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PETE'S TOUR JOURNAL PART TWO - Monday 14 March, Hamburg Germany Finally on the plane, I slept the whole way to Hamburg, the plane making up the time lost on the ground at Heathrow - a normal turn of events as far as I can make out. Both leaving and returning to Heathrow seems to be fated by delays of one sort or another. Landing in Hamburg by comparison was a very organised if uneventful affair. I picked up a couple of messages on my phone - one from Dirk at InsideOut and one from Paddy (who was looking after John and John and being our keyboard tech for the tour) asking where I was. I told him I had landed and would be at the venue ASAP and hopefully in time for our soundcheck. I seemed to breeze past customs just in time to pick up my bag from the claims hall and walk out on to the main concourse and through to the exit straight to a taxi rank. In minutes I was being driven to the Markthalle in a smart new Mercedes, by a driver who I found out played tablas (what is it with all these taxi drivers?). I made my way to the big metal doors which were the main entrance from the street, and of course they were locked so I phoned Paddy to come and get me. The Markthalle is a fairly old building situated right by the railway tracks over the road from the main station. Walking down from the street in to the venue you can be forgiven for thinking you are going on to a subway station platform. In fact the wide concrete stairs may well lead down to a station, but the door to the venue is on a landing about halfway down. Inside the atmosphere is quite nice and vibey with a reasonably-sized stage, a couple of dressing rooms and an eating area. It was nice to finally be here and I found John M, Bob and John B in our dressing room area. As soon as I walked in however I realised spirits were low, and things needed to be sorted out. I briefly went next door and said Hi to the members of Spock's Beard, who I knew from working with Neal Morse in Transatlantic, and we all shared the same stage at one point at the Astoria to play a couple of TA songs a few years ago. I came back and sat with my fellow Kino band members to get the lowdown on how things had been up to now. Pretty grim it seemed. Messrs Mitchell & Beck, Paddy and Kate our merchandise person, had the journey from hell from the UK to Holland by minibus only to arrive at the venue yesterday 5 hours before it opened so were left to sit in a car park until the place opened. Their day never got better, finishing with none of them getting anything to eat or much else in the way of hospitality. Not a good start to a tour. They were feeling left out of the loop and fed up. I made a couple of phone calls to Tommy the tour manager and Joerg the production guy who had set up the whole tour, and found that yes hot food, drinks and towels could be provided for us and would from now on. This had been an oversight on our part (quite big I know) and that when we had been asked for our tour requirements, although we had talked at length about drums amplifiers and all things technical to do with putting on a show, none of us had thought about mentioning food, drink or the essentials for any tour - clean towels. Yes forget food - that can be scrounged, forget drinks - they can be negotiated for or bought at a push, but towels are the one thing you need that are impossible to find, and are needed in vast quantities especially when travelling round Europe on a bus with no hotels in the budget. By the time I'd arranged all this, Spock's Beard were soundchecking, and we got ready for our linecheck/soundcheck. This is the bit I was always going to find strange. Along with the rest of Kino, none of us have been support much in our lives. Spock's were as I had hoped, more than generous with the amount of time given to our soundcheck, and Rob Aubrey who was doing out of front sound for both bands ran round like a mad thing getting us connected up and patched into both the PA and monitor desk. We had a quick linecheck, ran through most of 'Leave A Light On', got some monitor levels and that was it. The doors were about to open and we had just over an hour to eat, take some photos for Classic Rock magazine, and get ready for our show. Yes there was food and it was very nice as I remember. We decided to do the shots later as it was too near our show time. We changed into our stage gear and various members messed around with items ranging from toothpaste and hair gel to make-up and at one point I'm sure nail varnish was mentioned. I'll leave you to guess who was doing what to which part of the anatomy. Then it was 'look at the time - we're late'. The fatal mistake of any support band, if you're late it's your own time you lose, not anybody else's. We went on nearly ten minutes late, but quickly got into the swing of it. 'Leave A Light On' was the obvious start to the set and the keyboard riff started the proceedings. This is by far the easiest song to show all strengths of the band with its catchy melodies and harmonies in the chorus, and it seemed to go down well with the audience. I don't remember much else about the set except that we were being listened to and there were a few people chanting my name. I took that to be a good sign. I think we played 'Holding On', the one I find a struggle to play as switching from acoustic to bass is a scary moment. 'Perfect Tense' went well. I also remember we had to end in a hurry. I think we played 'Losers' Day Parade' as well but I can't be sure. Then we left the stage and had a quick post-mortem on how we did. It was not a bad first gig with plenty of room for improvement here and there, such as quicker changeovers - a good reason to lose 'Holding On' in favour of one of the others especially on some of the smaller stages where the acoustic wouldn't fit. We chilled backstage for a bit and I had a shower. Not the nicest showers - right next to the toilet everyone had been using all day. Rock'n'roll is not all glamour believe me. I realised while in the shower I was completely in the way of Spock's Beard getting ready themselves. I hadn't even thought about this having not been in a support situation for all these years. No-one said a word which I thought was good of them. I went and watched some of the show - they're a great band to watch live. Then we rounded everyone up for the photos for Classic Rock to be taken by Joerg's photographer girlfriend. The first lot were taken along a bench in a room somewhat reminiscent of a school dining room. We then went to the exit stairs and fooled around in various line ups until she declared that she had enough - or maybe she meant that she had had enough, I'm not sure… Anyway we looked through the selection and John B who has an eye for these things picked out one that could be used. I haven't seen Classic Rock so I'm not sure if it made it or not. If we were on some stairs looking interesting then that was probably the one. I went back to watch Spock's and hang by the sounddesk with Rob for a bit and introduced myself to Kate at the merch stall, before joining John, John and Bob out the front talking to some Kino fans, before going to find myself some food from outside the venue. It seemed that I would become the point of contact for Kino on this tour and resume tour manager duties as they were, liaising between Tommy the tour manager, and anyone else on all things Kino-related. One last issue we had was the problem of smoking or rather not smoking. The bus had been deemed non-smoking yet some of the crew, and all of Kino except me, were smokers. We seemed to have taken over the upstairs lounge which suited everyone as it was smaller and fitted us more comfortably than Spock's and the main crew. The two solutions were to sit with the driver so one person at a time could do this - not very satisfactory - or ask the driver to stop so people could have a fag break - not at all practical on long drives. This subject would be the main bone of contention, humour and general banter between both bands, all the crew and indeed the driver who got it in the neck from all camps for the duration of the tour. But for this evening at least, it would be no smoking upstairs, and only downstairs if sat with the driver. With this on my mind I went back to the gig with my chicken kebab and chips, congratulated the members of Spock's I met in the hall, had a chat with various members of the crew and offered the odd chip as a token of friendship. With all my food quickly gone, I headed to the bus and found the only free bunk left, sorted out my bags and settled in to bus life. With a full bus, being organised with your junk is a must or it easily gets lost somewhere in the darkness or left behind at the last show. Life resembles that of a submarine with everyone sleeping on top of each other. We had seventeen people on the bus - more than I am normally used to. We, Kino that is, had wanted our own bus, which would have got us and our gear to and from Europe, but this had been turned down by the record company as an extravagance that we could not afford. Having got organised I went down the back to see what was happening with the others. They were watching a DVD so I sat down with them for a bit then went downstairs for a bottle of water for my bunk. I sat and chatted to Olly the guitar tech and Tommy for a while. I found we were getting on well. I went back upstairs after a while to find Jimmy, Spock's new and pretty spectacular drummer, upstairs with John and John. I decided to go to bed as I was beyond tired at this point. I lay in my bunk thinking a few things over. I know this is not the level of touring we are all used to. Both Johns had their reservations about sharing a bus with another band. I looked at it the other way round and thought that equally Spock's were brave to share with us - a point I later made to both Nick and Dave. We were, after all, a brand new band never having toured together before - we may have fallen out, had a fight, who knows. At some point in the midst of all this nonsense I finally drifted off to sleep.
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