Thankfully we found the bus we had booked so managed to board it by about 2am. Sadly there was no trailer attached so our van had to come back and meet us in the morning for us to do the cross-load of equipment, merch etc. But all good in the end!
We had a 4 hour drive in the bus to the first 'venue'. We stopped at the airport on the way to pick up my dad, our singer Neil and our Tour Manager/Sound Engineer John. Then we got to chill for a few hours and investigate the features of the bus.
To my delight the back lounge had an accessible HDMI port which allowed me to connect up my recently purchased mini Sony PlayStation Classic console. Aside from drumming, my main hobby is video games and for the last few years I have enjoyed the resurgence of retro games and have starting collecting games from the consoles of my youth. If anyone wants to donate any old games you don't want to my collection then get in touch, haha! Anyway, after succeeding to connect the console I spent an hour playing some random games - Pepsi Man (never knew this existed), Megaman X5 and Jack Chan: Stuntman were the highlights.
I didn't have the longest sleep last night and I knew we had a late stage time this evening (11.15pm) so I thought I'd attempt a nap in my bunk or at least a rest. I've recently started learning some meditation techniques using the Headspace app so I put one on but sadly as we were driving through the German wilderness my phone signal kept cutting out and so did the audio tracks on the app so it didn't go to plan. Still, I had a lie down and a rest until we arrived at the venue - literally a football pitch inbetween many fields of corn in the middle of nowhere. Apparently the town of Altenbergen has a population of 500. I'm not sure if that's true but it's a cool place for a show. Sadly the phone reception was non-existent but that's too be expected in such a rural area.
We have quite a few brand new merch designs and as it's the first date of the tour we had about 20 boxes to figure out so my brother Tyla and I spent an hour going through them while the other guys loaded out the equipment and began setting up the stage. We had a short soundcheck but it sounded decent. We soundchecked the song 'These Old Boots' from my dad's solo album ready for it's live debut tonight and jammed a few other bits.
Now dinner time! We were blessed with fantastic catering today! Plenty of vegan options for myself and the other vegetarian members of the crew. Very tasty and plenty of it. We also had the biggest fruit bowl I've ever seen plus another fruit plate full of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and cranberries! Jackpot! My brother Todd brought his Nutribullet machine so myself, my dad, Todd and Neil all brought our Nutribullet cups to make smoothies whenever possible.
It's really easy to be unhealthy on tour so I find this to be a great way of topping up on important nutrients and it can also help with energy levels if you time it right. Hopefully it will decrease the chances of us all catching colds and then passing the germs onto everyone else too!
There is another band called Massive on the bill. They are from Australia and seem like cool guys. We're playing with them in a few days too. I've now got 'Land Down Under' by Men At Work in my head as they jammed it in their soundcheck. Thankfully I like that song and it brings back great memories of the local jam night that I used to often frequent with my brothers and mates. Also my own amaxing holiday in Australia earlier this year with my wife, Anna!
The actual show went really well and the crowd were excellent! Props to the organisers for being very helpful all day. I filmed a few of the songs on my GoPro from behind the kit. I brought an extra stand to mount it on this time to avoid the horrible noise it made due to the vibrations whilst being attached to a cymbal stand. I will go through them tomorrow and hopefully there will be a decent one worthy of an upload!
Show 1 - a great success!
To be continued...
That basket looks great! Felt really sorry for you when reading the list of what you had to eat in your previous post.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy Essen!