Germany Tour Blog 11: The Biggest Show in the Tiniest Town

We are a small town band. Like, we tend to be better received in small towns as opposed to big cities. And strangely, we tend to play to more people when there are less overall people in the area.

When we told people about playing in Unterlengenhardt, almost nobody had any idea where that was. The nearest town of Bad Liebenzell is about 10km away with a couple thousand people. That’s the nearest “big town,” and it operates relatively independently, separated by long roads through winding hills and tall Black Forest woods. 700 people live in Unterlengenhardt, and about 70 people joined us for a concert in the converted barn that acts as their cultural center. So, we essentially played to 10% of the town.

Inga and Michael acted as wonderful hosts — we stayed in the big farmhouse on the property and had a lovely bolognese and pasta made by the neighbors before the show. We told stories about how this little town felt so close to a barn that I saw a show at in Athens County back home in Ohio. We chatted with Jeff from Tucson and his family — living in Germany where his wife was born since just before the pandemic.

I walked the farm and pet the cows the next morning. I listened to the birds, similar calls with a different accent. Our little pocket of Ohio here in Germany.

Germany Tour Blog 10: A Familiar Face in Wetzlar

If you’ve ever been on tour in an independent band, you know that not every show is well attended. We’ve come a long way over the last eight years or so, but when you go out for a few weeks, each show might fill a different role in the tour. Each one is worth playing for the people there — you never know what someone is walking into the room carrying. But the room is not always full of people.

This is a long way to say that after playing to about a hundred people the previous night, we played to about seven lovely people in Wetzlar. Two heard about us on the local radio. One likes the label we’re on, and convinced his pal to come along. One was Jack’s mother who was in London, and made the hop over to catch a show. Others were listening from behind the bar.

I think there are a few ways to approach these situations. You can wish for things to be different, be disappointed in yourself, blame others. Or, you can play a show that meets the room where it’s at. In these moments, I remind myself that I choose to make music that deeply impacts literally dozens of people — not music that passively appeals to thousands of people. So we did that.

As folks applauded after the set, I walked through the room and thanked everyone individually. People shared stories about their own families and loved ones that related to the songs about my dad. One hadn’t been to a concert in several years, and found it lovely. Almost everyone bought merch. And the booker seemed to be happy, providing us food, beer, our guarantee for the night, and a place to sleep.

This is what we do for each other. Even when the show is nearly empty, we can fill it up with stories and songs.

Germany Tour Blog 9: Echoes of Columbus Bands in Dresden

We played our first show with Husten in Dresden at Beatpol. I’ve been a fan of one of the member’s solo work for a long while — Gispert zu Knyphausen. You should listen to his album Das Licht Dieser Welt — I don’t speak German, but the music still speaks straight to me.

Husten is a sort of indie supergroup project with several other musicians — the bassist is someone our friend Lars describes as the Rick Rubin of German indie and the band is full of musicians with a credit list longer than most movies. They were accommodating and personable as we joined them for the first time at Beatpol.

We found Anna at the merch booth acting as tour manager of sorts for their 6-day run — we have a mutual friend in Fabio from Köln. We played his hostel and venue Waltemfänger a few times in the past, but he’s working as a teacher now. She made us feel at home and shared some stories from the world of big time touring and festival promotion.

When we loaded in the venue, I found myself lost in the walls full of posters from old shows. Then I found two posters from Columbus bands from the 90s — Gaunt and New Bomb Turks. It’s wacky to see evidence of our citiy’s music so far away from home, and it felt humbling to continue following along in a tradition of indie bands from Columbus.

And we played a set! And it was loud and fun! And I bounced on my little chair a bunch! Strange as it seems, after searching for the perfect chair/stool to sit/lean/bounce in during every show, it makes me homesick for my little personal stool way back home in Ohio. It’s strange the pieces of home that we miss when we’re far away.

Germany Tour Blog 8: Reunited with Matthias and Margo in Bayreuth

We first met Matthias and Margo in Bayreuth in 2018 when they hosted us at a little DIY venue called Sübkültür. It was a tiny hole in the wall with a 6-inch stage where dan and played to a room crammed with people. Pictures from back then make it look like a hardcore show — just a mess of bodies hunched together for songs.

When we pulled up to Nueneinhalb and saw Matthias happily waving at us, Margot not far behind. I went in for hugs. It means so much to see a familiar face so far front home.

They moved into this new venue not long after covid broke out, then hosted their first shows in the new place around 2022 or so. It’s just a three minute walk from the old place, and we walked to the same restaurant — the Rosa Rosa — for a sit-down dinner together with Jens and the band.

The city owns the building and arts funding allows the rent to be quite low — around 500 euros a month for the whole venue. This has been a common story in most of the kulturzentrum’s that we’ve been playing on this tour — public arts funding allows them to offer a guarantee of several hundred euros, along with providing snacks, dinner, and a place to stay with breakfast in the morning.

He shared that to him, there’s no “hierarchy of artists” — no big artists, no small artists, just artists all deserving of respect and accommodation. He believes in songs, in music, and in stories. He loves Paul Auster and studied English and French Literature — he even finds that he enjoys reading more after leaving the university to book concerts.

Matthias is gregarious and personable, and he makes it feel like you’ve known each other for years. This became more interesting when I learned from Margot that he has face blindness — so his warmness is genuine, but also a strategy to allow him to figure out if he knows people already.

To top it all off, they used one of our photos (by Columbus’ own Fernando Rodriguez) for the cover of their event calendar. I’ll keep collecting these little artifacts of our tour — reminders of our travels for when it feels like it was all a dream.

Germany Tour Blog 7: A House Show in Hof

Each night as we play, people ask where we’re playing next. I rattle off a few city names or pull out my weeksheet that has all of our dates included on it. As I’ve done this, people have given us recommendations of places to go or things to do — but several people had words of caution when we mentioned Hof. “There’s nothing to do there” was the clear message from several strangers. But we were optimistic.

We rolled into Hof to play a house show run by Anna — she’s a supportive fixture of the local folk/diy/punk scene, hosting artists at her flat often. She’s a classic example of someone who doesn’t play music, but is absolutely critical to the music scene itself. One of the many people in a small town who does the unglorified work that allows both musicians and listeners to come together and have shows worth remembering.

When we arrived, she was setting up some benches in the garden behind her flat — the weather was perfect, so we would play outside tonight. Jens brought a small amplifier for the guitar and piano, and I sang unamplified, about 10 feet in front of the drums to find a good mix.

We played for about 20 people or so — friends, friends of friends, neighbors who walked down to join us, or just listened at times from their windows opened up to the garden. We played for a 4-month-old — his first concert ever. We played for a man who loves Guided By Voices and The Breeders — both bands from my hometown of Dayton. He said that Hello Emerson is the third Ohio band that he knows now — and I’m grateful to be in such good company. A man sitting in the front row mouthed along the lyrics to almost every song from the newest album. Talking to him after, I learned that he listens to our new album every morning when walking his dog.

After the show, we talked at length with Jens and Anna in the kitchen about the US and Germany, hopes and worries and everything in between. We ate home cooked food from Anna, and found soft places to sleep in the big room, with an invitation to stay as long as we needed to before leaving the next day.

For me, Hof was perfect. A reminder of good people outside of big cities who keep the first burning and the music playing. Thanks for everything, Anna.

Germany Tour Blog 6: A walk through Nuremberg with Jens and Etta

After the show in Fürth, Jens offered to show us around his town of Nuremberg after picking up his three-year-old daughter Etta from Kindergarten the following day. So, we met up by a big beautiful fountain in the shadow of an enormous church in one direction and an enormous castle in the other.

Jens named his daughter Etta. Think music, think Etta James — popular in the states, but very uncommon in Germany. Most people pronounce it with soft T’s (like “Edda”) but it should be pronounced with sharp Ts. Jens says that it’s a typical thing in Franconia to pronounce T’s as D’s and P’s as B’s. (On top of everything, “Edda” itself used to be a popular name in Germany, completing the linguistic chaos loop.)

He said that he rarely visits this part of town, and that he wouldn’t be able to be a great, well-informed tour guide despite being a local. “See that church, it’s fucking old! That castle, fucking old! Fountain, old!”

We walked up the steep walkway to the main castle, taking in the beautiful day while Etta heard her dad speaking a language she didn’t know (she was just starting to have her first exposure to English in Kindergarten — she thinks it is very cool).

Jens would translate back and forth between the three-year old on his shoulders and us three walking next to him, and she would chime in the conversation in German when she saw things, mostly ice cream and ducks. I would look at her when she was speaking, doing my best to listen while still having to wait for translation from Jens. Interestingly, Jens shared that she thought that I was listening and understanding her as she was speaking — and seemed to like that. We were an odd little group, stitched together by Jens’ dad superpowers.

We went our separate ways after having some ice cream in the sun. Later in the car, Etta said just a few words between getting buckled up and falling asleep: “Beautiful, it was. Wasn’t it?”

It was, Etta. It sure was.

Germany Tour Blog 5: “Community Not Competition” in Fürth

Our show in Fürth was on a Sunday. It’s a hard day to get people to come out to shows already, but it was also Mother’s Day. And it’s a hard day to get people to come to shows if you’re an out-of-towner at our level, and so far from home no less. That’s where our friend and opener on many of these dates, Jens, comes through yet again. Something like 75% of the people at the show were friends of his from nearby Nurnberg.

Jens makes music under the name “John Steam Jr.” He used to play a lot more punk and hardcore music, and is active in a scene that includes a lot of more straightforward folk-punk as well. This solo project of his seems to aspire to be a bit quieter, a bit more melodic, a bit more straight singer-songwriter — all while still retaining a punk ethos that’s willing to call out bullshit in the world and the people who support it.

Jens is all about “community not competition.” And it shows. I was getting some electrical noise in my signal chain for my guitars, and he intuited that I needed a ground lift. So he let me borrow a DI to use on the tour. He noticed that I needed to use a guitar strap for the electric guitar that I borrowed, so he brought one for me to use the next day. He noticed that a guitar stand would behoove me — so he provided one. And all of the best photos from this tour are from his little camera, snapping away as we hang out between soundchecks, sets, and meals. He talks the talk, and walks the walk.

Among his friends, we saw Julia Laura who opened up a show for us last tour, talking briefly about how to balance making music with making life in general. We also saw Eric from Jens’ band who we met playing a short solo set at BTM guitars last tour. We met Sabine who runs Kopf und Kragen — she has a history in Social Work and several decades of rock and roll under her belt. Timo behind the bar shared this is was one of his favorite shows in two years — and as a more of a hardcore/metal/punk drummer, that strikes me as a compliment of the highest order.

I dropped Jack and Dan at our little hotel room after load-out, then searched for street parking at midnight on a Sunday, finding a spot after twenty or so minutes. I soaked up the stillness of this old city of stone buildings on the walk home.

Germany Tour Blog 4: From Instagram to Real Life in Karlsruhe

I think often social media prioritizes metrics that reflect temporary distractions over real-world action. People may see one post that is memorable after several minutes of scrolling in a stupor, then hit follow, then continue to scroll in a stupor. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for slipping into a stupor — it’s been a gift to have some pockets of nothingness on tour — but I think social media is incentivized to put us all into a stupor for much too much time to be healthy. But this night in Karlsruhe let me spend time with several remarkable people I never otherwise would have met. So, grey areas.

We’ve played in Karlsruhe two times before, both at Cafe NUN — it’s a community-run bar that hosts music and performances pretty regularly in the neighborhood, and it feels just like home at this point.

We met a few people who knew us from Instagram too! Luisa was a fan of our music and was following us on Instagram, but hadn’t see our content for a while. After we started putting out more journaling videos, we reappeared on her feed and she found out that we’d be playing nearby! She’s involved with a group called Girls Gone International that organized meetups with women in the area — she was born in Colombia and moved to Germany later in life. At one of the events (maybe a Galentines Day style thing if I remember correctly) she made gifts for other members featuring my journaling mission statement: “I aim to ease loneliness in myself, my community, and people I may never meet. This led to a bigger conversation about journaling, how more men should journal, and being vulnerable online. She brought her partner Pablo to the show, and I loved being able to hear all about how songs and journaling brought things together for us.

I also met Bonnie in person as well — she found our music through one of the posts that caught fire recently and does music interviews on her channel from time to time. She traveled over an hour to come see the show, and we’ll set up a recorded interview when we get back to the states.

I also ran into someone I went to high school with! Blake now works at the Max Planck Institute doing some very cool stuff that I don’t understand. He and his partner both went to college in Ohio, and mentioned how nice it was to hear Ohio accents onstage during the show. It was a gift to have a beer with them afterwards as well.

Simon acted as the hostess with the mostest and Johannes made everything sound like gold. The room was cozy and full of people for a laid back show. We also met up with Jens who we met on a previous tour. He makes music under the name John Steam Jr. and has been an absolute joy to spend time with — and he makes great songs to boot. More on him later.

Germany Tour Blog 3: Fast Highways and Slow Dinners

After landing in Berlin and picking up our rental car, we made our first drive to Dresden. After driving behind some trucks at around 90kph, I took my opportunity on the autobahn to push it close to 200kph, which is around 125mph. And it was smooth, both with the rental car and the borderline perfect roads, but honestly there’s no reason that anyone should be driving that fast in their normal life — not to mention how much gas that burns. So I’m finding my middle ground bouncing back and forth between living behind semi’s and passing when it makes sense, but not really going above 80 really. That doesn’t stop supercars flying by us at 125-150mph or so, but that’s their problem.

We got to Dresden and met up with Lars, the friend who is to blame for all of our excursions in Germany. He’s behind K&F Records who we’ve worked with for our records in Germany and these tours after meeting him in Columbus when his wife was doing post-doc work at OSU, around 2016/17 somehow? He got us settled into an artist’s apartment above a theater, and we caught up over ice cream. We’re both pretty clear-eyed about the state of the small-time live music industry — tl;dr it’s unsustainable for most people. We hope to at least break even this tour, but it’s always a risk, definitely even harder now than it was four years ago. But we love the music, believe in the songs, and would like to give it our best.

Lars arranged an amazing dinner at a nearby restaurant with the whole cast of Dresden friends from throughout the past years. Hanna, Hannes, Ronny, Elmer, Annette, Lars’ wife Nelie and their daughter Ani. Ani is about as old as my niece now, and I remember getting a text from Lars when they moved back to Germany, mentioning that they were with child on their flight back home. Wild how time works.

Germany Tour Blog 2: The Fashion Designer from France

On the first flight, I sat next to a woman who was born in France who had worked in fashion in New York City for about 15 years, then moved and worked for a well-known bag company in a small town in the Midwest. She said that the culture shock of moving from Paris to New York was dwarfed by the difference between NYC and a small midwestern town. When she moved in, several of her neighbors dropped by with food to welcome them to town — something that she found absolutely wonderful, moreso than her introverted American husband.

She shared about how poverty in the US is entirely different from poverty in France, commenting on how brutal and grinding and pervasive it was. She said that it was ready for a revolution, or at least if people were experiencing the same thing in France, there would no doubt be one — she mentioned that they are quite passionate about causing a ruckus.

She was returning to France to see her mother, who is nearing the end of her life. Her siblings still live in the country, and it seems like it could be time soon. She bought a ticket last minute, joining me in the back row of the plane. After talking for about 90 minutes, I did my best to fall asleep in the middle seat, tucking a pillow into the front part of my shirt and just pitching my head forward. I wasn’t sure if I had actually fallen asleep. Before landing, she assured me that I had slept quite well.