European Tour Diary: Day 10 - Hamburg, Germany

When we get up, we take a quick walk around the local area for some breakfast before we leave for Hamburg. Our Tour Manager Emre can speak pretty much every language in the world so we come across a Turkish café. Seeing as Emre is Turkish and can speak German we figure we got all the bases covered and go in for some sandwiches and coffee. We walk back to the van noticing how common street art/graffiti is over here on the mainland. From tiny little pieces to building sized paintings, it seems more accepted over here. We open the doors to our travelling waste bin of a vehicle, and my suitcase flies out onto the pavement. From the top. That’ll be my one-week-old suitcase broken then. Awesome. It’s holding on for dear life and still has one zip that kind of holds it together so all is not lost, yet. It’s my property and will therefore break soon though.

We travel to Hamburg while Emre delights in telling us what’s going down in Turkey thanks to his Turkish newspaper he picked up in the café.

I feel like I keep on repeating myself when I say ‘the venue is really cool’, but truly that is the case, a lot of them are converted buildings and have a past history, and some are just laid out really well and are super accommodating. Partly I imagine it’s because Danko Jones pull big crowds so play good venues. Makes sense really, great for us though. This particular venue is close to the Red Light District of Hamburg and is called the Reeperbahn, which we are told by DJ’s crew is second only to Amsterdam’s - not that we even get to see it.


I do another interview in our dressing room while all the guys set up on stage for sound check and then join them on stage where we noodle around with a few new ideas and things to play on our next UK tour.
The show is great, but nobody is in the mood to go out after Berlin’s late night, and finally have the chance of a decent night’s rest so we pack the van and go back to our hotel. We paid for a shitty one but for some reason have been upgraded to a few really nice rooms at the top of the building which offer a great view out over Hamburg, which is awesome, but now we have three rooms that have a grand total of 12 beds in, instead of the 8 we ordered so somehow it feels like we are getting ripped off (we had booked 3 rooms to sleep our party of 8).

We hang out on the balcony of John and Mark’s room for a while before having probably the strangest half-asleep argument in the history of mankind over the rules of Heads or Tails. I lose and it is decided that I will be the one to get up early. Shit.

-Gus

European Tour Diary: Day 9 - Berlin, Germany

We finish the journey to Berlin in the morning and get to the venue, which used to be a massive post depot so we walk around its wide-open spaces, very industrial and very cool. It is also very cool to be in Berlin! I’ve never been and always wanted to, so I’m excited to be here. I remember watching The Berlin Wall being pulled down on the evening news when I was a kid, and now I can see it from our dressing room. Mad!

Sadly, we don’t have that much time before doors so we shower, eat yet another incredible dinner and get ready to go on stage. Tonight is a massive venue and to come to Berlin for the first time and be able to play to so many people is a great opportunity so we try our best to get them warmed up for Danko Jones later on.
After we’re done on stage we go upstairs, get cleaned up and wander down to the merch to hang out and meet anyone that wants to pick up merch or come say hi. I always find this to be one of the most rewarding parts of being on tour, meeting new people that have seen us play and have something nice to say. It’s a good feeling getting out to new people, especially when the crowd is made up of people who wouldn’t usually give our kind of thing a listen. We hover around merch until the show is over, sell as many CDs as we can and get on with my favourite EVER part of being in a band; The Load Out. This bit sucks. We heft all our heavy gear out of the venue and stick around the venue for a few hours as it turns into a club night. We drink lots of our new favourite beer ‘Berliner’ and then make a late exit to walk back to the hotel we are in for the night. It’s basically one big room with 8 beds in it so it feels like a school trip. In many ways, pretty much everything we ever do feels like a school trip. Make of that what you will…

-Gus

European Tour Diary: Day 8 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Denmark! Another first for us and me personally. I can’t wait to get there, even more so once Ben tells me that Biffy Clyro are playing a show at the same venueon the same night! They have a different room to us (obviously) but they are one of my favourite bands right now, and we’ve been fortunate enough to meet them a few times and hang for a while (they are possibly the nicest dudes ever) so it makes today even more exciting. We load in and make our way to the dressing room and once again fiddle with our laptops, doing a bit of demoing and putting some rough ideas down. I’m in the middle of a song that features the sound of John eating crisps in the background I will later discover. Interesting.

Tonight’s show is smaller, but a wicked one and I feel like we play it pretty much as well as we possibly can. Also, there is a group of people here that are actually fans of our band and give us some incredible presents of local foods, sweets etc. We are a lucky bunch of boys, and no there is no denying it, Anna and Karoline you guys are the best, thank you for our lovely present! And to our Swedish friends that have come to the past 3 or 4 shows and hung out with us, thank you so much. It means a lot to us. I can’t wait to come back again and spend more time with you all.

We rush to get all our stuff packed away and get a bit of Biffy Clyro in before the night ends. They are predictably good, and though Simon is sick, the songs still sound great, especially the material from the past 2 records, which I’m particularly a fan of. You just can’t argue with song writing of that quality. Simple as that. I really do feel Simon Neil’s pain though, even if nobody else notices much, not being able to perform as well as you know you can is infuriating, and when it’s because you’re sick there’s often nothing you can do about it. It’s like playing guitar with broken fingers, but as they say the show goes on so you just do what you can, and tonight they do that with skill. Good job gentlemen.

We leave and are taken to a Turkish restaurant by Emre (himself a turk) and we eat what might possibly be the best food ever. Fresh chicken shish kebabs cooked over hot stones, fresh hot wraps, delicious tsatziki and pitta etc. Literally incredible. We settle into our seats and begin the journey. Tonight is a long haul, 3 hours to the ferry that crosses from Denmark to our next destination: Germany! The ferry crossing is two hours long, and then another journey to the town of Rostock which is a midway point for us between Denmark and Berlin. The guys have slept in the van and on the ferry but I suck at sleeping so am pretty exhausted by the time we get into bed.

-Gus

European Tour Diary: Day 7 - Malmo, Sweden

This will be our seventh day in Scandinavia, and I love pretty much everything about it. The people are beautiful and hospitable, and so are countries themselves. I could live here very easily. I’m so grateful to be here and to be doing what we are.

We travel to Malmo without incident and arrive at the venue to watch Danko Jones sound check. They are so tight; it’s really something to see/hear. I’ve been using in ears for the first time ever on this tour so far, and I love it, but one of the earpieces stops working during our sound-check and afterwards I realise it’s because somehow the right ear has just…broken. Somehow it managed to disconnect itself and is just sadly dangling on a broken piece of cable. I either break or lose everything that I like, I am beginning to believe that I am cursed. Either that or just really really irresponsible. Perhaps it’s somewhere in the middle of the two, but it is so annoying. Damn it!!!! I’m not surprised, but it is so frustrating. When we’re playing supports, like this tour, often you have minimal space on stage once all the bands gear is up on stage. This makes it really hard to hear what you’re doing as a singer as most of the time all you can hear is cymbals and snare or bass guitar, having your voice and everything else actually in your ears can be really useful, but there’s not much I can do it about it so I just get on with it.

We chill for the evening and do a bit more song writing/demoing on our computers and warm up for the show. It’s another cool one tonight, and it is great seeing crowds that maybe wouldn’t give our band the time of day being won over and banging their head, it’s good to feel like we’re making progress.

Sadly, it is our last show in Sweden until whenever it is that we get to come back. We go out for some drinks with some of the Danko Jones guys and stay with some friends for the night.

-Gus

European Tour Diary: Day 6 - Gothenburg, Sweden

I’m a little sad that my time in Norway has been so brief, I don’t really feel like I got to grips with the city, but such is life, and I hope we’ll be back soon enough so I don’t get too down about it. Really, I’m lucky enough to be here in the first place, so that’s just how it goes I guess.

We leave and make our way back across the border to Gothenburg, Sweden. More amazing scenery, and lots of ‘danger’ moose crossing’ signs which are amazing. We stop off for some lunch at what turns out to be a huge cash and carry store. It’s hard to resist spending all of our money here, bags of M&Ms the size of pillows, gigantic Toblerones and all the imported American sweets you could think of. We like to consider ourselves sweet connoisseurs so I’m pretty amazed that we don’t come out with armfuls of tasty treats but we make do with some pizza and a few cans of American root beer and stuff like that and continue our journey. I eat a pizza called Obama while some of the others opt for a Da Vinci. I have no idea why they are called this but hey. 
We carry on and arrive at Gothenburg on time (shock horror).

We are fed in the restaurant next door to the venue, and it is SO posh, there is absolutely no way we belong in here but we soak it in, and it’s a cool experience eating in such a good quality restaurant when it’s closed. We mooch around the venue for a bit, looking at the wall of photos of cool other bands that have played here. Lamb of God were here on their last tour! Badass.
Tonight’s show is a lot better; the crowd is massive and treats us really well. Said it before, but we LOVE Sweden!



It is officially Ben’s birthday but we’re all so tired and worn out that we don’t really have the energy to go out. We are staying at some friends of Emre’s tonight, so we wait for them to finish up in the club post-show, and head back to theirs. They are lovely but both drunk and one of them pours a pint of Jack & Coke all over Simon on the journey back, much to his delight. We sleep in their spare room and make an early start the next morning.

-Gus.

European Tour Diary: Day 5 - Oslo, Norway

Fail plain miserably due to not really being able to sleep and pretty much have to go straight to the venue. Really cool place though, the Rockefeller, and we’re all excited to play again after a few days off. It’s only really now that the tour begins properly! 28 dates after tonight I think. Seems like a lifetime. When we get there, we are amazed to find that three Norwegian fans have come and have been waiting for us with some presents. We can’t believe it, and we hang out and take some pictures and chat for a while. Norway and Sweden seem pretty strict on age restrictions and tonight’s show is an 18+, so they can’t get in which really sucks. I try to figure out a way to do it but as a support act we don’t really have much weight so sadly we can’t make it happen but they hang outside for a while anyway and we talk. Next time guys, I promise, and thank you so much for coming to say hi, and the Norwegian chocolate.

We set up, and I leave the guys to sound check while I go to do another radio interview, on my own this time, for Radio Tango, Norway’s rock station. I get taken by cab (check me out) to the station and go up to the15th floor where I’m to do the interview. The view is immense, and it looks like mountains and rivers snaking off to the horizon in different directions surround Oslo. Pretty stunning stuff. Unfortunately, since I had my phone stolen in London a few weeks before, I have nothing to take pictures with so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

The interview with a lovely Norwegian woman called Marie is fun and easy enough, and I head back to the venue to get ready. The venue fills and we play our set. It’s fun, but the crowd do seem a little muted tonight, at least for us. That’s understandable, most people probably have no idea who we are, and people just want to see Danko Jones so it’s to be expected, but we give it all we got and make some new friends in the end.

It’s Ben’s birthday at the stroke of 12 we go for just a quiet few drinks, and plan to go out properly once we go back to Sweden tomorrow. We walk back to the hotel and pass out.

-Gus.

European Tour Diary: Day 4 - Day Off in Oslo, Norway

We wake up, sore headed but excited to start our first travel day in Europe. We’re on our way to the capital of Norway. Being half Norwegian but never having been there, I’m really excited but also completely unsure of what to expect. Will I feel some kind of homecoming sensation? Will I feel a kinship and a connection with this place I’ve never even been to before? I highly doubt it, but nevertheless part of me kind of hopes that will be the case.



We leave Stockholm and make our way across Sweden. The scenery on our journey is breathtaking, and though it’s not Norway it’s still Scandinavia and it feels good seeing this world I imagined all my life for real. Rolling hills and mountains, lakes and rivers, and fir tree forests lining the roads. We all want to get out so we stop the van in a remote area, climb up the bank on the side of the road and make our way through the wood to a beautiful still lake to skip stones, take pictures, and just generally absorb a bit of this amazing countryside. It really is amazing, but fucking cold! We lark around for a while by the lake and get back on with the journey, and arrive in Oslo quite late at night.

Tonight we are staying in what is basically a set of hostel rooms, which are basically a corridor with bunk beds and a sink. This is okay though, we’ve been in places like this plenty of times before, and the novelty of actually being able to stay in hotels/hostels and not on friends/acquaintances/strangers’ floors hasn’t worn off so it’s all good. We are pretty broke and Scandinavia is REALLY expensive, so we pop into the centre to see if we can eat some dinner for cheap. We walk past a cool looking venue and find out that one of my favourite new bands, a Norwegian punk/black metal/rock band called Kvelertak have just finished playing. Gutted! I keep missing these guys, missed them at Reading, at the Camden Underworld with Converge, and now all the way over here in Oslo. We find a junk food place and eat back at the room.

We are staying in the red light-ish area of Oslo and there are people around even though it’s pretty late. The area is a bit sketchy but kind of cool but we are all pretty exhausted so we split up into our two rooms and get into our beds. I later learn that Ben got stuck in the communal toilet for a while which amuses us no end. Our room is myself, John, Dave and Emre so I drift off while Emre reads and John and Dave skype each other for no reason at all. Plan to get up early and see some of the city.

-Gus.