We woke up the next day at about 11.30 and ate breakfast with Charles and his housemates. Charles lives right on a river (don't know which one!) and we had intended to get up at 10am go out on the river kayaking with him. Although we were late getting up we still managed to get out on the river, it was super relaxing. Sam and I shared a kayak with Charles riding out solo out front. We paddled around in the sun for half an hour, moored the kayaks back up and went back into the house... we were quite damp. After showers we packed the remainder of our gear, said our goodbyes and started our journey to our next show in Hechtel, Belgium (which no one seemed to have heard of.)
The drive was quite easy, we're avoiding the toll roads as most of the drives in France are quite short and we have a small car. The drive took about four hours and was relatively uneventful, we couldn't see any signs for the place we were heading for until about 4 miles from our destination, we knew that it must be quite a small place. We arrived at 5.15, only 15 minutes after we were meant to be there (win!) and parked up. We were playing in a house that used to house the local bishop but is now vacant. It's still owned by the town council and is available for hire. Tonights show was organised by a collective called 'I See Clouds' and every room in the house had something different happening. There was a large room downstairs where we were going to play and there was another smaller room upstairs where people were also playing. When one act finished in the room upstairs, one would start downstairs and vice versa. Filling the other rooms in the house was an art exhibition which included art from 15 different local artists and not forgetting the all important bar.
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| Charles' pad in Amiens |
We sat down to eat with Brecht, Woulter, Yann and some of the other people who helped organised the show, they fed us an amazing pumpkin curry and rice. We wondered round the house to look at all the art, it was strange but really cool. I don't really know anything about art but I'm pretty good at knowing what I like, and i liked most of it, especially the bath filled with blue water.
People started arriving for the show, it was cool see people from all ages coming to look at the art and enjoy the space. The music started about 8pm, some of it I wasn't that into but that's okay; Brecht and Woulter's band Codyceps played who were cool, but I wasn't into the guy playing Ed Sheran and Coldplay covers, different strokes i guess.
The house was getting really busy and the beer was flowing by the time we played, everyone seemed to be having a good time. We set up our gear in about half an hour while someone was playing upstairs. I was really worried that we were going to be too loud, but luckily people didn't seem to mind. I think we played well again, better than the previous two nights. The set we're playing on this tour is made up of songs which we wrote after we released our first album, so no old songs... we might learn a couple of we get time over the next few days.
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| Credit: JONAS CAMPS |
After we played there was a fire show outside with guys doing fire breathing and all that jazz, it was cool. By this point we were well into full blown party territory, we were drinking La Chouffe which is a really good Belgium beer that has a gnome on the bottle. There were a few DJs after us who got the place going and we spoke to some really nice and a few crazy Belgians. The music stopped at about 3.30 and we went to bed at about 5am. A really good night.
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