In 2007, in addition to all the Australian and New Zealand gigs we were doing, we returned for another two tours to the USA. Toward the end of the year Jayden and Caroline decided that they would remain in the USA to live. Jayden was due to do the second USA tour and then would remain there providing his working Visa came through. The problem with this was that, once he applied for a long term working visa in the USA, he wasn’t able to enter the country until he got it. So, a week before the tour when we realised that his visa wasn’t going to come through, we had to replace him for that tour. I had already been talking to a friend and another ace multi-instrumentalist from central coast NSW, Mike McCarthy, about replacing Jayden when he moved overseas but now it was going to be a sudden entry.
Not only did Mike not have a rehearsal with us but for our first gig in Indiana we got the time difference between states wrong and arrived at the time we were supposed to start the concert. Mike didn’t even get a proper sound check. He was thrown in the deep end of touring from day one. Mike is an established singer-songwriter in his own right and as well as being friends we were all big fans of his music. Mike’s idea of a tour was one day playing for every five days surfing. On Mike’s first tour with us in the Midwest we did fourteen gigs in ten days and drove through five States. By the end of 2007 Rod Gear had started to get involved again and we were even starting to do the occasional gig as a five piece. With Spike playing the bass parts Rod was able to concentrate on what he loved doing the most which is the ‘colour-in’ melodic parts on double bass, piano and guitar.
