I was opening up in Munich. Hit with a wave of nerves not helped by the fact that it was so dark on stage and the light was shining up at me so bright that I could only see a silhouette of my guitar. I took to the stage and kicked off my set. I started with ‘If I Could Love You’ and medleyed it with a new tune entitled ‘Love’ (The love medley so to speak.) I started so slick but couldn’t find my fret for Love and played an incredibly noticeably off intro due to poor visibility. I pulled it back though and recovered well relying entirely on muscle memory. The Munich show was awesome. The crowd was large so the applause came in waves from all around me. I came off stage content with my set (probably about 70% happy) – I think it’s important to be self critical, there’s always scope for things to go better. Chris bloody nailed his set. This was the best he’d been all tour. His jokes hit the mark beautifully once the initial confusion of (wait is this guy telling jokes) faded. Chris landed 4 encores and played to basically his ideal crowd. Fair play to him. We’d both been needing a good show and we both raise our bar dramatically when we headline; this was the best I’ve seen him. We came off stage to thunderous applause, a swarm of people coming up to us to say hi and a hat full to the brim of donations for the tour. We made €300 in hat collection and shifted a handful of CDs and shirts before having a few drinks and shaking many hands including the hand of Luke, the owner of the trailer that we’d be sleeping in; a tall, beaming, long haired bleached blonde surfer dude and heading to Lukes trailer for a night’s sleep.
The trailer was fairly disgusting. The window at the back was wide open next to a double bed which me and Brendan shared. We pondered if it was possible to catch chlamydia off sleeping on definitely ‘used’ bed sheets and turned in for the night. By morning we realised that no one was safe in the trailer; while me and Brendan may or may not have caught STDS off the diabolical condition of the bed, Chris had not come off scot free sleeping on a sofa bed at the other end of the caravan. Chris had been, what can only be described as; bitten to death by flies during the night. We were woken to the sweet sweet sound of rail-workmen hammering and drilling into the rail tracks; about 10 metres from our sweet bohemian surfer dude’s shag pad and awkwardly emerged from the trailer to the workmen’s amusement half naked. We took turns grabbing a shower in a nearby freight container (which entailed of a shower head nailed to the roof of a freight container held up with a contraption of make-shift hooks) and hit the road. Hard. A second show in Leipzig was calling and a chance to redeem ourselves from the mediocrity of the first Leipzig show. We were re-energised by the quality of the Munich show and were ready to go again. Here it comes baby. The Grand Tour is finally on the road.
We bombed it back to Leipzig. Only stopping briefly for a driver switch and a makeshift lunch from a service station. I’ve started trying to eat healthily on tour; nothing makes you feel worse than back to back McDonalds / service station food, so I made the effort and bought myself an extremely overpriced salad (More expensive than Brendan’s Big Mac to his amusement.)
We arrived back in Leipzig and managed to grab a parking space immediately outside of the venue (bliss). We unloaded and received some food money from the venue and went out to grab ourselves a meal. We grabbed a basic Thai meal before returning to the venue to do some mingling and promo. Mid mingle; we met a legend.
This legend took the form of a 48 year old IT consultant and potential ex mafioso – (unsure on the full situation,) the mans mystique grew with every story that came out of his mouth; Mike. (Surname left out to protect his identity.) Mike spoke excellent English and chatted to us for most of the night. Me and Chris decided to cut both of our sets in half and alternate sets to create a faster paced night. At the start it was quiet but the room was nicely full, it was only a small venue. The audience were fun but respectful and loved every minute of both of our shows. I headlined this night and raised my standard dramatically, I genuinely believe I put on one of my best shows in recent memory at this night. Our sets were completely air-tight. I was over the moon with the crowds response. I sold a CD to and did a flaming Sambuca shot (that I felt behind my eyes) with a woman on the front row who was a freelance film-maker and we went to join Mike and Brendan on the drinking train.
Several shots and beers later and we were sat on a table with our new European friends ranting about everything from Brexit to love lives and back to Brexit again. Mike bought many rounds for us and we had such a laugh. Brendan kept pace with him and hit full blown fucked Brendan phase (basically he just gets really loud and ranty) but our European friends loved it. We headed next door to our room to crash for the night and passed out on the sofas. Me and Chris managed to land ourselves a couch, Brendan wasn’t so lucky and ended his night passed out across two office chairs cradling him like a semi naked, Yorkshire Tower Of London.
Right before we hit the hay we checked our guitar bags and found a €50 note hidden underneath my guitar. Brendan confirmed that a certain possible ex mafioso turned IT consultant had thrown this in discretely with deep compliments about our performance after our set and we turned in for the night after our highest profiting day of the tour so far.
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Joel's Side Of The Story 
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