Touring Tales With Ish

Hello from Berlin!

We are killing time until the piano tuner finishes his work and the guys finish wiring the stage.  I always start posts like this with grand intentions and then am suddenly urgently interrupted.  Lets see how far I get!

R o m e

The last time I wrote was Monday. Crazy.  This week has somehow flown by.  You missed the night that our show in Rome got moved, then cancelled, then tacked on to the end of another show--forcing us to take the stage at 12:30am on a weeknight. ugh. Note: If you don't pay off the police in Italy, they're quick to find a bogus reason to shut down a place.  What a catalyst for a re-scheduling fury!  We sat around at a derelict looking venue--complete with heavily graffitied walls, and one tiny bathroom stall with no lights or toilet paper--for more than 3 hours.  The whole evening was some sort of comedy.  The house sound guys spent 30 minutes soundchecking one microphone.  After the first band sound checked, we hurriedly tossed our stuff on stage in the shadows and were shooed away without a soundcheck because, in addition to two shows, the venue also booked a theatre performance in the same room... chaos.

People waited past midnight on a Monday for us to play 7 songs (!)  That's likely more than I would've done for anyone.  And, to top it off, we only had 40 cds left to sell!  Oh Rome, we're sorry! What a crazy time.

L j u b l j a n a

I. love. this. town.  It's the only place I know in Slovenia.  We played here one year ago, and were excited to meet up with our promoter Rok (Roc? sorry if I'm spelling it all wrong!)--same guy as last time-- and Sammo -- an awesome guy who works at the venue and does a fantastic stage lighting job.  This was the smoothest day of the tour.  We arrived with a warm welcome, big hugs and Club Matte's! AH, love that stuff. Fizzy matte tea in a glass bottle. It's only made in Germany though, so we mildly freak out every time we find some.

 

Anyhow--we set up with ease, had a long, thorough soundcheck, ate dinner together (OH MY GOSH this town has an awesome falafel place that we've eaten at about four times now), and then played my favorite show of the entire tour.  Amazing. so much fun.  Sammo said the crowd had more than doubled in size since we played last year  (about 180 ppl. this time).  Hanging out by the merch booth afterward, I met some really sweet people who were so happy to have made it to the show.  After a crazy, stressful, exhausting night like the one in Rome, this day was 100% what we needed.

After this we had a show in Vienna, Austria that hopefully I'll get to tell you about next time.  But now, it's time for soundcheck.

p.s. Berlin is quite, QUITE cold.

ciao,

-aisha