Team Rockit Germany tour diary - June 28-July 08, 2007

  
1. Chi-town to Berlin. The path of Team Rockit tour #4 in Europe.
2. Flying over Berlin

Day 1 - June 28th-June 29th (one LONG day flying throught the night) - Introduction / plane ride to Germany

It is very surreal to be starting this 4th European tour diary. I've decided the word "diary" sounds a bit gay, so we'll refer to these as tour "reports" from now on. And yes, it's a direct rip from Rose's "tour reports" in Poster Children. Anyway, a bit of the back story leading up to me sitting here with a laptop on the plane to London (our layover city on the way to Berlin). Killian, our new bass player, almost didn't get his passport on time. On top of that we had a rough gig at the Brauerhouse where Killian ended up busting his hand after practically having to fight for our money. Oh yes, the joys of being in a band, but we're definitely hardcore like that. Those two things alone had us on pins and needles leading up to our departure. It all worked out in the end though.

I had the where withall to bring a labtop this time. I can't explain how excited I am that the tour diary won't take twice as long to post and won't take weeks out of my life to get together when I get back. This is just the intro and I already feel like this tour report will be much longer because of the ease of entering data. I'm in super close quarters in the plane right now with Killian to my right (bass player #4) and Joe passed out, as usual (on what?), on my left. It's weird to think that this is becoming second nature to tour like this. I feel like we're seasoned professionals now, which is weird. I got to the airport with $2 taking the blue line from work. Killian brought my stuff to the airport and we only had to pay $25 this time for Joe's amp case. It's a well oiled machine now. I'm also letting go of a lot of anger at this point regarding past bass players. Dave was well, Dave...very young, inexperienced in a lot of "life lesson" ways and talked about his own band the whole time. Mark was just always frustrated with life and achieving some grand goal. I feel wholely justified that we keep plugging along and producing great experiences without having to justify our existence to someone or to prove that we need to reach a certain "goal" point by a certain date. Killian knew Joe and myself way back when we played in Charlies's Pipe Dream together. He feels honored to play with us, is older, and less needy. I'm cautious about writing anything about bass players because who knows how long they'll last? For now, I'm just content that the one next to me and Joe is actually reading a newspaper and has some "world" knowledge. It's the little things that make a band run smoothly. Still amazed that Joe and I get along so well after all of this time. We're definitely opposites, but it feeds the fire. Now on to rocking...

I always get worried about the extra baggage we have to bring. Joe has two carry ons, but they passed. I'm carrying a TEAM ROCKIT bass drum head that they let through. Again, only $25 in overweight fees. This will be our first time touring in Germany in the summer. We're so stoked to see what it holds. I've already purchased the ceremonial Jack Daniels and extra alcohol for Franzy and Matte as gifts. We definitely take care of those that treat us well. Still holding my breath, as always, regarding getting off the plane and passing customs without paying any extra taxes on the merch.

  
1.Driving to Grillenberg (first gig) with no gear. Notice chips and toliet paper on dashboard - touring essentials.
2.Joe peeing on the side of the road.

Day 2 - June 30th - Review of our first festival in Grillenburg & our NIGHTMARE with the lost luggage fiasco

It was the best day and worst day all wrapped into one yesterday. We arrived at Heathrow Airport to choas. It was the start of Murphy's Law for the day. Anything bad that could happen, did happen in regards to our travels from England to Germany. We found out that our flight to Berlin, Germany had been cancelled. The worst part is that it had been cancelled even before we got on the plane in Chicago and we had no notification. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!! The only way we could make it to Germany on time was British Airways putting us on a different carrier (Lufthansa) to fly to Dusselfdorf, then on yet another plane to Berlin. Joe was going ballistic at the airport. He couldn't find a place to smoke on top of the aggitation of dealing with one airline attendant after another. We did meet a really nice Greek lady at the airport named Nancy who was hanging out for a flight to Athens. Joe called it though, he said out luggage would get lost with all of the switching of airlines and flights.....and it did. Meanwhile, Killian was fine on the plane ride to London and just couldn't take the two smaller planes from Dusseldorf and Berlin. He said he wasn't feeling well on the first flight. On the second, I looked over at him and there he was filling not one, but TWO of the puke bags!! Joe and I felt bad for him, but I was giggling outloud as I've need see anyone get sick on a plane before. The only shining light of the ordeal was Franzy, our driver, waiting for us outside of the baggage claim. She's great. It's our 3rd tour with her now. She's ultra helpful, a good spirit, and always makes us laugh.

 

1. Waiting on a Luftansa flight while looking out at the carrier we should have been on. Britsh Airways blows.
2. Killian after a good puking.
3. Franzy, the best driver & tour companion for a band you could ever have.

So without our luggage that had Joe's guitars, Killian's bass, my cymbals, Joe's amp, and all of our clothes, we pushed on to the first festival date in Grillenburg, Germany. We knew they would have instruments there and had alerted our booking agent what happened. That's the thing about being on tour. You just press on and it all workss out in the end. Grillenburg is a small town near Dresden in the east part of Germany. It's a nice little town and the festival was near a castle...cool stuff just saying you played near a caslte. It was raining, but the people there were so accomodating and nice to us when we arrived. They knew we didn't have gear and had already worked out which gear we would be borrowing.

After the bands Dingsbums, Pandemic, and A Fond Farwell played, we were the headliner. We went on at midnight. It had been a very long day and moral was low as we didn't have any of our belongs, but we had the place going nuts by the end of our set! We started with a cover ("Ace of Spades" by Motorhead as EVERYONE in Germany apparently knows that band) just to wake people up and get them back in the tent if they were milling around outside. It worked. It immediately put the kids/crowd into a frenzy and they knew they were in for a musical whipping. After that we proceeded to rip into our best TEAM ROCKIT songs. I hate being a little conceited, but they loved us! We threw in a couple of other covers just to spice things up within the set (Blur's "Song 2" and the Ramone's "Beat on the Brat"). By the end of the set we had three seperate encores. It was great. It's exactly what we needed after a super long day of traveling. We were on a huge high as fans came up to us afterwards saying how much they enjoyed the set. I quote one of the guys that came up to me and said (in broken English of course), "I didn't know who you guys were and didn't know if I was going to stick around. After you started playing it was like you got better after every song!" I could hear stuff like that all day. We made our mark and the tour is on! After that we proceeded to drink until we couldn't see anymore (a regular custom on tour). We had purchased our driver, Frazny a bottle of Jack Daniels as a gift and we polished off about 1/2 of it on top of the delicious German beer....good times. Good times. After finally getting to bed at 6am, I woke up in the van today feeling like ass for obvious reasons....funny what alcohol does. Right now we're on the way to our second festival in Herzogenaurach, a place we've played everytime we've been to Germany. It's a great small town and we actually have a decent number of fans that bought our records and know us. I just hope to god our luggage shows up today. They said they located 3 of the 6 bags. We're hoping they're the ones with the instruments in them. We can only hope.

 
1. Support Band in Grillenberg (A Fond Farewell? Dings Bums?).
2. DJ chick spinning in "dance tent" at Grillenberg Upseits Festival.
 
3. JD was not my friend the next morning in Grillenberg....ugh. (photo by Franka Fister)
4. Killian and Franzy by our new, rented van for the tour. Pee stop.

Day 3 - July 1st, 2007 / Review of U-Turn Festival gig in Herzogenaurach / Lufthansa to the Rescue / On the way to Chemnitz

WE STILL DON'T HAVE ALL OF OUR LUGGAGE!!!!! More on that below, but I can't believe major companies that pride themselves on service can be completely irresponsible!! ARGGGGH! I could scream, puke, and fight someone all at the same time with the amount of pent up frustration I have. On to more postive stuff, our biggest festival in Germany yesterday!

It was our 4th time playing in a small town named Herzogenaurach. We normally play the club Rabatz and they always mentioned how great their U-Turn Festival in the summer is. Well, we're finally here for that festival. It's great to actually come to a town where you know people....and we know quite a few here now. Smiley, the promoter here who plays in a band called Ragin Diarrhea is always great to us. Thomas, the older guy who runs Rabatz is extremely cool and even offered potentially setting up some gigs in Poland and Austria for us. There's Marco from Deafcon-X, our booking agent Matte came down to see us with his girlfriend Tina. Then there's fans where I've seen their faces, but just can't place the name. Random Hero also played on the bill with us (the played with us last time). It's truly a testament to how many times we've made the trek back to Europe.

Our luggage had still not arrived so we had to get instruments loaned to us from a local band called Bobby McGee and the Monkey Tree. We hit the stage around 10:30 after seeing Morgan Finlay. He's a Canadian who's also booked by Matte, our booking agent. We had met him before on a previous tour and it was cool to finally see him live. Talk about a guy who's paying his dues to the rock gods. He's been on tour for 10 months!!!! Now THAT's dedication.

We're starting the gigs with the Motorhead cover and it's working well. The sound on stage was a little weird and we feel like we're so far away from each other. It's also hard to read the crowd response from way back on the drum riser on a stage like that. I think they really liked us as I could only see the first few "rows" of people jumping around...mostly young kids. It felt good to jam with such professional sound coming out of the P.A. We ripped through our TEAM ROCKIT songs and threw in the Ramone's song 1/2 way through. I felt so bad for Joe as he's at the mercy of this retarded borrowed guitar that can barely stay in tune with how he plays. We managed though and I think we pulled off a great set. We had an encore!! Just for fun as it was a festival and these German's were dying to sing along with something they knew, we played "Sweet Home Albama" and holy shit, they went nuts. That's the thing I've noticed the most about Germans. They love to drink and sing out loud while swaying back and forth. O.K, so that's not ALL Germans, but I just find that happening at a lot of places.

After the gig, a reggae band called Jamaram played. It was a nice change of pace from most of the metal bands playing that evening. They had a really long set and we (Killian and I) proceeded to drink with Morgan Finlay and some people at the beer/cocktails tent. It was great to hear about Morgan's travels and again, the best part about touring is just meeting a ton of different people. Joe and Frazny were tired and slept in the van. I couldn't believe Franzy wasn't going to drink with us tonight. Killian and I pushed on listening to the DJ, watching fire breathers, and talking with others around a bonfire until we were finally driven back to Rabatz (youth center where we normally play when it's not a festival) at 6 in the morning. There were mattresses, clean blankets, and towels!! It was a sight for sore eyes. We had slept in the van the night before and it was nice to get a "bed". It's the small things on tour that matter. We love Herzogenaurach (H-town)!!

 
1. U-turn Main stage early in the day
2. U-turn Poster on the way in to H-town (Are we really headliners?! NICE!).

 
3. Two hot chicks...Franzy and our booking agent's girlfriend, Tina...who makes some mean Spaetzli.
4. Team Rockit live at U-Turn Festival in H-Town (photo credit Franka Fister)