Back to Germany: Cologne & Mannheim

To be completely honest, I have to admit that I probably have enjoyed my travels in Germany the most. Not only is the area around very nice to observe, the people here have been very accommodating. Amazing clubs and amazing people... well, what more can you ask for?

We got to take another ferry back from Denmark, but unfortunately we found no ball pits or anything like the first ferry. We actually were the last car off the boat due to some of the others lagging behind.



We performed in Cologne, Germany at an amazing club called All Area. Pull A Star Trip opened the night off with a great acoustic set featuring Steffen and Philip, followed by Beautiful Lies. It was probably one of the bigger crowds we've performed in front of on this tour, as everyone was having a great time as they packed the room. It was also very nice to meet a few new faces, as our good friend and producer Phil had invited some old friends who came to the show. I also got to see a couple friends who I met last summer at a Beautiful Lies cafe show at Berklee.

After the show we ventured to see the Koelner Dom. I wish there was a better way to show the massive size of this church, as it was even too big for my camera to properly capture it. It was also a little difficult because it was nighttime. But I took a few different shots of it:







Thursday brought us back to Steffen's hometown of Mannheim. We played stripped down set at Cafe Nelson, which was just around the corner from Steffen's apartment. A band from Switzerland called Slimboy opened the night, followed by Pull A Star Trip and then Beautiful Lies. Phil from Pull A Star Trip accompanied us on cello for "Save Yourself." After we finished our last song, the audience requested an encore, and we played "El Scorcho." And after that... another encore was requested. We've never really had that kind of thing happen, but it was very flattering. Phil joined us for the second encore, performing the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind." We'd never even rehearsed it with him before but it worked out wonderfully.

The next morning, we woke up to an amazing home-cooked meal courtesy of Phil. Two days in Switzerland follow our Germany dates. More to come soon.

Sweden / Denmark

It's been a few days since the last time I posted about the shows, and a lot has happened as well. While the people in Germany have been amazingly nice to everyone of us, the scenery in Sweden has been beautiful. I was talking with Steffen about it all... I plan on coming back to Germany for as long as I possibly can... but we have to make a weekend trip to Sweden. It's just beautiful. I don't really know what other way to put it. Pictures always speak much more than words, so I figured I'd just let photographs explain our time in Stockholm, Sweden:


































Later that night, we played a show in Uppsala, Sweden. It was at a nice little cafe place called the Grand Cafe. The staff was very nice and fed us a great meal of authentic pasta salad. We followed a band that sounded a lot like the Strokes. Afterwards, we went out to a small pub in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

The next morning, we travelled a long, cold day over to Copenhagen, Denmark. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see much of the city. It turns out I woke up in the middle of the afternoon in the van and everyone else was gone. It was the first time I had slept all through the afternoon and didn't even wake up when we stopped. i just found myself waking up next to a huge store called the New Yorker in the middle of Copenhagen. I thought I was alone as well, but much to my surprise, Philip was sleeping in the bench seat in front of me. Even though I missed out on the daytime in Copenhagen, the city was very beautiful.

We then played a show that night at a small venue called Lades. It was much like a basement looking club. The opening band was really cool, combining live electric and acoustic guitars with a lot of electronics. We then played a nice electric set where we played El Scorcho for the first time on this tour. We've been working out an extended bridge during the middle of The End which we played for the first time on the tour as well. Even though it's a few shows into the whole trip, it felt like the group was finally becoming much tighter, as it's only been a few shows with Mike.

Afterwards, we talked with some of the locals and met a lot of nice people. At some point in the night, the whole group traveled to a blues bar down the road, where Philip ended up getting on stage and jamming with the local blues guitarist. I have never seen anything like it... Philip is amazing at what he does, and probably jammed for about 20 minutes on stage.... unrehearsed... just purely phenomenal. I got a good 10 minute video from the whole journey, too.

We followed that day with a long trip back to Germany. Beautiful Lies and Pull A Star Trip spent the afternoon with a nice journey by van and ferry (which consisted of over 9 hours). Much sleeping took place in the van, and thank goodness I never have to drive because I really needed to sleep. I'll miss Sweden though. It's cold there, but not to our surprise as we're used to the chill of the air in Boston. I do hope to go back. Two shows in Germany to report on in the near future. I'l be writing about those shows soon and very soon.

Sweden

As far as scenery goes, Sweden has been one of the nicest places I have seen in Europe so far. And much to my surprise, the locals speak very, very good English... even much better than a lot of Americans do. Beyond that, our travels in Sweden have been amazing. We got to take a six-hour ferry ride up from Germany, which I never thought could be so fun. We set up our acoustic guitars in a room and just played for hours. Many people walking by seemed both entertained and confused.

Some pictures from the ferry:








The ferry arrived pretty late in the evening, so we dropped all of our gear off at the hostel we were staying at. According to the others, it was one of the nicest hostels they had ever stayed at. Whether or not this was the case, I was just happy to get a nice bed and a shower.

Since we had the night of from playing, some of us drove into town to check out the local scene, and we stumbled across a huge venue, much like the Avalon used to be. It was a little expensive to get in, but it was well worth it. Good music all night. We lost Mike for a little bit, and met some pretty... interesting.... people. But once again, another amazing night.

The following morning we had to wake up early to drive up to Stockholm. I was sincerely impressed with the club, as it was a teen center and one much better than anything I had seen in America. It was great to see these people giving a place for youth to go to and have a good time.

The show was much better than the first night, and we put on an intense performance. There was a good crowd who seemed to really enjoy the set. We learned a few Swedish phrases along the way too. I definitely would love to go back to Black Sheep.

We have one more night to go in Uppsala, Sweden. I'll write again as soon as I get another chance.

Germany

Hello to everyone from Sweden! While it has been five days on the tour, this is the first time I've had a chance to get online to write about our journey in the past few days. But I've got some downtime, so I thought I would take the opportunity to do so. The connection here is a little weak, which poses a challenge in trying to upload photos, but at the next good opportunity, I will post as many as possible.

Our first day was purely travel. We flew from Boston into the London airport, which turned out to be a really fun trip. Aside from my efforts to get over being sick, I got to watch a few movies on the plane. I had never seen "No Country for Old Men," which I enjoyed, as well as "Juno." Upon arriving to the London airport, Mike and I noticed something unlike any American airport we have been to: it was so clean and so quiet. Oh yeah I mentioned Mike...he's touring with us as our drummer. He's a great guy and we've been having a lot of fun with him.

We finally arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday night, and travelled to Mannheim, the town in which Steffen (Pull A Star Trip / Tour manager) lives. We had a great time meeting his friends from the area. We also got to experience authentic German (actually Turkish) food called a doner. Here you can see Steffen and his roommate Toby. After a round-robin tournament of beer pong, Team America came out on top. Victory was ours.




Thursday morning consisted of an early awakening and a trip to Steffen's parents' home for a lovely lunch. His parents were so nice and we got to see more of Germany. Steffen kept talking about his Porche, and after much anticipation... well it was a Porche... it just happened to be a tractor made by the same company.

Here are some photos from Steffen's house:







After this, we played our first show in Hamburg, Germany at a venue called Fundbureau. It was our first show, and while we played a good set, tiredness was still a factor for all of us. Despite the fact Hamburg is a big city, there were still a good amount of people there to watch, as well as buy some merch.





After the show, we got to check out the local pub scene, where we found two really nice places with good music and good people. I don't know if it's obvious that we're American, but we definitely brought a carefree vibe to the dance floors, getting many people involved in a good night.

The next morning we drove to Paderborn, where Pull A Star Trip started. Here we got to play at Bart's (Pull A Star Trip) bar called Wunder-Bar. It was a nice little place, but definitely not short of a good crowd. We played a great acoustic set, and got to meet many new faces. We also got to see some old friends Jonas and Iza, who we met on our first tour and were once members of Pull A Star Trip. They took us out and showed us some of the pubs to check out. For some reason we never even made it back to sleep. It was another great night in Germany.

More to come soon on Sweden. As for now, ciao!

01-12-08: Ben & Ari's - Fishers, Indiana

Saturday night at Ben & Ari's. What a way to end the tour. Call it a homecoming, if you will, and maybe even a reunion. And it was definitely one of the best experiences on this trip. I'm not even necessarily talking our performance itself, because things just aren't the same with Dave on drums, but instead I'm talking about the feeling of bringing everyone together after years of not seeing each other and being united and reunited by music. Everyone that attended were all friends of ours, whether they were from high school, relatives of friends, our own relatives, peers from other bands, etc. Not only were we excited to see them, they were all excited to see each other. Even on top of that, we met a lot of new people who were all very, very supportive, and we can't thank our old friends and new friends enough for all of their support.

Right before our set, John Deluca (manager of Ben & Ari's) introduced us, touching upon the subject on how they started these "student nights" seven years ago, where Zach & I were their first band to ever perform there. (We were called Crash at the time.) I never really realized we had began there so long ago, and were the first to start off their years of student nights. For us, as a young and beginning band, it was an amazing opportunity to perform regularly for our friends and meet new people. For Ben & Ari's, not only a great business move, it was also a way to give teenagers a safe place to go with a great environment. Ever since that first show, all of us have grown and learned through so many experiences that may have never happened if timing hadn't been right.

We performed a split set again, kicking off with All Because of You, Runaway, El Scorcho, and Same Things. Then we broke it down to play Get Low and Cold acoustic. We finished off with The End and Untitled. It was a great set and we had a great time doing, but it went so fast. Oh wait... at the end of it all, we performed Dammit (Blink 182) unplugged style on guitar with three part harmonies. Brought me so close to tears...

After everything was over... well that was a chance to meet a bunch of new people who hadn't heard us before. We signed some cds and shirts for these new faces, and just spent time talking to everyone and thanking them for all their support. I really don't think I've ever said thank you more than I did these past several shows, but it's true that I am so thankful for everyone who came to see us. A few friends and family from Ohio; my mom drove up from South Carolina; and several different people from colleges all over Indy. It was just such a great feeling.

In the end, I am sincerely going to miss everyone, because it's not every day that we get a chance to visit our hometown of Carmel. At the same time, I'm finally back to my apartment and in my own bed. I probably slept on the floor way too much, and a couch here and there, but my bed feels so much better. I'm looking forward to the next trip.

Oh yeah, I'm still behind on photos. I didn't actually get anyone to take pictures on my camera for the last show but I'll do what I can when I find some. In the meantime, I finally found some pictures of Common Grounds. Yes... that's me on drums. My cousin posted some photos too at www.ria6677.blogspot.com.

Here's a few photos from Ben & Ari's, courtesy of Hannah Commeville:










From Common Grounds, on my camera:

01-11-08: Common Ground's - Lebanon, OH

I have to make this short and sweet, simply due to time constraints. Duty calls, and that duty happens to be Skyline Chili. We're on our way to get a quick lunch and then head into Indy for our final show on this wonderful winter tour at Ben & Ari's.

Common Grounds was a great place to play, and a great place for lots of high school kids to go to to listen to local live music. There's really not a whole lot going on in Lebanon, considering it was a Friday night and this place was packed. Apparently the cops came three times, so they must not have anything better to do either. In fact, I figured maybe there was some kind of drug bust or underage drinking, but the only incident that arost was some kids under 18 smoking cigarettes. If that's the worst of the town's problems, well, that's not a bad town to live in.

My friend Jessica took a lot of really good pictures, so I'm going to hold off on posting anything from the show until I get a few from her. It was the first set we had without Dave, and it went incredibly well. I hadn't played drums with a band for a while, but everything went very smoothly. We split the set up with two acoustic songs in between four electric. It's something we've never tried before, and it seemed to go over very well.

Anyway, only one more show to go, and when I get some downtime I will definitely upload some photos from Common Grounds. Maybe I'll find some time to sleep, too.

01-10-08: The Night Owl - Dayton, OH

I'm just going to come out and say it right away for anyone who didn't know before. Last night (Thursday) was our last show with Dave for a while. He's going on a semester abroad, which is incredibly exciting, but unfortunate for the band. He also turned 21 while we were on stage at midnight. All in all, it was a great show, and a phenominal way to end our time with Dave. We all will miss him sincerely, but also we wish him the best with his travels. We're all very tired after last night though. We had to get Dave to the airport around 4:30 AM, and now I'm starting to feel the lack of sleep catch up to me. Luckily, we all got to sleep in beds for the first time on this tour, due to the hospitality of our aunt and uncle.

We arrived at the club last night to find that the only other local band on the bill had cancelled, due to the fact that their drummer decided to quit. I usually try to leave out negative opinions or emotions from what I write in these blogs, but I can't deny that we were all very upset with this, and even though two members still came and performed acoustic, their decision to bail on us was pretty unprofessional.

Aside from that one obstacle, we played incredibly. It was definitely our best show on this trip, which made it a great way to say farewell to Dave. Two people from the audience bought him different shots right at midnight, so he didn't even have to get offstage to get his first taste of alcohol. I got to see several friends and family members that I haven't seen in a while also.

Anyway, we still have two more shows on this trip. We're going to perform half acoustic and half electric (yes, which means I'll be attempting the drums in honor of Dave), so while it's a change of pace from the last two weeks, it still should be a great time.

With our cousin:


Happy Birthday, Dave: