European Tour Diary 2018: Day 3 Gent Sunday Matinee

It is pouring.  We have to meet the club owner's girlfriend to get access inside the club.  She is supposed to meet us at 11 so we can load out the backline into the van.  Unfortunately she is MIA, so Christoph and I just stand in the rain under a leaky canopy hoping she turns up.  I watch sullen women peddle past on bikes.  I send a series of text messages to our friend Bux who has a connection to the owner somehow.  Soon afterwards a grouchy petite woman gives us entry.  We walk in and discover that Leo, despite leaving the club at 5am, has failed to pack up his drums.  I send a text message to Sugar to yell for him to come over as I am not going back out into the downpour.  Leo cheerfully arrives to begin the work while the owner makes us an excellent quality coffee with the standard cookie on the side.  

The show today is at a new club called The Crossover, located right at the foot of a small bridge.  Bux set this up as a motorcycle event as he is ingrained into area enthusiasts.  The constant downpour will not be helpful to drawing motorcyclists.  Yet, as we load in we see a crowd gathering, many of which are wearing Hells Angels and Blue Angels MC colors.  It is a tough looking group of guys, any of them could be extras for Sons of Anarchy.  This is exactly the type of show that could go wrong for a minor cultural misunderstanding.  Yet, you have to do what you do on the stage.  "We must have a lot of Harley enthusiasts here today, right?  Triumph?  Let me tell you something.  Compared to my first bike, those are all pieces of junk.  Total shit.  My first bike blows all of yours away.  Mine was 100 percent plastic and made by the good people at Fisher Price.  It was a BIg Wheel." Then we go into "Big Wheel".  

At the end of that, I figure I will probably know if they will like us or if we are going to get beaten.  It is hard to get a feel for the room.  I think they sort of like us, but there is one guy that is completely disinterested, just looking at Facebook on his phone.  I spend the entire set trying to win over one Hells Angel sitting close to the stage.  I try to break out every circus trick I know.  We play fast ones, blues, hillbilly...  I am just not getting anything back.  It seems to be building steam with the rest of the room.  It is hard to believe it is Sunday afternoon.  The patrons are having a dizzying array of high powered Belgian beers.  When we finish, we get a strong call for an encore.  Frankly, if two motorcycle gangs want you to play an encore, you play an encore.  When we finish at last the Hells Angel guy gets up, walks over to the merch, and buys our records.  Dammit.  He liked it the entire time.  We autograph records and CDs for the next hour mingling with the crowd.

I had way too much beer over the last two days.  The bar offers cava, and that sounds really good to me right now.  Is it a good idea to drink cava in a beer bar with Belgian bikers?  It doesn't seem like it, but that's what I want right now so I go for it.  If you would have told me that I would have been having an in depth conversation on what it is like to be in a motorcycle gang while sipping a rose cava, I would not have believed you.  But I gotta tell you, this member of the Blue Angels was a straight up guy that was remarkably candid while maintaining a murkiness of detail to my increasingly in depth questions.  It was a fascinating conversation.  

When we load out a small incident that would have great consequence occured.  Leo gave me some "all" when we were pushing out Hector's road case and clipped my ankle.  It hurt, but not in a major way.  Little did I know the repercussions to come.  The sun mercifully breaks out for a moment and we drive over to Bux's farmhouse.  Bux has prepared a slow cooked beef stew all day and has amassed an impressive lineup of Belgian trappist, blonde, and wit ales.  I had purchased a bottle of small producer champagne from the biker bar (who knew they would carry that?) and Bux lets me open a Chateauneuf du Pape he has in his wine rack.  Everybody is pretty loose from an afternoon of La Chouffe, Piraat and Golden Draak.  Bux and his girlfriend Anna's hospitality is off the charts.  He has been amazing to us over the years but this trip is beyond even his high standards.  We finish the meal, put on some old punk rock records, and then head to his covered patio for the requisite deep fried delights.  We retire to the various bedrooms of the refurbished old stone farmhouse with full bellies and buzzed heads.