My road trip started on Thursday, when I spent two days in Mannheim, Germany teaching at the Popakademie. It’s getting close to semester exams, so I spent the time preparing my students for their big day; a 45 minute live looping performance. After my time there I travelled to Aschaffenburg for rehearsals and a gig in the evening. The gig itself was fine; I performed with a talented up-and-coming singer named Jennifer Washington. After three hours of sleep in my hotel it was off to the airport and my highlight gig of the week in Athens. The flight was full, the food was, well, airplane food (need I say more?), and the drive into Athens was interesting, to say the least. 

The venue was an open air club on the beach, and the guests were all employees of a very large telecommunications company. All of the musicians were colleagues and friends of mine, so although I went into the situation blind, the show went off without a hitch. 

It was this latest trip to Athens (I’ve performed here three times before) that made me realize that through my job, many of my childhood dreams have indeed come true, if not totally in the way I had thought they would. I’ve visited almost all of the European cities I dreamed of visiting as a child: Athens (I loved Greek mythology as a kid), London (my favorite European city), Paris (art and culture), Stockholm (I’ve always been fascinated with it) and many others, and on top of all that, I get paid to go to these places. 

Sometimes musicians who work a lot tend to take for granted the good fortune they have, being able to travel to exotic places to work. We often complain that many in the traditional work force don’t see musicians as having “real” jobs, but given that through my job I have been places that most people with real jobs can only dream of going to, that’s a characterization that I can happily live with.

Gig 1: May 20 – Session Werk, Walldorf

I’ve performed in many, many venues in Germany over the last 15 years or so; from bars, clubs and restaurants, to city and village festivals, to huge open-air concerts with thousands of people. From seaside hangouts to ski resorts in the Alps, I’ve played almost everywhere, especially in Baden-Württemberg (where I live), which makes it hard to believe that there are quite a few venues that I have never performed in. One such place was the bar belonging to the well-known music store Session Music, located in Walldorf, near Heidelberg. I’d been asked to perform there with the house band off and on for five years, but I never had time until recently, when friend and colleague Stefan Breuer asked me to perform there with his band. The emcee of the the night was another colleague, a singer named Gonzo. I knew most of the musicians in the house band from other bands that I’d performed with, but this was the first time I played with this particular formation, and we had no time to rehearse together, which made me a little nervous. The interesting thing to me was how full the club was (it’s a huge venue), despite being hot outside, a holiday and the UEFA Cup Finals being on TV.

Gig 2: May 21 – King Kamehameha Club, Frankfurt am Main

My spot. I LOVE this club, Especially in the summer. It was packed (as usual), and this particular night there were three front singers, which is rare. Considering that it was also very warm outside on this evening (even at eleven o’clock) and there are four other clubs on the same street as the KingKa, having so many people on that night was truly amazing. Again, it’s a testament to the hard work we put into making Thursday night a success.

Gig 3: May 22 – Restaurant Nizza, Frankfurt am Main

Change of pace (or so I thought): A wedding reception in a fancy restaurant on the banks of the Main River. A rather small gathering, only about 50 to 60 guests, all extremely stylish, with the ladies in their gowns and the men in either suits or tuxedos. What they lacked in comfort, however, they more than made up for in endurance, partying well into the early morning, way after we had finished our show (the father of the bride was particularly amusing). Even at 3:00 AM, the weather was still warm enough to engage in various outdoor activities.

Gig 4: May 23 – City Festival, Bad Homburg

My favorite gig of my little tour; a duo gig in one of the town squares of Bad Homburg, just me on vocals and my colleague Jan Stürmer on acoustic guitar. Very relaxed yet very challenging; our job was to entertain a large group of spectators (up to a thousand people at any given time) over a three hour time span using just our voices and a single instrument. That is music-making in it’s purest form, and we were successful in our mission.

Gig 5: May 24 – Radio RPR1 Family Festival, Bingen

After having performed four days in a row, I was exhausted. The last thing my body needed was to perform outside on the hottest day of the year. Being the soldier that I am, however, that’s exactly what I did. My final show of the week was in Bingen, a city on the banks of the Rhine River. It was 33° Celsius (91° Fahrenheit) outside, which is very hot by german standards. The bad part: we had to perform four sets during the day, starting at 1:30 in the afternoon. The festival was not very well attended, perhaps due to the extreme heat.

Summer Madness

What all five shows had in common was the effect the excellent weather had on people’s ability to enjoy themselves. Sunshine and warm temperatures are known to activate feelings of happiness and pleasure in humans; it’s no coincidence that more alcohol is sold, more concerts are attended, and more relationships are either begun or made permanent through marriage in the warm-weather months than the cold-weather months.

Unfortunately, it also tends to deactivate our sense of fashion, especially color coordination, in many cases. In that respect, summer-like weather also deactivates our sense of shame, which can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of view. I’ve been witness to people dressing in ways I’ve only laughed about on really bad sketch comedy shows or soft porn movies on cable TV. Simply AMAZING.

So, what have I learned from my latest road trip?

1. NEVER book a hotel room in a big city on the side of the building facing the street.

2. If you’re confident in your abilities, it doesn’t matter if new to a situation or not.

3. The warmer it is outside, the more willing people are to make total fools of themselves.

4. The passage of time is relative when you’re in good spirits.

5. Just because it’s warm outside doesn’t mean that the party’s dead inside.

6. Take time to appreciate not only what you do, but where you do it.

7. Sandals and socks are NOT CUTE.

8. Big t-shirts and sport leggings are WORSE.

9. If you’re going to wear a sleeveless top and sport leggings, at least be in shape.

10. Just when you think you’ve done it all, you quickly realize that you haven’t.

Judging by what I’ve experienced on this latest road trip, it’s going to be a very interesting summer indeed.

Thankfully, my gigs on Thursday and Friday were a blast. The gig in the KingKa (our nickname for the King Kamehameha Club) was awesome as usual, especially considering that the club has been packed on Thursday night every week for the past 8 years; we worked hard to gain such a following, and it’s paying dividends; Thursday is the busiest night of the week for the club thanks to the band, and many of the higher paying gigs I perform all over Germany are a direct result of my appearances at the KingKa.

Friday I played at the Essen Convention Center (known in german as the “Messe”) for an event sponsored by the German Federation of Fitness Studios, known as the DSSV (Deutsche Sportstudio Verband), I was hired as the guest singer for the Freddy Wonder Combo, one of the busiest show bands in south Germany, with whom I performed last year in Wuppertal, together with a 40-piece orchestra. Of course I was stressed out, being that I had only performed once before with this band and we didn’t rehearse, but one of the advantages of playing within multiple pro musician circles is that we all end up having the same repertoire, thus making it easier to perform concerts without having to practice.

This band knows how to get a party going, so performing with them was a lot of fun, and ultimately less stressful for me. Especially entertaining was watching the bandleader Freddy drink beer out of the female lead singer’s shoe. The corniest thing I’ve seen on stage this year so far, and the crowd went crazy for it. I even saw a few people in the audience that I met years ago at other shows in other parts of the country, which is always a highlight for me in my travels. Of course there were very good looking people in the audience, but given that the majority of the crowd either worked at or owned fitness studios, it was hardly a surprise. Tight pants everywhere.

After the two very successful gigs, I arrived at the hotel and got what I had been longing for since the beginning of my gig blitz: a good night’s sleep.

So, what did I learn from the last two gigs?

1. I like trains a lot more than I thought I did.

2. I have a new appreciation for the phrase, “if you build it, they will come.”

3. Even in bad economic times, (most) people still just want to have a good time.

4. Nothing is more satisfying than watching total strangers dancing together on top of bars and tables Coyote Ugly style.

5. Half shirts or tops that show off the midsection should be banned for some people.

6. People who can dance love to show off that they can dance.

7. People who can’t dance love to show off that they can’t dance.

8. Guys with huge muscles don’t look as cool as I thought they did when I was younger.

9. Women with huge muscles (unfortunately) look even worse.

10. I really need to visit Spain more often.

11. Sleep is the most unappreciated human necessity. EVER.