Our Adventures in the USA

Third Day Revive Show in Kentucky
This show was very cool - it doubled their biggest audience. I think the final count was somewhere around 9000 people. They were a great crowd: very excited to hear Revive for the first time.

Third Day Revive Show in Williamsburg Virginia
Mum, My Uncle and Aunty came to this show - we loved having them there!!
It was great to show them what we have been up to... and ride a few rollercosters!!
The theme park gave us an escort that took us around the park - she bumped us to the beginning of the line to get onto the rides! It was good because we didn't have time to think about the ride and back out.

Day at YMCA Camp high Harbour
During July Revive is playing at a few different YMCA summer camps so the director invited us up to check out the place and enjoy a few of the activities.

In mid June we headed to Conneticut to meet up with Rich's parents and his sister Briar.
It was beautiful there:

Glenn got right into chatting to strangers:

We also go a chance to go and see Yale - quite amazing

We headed down to New York City for a day trip and then again for two days later on in the week.
We loved it - it is such a different place. It was quite tiring walking all day and dodging the millions of other people walking around the city.

M & M world was very cool!

We really enjoyed central park - we all had a walk around the south end of the park and then later in the week Rich and I hired bikes and rode around the park. It was amazing - you really forgot that you were in the middle of a crowded city!



We found some quite beautiful places down the bottom of the island before we got on the boat to see the statue of liberty.



The night we stayed in New York we headed to Little Italy for dinner. It was not like i imagined. The people were really happy and friendly. I got this picture in a cab on the way back to the hotel. Basil growing in cans on the side of the road. It left me questioning the quality of the food we had just eaten.

Our final destination was Boston- we did the Freedom Trail which is a 2 mile walk around lots of the historic sites in Boston. It was really interesting.



We went to Harvard as well - needed to compare the top unis... very nice, but it didn't quite live up to Yale's architecture.

Revive is going well - we are keeping busy with local gigs. Rich and the guys are in Nashville at the moment having lots of meetings with management companies and booking agents.
Rich is in charge of the web now, and it is looking really good.
Check it out if you want to see what Revive has been up to at www.reviveband.com.
Lots of love Nic and Rich

On the 8th of April we picked up mum from the airport. It was lovely to hear another Australian accent and even more lovely that it was family!! Mums solution to jet lag is to just keep going.. so that's what we did. Rich and I haven't had much of a break since we have been here so we were looking forward to a good look around Atlanta. After a rest we headed out to Kennesaw mountain, one of the historical sights from the civil war.

Some of the other highlights from the first week:

RUBY FALLS:
This is a bit like janolan caves, with stalactites and stalacmites - You walk for about 500 m undreground to a waterfall.

ROCK CITY:
Rock city surpassed our expectations - It is on the top of a mountain where, they say, you can see 7 states. An amazing view and quite naturally beautiful until we went through the last section and creepy gnomes appeared everywhere. Having a party, panning for gold, fishing... and all painted fluro colours??

ATLANTA BOTANICAL GARDENS:


Glenn, Rich assures me that you will appreciate these photos. I have received quite a bit of mockery from Rich for showing an interest in flowers that is way beyond my years.

The second week mum we headed to Nassau, in the Bahamas!!!
We had an excellent time. The view from our hotel rooms was amazing! It was so nice to be around white sand and tropical water.


The markets were a whole lot of fun! Mum was a pro at bargaining. We got some handbags, shirts and jewelry. We got called baby and beautiful a ridiculous amount... quite flattering at the beginning... it became increasingly annoying as our patience for heckling and market shopping grew thin.


The rest of downtown was really interesting, the buildings were all painted different bright colours and it provided a bit of a more normal shopping experience.

We went to the local zoo to see the marching flamingos. They are Caribbean flamingos - such an amazing colour! I got pulled out to have a 'close encounter' with the flamingoes. One of them ended up pecking my neck and biting my hair as I stood there imitating a flamingo.

Most of the days we were away were windy - it turns out we chose the best day to go snorkeling. We went to 3 different sites. The fist 2 were good, lots of coral and fish. The third was especially memorable. We arrived and saw the boat before us feeding the Caribbean reef sharks we were about to swim with!! That boat moved off and our captain put a bait box 20 feet down in the water. The sharks started circling the box and that was our chance to get in! Mum was a bit wary but decided it was now or never so made it into the water. We had to hold onto one of two ropes behind the boat. I have never been so close to so many strangers. The sharks began to circle higher and higher in the water to the point where we could touch them if we put our foot down.... it was time to get out! When we were out of the water the captain fed the sharks. Check out the video... it was very cool!

Highlights from the last week with mum:

The past week has been great weather! We had a lot of fun doing things outside during the day and Mum got a chance to put faces to names during the nights. I put some of the people photos in so you could match the names to faces too.
Dinner with Rachel and Jeff:

Dinner with Suzzane (the lady from baggage claim) and Paul:

A night out with Suzanne, Pip, Kay and Barry. (We live with Kay and Barry)

THE LAKE HOUSE
Some fun times at the lake house!!! Kay and Barry generously let us use their Seadoos... A great way to spend a day!

STONE MOUNTAIN
Stone mountain has a carving some confederates on the side of it 45 foot high. We were going to climb the mountain but once there Mum and I decided it might be wiser to get the cable car up and walk down. It was great walking through the forest at the beginning of spring.

BASEBALL
The last night we had with Mum we head to the baseball with Barry and Jessica. A real introduction to America - pretzels, hot dogs and pizza!

We loved having Mum! ... Come and visit us!! - you could get this treatment too!

Well the last 6 weeks has been amazing - we worked out the we have been through 20 of Americas 50 states! We have spent a whole lot of time in our bus... and in a van when our bus wouldn't quite go.
The second leg of the Spring Tour was to up to Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa. No one was really looking forward to the 20 hour drive to get to the first gig. It turns out we never had to do it...we made it to manchester Tennessee before spending about 4 hours at the mechanics before realising there was no chance. The guys ended up flying off to the shows leaving the rest of the girls and I to get the bus home and get it fixed. It was a very long 2 hours back home - stopping regularly to fill up the transmission fluid and just the general stress that we wouldn't make it back.

The week we spent in Louisiana and Athens, Georgia was the first that we had time to look around. The first stop was New Orleans - It was quite incredible to see the aftermath that still remains 2 1/2 years on from hurricane Katrina.

We walked through The Fench Quarter and along the Mississippi River.

We had a bit of time to spare before the show in athens so Rich and I went for a walk through the town. The town is based around a college, so the shops and atmosphere is quite cool. It is also home of the Georgia bulldogs - the college football team. The stadium fits 97,000 people which easily gets sold out every game. A bit of a different world. We are looking forward to being part of the craziness when the season begins again.

After the athens show we headed to Kay and Barry's lake house. So Nice!! It was a great break for us. Rich was thrilled to see a wharf and fishing poles! ... we didn't catch anything.

After a tour leg to Oklahoma and Kasas we head to New Your state - we welcomed the change in food, much more like the food from home, but the was a definite difference in the warmth of the people. The guys did some great shows and i got the chance to go in and take some pictures of them...


During Third Days set Mac brings out the 3 singers from the other bands and they sing "Handle with care" by The Traveling Wilburys. They also need a guitar player so Rich plays every night with Third Day too. A bit of a blast! One of the Lyrics is 'everybody's got somebody to lean on' and everyone on stage leans on someone... i think this is the most stressful part of the night. The first night Rich didn't know about it and was left in the lerch... I'm stressed for Rich the whole song that it will happen again.

and here is me... just so you know i'm working.

We are happy to be back in Atlanta - and looking forward to some local gigs and a regular sleeping pattern.

Well, it has been a really long time between updates! We have been extremely busy this last two months with touring with Third Day - we have now done 10 shows with them from hollywood CA, all the way to Orlando, Florida!

The first 4 shows we did were on the West Coast of the USA - Hollywood, San Diego, Anaheim(Disneyland!) and then Las Vegas.

It was really awesome to see all the places that I had heard of before!

Check out a video of the trip:

Here's a little video I took of one of the shows while playing my bass!:

So - pretty much THE MOST AMAZING thing happened to us on our way to the Las Vegas show. We had met a representative from Fender guitars (his name was Dave and he was an awesome Christian guy) after the Anaheim show and he said he would like to show us around the Fender factory the next day - on our way to Vegas. We were really keen and thought it may be a good opportunity to build relations.

So, we get there and check out the factory:

It was really cool. He then took us back to his office and he had about 50 awesome guitars that famous people had used at some stage (like in movies/award shows etc). He let us play them - any one we wanted!

I picked up this beautiful Fender 5-string Jazz bass (it was played by Ricky Martin's bass player at the Grammys!) and started playing it. Dave came over to me, looked sternly into my eyes and said: 'Merry Christmas' He gave me the bass! He then proceeded to give Ty 2 (awesome) custom Fender guitars and Dave 2 (awesome) guitars. Nothing for Mike.

Here is a reenactment:

The other shows have been going great too - Mac from Third Day has been giving us HUGE plugs from the stage in his set. He gets Dave up every night to sing a Third Day song with them. It's pretty darn amazing. I still have to pinch myself every now and then.

Nicky is doing well - she is extremely busy with looking after the Revive accounts and Merch. She is slowly getting used to life on the bus/van. Typical Nicky, she sleeps well on the bus - even when we go over bumps and get airborne in our bunks, she'll still sleep.

Please keep praying for us. There hasn't been a week here yet when one of the 8 of us hasn't been ill. It's a bit of a killer, so please pray for that and for love!

The album will be released in like 2 weeks! You can hear 2 of our new songs on the myspace page: www.myspace.com/reviveband

I'll leave you with some photos from Mrytle Beach, SC - the closest thing we've found to Sydney yet.


Love you all!

Rich and Nic

So, I'll give you a Revive update first. We've finished all the tracks and it is being mixed at the moment. This is a really intense time of the album - a mix can either make or break a song, so you have to sit there and listen to everything he does and make sure it is good. For example yesterday I spent 9 hours listen to 4 songs!

You may have also heard that we ran into some trouble here with the name 'Revive'. You see, the Marriott hotel have a day spa and put out a relaxation CD called 'Revive' - the have trademarked the name in the music world. All lawyers and business people from Third Day told us to come up with a new name. Well, we prayed a lot and then Dave called the Marriott lawyers - and they've agreed to co-trademark the name with us!! The Third Day lawyers said that they have never seen anything like that before - it's a real miracle that the Marriott agreed as there is nothing in it for them!

We played a church the other day - in Alpharetta (Georgia). It went extremely well. We sold almost 300 CDs! In Australia we would sell (at a similar sized church) maybe 80? People are so generous - some were giving us donations of $500!!

In other news, I shot a gun at clay pigeons! My buddy Tom took me for an 'American' experience. Check it out...

Life, in the Robert's basement is going really well. We feel like we are settling in - and we are enjoying getting to know the family. We went to one of the daughter's (Jessica) school talent show:

Jessica's performance was good, but their were some acts that made you feel like you were watching the bloopers from the American Idol auditions.

Nicky is settling well into her job. She has now almost mastered MYOB and is doing great work with the difficult job of tour organising. We start our tour next week with 4 shows at the different House of Blues in the West Coast (hollywood, Anaheim, San Diego, Las Vegas).

Here is a map of where our tour will take us starting March 1 - a lot of dates!!!

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107668834674792757250.000446223951d97958502&ll=41.574361,-90.483398&spn=18.654616,41.132813&z=5

That's it for now.

Rich and Nic