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We are currently in Brazil on the last leg of our Tour Of The Americas, covering Canada, the USA and Brazil. In part 3 of our tour report Glen talks about (the lack of) manners in Brazilian traffic, deceased Formula-1 drivers, Brazilian coffee and more.

“Welcome to the jungle!”. These are Julio and Sandro’s welcoming words when picking us up from Guarulhos International Airport at 8am, after an 11-hour overnight flight with quite some turbulence. Whether the guys are fans of Guns N’ Roses we haven’t been able to figure out, but their remark is clearly meant to describe the traffic situation in Sao Paulo: ultimate mayhem! With a temperature of 21 Celsius at 8 am, it is bound to get a lot warmer still. After a bumpy ride through Sao Paulo traffic, we meet up with Uirá at his friend Caio’s apartment. Uirá runs Undermusic records, which released our last record here and he booked this tour for us. We spend the day chilling (well..) at the apartment, and when the night falls and the temperature finally drops below 35 Celsius we take a 12-hour bus ride to Florianopolis, where we pick up our van, gear and driver Nico.

Day 1 in Sao Paulo – 35 degrees Celsius

Having lost at least 7 of my 9 lives in the first 30 minutes on the road, it feels kind of weird to say that you do actually get used to Brazilian traffic. Cursing, sticking your hands out of the window instead of using blinker-lights, using no blinkers at all, cutting in traffic whenever possible, honking until your battery dies or just honking at pretty females; it’s all in the game. The fact that one of the highways around Sao Paulo is named after Formula-1 driver Ayrton Senna (who spent his last living moments on the racing track) says a lot about how people think about driving here…

Florianopolis

After spending the first 2 days with Uira as our tour manager and translator, we spend the next few days with only driver Nico. Uira is working at the WROS Festival, which is pretty much the Brazilian version of Groezrock, with Rise Against, A Wilhelm Scream, Strike Anywhere, Anti-Flag, Alkaline Trio and Pennywise on the bill. As it turns out, Nico does not speak an awful lot of English, and I’ve come to realize that I don’t understand a single word of Portuguese. Luckily, people here are very physically expressive, so a lot of situations make sense, even if I don’t understand the words. And of course there is google translate, which proves to be quite a good tool for communicating. In all honesty, I thought that people here would speak more or better English than some of them do.

Driver Nico and his van

The surroundings here are just beautiful, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. We’ve been spending most of our time here moving from city to city to play our shows, and trying to catch sleep whenever possible. Some shows don’t even begin before midnight, and having to check out of our hotel at 10 am after a short night is quite the downside to the luxury of actually having a hotel. Sometimes those short nights make you a little tacky, and that comes to the surface easily when you’re spending close to 24 hours a day with the same people.

Streets of Porto Alegre

Something that I really like about Brazil is how people seem to be very relaxed and open, a lot more so than in Europe or the US. For example: driver Nico needs to ask for directions every now and then. He’ll just pull up to the side of the road, asks the first person he sees for directions, makes a little social chit-chat and then drives off again full speed. Everybody takes the time to have a talk and it seems to be the most normal thing to ask for directions like this.

The shows so far have been quite intense. Not a lot of bands from outside Brazil come on tour here, so upon first contact first people can be a little shy. Once the bands play, the dancing, crowd surfing and singing along commences, and all the ice is broken. We don’t understand most of the comments that people shout at us in between songs, which results in a few funny miscommunications. Even though it’s our first time here, people seem to know our music. It’s so cool to see people singing along to our songs, or seeing them buy older albums, because they already own the last one.

Chilling at Tramandai beach

Before going on this tour, we received some tips on how to stay healthy, which we are ignoring completely. A certain band member was scared to death when he needed to get his vaccinations for Brazil (afraid of injections..). Among the advices we received was to closely keep an eye on how your food is prepared and to get rid of the ice cubes in all the drinks. As it turns out, it’s almost impossible to keep an eye on all these things, and the aforementioned band member (who shall remain anonymous) thinks it’s a little exaggerated. In the meantime, none of us have been sick, so we must be doing something right. At almost every gas station they serve free shots of coffee / espresso and it’s delicious! The tea however, brewed with tap water that contains tons of chloride, is not really my ehm.. cup of tea!

Let the last week of this tour begin! We still have a 13-hour drive to go, which is scary enough in itself, and 2 shows on one day in Sao Paulo. I’m sure there will be enough material for another tour report.

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We are currently on our ‘tour of the Americas’, covering Canada, the USA and Brazil. In this second episode of our tour report Glen talks about our sight seeing spree around New York City, sleeping in a former porn studio and overnight drives to make it to the next show.

Hurricane Sandy is everywhere in the news these days, and it’s really weird to realize that we were in that exact area only last weekend to play 2 shows in The Big Apple. In the meantime, a lot of friends at Fest who are from the New York area (or those who have connecting flights there) have stranded in Florida due to cancelled flights. At the same time, things couldn’t be more comfortable here in Gainesville: nice and sunny, and definitely way warmer than back home!

Welcome to the Fest

Last week rushed by like it was only one day, pretty much like the first week did. Since our last update we have gone on a sight seeing spree in New York City and we spent 2 nights in a row in The Marine Electric’s apartment in Brooklyn (they’re touring Europe very soon!). Only just before leaving their apartment, we noticed a framed picture in the kitchen which after further examination turned out to be a still from a porn scene that was shot in that same kitchen. Apparently the previous tenant ran a porn studio in there. Another one I can cross off my list of interesting places! The guys luckily did ensure us that they spent a proper few days cleaning out the apartment before they moved in..

Sight seeing on Times Square NYC

Our first overnight drive on this tour is a fact! From Wilmington NC to Gainesville FL, we made the 9-hour drive overnight to be in Gainesville in time for Fest. I never thought that a 300-kilometer driving shift and then another 3 hours of navigating until 8 am would cause a jetlag sort of feeling. Then again, arriving in sunny, warm Florida immediately made up for that.

Overnight drive Wilmington NC – Gainesville FL

While finally arriving in Gainesville is great, it also marks the end of the North American leg of this tour. During the 3 days of The Fest, Gainesville is almost literally flooded with visitors and bands from all over the world, which results in a very unique and comfortable atmosphere. We already met up with some Australian fest-goers up in Massachusetts, met them again at some of the shows down the coast, and now we meet them again at Fest. Everybody seems to be travelling down to Gainesville! Among my personal highlights at Fest are bands like PJ Bond, Restorations, Astpai, RVIVR, Iron Chic and Red City Radio. Our own show at Fest was very cool too. The venue was not sold out, but a lot of people took the time to miss another 10 bands that played the same slot, and they seemed to be very much into our music. Quality over quantity!

Static Radio’s final show at Fest

The other shows we played last week were also pretty well attended. Pretty well attended, especially if you consider that there are so many bands playing the same cities and a lot of people choose to watch those bands at Fest instead of in their own city. After the show in Richmond VA, we were stuck without a place to sleep for the first time on this tour. So far, we’ve been quite lucky to have a place to stay every night, because that is not always the case in the USA. Luckily, promoter Brad (drummer of Worn In Red) introduced us to Tyler, who lives in a very comfortable apartment just around the corner. He gave us a place to stay, treated us to some beers and even cooked up a healthy breakfast the next morning. As if that was not hospitable enough, he also gave me a book from his collection of American novelists to read on the road (Brett Easton Ellis’ “less than zero”). Thanks Tyler, you’re a lifesaver!

Gallery 5 – Richmond VA

As I am writing this, Fest has just finished and we are getting ready to fly out to Brazil tomorrow. To put an end to all the clichés of the rock n’ roll life, this is what we are up to today instead of snorting coke and making out with groupies (whatever that may be): crunching tour statistics, dropping off laundry, editing tour videos, adding subtitles, repacking our bags for the flights, getting rid of stuff we don’t need anymore, sending out postcards, catching up on sleep, cleaning out our rental car and hopefully eating our last slice of pizza for a while to come. And of course, we’re looking forward to what will happen in Brazil.

I said this in a tour blog last year, and I will say it again. There are only 2 kinds of shows: good shows and bad shows. Luckily I feel like I played good show on every night of this tour. The other day, someone came up to me and asked what it is that makes touring so much fun. I couldn’t really come up with an answer right away (probably too tired), but Riekus summarized it very well: the coolest part of touring is meeting so many new and old friends.

There you go, I’m signing off! Time to catch some sleep and get ready for another full day of travelling.

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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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