- This event has passed.
CANCELLED: Gentle Sinners
Tue 20 Sep 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm
CANCELLED
Unfortunately, Gentle Sinners have had to cancel their upcoming tour, including their performance at Summerhall on 20th Sept. Customers will be contacted directly shortly, and will receive a full refund.
We apologise for the inconvenience and disappointment caused. Please find a statement from the band below:
In retrospect, organising a tour to fill the only available mutual window in our respective 2022 calendars was a delirious insanity, but an honest and heartfelt one. The Gentle Sinners album was created as a way to keep in touch when we were physically far apart, and similarly the tour was designed as a busman’s holiday; a lads’ reunion filled with laughter, wine and song, meeting new friends in intimate surroundings along the way.
But after a long, hot summer of airport queues and walking with a cane, Aidan is physically and mentally broken, and finds himself months behind on the new Arab Strap material planned for next year. Meanwhile, having recently jumped back on the Twilight Sad tour train, James has realised that three months away supporting The Cure (from October 6th) is more than enough time to be apart from his newborn son and the rest of his family. Quite simply, we misjudged it: we had the spirit, and we thought we had the time too. We were wrong.
So, sadly, this year’s Gentle Sinners shows cannot go ahead as planned. We may well come back to them one day, if our other bands can afford us the time; and we may well make another record, which next time will be released in a period that can give us all the hours we need to prepare and rehearse, not to mention actually tour and play.
All tickets can be refunded at point of sale. Apologies and thanks to all who bought tickets – we’ll endeavour to make it work sometime soon.
In the meantime, as our album is finally released on vinyl this September 16th (also available on CD and digital right now), we thought we’d offer a parting gift, a digital-only single that isn’t actually on the album but hopefully serves as a kind of postscript, and maybe even goes some way to explain why we’ve ran out of time. It’s a cover of I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing and, as Aidan explains, it’s all his fault:
“Aye, you can blame me for this one. I’ve always liked it as a strong, soppy love song – a hit for Aerosmith, of course, but written by 90s power ballad queen Diane Warren – but then one night YouTube threw it my way out of the blue, and as I listened tipsily I thought that maybe the “baby” in the song was actually quite literal, and suddenly it became this beautiful song about wanting to see everything your child will ever do. James’s second son had just been born, so it seemed liked the stars had aligned, plus I really wanted to hear what James would sound like singing it. It ended up all distorted strings, military drums and wandering vocals, and it made me cry as I mixed it – especially right now, as I hardly ever see my children, they’re either always out or online, or I’m away on tour; I long ago gave up on sharing every moment with them, and I expect that’s why I was crying.”
It may be a cliché to say that time is precious, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. We hope you enjoy the single and album, and forgive us our scheduling blunder. Fingers crossed we’ll see you in the future somewhere.
James & Aidan