After the Whirlwind Tour Comes Whirlwind Remembrances
   
Orange Blossom Special (May 10)
Saturday: Carsten picks us up in D-dorf. Case of Krombacher in the van. Smooth sailing to Beverungen. Check into the Stadt Bremen. Share beers in the hotel garden with crazy guys on their way to drink whiskey and play poker at 2 in the afternoon. Walk over to Grüner Weg 25, past the Hotel Boker, where we stayed on our first Euro tour in 1999. Make it to Glitterhouse and see so many old friends. Make some new ones too! No rain to be seen! No mud, either. Hang out with the GC boys "backstage." Have dinner with David and Super Garrett. Hang out with the f’ing awesome G’house folks. Take a solo walkabout tour of the campground near the festival. Hundreds of tents. Hundreds of nice people. Say hello to a horse. Smile at the sun. Walk around some more. Hello Norbert. Hello Yannick. Watch the bands. Hang out with the bands. Make fast friends with Hyacinth House and Rykarda Parasol and the Tower Ravens. Drink Jäger with band named Cuba, Missouri. Explain to them that I grew up near St. Louis, Missouri, and have actually been to Cuba, Missouri. Watch Michael J. Sheehy onstage as the night fades to black. Drink the first absinth shot. Take a walk along the river with Karin and Dmitri to the Stadt Krug to drink with the folks from Langenau. Stumble to Stadt Bremen.

Orange Blossom Special (May 11)
Sunday: Sleep in very late. Put on stage getup and get ass over to Glitterhouse. The rocking has already commenced. Mary Epworth Jubilee Amazing. Her horn guys (Rainer and Karsten) will play with us—the Suessmilch Horns. Hang out with Hunt, Moder, Gregor (Captain Coma), and Pere from the Norway band Violent Years. Hear tales of Leach being the Last Man Standing the night before from the band Dexter Jones Circus Orchestra. Atta boy! Call my mom for Mother’s Day. Call my wife for Mother’s Day. Sit in the sun. Again no rain. No mud! Amazing! Hang out in the garden and share beers with friends. Practice in the basement with Suessmilch Horns on the songs they will play during our set: Forgiven for an Hour or Two, Chevy Nova, and Phyllis. Sounds great! They got charts! Nervous, nervous, nervous. But Pere keeps us laughing by drinking, hitting his head on ceiling, and hugging everyone in sight. Set is amazing. Can’t see the end of the crowd. Music. Lights. Beer. Whiskey. Applause. Craziness. Confetti. Confetti. Encore. Reinhard, Rembert, Carsten. Rykarda Parasol and Tower Raven Wymond join in on drums. Timesbold close the night. Flunkyball match in the courtyard featuring Hunt, Leach, and Moder. Stumble to Stadt Bremen at 2 a.m. Rest of crew goes to Stadt Krug after party until 6 a.m. Wasty Girl gets her new name from Leach.

Roding (May 12)
Monday: Sight of the 6 a.m. revelers not pretty at breakfast. On the road to Roding at 10 a.m. Feel like hell. But must keep promise to self to have a good time. Eek out a smile between bites of eggs and sausage. Get in van. I sit in front. Everyone else tries to sleep. The tour manager Carsten says, "Why do I do this?" Everybody laughs. Head to Roding and the club Grammophon. Nap at hotel and ready to rock. Before show introduced to the project Lesung aus dem Buch "Schwafi." Love it, check it out. Dinner at Italian restaurant (Bella Italia) with my fave, Pizza Funghi and Warsteiner beer. Very good. Great crowd at gig. Especially on a Monday! First sighting of the Roding Two, Andrea and Helena. Great club and very nice people. Visit when you are in the area:

Berlin (May 13)
Tuesday: Pull up to punk rocker and biker working on a motorcycle on sidewalk in front of club, Wild at Heart, in the famous Kreuzberg area of Berlin. See René and Benno from opening band Infamis. Dinner at Tiki Heart Café next door. Christian Seefeldt shows up with a bottle of Tullamore Dew and we go out for beers and laugh about old times and visits to Thailand. Show is amazing with another great crowd including two girls from England who are performance artists. Rainer from Suessmilch Horns joins us again. Also, get to see Claus Martin and Antje, who hung up GC posters all around Berlin. Wild at Heart crew say we can come back anytime. They couldn’t believe Berliners were singing along! Late night drinks at some bar with mannequins sitting at the bar. Their Names I Don’t Recall.

Jena (May 14)
Wednesday: Arrive early in Jena and have a chance to walk around this beautiful college town. Memories of our first tour in 1999 come flooding back. Have some time to drink some Bitburger at the sidewalk tables of (another) Italian restaurant on Wagnergasse (I think). Four beers later, time for load-in and sound check. Our opening act and tour companion, Radiolukas, is waiting for us. The show is to a relatively small, but energetic crowd and everyone has a good time. A few lucky souls even try the 'buy a CD, get a free absinth shot' merchandise special. Tour is sponsored by Tabu Absinth, by the way. Despite the new stairs, this club still holds the dubious honor of the most challenging load-in/out.
Höxter (May 15)
Thursday: Tonenburg is one of our all-time favorite places to play! No doubt. Lots of smiling faces. A great time all around. Sold out, again! Rykarda Parasol and Radiolukas join us on "Purple Rain" for an encore. Late night shenanigans with Barbara, Peter, Tower Raven Ryan, and the Glitterhouse Girls outside the Tonenburg concert venue. The beer ran out so we again turned to our tour sponsor Tabu Absinth. As Rembert is riding away in a cab, he rolls down window and tells Leach, "Don’t forget to lock up." Laughter.

Arnstadt (May 16)
Friday: Return to Kulisse! Great thüringers, great beer, great time! Crazy teenagers! Hunt and Moder had sweet pickles and actually liked 'em. It was so nice to see some familiar faces from the earlier OBS show. And our good friend (and official band helicopter pilot) Captain Coma was in the house. The venue is more like playing outdoors in a New Orleans alley, so the wonderful weather made for an even more enjoyable night. We loved it so much that we are going back in September.

Langenau (May 17)
Saturday: Hunt’s birthday eve! Travel to Langenau in search of hotel keys and sleep, but find neither. Instead have beer and pizza at...you guessed it...an Italian restaurant. Then on to Kapilio, our home away from home in Germany. The Roding Two make the trip. They guest star onstage on two songs. The show is stupendous. Birthday cake for Hunt (danke Karin) brought to stage at midnight. Dripping sweat entire show. Moder gives away sweaty T-shirt to a fan who demands it. Hunt gains a shirt by receiving a Stuttgart jersey for his birthday from our friends in Langenau. A great gig to end a whirlwind tour.

Rheinberg (May 18)
Sunday: Hunt’s birthday dinner at our tour manager’s apartment. Being Hunt's birthday, something was getting grilled. We had what I can only describe as German fondu-tapas-bbq. Relax, relax, relax with beer, whiskey, coffee, more birthday cake, great food, and a little bit more absinth. Hunt tried unsuccessfully to drink the entire bottle of birthday beer graciously gifted to him by the folks in Langenau. It was a really big beer. Better luck next year. After Leach's equally valiant effort in a Rockband video competition it was time to head back to the hotel, enjoy a beer in the garden and get ready to return home.


photosVisit the tour photo album



Fall Germany Tour
There will be a mini-tour in September. There are a few private shows as well as shows open to the public. We'd like to thank the great people from JZ Karo in Wesel to play their 15th Anniversary celebration. More details will be released leading up to September. Til the next update, here are a few shows already booked.

Sep 18 Günzburg | Musikbar on the Rocks
Sep 19 Arnstadt | Kulisse
Sep 20 Wesel | JZ Karo 15th Anniversary Celebration


Key to the City DVD
Thanks to everyone who purchased the DVD last month during the tour. If you know anyone who's looking to get their own copy, it is available exclusively through theGlitterhouse mail order.
Buy it here


  
New songs on GC radio
Live songs from recent tours have been added to the GC radio playlist (OBS 10, Zurich, Frankfurt...). Listen by clicking the GC Radio button on our website.

Music Available online
You can buy our CDs online from respectable vendors like the wonderful Glitterhouse Records.

Our entire official-release catalog is also available digitally through iTunes and Rhapsody. Some releases are available in iTune Plus format.
Listen at iTunes
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