On the road with Gerhardt pt. 2

This is me recovering some of the alcohol-soaked, blurry memories from the past couple weeks of touring... a continuing series of weird journeys.

So, after two weeks that were slightly less abou travelling and music and a little more about alcohol-intake, reading Hemingway and getting a case of the autumn blues, it was back on the road for me and the gang. We picked up our feet to do the usual things, making stupid jokes on the bus and gas-station intermezzos for the most part. The gigs sometimes feel like nothing more than short breaks inbetween endless sessions of tall stories and drinking stale beer from a can. Meanwhile we're getting better and better at mucking up the touring van.

ENSCHEDE

Our first date was at a place called Fellini's in Enschede for Popronde. In fact, all the gigs were Popronde's now, which meant that we'd just had to do one show a day. This makes life a LOT easier. Upon arrival in the far east of the Netherlands, we had the following things going on:

- Fellini turns out to be kind of a posh club that does both food and dancing. Usually, that's not where we find our best audiences.
- It would be my birthday right there on stage. At first it was something I was looking forward to, but my birthday did not turn out the way I wanted it to.
- Because of some dumb mistake of my own, I had misplaced my bass amp, so had to play with whatever was available. Thankfully the PA at Fellini's was pretty good and the in-house technician saved the day.

Despite sounding like a set-up for a big clusterf•ck, the gig was actually pretty good. We drew a small crowd who were listening intently in a very nice setting with great lighting and a cool 50's New York scene on wallpaper along the side of the room. Festivalinfo came along and shot a few pictures. Check them out HERE

Gerhardt + some dude in the background, rocking out.

We had the day off the next day. I spent my birthday in a foul mood for most of the day... I won't bore you with it...

AMERSFOORT

Saturday saw our little gang reconvene for a gig in Amersfoort. I already knew from various account that Popronde Amersfoort was a pretty wild affair, the second largest of them all. And sure enough, the city was out in force. The great atmosphere was courtesy in part of an Oktoberfest celebration going on, drawing all kinds of overdressed drunks to the pubs that were housing the Popronde on the same night. It sounds worse than it was though, Het Nonnetje (The Little Nun), the café we played was packed to the brim with enthusiastic people and we had them on their feet for the entire gig. We also got to make a cameo-appearance in fellow Popronde traveller's The Dance's vid-blog of the night.



TILBURG

A week later, we had a spectacular 3-day stint on the Popronde in Tilburg, Venlo and Den Haag. Tilburg is known for having a huge student population, and a respected educational instution called De Rockacademie. It's the closest thing to a School Of Rock one can find in the Netherlands. It's also the place where Gerhardt took part of his education from. Plus: the local festival-programmer is a friend. Think that's a lead up to a great concert experience? Think again. The atmosphere all across town wasn't great, but we played a decent show. This is a good thing: if you want to be a professional musician you have to be able to cut through all the white noise around you and play through your strengths. It's one of the prime things I've picked up from playing Popronde: Play on stoically, and do it with a smile, whatever the situation. People will always like you better for it.

3VOOR12/Tilburg wrote a review of the concert, which wasn't completely positive but more than fair enough. Check it HERE (in dutch)

Gerhardt regularly mentions Jack Black and School Of Rock as one
of his main sources of inspiration...

Our guitaristic genius Bernard fixed us up with accomodation at a friend's house near Tilburg for the weekend. She proved more than her money's worth, acting as our driver for 2 days, fixing our breakfast and supplying us with some very efficient strong liquor. Lisanne truly is a gift from above, if I was to believe there is such a place as 'the above'. But the most beautiful thing about it was, that she put a little feminine touch in the mix, while being completely unbothered with our horrible masculine bandvan-banter OR us thrashing her student dorm for two nights in a row. She has certainly won my respect over the weekend.

Lisanne at the wheel. Picture by Gerhardt.

VENLO

For those of you that don't know: Venlo is the residency of The Netherlands' most infamous politician Geert Wilders. As such, most people (not counting people who tend to the political rigt wing) perceive it to be the closest thing to hell you can find in the Netherlands. If so, than hell is pretty kind and welcoming embrace. There's a very charming historic city-centre, with nicely lit squares and monumental buildings. We played at a café called De Blauwe Trap, who were very nice to us and provided a great soundsystem and dito engineer. We arrived well in time and had a nice long soundcheck. There was some consternation over equipment that had gone missing the night before but this was quickly resolved as it turned out our fellow Popronde/Serious Talent buddies Capeman found our gear in Tilburg and kindly took it with them the next day.

N.B.: As it turns out, all bands have the same sense of humor. Even worse: it seems that an entire generation can replay and relive entire episodes of Family Guy and/or South Park from memory. It's scary, man. I realised this when Darko of Capeman welcomed me a bit like this:



As a result of all these relaxing factors, we played a good, stress-free, fun gig, despite still nursing a serious hangover from the night before. Among the crowd were also a few dignitaries of the local popscene, whom appeared to like what we did. Hopefully we've sown the seeds for a strong crop so we can harvest during the festival season next year.

DEN HAAG

So, for once I had the leverage. I went to bed early and came out a lot clearer because of it. We said our goodbyes to Lisanne, left her a shitload of forgotten dirty clothes, and got on our way to our last gig. Coming in way ahead of schedule, there was some time to muck about, check emails and talk to Katía, a very nice singer-songwriter also touring the Popronde. She was playing the coffee company where I was weeding through piles of unanswered e-mails. Again, typical touring man's peril.

Den Haag was another night to remember. We had some problems finetuning our sound during soundcheck, but rocked the stage regardless. It was good to see that we are getting to a point where we are utterly untouched by any internal or circumstancial piss-ups and we can just go about performing. The crowd where a little reserved at first, but loosened up soon enough. A few girls were dancing frontstage, which will always brighten our day no matter how indifferent we get being rockstars and all (promise!). Afterwards, we hung out with Amarins & Le Gatte Negre for a bit who were on after us, but couldn't catch their performance as we had to get on our way home. This is another lesson learned: you don't see much of the festival if you're part of the line-up. A big contrast to years before, when I saw a lot of the acts that played.

3VOOR12/Den Haag was there as well and wrote some very kind words you can read right HERE (in dutch).

CONCLUSION

As we reach the end of our fall tour, it's just been one life experience after the other. This has been my first tour of this volume and longitude, and a first taste of what's it's like to be a professional(ish) musician. I know the other guys have had plenty of experience like this, but I'm still finding my way and paying my dues, or so it seems.

Meanwhile, Gerhardt himself has some interesting thoughts of his own on the matter. You can read them at the Popronde blog, which is located HERE

All I can thing about now is playing our final show of the tour in Eindhoven. What will happen in the future is still up in the air. Despite some very cool and very serious plans, it will come down to Lady Luck to guide us through to the endgame. What that endgame will be? I'm sure I don't know.