Two out of three

It was again time for three shows in a weekend, this time in Germany, Belgium and Finland. The first time we heard that we are booked on these festivals the idea was that Finland is on Saturday. Now THAT would have been strange. To fly back to Finland to do one show and fly back to Belgium again. Luckily it was changed to better order which, as it turned out on Sunday, didn't really help much in the end.

The flight on Thursday, June 26th was at 18 something so I got picked up by everyone else directly from work. We were supposed to pick up a rackmount 4-channel DI box on our way to the airport but didn't have the time so our monitor guy's mother picked that up for us and brought it to the airport. Family business. We installed that in a rack at the airports lobby bar and got some funny looks from the bypassers. The rack case included now three wireless receivers, two guitar preamps, DI and a drawer for other stuff. The weight was over 47kg. We were told that 40kg is the limit and 45kg is the "absolute limit" so we had to move some stuff to different cases at the check-in. Live and learn.

For some reason Cane and Jonne had the idea that we're gonna drink gin & tonic in the airplane. We one and half rows in the plane. We were wise enough to put Jonne, Cane and myself together. And then we started with the g&t. I think the trio managed to drown one and half bottles of gin. I think we would've done more but they ran out of tonic and we had to continue with vodka and red wine. Oh well. Nice trip.

We packed ourselves in the van again at Frankfurt airport. Once again the drive was pretty much the same as described in the previous blog entry. It wasn't that long though. We arrived to the hotel in a small town whose name I can't remember a bit after midnight. Bang Your Head festival had a pre-party at the club somewhere but it would have been another drive and everyone was getting tired so we went to bed. Most of all at least. There still seemed to be some shouting outside the hotel. Next morning we heard from our manager that he'd heard someone shouting over and over again in the middle of the night in the hotel lobby something like "Korpiklaani! Alles gut?". We were suspecting Terji from Týr, but when we asked later he didn't confess.

After the breakfast we left to the festival area. Bang Your Head is quite a big festival and probably because of that the whole thing was very nicely organized. Great backstage with restaurant, showers with warm water, swimming pool, drunk people. Quite nice. We were the fourth band on the bill with 45 minute set. I didn't see the first band but managed to see most of our old friends' Týr set. It was still early in the morning but there was already a big crowd and actually some movement in there as well. During the third band me and Matson went quickly to check out the metal market. I didn't buy anything. I was proud of myself. But that was about to change. Wait until we get to the pool part.

For the first few bands the festival had only 10 minute changeover times which really isn't much. The band before us stopped maybe 5 minutes before their time so we managed to start on time at 11.55. We had a good show. Lots of audience and quite a lot of fists up in the air despite the early stage time. The stage had a catwalk probably for Queensrÿche but our guitarist couple used it quite shamelessly to get some action in the audience! We had to drop a couple of songs that we had on the set list because we couldn't fit it all in 45 minutes. Note to self: Black stage surface in the direct sun burns bare feet.

After the show we got drunk. At least I did. Like really drunk. And we had a pool party. There was a plastic/rubber/whatever pool at the backstage and in the end there was quite a lot of Finns and a few Fareose as well. I was trying to behave and was wearing underwear but Terji decided that I didn't need them and stole them. Judging by the number of photographers around the pool we will be featured on every music magazine next month. It was really a lot of fun. Floating there in the sun, cold beer in hand. I think my sunglasses are still in that pool. Oh yeah, if you lean on a plastic pool wall it will bend and you will flood the backstage. Live and learn.

We spoke about the pool later with our record label's promotion lady and she said that the pool has been there every year and it has always been only the Finns using it. The tradition lives on! Except for the Faroese.

Like at most festivals the bands with early stage time had to leave their dressing room early and make room for other bands. We had to do that as well and we sent our gear to hotel and moved our personal stuff and alcohol to another container that was reserved for that. Our dressing room was then given to White Lion. However Jonne somehow missed the whole thing and later went to their dressing room and told quite generously that "You can sit here, I am just taking our booze." And he really got the alcohol. It definitely wasn't ours but White Lion didn't object.

The evening went quite nicely and around midnight we finally got a shuttle back to hotel. After a mere four hours of sleep we started our journey to the next festival, Graspop Metal Meeting in a small town of Dessel, Belgium.

We arrived to the festival well on time after a rough ride. Graspop is probably the best festival we've ever been. It is really nicely built up and everything works exceptionally well. And it's big. The tent we played, Marquee 1, is bigger than a normal icehockey rink. We had plenty of time to settle in and check out the area. This time we didn't go to metal market. Hooray! I got myself a new pair of sunglasses though. We also went to the Marquee 2 to say hello to the monitor tech Stijn who toured with us on the Paganfest and was now working on the festival. We met lots of other old friends as well like Sabaton and My Dying Bride. We seem to be meeting the same bands every time. No problem with that. Nice people.

At Graspop the changeover times were generous. We had about an hour for that and since we were still doing only a linecheck I was for example ready for the show over 30 minutes before show time. We had some wireless problems during the linecheck since were getting Sonata Arctica's bass on accordion's wireless. That got solved before the show though.

When I got from the backstage to the back of the stage I didn't see the audience. I started to tune my bass and when I was finishing it the intro started and I heard the crowd roar like never before. I almost fell on my ass. The noise was astounding. We hit the stage and the whole fucking tent is packed and we can see the fists up in the air all the way to the back of the area. Brilliant. Then the intro ends and Matson counts on the hi-hat 1-2-3-4 and I hit the first note. There's no sound. Shit. Suddenly there is. Phew. No. It's gone again. Then back again. Shit. Shit. Shit. I shout at Tuomas to do something about it and they check everything at the desk, receiver & preamp. Finally after 3 songs just before "Tuli kokko" they decide to change the wireless. So the drum intro starts and there should be a bass over it but there isn't. After a lot of trouble we finally get a sound out. A crap sound. They gave me a wireless suitable for guitar but not for the bass. Some wireless systems don't really transmit much lower frequencies. I hope Paukku at FOH got something out of the PA at least. There wasn't anything I could do anyway so I just started to enjoy the audience. It was a great show after all.

After the show the schedule was pretty standard. Meet friend, get drunk. When the headliner Kiss was playing I was already sleeping at our dressing room. I heard them and thought "It's Kiss. Am I interested enough to get up? No." So I got up after their show when we left in a hurry back to Frankfurt airport. We were already late from our original schedule because Kiss was about an hour late and some of us demanded that they have to see them anyway.

Our flight was at 7.30 and we arrived at the airport at about 6.20. So basically we were in a hurry but usually 70 minutes is enough. Unfortunately the combination of us being late and the check-in girl being probably quite unexperienced and at least extremely slow turned out to be fatal. Only two of us managed to get on the plane on time, Tuomas and Hittavainen. When I told the lady at the gate that maybe we were late but the girl was really slow too she immediately said "OK, I'll put you on the next flight for free", which was ok for us. We'd still be at Tuska festival on time.

The real problem was that our gear didn't follow us. The first flight had some, ours had some, but we were still missing some. The most important was the accordion. I got all my stuff, Hittis got his, Jonne got one guitar, Cane was ready to play any borrowed Les Paul but we couldn't get an accordion. We called Roland and festival organization tried to get one. No luck. 37 minutes before our showtime we were forced to cancel our show at Tuska festival. Luckily they still managed to get Before The Dawn to fill in. We were pissed. Totally. We finally get a slot at Tuska and we fucking have to cancel it. Thank you Luftwaff... hansa. The announcer Jone Nikula told us that when he went to the stage to announce the cancellation there was already a huge amount of people in a party mood packed in the front and the disappointment was easy to see and some people actually left the whole festival area.

We still did have a lot of work to do though. We had hours of interviews booked and since we now had more time our press lady Silke started to move them earlier. I don't know how many of them there exactly was but many. It was basically Jonne, Cane and myself doing them. Sometimes individually, sometimes in different combinations. At some point of the afternoon we did a signing session and met so many Finnish fans that it basically surprised us all. Thank you all for being so understanding!

When the work was done it was time to go home again. We had already received some of our missing gear delivered directly to the festival and we picked up the rest from the airport on our way home. Surprisingly we stopped also at a gas station and got some cider.

Next week: the most beautiful festival area ever, Metal Camp, Slovenia.