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26 October 2012 ~ Comments Off on Tour of the Americas – Part 1

Tour of the Americas – Part 1

We are currently on our ‘tour of the Americas’, covering the USA, Canada and eventually Brazil. In this first tour report, Glen shares his experiences of his first ever visit to the States.

En route to Albany NY, a 24 hour trip from Nijmegen

As I am writing this we have reached day 5 of our tour in the USA. Anchors, our touring partners from Australia, are playing their set to a crowd in Worcester, Massachusetts. Later tonight, No Trigger will be playing a hometown show here in Ralph’s Diner. Needless to say, the upstairs venue is quite packed with people.

I’m not too sure how big a city Worcester is, as the sun was already down by the time we drove into town. Before the show we had a nice family dinner at Eric from Smartbomb’s parents’ place. They’re very hospitable people who live in a nice (to my understanding typically American) home on the outskirts of Worcester.

Anchors @ Ralphs Diner – Worcester, MA

Over dinner I had a conversation with Eric’s dad about how overwhelming the States have been to me, because I’ve never toured here before. This is Riekus’ 3rd USA tour and Willem’s 4th, so they obviously have more experience with the American culture than I have. At times I will just wander around like a kid in a candy store, trying to process all the new impressions. Like the cars people drive here, which are just huge! Or the all-you-can-eat diners, and even the 24/7 Wall Marts where i heard you are allowed to sleep in your car on the parking lot. At the same time a lot of things seem familiar, because we’ve apparently incorporated quite some aspects of American life into our own European lives.

Crossing the Canadian border, AKA ‘The end of America’

The first days of the tour have been better than we expected: the show in Montreal was well attended and a lot of people sang along to our songs. Quite surprising on our first Canadian show ever! It definitely made us think about doing a longer stretch of shows in Canada the next time we come over. The shows in Albany and Rochester also turned out nice, although Riekus and I have managed to slightly loose our voices already. I lost my voice due to being a little too keen, Riekus probably lost his to cheap cigarettes and beers.

We spent most of the last few nights at Will and Jimmy’s place, just outside Albany. Will plays bass for After the Fall, Jimmy plays bass in Will’s other band, Bad Friends. They live in a nice old house, I believe from the 1870’s and it’s all wood. That’s new to me: most European houses are all brick. All in all it’s a rare luxury on tour to have a ‘home’ for a few days in a row. And the surroundings are just straight up beautiful, with the fall setting in on woody upstate New York.

Outside Will & Jimmy’s house

For this tour we’ve arranged our own transport, because the After The Fall van only holds 2 bands. Our rental Chrysler minivan is nice and spacious for our baggage and the 4 of us: Willem, Riekus, Glen, and our Scottish friend Mark McCabe, who is travelling with us. He’s playing Fest too, and he decided to tag along, playing his acoustic songs in between sets whenever he can.

That will be all for the time being. Tomorrow we leave for two shows in New York City: ABC No Rio in Manhattan and The Place in Brooklyn. I can’t wait!

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27 December 2011 ~ Comments Off on Greece trip 2011 report

Greece trip 2011 report

Our trip started in a rather unorganized fashion: we almost missed our flight from Düsseldorf. Don’t ask how, but we heard our names being called over the speakers on the airport: “mr Ten Haaf, Heijmans and Van Montfort, you are delaying your flight”. Pretty strange, but we made it by a close call and besides that we could skip the whole waiting around at the airport. Win-win situation. Also, we had to wait for Riekus a little longer because he had a leatherman somewhere in his bag and they don’t like small heavy iron objects with a knife in airports.

This is what happens on twitter when we almost miss a flight

Arriving in Greece was pretty nice for us: 19 degrees and some sun is better than the icy, windy, rainy weather we had left behind in the Netherlands. The first night we were invited to play a sort of secret show for a smaller audience in a rehearsal studio. It was small and intense and extremely warm but very cool to play there. Jack from Despite Everything (great band!) recorded the whole show with his studio-gear. I have no idea how we must have sounded (loud as always I guess) but I was having a cold and Willem was recovering from a cold. All in all we had a great evening on our first friday night ever in Greece.

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On saturday, our host Apostolis’ roommate Drossos (“even for Greeks it’s a weird name” he said) showed us around Athens. It’s nice as a tourist to see the ancient Greek parts of Athens. It’s hard to figure out how heavy ass it must have been to make such structures without all the possibilities and heavy constructions stuff we use these days to build things. What’s strange to see for me as a european in another european country was all the police walking around all day and night. It sometimes gave me a feeling of discomfort being there. Of course there is a lot going on about politics and the eurocrisis but I can understand that a lot of young people don’t like all the police walking through their city fully armed. It just gives you a feeling of being uncomfortably ‘safe’ sometimes..

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The show in Athene went well on saturday night: we had a great time playing and meeting a lot of new people and for me personally seeing new bands. Then sunday morning we had to travel to our show in Volos, but to be honest (and we also told the audience later on) we had no idea where and what Volos was. So Riekus got his macbook out, ran Volos through wikipedia and google maps and SHABAM we knew what to expect from the city.

Our label buddies Whales' Island from Palermo

I believe it was a 4 hour drive from Athens to Volos. Sitting in the van with Wish Upon A Star from Athens, we got the extra touring guide information about what we were seeing from the roads we were on (and holy shit do Greek people talk loud!).

en route to Volos with Wish Upon A Star from Athens

The show in Volos went well. I actually heard from some people that they liked the show in Volos most. It’s always tough for me as a musician to compare shows with each other but maybe they were right. After all, the show felt good and I was not feeling so sick anymore in Volos. So that was Volos. One thing I will never forget was the ENORMOUS teddybear at the sleeping place in Volos.

... and back to Athens

So that was that! Back to Athens airport on monday morning and trying to get some sleep in the plane. No flights were delayed this time. A big Thank You goes out to Apostolis for inviting us and putting up 3 shows for us! I’m very grateful for the possibilities we got for playing over there and hopefully we can go back to Greece another time soon.

Pictures or it didn’t happen!

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05 July 2011 ~ 1 Comment

Tour report Euro tour with Boysetsfire June 2011

Below you can find the combined “From the back of the van” reports written and posted on this website during our tour with Boysetsfire and Letlive. Some parts are chronological, some parts per subject. Hopefully it gives a nice insight on how we tour and on how this tour was in particular. Some pictures can be found at the bottom. Enjoy!

From the back of the van, June 14, 2011

I’m typing this down on our way from Austria to Budapest. Yesterday we played Wiener Neustadt, the last show “on our own”, without Boysetsfire and Letlive. It was very nice to see a lot of familiar faces and longtime friends before we enter the realm of anonymous crowds, dealing with a tour manager and people only waiting to see BSF. On the other hand, we have been looking forward to this a long time, so we can’t wait to start this second chapter of the tour. We are very curious what to expect, whether the people will be interested in us or not and how touring in a “less-DIY-way” is. It might not be too different; yesterday we got a last minute email the Prague show has been canceled. Happens to the best apparently. And one advantage of our own “DIY community”: we managed to get a new show (on our own, not with BSF) on that same evening, at Cafe na P?l Cesty, in Prague. Below the statement from booker and venue:

We have bad news. Unfortunately we have to cancel BOYSETSFIRE´s Prague show that was supposed to happen on Thursday, June 16th, due to a massive strike happening there that day. Not only will there not be any public transport, but also blockades of the main roads, so it would be questionable if the bands would even get into the city or people to the show. According to a news report they´re expecting the city to be totally paralyzed. We´re really sorry about this.”

Torn between solidarity with the workers, ignorance on getting through Prague and the eager to play we decided to try to go to Prague and play. No Boysetsfire, but free entrance/donation instead. See for yourself.


From the back of the van, June 19, 2011

The second part of the tour has surely begun! The first show with Boysetsfire and Letlive was on a huge boat in the Donau in Budapest. Really cool show, playing after Deez Nuts who were last minute added to the lineup. At the second show in Poland there were two local bands playing so we were playing 3rd in front of quite some people again, nice! Good responses, but we had to get used to the different dimensions of the show and the sound in Poland didn’t work in our advantage.

budapest

Even though the show with BSF and Letlive in Prague was canceled we got an alternative show offered. We played one of the coolest venues, in one of the coolest locations ever: a café selling vegan burgers in the middle of Pankrac Park in Prague. Benches outside, a front porch at the entrance. The place was packed with 40 people. Different dimensions, great evening though! I hope the strike and blockades helped the workers to get what they deserve, it didn’t affect our movements at all. The next day was going to be hard. 2 shows on 1 day, no shower the next morning. Good times. The first show was a festival in a small town in the Czech Republic, which wasn’t too crowded, but nice. 12 year olds buying our shirts. The second show a completely packed show in Zwiesel, where we had been before and that showed. And again a lot of young kids, there is a future and it is bright!

Na Pul Cesty, Prague Czech Republic

Last night we played Leipzig, the biggest show in Germany and sold out, 1000+ people. And Conne Island, what a venue! Including a nice skatepark outside, food grills in front of the venue and a nice biergarten. It was already quite full when we started playing and the crowd apparently enjoyed us and vice versa. Today we have our first and last off day of tour and tomorrow the third part of tour starts: a non-stop run of shows with BSF and LL; no more off days or shows on our own. But first: BBQ at Hotel Kötti in Regensburg!

Some footage from the show in Gorizia (IT)

From the back of the van, 25 June , 2011

For a European band touring with a North American band is one of the best things that can happen to you. Or at least, that is what we heard from other bands. North American punk/hardcore bands draw a bigger audience than the average European punk/hardcore band. North American bands are more exotic to most people and come from the countries where most punk and hardcore bands and labels originated from. Whether the difference between the attention for North American and European bands is fair or not I would gladly discuss with you another time! But touring with Boysetsfire and Letlive indeed gives us the chance to play in front of more people than we do when we tour on our own. Some of the stages on this tour are bigger than the venues we usually play, go figure. Even though we are very happy to also see familiar faces from “our own shows”, it is a nice challenge to play in front of people who are into the same kind of music, but initially didn’t come to the show for us and generally don’t watch DIY shows or European bands.

Hirsch, Nuernberg Germany - the crowd

So far we are doing well I think. For this tour we play mostly as the 1st out of 3 bands. To make sure people catch our name when they enter the venue during our set we even made a backdrop. At some shows there are more bands playing before us, and the last part of tour will be only BSF and us. We get to play 30 minutes, which results in a 9-song-nur-hits-setlist and enough time left for futile revolutionary talk in between songs. Even though the crowd isn’t complete yet when we play, we get great responses after our songs and show and we do well on merch. The reactions on our site and facebook are proof! What struck me was that at first we were the only band selling actual albums. Letlive later received CD’s (no vinyl) but neither BSF nor LL sell LP’s. How old-fashioned of us to sell our complete catalog on both CD and LP.

So far our “on/front-stage” experiences of this tour, next chapter: off/back-stage!

From the back of the van, July 1, 2011

When you take into consideration that our tour through Russia is the last tour we did before embarking on this tour, there couldn’t be more differences. Of course, as previously described the audiences are bigger. But besides playing in front of bigger crowds there are a lot more differences between this tour and our usual touring. Preparing the tour was not business as usual for us. All shows with Boysetsfire have been booked by Destiny Bookings so we didn’t have to do anything to get the shows. So that’s easy. But since BSF is touring and sleeping in a nightliner we still have to arrange our own sleeping places. No problem, because we appear to have plenty of friends all over Europe! Something else: at the first show in Budapest we are being introduced to some people from the national TV. Apparently they want to do an interview with Boysetsfire and the support bands. It is a nice little interview, with some big lights and more and less obvious questions. I’m very curious if we will ever see the final result of it.

Another “win-win situation” of this tour is to be found in the backstage. Since we share most backstages with BSF and Letlive we get the same luxury treatment as them. From sandwiches at our arrivals to our own exclusive backstage bar in Budapest. Snacks and drinks until you drop. Whatever is left at the end of the night (food and drinks) we put in our bags and take to our van, they make nice snacks and drinks on the road the next day. Cheaper than the average gas station.

You know those plastic backstage passes some bands make for themselves proving they never tour, whilst trying to prove they are on the road all the time? They appeared necessary on this tour, I learned the hard way. On our show in Frankfurt I really couldn’t get past security without showing my pass or paying entrance. So I started wearing the damn thing.

Batschkapp Frankfurt - day 2

Another security measure I started to understand when it got explained to me are the barriers in front of the stage. At some shows there are barriers “protecting” the band, or the audience, I don’t know what their official function is. And it always feels weird when a band decides to play behind barriers. Why so distant? But in some clubs a band will be held responsible for any accident happening without barriers being put up. But if the barriers are there, the club will take full responsibility. For a band, and an American band in particular, insurance issues always are difficult (health insurance anyone?), so I understand why bands choose “the easy way” and decide to put up barriers. On top of that all German shows on this tour are sold out and having around 1000 people in a packed club is something else than the 100 people maximum we usually play in front of …

At most shows we can use BSF’s backline. Guitar and bass cabs that is. They remove their drum kit from the drum risers so we can put up ours, which is a little nicer than putting our own drum kit in front of the main band’s kit. The same goes for the backdrop, we can hang it in front of theirs. At some of the shows the support bands weren’t announced at all so it was nice to inform people who we were.

Melkweg Amsterdam - by Melissa Duijn

Towards the end of the tour we get to know BSF and their crew a little better. Even though they travel in their nightliner, spend a lot of time in their dressing rooms and might be “a little older than we are”, we also have some time together. Especially the after-show-BBQs in Gorizia (ITA) and Antwerp (BEL) are awesome. Both the band and the crew are extremely nice and easy going. The tour was a great experience for the band, but the people involved made it a nice personal experience as well.

Photo’s or it didn’t happen!

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09 May 2011 ~ 8 Comments

Tour Report Russian tour April, May 2011

I could write a day-by-day tour report like we have done in the past, but when touring Russia it might be nice to pick out certain subjects and write about those more in detail. Because we might have toured Europe and the USA several times, in Russia you can forget what you know and start from …

Before writing the report we would like to thank Sergei and Vladimir from Play It Loud Bookings for getting this tour together and Aleksey from Angry Chuck Records for releasing and promoting our new album and tour in Russia. They still have a lot of our albums and T-shirts up at their distro.
In case you have videos or pictures of our shows in Russia, please email them to us. We would love to have some proof of people going crazy at our Russian shows!

Logistics

Touring overseas or far from your own home usually means flying to your destination resulting in not having your own van and backline there. When touring Europe we have our own van (including beds) and backline, we book most of our own shows and have riders making sure we know what to expect. This all makes it fairly safe and comfortable for us to tour Europe, and this way manage to tour extensively. When we toured the USA we always toured together with other bands whose backline and van we could use for the tour. So even though it is not your own stuff, you at least know what kind of equipment you can expect each night and what vehicle will get you to your sleeping place and next show.

Ride to Vladimir

When in Russia, you don’t. For us, coming over to Russia meant having no clue what to expect at all. No idea what kind of transportation and backline we get, where we sleep, if there is food and drinks at the show, how the shows are and in general how people react or communicate with us. Not only do we use public transportation for the whole tour, but all local bands use public transport to get to the shows. In Ryazan’ we play with three touring Russian bands and they actually rented a tour (mini)van and driver. For the first 3 shows we travel from and to Moscow, staying at Vladimir and his friends’ flat every night. This means walking to the metro with a guitar case, bass guitar case, merch suitcase and our personal stuff. And after that taking several Moscow metros for an hour, keeping our eyes on all our gear. After the metro comes an additional train or bus to the city we play. And the same on the way back home.

Transport from Moscow to St Petersburg

After playing Schekino (Tula) we find out there is no bus going back to Moscow that night and it seems we are stuck in Tula until the next morning. Since arriving in Moscow and getting to your destination by day takes more than 2 hours because of all the traffic, we decide to take a taxi back to Moscow that same night. Financially irresponsible in Europe, over there the ride was less than 40 euro, taking the 4 of us for more than 200 kms. By the way, in Russia everybody is a cab driver. Just raise your arm like you are hitch-hiking and a car will stop and drive you wherever you want for the amount you agreed on. This way we became the subject of a lot of “you will never believe what I have in my car right now”-conversations over the phone, and we managed to get a ride on what some may consider typical Russian transport: an oldschool 1970’s Lada!

lada cab!

Using local transport avoids getting pulled over by the police, as so many European and American bands have experienced and warned us about. And thanks to Vladimir, Sergei and Aleksey travelling with us, we have no trouble communicating with drivers or buying tickets. Public transport is quite relaxing since everything is out of your hands. Even though the seats in Russian vans and buses are rather cramped. In a van where in Europe only 9 people fit, in Russia they squeeze in 20 people easily. We were actually looking forward to flying on the plane, having space for our legs (!). A lot of Russian buses and trucks are second hand, bought from West-European countries. We actually saw an old Connexxion bus with it’s old destination still on the board: Hoorn (Netherlands). The roads in Russia are the worst we have seen to date. Cars and buses can’t drive on full speed most of the time because the state of the asphalt doesn’t allow it. Belgians, take notice!

Russian highways...

Backline

Touring by train or bus means you can’t bring more than a guitar, a bass guitar and some drumsticks. And the local bands don’t bring amps or drums either, even the band that rented a van didn’t bring a backline. What are you gonna use then? In Russia the venues provide a backline for all bands. Every band uses the same gear (the opposite of Belgium, where literally every band uses all their own stuff) and the gear is not top of the bill or is worn a little. But despite my expectations playing a Crate solid state combo isn’t all that bad (or is it the vodka that makes it sound good?). The best amp I play is a Marshall TSL tube combo, the worst a brand-less transistor combo.

Most of the nights the sound and the backline are OK. Only in Vladimir the gear and the sound system get the best of us and we don’t play at our best. For Riekus the quest for gear goes a little further than for Tim and me, because the drumkits in the venues usually don’t include a snare, kick pedal and cymbals. On the plane we couldn’t bring those because of weight restrictions, which results in a begging 101 course for Riekus to get his stuff together. Thanks to a lot of generous Russian drummers, this never leads to problems.

The shows

The biggest difference between shows in Russia and anywhere else is the enthusiasm of the people. There was not 1 show without circlepits, stagedives and crowdsurfing. Even though more and more foreign bands tour Russia and people are wearing all the cool and hip band shirts, all hell still breaks loose when a foreign bands starts to play. A little head-nodding from the crowd can be very rewarding playing in Holland or Belgium, in St Petersburg we were actually chased back onto the stage because it was too wild playing on the floor. When your drummer is being crowdsurfed during your own set, you know people are having a blast. When at every show there are people who know your lyrics even though you have never been there before, you know people care about going to see bands and getting to know their music.

Our show in Moscow - by Ilyabenton.com

Russian people tend to come off very distant and inaccessible when you walk in the street or ride the metro. It isn’t until you personally meet people at the shows that you experience how friendly and warm Russians can also be. A grumpy face turns into a smile turns into ecstasy after you’ve played. I never polluted more pictures with my face and merchandise with my signature than in Russia.

At the shows we usually play with 4-5 other bands. To avoid a late night, shows start rather early, around 19h. It is 21.30h when we step into our taxi after the show in Veliky Novgorod. In Italy the promoter would not yet have been at the venue by that time.

One thing that really has to be a cultural difference is the Russian interpretation of rhythm and beats. Where we are used to clapping our hands on the 2nd and 4th beat of a song (on the snare hit), in Russia people lay accents on the 1st and 3rd beat (bass drum kick). Quite funny once you notice it. Quite hard to play along to.

Life in general

The Russian language appears to be completely incomprehensible when you first see it. But when you start learning the alphabet and get to know what Russian characters (and numbers!) resemble western characters, you can translate about half of the words into English, French or German. ????? = garage, ??????? = ‘magazin’ or shop, ???? = sushi, ???????? = ‘products’ or mini-shop etc.. ‘Learning’ the Russian language turns out to be a pretty nice pass-time!

Schekino - some Russian script in background

Commenting on the standard of life, I wouldn’t simply dare to say Russia is a poor country. It might be better to say there is a huge gap between those who benefited from the post-communist society and those who didn’t. The standard of life and health can often be measured by the way people walk and the condition of their teeth. And for some reason I noticed quite some young people limping or having bad teeth, which says something about health care.

When you drive around the country, outside of Moscow you will see a lot of old impoverished houses and buildings and cars and trucks that seem a hundred years old. On that same road you will see Porsches, Ferraris and stretched limousines (especially in Moscow) driving around. But then again; no working lights on your car? No problem, just drive with your alarm lights on! Car no longer working? Just leave it on the side of the road. No more room for garbage in your house? Just donate it to the side of the road. Compared to Russia, Naples looks like a hospital room. If they could make condoms out of old Russian car tires on the side of the road, AIDS would no longer exist …

Trashy Russian ghetto, St Petersburg

We played huge cities like Moscow (10+ million people) and St Petersburg (5+ million people) but also small towns and villages. At least that is what we thought. When Russians refer to their small town or village it still might have more than half a million inhabitants, but not more than 2 or 3 punk/hardcore bands. We are from Nijmegen, one of the 10 biggest Dutch cities, with a little over 160 thousand people and dozens of punk/hardcore bands in the area. What different standards?

Some trends we picked up in Moscow: Short, clear blue skirts are hip. Kissing and making out in public too. High, HIGH heels the same. Getting married must be the national sport #1, brides and grooms everywhere. Oh, and for those still wondering: Russian vodka is pretty O.K.!

I hope this report gives a little insight on how we experienced Russia: amazing and mind-blowing. We had the best time ever in Russia, great shows, meeting a lot of new friendly people and doing all this together with our great friends from Play it Loud and Angry Chuck Records. We will be back for sure!

Last but not least: a big thank you to Jeroen ‘bookhooker‘ Brom and Nederlands Fonds  Podiumkunsten / Performing Arts Fund for supporting this tour.

Pictures or it didn’t happen!

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07 June 2010 ~ 3 Comments

European tour report may / june 2010

We came back from the last tour at the beginning of May, washed our stuff, did a show in France that didn’t happen, packed our bags again and left for a new tour. This time, Germany, Austria, Italia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium and The Netherlands will be our home for the next 21 days, our longest European tour so far. Our tourparty consists of 5 people. Willem, Riekus and me are accompanied by Thomas and Rudy. Leuk!
We’ll try to update you once in a while with our stories!

Wednesday the 26th of May @ Haus der Jugend, Freiburg (Germany)

Woke up, kissed my girlfriend goodbye and took the train to Nijmegen, where we would meet to take off for our longest European tour so far. We started good with the longest drive on tour on the first day. Did some quick shopping and left for Freiburg. During the ride we encountered heavy rain, lots of traffic jams and when we finally arrived in the city of Freiburg we discovered that the Dutch national footballteam was playing against Mexico. In the massive traffic jam (2 kilometers took us 45 minutes or something) we made some Mexican friends.
When we arrived, we unloaded the van in a storm, scheisse! We met Christian, the promoter. His mother cooked us some amazing food! Christian’s band Far Off The Zoo opened the show with some nice punkrock tunes and some cool intermezzos. We were up next. During our show somebody yelled “Optiefen ouwe graftak!”. It turned out to be Marius who we met before in Rastatt. I’m still wondering why we teach foreigners “Neuken in de keuken” when there are so many better options!
After the show we went to Christian’s place. Drank a beer, drank a whiskey, listened to good music and went to sleep. Tomorrow we would have a nice drive ahead of us, which would take us through the Schwarz Wald.

Thursday the 27th of May @ PMK, Innsbruck (Austria)

We had to be in Innsbruck at 5 PM, so we left pretty early for a long drive on small roads that took us through a beautiful landscape in South Germany. We crossed the border at Lindau and the first thing I did in Austria was buy a bottle of Almdudler, best drink ever! Drank it as a kid on holidays in Austria, and still buy it every time when I’m in Austria. When we arrived in Innsbruck, the venue was still closed and it was already past 6 PM when the promoter arrived. Promoter Maurice turned out to be Italian and had to drive from Bolzano to Innsbruck. We got some Italian pasta, like! On the bill were three bands. The first one was U.C.D.T. From Italy. The played pretty loud hardcore music. We were up next. Played a bit shorter than the day before, because after our show it was up to Traktor from Sweden to finish the evening. They played some rocking hardcore screamo mixture. Pretty awesome! After the show there was going to be a party until 5 or 6 in the morning, but I was so exhausted that my bed in the basement was the best option. We were planning to have a long sleep, but the promoter and his friends woke us up because we had to leave early. We headed for the supermarket where I bought millions of vegan sausages and of course, ate them all in one and a half day. Bought some fake Almdudler and we continued our way to Poirino, Italy, where the sun always shines!

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Friday the 28th of May @ MT Beer Festival, Poirino (Italy)

Today would be the day that Rudy finally did a number two. Sorry Rudy! After a few stops and a search through the van by the financial police (huh?) we arrived in Poirino, where we would play the MT Beer Festival. An outdoor festival with a stage with no roof. We soundchecked the drums and afterwards it started to rain. We covered the equipment and were hoping the rain would stop. But no, the rain turned into a storm and the weather turned out to be the worst I’d seen in months. We got a real nice pizza, we got drinks, but we didn’t get the chance to play the show. The rain continued the whole evening. Second show in 7 days that we couldn’t play, damnit! Good thing was that while we were watching some episodes of Dutch TV show New Kids in the van, we learned the Italians who were watching with us what “Stoma” means. Another fine piece of the Dutch language. Dario, the promoter took us to our sleepingplace and we had a good night sleep. Next stop: Milano.

Saturday the 29th of May @ LeonCavallo (Dauntaun), Milano (Italy)

Leon Cavallo is a huge building in Milano with lots of different venues in it. Our show today was in the basement, while upstairs in the big hall some kind of rap contest was held. On our show there were supposed to be 5 bands, but due to some miscommunications, Total Abuse was no longer on the bill tonight. We played with Kontatto. Some d-beat stuff with hardrock influences, which was pretty cool. The other two bands played more rock ‘n roll and hardcore stuff. I think all bands played pretty nice! What was not so nice, was the fact that the venue served cans of Oranjeboom, the worst Dutch beer ever. In The Netherlands, you can’t get it anywhere anymore, but here in Italy they still had it. The people at the bar claimed it was the best beer ever and one guy was actually thinking about getting an Oranjeboom tattoo. Dude! We all drank one can, decided it was really bad and moved on to other brands of beer. After the show, we were taken to our sleepingplace inside the building. In our sleepingroom, I accidently stepped in or on a snale. Leuk! The next morning we had to get up really early, because there was only one person that could open the gate for us. We waited for two hours and when we were still locked in the area of Leon Cavallo, we kinda broke out. Good to have an ex-squatter in the crew. Makes it easier to get out of a squat. After breaking out, we had to drive for almost 30 kilometers, what a distance!

2010-05-29 21.38.45

Sunday the 30th of May @ Spazio Milk @ Melegnano (Italy)

After leaving Leon Cavallo, we went into the city center of Milano. Parked the van pretty cheap and strolled around like tourists. Drank some coffee, saw the Duomo and relaxed in the park. The weather was really nice, so it was a real relaxing day.
After checking out the city, we continued our way to Melegnano, where we would play at Spazio Milk, what looked like some kind of library. Tonights show was organized by Ste, from our Italian label No Reason Records. His girlfriend Sara made the best food ever! She even made vegan yogurt pie for dessert, yeah!
First band tonight was A Theory Of Justice who played hardcore with a male and a female singer. After their show, we played second. It was a strange place to play, but we had a great time. The last band played some more experimental punkrock music. Thought they were really good! After cleaning up we drove to the office of Dami of No Reason Records and we spent the night there. Playing stupid games with bandnames and drinking a couple of beers. We all had a good sleep and a freezing shower in the morning. For some of us, it was the first shower on tour. Imagine how the van smells right now! We said goodbye to Ste and moved on to Bologna, where a show with The Cute Lepers was our next stop.

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Monday the 31st of May @ New Lazzaretto, Bologna (Italy)

Mondays can be really hard for shows, but hey, bands don’t tour only in weekends! Fortunately we had a show in the town of Bologna with The Cute Lepers, with members of The Briefs. When we arrived at the New Lazzaretto, we were wondering what this building used to be. Some of us thought it was a lighthouse, some thought it was a flower shop and some thought it was a UFO that landed here and never took off again. For dinner, we had pizza again! I like it when we have the local food! We killed some time drinking beers outside the venue, having conversations with some lepers. First two bands of the evening both played some punk ‘n roll, which really matched the sound of The Cute Lepers. Guess we were the odd one on this show, but there were some people that came for us. Again I saw some people singing along. One guy knew that I was the new guy, because the old bass player screwed too much. Sorry Rudy! After our set The Cute Lepers played. I was really exhausted, so I watched it sitting on a cabinet. They played a nice set of punk ‘n roll. After the show we left together with Claudio, to sleep at his studio. Riekus and I decided to sleep in the van and have a romantic night. Problem was that we parked the van somewhere where it was illegal, so I had to get up early to park it in a better place the next morning. Problem with sleeping in the van is that you can’t go to the toilet. You don’t want to know the solutions I came up with when someone needed to do a number 2. Luckily I could do it in the morning at the place where the others slept. After a while Claudio picked us up and took us to the music store and we grabbed a coffee with him. We explored the city center of Bologna, the towers that are leaning over and enjoyed the nice weather. Tonight would be the last Italian show of the tour, so we headed for Vittorio Veneto.

Oh yeah, for those interested, the venue used to be a vegetable shop.

Tuesday the 1st of June @ Spazio Mavv, Vittorio Veneto (Italy)

Vittorio Veneto is a small city in the Northeast of Italy. Actually, tonights show would be in Tarzo, an even smaller city, but the promoters moved it to Vittorio Veneto. Tomorrow was a holiday in Italy, so a lor of people came out to the show. Who said that Tuesdays are bad for shows? Again the Italian promoters, Patrick and Tomas, gave us Dutch beer. This time it was Royal Dutch beer. Never had that one before. The food this night was amazing! We had some salad with tomatoes and bread and after that we had probably the best pasta I ever had. Those Italians know how to make a pasta! We drank a coffee and after a while, Gargantha opened the show. I never heard of these guys before, but they were fucking awesome! Best band we played with this tour so far! Some parts reminded me of Satanic Surfers, like! The venue where we played was really big, but still really hot. Might have been the hottest stage of the tour. After our show I spoke to some guys who saw us at Groezrock and drove down from Verona to this show. Really cool to see that people do that for a band like us! We were taken to a youth hostel, drank some beers with the Veronians in the garden and got some good sleep. There was a great shower, so I finally could have a shower after Freiburg. Think I smelled really bad.

Wednesday the 2nd of June @ Club Baza, Ajdovš?ina (Slovenia)

Today we would leave Italy and their crazy drivers again. Next country on the list is Slovenia. First stop is a city called Ajdovš?ina (easier to type than to pronounce). On our way we were talking about that you have to put your lights on when you’re driving in Slovenia. Willem told someone that while driving in the UK, it’s illegal to drive without the wipers turned on. Sorry Thomas, but what goes in the tourreport, stays in the tourreport!
Todays show was done by the guys in Real Life Version, who I saw in my hometown last December. Great band! Because of some strange new laws in Slovenia, it is getting harder to do ‘legal’ shows and because of this, the guys made it a ‘private party’. We were the only band and I was afraid that no one would show up for a show of an unknown band in a small town on a Wednesday, but I was wrong. I think about 30 people showed up and they seemed to enjoy. After the show we had some nice talks, a few drinks and we loaded the van in heavy rain.
Jani and Aljosa, the promters, took us to the house of their drummer where we could sleep in the rehearsal room. Some people had a jonko, some people had a beer, some people had the internet. Satisfied we went to sleep to get up pretty early the next morning. After a quick breakfast we left for the capital, Ljubljana.

Thursday the 3rd of June @ Tovarna Rog, Ljubljana (Slovenia)

Around noon we arrived at Tovarna Rog in Ljubljana. We found out that the Cockney Rejects were playing at Metelkova tonight. Might not be the same kind of punk we play, but it sucks that there are more punkrockshows on the same night in the same town. We walked to the city center where we had some coffee and sandwiches. I love the Thai Sandwich at that one place in Ljubljana (don’t know the name of the place, but I know where to find it!). Since we’ve been to Ljubljana before, but no one of us ever visited the castle on the hill, we decided to climb the hill and enjoy the view over the city, awesome! Hanging around for some time, we took the train downstairs and ran into a roommate of Dario where we would sleep that night. That resulted in some free beers, yeah! Pretty bummed out that the organic store was out of vegan cornetto’s I ate some vegan magnums. Back at the venue, Dario arrived pretty soon with delicious food! A mixture of goulash and chili. Before we played, there was a puppet show in Slovenian and French, but I had no clue what it was about. I was not really interested because there was some catching up to do with Dario and Shaggie of In-Sane. I also met Rita, a Portugese girl that made a shirt design for us. There were not that many people at the show. I guess there was 1 paying Slovenian guy. Other people came from The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Portugal and Canada. Strange… Riekus had the best snaredrum sound ever, so tonight was still a good one! We loaded the van, got some Burek and veggie kebab and left for Dario’s place to spend the night. Last time, their dog was 20 centimeters high, this time he was big, BIG! We immediately fell asleep and had a wonderful shower and breakfast in the morning with rucola from their own garden and good tea and coffee and homemade bread with some spreads and vegetables. Touring is so much easier when you have mornings like this! Although I had quite some beers and a bit of Slibovic, I felt pretty fine. We said goodbye to the guys and continued our way to Oh Vienna.

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Friday the 4th of June @ EKH, Wien (Austria)

The drive from Ljubljana to Vienna was the longest of the remaining drives this tour. So getting to the next show is getting easier and easier. We arrived at the EKH squat in Vienna, a really big and awesome place! We brought our equipment in and did some relaxing in the garden. We found out that there were some people from Amsterdam and even an Austrian girl that spoke Dutch with an Amsterdam accent. During dinner, one of the best lasagnas I ever had, we had conversations about squats and squatting, which unfortunately is illegal in The Netherlands since this week. Although it’s really bad news for culture, underground music and everybody that is hoping for affordable places to live, we’re pretty sure that “Kraken gaat door!”, squatting continues.
The show was a benefit for the Anarchist Black Cross. Always nice to contribute to a good cause. First band with promoter Andy played doomy crust with keyboards next to the guitar violence. Pretty cool! Second band, Pistole played more oldschool hardcore like Youth of Today and Circle Jerks. We played last and during our flughafen, someone told me I had good looking shoes. Nico van Montfort, leest u even mee? After the show we went to our sleeping place and we found out that Propagandhi played this venue in 1996, sweet! The next morning in the computer room we found out that RKL played this venue in 1992 or something, sweet! We had probably the best breakfast I ever had on tour, holy shit! After breakfast, the rest of the gang occupied the internet while I was reading a book in the sun on the roof. Touring is not glamorous? It shure can be relaxing! The ride today was less than 90 kilometers so there was no rush. We took it easy and left for Payerbach somewhere in the afternoon.

Saturday the 5th of June @ EntroP’s, Payerbach (Austria)

Todays show was supposed to be at the new EntroP’s Extended in Wiener Neustadt. I heard from some Neustadt friends that there were problems with the local authorities concerning live misic, so Oswald, the promoter moved the show to EntroP’s in Payerbach, where there were problems with the neighbours instead of the local authorities. Guess Brat Pack would have been the perfect soundtrack for tonight, because the neighbours started to complain. Payerbach turned out to be a village where a lot of rich people from Vienna had their second home and they’re there for some weekend a year and they start to complain when the local kids have a show 2 times a year. Anyway, we had some chili and beers and then the show started with Second Effort who I played with before in Wiener Neustadt. These guys really improved since the first time I saw them. Same goes for the second band BHF. I saw them almost 3 years ago and today was the last show of their singer. I think they played some cool hardcore punk. When we played, Dominik, the drummer of BHF joined us on Testimony by playing keyboard in the bridge of the song. That was a really cool experience! It was also great to see that some Neustadt people came to the show in Payerbach. Always great to see some people again!

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After the show, we headed for the EntroP’s Extended, where we would spend the night. Second time in Wiener Neustadt today. In the afternoon we already went for shopping (vegan wurst and Ottarocker beers), getting cheap gas and cleaning the backside of the van. Anyway, we ended at the venue where the show was supposed to be, had a few beers and crashed on the floor. The next ‘morning’ we woke up Oswald, who was kind enough to offer us beer and sake, but we thanked for that. Did get some Fritzl Cola and Jägermeisters and took off to our next destination where we would run into an old friend. Next stop: Sankt Jorann im Peru.

Sunday the 6th of June @ Casino Rockbar, Sankt Johann im Pongau (Austria)

Ever seen the movie Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone? Never mind, I tried to make a cliffhanger at the end of Payerbach’s day. We had a nice drive through the Austrian landscape and arrived at the place of the drummer of Killing Oma, where we would meet Luk, tonight’s promoter. When we entered the building, we were welcomed by our old friend Lux, who used to play guitar in Rentokill. Lux quit the band over a year ago and tonight he was playing with his new band Igel Vs. Shark. After delicious food, some kind of vegetable wrap, we went to the venue, the Casino Rockbar. We unloaded while there was Rammstein on the speakers. Mmm… Igel Vs. Shark did the soundcheck and I was already blown away by their hardrock! Like! We had a couple of beers while catching up with Lux and Julia and found out that there wouldn’t be a large audience tonight. Guess Sundays in small towns are hard. Anyway, there were some people that came to the show which made it nice and cosy. I was really surprised by Igel Vs. Shark. Too bad they didn’t have a record yet. We played last and it was good to see that some people were amused. After the show, we drank a couple of beers while enjoying the music in the pub. Rammstein was replaced by Queen, Dire Straits and Ricky Feestje. YouTube turned out to be our friend, or enemy. Genohot!
Luk fixed a sleepingplace at the Killing Oma rehearsal room in the basement of his house. The next morning he gave us a good breakfast and some wonderful band and crew pictures with the great Austrian scenery in the background. We waved Luk goodbye and left for Graz, city of Schwarzenegger!

Austrian countryside - by Luk Kirchgasser

Monday the 7th of June @ Sub, Graz (Austria)

I’d really like to advise you, to say the bold sentences out loud, like Arnie would do. Come on, do it!

We needed to get out of here! We got to the chopper! We headed for Graz, city of the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When we arrived at the Sub, we met Klaus who booked the show, together with Robert. They made awesome food with chickpea curry and salad. Yummie! The other band tonight would be The Frantic Arts. I never heard of them before, but they sounded great! They played a None More Black cover as their Flughafen, supertoll! There were really a lot of people for a Monday show and fortunately, they stuck around! It was great to see so many people that came from far. My buddies from Soey were all there and there some other familiar faces. I really enjoyed this evening and I think it resulted in one of the best shows we played so far on this tour, although it was hot as hell inside, AAAAEEEEHHHHWWW! After the show we had a couple of drinks and said goodbye to our friends and to the people from Graz: Hasta la vista, baby. We’ll be back!

Willem drove us to Puntigam where we stayed at the Puntigang house. The dog almost ate my hand, we drank some beers with Klaus, Hirschi and Dominik of Soey and crashed on some nice beds. A good sleep this night would be really welcome, tomorrow we would have quite some driving ahead of us.

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Tuesday the 8th of June @ Jugendcafé, Zwiesel (Germany)

A long drive through the biggest part of Austria and through Bavaria in Germany, took us to Zwiesel. We arrived at the Jugendcafé in time and since there was some time to kill, we decided to watch “Backstage Passport” by NOFX. Thomas promoted himself to be our manager on this tour, so we thought that Kent of NOFX would be a great source of inspiration to him.
The first band was Punchers Plant from München and they played a cool set of melodic punkrock. Today was even hotter than yesterday, so at the end of our set, I had to take off my shirt. Sorry ladies! Sorry boys! Immediately after the show, I threw water over myself which resulted in a wet boxershort. Sorry me!
Afterwards we had some drinks outside and heard that our friends in Sweet Empire had played the Jugendcafé a couple of weeks before us. A girl there told us about their favourite German word. Can’t remember it. I know that mine is Gummiüberziehe and that Fahrvergnügen is Riekus’ favourite, and he can’t even drive! When everybody left, we watched some more Backstage Passport while the local Bram van Montfort-clone was sleeping outside in the cold. We tried to wake him up, to no avail, then put a blanket around him and went to sleep. During the night, he woke up, closed the door too loud a couple of times and woke some of us up. Next morning the soundguy came to lock the door after we loaded our stuff. We tried to get some cheap gas and left for Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, my first Czech show ever!

Wednesday the 9th of June @ Putika Club, Hradec Kralóvé (Czech Republic)

On our way to Hradec Králové we passed the city of Plžen, where they invented beer. We also drove through Prague, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and finally we arrived in Hradec Kralóvé. We found the venue and stole some wifi outside. Tonight there would be two bands and a debate about the Palestine-Israël conflict. Too bad this was in Czech language, because I’m really interested in the subject. Instead of listening to an unknown language for one and a half hour, I stayed in the van. After the debate, the first band, Just For Being, opened the show. These guys played some nice poppunk songs, and a great Rancid cover. When the bassplayer broke a string, I gave him a spare bass. Later I realized, that the strap that was attached to it, had the worst smell ever. Sorry Rudy! There were not so many people at the show and I was a bit grumpy at first, but in the end we had a good show.
We went to the promoter’s small house where we had to sleep with 7 people and a dog. After a weird night with possible Hylco-Douwesjes, we packed our stuff and took off to Poland. Breslau was up next!

Thursday the 10th of June @ Wagon Club, Wroc?aw (Poland)

Today we would play at the Wagon Club in Wroc?aw, a place I had been before. The venue is not easy to find, but I recognized it from a year before. Promoter Lukasz was already waiting for us and prepared us wonderful food. We went to the supermarket to buy us some beers too, really nice! Lukasz showed us an old train and we had some talks about Wroc?aw and the history of the town, being German, Polish, German and Polish again. From what we heard, Warsaw still owes Wroclaw quite some bricks.
The other band tonight was All Wheel Drive. They reminded me of some old Ignite and old AFI. I thought they were really good! Although the show was not that crowded, people seemed to enjoy our show and there was even a small moshpit.
After the show, Lukasz took us on a trip around town. We had a nice tour with beautiful sightseeing of the city by night. We were also looking for pizza, but all places that sold pizza were closed. What is wrong with these people! After being stopped by The Man, we ended up at the sleeping place, ate some bread and salad and decided to grab a pizza for breakfast.
Next morning, Lukasz told us he was gonna kill Riekus. I guess sleeping next to him is not a treat. We went to the pizza place and had a great breakfast indeed. We bought some water, because the temperature was killing us, waved goodbye to Lukasz and took off for Berlin, city of vegan food vreetpaleizen!

Old Polish engine outside Wagon Club Wroclaw

Friday the 11th of June @ Subversiv, Berlin (Germany)

Imagine there is only one highway in Poland. Imagine it goes from Wroc?aw to Berlin. Imagine there is one point where that one highway turns into two highways. Imagine your GPS doesn’t know this point. Imagine there is no Berlin or any well known city on the signs. You’re fucked! Ofcourse we took the wrong way and ended up somewhere at the German border, where we had to take small roads to make it to Berlin. When we entered Berlin, we had a good view of the city center. Subversiv is pretty close to Alexanderplatz and all of Berlin Mitte. According to Basti and the guys over there, we were in time and there was no hurry. We got delicious pasta salad, but best of all, we had some soysteaks. Man were they good! I think I had a million of those! We drank some cold beers and had a great night. First, Tiger Youth played a set of acoustic songs in German. The guys had just moved across the country from Ibbenbüren to Berlin and played a show in their new home bar. Cool stuff! After them, Smile And Burn played. They might have been the best band we played with on tour. Dammit, I saw so much awesome bands, but these guys really blew us away. They ended with a cover of the Baywatch theme song. Leuk!
Somehow, Riekus managed to break a cymbal stand and ended up pulling a Nico van M on stage. Willem and i played a great show. Loop maar door! After the show we had some more beers and Basti showed us the sleeping places. The room was small, so I could sleep in his bed. Yeah! Next morning I had a good shower and for breakfast, there were more soysteaks. Sweet! We drank some coffee and jumped in the van to score a vegan burger at Yellow Sunshine, in my opinion Berlin’s best vegan vreetpaleis. I had a double chicken vegan burger and the rest ordered some drinks. Seeing me enjoy the burger, everybody ordered some food and I took a double wheaty cheese vegan burger. Or something that sounds like that. Man, I was stuffed! But I’m not in Berlin everyday, so I had to eat it all! With a full stomach we ran to the van and left for the last German show of the tour in a small city called Holzminden, somewhere between Kassel and Hannover.

Saturday the 12th of June @ U-Rock, Holzminden (Germany)

The drive to Holzminden took us, again, over small roads. We arrived in time and when we got close to the venue, we found out there was some kind of a wedding going on. Were we really playing a weddingparty? Thought punkbands only played Bar Mitzwah’s. The party was upstairs, our venue was in some sort of basement. Four bands on the bill today and it started pretty late. First band played more than an hour I think. Think they played a New Found Glory cover. They sounded like NFG too. Call Me Names and Enesty were the other two bands. I watched a part of their sets and I was hanging out outside with the guys and David and Sabrina from Fair Trade Merch. They drove from Bielefeld to Holzminden, to deliver our new shirts. Everytime we order merch, we just put them on the guestlist and they show up with the merch. Cheap shipping, haha! David is a really friendly guy and he is working on the artwork of our new album right now too. I saw some parts of it and I must admit he’s talented!
We played last and by that time, there were boys and girls from the dance school party upstairs. No wedding, but still it was nice they showed up. Rudy was filming some songs and I hit him or his camera with my bass. Sorry Rudy! We got a couple of beers from Specki and the people at U-Rock and went to the sleepingplace. Next morning we woke up to the sound of a woman speaking German through speakers. There was a health convention going on in the building next to us. We tried to thomas a German flag, because the World Championship of football started. Football that is, soccer to Yankees, no fake Rugby. We got in the van and it felt kinda strange to me. Tonights show would be in Heerlen, Netherlands. Although I can’t understand anything people in Limburg speak, it’s “our” country so it feels a bit like going home.

Sunday the 13th of June @ Café Bluff, Heerlen (The Netherlands)

We drove straight to the German Ruhrarea and entered Limburg. When we arrived in Heerlen we found café Bluff pretty easy. We unloaded and Max, the promoter, showed up. I’ve known Max for quite some time, but today I would finally see his eurohousehappyhardcorepunkrockzwakkmosh project: Ravedigger! I was stoked as hell! The last three days of tour, we’re playing with Hot Water Music, Down By Law and Ravedigger. First band was Bronson. They sounded Limburgian to me. Hardcore with some MOC influences. Not really my cup of tea, but they did a good job. Stetson from France were added last minute and they played real rocking hardcore music. Sweet! We played third and it was a decent set I believe. But we were just warming the crowd up for the almighty Ravedigger! With a videoclip projected on screen, drumcomputers, two guitarplayers, a female singer and the lyrics in the background, I was liking this band from beginning to the end. The “slide show” was absolutely briliant! BA Baracus approved. Best part is that my photo was in the video, during a 2 Unlimited song. BOAH!
When we ran out of drinking tickets, Marcel gave us some free beers and he bought lots and lots of our stuff. I must admit that he was a really friendly guy! Thanks to him there was a real nice atmosphere at café Bluff. Great place!
They only bad thing I can say, is that 34% of the people in the area of Heerlen voted for a racist party. Watsmetjou? Geef me je nummer! Of je MSN. Anyway, we tried to deliver a message how to see things in a more positive perspective. We were on a mission!

Max' van: punkest ride ever!

Monday the 14th of June @ Trix, Antwerpen (Belgium)

After a good night party at Max’ place with YouTube-leed video’s (Zanger Rinus? Anita en Ed? Wilbert? Zanger Bob? Tuut Chips? Ricky!) we crashed on the floor. Next morning we said goodbye to Stetson and we watched The Netherlands – Denmark in Max’ livingroom on a big screen. Ofcourse we won, moved our asses to the van, bought stuff in the local musicstore, found cheap gas in Belgium and drove to Antwerpen. Tonight we would be playing with one of my favourite bands, Hot Water Music.
We arrived at Trix right after HWM was done soundchecking. We built up our stuff and Break Of Day did a soundcheck as well. We got great food, prepared by Ursula, who I used to poke way before you had a facebook (no erotic poking intended). I was kinda nervous to play, because we were playing with HWM, my predecessor Yvo was there and I saw my girl again after almost three weeks. Break Of Day played a solid set, think we played okay, keeping in mind we were pretty tired from the last weeks. After us, it was up to Hot Water Music. I think Chuck Ragan is one of the friendliest people out there. I noticed George was not there but I didn’t know who was filling in, until I heard it was Dave Raun. Did I just play the same stage as a guy from RKL is doing a couple of minutes after me? Dave Raun destroyed his kick and had to use ours, but all geeks who are following Riekus on Twitter already knew that. We had a great night, which was supposed to be the last show of our tour. But, a couple of weeks before we left another show was added. Tomorrow would be our last one, playing in Arnhem, close to home, together with Down By Law and Bro Hymn Pack.

Break of day soundchecking

Tuesday the 15th of June @ Willemeen, Arnhem (The Netherlands)

Last day of tour, although I already slept in ‘my own’ bed in Breda. Next morning we woke up, did some grocery shopping, got some ice cream and picked up the van. We drove to Arnhem where we heard that Down By Law would be late due to a missing guitar at the airport. Brat Pack were also late, punkers! Brat Pack opened the show. I didn’t see them play for a long time, so it was nice to see one of the best Dutch punkrockbands again. Rock ‘n Roel broke all of his sticks and got a pair from Riekus. I think you can whistle to them! Think I played one of the worst shows of the tour, man I was so tired. Think I added a post-apocalyptic vibe to the show. Tried to point out some differences between us and Dave Smiley (Joooonaaaas, 2010) but the DBL guys weren’t there. Missed that opportunity. When we were finished, they still weren’t back from their hotel. Can’t really blame them after being awake for a million days (pun intended). I must admit, I haven’t been the biggest fan of DBL (I’m more the Counting Crows type of guy) but I enjoyed the show and especially enjoyed the Montfort Bros enjoying. When they played Values Here as an encore, I went berzerk. Great to hear that song with the ‘original’ vocalist. Had some smalltalk with Dave afterwards. Turned out to be a nice guy after all. Packed some stuff and headed for the train together with some Utrecht and Amsterdam folks. I was just in time to catch the last bus to my house. Fell asleep right away and woke up the next morning to the sound of my alarmclock. Tour was over, time to go to work.

At The Stage Arnhem, by bernard bodt

I would really like to thank everybody who made this tour possible. All promoters and people that came to the shows. In particular I would like to thank Thomas and Rudy for driving our van, doing merch, “MA-NA-GING” us, hanging out with us and – of course – drinking our beer. Many thanks go out to Ste and Dami from No Reason Records for hooking us up with cool shows in Italy, grazie mille! Also thanks to Bas Adriaan Verheijen for using your basscab. Hope you enjoy the beers!

See you on the next tour! LEUK!
Tom and Antillectual

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