SHOW DAY #3: USTER, SWITZERLAND

You’re vaguely aware of the bus stopping when the journey is through, but the rumble of the engine rocks you back to sleep. This was a three hour drive, so we arrived in the middle of the night. I’m usually the last one up the next day, not because I’m lazy but because rest is the only true vocal medicine that works and I’m not here as a tourist, I’m here to sing.

Switzerland is beautiful; I’ve ridden through it a number of times on various tours but never performed there, although on this date our view of the countryside is limited to the venue, the parking lot, and a round trip car ride to a nearby restaurant. No scenic view of the Alps this time – just a journey down a long stairwell to the underground (I mean it’s under the ground) club called Rock City.

This is another first for us. We’ve performed in a dozen countries during previous European jaunts, but tonight marks our debut performance in Switzerland, and it’s always good to cross another nation off the list. We met Hagar, the owner of Rock City, at last year’s Stockholm Rock Out Festival and he vowed to bring us here on our next tour, and he’s made good on that promise. Hagar is a true fan of the genre and a great supporter of this music, and his venue has become a popular routing date for international bands on the road in Europe.

About thirty meters from where the bus is parked, a high speed commuter train roars past every few minutes in either direction. While waiting for the venue to open, Renee and I pass the time putting Euros on the tracks and letting the train flatten them into souvenirs – unfortunately, many of them are spit and spun in all directions and become hard to find, so this becomes an expensive pastime.

I was happy to see a friend in the parking lot, White Widdow vocalist Jules Millis, and excited that his band would be opening up for us on a couple of shows. Jules is a super guy, we hung out at Rocklahoma, and his band came all the way from Australia for these gigs.

The venue and stage, while rather small, are very clean and classy and the sound system is excellent. It was a very tight squeeze on stage, but we made it work and soundcheck went smoothly.

Dinner was an adventure, when the club provided a couple of drivers to drop us off at a local restaurant. Uster is a distant suburb of Zurich, and doesn’t get a lot of tourist traffic, so the menus do not have English translations…the staff of the restaurant spoke little or no English…turns out they had revised their currency and we had OLD Francs which were no good, they only accepted NEW Francs…or credit cards thank God. I enjoyed my hamburger.

Upon returning from dinner, it was great to run into a couple of German friends who drove in to visit and see the show – NiteSyde guitarist Steve Heyden and his lovely wife Simona. Of course we had to bring them on the bus and show off, and Steve was very gracious to bring each of the guys gift-wrapped copies of his new CD and his solo acoustic disc.

Apparently tour bus had leaned a little to the left and the upstairs driver’s side window cracked upon coming in contact with a sign, or something protruding from a building, or whatever…I couldn’t understand for sure…but Kristov and a couple of rolls of duct tape fixed it right up.

Backstage at Rock City with Jules Millis, vocalist for White Widdow

White Widdow rocked, and our show was great except the close quarters on stage caused a few collisions and knocked a few guitars out of tune from time to time. I’ve played a lot of small clubs and bars in my travels, but I think this was the smallest stage Marc & Bryan had ever been on, making the choreography a challenge. The meet and greet afterwards was rewarding as always, with so many fans brining their entire collections of not only KEEL but other projects as well and taking sweaty photos of us. As a warning to future audiences, we always hit the meet and greet immediately after leaving the stage, and before we shower…

The club hosted a great after show party for us, with pizza, beer and liquor, and a musical program that featured tunes from throughout my career, including KEEL, Fair Game, IronHorse and more. That was a really nice gesture, and we enjoyed it until the crew and bus were ready to depart. We all thank Hagar and the Swiss fans for a rocking good time and hope to come back to Rock City next year!

SHOW DAY #2: KERKRADE, THE NETHERLANDS

This is the last morning I get to sleep in a bed in a hotel. From here on out, the routing gets challenging and the schedule gets tight due to the long distances between shows. Consequently, I sleep right through breakfast…and I love the breakfast buffet at the Kerkrade Golden Tulip…

From here on out, internet connections and phone service are also going to be a challenge, so I take the time to check email, post on Facebook, and set my Fantasy Football lineup for the upcoming weekend.

After having such a strong show the night before, my major concern is can I do it two nights in a row. The pipes feel fine, but you really never know until you belt out the first screams at soundcheck.

Could’ve slept a little longer, because the bus was almost 45 minutes late picking us up. But it’s only a five minute ride to the venue – tonight we return to The Rock Temple, where almost exactly a year ago we performed our first show in Europe since 1986. The Rock Temple is the headquarters of our tour producer’s promotion company, Eternal Rock V.F.O., and they work with some of the biggest acts in the genre coordinating tours throughout Europe. The walls of The Rock Temple are lined with posters of both legendary acts and bands we’ve never heard of. This venue is a popular stop for hard rock bands touring the region, and it’s obvious why – they do everything first rate, take care of business, and treat every show as if it were a sold out arena.

I’m using a rented acoustic guitar on this tour – it’s more economical than paying baggage fees and less shit for me to deal with at the airports, and I can leave my instruments at home – but last night I had to use the electric on “Does Anybody Believe,” “Because The Night,” and “Tears Of Fire” because the Takamine they’d rented for me had a problem with the electronics and only 4 strings were coming through the pickup. A new guitar, a Taylor, was brought in today and though it sounds better, the action is very high off the fretboard, making the high chords of “Does Anybody Believe” impossible. I put a lighter gauge set of strings on it, but that doesn’t help enough, so for the rest of the tour, I fingered the Em7 chord in the low open voicing…

On this tour we got to do a couple of shows with a great band from Norway called The Stage Dolls. The bill is actually a co-headliner, but they played before us. They had a couple of hits in the 80’s such as “Love Cries” and “Still In Love.” Super guys, good songs and a loyal following throughout Europe.

Soundcheck again takes longer than expected – our engineer Maurice is very diligent about getting the right balance and eliminated hums, buzzes, and rumbles. Come to think about it, I did not hear a single bit of feedback through the sound system on this entire tour. But thankfully, my voice feels fine – not quite warmed up, which is to be expected, but strong and no damage.

I was supposed to be at the local radio station a five PM for an interview, but because we’re running late we call the station and do the interview over the phone. I have time for dinner - Chinese food, second day in a row – and I enjoy the chance to actually sit at the table with everyone and have a meal. Then I have two more interviews, one with a Dutch radio program called “Rock On Your Radio” and a Belgian radio program that I can’t pronounce or spell. I bring Marc Ferrari in as backup, because it saves wear and tear on my voice and because he’s really good at it. The interviewers are true fans who know our history very well, and it’s always a pleasure to be able to chat to our fans through these radio programs that help keep this kind of music alive. We recorded these interviews on video, and when I get the chance maybe I’ll post some clips of this stuff on youtube.com/KEELTV.

Time gets short because the interviews go long – I hate to cut these guys off and limit their questions because they’re so enthusiastic and so interested in the band. But clearer heads prevail, and Aaron Fischer assumes the role of asshole and tells the radio guys we gotta go get ready for the show.

Good thing I showered at the hotel, because it’s getting close to showtime. I try to fix my hair, but it seems the entire tour I was doomed to bad lighting and ill-placed mirrors in the dressing rooms. I use a round-brush type blow dryer thing, I don’t know what the hell you call it, to straighten my hair, but it didn’t work over there even with the various adapters and voltage transformers we bring, so consequently in all the live video and photos I look like a fucking poodle.

Stage Dolls had a lot of gear, a keyboard rig and such, and therefore we start about fifteen minutes late. Many of the venues in Europe and the U.K. have curfews and limit you on the sound levels – but not The Rock Temple. So we are free to play as loud and as long as we want…

We knew what to expect because we played there last year – great fans who give the show a tremendous amount of energy. Many of the same faces we saw last year, and some new ones. Good thing we changed up the show with a different opening song and some material we didn’t play on the previous tour.

The band sounds great, the gig feels great, very natural and comfortable on stage together and with our audience. It was very hot, and I felt so bad for the girls in front of the stage getting showered with my sweat that I handed them a towel. After the fourth song, I introduce the crew and bring Ludy Wetzl, the owner of The Rock Temple and the producer of our tour, on stage with us and present him with a gift from the band. It’s a frame containing an autographed European Tour color 8x10 photo, the Europe Tour 2011 guitar picks, a “Streets Of Rock & Roll” CD and an engraved message from the band thanking him for making the tour happen. I’ve brought this in a glass frame in my luggage all the way from the States, and I’m really glad to pass it on to Ludy, I was worried about broken glass in my suitcase…he’s a great guy and a true champion of hard rock music in Europe, and he deserved this and more.

There seem to be a lot of fan-shot clips from this gig on YouTube – I haven’t had time to watch any of them, so I can’t comment on their quality, but if you want to check some of them out CLICK HERE.

The after show meet & greet is wonderful, it just feels so good to come out and hang with everyone, talk, take photos, sign stuff. A lot of this audience had seen us last year and already had everything (our Europe Tour color 8x10’s were pre-signed at the rehearsals so they all looked great and were done).

Before an all-night bus ride, after-show showers at the venue are mandatory, and since there was only one shower backstage we took turns while the crew was packing up. When we came outside to get on the bus, many fans were still outside waiting for us and we got to take some photos and say goodbye before getting on the bus and heading for Switzerland.

An after show party on a tour bus on the road is a very special thing. A lot of smiles and high fives, talking about how cool the gig was, raiding the fridge for beer and sandwiches, watching concert DVD’s on the entertainment system. On this tour we watched some cool stuff – a lot of live Gary Moore stuff, Rainbow (Ronnie James Dio was great, and the long Blackmore solos are good for putting everyone to sleep), Thin Lizzy, Axel Rudy Pell.

Eventually everyone hits the bunks, and Kinley (our light guy, he’s only 18) and I are the last men standing, so we go up front with the driver. I sit shotgun, enjoying the massive bus just eating up the white lines on the highway toward Switzerland, and I am home.

TO BE CONTINUED

SHOW DAY #1: TERNEUZEN, THE NETHERLANDS

Dead tired, I had slept from 6 PM the previous night until 5:30 AM, and then took a nap until 8:30 AM…this was just what I needed to prepare for the first show of the tour.

Shortly after 12 noon, our tour bus, the Nightliner, pulled up to the hotel. We’ve had buses in the past, but never anything like this: a massive double decker rig, 61 feet long including the trailer, over 13 feet tall, with 12 luxury bunks, two lounges (upstairs front and back), 1500 movies and thousands of songs pre-programmed into the state-of-the-art entertainment system.

We met our crew for the first time, and over the next five days we would find out just how lucky we were to have such a great team of people with us. They were not only extremely skilled, intelligent, and hardworking, they were really good spirits and so much fun to tour with: our sound engineer, Maurice Hartgerink; our production assistant and also in charge of merchandise Michelle Boumanns, our lighting tech Kinley Wetzl and his father, tour producer and road manager Ludy Wetzl. The bus company provided two full-time professional drivers, Kristov and the quiet dude whose name I forgot…

The entire tour took us to five cities in four different countries. The distances between these cities and the long drives dictated that there would only be two hotels possible – in Holland and in Germany. So we would stay at the Golden Tulip in Kerkrade the first two nights and commute the six hour round trip to the first gig in Terneuzen in the Nightliner.

I brought the entire team together in the downstairs lounge of the bus and said a quick prayer of thanks and we got the bus rules – no taking a shit, no smoking – and we hit the road. Had a couple of beers, learned our way around the bus, chose our bunks, and halfway to Terneuzen I was horizontal in mine. I have always loved a tour bus bunk (even back in the day when they were two inches shorter than I am) and these bunks kicked ass. Sliding curtains for privacy, sliding windows so you could look out and see the countryside if you want, led lights, great ventilation, a drink holder (VERY handy for me) and a rack to hold personal items.

I had no problem catching a nap in that bunk.

Whenever a tour bus stops for a while, it usually means you’ve arrived at your destination, or something’s wrong. After a sensing we’d been stopped for a while, I got up and was informed that the bus was too big to drive on the street where the venue was. After discussing several options, the only choice was to park the bus about 200 meters away where a nearby carnival had their buses and trailers parked, and ferry the gear in by car and by hand. The only spot left was on a grassy patch by the highway, and as soon as we pulled fully onto it the bus got stuck.

The amps were too big to fit in the car that was transporting the gear to the gig, so the crew was actually wheeling the Marshall amps and Ampeg bass rig down the street.

Since I probably had more experience getting stuck in the mud than anyone else on the team, I hung with our driver Kristov and tried to help out. We took the trailer off to lighten the load – no luck. Put planks and mats in front of the tires to get some traction – no luck. So they called a tow tractor and I went off to soundcheck.

The venue was De Pit (that’s Dutch for “The Pit”) – nice place, decent sized stage and a projector screen behind us which projected a giant KEEL logo. The first load-in and soundcheck of any tour is the hardest. This is when everyone is getting to know the gear and the setup, the crew is finding out what we need and how we do things. As I said, this crew was very pro and we got dialed in quickly. The band was fresh and fired up, and we probably overdid it at soundcheck…we always do “Push & Pull” for the check because it includes all the backing vocals and both guitarists take solos…then we did the entire encore (“United Nations” into “You’re The Victim”) just because we felt like it. I did apologize to the opening acts that were waiting patiently for our self-indulgence to pass. They were Lick (young commercial rock band) and Kabuki (KISS-like tunes and makeup, original tunes but heavily KISS-influenced). They were all really cool guys, showering us old fuckers with respect. Very nice.

What can I say about the show – in my opinion, ALL of the shows on the European tour were among the strongest of our entire career. The band is sounding better than I ever remember – Bryan and Marc are one of the tightest and most-exciting (and most underrated) twin axe attacks in the business, Dwain and Geno are locked in so tight as a rhythm section, and my training and practice regimen paid off for me with my strongest live rock vocal performance in twenty years.

The crowd was a little slim, there seemed to be little promotion (even the guys at the music store across the street had no idea we were coming) and the venue normally catered to the hardcore deathmetal crowd. This played into our favor because we were able to get some great video footage because there was plenty of room out front for the camera to move around…

The setlist was the same for the entire tour, with the exception of the Germany show because we had to cut five songs to fit into our time slot:

COME HELL OR HIGH WATER

SOMEBODY’S WAITING

ELECTRIC LOVE

SPEED DEMON

PUSH AND PULL

DOES ANYBODY BELIEVE

STREETS OF ROCK & ROLL

WRONG THING RIGHT GIRL

LET’S SPEND THE NIGHT

BECAUSE THE NIGHT/HERE TODAY

ROCK N ROLL OUTLAW

COLD DAY IN HELL

LOOKING FOR A GOOD TIME

TEARS OF FIRE

RIGHT TO ROCK

UNITED NATIONS/YOU’RE THE VICTIM

After the shows, we always go to the merchandise area to meet the fans, take photos, and sign stuff. Even though the show was not packed, the quality of KEELaholics made up for it, and we met some cool fans.

After that (and a bottle of rum) it was back on the bus for the three hour ride to Kerkrade. I don’t remember much about that…

TO BE CONTINUED

I know I want to share the KEEL Europe 2011 Tour experience with my people…jeez, where do I start. I don’t want to bore you with a turn-by-turn trip on the roller coaster, but we’ve got some people to thank and some stories to tell. So I'm going to post the tour recap as separate blog entries over the next five days -  I’ll do my best to recap an experience that was ultimately an 8-day adventure that was months long.

It started earlier this year when the shows were booked and really kicked into high gear for me two months prior to the tour, when I began a physical and vocal regimen that would enable me to deliver the quality of performance I demand of myself and what the fans expect. While I am a very active vocalist and performer, doing hundreds of shows a year as a solo artist, acoustic gigs, and the tribute show in Las Vegas, KEEL is currently my only outlet for my hard rock voice and we hadn’t done a gig since Halloween 2010, almost a year ago. Through a combination of diet, exercise, and just powering through the vocals as often as possible, I got to the point where I could withstand the punishment that comes along with the shows, the travel, the interviews, and talking to the fans.

The band assembled in Los Angeles September 17/18 for two days of rehearsals, 4 hours each day. I can’t believe how tight the musicians are after not having played together in so long – of course everyone does their homework, and guitarists Marc Ferrari and Bryan Jay both live in Southern California so they can get together from time to time and play through the songs and harmony solos, and it really shows.

This tour was produced and coordinated by Ludy Wetzl/Eternal Rock V.O.F – we made friends when he brought us to Europe in September 2010 for our first European show since ’86, and we had total faith that everything would be done right, and he really took care of business. Of course, every rock tour has its share of Spinal Tap moments…

DEPART U.S. TUE SEPT 20, 7 AM - ARRIVE AT HOLLAND HOTEL WED SEPT 21, TOTAL TRAVEL TIME 24 HOURS

The first leg of the journey was to New York, where the band all met at JFK airport and boarded a flight for London. With us on this trip was my wife Renee, who brings order to my chaos (as well as helping with accounting, and documenting the tour with photographs and video) and my longtime friend and associate Aaron Fischer, who was a huge help on this tour, as he always is. After flying from Vegas to New York to London with very little sleep, we had a couple of hours’ layover and then our final flight to Brussels, Belgium. Upon arriving in Belgium, and after customs and immigration, we crammed into a van for the three hour drive to Kerkrade, Holland.

We had stayed at the same hotel last year, so I knew to ask the driver to stop at a store so we could pick up beer, bottled water, and snacks. Of course he did not, so after we checked in to our rooms I went hiking with Renee and Aaron in search of a convenience store while the guys all went to sleep. I wanted to stay up as long as possible so that I would get a good night’s sleep before the first show and accustom myself to the time change. But I could have done without the 2-kilometer walk to a store where they would not take our credit cards (luckily Renee & Aaron had converted some dollars to Euros) and the long walk back to the hotel carrying bags of beer, bottled water, and snacks…

We spent the next couple of hours re-organizing gear and merchandise, which had travelled in the luggage, and Renee, Aaron and I were first at the restaurant when it opened at 5 pm. The schnitzel at the Golden Tulip is highly recommended…

POSTING TOMORROW: SHOW DAY #1: TERNEUZEN, THE NETHERLANDS