I have been able to write a little and read a lot on this tour. The packing and unpacking and checking in daily and then the drives combined with soundchecks and then arrival times at the venues through to the concert and the packup (5:30 to 1am), leave us little time to do much else. However…we both still try to compose or see something new or taste something local in the few moments we have. In the last few days we have squeezed in house visits to friends that live close to the route we must take for the next show. That included a surprise Tent concert for a cool kid named Lukas and hanging with my lyric translator Trouble Angie. (Angie & Thomas PF We love you-they may be our drivers/tour hands next tour!). Visiting Marburg was a familiar scene to me as I think this is my 5th visit! This time, there was no climb up to the castle, rather we rented a paddle boat & floated around while ducks floated eagerly beside us with their soft fluffy ducklings hoping to score some of the fresh pretzels we were eating. We stayed in a spectacular old house belonging to a sax player & dentist who is called “Z” (like Zee, not Zed). It overlooked the gorgeous town of Marburg (almost untouched during the war), and its castle.
Every now and then there are ‘party’ venues. You can’t guess it ahead of time…Obermarchtal was this for us. It was a wild, loose and sweaty show, with the spectators standing only. Some fans were new as they had heard us on the radio that day. (We did a show at Radio Free in Ulm). The town, though you wouldn’t know by the crowd, is so small that a 4 minute drive to the hotel has us in another town! It’s not common to have dark curtains to keep the morning light from one’s eyes in the hotel rooms so often we are up earlier than maybe we would like and this time we use the time to explore Leipheim and I do a long run along the River Danube & the dreamy woods. Then we both take a short tourist trek to the historic and colorful Gunzberg, and then to Ulm to visit Thomas at Fortune records, indulge at Einstein’s Restaurant and make flyers for Jason-as his CDs are sold out. We could see the concert advertisements everywhere we turned (thank you to Bomi for this!). Leipheim offered us a fabulous stage & extra pro hostessing. This castles headquarters (Zehntstadel) was full and even the balcony was used. Andreas, a Jazz drummer joined us for a few songs. Jason and I have played together now for more than 20 concerts this tour & it’s tricky to add a third whom we hadn’t rehearsed with or performed with before, but he was awesome (a myspace connection!). Now a drive up to Reichenbach…ummm there are more than 25 of them in Germany! Know your postal codes! We were close to Stuttgart and Die Halle lay in the woods. Our crew was like buddies and there was a Joan Armatrading poster on the wall (Mel, smiling…). This night was full of wonderful surprises, and we even had a drummers side wash speaker on stage (making us feel bigger! Ha-ha) It was a big CD sales night, and a lovely man gave Mel a Cd of photos from last tour…perhaps there is magic in these woods close to Stuttgart.
Comments