Sonata Arctica: On the road: North-America part one 18.2.-23.3.2016

Day 1 - Thursday 18.2. -Travel Day

Due to some cancellations we had to drive to Oulu and

fly from there instead of Kemi, in order to make it to the

JFK bound flight from Helsinki in time. So at around 0400

in the morning we jumped on the bus which took us to

the Oulu airport. A one hour flight later we were in Helsinki,

and headed for the Lounge we the NW guys were already

hanging out. Our flight to JFK was of course late but we

enjoyed some drinks and at some point we finally got

on the plane and towards USA. From JFK we headed to the 

airport hotel where pizza and beer was waiting for us ;-)

Day 2 - Friday 19.2. - Sayreville through

Day 35 Wednesday 23.3. Tampa

Since I didn’t get started on this blog until now (24.3.) It’s gonna be impossible

to remember everything that happened during our trek with Nightwish. I’ll try to

be more active from our headlining part of the tour (days 36-48). Be that as it

may here are some of the highlights as I remember them:

It felt great to be back on stage after several months with no Sonata activity, at

least not any musical stuff. We played 26 shows with NW and a lot of them

were sold out as well. One show got cancelled due to illness. It was a bit weird at the beginning to play for only 45min, since we’re used to doing headlining show clocking in at around 90min or more.Anyways, it was a lot of fun, drinks great talks with the guys and a lot of stunning magic from Troy. 

In Minnesota our own Tommy arranged so that we could go a check out the Florida Panthers - Minnesota Wild game during our off-day. We also got to

check out their locker room etc which was really interesting. One of the Finnish players Mikael Granlund came to our show the next day which of course was really exciting as

well.

In Reno our friends from back home flew out, partied with us on the off-day and enjoyed the show the next day as well. I also bought a pair of cowboy boots, which

I’ve been trying to do for a few years now….finally I found the right ones ;-)

In Anaheim we spent the day driving up to the mountains around L.A. with Ville

Juurikkala to take our new promopics. From the stuff we previewed, these are

going to be awesome !!

In Oklahoma we were falsely accused of shitting on the wall of the venue, which was

a really weird episode.

and of course we had to hit the French Quarters in New Orleans, which ended up

being a surprisingly laid-back bar hopping trip. Maybe we’re getting old ?

On an off-day in Panama City Beach, Pasi, me & Mikko our FOH went walking for around 15km on the beach, had the best burger on this tour and got sunburn…

I think the total driving on this tour so far has been around 10,000 miles so some

16000km…just something that crossed my mind ;-)

The Shows have been going really well, some small hiccups here and there but

nothing major…as far as I can remember. Tero accidentally dropped my keytar at

some point so we had to order a new one just in case it’ll completely break down.

Well that’s about it so far, I’ll upload some pics at some point. A big thank you

for Nightwish and their crew. Love you guys !!!

cheers,

Henkka