A Tribal Roadtrip

A letter from Munich
August 9th

We have settled into Munich with two days off – much of which will be filled with meals hosted by various friends who live in the city. Our ‘social calender’ is looking as hectic as our performance schedule! Last night, we played in a very cool club in Augsburg, a place we have visited and performed at twice before. Some people had seen us on the two previous occasions and still came out last night. It was a lovely crowd, just under 200 – and a very industrial looking venue with a good sized stage. Aaron has stepped up to the mark – it turns out he has got a very lovely singing voice. So, we have him featuring solo during a section of Te Po. Very nice.

The previous concert we did was in Freiburg. Trina and I got to see a little more of Freiburg than the others because we got lost trying to find the Munster Cathedral and its colourful marketplace. I was determined to take some shots for my friend and chef, Annie. Anyway, the markets over here are well worth visiting. The produce is so fresh and lustrous. You should see the olives and cheeses….

The Jazzhaus is a very cool club, an old ex-brewery, with lots of brick and iron, kind of industrial looking with a good sized stage. It was once again, smokefree for our concert. This is a tikanga that our band has instituted over the years – to have all indoor venues smokefree. Most of the time, we are the first to request this but it never seems to be a problem. Freiburg was one of our smaller turnouts, perhaps 120 people – but they were a great, responsive bunch. Freiburg is a student town, so there were a few students in the audience. Excellent sound, and the’Twins’ (our nickname for Te Hira and Aaron) just keep upping the ante on their choreography and vocals. Also, Horomona, our ‘supermodel’ (who promotes our teeshirts onstage) was in great demand. When he does land a good modeling contract, he has me to thank!!

Before that, we were in Friedrichshafen, on the huge lake. The venue was a small circus-like tent, it was sold out. We couldn’t use our video projections because the roof was too low, but it didn’t seem to detract from the concert – the crowd wanted us to do a 2nd encore. We are so well organized that by then, we were sitting at our Sales table, waiting to sign autographs on the CDs bought earlier on in the night. A special thanks to Thomas for bringing me the lovely cheeses for Toby!

And before that, we were in the town of Seeheim, but I never really got to see that place. We arrived late after being trapped in autobahn traffic.

The autobahn was clogged up with traffic, tied up for miles. So, we got out of our bus. Avon wandered over to the owner of the nearest Ferrari, struck up a conversation and ended up selling the driver a CD on the spot – so we thought we would give an impromptu performance by the side of the road! Before you knew it, people crowded around, cameras came out – a nice man started giving out chocolate to us, we had a good time filling in the wait. It was a fun way to distract from the wait.

In Seeheim, we played in this lovely outdoor, Greek-like theatre, probably 200 turned up. A Kiwi athelete called Liam, training for triathalons, too. The audience were raging up large, singing away – we had a ball. Then I said a line in Maori about one of my Te Arawa ancestors and straight after that, a huge thunderclap happened. The audience clapped away, wow – very impressed. The rain actually came down after the absolute end, after the encore. Our host promoter was a most gracious woman, very lovely.

We have to say that our favourite spot so far has been the small town of Coburg. And, the reason for that is simply, we stayed there for 3 days so really got the opportunity to have a good look around the place. We don’t often have that chance to bond with a town. After all, Munich is home away from home to us when we are in Germany.

We were provided with a tour guide by the Coburg Tourism Office, who took us on a very interesting and entertaining wander through the cobbled streets. We discovered that Queen Victoria had quite a role in this town – in fact, her husband Prince Albert came from Coburg. One thing we found out was that ‘our Vicky’, when young, used to exchange erotic letters with Albert. She thought he was such a sexy beast that they erected a statue in the town square a few years after Albert’s death and she made sure that his thigh was poking through his garments and on view – (apparently she thought he had quite erotic thighs). Seems like the Victorian era was misnamed – she wasn’t prudish, at all.

One of our hosts wanted to take us flying over Coburg in a little plane, which sounded really great at the time of the offer but as we wandered the streets, me and Amiria and Trina figured out pretty quickly that our stomachs might not cope with it. So, we all bailed out of the exercise, apart from Horomona (he with the cast-iron stomach), Leo and Anne Marie. They said they thoroughly enjoyed it. They got to see the 40 or so castles surrounding Coburg from a great height, including the one we performed at – Tambach – which is very memorable for us, too.

Later on that night, our host met us and took us to a traditional real old style bierhall - an inside job. We had pig knuckles and I tell you, their pigs must be gigantic because these little porky bits were humungous. They had yummy crackling on them, they were so meaty and nice. This was after an entrée of some potato soup dish straddled by a frankfurter – very strange, quite tasty and more than enough for one meal. It was an absolute feast and our host Thomas from Tourism Coburg was a witty and entertaining (as well as generous) host.

Later on, we went off to a fairground – a real awesome one. It was crowded, absolutely packed. Trina thought it would be a good idea for us to go up on a giant ferris wheel. I did too, until I remembered (rather too lately) that I hate heights. Not much good when you are way at the top of a huge, huge ferris wheel that didn’t do only three cycles as I thought it might have, but did 10. I know…I counted them. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did – we stopped at the top, swinging away in the gentle breeze (which turned into a huge storm in my brain) while some lucky bastards got off below us.

The reason why we were ignored by the boys on the machinery every time Amiria and I hit the bottom (much to her amusement!) was because the said boys were distracted by a huge fireworks display that lit up the sky with colour and even bigger bangs, while we were going round and round on this damn wheel like two rats on a treadmill with me clinging to the centre pole. It was awesome fireworks though.

Anyway, I headed off back to my room and left the lot of my mates down there hopping on even worse machines – especially Horomona, (who ate every pig knuckle in sight and downed a few beers, I just don’t know how he did it!) He went on the most revolting ride on the grounds, like 3 giant claws swinging around all over the place. It just looked horrible – but he loved it. Te Hira was a bit seedy though.

Everyone in the band has been great.

Stus been great on the screen, and great giving feedback about sound and lighting. We’ve used the screen every time bar one, roof was too low and far too many lights and no where to put it close to the stage so he and I decided to give it a miss. He’s done the odd merchandise duty too and he’s generally been quite helpful.

Cadzow is playing awesome, – he really is just magnificent. You should hear them at the end of the set – they just go right off, and the crowd claps away. He is fabulous.

The Twins introduce a new element into the concert every night, something totally out of the box. Unbelievable! Flash patu routines, they are rarely offstage, whole fight sequences, the works.

Avon has really come out of his shell, is so funny – and is managing the sound and stage production with the international production crews in a very throrough and professional way. His bass playing is getting tighter and funkier by the night.

Horomona is rapping away, doing the haka, chanting, on taonga puoro. He is such great fun to have on board – we have a lot of laughs. He is fantastic offstage too, always very helpful. We will miss him when he heads back to New Zealand. Jerome will be joining us soon, so that will be great. He has been filming in South Africa and it sounds like he is hanging out to get with the whanau.

Trina and Amiria are singing beautifully, despite Amiria being diagnosed with bronchitis early on in the trip. She is a real trooper, refuses to stand down and they are both fabulous to have on tour. We are looking forward to spending time with our friends in Munchen.

Stay tuned. Next stop is Stuttgart and then we head to Switzerland for a big reggae festival, which should be a lot of fun.

Big hugs from Munich!