Special Consensus mandolinist Ashby Frank has agreed to send us updates and photos from their current tour of Britain and Ireland. Ashby is unsure how much web access he will have during the tour, but promises to send his musings whenever he has the chance.

Hello from 6 hours ahead!

In a period of 48 hours, we’ve been in 5 airports (Bismarck, Minneapolis, Nashville, Nashville again, Chicago, and Dublin), riden a bus to Belfast, and then been shuttled to where we’re staying not far out of Belfast, Northern Ireland. You should see how we packed 5 suitcases, 4 instrument cases, a bass, and all four of us in a Honda minivan. Very entertaining for everyone at the bus terminal in Belfast I’m sure.

I didn’t sleep on the plane, but it was a nice flight, Aer Lingus is awesome! Tons of movies and decent airplane food. Still, even though it was comfortable I didn’t find any sleep for something like 25 hours so I’m kind of turned around.

If I were home right now, I’d be getting ready to go down to the Station Inn for Mashville. It’s 6:36PM Tuesday there, and it’s 12:35AM on Wednesday here. I got a long nap once I got here and now I’m all messed up and lagged. I’m sure it won’t take long to recover.

In the next room, Greg and some of our friends here are jamming on some Irish tunes, David’s in bed and Justin is trying to make his Skype work. Ah the joys of world travel!

Tomorrow we play in a pub in the South (The Republic of Ireland) in a town called Grange that’s only 3 hours from here so we’ll all be rested. The only problem is, that show starts a string of 21 straight nights of gigs. Wow. Most I’ve ever done for sure. Guess there’s worse ways to get your musical chops up!

So tell all of your friends in Grange, Ireland to come see us tomorrow night and hopefully I’ll blog at yall later!