Sunday, February 22, 2015

SA:On the Road: Pariah’s Child World Tour Latin-America 2015 part 1

Thursday 19.2.-Friday 20.2.2015 - Travel Days (Kemi-Fortaleza)

Marching out with a great combo of flights, Kemi-Helsinki-London-Sao Paulo-Fortaleza.
Flight times should be 1,5h + 3,5 h + 12h + 2,5h and the changeovers 5,5h + 3h +
4,5 so from my front door until the hotel in Fortaleza we have slightly less than 35
hours if everything goes well. (Note: Just stating the facts at the moment, no whining).

Disclaimer:
I shall spend this time using my computer (until the battery dies), my phone (until the battery dies) and maybe reading a bit (not likely), drinking a bit (highly possible) and watching movies if available (high probability) and sleeping (good luck with that ! ).

….alrighty-o, actually this was probably one of the easiest long-haul flights we’ve ever had. I managed to sleep for around 6 hours on the flight from London to Sao Paulo which was great. When we finally arrived in Fortaleza we took a quick stop at the hotel for showers etc and then we went for a really nice dinner !!! We ended the night sitting outside at the beach and drinking beer. It’s good to be back on the roead ;-)

Saturday 21.2.2015 - Fortaleza, Brazil
Got up at around 10 and managed to hit the breakfast buffet before it closed. Elias joined me so I didn’t have to eat alone. A bit later Pasi, Tony & I went for the gym for a short session. It was nice to do a short work out and get fully awake. In the afternoon we had dinner at the hotel and then it was time to go to the venue and do the soundcheck. The sound on stage was a bit chaotic because of the venue setup but I’m sure it’ll be ok tonight when the people arrive. Todays piano is a Triton Extreme 88 which is ok, not the best but it’ll do. Since we haven’t played here before we dropped What did you do in the war, Dad ? and Love from the setlist and added Replica and Tallulah instead. We’ll probably be juggling the setlists around depending on where we are. In the snowcastle we played White Pearl, Black Oceans and we might do that one again on this tour since we now play it until the end (as opposed to the previous live version) and we also have new orchestral backing tracks that Mikko P. Mustonen did for us so the song sounds quite different these days compared to how we did it last year. Let’s see what other stuff we’ll come up with, it seems that it’s getting harder and harder to decide which songs to play….

Anyways, before the show we had a short meet & greet and then it was time to go onstage in front of around 1500 people. Really nice !! ..and we also found out that the show was sold out so a great start to the tour. Afterwards we had to be quick to get back to the hotel since we had a 0445 lobby call to fly out to Recife.

Sunday 22.2.2015 - Travel Day & Recife, Brazil
Got up at 0430….tired, no surprise here, we came to the hotel at around 01 last night so…Anyways, the flight to Recife was really short and upon arrival we hit the breakfast buffet and then it was off to bed to sleep some more. Decided to take a short swim in the pool in the afternoon, which was a great idea ;-) Dinner, Soundcheck…the usual routine and then it was time to chill at the hotel for awhile before the show…
…and post this ;-)

cheers,

Henkka

Sunday, February 1, 2015

SA:On the Road:Pariah’s Child World Tour Finland 2015 (part 2)

Thursday 29.1.2015 - Kerubi, Joensuu
Our bus have been up here in the north so it was really easy to get on the road for this trek, at least for me, tony & Tommy. I got picked up just after 0600 in the morning for a really pleasant 500+km drive to Joensuu. Spent most of the drive sleeping, noodling with my computer and talking bullshit with the guys. Upon arrival we had a few hours to kill at the hotel before the soundcheck. Tried to fit on the small stage, checked the sound and ate dinner, then it was back to the hotel for about an hour (the backstage is really small so…). The hotel is more or less on the other side of the street so since it’s very close I prefer to hang out in my room….anyways, at 2100 it was time to start the first of the two shows this week. The show went ok, somehow there was very little oxygen onstage so it was a bit hard to get too wild but whatta hell, everything went well, no gear malfuctions etc. Afterwards I had a couple of drinks with our merch guy Mape before heading to bed and watching netflix until I fell asleep….

Friday 30.1.2015- Kylpylähotelli Rauhalahti, Kuopio
Todays drive was only around 140km so we got to sleep a bit before getting on the bus and heading for Kuopio at around 1130. My day went as follows: arrived in Kuopio, ate a pizza, watched youtube videos for around 2 hours, worked on some logistic calculations with our busdriver, did the soundcheck, did the meet & greet, ate some more food from the buffet, did a few videoclips for Latin-America, did a interview, sent a bunch of business mails. Took a nap, got ready for the show and at 2330 we were on. This place is one where you’ll have to walk through the crowd in order to get to the stage so we (once again) skipped the encore break and just played our set straight through the end. Afterwards I had a chat with some friends and then it was time for bed in order to get up before 9….and drag ourselves to the trainstation.


Saturday 31.1.2015- Travel Day 
The rest of the guys all went in different directions so it was just me, Punky & Tommy taking the train back home. Around 2 weeks at home before we head out to the most extensive Latin-American Tour we’ve ever done, it’s gonna be almost 5 weeks of flights, heat and great shows….and I’ll probably be bitching about the airports, delayed flights and what have you…another great adventure lies ahead and until then I get to focus on practising the songs we haven’t played from Ecliptica in order to be ready to go in May. 
..oh and finishing my solo album ;-)

cheers,

Henkka