European Tour Diary: Day 33 - Saarbrucken, Germany

Unlike Marlebach (which is in France anyway) Saarbrucken is a lovely town/city/place/whatever it is.
Me John, Dave and Ben have our heart set on eating some Mexican food for lunch and have seen a cheap place in the centre so we leave the others in the venue and go off to find it. We stuff ourselves with fajitas and enchiladas and head back to the venue content and in serious danger of lapsing into a food coma.

We’ve not had many chances to use the internet on this tour, often the venue’s wireless networks don’t work, or do but are being hammered by all the bands/crew/venue staff, but today is usable so we spend a few hours catching up on e-mails, sending off these here tour diaries, doing mailouts and taking care of business. Nice to feel connected and not out of the loop for once.
We’ve been writing and mucking around with ideas on Garage Band on this tour so spend the early evening showing each other ideas, playing around with the acoustics we’ve brought with us and talking about album number 2, which is on everyone’s minds at the moment. What do we want out of it? What should it sound like? All these questions are circling around in our heads and we’re excited to really begin the whole process again. I can’t imagine actually sitting there having a second finished album – right now it seems like a million years away but as we’ve learnt these things have a habit of creeping up on you, and one way or the other there will be a point in time when we have our second record in our hands and ready to show the world. I can’t wait.

Today’s show is ok, not one of the best but not one of the worst either. It’s a big room but the crowd is here for one reason and it sure ain’t us. We play and get a polite reception, and pack up our stuff to go back to Merlebach for another night, meaning that we came from France this morning to play in Germany, now have gone back to France to sleep. Back to Germany tomorrow.

-Gus

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European Tour Diary: Day Off in Merlebach, France

We have a day off so decide to be constructive with it. We’ve booked a cheap hotel in a little town called Merlebach which is between Strasbourg and Saarbrucken, tomorrow’s destination. Booking Formule 1 hotels is like playing roulette. Sometimes the rooms are ok, sometimes there’s old vomit on the floor and gum and junk all over the walls. That’s what you get if you spend 30 euros a night on a room that sleeps 3 I guess. Communal toilets and showers, but it’s not too bad really, and it’s quite funny seeing middle aged European men traipsing down the hallways in speedos, a t shirt and flip flops on the way to the shower, and Ben in amongst them.

We set up camp in the rooms, before getting all of our luggage, forming a little train and walking into town with all our stuff in search of a launderette. There’s only so many times you can re-use clothing before it becomes damaging to your mental health. Most of our clothes could probably walk to the launderette on their own by now. Not cool. 
Merlebach was a small mining town, but like a lot of the mining towns in England, when that dried up so did the town. It feels like a ghost town, the streets are dark and deserted and we make a ridiculous amount of racket dragging our suitcases, the 5 minute journey promised to us by the F1 receptionist inevitably turning into a half hour journey. We see our destination in the distance, glowing and promising cleanliness and shelter from this shitty evening.

We take over the launderette and load our clothes in and begin the wait. We’re all so excited to have clean clothes - we’ve been good with keeping ourselves clean but seeing as it’s impossible to realistically take 6 weeks of clean clothes on a tour, we packed what we could and had to hope for cleaning facilities along the way.

Showering then getting into old clothing is never cool, so we eagerly watch the machines do their work and kick about the place waiting.

I remember being a kid and waiting with my mum in the local launderette down past our estate, waiting for what felt like 5 hours for our clothes to wash and dry. In here, it takes like half an hour to clean, and another half to dry. Either there have been some serious advances in washing machine technology or I was an impatient little kid. I’m guessing the latter, but it is funny how being young warps your perception of time.

We order some pizzas from across the road, expecting them to be dodgy but (quelle surprise) they are amazing. We order two huge pizzas and feast on them back at the hotel surrounded by our clean clothes. Serious amounts of contentment going on right now. Nice to chill for a day and do nothing much but watch films eat pizza and shower.

-Gus

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European Tour Diary: Day 31 - Strasbourg, France

What’s this France, more rain? Weird!

Before leaving we pop into a nearby Boulangerie for croissants and Café au lait. The croissant is maybe the best thing I’ve ever eaten, tastes delicious and is cooked to perfection. So simple but so good.

Ben and Fraser have very impressively gotten up a few hours before everyone else and gone for a run in the morning rain, so emit the glow of those that just know they are better than everyone else by the virtue of having achieved the impossible on tour and actually done something GOOD for you. Bastards. We arrive in Strasbourg early (shock horror) so walk around the lovely centre and decide to go for a Korean lunch. My first ever, and man it was delicious.
We are in the Alsace region, which is a territory known for having gone back and forth between German and French ownership which has led to it being a bit of both. Depending on where you are, they speak French or German, same as where we’ll be staying, in Merlebach. It’s getting extremely confusing now, knowing which language to attempt to communicate in.

We play the show which is cool but rather uneventful, and head off to the F1 in Strasbourg for some rest.

-Gus.

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European Tour Diary: Day 30 - Paris, France

France, you really don’t seem to like us do you? It’s like it’s a body and we’re a foreign invader, and it’s trying it’s hardest to get rid of us. The weather is absolutely shit today, it is pouring it down and so grey that it’s hard to see anything. We crawl to Paris in yet more shitty traffic and it’s definitely fair to say that Morale is low. We are tired, all have a cold, the van is overcrowded and full of junk, and we are late. Not a good place to be right now. Despite all of this, I’m really looking forward to tonight. We’ve only played one show in Paris (with Madina Lake earlier this year, in a smaller venue called Glazart) but things just seemed to click and we’re hoping for the same tonight.
The venue is called Elysee Montmarte, an amazing old venue that I’ve actually been to once before. Me and my brother went to see The Dillinger Escape Plan and Poison The Well here a few years ago and it was fucking awesome. Pretty mad that the next time I’m here it’s ‘cos my band and me are playing.

We get to the venue in darkness, and park the van on what feels like a 70-degree hill, haul all the stuff out the back in the pouring rain and take it in. We’re all soaked by now, ill, all our clothes are dirty and despite being excited about being back in Paris, the general mood isn’t great. We soundcheck and it sounds wicked on stage, which cheers everyone up a bit.
More interviews.

We play the show and it’s another good one, awesome! Fully happy now and really excited to go out to dinner and meet some friends in town.

We go out to some bars for some drinks, somehow end up in an Irish Bar (there seem to be tonnes of these all around Europe) with a French dude singing Radiohead songs with an acoustic.
We get merry, then head out into La Pigale. We search for the Moulin Rouge because we really want to get a picture outside the famous glowing windmill - We’ve not managed to see many famous sights on this tour, and though the most obvious one would be the Eiffel Tower, we saw that last time we were here, so seeing as it’s nearby we’ve decided this is the best option. After searching for what feels like an age, we see it in the distance and trot up the street to it. We position ourselves across the road so we can all fit in with the windmill, get someone to take the picture and then eagerly take a look at the photo.
Strangely, it’s pitch black behind us. Odd. We turn around and it turns out that the place shut down for the night a split second before we managed to actually get a picture. Shit.


This area is a bit rough (How does this keep happening…?) so as all the bars are closing up we say goodbyes to our friends and go back to the hotel for some sleep. I’m sad that our time in Paris has been so brief, so plan to get up mega early and go to Montmartre, which is nearby. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t happen.

-Gus

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European Tour Diary: Day 29 - Toulouse, France

We head off nice and early as have a lot of ground to cover. We’re all still basking in the winter sun of Spain and it’s amazing how much difference nice weather can make. We’re all exhausted but the sun and warm air make it impossible to be moody. Good times, windows down as we roll out of Spain and towards France. We pass Montserrat and encounter our second mountain range of the tour. We spend 40 minutes or so debating what it is and where we actually are, but a helpful road sign resolves it all as we whiz past. The Pyrenees! Amazing. Like a hotter drier version of The Alps, it’s beautiful here. We pass towering mountains and plunging valleys and gorges, still lakes, scrubland and it’s all amazing and so completely different to being home. We stop off and get our tourist on at a particularly beautiful valley range (ignoring The Simpsons style power plant on one side) taking snaps and admiring the view. I always find it quite funny looking around at us reprobates in such grand environments. It’s like someone plucked us out of our natural habitat of mess and small English rooms and dunked us into spectacular places that we just don’t belong. We stick out like a sore thumb!

We reluctantly get back in and continue our journey, and the more French and less Spanish things get, the greyer and darker it gets. Hmm. Come on France, cheer up!

By the time we reach Toulouse it is torrential rain. Toulouse is a beautiful place but alas we don’t’ really get to see it, as per usual, and our 7/8 hour journey has taken it out of us so we load in and flop down in the dressing room and wait for Danko Jones to finish soundchecking so we can begin ours.

The venue is modern and quite clinical but there is amazing catering. I’ve said this before but in England you get crisps, bread, ham and cheese etc, here we are served a lunch of home made soup, beautiful salad, selection of continental meats, fresh coffee, wine etc, and a dinner of beautiful pork chops, vegetables and amazing Banoffee Pie. Everyone laughs at me because I thought Banoffee pie was so named due to it coming from Banoffee, when in fact it’s because it’s made with Banana and Toffee. Oops.

Sometimes I watch Danko Jones sound check, and then play and I imagine what it must be like to come half way across the world (they hail from Toronto, Canada) and play to such large crowds, with such great lighting and all that kind of stuff at their disposal. Their sound guy, Corey, has become one of our favourite humans on the planet and is great fun to talk to, or just listen to as he tells one of his stories from his years on the road. Corey has a lot of stories. He’s been touring for 27 years, and DJ themselves have been around a long time too, having toured with the likes of Guns ‘N’ Roses (!). I wonder if the lifestyle ever gets old or if it’s possible to fall out of love with the game (sorry, too many episodes of The Wire). I doubt it, though the miserable weather sure does get old pretty quick.

Tonight’s show is also one of the better ones and we do well selling CDs afterwards. It is really reassuring to know that on a good day we can connect with people that so obviously wouldn’t have thought they’d like our kind of music. We’re all guilty of it, but first impressions or unfounded assumptions cut us off from so many things and experiences we’d probably really like. Makes me wonder what I’m missing out on.

We pack up, head to our hotel and get ready for Paris tomorrow! Can’t believe we’re approaching the last stretch of this tour.

-Gus

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European Tour Diary: Day 28 - Barcelona, Spain

We’ve loved Spain so far, and today our drive is amazing. The scenery is really amazing, arid open flat plains that look like the deserts around LA and jagged hills and mountains.

We can’t get over the fact that it’s so hot in November. Love it! Those of us who didn’t go out lord it over the ones who are now hung over and retreating from the sunlight in the darker corners of the van.
We stop at a service station to eat and refuel. It’s almost like walking into a kitchen, and it’s all Tapas but it’s all strange and unidentifiable food. I eat some meat on skewers and it’s impossible to actually tell what it is, even as you eat it, which is quite unnerving really… Definitely feel unwelcome in here too, lots of stares and scowls. Time to go then.

We drive on and encounter the worst traffic in history. Suddenly the heat is a lot less nice as we’re all stuck in a heated can, and we crawl into Barcelona an hour late and with the opening time approaching. This means it’s a serious case of all hands on deck as the venue staff and we grab all the equipment out of the van (we have acquired a lot and it weighs a couple of tonnes by now) and drag it into the awesome sleek, minimal and very modern building that houses the venue.

Once in I have to rush through a few interviews (including an acoustic run through of weight of the world with the venue staff running around behind me) while the guys get the stuff on stage and sound check. 
We get everything done in time, and head to our dressing room to try and get some food in. Our dressing room today is a corridor that connects to the main stage room so we’re ready to go on at a moments notice. We play the set and for me it’s one of the highlights of the tour. It’s funny, you can never tell what a show is going to be like, sometimes you can be stressed, rushed and disorganized and end up having the best show ever, sometimes you can be relaxed, prepared and confident and then the show will not go your way.

We talked about getting tattooed while we were in Barcelona as there is a specific area with shit loads of great tattoo places but we’ve simply not had time so we hang out by merch, talk to people, then hustle CDs as people are leaving, as per usual.
Head back to the hotel as we have yet another long drive tomorrow to get back to France.

-Gus



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European Tour Diary: Day 27 - Madrid, Spain

Madrid is a beautiful city. We get to the venue and John and me shoot straight off for yet more press in a coffee house nearby. By this time I’ve already had a Red Bull and a coffee but seeing as we’re going to be here a while I order and we sit with our coffees and talk for a while. Doing interviews can be a strange experience because you basically have to, for that period of time, be self centered and talk about yourself and feel very self-important. Easier for some, harder for others. I kind of fall in the middle, I like to think I’m quite good at talking, but sometimes it feels weird going on about myself and my band for ages. Ah well, it’s hardly a problem, and doing press is generally really cool so I have no problem. We talk for quite a while and have to rush back to make our soundcheck.

We’ve spent quite a while figuring out what songs work best on this tour, and which don’t so by now we are quite familiar with everything and it’s just a case of getting our sound on stage right. Mind you, I say that like it’s a small easy thing – on stage sound we’re all happy with is just so rare. The sound on stage is really different to off stage, but it’s probably also because we’re a fussy group of guys. 
We head back stage, begin the process of warming up, eating and generally getting ready for the show. Madrid is wicked and as soon as we’re done we head off to grab a bite to eat in a Mexican restaurant nearby. I want to go on the record and state that Mexican food is my (and ours as a group) favourite food in the world. Tacos, fajitas, enchiladas, whatever – if it’s Mexican I can pretty much guarantee I’ll love it. Head back to the venue, hang out with people that want to say hi, and then pack our gear away.





It’s pretty rare that we’ll go our separate ways for the evening but some of the guys want to party and me and a few others just want to crash so that’s what we do.

-Gus

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