"There
Goes The Sun"
"My Trip to
Germany and Finland... August 2009"
Day 3
I am never
really happy on those days when I miss my morning Bible study and prayer time so
I made sure I began my day with this and a couple of cups of tea!
I was thankful
for a good night´s sleep (among many other things) because show days tend to be
quite long.
Now I will
shower, go down for some breakfast, change the strings on one of my guitars and
prepare for sound check later.
More soon… bye
for now.
Breakfast was
big and fat and, if I keep eating this way, I will be too! But it´s only once in
a while!!
Ken (we call
him "junior") was running late because of traffic between Stuttgart and Munich
which was caused by endless road works apparently, but all went well and I met
so many people that I hadn´t seen in years. John Young was there with Bonnie
Tyler´s band, Geoff Whitehorn was there to mainly cause trouble when he wasn´t
playing with Richard Thompson and Ian (from Shotgun, The Kinks etc.) was with
Richard too. It was so good to see them and catch up. Ian had seen me at my
drugged-out worst with Shotgun, Geoff and I used to meet at every trade show
when I worked for St. Louis Music and John Young and I worked together with John
Wetton at The Magician´s Birthday Party.
Now we are
up-to date …
They had
forecast good weather for the weekend and it was, in fact, a lovely day… quite
warm in fact.
Rechberghausen
is a very small village about 45 kilometers from Stuttgart. It was really cool
actually and the promoters were expecting around 3000 people for this, the first
festival out there. The venue would probably hold 4500, maybe a little bit more.
Junior made it
safely although a bit tired, the band was paid and it was time to play!!
By the time we
went on, the place was still filling up and after about 20 minutes it looked
packed.
We started in
the sunshine and finished in the blaze of the stage lights. We were given 80
minutes to play and, including the encore, we played 82 minutes and it was
fantastic. Once again my Vikings blasted their way through the set and the
audience reaction became more intense as we went along. We finished with Lady In
Black and did Gipsy as the encore just to finish everyone off!
We have a lot
more shows coming up and we´ll rehearse new songs from my new CD too so we have
a chance to make this band tighter and even more powerful. That will be
something great!
The vibe is
always great after a show where the band has connected so well and, in turn,
connected with the audience so we enjoyed the moment and dropped into the
after-show area for a while to sign some stuff and take pictures with very happy
people.
They had an
area roped off for the musicians/artistes/stars but we left that for the
wannabes and had fun with the people.
Back at the
hotel bar we laughed, joked, lied and exaggerated until bed time, which was
really late…. especially for me!
