We spent the next few days in Zweibrucken; a small city just inside the border between Germany and Luxembourg in Tsaarland. We were there to play a house party show for Mari, a mutual friend of Chris on Monday but arrived the day before as Mari very kindly let us stay a few days to refresh. We arrived, unpacked and washed our clothes and got acquainted with her two dogs and three cats. I fell in love with Katie, (one of the dogs; she was tiny and adorable and always craving attention.) The first night Mari showed us ‘The R2D2’ which was pretty much exactly what it said on the tin. It was a giant R2D2 observatory positioned on the top of a hill by the university campus overlooking the valley which the city lay in. Me and Chris had some jokey photos with Brendan and watched the sun go down then headed back for a few drinks. Mari had very kindly made a roast meal which was delicious and extremely welcomed after two weeks of basically not eating properly. We were very well looked after in our time here which helped sooth the pedal board grief and refreshed our souls (as Brendan put it) after weeks out on the road.
The first night at Maris was a chilled one, we were all busy catching up on admin. I reached out to the internet to try and raise some funds to replace my stolen pedal board. People were incredibly generous which I cannot thank people for enough. Merch sales and donations have basically cut the cost of replacements down by a third, which is phenomenal so thank you so much if you donated or grabbed a CD or shirt.
On our second day in Zweibrucken we went to the shops and grabbed some snacks to tide ourselves over for the final few days of the tour, Brendan bought a phenomenal amount of biscuits and Chris grabbed himself some fruit with the best intentions but sadly this was destined to be sat in a warm car for the best part of five days. Nice. We had a quick walk around the city itself, saw the town hall, checked out a few music shops and had some photos taken. We got chatting to an American who had moved over to Germany and opened up a hotdog stall and ran it with his friend who was studying in Zweibrucken but could only speak English. We loved the opportunity to speak to someone who spoke English as a first language for the first time in a few weeks.
We headed back to Maris and walked the dogs, I worked on some songs. I’m good at writing. I don’t get it when songwriters talk about having writers block, or say they’ve been writing loads but only got one new tune. I’ve written probably in the realm of 200 songs. I only play 25 of them live and unveil a few to the wide world, but writing is my favourite part of music. I try to be disciplined with it and have a constant stream of new music coming through.
All too soon guests started to arrive for the show that night. Mari had prepped some finger food and got some beers ready. The room filled up nicely and before long we had a seriously cute show on our hands.
The show was great, we told jokes and played our songs to a respectful audience. It was a touch chaotic as there were kids and dogs running around while we were playing but it was fine. A great show. We shifted a couple of CDs and had a great laugh. It was our first un-amplified gig of the tour so it felt very au-naturale. There was no hiding behind anything so it was nice to focus on the intricacies of performing. A kid ran in-front of Chris while he was playing so Chris engaged with him and said in German “Hello, whats your name?” and the child replied in perfect English, “Hello, my name is Jan, I am 5 years old.” Leaving us all feeling incredible embarrassed about our lack of ability to speak German.
The party cleared and we stayed up late and drank. Me and Chris stayed up very late drinking. Things got DEEP and we started playing each other songs that we thought were the best songs ever written. We both got emotional listening to certain tunes then went back to the booze and before we knew it we were up at 4am doing impressions of people we’d both worked with in the past. Chris did a truly exceptional impression of the producer that we both use. We hit the hay but not before Chris had impersonated everyone under the sun to mine and Brendans great amusement. It was a great, great night. We had all been in a car together for the last few weeks, so it was nice to have a moment where we just enjoyed each others company rather than worrying about where we needed to be or soundcheck or eating. This was one of my favourite moments of the tour.
The next day we were driving north for a show in Dortmund, then driving through the night after the show to play in Paris. It was an incredibly long day, we really should have got to sleep early and rested up. We crashed out at 5am.
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