After an incredible two months away I landed back early morning on July 2nd in to a rainy Heathrow. Arriving home I boiled the kettle and made a good English brew, (milk first by the way!)

It tasted so good, (Custard creams on the side) The Americans struggle to do a good cuppa, but what they lack in tea making skills they certainly don’t lack in screaming and obsessive “Fangirling’, which is a new term apparently. One Direction has just completed there first ever USA headline tour, and as their Musical Director and Keyboard player, I could only take in and admire how successful these boys were on the other side of the pond!

The venues we played differ slightly from UK venues. They ranged from to a mixture of casino arena’s, Open air arena’s, the Americans call these sheds and can hold up to 20,000 basketball stadium’s, and the legendary Fox Theatre of Detroit, home to the Motown greats!

Now on the tour, it is my responsibility to cue to the show, I have an Ipad next to my MOTIF boards, running an app with touch screen buttons. This allows me to trigger each song; this then feeds back to the main playback system at the side of the stage. Now, from the moment I pressed play at the first show in the Mohegan Sun Arena, I knew these audiences where like none we ever had played! Super loud, super excited! In fairness these fans had been waiting over a year to see the boys live! The pace and intensity was set. Turn your amps up to “11″ Triggering that first song every night for 47 days on the road was going to be a lot of FUN!

As we traveled through North America, Canada, and Mexico performing the “Up all Night“ tour, we were privileged and fortunate to have Mr. Olli Murs on the road to open up for us. I worked with Olly Last year on a few shows covering for the talented Yamaha artist Sean Barry. Olly and his band are fantastic, working alongside great musicians and Yamaha artists Donavan Hepburn and Sean Barry was a really enjoyable. Sean has been a close mentor on the 1D project, so to be able to buy him a few thank you beers overlooking the Toronto skyline was a memorable occasion!

Fun aside, the drives in the USA are long and the roads are very bumpy! We had 4 tour buses on tour, 2 for our crew, one for 1D and one for the 4 musicians) Our bus driver was Lorne Jensen; he would drive the bus through the night and day to get us to our next destination. Armed with a large box of pretzels and a cool box of diet coke, this man would drive up to 12 hours solid at a time! We salute you Lorne!

Off the Road, the 1D boys love to let their hair down and relax, the video at the end of this blog will show you some of the amazing things we did on tour! From teaching dolphins to dance, to riding in police cars, to the Niagara falls Maid of the mist boat ride and having VIP access to Six flags Theme park. Amazing! I’ve never been to a theme park where you get driven to each ride, then go straight on to the ride. There were some angry looks from people who queued for a long time. But hey why not milk the celebrity perks while you can? You would do the same right?!

So a little break now for me, I’m getting fit down the gym and making my garden look nice, good to be doing normal stuff for a change! But that won’t be for long, we are about to start preparing for a huge headline show at Madison Square gardens in NYC! I cant wait, and I will keep you guys up to date with everything that’s going on in the 1D camp, as a Yamaha Artist!