we were going to try and write my blogs in order, but i realize now that with only a few minutes of internet access every few days, it will be futile, and you would get NO new blogs from us...
Therefore, in bits and pieces, completely disorganised will come little snippits of our tour!!! (The Flogging Molly show on Nov 13th in Muenster was packed and in an indoor skate park.) Lorraine shipped some of the gear by air and it was supposed to take only 2-3 days. Unfortunately, for a reason as yet unknown, the gear never left Canada until the 11th so wouldn't arrive on time for the first show in Mainz.
The gig went well despite the fact we didn't have the synth module, the spare guitar, the sax wireless and Lorraine's sax (not to mention the T-shirts & stickers). The crowd at Reduit really enjoyed it and Hermann, the promoter, as usual took good care of us. We picked up some cymbals at Grover on this day, they are Millenium brand... If you ever speak to a drummer who has used these, he might just break into laughter... heh heh heh... no offense to anyone that uses them, but there's more plastic than metal in those things...!
The next day, Sunday the 14th, we drove to the airport to pick up the gear and merch. We got stuck in customs for 4 hours filling out papers, etc. At first they told us we couldn't get our gear on a Sunday, then they told us it would cost 25% of the cargo value in duties, they said they couldn't help us fill out the paperwork, etc. Anyway, after a while of playing this game of theirs, we finally filled out the papers ourselves and the duties ended up being less than 100 Euros!!!! Christian (tour manager) took care of it all as none of us speak German well enough. We drove on to Hengelo in the Netherlands where no soundman was available for the show.... They found a sub, but he gave up after a half hour and disappeared. Then another guy came in and he was great and quick! Finally it actually sounded quite good. Some of Lorraine's family showed up for the gig bearing gifts (Spekulaas cookies... yum...) and the evening ended up being quite fun! In the van, we listened to "Nouvelle Vague" which was pretty cool. The next show in Fulda (Germany) was in the cellar of a museum. A beautiful venue. Dan was ready with his synths, having worked on his sounds a bit with Mike's laptop. Right into the first song, his stand got knocked over and down went the beautiful Nord right before our eyes... We were all stunned but kept playing. It didn't work for the rest of the set!!! Fortunately, Dan is a whiz with that stuff and he fixed the broken connection... That was a tense moment though! Prague really is as beautiful as everyone says!!! We all really want to go back when we have more than 40 minutes to walk around town! The show was fantastic, we played a ska festival and Fred Skarface was there! They had played the night before in Club 007 and had a day off. Perry, the DJ gave Lorraine the biggest compliment! He called her "The last great woman of ska... I've met Pauline Black, Doreen Shaffer and now you" WOW!!