SA:On the Road:Festivals ’14:South Park & Kivenlahti Rock

Friday 6.6.2014- South Park, Tampere, Finland

This seems to become the summer of trainrides ;-) Our buddy up here in the north

who used to have a bus just changed it and the new one won’t be ready for this summer so we’re gonna travel by train….which is quite easy and fast but unfortunately you can’t smoke on the trains in Finland anymore so…we’ll see how it goes. Nevertheless got up quite early and then headed for the trainstation in Kemi for the 0735 train towards Tampere. Spent most of the time online searching for all kinds of useless and useful stuff. This weekend  will be quite interesting since tonight we’re playing the first summer festival and tomorrow we’ll do a special set at the Kivenlahti Rock, where we’ll play the songs that got the most  votes from our fans. (unfortunately we only had 27 songs on the list to choose from, the ones we know how to play at the moment…no time to rehearse more with this schedule..)

At around 1500 we arrived in Tampere and made our way to the hotel before being picked up for the festival by Elias. Dinner at the festival, a short meeting with our manager and then it was time for a signing session….which all went smooth fast and before we knew it, it was time to get ready for the show. Since we’re playing totally different sets tonight and tomorrow we’ll be performing 20 different songs over these two days. Anyways. tonigh we played a 75min set which was a blend of old and new stuff. It was a bit shaky being the first festival of this season  and us not having played together since the last European Show in Madrid a month ago. We did have a great time though and the rain that had been pouring down like hell actually stopped for our show….at least that was the impression I got. Just before Blood we got a bit confused 

because we heard some guitar shredding in our in-ear monitors…turned out it was the Skid  Row crew testing their equipment and there was some radio interference…well at least they succeeded to make Tony fuck up some of the lyrics :-) Other than that there were no problems during the show…I did however start Fullmoon too fast so I had to slow down a bit when Tony started singing….no idea why but sometimes these thing happends…it’s not like I don’t know in which tempo Fullmoon starts, having played it almost 700 times live already.

After the show I chatted for awhile with Pyry and Janne from our friends in Battle Beast who where at the festival partying and preparing for their gig the next day, I’m sure they’ll kick ass like always. I quickly got my stuff together and jumped in the van with the pyrosquad and left for Ari’s mansion and a late night sauna. Somehow I didn’t feel like staying at the hotel tonight  so this was the other choice. Some hours later I finished the night with some wine, sauna and a couple of episodes of Orange is the New Black season 2 on netflix….nighty night.

Saturday 7.6.2014-Kivenlahti Rock, Espoo, Finland

Felt really rested when I woke up and it was time to leave for Kivenlahtirock. In the van I spent my time listening to Santa Cruz since we decided last night in the sauna that I would do the pyros for them today. Jiiihaa !!! Great band and good songs this was awesome. The rest  of the day was spent talking about some stuff that we didn’t have time to do last night with our manager and a short video interview. So now the plans for next year start to surface and we’ll of course let you all know as soon as things are set and agreed upon.  The show went quite well tonight, it was a bit weird to play the songs that were voted for and try to get them into some reasonable order….we started with Victoria’s Secret and ended with Don’t say a word. Less than 30min after the show we were already in the cab and on our way to the railwaystation. 2 hours by train to tampere and then a change of trains and  finally we got our sleeper coaches and managed to get to bed :-) 

Sunday 8.6.2014-Travel Home

Woke up just before the train arrived in Kemi at around 10 in the morning. The festival

season has begun…now we have two weekends off before our final stretch of 8 weekends in a row. Better spend the time getting my parts for Ecliptica ready…..

Sun and good happiness stuff !!!

Henkka

If we'll ever get burned or hurt because of the pyros, you can blame these guys, Ari & Miika

#crazymotherfuckers #dangerouspeople #besafe #ifyouseemerunningcatchup