Not Bad For A Girl: Hot weather and cool gigs, Katie Marie on her latest tour of Germany

By Katie Marie, on Thursday, July 22, 2010

Guten tag peeps! wie geht’s? Yep you guessed it, I’m in Germany and as always I’m having oodles of fun

I had a gig with Nicky Swann last Wednesday at the wonderful Windjammer in Dartmouth. Then I had to shoot off home and grab a minuscule amount of sleep (minuscule being all of 15mins lol), grab my stuff and head off to Stansted Airport, rock n roll ay?!

The weather here is *amazingly* hot and I have vowed never to complain about it not being hot enough at home ever again! Most days it’s been nearly 40 degrees (or in the high 30s) and the air is warm too and very, very still. The first night I was here I had both windows open in my room as it was so ridiculously warm. Funny thing was when I put my hand outside the night breeze was actually warmer than inside the house! Mad.

The day after I arrived we had to do a mammoth drive from Stuttgart to Rostock (which is in the North of Germany). It took us about 11 and-a-half hours to get there and the heat was so intense we had to have every window in the car open (even when we were on the Autobahn travelling at a ga-zillion miles an hour!). My gig that evening was at Rostock CSD with Elli and we had loads of fun. It was the first chance for me to properly try my lovely new Logarhythm Stomp Box through a big phat PA rigg and it sounded mighty fine indeed. Here’s a vid the Lisa took on her iPhone:

Elli and I also had to play a couple of songs in a nightclub after the CSD (kind of like an after show party) and then we all once again had to try and grab as much sleep as poss before heading off to Frankfurt the next morning!

I’ve never visited Frankfurt before so I was really looking forward to seeing it, as well as doing my gig at the Frankfurt CSD. There were quite a lot of peeps there and the VIP backstage area was very cool indeedy. I had my own little room complete with tables, chair, towels and a mirror (oh and a fan, I mean the spinney type not the music-loving type ). In the main area backstage we had our own bar with free drink and also free food and a big fridge that was full of tubs of fruit and yoghurt (I could get used to this!). All the other acts that were playing were using backing trax and it was mostly dance music, so I had no idea what people were going to think of this Brit girl only armed with an acoustic guitar.

Thankfully it all went really well and the Frankfurt peeps seemed to enjoy it. On after me was Snap (yep, that band from the 90s that did Rhythm is a Dancer and suchlike) and also Jimi Somerville (who many of my friends asked ‘is he still alive?!’ lol).

After a wunderbar time in Frankfurt we headed back to our base in Stuttgart. My next gig was at a venue that is very close to my heart indeed, The Kellarbar in Laupheim. This was one of the first ever places I gigged at when I started playing in Germany two years ago and the people there are so amazing As always we had lots of fun and I think they’ll be one or two vids on Youtube very soon, but in the meantime here’s one of my favs from my last visit:

So today I’ve got a day off and then it’s back to work tomorrow! I’m gigging with Elli at another one of my fav venues which is Cafe D’Art in Neu-Ulm. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but it’s suppose to be raining tomorrow and I’m sooooo looking forward to it!! lol

Anyways hope all’s good back in blighty Bis dann!