Tag: 2022/07/07

Day 12

Thursday March 10

Mark:

Our hustle target for today is The Irish Rover and Fleet Und Keiker, two venues that were mentioned to us by Sam at Indra. We take a walk out towards the city centre. Approaching The Irish Rover, we see a guy standing outside who we say hi to and quickly establish that he is the manager. He’s interested to hear our story and, as we continue, he becomes more and more animated and interested. By the time we’ve finished, he’s decided he’d love to give us a chance to play over this weekend and says we should maybe drop by later to confirm details. Wow. Brilliant. Thankyou very much. We resume our walk.

We arrive at the Fleet Und Keiker sometime mid to late afternoon. This is normally an ideal time to try to catch a bar in a quiet period and to be able to chat to a bar manager, but we’re discovering that this is a waking up holiday city and the concept of ‘normal ideal times’ means nothing here. The place is packed and the greeter seems seriously harassed. He suggests we return tomorrow sometime mid afternoon. We thank him for his time and leave him to frantically get on with it.

If we can catch someone at the right time, this looks like it really could be a good place for us. It’s an Irish bar welcoming Irish musicians, and is kind of a cellar bar accessed down a bunch of roughly cut, ancient looking stone stairs. And the interior appears similarly anciently appointed. Among the posters, well kept behind glass adorning the walls of the stairs is one celebrating the pubs of Cork, all arranged in a pint glass formation. Oh this is a trip down memory lane. All my old favourites are there, including Fred Zeppelins which is where I used to run an open mic night. I really thought the presence of such a poster, along with my own correlating experiences would have been something of a conversation starter, but no way. Not right now.

Before he disappears into the chaos, our greeter friend is kind enough to refer us to Paddys, an Irish bar very nearby. So we head down there to see if there could be anything going. Oh dear. The place looks lovely, but tiny. Not for us. Back to the Irish Rover it is. Ralph is still there just outside the door. We’re thinking of dropping in for a drink but the quiz, that was on when we passed by earlier, is still going and he tells us there’s not a seat to be had in the place. He also tell us that he was really thinking of putting us on tomorrow but he’s had a look round and discovered he can’t get enough staff to open the downstairs bar that he was hoping to put us in. Still, a very positive contact and this is definitely a place to mark and return to next time.

Back to drinks at the hotel bar, which leads to thoughts about what we’ve done here in Hamburg. We didn’t get exactly what we wanted in terms of stage time, but what we have got what we didn’t realise we actually needed; we’ve made so many contacts for the next time we’re in town. Just like we did in Berlin. Pitched against that criteria, our stay here, which has for much of the time threatened to be quite underwhelming, suddenly looks like an enormous success.

Day 13

Friday March 11

Mark:

We make it Fleet Und Keiker by 4pm but are totally taken aback by how busy it is again. Nowhere near as much as yesterday, but still. We settle in for a drink and, when a small opportunity opens, I go and introduce myself to the owner. Although clearly busy, he is interested to take the time to listen as I talk about us, and has a few questions, such as how long we’re around and the like. Well, we’re leaving Tuesday so we really don’t have much of a window. He says he has nothing at such short notice, but would be interested to hear from us when we return. Wonderful. The theme from last night continues.

Now it’s off for fish and chips in The Irish Rover which is quite simply one of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had. Ralph makes an appearance just as we’re leaving and we have a little hello with him, but we also get to meet quite a few of the bar staff, one or two of whom are from Ireland. Cards get passed around and, in all, we feel we really get to make quite a bit of a presence in here.

When we get back to our hotel, we discover the atmosphere is significantly more upbeat than it has been for our entire time here. An entire German stag party has descended upon us. And a very joyful and welcome diversion it is. A group of around ten guys are in our bar just heading out when we arrive and they hang around for a little longer as we all make our introductions to each other.

Maja:

The adorable stag night guys. Absolutely adorable. They felt so incredibly missplaced in an area of sex and rock n roll, such as the Reeperbahn actually is. As we talk to them, I just feel like we have to give them a little show, welcoming them to the place they actually are at. Keizbude on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. So Mark gets the guitar, and I stand up on the bar, totally owning the space giving them a private performance of I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). They love it. 

As soon as we finish, they ask if we have any ideas of where they could go for their stag night, which is an odd question. If you just go out to the Reeperbahn, you’ll find so many places to go to. I recommend a transvestite burlesque bar that someone tried to get me and Mark to go to, but we never went. It’s way more fitting for a stag night than it is for two musicians just wanting to play gigs.

Day 14

Saturday March 12

Mark:

A huge walk today as we simply take in the environs of Hamburg without any of the pressure of the hustle. Just a lovely walk with no ulterior motive. Oh that feels nice. And the sun is shining. We stroll down to the docks and walk along them all the way into the heart of the city, along the way stopping for crepes which we lazily consume while sitting at the water’s edge, contemplating the endless shipping and general docklife activity. 

Then up and away we go again, meandering through the crowds in a careless promenade. Reaching the far end of the docks and we come across a bridge and high walkway leading into the city centre. Why not? That takes us into the main shopping districts and back out to the lake before we start to think about maybe dropping in for a quiet drink somewhere. Maybe Paddys, the lovely, small Irish bar we came across a few days ago. We picture ourselves hanging out at the bar, chatting cosily to the regulars and bar staff and generally introducing ourselves to the scene a little more. When we catch sight of the place, we immediately realise none of that is going to happen. International rugby is on, and it’s England v Ireland in the six nations no less. One of the biggest matches in the calendar. So no. There’s going to be no quiet cosiness happening in here today. Oh well.

Back to the hotel for drinks it is, and the lads are there again so another lively hangout with them as we hear about their own assorted adventures on the Reeperbahn last night. We take it easy because we’re planning on something of a late night tonight. We want to go to Indra, arriving after the show there to maybe talk to Sam, tell him about the things we’re doing and see if any kind of tentative groundwork can be laid for a return visit. Apart from anything else, we think it would be good to catch him properly once more before we return home to Ireland.

When we get there, the place is every bit as quiet as we thought it would be and Sam once more welcomes us joyously. We are very warmly welcomed into the company of the bar and introduced to the off duty bar staff who are enjoying an afterwork drink. And some of Sam’s good friends are in and we meet and chat with them as well. It all feels like we’re among something of a secret Hamburg club, far away from the madness of clubland. A place where we can talk social and business, and generally continue our introduction to Germany and Europe. Given the connections Sam and his friends have to venues all over the place with their general live music business interests, this place really does seem like something of a gateway to Hamburg. And with Berlin and Hamburg being pretty much the central areas for music in Germany and Germany being something of a music centre for Europe, right here right now really is one of the best places we can possibly be.

It’s all rather wonderful and the guys are asking all kinds of interesting questions about us and our music. We talk to them a little about our story and they’re enraptured. We tell them of shows we’ve done in Berlin and Hamburg, and about plans we have for playing Ireland and America, and they lap it all up. Then, almost inevitably, they want to hear some music. We have something of a rough studio production of I Like You Better (When You’re Naked) but nothing with really high production values. But by now they’re so invested in the story they want to hear what we have. OK. Let’s have a listen. Sam is very keen to get this on and finally hear what we sound like, so he follows our instructions to the link and the song itself. He hits play and out it comes. Now, this song has elicited some of the strongest reactions I’ve ever seen to any original song in a bar environment. In The Trap in our first ever show, it was demanded as an encore after we’d first played it as our second song of the night. A few people told us it was the best song they’d heard in years, and a friend with some kind of links to the music business offered to buy it off us. Although yeah. I’m still not entirely convinced he was joking. At songwriter events, it has routinely been met by the biggest audience reaction of the night. And in all kinds of settings, we’ve had people come up to us out of nowhere and sing parts of it out to us. In short, it’s fair to say it’s a keeper. But as soon as it comes on here, as a cold, raw studio recording in a huge room, especially when coming on just after the full, classic, studio productions of high octane supergroup classics we’ve been listening to. it does admittedly sound just a little bit flat and quiet. And empty, being just acoustic guitar and vocal and nothing else. But still, all the joyous energy of the performances are still there, and a song is a song right? Wrong. I’ve actually known this as a fact for sometime, and have been advised on it when even thinking of pitching a song to industry professionals; don’t think people can hear the song shine out in its raw form. For most people, unless the full production is there, they have no idea what they’re listening to and this goes right to the top. Right now the production isn’t there, but we still think it sounds wonderful and fun and we dance joyously around the room as we hear it for the first time on enormous speakers, even as we know its sound doesn’t even begin to touch the huge budget productions we’ve been listening to all night. As soon as the song comes to a close and we return to the bar, it’s clear that our new friends only heard the production, or maybe didn’t really hear the song at all, or just didn’t like it. It wasn’t for them. Fair enough and absolutely, no harm and no hard feelings. Surprising and a little disappointing maybe, but in any creative endeavour you have to accept not everyone is going to like what you do, and that goes for every piece of music ever recorded, no matter how successful or universally lauded. What we’re not prepared for is what happens next. We simply cease to exist. The guys form a huddle and start talking – inexplicably still in English – about the most benign things imaginable. Like talking for the sake of talking. Not one person acknowledges our presence as all we can see is backs. I look at Maja and then back at people who, until just a few moments ago, we considered nascent friends. Now, because they didn’t quite connect with our song, we’re dismissed and totally judged as people they simply don’t want to know, or wish to be associated with. ‘This is ridiculous,’ I whisper to Maja. ‘So they didn’t like it, or maybe it didn’t sound great in here. Fair enough. But this?’ No. This is wrong. ‘I think we should just leave,’ I say. ‘Let’s just walk out the door right now and never come back.’ So that’s what we do. Without a glance behind us, without a word of thanks or goodbye, or any other kind of acknowledgement to our hosts, we slip silently out of the door and into the cold, but far more warmly inviting night. What. The. Hell. Was. That?

Maja:

I can’t understand what just happened. Absolutely not. But what I do understand is that no-one will accept a song they hear on speakers without a full production. But still, the behaviour they showed us is beyond unacceptable. I am angry. As we go outside I shake away the anger and let it be replaced with a feeling of ridicule. It’s too ridiculous not to laugh about. And I am utterly confident in our music, and I know that we’ll go all the way, so to ridiculous act like this. Well. At least it makes a fun story.

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.