European Tour 2004 continued...

Today we drove straight for Lund in Sweden to hang with the excellent people from Bad Taste Records. This trip we get to take a ferry across the Baltic sea and then the same expensive bridge we took last time from Denmark to Sweden. Not cheap at all.

Mike, Martin, KJ and Kevin in the Swedish capital of rock

Tonight we're opening for Danko Jones a Canadian band we played with waay back in the day and haven't hooked up with since. Now they're doing great in Europe with a huge following. We're playing the big room of the Mejeriet, in the same building that we played in last time. Great veggie/vegan meal and a good time catching up with everybody.

Soundcheck in Lund

The show went exactly the way we dream an opening show should go. At first the crowd didn't know what to think and then slowly they started to get it. By the time we left the stage, they were all singing along. Too bad we didn't film it. After, we got to hang out with people who drove from Denmark, Norway and the far North of Sweden to see us play!

Last night people were talking about heading to Malmo (about 20 mins away from Lund) to see their soccer team FF Malmo play. We figured, why not? Our friend Martin met us at the stadium and got us some cheap seats in the rowdy section. People really love their soccer in the south of Sweden. It's even more popular than hockey! Thanks to our cheering, Malmo won 5-1.

Maaaaaaaaaaalmo! KJ, Mike and Jason spend twenty billion Kroners on scarves and hats!

After the game we went for dinner with Bjorn and Martin from Bad Taste then decided to start heading back to the continent. Jason took the wheel once again and everybody else went to sleep. We all woke up at the ferry terminal to hear the good news. We'd taken a wrong turn and were on the wrong side of Denmark. It was 3am and everybody was pretty tired and, for a split second, a little bummed out. You could tell Jason felt terrible. The look on his face made us all not bummed anymore so we drove back to where we started from. We drove for five hours and got nowhere but nobody really seemed to mind.

Copenhagen to Belgium is a pretty long drive so it was pretty much a drive straight to the show day. We got in late and there was already a Belgian band on stage when we got there. We skipped dinner, had a beer, watched them and changed our strings. GAS Drummers played with us again tonight so we killed some time prank calling each other's dressing rooms before they played.

It was a small but fun show. Everyone had a great time. We went out afterwards with Jan and Chris from Get a Live (the promoters) to this disco to drink and dance. The bar was super packed so to accomodate all the requests for favorite songs the dj played 30 seconds of each song. You will never hear louder "canned" music in your life. The mix was great: Madonna then some 3rd Eye Blind, some Elton John then the Belgian national anthem. It was a bit hard to listen to but an interesting slice of Belgium nonetheless. Crashed at a bed and breakfast place at about six am.

The guy running the bed and breakfast and his wife were there at nine to kick us out. I guess they wanted us to experience a good full Easter Monday in Peer. We were kinda slow in getting up which made them a bit angry. They vented their anger by booting our asses out into the street! I can't remember, is it Easter or Christmas that was all about the inn-keepers being mean to pregnant Mary and Joseph? Safe to say I don't know my Bible but at the very least, I can tell you these two have a lot to learn about hospitality from everyone else we've met on this tour.

Good thing they rushed us! When we went to check out Peer, Peer was closed.

Easter Monday - Jason, Mike and Kevin look for something to do in Peer but come up empty handed

On to Solingen then. We stopped in Koln (Cologne) on the way to check out the huge church that they are famous for. I think it's the first time I've been to church on Easter Sunday. Not a bad place for your first time I suppose.

Chixdiggit in Cologne

It's pretty huge, bigger than St. Stephans in Vienna, and they claim to have the game used remains of the "three wise men" in the back. Beat that Cooperstown! The mosaics on the floor and the sheer size of this place were the things that stuck out for me. Lots of long deceased religious figures entombed here as well. Well worth the visit!

Three Wise Men squeezed into a little gold box

Every tour has at least one bad show and this one was it. We only were allowed a short set and didn't take advantage of our time. We made ourselves feel better afterwards by having a few beer and heading to bed early.

Today another long drive but we're from Canada and we're supposed to be used to it. Today it's kinda like playing Calgary then Vancouver the next day and then back to Calgary the next. We seem to be passing throught towns that we just played. We all thought that Europe was supposed to be closer together.

Tonight we played with an awesome Swiss band called The Peacocks and our old friends from Montreal, The Planet Smashers. We toured with the Planet Smashers in 1999 across Canada on the Sno Jam tour. Before the show we caught up with the other bands and Scott and I killed time by playing with some hockey cards that he brought along. The person who flips the card closest to the wall wins kinda thing.

Backstage in Zurich

Mike rocks Zurich

The cool thing about going back into Germany is getting back on the Autobahn. Nothing like driving 160 and getting passed by a Porsche going 220. We've only seen a couple accidents on the Autobahn and they were only minor. In the states, we would have seen more and they'd be way more serious. People are pretty good drivers over here.

We got into Munster just in time for dinner. This dinner tied for first place with Zichem. The cream and garlic soup was perfect. Tonight we played with a band from Chicago called The New Black and one from Berlin called Kate Mosh. It was cool because both bands were way different than bands we'd normally play with.

The last time we played here it was almost exactly the same. A totally happy, ready to party crowd. They made the show. We had two encores and, since our set list is a little shorter because Kevin only had time to learn some of it, we had to play a couple songs twice.

Today we picked Ernie up in his hometown of Braunschweig to come along for the show in Berlin. Some of you may remember Ernie as our part-time driver from our past Euro tours. He's an excellent guy. Also, for those who care, Braunschweig is right by Wolfsburg where they make Volkswagens.

Scott gracefully sleeps through a nice profile of Ernie

We had a great meal at the Tiki Heart restaurant next to the Wild at Heart then Scott and I took a walk through "no mans land" in between where the walls used to be. Everyone else went shopping. The shopping is pretty good in Berlin, I hear.

Tonight we played with our labelmates The Lawerence Arms. Super funny guys and a cool band. We ended up drinking pretty much all night. That's all I remember.

Driving in to Bremen we got lost. The directions in our tour book were in German so we had trouble figuring them out. We had a good time finding it though talking to the usual nuns and taxi drivers. Driving through, the houses here make it look almost exactly like San Francisco.

Tonight was another small but fun show. Excellent hospitality with a great meal and lots of chocolate afterwards gave us all a chance to work on our Ritter Sport six-packs. Also, we played with a cool band of under-eighteens called Stu Shit. Definitely the best band name of the tour. They were great and were really cool. We had a fun show, blasted out the hits, had a few drinks then headed to the hotel. We stayed in a beautiful apartment that the club had rented off of somebody.This was the best place we stayed on this tour!

Kevin enjoys his best rest of the tour

We all met for breakfast next door to the condo then hit some stores to pick up souvineers. When we got to Dusseldorf, The Apers were waiting for us. We played some soccer out front, drank some beer and had some pizza together. Kevin Aper entertained me with tales of their last show here where a guy at the front of the stage smothered Kevin's face with blood while they were playing. Not my idea of a good time.

A man and his mouse: a Dusseldorf rock fan

The show was free and there were a lot of people from Solingen there so we had a chance to make it up to them. We had a good show in front of a punk rock crowd. There was one casualty though, a poor girl out front got knocked out after getting thrown head first into my guitar. Don't worry, my guitar was fine.

Another kinda long drive today but it's the last show. It was a cool drive though. We played the "who can tell when the former East Germany begins" game which killed a lot of time. We were probably wrong in our guessing but, like I said, it killed the time.

We got to the club just in time for a pre load-in beer, the took a walk to see the old stuff in the "Altstadt" on the other side of the Elbe river. The entire city was flattened near the end of the war and it wasn't until after the wall came down, that they started to rebuild all the historical buildings. It's taking a long time because they're using mostly the original stones and putting them back in their original places. You can tell which ones are the old stones because they're black and the new ones are tan.

Just don't expect blankets

Noooooo! Play the good one!

The Church is fantastic! Of course, a great rock and roll party ensued. Endless encores, tons of beer, sing-alongs. The works! Dresden gave us the perfect ending to an awesome tour. We were all soaked to the bone with perspiration, booze and applause. After the show, Jerry Aper shocked the backstage room by drinking a tall glass of my cloudy sweat squeezed from my t-shirt into a glass!

The kids in Dresden know how to rock!

Mike rockin' em back

After a couple of beer, some late night food and a little hanging out, the tour wound down. The Apers headed back to Holland and Mike and Jason drove to the airport in Munich. The rest of us crashed at the band flat which was perfect but there were only two blankets for the three of us. Thankfullly, Kevin took one for the team.

Between the towels: Kevin dreams of differences between East and West in his "cosy nest"

I guess that's the end. The next day everyone else said goodbye and headed to where they had to be.

Special thanks to Kevin for filling in on guitar and to Scott for keeping all of us organized. You both did an awesome job! Thank-you to everyone who booked shows, bought us beer, bought us chocolate, put us up, showed us around, gave us directions, took care of us and/or gave us the history of where we were. It was our most fun tour yet!

Extra special thanks to Martin at Bad Taste Records for going above and beyond the call of duty.

We'll be back soon.

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