tour report - leipzig

it was pouring rain in leipzig when we arrived, which was a bummer. the load-in was made somewhat problematic due to the length of the road we had to carry things through. cobblestones, while beautiful to look at, are not helpful for pushing wheeled flight cases that weigh 500 pounds. i will say that the venue (werk 2) was absolutely massive, essentially a giant hanger with a huge stage in the middle of it. once we loaded in, i hit the shower which was definitely the best shower of the tour so far. great catering today as well, all cooked in house with plenty of vegan options! always a big bonus when that happens!

we wanted to get out and see a bit of the city while mesh was soundchecking, so we had a runner drive us to this massive train station that also contains an entire mall within it (thanks ule!). one thing that we were not counting on was how crazily expensive batteries are in germany! due to the weight restrictions on our flights, we decided against bringing all the batteries with us, figuring that we could get them when we arrived here. not the best idea, as it turns out...a single 9 volt battery costs more than six euros!! out wireless equipment basically eats batteries for breakfast, so we're now rationing the remaining batteries as much as we can. in any case, our soundcheck time was coming up, so after aaron purchased a replacement pair of shoes, we headed back towards the venue. of course, it was rush hour in downtown leipzig, so we got stuck in traffic jams...it was a little nerveracking since we were running out of time to make it to our soundcheck. but luckily we managed to make it literally as mesh was leaving the stage, so it all worked out perfectly. soundcheck was a little crazy...all these huge concrete rooms we're playing have a tendency to amplify the high frequency sounds in our mix...

one awesome thing about our time in leipzig was that we got to hang out with daniel and dejan from haujobb again. we see daniel in the states pretty often, since he does so much touring, but we hadn't seen dejan since 2000 when we did the din_fiv tour with haujobb and velvet acid christ. it was really great to see them and have some time to hang out and catch up. needless to say, plenty of drinks were consumed. our show was good, from a performance perspective, but the crowd didn't seem too moved, unfortunately. kind of a bummer after the reaction in braunschweig, two shows with minimal audience response during the set. however, the good news was that people bought a ton of cd's, and all the people we spoke to after the show seemed to really like what we were doing. having pete, the tour lighting director, doing our lights certainly helped make us look as good as possible. i slammed myself around the stage as hard as i could, in any case.

mesh put on a pretty epic show, i have to say. watching them night after night has certainly made me a much bigger fan than i was prior to the tour. i'm constantly amazed by the quality of their work and their live show. we're definitely learning a lot of new tricks from them, no question about it.

thanks to everyone that made it out to the show in leipzig!!! we'll see you next time!!