TOUR DIARY
JON AMOR BLUES GROUP IN THE NETHERLANDS
November 2011 - Part One
It’s quite hard to pee when you know that 90’s kid rockers ‘Hanson’ are standing outside the door….
“Where will I be in 30 years time?” I would regularly ask myself as a kid, my life stretching out before me like a winding road into unfathomable fog, “On this day, thirty years from now…. what will I be DOING?” Well, son, you’ll be underneath a converted church in Amsterdam trying to pee while Hanson listen at the door.
They’re not listening, of course. Actually, they’re engaged in conversation with Jon Amor Blues Group tub-thumper Si Small, and they’re all getting on like a house on fire, to the point where they now appear to be exchanging numbers.
I stand at the toilet trying to tune it out, but now my mind is picturing the Hanson brothers bopping along in their tour bus, singing away in close harmony while their driver listens and bobs around at the wheel, grinning like a goon. I imagine the keyboard player’s phone ringing and he answers:
“Hey guys! Quiet! It’s Si! Si from last night! How ya doin’ Si?”
The other two crowd round the phone and holler “HEY SI!!!!!” in unison.
I shake myself out of this daydream and concentrate on the job ‘in hand’. I try whistling a tune to help me focus but the only tune I can come up with is “MMMBop”. It’s no good - I’ll try again later. I give up, but I flush the toilet anyway just so it doesn’t seem weird when I come back out in silence.
We are down in the dungeonous dressing rooms of the famous Paradiso in Amsterdam, waiting to take the stage in the smaller upstairs hall of this impressive venue. Hanson, of course, are headlining the large hall and an army of fans have gathered to fill the place. We have our own (admittedly smaller) army waiting for us upstairs, so the soft aroma of hair gel (chiefly belonging to Chris a.k.a. C-Boy) fills the dressing room and the battle for space in front of the mirror has begun. Dave - a.k.a. DD - debates white jacket versus grey whilst trying not to moan about the fact that we have been given a bottle of Jameson’s (my choice) and not Jack Daniel’s (his choice). I am stuffing my face with mini Bounty bars while updating my Facebook status on my phone. Our first-time JABG tourist and driver for the weekend Adam ‘K-Dog’ Kyte observes proceedings from a corner of the room, probably astonished that we actually get paid for all this loafing and preening. 10 minutes to show time…
A fashionable fifteen minutes late, we take to the stage. The room is busy and bustling as we do so. Friends I haven’t seen for a while are in attendance, as well as friends I only saw a couple of weeks ago. My microphone stand misbehaves throughout the first few numbers but my good friend Yanu fixes it. My Tube Screamer misbehaves but monitor man Nils fixes it. As we coax the crowd forward towards the stage, the back of the room fills up with men who have abandoned their partners/daughters downstairs in the main hall. Despite a long, hard day of travelling, the band is full of energy, and I can only put this down to the excitement of meeting Hanson.
It has indeed been a long day, starting with a 6am departure from The Shire and a good 9 hours in the van. K-Dog’s stint at the wheel was quite admirable, and allowed me the novelty of sitting on the back seat like a school kid, watching Boogie Nights and singing along with The Doors in a Wiltshire accent. However, the events of the last 24 hours have now taken their toll on poor Dave, who - clearly suffering - slips away into the night straight after the gig in search of his hotel room. Next morning he will inform us that he ‘puked his guts up’ on arrival. I can’t help feeling sorry for him - this is his first night in Amsterdam and he spends a large part of it crouched over the toilet. Then again, he’s surely not the first….
So it is left to the rest of us to join our friends for a few drinks in this great city, and we venture out into the night with a veritable gaggle of companions. Our destination is a bar called ‘Kletskop’ near Central Station where my friends Glenn and Audrey await us. It’s a substantial hike across the city, and our new friend Henny leads us there, along cobbled streets, over pretty canal bridges, and past scantily-clad ladies standing in shop windows. It’s worth the trek - the Kletskop is a lively hub of activity, we’re surrounded by old friends and new, and beers are thrust into our palms every 10 minutes. This is the life….
8 hours later I awake with a pounding head. My mouth feels like it’s had a switched-on vacuum cleaner nozzle resting in it all night, and I can’t find my glasses. I manage to mumble the word ‘coffee’ in the general direction of the bed next to me, where I expect to see Si, but Si is already up and showering - the little bastard. I am Amsterdamaged.
A thick fog has descended on The Netherlands. Not unlike the fog that has filled my head, it is the kind of fog which seems like it has been there forever and will never go away. K-Dog steers us manfully through it to our next destination - The Iduna in the town of Drachten, in the northern province of Friesland. Thanks to the careful tutelage of our new friends in Amsterdam we are equipped with the knowledge of how to pronounce “Drachten”; halfway through saying it, one must pretend that there is a fly stuck in one’s throat. We all take turns practising as we load in, much to the bemusement of the sound crew. A poster on the wall proclaims that JABG should appeal to “lovers of The Hives”, causing me to belt out “HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SOOOOOO” every ten minutes, and DD to convince himself that the room will be full of Swedish students yelling “We want Hives! We want Hives!”. Si checks his phone… nothing from Hanson yet.
Sound-check goes reasonably smoothly and we have some spare time before doors open. Chris has written a mind-boggling riff that we try to play along with, but only Dave can find the ‘one’ and Chris declares “I don’t really know how it works”. My head hurts, and I’m hungry….
Dinner (Indian/Chinese) is followed by a prolonged indulgence in that most traditional of rock and roll pastimes - Hanging About. This involves the munching of Haribo, drinking of Jameson’s and Dommelsch, and attempting to lift each other up, with varying degrees of success. Our promoter for this evening, Teunis, is a fine host and cannot do enough for us.
Show time…. A decent number of people have ventured through the fog to see us play and despite the absence of opening band The Mud Birds (struck down by flu) it’s an enjoyable night, with our friends Mensies and Ronald in attendance. Ronald will later leave his rather stylish scarf in the dressing room, only for a conscientious, caring and rather tall member of the band to rescue it and hang on to it for safe-keeping.
We head to the hotel, and my satisfaction at having bagged a twin room all to myself is tempered by two things; a) the realisation that none of the others fancied sharing with me and b) the room is FREEZING. So preoccupied am I with being grumpy about the sub-zero temperature of my room, that it’s a good 2 hours before I realise that the window is open and the radiator is turned off. I must sleep…. we have an early start tomorrow. The W2 in Den Bosch awaits our 11am arrival….
