Part two of week two of the US/Canadian tour ...with an European bonus

The first part of the Farewell tour is over. We've been back in Sweden and Finland for a couple of days, catching up with the normal life and getting rid of the last traces of the jetlag. We are obviously recharging our collective batteries for next weekend when we start the European festival season for real with Hellfest in France and Metaltown in Sweden. But enough about the future now, and back to the US...

Where were we? Oh yes, last time we were in Portland, Oregon. We left the Northwest and our driver Jeff and his dog and took a short flight down to Oakland, California where we were met by our next driver, Jeremy, who had a mohawk and the skinniest legs I have ever seen. Apart from being a solid driver with a squeeky van, Jeremy doubled as our merchguy for the California dates. In Oakland our tour manager Greg had gotten us a really nice hotel down by the water just a few minutes from the Metro venue. This magnificent setting was only slightly disturbed by a loud honking train that passed through the city just a few yards away every ten minutes.


Setting up at the Metro in Oakland.

Anyway, at the Metro we were joined by our next main support band, Landmine Marathon, who generously shared their backline with us. The venue was a huge warehouse and apparently a little bit large for us this evening. The show was good, but not one of the best on the tour. In the crowd was a girl from Örebro who lives in Oakland now, which was quite odd but obviously fun.

The following day we had a monstrous 7-8 hour drive along the coast to reach Ventura. By this time in the tour we've gotten quite accustomed to long drives and particularly to sleep through them in some odd and inconvenient position. I don't remember much of the drive apart from a really nice stop at Refugio State Beach. Very nice and definitively something else that a damp venue in some slightly seedy part of a town.


A drummer at a beach. Inge krångel.

Well in Ventura we were somewhat stunned by Billy O's which was nothing else but a bar with barely any room for people and the smallest stage ever. No back room or anything so the bands had to assemble their gear on the sidewalk OUTSIDE... Why on Earth were we booked at this place? In the end the actual show turned out to be one of my personal favorites on the tour - small and very intimate, but most of all fun as hell! To say the least - the US tour took us to all kinds of venues.


Intimate show at Billy O's. Hey, that rhymed!

After the show we drove down to Long Beach, Los Angeles and stayed at the same hotel for two nights with a show at The Black Castle between the nights. Now, I don't know how many people told us to be very careful at The Black Castle... "It's a scary neighborhood - don't bring any valuables..." That sure made us paranoid to say the least. I left everything but a few dollars at the hotel room and hoped for the best but expected the worst. But the neighborhood wasn't particularly scary. Nothing happened and we could do the final show in California without any problem. In fact, the scariest thing that happened was when I accidentally dropped one of my hi-hat cymbals so it ended up UNDER the stage, impossible to reach by hand. In the end I had to crawl in some nasty shit and use a two-by-four to reach it. Yuk!

On this final show we were joined by the legendary Nausea which was really cool and our show was good. Jon barfed two times on stage without missing a note, a rare talent indeed. By that our time with Landmine Marathon and Jeremy was over and we thank them a lot for their help.

One early domestic flight later and we were in Texas and were met by yet another driver, this time the lovely Maggie. Texas was as expected hot but fortunately the hotel was nice and cool and the Red 7 venue was just a few steps away. Little things like this makes touring a lot easier. But the heat cooled off in time for our gig and the stage was covered in fans (the mechanical ones, that is...) so Maryland Deathfest remains the hottest show on the tour! Chaos in Tejas became something of a reunion as our merchguy from the first week, Jamie, returned, but this time as a stage manager, and Massgrave also played and after the show the guys from Dropdead had arrived. Nice to see some familiar faces again. Massgrave's singers Lenny and Woody joined us on stage and did "I see lies" by themselves leaving Keijo free to do some crowd surfing and during "Inhale/Exhale" their drummer Hesher came up and helped out with the vocals. A good ending to an exceptionally good US/Canadian tour!

A bunch of thank you's are in order, so first and foremost thank you Greg and John who were with us during the entire run as tour manager and sound guy, and thanks Jamie for your work and the improvised tour of Philadelphia, and thanks Erik, Jeff, Jeremy and Maggie for your driving skills, and thank you Brutal Truth, Dropdead, Massgrave, Black Breath, Landmine Marathon and Nausea and all you other bands that shared the stages with us. We love you all and will miss you!

...but the trip didn't end there. We had one stop left before we got home. After a hellish day of traveling - a domestic flight to Washington, and then a long continental flight to Amsterdam we got to Nijmegen, Holland at 10:30 in the morning (after loosing half a day in timezones) and tried to gather some strength for the first of many European festival shows. The show at FortaRock was scheduled at 3 in the afternoon and four and a half hours earlier none of us were in a particularly good condition to play some grind for the Dutch people, but it was just a matter of getting some rest, some food and bring forth the last drop of energy. One refreshing factor was that we were joined by our all Finnish crew Janne, Hannes and Antti, who were all nice to see again. The actual show was large in a packed tent but not 100% on the Nasum performance scale due to some mishaps and a terrible stage sound.


Dressing room door at FortaRock.

Shortly after the show we packed up our stuff and went back to the Amsterdam airport and traveled home. All in all we spent only half of a day in Holland. Weird.

That's it - the first part of the tour. 16 shows done and still many more to come... Stay tuned for more postings in this blog...

One final note though: I'm not lying when I say that there obviously has been some worries in the band before the tour started. Have we made the right choice, will people accept Nasum 2012? Well, judging from the reception so far, people seems to like us and one comment on Facebook really nailed it: "It was a good call to do the tour". Spot on!