Friday, November 25, 2016

SA:On the Road: The 9th Hour World Tour: North-America 2016 part 1

Heading out again !!

Allrighty then, we’ve been out for 3 weeks now and I’ve been too lazy to jot down some lines so let’s see what I can remember:

On the 4th of November we did the usual drill: Flying to Helsinki, having some beers and sleeping at the Aiport Hilton in order to catch the morning flight towards the USA.
This time around we managed to check in all our gear and stuff in the evening so the morning was a lot easier than usual. We flew to Charlotte via London, UK so that took awhile. The travel was mainly uneventful with the usual crap of watching movies and trying to sleep as much as possible. Well upon arrival we went to watch Ghost perform at a club nearby in order to try to stay awake as long as possible and avoid the jetlag or at least minimize it. We did stay up but it didn’t really help, got up early in the morning and had breakfast. The next day we had totally off, since Hillary Clinton “stole” our venue forcing us to cancel the show. That was a major bummer. On the 7th of November we played our first show in Silver Springs….and we were officially on our way. A couple of the first shows on this tour were combined with the Dark Tranquillity one so there was a lot of bands on those nights. On the 8th we played in Clifton Park and some people showed up even though I think most were at home following the Presidential Election. We did also check it  out, interesting times I must say. From there on it’s been the basic stuff, playing shows, trying to entertain ourselves during off-days and shopping at Wallmart. Some of us have been watching a lot of hockey since back home it’s on in the middle of the night. So far we’ve played the following shows:

November:
7th, Silver Springs, USA
8th, Clifton Park, USA
9th, Philadelphia, USA
11th, New Jersey, USA
12th, Hartford, USA
13th, Montreal, Canada
14th, Ottawa, Canada
16th, Kitchener, Canada
17th, Columbus, USA
18th, Westland, USA
19th, Pittsburgh, USA
21th, Milwaukee, USA
22th, Minneapolis, USA
24th, Regina, Canada

Tonight we’re in Calgary and tomorrow in Edmonton. So far it’s been going good, somehow the airport people managed to break the last 3 keys of my Kronos so I had to do some programming to get around that since so far we hadn’t have the time or energy to open up the damn thing with Tero and check if we can fix the problem. Apart from that our gear is mostly working so no big concerns here. I’m thinking that I could sell one of my keytars during these last shows…not sure though, whadda think ?

We’ve been getting to know our support bands a bit as well, mostly hanging out with our Finnish friends from Omnium Gatherum…a great bunch with the same sense of humor as we have.

Anyways, the Jets-Predators will be on in a few minutes so I’ll have to check that out. I drop some more lines when I get around to it…as well as pics at some point.

cheers & see you at the shows !!

Hank 

Thursday, November 3, 2016

SA:On the Road: The 9th Hour World Tour: Pics from Europe 2016


Here are some random pics from the European Tour 2016, enjoy:



Setting up the first show in Norway....


...checking the smoke...


...and playing in front of a Sold Out crowd !!


Backstage, somewhere...I don't even know why we took this pic ;-)


Our home for this tour !! Same bus as we had on the Ecliptica over Europe tour...


Healthy snacks backstage.


A nice setup for the dinner somewhere in Sweden. Good food as well.


Elias rockin' out backstage !


Smoking booth backstage in Tilburg.


...same place...


...and we even got a cake to celebrate the Sold Out show !!


Another backstage in Holland, the view from the balcony.


Hanging out with our friend Kristian, who took some awesome pics
from our shows, once again.


This is how I connect my keyboards, or actually Tero does since I'm not allowed
to mess with the system.


Outside of the backstage in Mannheim, cool wall !


Merchbooth pic 1


Merchboot pic 2 , don't ask where these were since I have no clue.


Took a pic from the Eiffel Tower during my off-day in Paris...


...found this painting in a Museum...


...fooled around outside...


....and another pic from the Tower ;-)


Pekka being foggy, and blurry as well...


The setlist in the beginning of the tour, sorry if I spoiled it for someone.


Fooling around on the ship on our way to London...


The cliffs of Dover, I suppose...



....more posing...


...and a nice night-shot to end these pics.

As usual I've been quite lazy taking pics so these are just random shots from here and there. Maybe I get a bit more active on the North-American Tour....but probably not. See you in a bit !!

cheers,
Henkka