We left London on Thursday and arrived at my brother and cousin's lovely flat in Christianshavn that night. Only by sacrificing their own beds did they manage to house all eight of us for the weekend. (We won't forget that!)
We managed a fairly quiet night, I think due to equal measures of the fatigue of travel and nerves for the gig.
The next morning the boys, fresh as daisies, popped down to the local posh bakery (Denmark's most expensive, apparently) to fetch lavish lattes for everyone and picked up a
copy of Politiken (Denmark's best newspaper) which happened to feature a full-page spread about the band. A great piece, which did us all proud.The weather was quite frankly shite, so most of the band spent the day inside, lounging, jamming, reading and generally keeping things fairly 'folk', before heading off for sound check in Lyngby. From then on things happened fast. By the time we had finished our fairly spartan sound check we just had time to neck a brewskies and scoff some rice and unidentifiable orange sauce and then we went on stage. The gig was cool, but by no means our best. There were about 100 people there, including my and Caecilie's (Chimes & Bells) parents. The worst part about it was that some uber drunk and, invariably, uber tall Dane was standing right in front of stage with his back to us, chattering wildly with an equally cooked girlfriend of his. Even though I do normally manage to get on with the music when this kind of thing happens there was something utterly off-putting about the situation. My eye caught my brother and cousin threatening the obtrusive pair with violence more than a few times, haha. Oh well, we still managed to keep things together and my parents didn't threaten with suspension of my allowance or anything.
Chimes played a cracker after us and even though I think it was a bit loud for my folks, everyone else was loving the wall of guitars for the hour-long show.
The night finished back at our flat where we stayed up partying til about 8 in the morning (roughly the average, spread over the 8 of us).
Predictably, the next day didn't really start before it was over for the drunken folkies. We got up, showered and went straight to sound check at Loppen, Christiania. It was probably the low point of the trip, both due to the insanely potent hang over and the sub-par show the night before. The sound check didn't happen, as a result of strict curfews from the above restaurant, so the nerves were amplified even more in the hours
leading up to the gig.We knew this one was the important one of the two nights. On the back of the Politiken article from the day before we anticipated some 'industry' might show up and really wanted to prove to ourselves that we could do better than we had.
But but but, we pulled it out of the bag and delivered an absolute stormer to a good-size and very recipient crowd of Copenhageners. The night stands shoulder to shoulder with our album launch gig as the best Klak Tik have ever had and the last bit of hangover was flushed out with the two truly magical remedies, music and... more alcohol. We had another endless night of folkish debauchery, including frantic 7 am phone calls to the youngest and definitely most rock 'n roll member of the group, Mr Feeney, guiding him homewards in time for our departure.
And that, dear friends, takes us back to the start. Another epic hang over and dreamy flight home, but big smiles on every member of my wonderful band.
A weekend spent in the company of beautiful people and phenomenal music by Chimes & Bells.
We are playing a 'Murmur Box' gig on Thursday 25th at the Troubadour here in London. Come down, we are better than ever!
Love,
Soren
