Been there, done that

LAX at 11.30. The shows are over, tour is not. We still have to drag our asses and gear to Finland. That means huge overweight costs and 11+ hours on a plane to London and then 3 more to Helsinki.

Last night was exactly the anti-climax I expected. After all, the last three bands did full length sets. Moonsorrow had probably the biggest audience of the evening, Primordial didn't have that much, we had quite the same as Moonsorrow although we did have quite a pit sometimes. So, basically the shows were good but everyone was tired and emotionally had already finished the tour in Hollywood and after all the shit that went on during the day last night really wasn't anything you want to write home about.

Anyway, I'm done. No boobs.

Idiots of all idiots

18.50 in the bus. Of fuck this shit! The place is fucking dump and then they are also complete fucking idiots.
- the show has been advertised as "all ages"
- their advertising has said "Doors at 7PM"
- their website says "Doors at 8PM"
- they told us they will throw every minor out at 22
- we were thinking about cancelling the whole thing since there's no point in throwing half of the audience out in the middle of Primordial's set.
- however, we decided to do the show so that every band will play a short set and Swashbuckle starts really early, so that the minors will see all bands
- Swashbuckle started at 18.15 and played of course to an empty hall
- then we realized that now they are not letting the minors in at all
- so, all schedule changes were for nothing
- what a fucking bunch of idiots

No boobs but a huge d**k

11.00 in the bus outside the venue in San Marcos, CA. We should've ended the tour last night. That would have been a perfect ending for the tour. Brilliant venue, House Of Blues, excellent location on the Sunset Boulevard, excellent audience and great shows from the bands. Tonight will just be sort of an anti-climax after last night. Although I didn't get any boobs photographed so even if the tour will probably end with an anti-climax I personally still have a chance of ending it on a high note.

Yesterday was a blast. The whole day was. Just hanging around Strip, getting a lot of sun and beer. In the morning Jonne, Cane, Matson and myself went for a breakfast to a bar close to the venue. Can't remember the name though. Ranch something. Anyway, we were sitting outside drinking our breakfast when a tourist bus passed by and they started taking pictures of us. Probably the tour guide was saying: "And there you can see a few local residents, famous rock musicians, who have probably just woken up from the gutter and dragged themselves to the bar to get drunk again. So sad. Take pictures."

As I said, the venue was just brilliant. Looks really cool outside and everything inside is just excellent. Including the local crew. Or at least the part that I met meaning basically backstage hostess and security. Presale was about 500 so I'd say there was about 700 people in including huge amount of record label people and journalists.

After the show basically everyone from the tour went to Rainbow Bar & Grill to have a drink. I guess that's sort of a must to go there when you're in Hollywood. We also saw there my all-time favourite actor Ron Jeremy. Nice. I was slightly disappointed that I wasn't wearing my "Ron Jeremy Fan Club" shirt though.

Oh, yeah. There was an earthquake during Moonsorrow's set. I didn't even notice that but some were saying that it was actually shaking the buildings.

14.45 in the bus. Crappy venue that apparently has the rule set by the local police that every minor under the age of 21 has to leave after 22.00. This would mean that some of our audience would have to leave before we even start. As Swashbuckle guys would say: "That sucks, bro." The tour damager is trying to sort things out, extending the time with the police or something. And of course there's always a possibility of cancellation if we basically can't play.

Huge knockers

8.00 in the bus in a car wash. I stayed up until 3.15 or so last night and today I am up again at 8. Fuck. And the bus is turning into a sauna again. Fuck.

San Francisco last night was a good show. Jonne said that it was his best of the tour, I on the other hand didn't feel that well about the show, so I guess it's safe to say it was ok. The venue was packed and the audience was probably the loudest of the tour. The city is known as the hippie and gay capitol of the world so I was afraid that there really isn't much audience for our kind of music but San Francisco managed to surprise me. The venue was basically decent. A huge backstage area with a toilet is always a plus. It didn't have a shower, so it was a shithole. I didn't really mind that since the toilet was big and clean and had a big sink as well. On this tour I've learned to wash my hair and other parts in the sink and was prepared to do that last night as well. While I was going there with my towel Markus asked me where did I think I was going.
- "I'm going to take a bath in the sink."
- "Good luck. There's no warm water."
No hair washing. Just have to wear the cowboy hat. Which by the way smells like a hay barn now.

My boob picture project was continued last night as well. After the show on the street next to our bus was this woman in a Korpiklaani shirt with a huge rack. She was actually talking with some Primordial guys but I went there and explained her the thing about the pictures for girlfriend and she was totally up to it. So I took a couple of pictures of those huge knockers. I mean like really huge. Definitely not my girlfriend's type but she didn't really complain last night when I sent them to her. I have a brilliant girlfriend by the way.

Boobs and cowboy hats

8.15 in the bus in Weed, CA. Yep, Weed, high on the Californian mountains. They even sell shirts with a mountain and a text "I'm high on Weed, California".

I stayed up relatively late last night, was a bit drunk as well and I still woke up exactly at 7.29. What the hell is wrong with me? Ok, it's a good thing to be up at these hours since we're still on our way from Portland, WA to San Francisco, CA and the scenery is just amazing. Justin from Swashbuckle is also up. Nice guy, doesn't talk much though.

Yesterday was a really nice day. Apparently that area of Portland was called Hawthorne that is known for it's hippie communes and weed consumption. It was reall nice neighbourhood. I wouldn't mind living there. The venue was on Hawthorne Bldv and you found basically everything you needed from the same street. We for example found the best record shop of the tour. Ok, the place was mess but the enormous selection of old vinyl and really cheap prices made up for it. I've basically decided that I won't buy 12" vinyl from the tours since they are really difficult to get home safe. Yesterday I had to make an exception since they had Jethro Tull's "Living In The Past" 2LP from 1972 with the hard book-like covers, inserts and everything in near mint condition and they only asked $8 for it! That's like 5€! Nothing. And I also got the Skynyrd's "Street Survivors" from 1977 with the original cover art where the guys are in flames. You all of course know that quickly after it's release it was drawn back from the stores since a few members of the band died in a plane crash and apparently burned. That was $8 as well. A bargain.

Now I am alone again, Justin went back to bed. I am sitting in a tour bus through sunny California and listening to Skynyrd's live album "One More From The Road" wearing a cowboy hat. Now I am going to go and see if there's any cold beer in the fridge. C'mon, you're all jealous!

Yes, there was. Yeehaa! I'll be back soon.

So, the first beer of the day is gone. I wrote a few days ago about the privileged position we're in. This moment right now right here is just so unbelievably beautiful that I can't even describe the feeling. Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Gimme Three Steps", sunshine, Californian mountains, ice cold beer.

Back to the business. Yesterday was a good show. For some reason the audience ignored Swashbuckle entirely and entered the venue just before Blackguard. Maybe they just wanted to spend more time outside and since the venue had this "No return" -policy Swashbuckle had to suffer. We on the other hand had a full house so we can't complain. Except that my shower was again bottled water at the backyard. You know the policy already: the venue was really nice with good bar with good cider and everything, but they had no decent backstage or showers, so it was a shithole.

Last night I also did what I was asked. I asked politely this girl if I can take pictures of her boobs for my girlfriend at home and she was up to it immediately! So I now have nice pictures of her pierced twins as well. Why the fuck didn't I start this earlier?

Sleepless in Seattle

7.30 in Portland, OR. Why the hell can't I sleep on this tour? Why am I once again up at 7 in the morning? Why is my sleeping average something like 5 hours a night?

Yesterday we were in Seattle, WA at the venue called Studio Seven. Many of us called it a shithole, but since it had a shower AND warm water I think it was a nice venue. Although there was also a mouse. I guess it was more scared of us though. Well, except maybe Juho was more scared of the mouse. As I wrote earlier the venue was really far away from the city centre but Matson and myself walked there and back anyway. That was like 11-12 kilometres all together. I actually did two phone interviews to Belgium while we were walking. The city centre was basically nice. It was a bit different than many others since it was not so flat. We went to the local market area as well (terrible fish smell, which I hate, by the way) but couldn't really find anything that interesting. Except when we were walking back along the 1st Avenue and saw that all the strip clubs are there. So we knew exactly where to go after the show.

The show itself was a really good one. We played well, stage sound was at least decent and the audience was really good. Really good movement and once again surprising sing-alongs. We really had no idea what to expect from this tour and to our big surprise in every city we've met people who know the songs by heart, sing along and after the show come to tell us how they had been waiting this to happen for 6 years and had already lost their hope of ever seeing us live. Heartwarming.

After the show we drank a few beers in the bar. I got quite easily people convinced that we really should take a cab to the strip joint but then came the strip joint expert Nick the Merchandiser and told us that in Washington it's forbidden to sell alcohol at the strip joints but you can always buy a can of Coke for 5 bucks. We didn't go. Alcohol 1, boobs 0.

Today, Portland, Oregon. The venue is again in the middle of nowhere. Well, not really nowhere, just really far from the city. This one doesn't have showers or even a backstage, so it's a shithole, but I'll still give it a few extra points since it's called Hawthorne Theatre. Yep, theatRE.

Today I will try to get more pictures of boobs. Lady at home liked the previous pair so much that she wants to get more. And who am I to argue. I like a good pair of knockers as well.

Boobs

10.00. An industrial area on the outskirts of Seattle, WA. The weather sucks and the area pretty much sucks as well. At least we're in the US again and the internet connection on the bus works again. I can see the city skyline quite nicely but it's probably too far to walk there. So I guess I'm stuck here.

Yesterday's venue was the best of the tour. Commodore Ballroom in the heart of Vancouver. The venue was huge. Presale was 350 so I'd say there was 500 people max. Way too little for a barn like that but otherwise a good amount. During all the sets, including ours, there was a girl in the front row with her boobs out. That was nice sight. A bit disturbing perhaps, but still. C'mon. Boobs. The best thing since the sliced bread.

We did a bit different show than usual. We forgot to play Happy Little Boozer and when we came off from the stage before the encore there were a couple of Primordial members asking why we didn't do that and Jonne said: "We didn't? I thought we did. Well, we'll do it now then." So we started the encore with Happy Little Boozer and they came to the stage to dance and sing the chorus. Then we did the "normal" encore opener Let's Drink and after that when everyone was prepared to finish with Ii Lea Voibmi Jonne said to the audience that "The next song is called Palovana!" so we did that too and after that we finally finished with Ii Lea Voibmi.

Afterwards I noticed the boob girl from the front row with some members of a certain opening band and thought that since she wasn't that shy about them earlier she probably won't mind if i take a picture of the twins. She didn't, so I now have pictures of her boobs. Nice.

Flat Calgarians

10.00 in the bus in the middle of nowhere. I can only hope that all touring musicians realize how privileged they really are. For myself there has been a few key moments when I realized that. One of them was a beautiful extremely hot morning when I woke up in the bus on the road from Czech to Italy. We were driving through Brenner Pass and I'd never seen anything as beautiful. I just sat in the upper front lounge and enjoyed the scenery. Today I woke up at 8.25 in the middle of massive Canadian mountain range. Since that I've just been admiring the scenery and thinking how extremely lucky we are.

Even without all the traveling experiences we still would be extremely lucky if the shows were always like yesterday in Calgary. The place was almost full, probably around 800, the same as last time, but this time they knew us better. It was definitely the tour's best concert so far. We were good and the audience was just crazy. We can only hope that the next time we come to the North America the places we've now been for the first time will all be like our second time in Calgary. Unbelievable.

There was a lot of stagediving last night. I think Mike from Swashbuckle started it. He asked from the security guy why they are marking the hands of crowdsurfers and he explained that it's allowed twice but once you get marked the third time they'll throw you out. Mike asked him what they're gonna do to him since he's from one of the bands and the security answered "Nothing. Do whatever you want." And he did. He dived a few times from the stage, Ville from Moonsorrow dived a couple of times but the funniest and at the same time scariest diver was Pat from Swashbuckle since the man must be at least 150kg. Swashbuckle guys were still in their pirate suits as well. I'm sure that there are now a few badly hurt teenagers in Calgary who have no idea what hit them.

Flat

15.00 in the dressing room in Calgary. The venue has actually been changed and it's now the same as it was the last time we were here. Macewan Ballroom at the university campus area. This is a really nice venue with real dressing rooms and showers and everything. And female university students. Nice sight for sore eyes.

Yesterday in Edmonton was quite good. We played a good set as usual with some Rainbow and Accept riffs thrown in. The audience was quite nice as well. It was a Monday night so maybe not wild as some other audiences but still nice. And after the show I took a bath as usual. Toilet sink. It's not that bad when you get used to that.

Canada is a strange country. First of all there's nothing. The country is a flat piece of land with just nothing. Then suddenly there's a city in the middle of nowhere with skyscrapers and all. Everything is really clean as well which is of course really nice. The cities look busy and for the first look you'd think that "Hey, the venue's in the centre of the city, there must be lots of interesting stuff around here" and then you realize that there really isn't anything. Or maybe we're just stupid and can't find whatever there is.

The people we've met have all been really nice. Except for the idiot bikers. Everybody's been really friendly and open, in both Canada and USA. I've heard many times the sentence: "Oh, I love your accent! Where do you come from!" and when I say "From Finland" quite many of them start telling how they've been to Finland or they're going to go there or they have relatives living in Finland. Finland. No matter how hard you try, you can never escape.

Prairie dogs, those sneaky bastards

17.30 at the backstage in Edmonton. Finally they got the internet working. Today's venue is basically a nice old theatre kind of thing in the city centre but since there's no shower, it's a shithole. Edmonton seems really strange. There's basically is a lot of stuff in the city centre but still there's not much. The river and the valley give it a nice touch though. If someone askes me to describe Canada with just one word, the word would be "flat". Edmonton is not that flat so it is probably one of the nicest looking places here. It has a river. It can't be that bad.

Earlier today we went out with Jonne, Matson and Juho. We walked around the city getting some strange looks from the locals. I guess they don't see our kind of people that often. We also found an English pub so it was breakfast time. I had two pints of Strongbow cider and a veggie burger with sweet fries. Yep, sweet. Strange. They were good though.

Yesterday was a nice day as well. The place was ok. No shower, so it was a shithole, but still. It was located at the industrial part of the town but Regina is a small town so everything was in the walking distance. Everyone went out except me who stayed in the bus a while typing. Then I went out alone and bumped into Mitja so we continued out Regina tour together. City centre didn't really have anything but the park and the reservoir around the whatever creek were quite nice. We even took a guided tour around the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.

The weather was really hot so back the venue we all just basically chilled out. Some of us played football and some played soccer. Although I don't understand why they call American football football, since it's mostly played by hands and the "ball" is not a ball. I was trying to take a picture of prairie dogs running around but those bastards were too fast.

The show was really good. Not much people but still totally different than in Winnipeg. No death threats from the bikers. Good show, nice people. After the show there was still a few hours to kill so we basically just hung aroung the buses and drank few beers.

Let's see what today brings.

Winnipeg idiots

9.00 in the bus approaching Regina, SK. Weather looks beautiful, but is actually freezing. I want to go to California!

Was yesterday's show better than cancelling it? Not really sure. The venue was shit. Gear was shit. Turnout was shit. But there were people wearing Moonsorrow and Korpiklaani shirts and they got good shows so I guess it was worth. The original promoter had probably known already for a while that he's not going to organize the show. Practically no advertizing and even the venue had posters of the Testament show happening on the same day, but not Paganfest posters. Oh well, live and learn. In Europe we've grown out from the venues like that but obviously there's still some ground work to be done in some parts of the world. Luckily the venue was in the same building with a motel. Woohoo! Shower!

Oh yeah. Not a day without an idiot. This time it was four of them. Already from the early evening there were also four motorcycle gang members in the venue. Or some other gang, maybe not motorcycle but still wearing the gang vests. When we were about to start our show and Cane walked in wearing his "Happy Little Boozers - Beerland" vest those idiots surrounded him and started to push him around asking about the gang he's in. They couldn't understand that it's not a gang, it's a band. Suddenly one of them approached him from behind and just tore the vest off. I can only admire Cane keeping cool. In the same situation, someone attacking me, I would've gone berzerk. I am a nice, calm person, but touch me and you're dead. Maybe with the four idiots it would have been me dying so it was good it was Cane. All this added a nice little touch to the show. Are we going to be beaten up after the show? Later I heard that they had been harrassing also our merchandiser Nick because of our common "Korpiklaani - Finland" skull t-shirts. What a bunch of wankers.

Today's venue is the smallest of the tour. Do they have shower? Do they have internet? I can only hope.

Internet laundry

Woohoo! Free internet! In the self service laundry. The only reason I came to do some laundry was the free internet. I have enough clean clothes for the entire tour.

The venue seems to be located in a village called Osborne. I guess it's a suburb of Winnipeg. At first sight it seems that there's nothing around here but there actually is lots of stores, small novelty shops, liquer stores and restaurants. Show's presale is really bad but at least we're doing it. Beats the cancellation.

Cancelled, not cancelled, whatever

Around 7 in the morning, approaching Canadian border. I hope all goes well there. At the border I mean. We've crossed it already twice on this tour with no problems but this crossing point is the one where Canada trains all their border control officers and is supposed to be a bit tricky. They may take any vehicle and decide to use it as training material for the most thorough search they know. We'll see.

Yesterday's show was again quite good one. As I said earlier the place was a shithole but technically pretty good and it was pretty much filled with the great audience so we have nothing to complain about the show itself. We added "Crows Bring The Spring" to the set last night. We didn't really leave anything out. We didn't do "Metsämies" but that's been on and off the whole tour.

Now we're heading to Winnipeg. For a few days there's been some speculation if the show will happen or not. The tour manager has been saying that there's a 90% chance of cancellation and when I asked why exactly he answered: "Because the local promoter is an idiot." Apparently someone has sold the tour package to local promoters when Eluveitie was still included and when they dropped out that someone jsut forgot to inform the local promoters about the change. They are now basically getting less for the same money and therefore some of them have been a bit difficult. Yesterday afternoon we got the final work: "Tomorrow's an off day." However later in the evening we got even more final word: "We're on tomorrow." So, it got cancelled already but the owner of the venue decided to have the show anyway so the local promoter was just dropped off and we're on as usual.

This bus network is brilliant but it only works in the USA so in Canada we have to rely on the venues' networks. Hopefully they have networks there too.

Small update

13.45 in St. Paul, MN. There's nothing in this town. I think we found the centre but there was basically nothing interesting. Haven't been to the venue yet. Doesn't look too good.

Yesterday was a good day from start to finish. We played a really good set in front of a really enthusiastic audience. There was two or three huge security guys trying to keep the mosh pit down. I guess they managed to do that but there still was quite a pit at times.


Why do we do soundchecks? In the soundcheck we check the most important thing to us, the monitors. Why, since they are never like that in the evening when the show starts?

Primadonnas

14.15 in the bus at Mokena, IL, suburb of Chicago. Beautiful hot weather, just been laying on the grass with some MSorrow guys. Really nice way to leave behind all the shit that went down last night. If Cleveland was bad, yesterday was just disaster. We did something that we've never done before, and hopefully never ever will. We walked off the stage after 5 songs. It was just waste of time playing there without any monitors. They were fine for a minute, then their power amp clipped and was cooling down for the next 2 minutes and the monitors were totally silent. You just can't sing or play a fretless instrument like violin like that. Since the crew didn't do anything about that we thought that why should we be there pretending that all is well and we're having a good time when everything is shit. So we left the stage. After about 15 minutes of screaming and shouting and everyone calling everyone with every possible bad name they managed to fix the problem. Why couldn't they do that during the show? I don't get it. We finished the set after all. So the audience in Covington got a really short set but an extra long encore.

As I said, today's a different thing. Beautiful weather, nice venue and showers. Don't have to wash myself in a bar's kitchen sink like last night. Let's just forget that there was yesterday.

No post without idiots though. During Groomborrow's set we suddenly noticed about 20 police cars rushing past us and stopping about 200 meters from the venue. A bit later we heard that someone had shot a police officer. Some of us decided to walk there to see what's going on. Quite idiotic, if you ask me.

Idiots

10.00 in the bus. Just visited Wal-Mart. I was going to get some vodka because last time I went to Wal-mart they had that but once I was inside I realized that it was in Mexico. No vodka, but they had Strongbow.

No showers yesterday after all. The hotel didn't allow us to use a room just as a shower. Well, they did allow that for five persons per room but that felt too expensive. So after the show I dived in a tub. The venue had a huge old metallic bath tub at the backstage full of ice and beer. of course at that point it was only ice and water. And I took a bath in that.

Back to the show. It was shit. The crew, ours or the local, don't know which one, did a shit job. Linecheck before the show was complete except for the bass, since they couldn't get any sound out of it. I finally ended up walking to the stage myself. I turned the master volume knob from 0 to 5 and there was sound. Idiots. Once we finally start all we can hear on stage is Jonne's guitar so loud that it was hurting my ears. Once we get to chorus we also realize that Cane's vocals are on Juho's monitor and vice versa. And of course so loud that it hurts. On Matson's monitor there's nothing. Except Jonne's guitar painfully loud. We got through the first two songs but then just stopped the show for a moment and started fixing it up. It got better, still not good but less bad. We continued the show but I couldn't really hear the drums so I walked to the monitor desk and asked if I can get some snare in front. The idiot started with "Yeah, but then..." and I just walked away. Idiot. That was actually our tour manager. The one who is always calling others idiots. I was sure that he would come up with an explanation or an excuse for all that. Only about a minute after we got back to the backstage he walks in and turns to me. Before he says anything I told him that "If you are going to explain your way out of that shit, I don't want to hear that." So he says nothing and just walks out again. Idiot.

Now to Covington, KY.

Vesilahtelaiset New Yorkissa

Oh, how I hate this fucking Windows Vista! Yesterday it lost it's connection to the bus network and just can not connect anymore at all.

Now it's 11.30 and we're on our way to Cleveland, Ohio. Yesterday we were in New York City. That was brilliant. Once we got to the city we went out with Matson and three Moonsorrow guys. Janne, a fellow vegetarian and New York expert, took us to a place where they prepared amazing thick cold drinks from fresh fruits and vegetables. Maybe the place was called Jamba Juice. I can't fucking check because of the fucking Windows Vista. Fuck.

Anyway, Janne had to go to the Guitar World interview and we were left alone in the big city. We decided to act like tourists and walked to Empire state Building and went up even though the $20 price felt a bit high. Well, it's only like $0,05 per metre. They take picture of every entering person in front of a green background and later add a night photo of the building to it. We went there all four together. When we were leaving we checked the photo and we actually decided to buy that since the picture was so good that we even decided to form a new band because we already had our first promo picture! That band has two drummers
and no guitarist. It will probably be better than most bands just because of that.

The venue was called Blender Theater. Why do the Americans always misspell the word "theatre"? Anyway, one of the nicest venues except that still no shower. After the show I washed my hair in the sink and actually I washed myself entirely in the sink. That worked pretty well although the floor was a bit wet after that. Build yourself a shower and it won't happen again. The show itself was a blast. We're tighter show by show. We were in New York City so did a bit of Kiss as well... The venue had signs "Moshing & crowdsurfing are prohibited" which really didn't stop the audience. There was a huge moshpit and even some crowdsurfing. Good show. Two kids from Vesilahti playing in New York City.

17.45 in Cleveland. Masa, Juho and myself just returned from the city. It's a couple of kilometres away but worth going. We went to Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame & Museum and for example bought Cane a gift since it's his birthday today. The man is sixteen. Again. We brought him a guitar puzzle. Maybe 50 pieces so I think he can manage that.

Today's venue is again a shit hole. Peabody's. No showers but we're taking a hotel room so that everyone can take a shower if they want. I guess I'll survive this tour after all.

Statler and Waldorf

Monday morning at 8.30. We're parked somewhere outside of New York City just waiting for the traffic to clear. The venue for today is in the heart of Manhattan so I would have wanted to be there earlier and go sightseeing.

Yesterday we played at Jaxx, in West Springfield, VA. The venue didn't have any kind of backstage, dressing room, shower or toilets. Well, of course they had toilets but we had to share them with the customers. All this usually gives me the right to call a venue a shithole. Jaxx just was otherwise so nice that I can't do that this time. For the first time ever I heard our sound tech say: "Well, the PA-system is so fucking powerful for the venue of this size that it just has to sound good." The venue's monitor tech was a true professional as well. And we saw one of the venue's own guys shouting to our tour manager and basically telling him to fuck off. "I work here every fucking day of the year and you come here for one day. You really think you this better?" Serves him right. He's a good tour manager but needs to be told to fuck off every now and then. He does that to everybody else anyway.

Jaxx was in the middle of nowhere about half an ride from Washington D.C. but there was still plenty of things around like Starbucks and this mall called Whole Foods that actually sells lots of different vegan, vegetarian and organic foods. I went there and filled the fridge and freezer. That was nice.

Yesterday we did a soundcheck again as well. Not really for the sound but we rehearsed Pine Woods (ie. played it once). We dropped Metsämies from the set and added Pine Woods and changed things around a bit as well. In my opinion all this made a better set. We also played our best show so far last night. As usual, we are getting so much tighter show by show when we're on tour. The venue had a sort of a balcony for the staff and bands where they could sit and watch the show. Ville and Markus of Goonmorrow sat there the whole show and looked exactly like those two owls on The Muppet Show. Were they Statler and Waldorf? Can't even check since the internet is not working here. It works with the telephone network and apparently this parking lot doesn't have the connection. Anyway, they looked like those two who always ridicule everything:
- "Did the band finish?"
- "No, but someone should finish the band!"
I am not really sure if they were owls. I thought that they were something called "huuhkaja" in Finnish and now I found out that it is Eurasian Eagle-owl in English and they only live in Europe and Asia (hence the name) so I doubt that they had them on an American TV-show. Whatever.

After all, the venue did have a shower. It was raining like hell when we finished so I just stood naked behind the bus for 10 minutes and washed myself. Didn't even get arrested.

Yesterday I again did some interviews. One for the radio and one for Washington Post. I thought that the Washington Post thing was brillian. A really long, deep interview for a fucking Washington Post. C'mon, how cool is that!

Now I'll make myself a nice vegetarian breakfast.

Cold showers

Sunday at 9.00 in a bus on the road to somewhere. Yesterday I thought that the show in New York was on Sunday but then learned that it's on Monday so now I don't know where were going today. Somewhere in Virginia I guess.

Yesterday we were in Allentown, PA, a bit of a depressing place I'd say with all the rehab centers, homeless shelters and pawn shops. The venue was the worst so far on the tour but still it wasn't even near the worst we've ever been to. It even had a shower. The water was cold though. We played probably our best set so far even though the sound on the stage was horrible. The stuff coming out from Juho's wedge was so loud it was hurting my ears. I thought it was mostly his background vocals I asked that down. It didn't help. Then I asked the accordion down several times with no audible change. The venue's monitor guy wasn't even behind his most of the time so I was talking to the tour's stage technician Dave the whole time. He then walked to the monitor desk got the local guy do something. Finally around like fourth or fifth song he came back to me and told that the local guy was an idiot. He had mixed all the connections entirely and all the monitors were just one group. This meant that he basically had a nice mixing console with all the buttons and sliders but he could only use one: master volume. If he put accordion down from Juho he also put vocals down from Jonne. "Everything louder than everything else."

We spent most of the day just hanging around the venue. The venue was connected to pizzeria that had the same owner. At one point he came to us and asked to pose for his pizzeria so Jonne, Matson and myself ended up posing with pizza slices and funny faces. Great. Not.

And now I tried to post this but the internet connection in the bus seems to be broken. Later then. Oh, it works now.

Irish Bathory

20.45. Just got back from the Irish pub. I've been sitting there with Alan from Primordial drinking cider and doing interviews. That was nice. Now I am sitting in the bus and waiting the next interviewer to arrive. The pub was better.

11.45 Saturday, in a bus about 15 kilometres from the venue in Allentown, PA. Yesterday was our first US show ever. It was good, really good. The audience wasn't as wild as they were in Canada but still very enjoyable.

We have played basically the same set every night. Only encores have varied a bit. Sometimes we've been doing "Erämään ärjyt" and sometimes "Palovana" and like yesterday, neither of them since we ran out of time.

Yesterday I watched Primordial with new eyes and ears. After speaking earlier with Alan about our influences and roots and where we generally come from I decided to give them another chance and I realized that they are actually an Irish version of Bathory!

Vegetarian adventures

Friday afternoon in Worcester, MA. How the fuck it can be so difficult for some people to understand the meaning of the word vegetarian? We went to eat Chinese. I ordered noodles with vegetables, which I thought would be vegetarian but the morons added rice to it and their rice comes with fucking pork. After I complained and explained that I am a vegetarian they promised me a new dish. After a few minutes they brought me chicken. I just went to Subway to get a foot long Veggie Delite.

Otherwise the tour's been really good. Venues have been really nice and today's Palladium is no exception. That will change though. Tomorrow will be the last venue with shower and next shower will be available next Thursday in Chicago. We've had brilliant audiences so far. Canadian crowds are really something. Let's see how it goes in the USA.

Yesterday there was actually a possibility of cancellation. The local promoter was refusing the full payment because Eluveitie was not with the tour. Everybody knew that months before the tour but I guess he had ignored the fact and just tried to save a few bucks. Anyway, the show started a bit later because of all that, but after all turned out to be a brilliant evening. I was totally sober by the way. Didn't have a single drink the whole day. However, after the show I started drinking vodka with Primordial's guitarist and then later continued that with Janne of Moosehollow. He was still trying to cope with the loss of his belowed guitar and needed someone to lean on. Yeah right. Like we need an excuse.

We crossed a border again in the middle of the night. No one of us could get Hittavainen out of the bed so actually the border control came in and dragged him out. Nice.

Today we even did a soundcheck. We don't really want to and if the tour had the same guy doing the monitors every night we would never do soundchecks. However, we are relying on the venues' own men or women and it is not so easy with them since they don't get to do a band with violin and accordion that often. Ok, now I have to post this while I still have some battery left.