Freiburg (DE), 16.03.2019
Playing hometown shows is always something special. We have two shows in Freiburg today: An acoustic instore show at the FLIGHT13 Recordstore in the afternoon and a full-band show at the Slow Club in the evening. It’s a rather short drive from Dijon to Freiburg but last night‘s show ended super late and we had to get up at 7 am again. Fuck.
We leave at 8 and I think the whole travel party can really feel the lack of sleep over the past 30 days. Doesn‘t matter. We’re playing two hometown shows tonight, it’s official The Deadnotes day. It‘s Funday!
We arrive in Freiburg a bit later than planned but the weather is beautiful which is amazing after a few cold and rainy days in France.
The loveley people at the Flight 13 even serve us breakfast and coffee while everyone apart from Darius and myself uses the spare time to go home and wash their clothes. We end up feeling completely helpless setting up the merch and the pa without a a crew. There‘s still some time left to rehearse our acoustic set and have some chats with friends I haven't seen for way too long. We took an acoustic guitar with us in the overloaded van for over a month and promised to rehearse the set somehwere on the road but of course ended up doing this on the very last minute in the back room of the record store seconds before our gig.
A lot of people made it to the acoustic show though and it was absolutely crazy. Thanks for the amazing show!
After the show we drive straight over to the Slow Club that is only five minutes away and start loading in, seting up and doing soundcheck. I‘m surprised with how routined everyone does his „job“ after 30 days of touring. We even have two sound guys tonight as our home boys Robert and Martin share the mixing desk. I think the guys at the Slow Club are quite happy that they have such an easy job today. However it seems that they worked really hard on providing us the best catering ever. In our backstage there is a table full with different food from salads, different types of bread, spreads over to lasagne and even a tasty looking vegan dish. There‘s literally everything and I think it‘s the first time we are playing a Freiburg show and don‘t have to take care of the catering ourselves as we used to put on on all our past shows without a promoter.
The worst thing about it is that I don‘t really find the right time to sit down for a few minutes to eat. I end up standing in front of the venue with two bananas in my hand. I’m always way too nervous when we play a hometown show and always too busy making sure everything is working out. It‘s a special night and we don‘t want anything to go wrong.
It’s 7 pm and there are already around 50 people lined up outside of the venue for the doors to open. What the actual fuck. 20 minutes after doors the venue is completely sold out. There are still a bunch of people left who aren’t allowed to attend anymore. We‘re really sorry about this. Fortunately there are some screens in the lobby that broadcast the show, haha. No joke! (see picture below)
Our buddies in Death By Shotgun play a banger set to a sold out Slow Club and it seems that the crowd really digs their music. My nervousness is now slowly reaching its maximum. There are a lot of friends and people you really like coming out to see you play which makes you feel a hundred times more nervous than playing any other show. I always feel like everyone is watching every little move I make on stage.
All this doesn‘t really matter though. The show is definitely one of the best ones on the whole tour. The whole crowd is singing a long to our songs, there are stagedivers while the bad luck with our equipment on stage we had on this run of shows continues. First of all Yannic breaks his kick drum pedal, the steel that holds the beater literally burst in two. It‘s also literally the first show on this goddamn month long tour where Yannic, don‘t ask me why, forgets to put his spare pedal next to his kit. Later Darius‘ pedal board is making weird noises while he hectically tries to fix it first with continous use of WD40 then eventually with duct tape.
It couldn’t have been any better! Thank. You. So. Much. Freiburg.
After the show I feel relieved. We drink too many beers and end up way to drunk to figure out how to fit all the equipment in two very small cars as our van is going back to Cologne tomorrow. I walk home with Yannic through the silent streets of Freiburg for almost an hour which helps calming us down and we talk about our band history and what kind of crazy things we get to experience day by day. What a night.
Photos: Sebastian Igel