The first day

We got off to a good start. We hung out at the bar in the Newark airport (it's so fab, I wonder why Time Out hasn't written about it) for about 2 hours before we boarded the plane.
We were taking the red-eye to Brussels on a Wednesday, so the plane was empty -- one person to a row! I got a solid 2 hours' sleep, but you can see on Jerry's face below that he didn't fare so well.

It's rainy and cold, but Belgium is really beautiful.The buildings still have a medieval flavor to them, the vibe in general is very old world. We're staying at our driver Freddie's parents' house for the first few days. It's a farmhouse that really has that old-world charm, but it's cold as fuck. I think the rule is to turn on the heat only in the room you're currently in, and keep every door closed so you don't have to heat the whole house.

Still, we got a home-cooked meal from Freddie's mom (best damn applesauce I ever did have) and the beds were super-comfortable and warm, and Stosh (our lighting/support/general everything guy - that's him between Noli and Travis in the first picture) snored for only about 10 minutes the whole night.

We played at a local pub, a place Freddie arranged for us at the request of the booking agency that put the whole deal together. It was a really beautiful place that the owner had been building by hand piece-by-piece for years. The cabinets behind the bar were hollowed out old TV sets (see pic), the tabletops were cigar box lids, there were so many knick-knacks it was like this guy's own personal Belgian TGI Friday's, but with more heart. And this guy Eddie had heart. He took great care of us, giving us all the beer we could drink and even serving us dinner himself after we played.

When we first walked in, the place was so tiny that we thought it was inappropriate for us to play there - we thought we'd be too loud.The Belgians were insistent that we play, so we cleared the table and chairs off the stage and did our thing. Freddie had gone to get the PA for Noli to sing thru, and when he got back, he noticed that he had 2 speakers and no amp. Problem was, he picked up 3 speakers AND the amp. We think the other speaker and amp fell out of the truck on the way over. We're leaving it to the local authorities to keep an eye out for these expensive items.

So we got the house PA going, which they use for karaoke. At first, we tried to play at a lower volume, but that, mixed with no sleep and no monitors (we couldn't hear Noli at all), proved to be disorienting, and we made a lot of mistakes. Halfway thru, I told the guys that we should just go for it and play loud, we couldn't do any worse than we were now, and the crowd looked like they wanted it loud. That was a little better.
Our first show was at Foli-A, a really beautiful pub somewhere in Belgium.
Our first show this tour. We have no comments about our playing at this time.
Enjoying the Belgian hospitality after our set. We're eating on the same stage we had just played.

So we survived the first day. Right now it's a sunny morning, and we have a few hours to kill before we head off to another Belgium show. Everybody is in good spirits, anxious to have a great show and a rockin' good tour.

Until next time,
Shambo