Raggalution checking in again, with the final Raggablog of our 2016 European tour! In the last Raggablog post we had just played our shows in Holland and were headed for Chemnitz. Since then we played 4 shows, met many awesome people, and gotten back home safely. Now everyone else is resting and I have to write this blog. What bullshit 😀
Just kidding, I love this blog… now on to the 4 shows:
Chemnitz – Subway to Peter
Our room in Chemnitz. Lots of bands have called this place home for a night.
We were fools and forgot to take pictures in Subway to Peter, where we played in Chemnitz. The bar isn’t really built for concerts (although they have them all the time). The room where we played is built in a way that most people have to stand on the other side of a doorway to listen to the show. Of all the shows on this tour, this is the only one where we didn’t play all that well. I’m not saying we played poorly, but we were getting a little tired at this point, and it showed. We hold ourselves to high standards when it comes to playing. Luckily our audiences don’t expect as much from us, and the people of Chemnitz were eager to dance along and reassured us that we still played great. It was nice meeting some East German people, they are quite different than West Germans.
Wroclaw – Alive club
Small crowd, but they’re loving it
Our first time in Poland! We played at a very nice club in Wroclaw, and had a very nice time, but were again plagued by very low attendance at our show. We don’t rate our gigs according to how many people show up, but by how many of those people are dancing at the end. Therefore, the show in Wroclaw was awesome 😀
New friends
After the gig we hung out with two Spanish girls and a slightly older French dude deep into the night, until the bar closed. It was a good time. Shoutout to both Marias and the French dude, whose name I never really found out 😀
Czerwionka – Stara Piwnica
High 70 😀
Moving away from big cities, we found ourselves in a small club in the basement of Czerwionka’s centre of culture. We got there really early, so we spent a lot of time hanging out with the crew of Stara Piwnica. They are awesome dudes, and we had the honour of having our sound done by (and drinking a few beers with) the sound engineer of Tabu, a major Polish reggae band. After the show we didn’t stay there as long as usual, because we had to drive a while (30min) to get to our sleeping place for the night. When we got there the guy who organised our shows in Poland, Robert, and his friends were waiting for us, to have a little afterparty. They were already quite drunk, and we were too. We had a jam session with drums, two bass guitars, and the occasional trumpet solo. There were drinks, sausages, and an electric room heater used as a grill. I talked to a guy in Polish for about half an hour. We understood each other just fine 😀
Tychy – Kloster Pub
Luka of Arabia making tea
The next day we had the luxury of just relaxing all day long. I didn’t leave my sleeping bag until it was time to make lunch, around 3pm. The other guys were slightly more active, but not much.
We’d been playing for really small crowds all tour, but Robert had done a lot of promoting for the gig in Kloster Pub, and the venue itself is a very cool one. When we saw the place we knew that we were in for an awesome finish to our tour.
Our roadie Jagoda’s girlfriend lives pretty close to Tychy, so she brought a few friends to the concert. This is important, because those guys were ready to dance from the start, and their energy got everyone else dancing as well. It was a really really good show, the kind you only get a few times per year. It was a cathartic experience. Maximum powa all the way through. Towards the end of the set I was absolutely losing my shit, like Jah spirit was possessing my body. I looked across the stage and saw Jene losing his shit as well. Now we have no more shit.
Unloading our van for the last time
So that’s basically it for our tour. After the show we hung out at Kloster Pub for a while, then hit the road for Slovenia. We got back today (Sunday) around noon.
It’s been an awesome tour, we met many amazing people, and we’re playing tighter than a 14 year-old’s vagina. Just the kind of spirit we need to finally start recording our second album, which should happen sometime later this month.
Today we rest, for tomorrow has new wonders in store for us… I hope to see you all at our grand finale at Dub Lab tomorrow, 4.4.2016. Bless!
Dub Lab FB event
P.S. I will add some more pictures of our shows in a day or two, once I get them from the photographers 🙂 They will also be posted to our FB page
