Day 15

Sunday March 13

Mark:

I wake up with a horrible feeling as thoughts of last night flood in along with the morning sun. I’m still hurt and insulted. And massively disappointed that our friendly ally could have revealed himself as such a superficial fake and turned on us like that. As we progress into the morning and debrief and digest what happened, we start to think that, apart from the fact that maybe we arrived Hamburg a little too early as it emerged from Covid restrictions, it really is essentially a coverbar/nightclubbing town and not worth coming back to for any kind of development. Apart from Tommy, not one person who said we could do something with them has come through. Not even, massively disappointingly, Sven – I might just give him a pass and say his intentions were pure and genuine but maybe there were too many other things going on for us to get full consideration. I mean, the guy gave us hugs and free drinks everytime we walked into his bar. But just like here, in so many other places also we’ve encountered so much huge and encouraging enthusiasm on the surface, giving us so much optimism, and none of it has ever translated into anything tangible. Not one person acted on it. Not one phone call or email. Not even when people promised to call back within an hour or two. And then last night just topped it off as Sam got written off. As the morning progresses we kinda get over it but no, we don’t really want to talk about it with each other. We silently agree to just forgot about those guys and move on. As we do, we agree we ain’t coming back to Hamburg until we’re playing the proper big places. And no. Sam will not be on the guest list.

Maja:

I can’t believe it either. Hurt is an underestimation. I loved the inclusive feeling we used to have at Sam’s, but after getting that kind of response, there’s no going back. After giving our everything to our art, I think we can be entitled enough to give our attention to people who actually believe in us. Sorry Hamburg. I’m starting to feel done with you.

Mark:

As we work into the day and start to feel active, we take the 40 or so minute walk out of the city to pick up the car and bring it back to the carpark near the hotel. It is now ready and waiting for our departure.

Then it’s chill time before we get ready to go out and play the last show of our European adventure. This is Leah’s open mic event at the Alt Liebe, the venue we played last minute on Thursday after our show at The Brauerei was cancelled. We get there and discover it isn’t an open mic as such as it is an acoustic cover show at which members of the audience can get up and do their thing. Which is normally sing a cover song or two with live backing. So, essentially a live acoustic karaoke with open-ness for other elements. Into which we fit. Leah plays pretty much the first half of the evening herself, then the floor opens up a little more in the second part of it all. During all this we get talking to a girl sitting next to us called Lulika who can’t get her head around being able to get up on stage, let alone the concept of doing it, or trying to do it in any professional capacity. In our chat she agrees to film us when our turn comes. When we get around to that, we’ve decided our two songs will be My Game My Rules and Six Sense Lover. Up we go and we tear into both of them.

Maja:

I get up on stage and as soon as I sing the first note I realise. I can’t hear myself at all. My heart drops like a stone but I go for it anyway. It seems like the audience can hear me so that’s something at least. But it just feels terrible. It’s really hard to perform but I can’t even be bothered to care about it. I just go for it. Even if it’s terrible, I gave it a proper shot.

Mark:

The reaction is promising and pretty cool, but it’s clear this crowd does go more for the covers, as they rave and cheer and whoop for that kind of thing when the singers get up. Fine. And they do give us a fair chance so that’s all cool. But there’s something about our performance that, after the event, makes us think we played far too fast and really didn’t do ourselves justice. Last night of the whole tour and we’re a little bit down with ourselves. But we have a recording. When we get back to the hotel, the first thing we do is listen to it. Oh. Oh. Oh. Wow. Really not bad at all.Would we put it up? Maybe, maybe not. But not anywhere near the trainwreck we really feared we’d delivered and certainly not too frenetically fast. Maybe a touch on the faster side, but not too fast. You learn and learn and learn. In the moment stage and live perception can often be so different to reality. But normally it’s the other way round to what we’re experiencing here; you think you’ve done a bang up show, everyone cheered and everyone’s patting you on the back and you think you knocked it out of the park. Then the next day you listen to it and you want to burn the tape. That is, if these things were still on tape. Here, we were convinced we’d delivered a disastrous mess but what we have is not just listenable, we realise it was actually really good. We’re stunned. With that, we really start to decompress, especially as we’ve been slightly tightly wound ever since we got off stage. Although we did all the right things afterwards, said thankyou at the right times and smiled all our smiles as though everything had gone exactly as we’d planned it to, inside we felt just that little bit deflated. Well, now we realise it actually had all gone as planned. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we have concluded. Tour is done, lessons have been learned, and now with this new recording we can see and feel that our level really has gone up and up and up. We’re going to leave that there for now, get back to Ireland, shake all this off, and then start to put ourselves back together again musically with all we’ve learned and all we’ve developed since hitting the road in Berlin that first night back in the first few days of December at heavy metal bar Brette Bude. Oh damn, we really have not done this the easy way.

Maja:

Is there a easy way? I think we’re doing it the only way it can ever be done.

Day 16

Monday March 14

Mark:

We stay in all day today. A bit of writing in the bar, and also a little movie watching. But overall a total chill. And why not? All our hustling and playing is done. We’ve seen the city plenty and, above everything, we have a big travelling day tomorrow with Maja contemplating an epic drive. And the next day. This is going to take two days as we drive through Germany, Belgium and France, then an overnight ferry to Rosslare, right on the south east corner of Ireland, before driving through the countryside to home.

Maja:

After all that, I really think we need a sleepy day. Sleepy sleepy day. To sleepy sleep sleep.

And yes. I speak like that.