We are back! We played six shows in seven days in three countries. It's always fun to play Balkans.
I had a tough time with booking this one, although it was only a week long. It was supposed to happen in April, but we got a better offer for a show in Skopje, as well as a Bulgarian show was cancelled. So we postponed it for May. And it still didn't go very smooth. A week before the tour I got a mail from our Bulgarian bookie that one show in Bulgaria is off and that it would be wiser to cancel the tour and come back some other time. But I couldn't agree with this because I already booked five other shows. So we decided we're going, no matter what. And at the last moment we got booked for that last date, so everything was in order.
The tour started in Novi Sad, Serbia. I keep coming back to this club called CK13 (black house 13), because they are developing sustainable and horizontal forms of organization, working against hierarchies, focused on solidarity and self-organization. They are more or less anarchist, vegans and feminist. Nevertheless, for some reason, the city doesn't respond to their work, so there is not much people at the shows. This time was no exception. But we played with really cool two bands, Ensh and Sergio Lounge from Belgrade.
Check them out. Ensh is kind of an electro popish music with really great live performance, while Sergio Lounge is a crazy guy with a keyboard on which he plays lounge music (super fun!).
That evening we met up with our friend Uroš from Belgrade who was doing the sound on the tour. Btw, Uroš has an awesome surf-punk band Threesome.
Anyway, the next day, we left for Skopje. After 15 minutes of driving, we heard a rattle from underneath and a little lamp turned on on the dashboard. Shit. Very shit. We pulled over and noticed some kind of a cable got detached and was bumping on the road as we were driving. We duct-taped it (everything can be fixed with a little bit of duct-tape) and went to the first gas station. There we called the rent-a-car-guy and photoed the incident. Fortunately, our friend Uroš, a self-taught engineer basically, managed to screw the cable back to where it fell off. And a little bit of duct-tape and we're good to go. We reached Skopje pretty fast (Uroš is also driving really fast).
They got an amazing club in Skopje, a Youth Cultural Centre, which means they are funded by the state, unlike basically any club in Croatia. And they have a big club, several venues inside, a bar, a restaurant, a planetarium (!!!) and a hostel. It's awesome because you don't have to go anywhere. Everything's there.
We were playing at a feminist festival "Prvo pa žensko". The name of the festival is a play on words with the old proverb in our region - "Prvo pa muško", which is referring to the first child born into a family and that it is male, which was of course really important back then. So this festival changed male to female, the first baby is a girl. Actually we were the only band playing at the festival which didn't have a girl in the band hihihih. I felt flattered.
We did the soundcheck and were ready for a great show, a lot of people was supposed to come. Unfortunately, there was rain and the show was rescheduled for Sunday evening inside the premises. Too bad, but it was still really good. We had a really great time in Skopje and the people loved our show.
(photo by Samir Ljuma)
On Monday we went to Bulgaria - Plovdiv, as I was told, the oldest settlement in Europe. We played here once with our old band and it was awesome. This time, it was a last-minute show with not much promotion, so I was grateful that we are even playing. Our friend Chongi, who is the best Bulgarian skier (I shit you not), invited us to play with his band.
And it was spectacular. It was amazing, the club was small, but it was packed (on a Monday, the worst day for touring), and the crowd loved us. Can't wait to go back when we have our album out. This is the last song of the show, our new unfinished song.
The next day we hung out with Chongi and his girlfriend Magi. We ate falafel for 80 cents. That's basically free. I bought four in two days hehe. And this is our friend Chongi, the legend.
The next day was the weirdest show we had. It was in Sofia, venue called Majmunarnik (Majmun means 'monkey'). It was raining and we were following our GPS. As our bassist Groba put it - "Navigate or die".
We came to what seemed like a middle of nowhere, in the centre of a huge park next to the Levski stadium. It's more or less the central part of the town. Anyway, when we found the venue, we were bedazzled. It was huge, like for five thousand people or more, with a really big stage. And it was Tuesday, with light rain falling. Not a good omen for the show.
But the weather got better and some people showed up. Of course, it was huge so you have a feeling of emptiness in front of you, but I think we delivered and the people enjoyed the show. And we got really taken care of by our friend Angel from Plovdiv. If you're reading this, big hug to you!
There was an anecdotal situation later on. We bought some beer and sat close to our hostel. On the street we noticed a dead rat. He looked like he was sleeping. Poisioned probably. And a couple of minutes later, a stray dog showed up and lay himself a couple of metres next to the rat. I couldn't help but think, this is Bulgaria. A dead rat and a dog on the street. Whatever that means.
The next day we were going back to Serbia, to the city of Niš.
We were playing in a nice place called 'Feedback' with an awesome band 'Igralom'. They are maybe my favourite band in the region currently.
The show was great, a lot of people came, although I broke two strings in a single song, and we had to discard a song from the setlist because of that, so it all felt a bit unfinished. But the party afterwards was nice, a lot of herbal medicine and good rakija.
The next day, things started poorly, that was the last day of the tour. We couldn't start the car. And we didn't have the jumper cable, so we asked around, but no one had them. It lasted for at least an hour till we found someone. And it was a funny older guy who has speaking with an incredible Bulgarian-Serbian accent. I never heard someone speaking like that, it was hillarious. But we owe him big time, thousand carma points for him.
We left for Kragujevac, the last show of the tour. I must say it was a bit anticlimactic, that evening. Although our host was very nice, there was very few people at the show, so it wasn't the euphoric ending you'd like. But it was ok. There were some people who really enjoyed the show. Afterwards, we slept in a nice hotel and had a nice breakfast the next day. Uroš drove like mad again (which is normal for him) to Belgrade, we left him off and went back to Zagreb.
All is well that ends well, right? Well, yeah. The story doesn't end here. I went back to return the rented car. It turned out someone scratched our right door real bad, and we didn't notice it. If we had, we could have filed a report and the insurance would cover it. But we didn't. This little incident cost us one fourth of the money we made on tour. I got home in a pretty bad shape. But this last part shouldn't overshadow all that was great. And the tour was really great. The shows were great, people loved us, the spirit of our little expedition was also high, we had tons of laugh, I felt as if my face was melting at one point. All in all, successful tour. I like playing Balkans more than I like playing western countries (Austria, Germany, Netherlands...). The people our more open, warmer, reacting immediately. And it fuels your show. The more to the east you get, it's more fun.
Hope you enjoyed this text, we are having a couple of weeks off then heading to Vienna. Our album should be done by that time, as well as the artwork. I'll keep you posted. See you!
https://seine.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/seine_vz
https://www.facebook.com/SeineVz/
Unbelievable that your post attract only 23 views till today. Something is terrible wrong with Steemit. Marina is your girlfriend?
Dunno man.
Nope, she's my wife :)
Još bolje :)
Nice! I always wanted to go to the Balkans. Safe travels
Thats sounds like a pretty great tour, we also just came back from tour and we are touring Europe for the first time next year, who was the booking agent you used?
hey man, contact me on steemitchat!
Cool will do.
Thats pretty cool!
sounds like a grueling schedule to do several countries in a week. I guess when you're doing what you love it doesn't feel that way.
Looks like the tour was a great success!! Congrats man!
Touring with a rock band as their photographer is not all glam: here I wash my undies in a sink!