The Decline Tour Diary: Part Two

I wasn't planning on doing another update for a few days, but it's kind of hard to sleep when your accommodation also doubles as a band's backstage area. We're currently in Frankfurt, Germany, and staying at the “band apartment” in a random venue. We played up the road at a place called 11ER Club earlier tonight.

It's 1.30am, and the show at the venue we're staying at doesn't finish until after 2am. Noise I can sleep through, but a random Berlin rock band filling the room with enough smoke to kill a small child is kind of hard to tune out. This room is pretty tiny, and there's an arrogant 50-year-old, washed-up drunken DJ doing lines in-between asking us questions about Australia and calling us stupid.

Pondering Pat...

We're six shows into our European tour, but by the smell of our drummer Harry's stage shorts, you'd think we'd been here a month. He wears the same pair onstage each night, and at this point they smell like a dead animal. It also feels like we've been here for over a month. The past few days have melded into one big blur and I can't quite remember where we woke up yesterday morning. All I know is it was a different country.

I finished up my last update halfway from our drive from Austria to Belgium, and a ridiculous amount of things have happened since then. We rolled into Belgium as the sun was setting, and the sky was filled with hot air balloons. I still can't get over how picturesque Europe is.

The language barrier is a frequent issue, as our guitarist Nathan “Nate Dawg” Cooper found out the hard way. We're all vegetarians, and he purchased a sandwich that he believed to be vego friendly. He got halfway through and then I saw the package. He was eating a bacon sandwich. In his defense, there was no way of telling from the packaging (see photo). We also keep buying sparkling water instead of regular water. There's bottle after bottle of the stuff littered throughout the van.

Bacon + Vegetarian = Bad Times!

He wasn't the only one to consume something he shouldn't have. Our other guitarist, Pat Dolin, came up with a foolproof plan to stay fresh on long drives, which involved drinking small amounts of mouthwash. It came to an abrupt halt when Harry advised against it. The “do not drink” warning on the label also played a role.

It's not the first time he's ingested harmful liquids. When we flew to the US in '09 to record our debut album, he had one too many drinks and found himself in a spa. Not wanting to venture back to the room to grab another drink, he took his chances with an opened can of Budweiser nearby. The can was full of chlorinated water and he spent the next day throwing up blood.

So after drinking mouthwash and eating bacon, we found ourselves in the thick of Belgium in a place called Antwerp.

If Brooklyn and Melbourne had a baby, it would be Antwerp. For the first time on this tour we had support bands – both of which Harry and I missed as we got lost in the confusing hedge maze that is the streets of Antwerp. We had a pretty decent turnout, and the promoter, Roel de Reu, was an absolute legend. But the coolest part was that people we had never met before were singing along to our songs, dancing around and yelling requests. To be on the other side of the world and have people know the words to your songs is surreal.

As I said before, it's easy to get lost in Antwerp. We dropped Pat near the hotel we were staying at so he could check-in and the other five of us went to park the car. 30 minutes later we had no idea where we were and no idea how to get back. We kept thinking about Pat waiting in the hotel lobby and how confused he would have been. He loves food. He's sitting next to me right now eating. We thought it'd be funny to tell him we were getting pizza and that's why we took so long. As luck would have it, we found two pizza boxes on the side of the road – one with a few slices inside – and took back a prop to really sell the joke. It ended badly, and he spent the night in a room on his own. “Don't mess with me when it comes to food,” he later said.

The next day we luckily only had a two-hour drive to Netherlands. Having spent most of the other days driving all day, it was a welcome change.

Indoor skate parks make for an awesome live music venue...

Unable to find a Netherlands show, we sent out a call on Facebook a few weeks before the tour and a fan of ours, Emil Schot, managed to hook up a show at an indoor skate park. It was exactly as awesome as it sounds. Once again, we had people dancing around and requesting songs. A few of the songs requested we hadn't played in a while and didn't plan on busting out on tour, but we did them anyway. We also managed to get enough footage to potentially chuck together a music video. We'll see what happens.

After our set, Pat was approached by a fan that had heard our song Worlds Apart II – a tune about sweatshops – and had quit his job because of it so he could work for a free trade chocolate company. He gave us a bunch of free chocolate, which I'm yet to try. The fact that one of our songs had such a huge impact on his life is mind-blowing. Packing up the car, Schot asked if we were fans of Frenzal Rhomb. Not only are we fans, but I had an interview with frontman Jay Whalley the next morning… at 4.40am.

Life-changing chocolate.

The obvious choice for accommodation that evening was Amsterdam. The skate park was a 40-minute drive away, but we ended up getting there at 2am, which meant no time to go out and party the night away. Only our band would go out of our way to see Amsterdam, and spend most of our time at our hotel starring at our phones. From what we did see of Amsterdam in the two hours before leaving for Germany was awesome. Anyone who has been there knows that crossing the street is like playing a game of Frogger.

So after a rushed tour of Amsterdam, visiting a café that's Wi-Fi password was “legalize”, we headed for Krefeld, Germany. It took Harry five minutes upon arrival to label the city the “buttcrack” of Germany. Maybe if he wore shoes instead of thongs all the time he wouldn't have got dirty street water on his feet.

At our show that night someone from the audience pointed out Harry was playing barefoot and was quite shocked. The punter later saw Harry wearing “flip flops” and called him a poser.

The hospitality over here never seems to disappoint. Before our set in Krefeld we were showered with enough food to feed us for days, and given accommodation with a friend of the promoter.

Pat trying to sleep whilst random Berlin rockers sniff and smoke themselves stupid.

Another short drive brings us to Frankfurt, and almost up to date. Once again we had a few punters in the crowd singing along and really getting into it. I thought we played pretty well, but when I asked my brother, Ben, how he thought it went, he said, “I can't remember any of it, so it was good.”

The legal blood-alcohol level for driving in Frankfurt is 0, unless you've had your license for 10 years. Luckily Pat didn't get pulled over. There was also an extra person in the back as we were driving the promoter home.

Now I'm squinting through a thick fog of smoke as I type this and politely turn down drugs. At least they were nice enough to offer. As Nathan described it, this is “fucking weird” accommodation. I think we're all looking forward to some days off to process all of this chaos!

Written by Daniel Cribb.