may 29 & 30 2004
crowd: 75+
Okay, so here's the deal. We were playing at a festival called "Nieuwe Oogst" in Venlo. The first day we had to play 'unplugged' in the café part of Perron 55, the music center where the festival was being held. The second day we were supposed to play 'full power' on the big stage.
After our last gig (the one in Meijel, with a huge crowd of 1), we were glad to see the café was well filled with people. We had our own temporarily backstage dressing room. There were sandwiches and fruit waiting for us, and also a fridge filled with... mineral water. Hey, that's no beer!
We completed our setup quite fast, and were anxious to begin. Normally we don't play acoustic (to say the least), so this gig was going to be a special one for us. We started our set with 'Black Widow', just as usual, but totally different at the same time. We played it quite smoothly, and we were surprisingly well received by the crowd, which promised a lot for the rest of our gig!
We went on with the show, and it soon became clear the audience had a thing going for us: everybody stayed to listen to us. We were absolutely happy about that: not bad for a first time unplugged, not bad at all! Emmelie's voice sounded amazing with the acoustic versions of our songs, and we all had a lot of fun playing them.
After we jumped off the stage, we got quite a lot of compliments and bravo's from the audience. Most of them were musicians themselves, talk about the toughest crowd you can get... We immediately listened to the recordings we made of the show, and I have to admit, we really did play great! Emmelie's singing on those recordings is really awesome!!!! Might even be new cd material...
So, the first show was an excellent start of this two-day gig. We enjoyed it, the crowd enjoyed it, and the best was yet to come... the big stage show the next day!
The second day of the festival: a new day, a new challenge! The previous band that performed on the big stage played a little bit too long, but what the heck, our time had come!!!!
We were very happy with the water the Perron 55 crew supplied to us. Working hard under those steaming hot lights really makes you thirsty. And sweaty, bah. Especially Sander, who brought along a shitload of material, drank water at almost the same speed as he drinks beer. Which is an awfull lot...
While setting up, we noticed that the guitar amps were staged beside the stage. Not a great set up, because the guitarists smash their sound towards one another like that. And to make it totally odd, Mauzie was playing a Fender Twin Reverb amp, and Joep was playing a Marshall JCM amp. Talk about the world upside down, huh?
Of course we kicked off with 'Black Widow' again, but this time the "pedal to the metal" version. The sound engineers needed a little time to adjust the sound, but no problem there. It smashed the crowd anyway! 'Hurt' was our second song, and started really well. A little screw-up created quite a chaos at the end, but nobody seemed to even notice that. But after this oopsy, we knew we had to concentrate a lot more to keep it up. The guitar amp setup didn't really help and caused a somewhat chaotic stagesound, but hey, we've survived worse!
So, the show went on, and we made a steamy hot performance of it. Especially Emmelie went totally bezerk and amazed the crowd several times with her vocal swings from real heavy grunting to almost classical singing. And as usual, she also made the visual part of the show a big success.
Because our gig started a little behind schedule, the last part of our show was at the same time as the awesome metal band "Mytholic" started their accoustic set in the café. Some people went over there to see them, but most of the crowd stayed to see us finish our show first. That was great! And they didn't regret it, because at the end we traditionally played Iron Maiden's 'Iron Maiden'. We really knocked the crowd of their feet with that one (yes, we did, not the beer). They won't forget us quickly, that's for sure!!!
All in all we had a great weekend. Both our unplugged and fully equipped gigs were a succes. A perfect revenge for our previous gig, and certainly another step up the ladder. We might not make it to "Rock am Ring" this year or next year, but Burning Acewing will be heading for the best rockin' experience near you soon!!!