Saturday 21 October 2017

Buena Vista Sofa Club…three in a row for Estonia…amazing shows…thank you!

NOT too much panic this morning…I get some emails and admin done as well as the last minute promo for tonight’s show in Rakvere out the way before we pack our bags.

We take everything downstairs when we go for a late (10.30am) breakfast then check out and grab a taxi to take us to the bus station.

I nip onto a shopping centre to get some insoles for the boots I wear while playing…my feet have been killing me the last few days and they might help cushion the impact while I’m stomping!

I’m back just in time to load the gear onto the coach and we’re off…two-and-a-quarter hours to Rakvere and the coach is less fancy and more cramped than yesterday’s luxury coach. Doesn’t stop me sleeping most of the way though!

Club owner and promoter Eduard and his soundman Ants meet us and we go straight to Buena Vista Sofa Club. Its another great venue with a first class sound system. We have a coffee, set up and soundcheck…then Eduard takes us on a quick tour of the town and on to our hotel. It’s 4pm…we’re being fed in half an hour and a car will pick us up at 8.30pm.

We settle in then go downstairs to the restaurant where we have a couple of monster-sized beers and a nice meal. We’re just finished when Eduard appears. There seems to be some problem to do with accommodation…we;re not sure what, exactly, but its something to do with some Russians wanting to stay somewhere else…so he’s wondering if he can move us.

That’s OK by us, so we get our bags and are driven to accommodation at the theatre which is as good – if not better – than the original place.

I had an urgent message for help form a musician whose two websites I built and maintain….she’d in New Zealand on tour and thinks she’s had her email hacked. I advise her its more likely that her address has been used as a reply address by spammers – a fairly common thing these days…a bit of a pain, hut it usually passes and doesn’t pose any security/privacy threat. But she’s binned her email and started  a new one which has implications for both her websites’ contact details/contact forms etc. I reconfigure everything and let her know some other things that may be affected by the email change….

There’s time to chill for a while before driver arrives to take us to the club. Doors open at 9pm.

We’ve just had a big meal..and there’s more food and drink backstage!

Backstage there’s enough food for an army…especially considering we’ve not long had a meal. Beer aplenty, some weird-ass Estonian liquor from soundman Ants…

I hit the stage at 10pm sharp for the first of two 45-minute sets…there’s some folks we know in the crowd and the place goes crazy. I manage to speak to as many folks as possible at the break then hit the stage again. We have a fantastic night and a lot of fun. This has been the best Estonia trip ever…even if it’s  2am and we have to be up at 6am for a bus to Tallinn, then on to Latvia. Hell yeah \../