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September 27, 2002 Today was the day we left Amsterdam and headed to Enschede, Holland, where the guys were going to be playing at Nix BBBlues Club. It was also the first of many times my sister and I would see our dad actually get really pissed off. See, our dad is about as low key as low key gets - he'd need Valium to get riled up about something. But for the first time in my 30 years I actually saw that vein everyone talks about. You know, the one on your forehead that starts beating thu-thump thu-thump thu-thump? That's because we apparently didn't have directions to any of the clubs, and finding them turned out to be more than an exercise in frustration. It was a three hour drive to Enschede and we made it there around late afternoon. The guys checked out the club and the stage - it was moderately sized and looked like it could be a good venue to play. There were just a couple of kinks in the plan: a rival club owner had gotten the place shut down the night before, and only after staying up all night to fix some things was the club allowed to be open for that night, but only until midnight. Therefore Rebel Storm would have to go on an hour early, but no one knew that. The audience might not be there.
Eventually we got there, and impressive is an understatement. Ronald and his wife Ans live in a beautiful area of Holland not far from Enschede in the countryside, surrounded by woods and pasture land. Absolutely idyllic. Ronald and Ans got everyone settled while they put out coffee and homemade cake on the patio in the backyard for all of us. They were such hospitable hosts, and we'd learn that nearly all of the hosts on the trip would have this incredible level of hospitality. We felt spoiled. Billy Leach managed to find an acoustic guitar in the house and took it down the path to a bench by Ronald's koi pool. The sounds of "Over the Rainbow" wafted across the yard. Now how cool was this? The boys got some rest and everyone met up at the club that night. Rebel Storm went on as scheduled, which meant the crowd was a little thin at the start. But things began picking up and pretty soon the place was packed and the boys were rockin'. They played a lot longer than originally planned, but no one seemed concerned - they wanted more! After the set finished we sold a few CDs and the guys got to autographing them for the fans. Meanwhile, the second band, Los Locos, got on stage. Made up of three young guys, they played some blues covers and they had some serious soul. The singer was about as drunk as you could get, but that didn't matter. These guys rocked hard. I got a special treat during the show: Frans de Vries, formerly of Blue's News and now just with 3D Gamers, came up to the show as it was only 10 minutes away from him so that we could meet in person. I'd been working with Frans for a while and it was such a blast to meet him. He was a great sport for coming up to the show - thanks, Frans! After the show the guys got some much needed rest - we all had to get up early the next morning for the 6 hour drive to Horb-Altheim in Germany. This would end up being one of the coolest legs of the trip for us. September 28, 2002 Early in the morning we picked up the boys at Ronald's, and Ronald was gracious enough to lead the caravan once again to the border of Germany, which turned out to be only a few kilometers from his house. Horb-Altheim is located in the Black Forest, so almost all of the trip was through some very beautiful German countryside. My sister and I made fun of the guys for needing to stop every hour and pee - we told them they had bladders the size of walnuts. The Horb area turned out to be absolutely beautiful. Nestled in valleys in the Black Forest, it was everything I pictured rural southern Germany to be like. The only problem was, once we got to the Horb-Altheim area we had no idea where the club was. We'd managed to get an address the day before in Enschede: 3 Beim Banhof, Horb-Altheim. We could tell that Horb and Altheim were two distinct towns so we didn't know where to go. We pulled the caravan up to a couple of ladies outside of a cafe getting the place ready for lunch. My dad asked them if the sprechened the ol' English, but they shook their heads - we'd learn that very few people in this area in Germany spoke English. But what ho! Caryn, Super Language Enthusiast is here to the rescue! Now was my chance to shine with my broken grasp of German! (My broken German, it seemed, wouldn't help us much.) I hopped out of the caravan armed with my dictionary and the address. I was able to let her know that we were looking for a music club called The Rainbow and that this was the address. She told me in German to take a series of lefts and rights and go through a roundabout…from what we could tell she was directing us somewhere we'd already been, which was up in Altheim. But we'd been up there and couldn't find it. We decided to give it another try. We drove around and around and still couldn't find it. We stopped at a gas station and my dad and I went in. As soon as she shook her head to his question about whether or not she spoke English, my dad grabbed me by the shoulders, pushed me in front of her and said, "you're on." I explained to her what we were looking for and fortunately we saw that they sold maps of the area. She pointed out the general Altheim area but couldn't tell us where the club was. So far, it didn't seem to matter whether we spoke German or English - no one knew where this place was and they could only tell us what we already knew, that it was somewhere in Altheim. More hours went by as we tried finding this place, accosting local citizenry as best as we could. That vein in our dad's head was looking awfully strained. I'd managed to locate the area on the map where I was sure it was and took us there, but as we drove down the street we didn't see a club at all. Finally, we stopped at a restaurant that appeared closed, but Billy Leach and I hopped out and tracked down the owner. He fortunately knew of the club and was able to point to the area on the map that we'd just been to. It must be there, we just couldn't see it! We tried the area again. As our car approached the area we saw that the band's car had another person in it. It turns out that they'd grabbed a local kid (he was willing, it was okay) who knew where the place was. They just opened the door and said, "do you speak English?" And when he nodded yes they practically abducted him and said, "take us to the Rainbow!!" We couldn't find it because it was a house with a tiny sign above the door! The boys thanked the kid and one of them drove him back home. The guys got the lay of the land and from what it looked like, this would be a challenging gig - the stage was pretty small, as was the entire club. But Freddy, the club owner, was thrilled to have us all there, and he turned out to be one of the nicest, most hospitable guys we met on the whole trip. Once we checked out the Rainbow and the guys got the scoop on the set up, it was back to the guesthouse for some rest for the boys before the gig.
Faces of Fate, a local group that sounded a bit to me like Alice in Chains, opened the set that night. They sounded great, and the club really began filling up. We all wore laminates that said Rebel Storm on them so you could pick out who was the band or with the band in a crowd. Let me tell you something about the musical tastes of southern Germany: they love American southern rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchett, they're all hugely popular, it seems, down in that area. Two somewhat local groups have a really strong following - Flatman and Lizard. Flatman played a couple of shows with Rebel Storm early on in the tour and from what we heard, the guys were great, not just musically but as all-around nice guys. Unfortunately Xoe and I missed out on meeting them and being involved in that part of the tour, which we heard was incredible. By the time Faces of Fate was done, the club was packed to the gills. You couldn't move around the place without squeezing yourself forcefully between two people. The crowd was eager, too - they were really anxious for the guys to get on stage. And when the guys opened up, the crowd loved it. Although the club and the stage were small, the energy was high and the guys put on an awesome show. We sold quite a few CDs that night so the boys were busy signing for quite a while. After that, it was back to the guesthouse for another night of rest, and then three days of relaxation in the heart of the Black Forest before the next gig. |
