News Tour Diary: Husky (Part Two)

Husky have been busy sunning themselves on tour in Europe. Gideon fills us in on the band’s latest adventures on a quite afternoon in Munster.

I’m sitting in the courtyard of Gleiss 22 in Munster, our venue for tonight’s show which operates as a café during the day and a live music venue by night. After a late breakfast - a hearty traditional German meal of shredded potato cakes with apple sauce - I sit thinking about how good it is to be back in Germany playing shows again. Why is it that the audiences are so appreciative here? How come the venues look after bands so well? Perhaps it’s a cultural thing. Maybe it’s something ingrained in European cities and people that comes from a long lineage of great art. Maybe there is a greater respect for art because it is so much a part of the history here. Perhaps I should stop thinking about it and just enjoy it…

Tonight is show number four here in Germany. We’ve been playing small venues filled with warm and loving audiences in Hamburg, Berlin, Koln and now Munster tonight. On our night off last night we went for a stroll in search of some beer and stumbled on the local Munster blues jam. We sat around listening to the locals playing and singing their hearts out and I couldn’t stop thinking about ‘Sultans Of Swing’ by Dire Straights. Some of those guys could really play the blues, probably saving up their licks and their sorrows all week for the regular Tuesday night jam.

An older, rotund, German man, with thick frames and an unsteady walk sauntered up to the stage awkwardly fumbling with the microphone stand as he also tried to get his guitar to sit comfortably over his belly. He counted the tune in and off they went but man, could that guy wail! A bit of a surprise to us all and a good reminder that this guy is what the blues is all about. Afterwards, a friend of this unassuming blues marvel leant over to me and said in a thick German accent, ‘he’s pretty good when he’s not sleeping, don’t you think?’ I nodded in agreement although not totally sure what she meant by it, maybe it was lost in translation, but I felt like I understood.

Meanwhile, Ev lurked by the stage licking his chops and I was fairly sure I could see beads of sweat forming over his brow, not from that strangely warm European summer night, but because he so badly wanted his shot on the bandstand. Ev pushed me on to the keyboards and then he and Luke followed. We sat in with some of the others who had played before us and man did it feel good to play. I think they were pretty excited to have foreigners get up at their jam. The beers, jams and good times flowed that fateful night in Munster.

Anyway, I’m sitting at the venue waiting for soundcheck, the sun beats down and bikes whiz past mostly with young people perched on top. Munster is a student town and people move here from all around to study. Everyone seems to ride bicycles. The streets are lined with parked bikes, sometimes stacked, discarded and strewn on top of one another. A local told us that there are around 500,000 bikes in Munster, an interesting figure considering there are 250,000 people living there. What would it be like being a bike in Munster? There are plenty of bikes past their prime, abandoned in the streets, tangled and beat, spokes and chains and other parts woven in a sad mess, like a bicycle graveyard for the unlucky ones. But what about those more fortunate? They get a good life, they certainly get the glory when the goings good. Do they know that they’ll most likely end up like the other bicycles? That this is where bikes go to die? Would it be better to have your time in the sunshine than to not have it all?

Read the first part of Husky’s tour diary here.