Off days and stuff

Sunday, September 16, 2am, on the tour bus lounge.

I am trying another approach tonight. Not typing in my bunk, but in the front lounge. Let's see if I can stay up long enough to finish a blog entry this way.

Once in the middle of nowhere, aka Ramona, CA, I had nothing to do. As said before, there is a music store, so after about an hours pondering I finally got someone to go out as well. Those were Markus and Tuomas. Tuomas was a mistake. A fucking antique poof in a small old village full of antique shops. The other two trying to find beer and food and the third one going through every antique shop on the Main Street. The only street. Anyway not a good match. We finally got to eat something anyway and then returning to the venue we did indeed got rid of Tuomas. No offence. We had more important things to do. Laundry. Well, not really but there was a laundry next to the venue and we had dirty clothes. We equipped ourselves with dirty clothes and a 12-pack of Lime-a-ritas. I know, terrible stuff, but 8% of alcohol and sort of a decent taste is good enough for the poor people of Finland. Anyway, we were doing the laundry and getting drunk. Not bad.

The show wasn't bad after all. Of course we had to quit the alcohol at some point just to be able to play the show. In my humble opinion, Ramona was probably the best show we've played so far on the tour. The audience was not the biggest, but a good one, but the main thing was that we played a fucking tight set. We finally made the first "big" change to the set and changed "Ievan polkka" and "Ruumiinmultaa" with each other. Set was better this way.

This really isn't helping. I am falling asleep here too.

Monday, September 17, 1am, in the tour bus bunk.

Let's try this again now. Back to Ramona. The show was indeed nice and as promised the venue had a nice new shower. Like pretty much always and everywhere in the USA, the venue has nothing around it, no bars or any place else to spend the 2-3 hours between the show and bus call. I asked one girl where do people usually go in Ramona to spend their Friday evening. Her reply was: "Well, usually we go to Denny's." Not really a good option for us. For those of you who don't know what Denny's is: http://www.dennys.com

So it was once again a standard evening. I had a few cranberry-vodkas, but not much. I've pretty much managed to quit drinking beer. Had one with lunch in Ramona, today no beer at all. I am a boring old man. Went to bed early.

The next show was in Tempe, AZ. We've been there at least twice before. Every time in a crappy bar and honestly this place wasn't much different. Rocky Point Cantina. Outside looks like whatever Mexican/Southern USA building but it in fact is an open air bar. The stage was located in the only non open air room. Not the smallest of the venues we've ever been to. Not the worst, but the lack of shower... well, you know me and my venue categories already. I think I wrote earlier about showering with the kitchen dish washing thing in Joliet, IL. I noticed that this place had the similar thing in their kitchen so Markus and myself went to check the place. There was something cooking on the stove so clearly the kitchen was being used. Chef walks in while we're there and we ask if we can use the sinks and stuff to wash ourselves after the show and he says "Sure, I don't care". I went to check how things were working out for Moonsorrow guys washing themselves there after their show and the chef comes shouting at us "You can not do that while I'm cooking, you were supposed to come after the show." Obviously he hadn't realized that "after the show" means a different time for each band. Once we were finished and I was going to wash myself he had locked the door. Thanks.

Anyway, the day. We had a few friends visiting, some local Finns and some who just like Finns. They spent their day driving most of us around the place. Including record stores. Seriously, I will not buy another LP on this tour. Enough is enough. We even got some Finnish style buns as gifts, so once Marko made the coffee we were able to treat ourselves with traditional "pullakahvit".

Monday, September 17, 9:30am, in the tour bus lounge.

I obviously can not write much stuff in the evenings without falling asleep with my face on the keyboard filling the screen with "i"s like it did last night. And on the other hand I obviously can not sleep in the mornings. Woke up at 7 again.

Someone told us that the Tempe show was sold out. It most certainly did not look that way, but maybe they limit the number of tickets sold for the shows. I mean, it would make no sense to fill the bar area with people who wouldn't be able to see the stage anyway. The show was quite good I'd say. Stage was a bit too small for us but not too bad. I can only hope that our sound was better than with for example Tyr. That seriously lacked some balls.

Afterparty was as usual. A few drinks in and around the buses. The security actually cleared the parking lot too, so basically there wasn't anyone except touring personnel left 30 minutes after the show. We left quite soon as well. We had a long ride ahead.

I am seriously pissed off at how this tour was set up. There are several reasons. I won't list them all here since they are not really for the general public to know anyway. However, one of them is the off days. I do not mind having an off day every now and then, when there is a good reason for it. How come the first off they was a Friday? With Saturday the easiest day to sell a show? Boise, Idaho was on our way anyway, but no show for some reason. And now we're having TWO off days in a row. We're driving from from Tempe, AZ to Detroit, MI. That is 2000 miles, 3200 kilometres. Why no shows in between? Amarillo, TX? Austin, TX? St. Louis, MO?

So yesterday was an off day. That means a long day on the bus that then later is parked outside of a motel where the drivers go to sleep and rest of us are left to entertain ourselves which ever way we can. If you're ten kilometres from the city centre (Amarillo, TX) like us yesterday, there's not much to do.

View from where the buses were parked. Mitja Harvilahti in the centre.

Mitja had a brilliant idea to take the birthday girl Melanie for a dinner with all or at least most of us. It was indeed a brilliant idea. Or would have been if he had picked some other place than The Hooters. I tried to warn him. Mel didn't appreciate his choice of a dining place, so we actually decided to move the entourage to a nearby Mexican. That is basically worth another blog. Shortly, food was good, but hardly worth the 3 hours it took!

I seriously was trying to stay up last night. We had a bus call at 3am. I thought again that if I manage to stay up until we leave I will be able to sleep longer and thus have a shorter suffering during the long drive. Well, I failed. Let's see where we end up spending an evening today. There was some talk about St. Louis, MO, but according to our driver it is too far.

Funny name for the day: Kickapoo.