Sunpower France/Italy tour 2011

Long time ago since I updated this. Thank God there's Mike who makes me write stuff down.



The basics of touring: you rent a van, you make sure you have some shows to play, you make sure you have enough Belgian beer to last 10 days and you go! The first 4 days your overestimate yourself and party like it's 1999. The 5th day you're sick, but will probably play the best show on your tour. The 6th day you start all over again! As thus sunpower tours again! Some days in France, some days in Italy. What happened?

Brest: After a 10 hour drive we arrived in a venue that seemed pretty huge. Awesome backstage, awesome people, lots of people showed up, We discovered some great melodic bands such as Speedball, Hoverboard and nine eleven. We were pretty tired at that moment, sitting in a van for more than 10 hours, but I guess we pulled it well:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xii4ez_sunpower-la-carene-brest-09-04-11_music

Soudan: After visiting the wonderful Brest shore and hearing we had a day off we decided to head for Soudan. Not the African Country, but some village in Bretagne. Our old Paris/Liege friend Arnaud lived there. He started an organic farmproject with some friends and organised shows there. We spent the day and night tasting homemade organic cider. Awesome!!

We just listened to madball before this.

Soudan part II: After hanging around at the farm we saw 6 or 7 people making a cow stable into a show venue and a kitchen into a bar. People were coming in. I personally was extremely siked for this show since we got to play with Ludrica, a non-Satanic-but-nevertheless extremely awesome black metal band. I was about to miss out their shows in Antwerp and on the roadburn fest, but was so siked to support them on this show in this... cow stable! The sunpowershow was... I don't know,... very evil I'd say! At least there was something dark and fucked up about our show. Anyway: show was great, Ludicra was awesome and the hangout ended at 5 am, nuff said!



St-Etienne: From the farm to the Irish Pub. We were supposed to play a show in L'assamoir and it seemed like a nice club/venue. Especially since we were going to see our friends from Lost Boys again! We met with "Thrash", the promotor, who will go in history as the most awkward and at the same time most awesome promotor we ever met! Why? We can't tell, but go to France and meet him! We saw the best Lost Boys show ever! I have no idea why they aren't playing more in Belgium, but they should! Headlining band that night was Simon Chainsaw. Never heard of them, but they had the former guitarplayer of Radio Birdman and they got us on a show in Lyon the next day. Nice!

Lyon: Ok, from the organic farm to the Irish pub to a boat... this tour gets more awesome every second! We weren't on the bill here, but got a last minute show. After some obligatory record buying we opened the night. Legend said we had the first circle pit ever in Lyon. It had 4 people and the rest of the "crowd" was looking kinda sad to the thing. But anyway... Some shows are awesome for the food and the hangout. Lost Boys were there, Wodka was spread and the Lunatic Society lyric: "Mashken, what are you doing man?" made sense to us. We slept in some sort of a legalised squat. Probably the cleanest squat we ever slept in.

Nice: Nice, the "Blankenberge" of France! Home of the old people and the rich people. Sketchy neighbour of Cannes and Monaco. Since Brest people were asking us why the hell we wanted to play here. Well, the promotor didn't show up, we played a show for 10 people but had fun anyway. There were some people from Nice cool enough to provide us food and to arrange the show, for which we are grateful. Better to play an empty show than to do nothing at all. Again: We had Fab from Thrashington DC who offered us a nice place to crash and an awesome hangout!

La Spezia: From the beau monde of Nice to the Trailerpark/Squat of La Spezia Italy. We were welcomed by the friendly faces of gypsies and punks who didn't know who the fuck we were. Nobody spoke french, nor English, but they were friendly enough to make us food anyway! Mash, in the meanwhile baptised "Chilly Willy Drumroadie", got a sunpowertattoo for a very good price and... well... we played a show there.

The first Sunpower tattoo is born

Firenze: After a long time on the road you know you want to eat at a good Restaurant. That's what we did in Firenze. Man, little did I know that good food could get you some sort of an orgasm! Amazing! Italy, home of the second best food in the world! After checking out the nice and clean city of Firenze we went to another squat. This one was huge and awesome. Our old friends from Coloss played there. But offcourse, this was the last day of the tour. We had an 18 hour drive so decided to call it an early night. I said goodbye to the sunpowerguys and went to my hotel in Firenze, since I was planning to stay some more time in Italy. I remember thinking: "wow, that was another rollercoaster ride to add on the list!"

Thank you: Sylvio, Tom, Mash, Kristof, all the people that fed us, gave us a place to sleep, all the people that promoted a show for us, Fab, Arnaud, Lost Boys, Thrash, Simon Chainsaw and tons of other people.

Things we learned on tour:

- When a Spanish chick says her name is "bear", you probably heard it wrong.
- Female Vampire is the best tourmovie ever!
- NOFX backstage report is quite essential too.
- Mash is a dragonslayer.
- We're getting too old for this, but we won't stop!