Brussels was fabulous...We showed up and they had prepared a feast for us. Even if the gig had gone badly, it was already worth it.
The room was filled with Italians that speak French. Go figure? They were extremely warm people, and every single one of them greeted me with a kiss. I've never kissed so many guys in my life!? LOL
There were a lot of visitors from surrounding churches who came to see us at this congregation. Almost no one spoke english, which was a little scary for the first couple of songs knowing that very few could sing along.
But we rocked 'em hard and they loved it. This being only our 3rd gig, and considering the bassist and drummer aren't with us we were somewhat limited with only 40 minutes of music, so I wanted to stretch the songs with some jamming and long solos, but the lead guitarist kept the songs to the tighter short arrangements so it wasn't long before we started jamming on songs that we had never played together.
The band is made of 4 solo artists who all have their own projects so I just started passing off to the different guys and it worked very well with Jamie doing a bunch of energetic Israeli songs, Jeremiah doing some hip-hop, and Pawel playing some classical/jazz.
We got 3 encores and I was starting to worry that we would eventually be stumped, but we did a refrain of an earlier song and I just told them, "hey, that's it...we're out of songs". They would have stayed all night, I think. Then the local music team got up and started playing some of my music to honor us. They put out an album last year with 4 of my songs done in French, and one of out lead guitarists songs also in French.
Then they mobbed us at the merch table. We all have our own merch and tonight I did better than the other guys. I got offers to go to Sicily and a few more places in Belgium...and a Sicilian lady gave me a couple of Italian leather jackets.
I had packed all our stuff into what europeans call an SUV (ha!?) and thought we were going to have to buy one of us a train ticket because there was no way we were going to fit 4 people with all our gear, clothes, and product into that tiny little car...but Pawel (keys) somehow filled every nook and cranny and we squeezed in for a 3 hour drive to Amsterdam.
Again, there they had prepared an amazing feast for us in a beautiful hall with a great sound system and sound guy. About half the room could speak english we were limited to only an hour set tonight...but we got 2 encores anyway. Luckily we easily had enough music for 75 minutes after last night. The percussionist broke out a new hip-hop song tonight that was really cool.
Tonight we're in The Hague. After that I'll have a few days for exploring the Netherlands. I'm losing the keys and guitarist for a couple of weeks as they go back to Poland for some artists they are Producing and the original band is down to a duo next week. Not a problem, I have friends in London who will join us and at least we can talk in the same language for the next week. Yay!
Oy. What an adventure this is so far. Not a lot of time to upload pics from this host house before I have to leave for The Hague so that will have to come later...
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