SA:On the road:Pariah’s Child World Tour / Europe part 3

Thursday 17.4.2014-Berlin, Germany

…Soundcheck done and tonight will be the world premiere of What did you do in the war, Dad ? Hell yeah, finally. Tomorrow we’ll start rehersing another new song…let’s see how long it takes to get it together :-) Just waiting for dinner so I better do the e-mail inties now so I can practise a bit after eating.Tonight the New York Rangers will start their playoff run and I try to get to watch it somehow, hopefully the internet here will reach all the way to the bus. Fingers crossed.

Well, we did play WDYDITW,D? and it sounded good, I think. The internet didn’t work from the bus so I couldn’t watch the game :-( So, hanging out sipping wine and at some point it was time to go to bed and continue watching the apprentice. By the time the bus left at 0600 I was sound asleep.

Friday 18.4.2014-Leipzig, Germany

Woke up just after 12 and went outside to enjoy the rain ;-) Tonight we’re playing at a place we never played before and it’s cold as hell. According to Tero’s sofisticated temperature mesuring equipment it was 14,5 degrees celcius on stage during our soundcheck. We started to rehearse our next new song but it will take some days to get it working. Naturally there’s no internet here so I had to make a phone call to find out that NYR won 4-1 last night. Be that as it may if the breakfast I had when I woke up is any indication we will have an excellent dinner so at least there’s that to look forward for….and of course the show. We changed the setlist by one song, actually Elias and I did, hopefully the other guys approve. 

Btw one funny thing happened during soundcheck, when we started to play some mold/trash/crap fell down from the roof on Larry and our merch so he’ll have some cleaning up to do before he can sell those.

The food was really good and afterwards I tried Punkys golf clubs outside. Fun as hell…and difficult but I managed to hit the ball pretty good a couple of times and didn’t destroy anything so I guess it all went well. During the show it was finally warm on stage and we were actually able to play our stuff without any problems. We had to leave really early after the show since we had a long drive and had to pick up a ramp for the trailer as well. So it was easy to retire to our bunks and watching movies on the laptop.

Saturday 19.4.2014-Bochum, Germany

Started the day by trying to find the backstage, which eventually I did. It was more like a treasure hunt / adventure trail than anything else. Spent some time online checking mails and of course the NHL highlights from the last couple of days and whatnot. Managed to watch the SM-liiga playoff game Kärpät-Tappara which of course Kärpät lost, so Elias was happy and the rest of us not so much ;-) Anyways we once again had an excellent dinner and then it was time to start preparing for the show. Did some changes again to the setlist but no new songs, we’ll see in a couple of days if we can get it together. 

Sunday 20.4.2014-Off day, Bochum, Germany

Woke up, got a late lunch, had some beers with the Trick or Treat guys at our bus and went back to bed. Did I ever mention that I have off days ?

Monday 21.4.2014-Aschaffenburg, Germany

Ok, this was a lot better then ;-) Back to work. Luckily we only have 3 off days left and two of them are driving days so.... The only downside of this place it’s that is it a drop and go thing. Meaning there’s no parking for the bus so you have to get up when we arrive and then spend the whole day at the venue. I took a nice nap on the backstage couch, watched some NHL highlights etc. We also met with our webdesigner to sort out a couple of things since we’re getting a new website pretty soon, yay !! During the show all went well except Tony managed to do some weird noises in the beginning of Tallulah which totally confused me and we had to start over a couple of times since somehow we couldn’t get it together after that. I took it as a comic relief :-) After the show we had to hurry a bit to get our showers and everything together, out to the bus and off we went towards Saarbrucken.

cheers,

Henkka

SA:On the road:Pariah’s Child World Tour / Europe part 2

Monday 14.4.2014-Hamburg, Germany

Back to the Markthalle for the 100th time or something like that. It’s an ok venue with a cool backstage to hang around. We changed the setlist again but still no What did you do in the war, Dad ? I hope we can put it into the setlist asap but we’ll see about that. The show was a nice hot one and we had a couple of drinks afterwards. Eventually it was time to go to bed and try to get some rest.

Tuesday 15.4.2014-Off day, Hamburg. Germany.

Woke up in the afternoon and went for a lunch/breakfast with the guys. Larry our merchdude took us to a nice restaurant that we actually tried out the last time here as well. Good food and not too expensive so all was well. Some of us went to the music store later on to get some drum hardware for Tommy. Afterwards we also went to the local Saturn store and I bought the remixed version of Vapor Trails (by Rush). We also got some pink headphones for our front of house guy. In the evening we took a rather long walk until we found a nice restaurant once again. So nothing too special but a nice day all in all. I somehow don’t really like off-days especially so early in the tour luckily we now have 4 shows in a row.

Wednesday 16.4.2014-Brauschweig, Germany

Never been here before, Pasi went walking around in the morning but said that there’s really not much around so I spent the day recovering from the off day and writing crap on my computer.Like this. We again changed a couple of songs in the setlist. The venue here is quite small so it was totally packed in the evening, which of course lead to a sweaty show.Good times. During San Sebastian in the encore I tripped and fell flat on my alesis, luckily it didn’t break and I didn’t hurt myself.I took it easy after the show and pretty much focused on getting to bed at a reasonable hour, took some time to pass out though but I watched some episodes of The Apprentice, so time well spent ;-) Also the NHL playoffs started tonight !!!

Thursday 17.4.2014-Berlin, Germany

Woke up already around 0900 but I didn’t get out of bed until around 12 or just after. Got some bacon & eggs for breakfast at the catering and then I started to go through my e-mail. A couple of interviews to be done, will do them later I think. Checked out the highlights from last nights hockey games. Oh…and I got the pics from my rig. See you all tonight !

cheers,

Henkka

Walking to find a dinner place on the Hamburg off-day. No idea what

that building was or where we were walking....

Punky took a pic of me during soundcheck somewhere..

...and taped this on the ramp for today. It means lift...referring to my tripping

last night...

The rig: My rented Korg SV-1

The rig: My M3 + my FX pedals for the lead sound the stustain

pedals are use for changing sounds and....for sustain ;-)

The rig: Another view from the M3 rack thing.

The rig: My painted Alesis Vortex...did that myself ;-)

Tony checking out Mikko's new headphones...and liking it !!

SA:On the road:Pariah’s Child World Tour / Europe part 1

Wednesday 9.4.2014-Travel Day

So just a bit under two weeks at home and we’re off again. This time the 15th anniversary shows are over and we’re embarking on the Pariah’s Child World Tour. First up (as usual) is a flight to Helsinki and an overnight stay in order to be ready for the morning flight to Dusseldorf. Beer & Burgers was the theme for the night and it was great. Masi came out and had a few beers with us which was very nice. I also had to say goodbye to my trusty old suitcase, it couldn’t do the job anymore. I was actually about to buy a new one back home when Ari the pyro maniac called me up and he mentioned that he had an old suitcase which was too ugly to use in public. So I packed my stuff in the old green goblin (pictures below) and at the hotel I just threw my stuff over to the new one. Luckily Masi took the old one for use as a backdrop bag or whatever so I didn’t have to throw it away, which would of course have been horrible, given our many years of touring history together. Anyways, enough about the fucking bag already…

Thursday 10.4.2014-Travel Day + Eindhoven, Holland

I hate these ”fly in the morning, play in the evening” kinda things, however after this day, it won’t be a problem for the rest of the tour. Nevertheless we got up at 0500 with a 0530 lobby call. The usual hassle with the gear etc but we got it done and off we went towards Dusseldorf, Germany and our bus…..with our bunks…in which you can sleep….took a short nap on the plane and well on the bus I went straight to my bunk to try to rest as much as possible. Did I mention that I love bus tours already ? Well I do, mainly because you don’t have to be at the airport every fucking morning, you only have to pack your stuff once, when you’re done and go home….and you can sleep more than enough every day. This will be awesome.

During tonight show we played Blood and Half a marathon man for the first time live. Since we didn’t have any time to rehearse, we’re now practising new stuff during soundchecks and when we feel comfortable we’ll add them to the set.

Friday 11.4.2014-Durbuy Rock, Belgium

A nice little festival with us and Stratovarius. So needless to say we had a good time after our show, watching the Strato guys rock out and having beers. Our backstage was in some dudes living room, which was a bit weird but also nice in some way. We did just hang around in the bus and at the backstage for the whole day. Our set was only 75min so it was a bit hard to choose what songs to play but I think we managed to get a decent set.

Saturday 12.4.2014- Off day, Amsterdam

What do you do on a  Saturday in Amsterdam ? Well you have beers and get a tattoo ;-) We also went out to dinner and I met a friend from back home so we hung out and partied.

Sunday 13.4.2014 Amsterdam, Holland

Back to work ! We practised What did you do in the war, Dad ? during the souncheck but we’re not playing it tonight, it still needs some work until the song is in shape to be performed. I think we might play it tomorrow. Anyway we changed some of the songs in the set and will probably keep on changing things up for this tour, to keep ourselves and our fans entertained. Spent the day doing checking e-mails and doing nothing….a nice dinner and then it was time to rock out !

The show went pretty ok, we played Sing in Silence and Paid in full instead of In the Dark and Victoria’s Secret. Tomorrow we’ll hopefully play What did you do in the war, Dad ? It remains to be seem. I actually managed to take some pics but still no pics of my rig, I’ll do that later tonight and try to get them uploaded asap.

A fan tattoo after the show in Eindhoven !

And another one...cool stuff !

Pasi is always very happy :-)

Leaving Kemi and the snow behind...

...another view...same shit...

Part of the off-day breakfast in Amsterdam...so this would be what I ate today part 18 or something..

Tero is confused at the airport in Dusseldorf.

My former bag, not in too good of a shape anymore....

bye bye my trusty friend....

That's all for now, 

cheers,

Henkka