Tour is a flat circle: Austria-->Italy-->The Future
In which Remember Sports establishes its empire...
One little housekeeping note — I have a present for you, my trusty reader, at the end of this post. So read on and stick around for your prize.
Hello from Italy! We are currently on the outskirts of Bologna, having played our last gig of this European tour in Carpi last night. We took a train here from Modena this morning, lugging our heavy gear on the train with us just like we did at the start of the tour in Ireland. The Carpi show wasn’t *quite* the end-of-tour-emotional-triumph that I had envisioned, but we still played well. Kizzie discovered right before the gig that someone had broken into our van and stolen her laptop and Nintendo Switch. The theft of her stuff and the invasion of the space that we’ve called home for the last month felt like a real violation, so our moods were definitely dulled a bit. Another factor was the fact that we didn’t actually go on stage until midnight. Italy runs on a different time system than we’re used to — things seem relaxed and slow, which is nice but it might have given us time to drink a few too many last-show-of-tour beers. I’m making excuses for sure — we played a little bit drunk and a lotta bit tired and the crowd was none the wiser and it was what it was. When you get to the last few shows of a long run like this, your mind already is looking towards the post-tour future. I know I’m already thinking about the logistics of getting home, going back to work, , etc, etc, etc. The deep-in-the-moment tour mindset is over, life is rushing back in, as it always does.
I can’t believe that there are no more load ins and no more load outs, no more wifi passwords to ask for, no more green rooms, no more Airbnbs. It’s melancholy but I think we feel triumphant. We pulled this off! We said our tearful goodbyes to Kizzie last night after the gig, Jack and I fly from Bologna to Boston very early tomorrow morning, and Carmen & Catherine are taking a few extra days to sightsee in Rome. I flew from Boston to rehearsals in Ireland over a month ago on September 28th and that feels like it was just last week and simultaneously a decade ago. I’ve done longer tours in the US before but there’s a certain amount of friction involved with traveling so far from home. Language barriers, border crossings, extra logistics — it takes a lot out of you! We’ve certainly lived well overall — I slept on only one floor — but we are nevertheless completely fucking exhausted. In an attempt to put this last month into context for myself and for you all, I have stats:
24….shows, played in 24 cities. Every single show we lugged a bass drum, a floor tom, a rack tom, a snare drum, a drum rug, a giant thousand pound drum hardware case (“Dr. Fuck”), 2 heavy guitar amps and their requisite flight cases, a bass amp/flight case that was so unnecessarily heavy that we considered pushing it in the river almost every night, 2 guitar hard flight cases and 1 bass hard flight case and at least 2 boxes of merch. In and out every night. 48 loads. We all are physically stronger than when we started this tour. This also means we completed 24 soundchecks. 24 instances in which I hit the kick, then the snare, then the rack tom, then the floor tom, then the cymbals, then the whole kit, then the drum pad, then Catherine plays that Mike Dirnt bassline, then Carmen and Jack play their guitar amps and make sure that the levels are appropriate and that Carmen’s input switch is calibrated correctly, then Carmen tests her vocal mic by singing either Taylor Swift or just saying “check 1 2” depending on her mood, then Jack tests his mic, then Catherine tests hers, then I test mine, then Carmen asks for just her voice and the drum pad in her monitor, then tests the levels of those two things and signs off on it, then Jack asks for just his voice and the drum pad and sometimes a little of his own guitar depending on the venue situation, and then he tests the levels of those three things and signs off on it, then Catherine asks for her voice and drum pad and sometimes a little of her own bass depending on the venue situation, and then she tests the levels of those three things and signs off on it, then I ask for a lot of drum pad, bass, Carmen’s vocal, and a little bit of both guitars, and then I test the levels of those five things and then I sign off on it, and then the sound person asks us to play a song and we play Saturday which is like a minute long and has harmonies so it’s a good test song, and then we ask for any adjustments we need based on how things sounded, and then we play Out Loud because it uses the drum pad and we have to make sure that we meld with it correctly both in the house and also in our own monitoring, and then we play Pinky Ring if the sound person wants more, but sometimes they don’t want more, sometimes they just want to get on it with and honestly I respect that feeling too.
9…countries visited. England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Italy. I feel like the tour was in distinct parts — the UK portion, the France/Belgium/Germany/Netherlands portion, and the Austria/Italy portion. It was my first time in Italy and Austria and I can’t wait to go back. Vienna, in particular, was a memorable night. We played at a very punk spot called Venster99 which was built into the base of a bridge that the train rides over. The venue was small and smelled like very old stale beer but the folks working there were incredibly sweet — I got the sense that this is the kind of venue that is a pillar of a community, a place that people come to regardless of who’s on that night. The bartender poured Carmen and I vodka matés, telling us to “say when” as he poured the vodka. Jonas, the promoter set up a little hot plate buffet on a picnic table outside the venue and cooked us two types of chili — vegan and beef along with delicious flatbread and chocolate hazelnut wafers. He set a small lamp that he had brought from home on the table so we could eat as the sun set and this little act of kindness really made me emotional for some reason. We have faced so many strangers and unfamiliar situations and….something about that lamp….it made me feel warm and comfortable. We rocked pretty hard on this particular night and I give full credit to the lamp.
7319…kilometers traveled, aka 4547 miles. This is a conservative estimate and doesn’t take into account coffee runs, Airbnb cross-town trip, extra errands (going to the Crocs store at a mall on the outskirts of Frankfurt Germany for example), etc. We went a long long way. Kizzie did a wonderful job driving and organizing, I don’t think we would have survived without her. Hire her to manage your tour, for sure.
2….days off. This reality of putting on a tour like this as a “smaller” band is that margins are so razor thin that you can’t afford to take any time off. In retrospect, I think another 2 days of rest scattered throughout the trip would have really helped keep spirits and energy levels up but I totally understand why it was booked the way it was. Nobody totally cracked under the workload though, Remember Sports is road dogs for sure. My body is sore. I’m 35 years old and I just worked 29 out of the last 31 days. I am looking forward to sitting on my couch and home and not moving.
6…hours of sleep per night, on average (according to my trusty Fitbit). Not very good. I got 4 hours and 50 minutes last night and I can assure you my brain is only half functioning as I write this. I definitely have hit the fun button on this tour a little bit harder than I might have pre-pandemic, and I think the rest of the band might feel the same. I’m not really a huge tour party animal kind of guy but I have tried not to say no to any opportunity to experience anything on this tour, sometimes at the expense of a good night’s rest. Carmen and Catherine want to go smoke a joint and ride electric scooters around Cesena? Sure! Banrion wants to go to a bar and get pints of Guinness post Dublin gig? Yeah, why not? I am tired and sore but I am sans regret.
5…broken drum sticks. I’ve found that I tend to break sticks when I’m hitting the drum really well, rather than really hard. I play a lot of rimshots in this band and eventually that leads to smashed up drumsticks. I broke a stick during some song a few nights ago and the broken half went flying in the air and landed on my head. Some guy after the show was like “I liked that trick you did with the drum stick”, I didn’t correct him.
4…electric scooters rented. I wish I had gotten on the electric scooter train earlier in tour. I only really discovered the joy of zipping around a city at 20km late in the game. These electric scooters are EVERYWHERE in Germany and Austria and I know they’ve been controversial here in the United States but I welcome them. Give me a scooter here in Boston, I’ll run everyone off the road.
At the end of a month+ of playing nightly, I feel like a musician again for the first time in a while and that’s gratifying. I’ve done so much session work in the last few years, especially throughout the pandemic, and while studio recording is where my head is at in the long-run, there’s just nothing that beats getting in a room or a club or a venue and playing with people as a team. I feel honored that Remember Sports asked me to come on this run. Without going too cheeseball on you all, I have to stress stress what an outstanding band and exemplary group of people they are. I’m going to miss looking to my right and seeing Jack smiling while he tunes between songs, I’m going to miss Catherine shaking her head slowly back and forth mid-song when she’s really into a groove, I’m going to miss Carmen always turning slightly towards me when I take my big dumb triplet fill during the climax of Out Loud. I have been lucky to spend most of my life thus far playing worthy and satisfying music with people whom I really love and you’d better believe I don’t take that for granted. I don’t have nightmare stories in my past, I don’t have shitty gigs that I regret, just a lot of friends and music I feel proud of. It rules.
Okay so enough of that, I’m going to give you the European present I promised at the top of this — I’ve put together a pack of drum breaks I recorded during soundchecks at all of these gigs for the past month. I did this once before a few years ago and it was incredibly gratifying to hear all the cool things people did with them. Please feel free to download these new ones and spread them wide — write songs over them and send me what you make! I find it very helpful to have a vibey drum loop to write over, even if I end up replacing it later, maybe you’ll find them useful too.
<BIRTHDAY BREAKS VOL 2> —click to download
Go get em and enjoy!
The scooters have finally won you over!