The Half Full Flashes outside of Ungar Grill, Vienna. (L–R) Darija Kasalo– superstar owner, Christian Heerdt– elevated music genius from Hamburg, Eleni Zafiriadou superstar (singer, screamer, keyboards, guitar), Daniel Benjamin– music director bass guitar, Kevin Kuhn drums and rock history, me– singer, storytelle, lead prancer! Daniel Benjamin came up with the name Half Full Flashes based on his knowledge of my psychedelic personality and its a play on the German word “Flasche” meaning bottles! The half-full bottles then; VERY optimistic!
The whole situation that allowed me to have a band and do a tour was a blessing and kind of a miracle too. Daniel Benjamin, a fabulous musician that I have long been a fan of, visited me in my studio a couple years ago asking what I was up to. I told him I was reviewing 200 of my own songs to see if I still liked some of them and so he asked me to send him all 200 songs, which I did! One year later he called me to say that he had listened to each song 20 times and he picked what he considered the 10 best ones. Daniel told me that he would form a band for me and organize a European tour. So: he selected the material, found the musicians, made all the bookings / travel arrangements and even offered to drive us in his own van!
Some of the songs he picked really surprised me: “Mannequins On Parade” which is long and complicated, and has nothing to do with modern music or trends! Moon/SIFOD (Searching In The Face of Disaster) is extremely slow with only electric piano, organ and light drumming over very long poetic lyrics. I, personally, never thought a crowd would sit still for that kind of thing. He also selected an acoustic number, Silence of the Sun, which I’ve never tried to do live before, worrying that people wouldn’t sit still and loudly talk through the entire thing.
Lifeboat and Moon/SIFOD were three pieces of music that I composed completely during the recording process, so never had any idea what notes I was actually playing when I wrote them! I never intended to play them live –- so it took me three full months of practice on my own in my Berlin living room before I was able to perform the keyboard parts and sing at the same time. The other songs were much easier basic rockers which have been carved into my memory because I’ve been playing them in concerts for most of my life!
I didn’t have very high expectations going into the tour. I imagined suffering through very long drives with sweaty musicians in the car. I imagined five people sleeping in a dirty room on stained mattresses, with overflowing ashtrays and very bad smells. I imagined no one coming to the shows, which often happens when I play my own songs. In Seattle this was a familiar feeling, also in New York for sure. I even did a small tour in England two years ago, and of the shows that weren’t cancelled, there were literally between 0 and 5 people in the audience. Gordotronic music business as usual!
BUT, this time Daniel Benjamin had booked several “cultural centers” in Eastern Europe and Germany –- with lovely stages, great sound systems, very cooperative and creative sound mixers, AND nice apartments to stay in (often I had my own room)! All the rooms were actually clean with fresh bedding! Only one drive was oppressively long, but even that was kind of fun because we were going from Serbia, crossing into Hungary en route to Vienna.
Some shows had moderate attendance like 50 people, while at other shows 70 or 100 people came out to see us. Every place we played, the people watched very closely, paid attention and were openly receptive/responsive to what was going on. That was certainly the biggest surprise and the most joyous part of the tour.
I expected that my own performance would be “OK to pretty good”, featuring lots of out of tune guitar playing, sore throats and missed singing notes. I also kind of thought the band would do an OK job but nothing super amazing or special. Happily, I was wrong about these! After the second show the band was incredibly powerful, charismatic and humorous on stage. Thanks to the fact that we actually had enough rehearsals and the band was SO powerful– I actually rose to the occasion becoming a bit of a good performer. My guitar stayed relatively “in tune”, I hit my marks the way I wanted to and in some cases even surpassed what I believed I was capable of.
If I could repeat that experience or do more elaborate and bigger tours along the same lines – I would jump on the chance in a heartbeat!
One other thing worth noting – We had tried to do a tour last winter but it proved impossible for Daniel Benjamin to convince the booking agents and promoters to take a chance on us. Our tour at the end of April all the way through the month of May was a happy breakthough. Every city was having sunshine and early Spring weather. Warm without being too hot, yet never cold enough to wear a jacket! Every city offered us blue skies and fresh Spring weather almost like a holiday. I can barely imagine what touring must be like in the boiling Summer or during the frigid Winter months!! I had never seen most of the cities in Germany and Eastern Europe that we played, so it was very exciting to go to those places and perform my songs so nicely.