Kouvostoliiton sankarit

So, Saturday was going to be Donington Rock Club in a small town of Kouvola. Actually, Kouvola is now the 10th biggest town in Finland with almost 90000 inhabitants. However the "real" Kouvola is still a small and ugly eastern-block-kind-of town of 30000 people. In the beginning of this year six small towns in the area joined together and are now known collectively as Kouvola. From rags to riches. Not.

The club itself is next to the towns main square that is always empty. At least it has been empty every time I've been there. My spouse used to work in Kouvola so I know what I'm talking about. No, wait. Correction. Once there was some action when a bouncer of the local bar was beating the shit out of their client. He deserved it, no doubt. As a matter of fact, Donington is located in the downstairs of that same bar. At least they had an elevator so the load-in wasn't too bad.

I still have to go back a few hours. Already on Friday we had decided to go eat something nice when we leave the hotel at noon on Saturday. Risuparta, the monitor tech, knew a good place close to Järvenpää at Haarajoki or something like that. The place was an old gas station and the yard was full of old tractors and other machinery. The place was quite nice in fact. Food was good as well. When I first went to ask if they had anything vegetarian on the menu the reply was just blank stare but after all they did prepare a good vegetarian pasta meal. I had noticed that there was a biker theme in the place and for example the chef was easy to imagine riding a Harley. Another man arrived to help him and looked like that as well. Since I have no problems with people being bikers, shoe salesmen or Jehova's witnesses I didn't realize that there was anything wrong until someone from Tankard said that they don't like the place because the people there are nazis. They were right. The guys were actually wearing these white power shirts under their vests so the place really wasn't that good after all. Note to self: avoid.

Back to the venue. Donington was the smallest of the three in every sense. Venue, stage, backstage. I guess the audience was maybe the same size as in Tampere but since the venue was smaller it seemed to be perhaps fuller. Falchion opened the evening. This was the first time I saw them with their new guitarist Toni "Tökäri" Tieaho who will actually be joining us as a guitar tech during the summer festivals. The audience didn't really warm for them. The place was still half empty as well.

At one point when planning this tour we decided that we will headline the Kouvola gig since Tankard must leave for the airport soon after the show. That would have caused us some extra problems since our gear was traveling with them so basically they wouldn't be able to leave before we had finished and the gear loaded in the car anyway so we changed the original plan and decided that Tankard will headline after all. Then we realized that the daylights saving time thing will happen that night and will steal another hour from the travel time to the airport. So we finally just decided that both Falchion and us will do really short sets so that Tankard will have at least 75 minutes. Falchion also started really early, soon after the doors were opened so that didn't really help them to get much audience.

So, we did a short set of about 45 minutes I think. The place or least the floor in front the stage was packed and we had a good show. Not perfect but good standard show. Someone throw an empty glass to the stage and the latter part of the show I had to stand mostly still since I was barefoot as usual and didn't really want any glass in my feet. The audience seemed a bit disappointed to the short set but Tankard saved the day I think. They once again did a solid set and I don't think no one in the audience was that disappointed anymore.

Afterwards it was time for a quick load out and driving 200km to Tampere on a really slippery roads. I hadn't really slept enough during the past few days. The three sleeping drunken musicians at the backseat didn't really provide much entertainment to keep me awake but luckily Risuparta stayed awake on the front seat. At least the guys had been drinking beer and we had to stop every now and then so I could also step out to get some freezing air on my face. After I had dropped everyone off I was home at 6 in the morning. A warm bed comes in handy in times like that.