Euro-trip 2011
Festival season. That time of year where you play in the middle of a dirt field miles and miles from civilianization. You get to see your favorite artists on big stages and the workload is normally pretty light…
It all started just like any other overseas tour. Meet everyone at the airport, and hop on a plane to Europe. It was just another 7-hour flight to start another year of summer festivals. We all knew what we were in for, and frankly, we were ready for what we thought would be another dusty, dirty festival season. But, what was to come over the next 4 weeks was nothing any of us could have ever predicted.
June 9th: We arrived in Switzerland a day before the first festival to get rested up and adjusted to the time change. No problem, get to the hotel, check in and pass out. My kind of day.
June 10th: We’re greeted by the bus in the early morning. It’s a bus from a company we’ve never heard of, and it looks like it’s seen better days. From day one, it is dubbed “The Honeymooner.” But, at least we have a bus, and it’ll get us from point A to point B. We settle in and prepare for our first festival of the season.
It’s a festival in the Swiss Alps. Absolutely beautiful scenery, but one minor issue: All of the other bands on this show were metal. We stuck out like a sore thumb. Come set time, nobody cared about ATL at all. They stood there and watched. Oh well, the show went flawlessly, and we were off to a good start. Well, kind of…
Come end of our set, we were packing up and pushing our gear to the bus trailer for the first time(all of our gear was shipped straight to the festival). We push everything over and start to notice a small problem. We have a 6x9 trailer, which is not a big trailer by any means. We have a lot of gear, and I mean A LOT. There was no way this was all going to fit into this little trailer. So, we begin packing, and packing. The trailer is packed top to bottom, front to back, and there’s still about 10 things that need to go into the trailer. But, it’s full. You couldn’t get another piece of gear in there if you wanted to. So, where does the extra gear go? The bus bays are full with luggage, so that’s not an option. Well, how about the downstairs lounge on the bus? Yep. That’ll have to do. So, our bottom lounge becomes the “Garage” of the bus with extra gear and merch. Oh well, it is what is it, and we’ll hopefully have a new trailer soon.
June 11th: Venice, Italy. A rainy morning gives way to a beautiful sunny day. 60,000 were people in attendance for this festival. Awesome, right? Negative. Of the 60,000 people in attendance, 90% of them were there for one reason only, the headliner, Vasco Rossi. The crowd was chanting for him all day, while other bands were on stage, showing no respect for them. During our set it was an uphill battle to win the crowd over, but I think Alex won the respect of quite a few that day. Mission accomplished, at least a little anyway. ATL was the only band that didn’t get bottles and stones thrown at them that day, so I think we made out ok.
Our schedule was very laid back this tour: 1-2 days on, and then a day or 2 off. 22 shows over 31 days, could be worse! Things were going smoothly, and we really had no complaints. The trailer was a small issue, but they were working on it. We were getting by with this setup and the shows were all going off without a hitch.
June 18th: Germany, Southside Festival. I wake up at noon and realize something is wrong. We’re still driving. We’re supposed to play in just over 2 hours. Apparently there was a huge crash on the highway overnight and it slowed us down a lot. We were hauling ass to get to the festival and make it in time for our set. We pulled up at 2pm. It was crunch time. We had to unload our trailer and set up everything in 45 minutes. We were running around frantically trying to get on stage and set up as quick as possible. We made it just 3 minutes late. I was blown away that we were able to get up and running so quickly, but we did it and had a solid show. If that was the worst thing that happened on this trip, I think we could all deal.
June 24th: The start of what seemed to be another normal day, or so I thought. I woke up around noon to the sounds of our bus engine stalling out on the highway. We pull into a truck stop and our bus driver starts to fix the problem. Our fuel pump on the engine had a busted washer and it was allowing too much air into the engine. No problem he said, it’s an easy fix. 30 minutes later we’re ready to hit the road again. Everyone climbs on board and we hit the highway again. 3 minutes later, the bus goes dead again in the middle of the highway. We’re sitting dead in the middle of the road, not really a good place to get stuck. The bus starts again, and we make it to another gas station at the next exit. The fuel pump is busted, and we need a new one. The bus is dead in the water. We’re 3 hours outside of Madrid, Spain in the middle of nowhere.
It’s approaching 3pm, and we play at 7pm. It’s not looking good at all. Not to mention, we have 2 very long drives coming up over the next 3 days. It’s not really a good time for the bus to break down. We finally get word that the festival is sending us a van and trailer to take us, and our gear to the festival. Cool, it looks like this might happen. 4pm rolls around and the van and trailer arrives. We are all in disbelief when we see what they sent. The trailer is tiny. I forget who said it, but it summed up the trailer perfectly: “They sent a dog kennel sized trailer.”
There was no way we were going to get half of our gear into it. So, we cut down to the bare essentials. We absolutely needed our monitor board, in ear rack and a few guitars to do the show. We could borrow drums and guitar amps to get the show done. We get the in ear rack in the trailer, and next is the monitor board. It’s too wide to fit in the trailer. There was no way we could fit it. That was it. We were screwed. It’s 4:30pm, we have no way to get our gear to the festival and we’re supposed to be on stage in 2.5 hours. We managed to work it out with the festival to play later in the night and play acoustic so everyone still got to see ATL play. It was far from ideal, but it was better than nothing. We all hop in a van, and begin our journey to the festival.
We arrive around 7:30pm, and get out to stretch out legs. It’s been a long day already and I just want to eat something. I head off to catering and grab a meal. We hit the stage at midnight and have a great acoustic show. It was a fun show, and it was cool to hear the songs acoustic.
After the show, we head off to the hotel with no idea what’s going to happen over the next 48 hours. We were supposed to drive from Madrid to Luxemburg the following day(20 hour drive), but because the bus was dead, we had no idea what was going to happen. There was no way the bus was going to make it to the show, and that means we had no gear to do the show.
June 25th: Day off. The band decided that flying was the only way they would make it to Luxemburg. They would fly in, play acoustic and then fly to Norway and meet us there. So, they took off midday and the crew stayed behind waiting for the bus to get fixed.
Finally we got word that the bus was going to be fixed and up and running by mid day, and we’d drive straight to Norway. Due to the driving laws in Europe, we’d have to drive 18 hours, take an 11-hour break and then drive another 18 hours finally arriving in Norway. We had 2 days to get there, so it worked out perfectly. We hit the road and started the first leg of our 2 day trip.
10 minutes into our trip we hit our first snag. The bus makes a wrong turn into an underground public transit system. The bus is as tall as the tunnel and as wide as the tunnel. We inch our way into the tunnel and start knocking things off the ceiling. We break a sprinkler valve open and water starts jetting out of the ceiling. The police stop us in the middle of the tunnel and we’re completely blocking traffic. We have completely shut down this bus station. People are taking pictures, staring and laughing. I could see the news headlines now… After some talks with the local police, they start to guide us out of the tunnel. We have to carefully avoid each sprinkler head, as we don’t want to set off any more alarms. The only reason we got out of there without paying any fines was because the sign at the entrance said “4 meters max height,” and we were just under that. So, 1 hour later, we are finally able to hit the road and begin our journey.
June 26th: We arrived in Disneyland, France for our 11-hour break. This somehow ended up being a “convenient” place to stop, but I think it was planned. Regardless, it was a good area to rest. We booked a hotel room on the phone and walked over to it. We ended up in the Wild West. Our hotel was a Wild West theme. Kind of cool I thought, except for one small detail: the hotel had no air conditioning. Oh, and the hotel room had bunk beds. Yeah, this was a family resort. Whatever, we made due and rested up. 9pm rolls around, and it’s time to hit the road again.
June 27th: I wake up and the bus is still in motion. No problem, I check in and it looks like our arrival time in Norway is 5pm. Not too bad. I’d spend the day watching movies and relaxing. As I’m standing in the back lounge talking to the guys, I hear a loud boom followed by smoke pouring out of the bus. We pull over and jump out of the bus. Our driver runs around and opens the engine bay. Nothing is on fire, which is good. But, the compressor for the air conditioner blew up. A pipe burst which shot coolant all over our luggage(awesome) and the compressor is seized up. There goes the A/C… At least we’re headed up into northern Europe, so it won’t be as hot.
5pm rolls around and we’re running a little behind. Our arrival is looking to be around midnight or so. Not the end of the world, I can deal. Night falls and we’re still driving along. Everything is running as smoothly as it can at this point. We arrive at a ferry dock. Wait a minute, we weren’t supposed to take a ferry… The GPS took us the wrong way. It wanted us to take the ferry and continue on. Well, the last ferry for the night had already left. What does this mean? Another 5 hours added to the trip because now we have to drive all the way around this body of water. Looks like we’re sleeping on the bus again.
June 28th: I wake up and the bus has stopped. We made it, 50 hours later. We’re in Norway. Finally, I can get off the bus and regain a slight sense of normalcy. This nightmare is over, for now.
To be continued…
