Hello all R-K fans, readers of the band blog site and to anyone who has lost there way and ended up here!
My first blog has been a long time coming.. But better late than never aye miss Emma ! (The bruises are healing now..thanks !!)
Faaker See seems a while ago now. It was our first chance to perform on the wider stage to the Harley-Davidson community who was yet to hear of us and to the fans that had purchased our debut album, Dust and Gasoline and wondered if the band really could cut it live.
It was on a cold night in November last year whilst I was recording in London that I got the call from Suzanne to confirm we were on the roster to perform on the main stage at Faak ! This was such a great opportunity for The Road-Kings to perform at the biggest Harley-Davidson event in Europe and naturally I was delighted to accept the offer. We were new on the scene and even if we could only secure the Wednesday night slot, I knew in my heart we would ROCK ! and turn a few heads with what we had to offer as a band and I couldn’t wait to show em !
As such (I wont mention surnames) I owe a very special thanks to Marg and Suzanne for all of their help and continued support to publicise and promote The Road-Kings, both then and at future events world-wide.
We flew in from Stanstead the day before we were due to perform. With the hotels, transport and more importantly the drink’s kitty sorted we were ready to roll. We drafted in extra personnel both for the band and on the management/filming side for the occasion :
Dave Mian, a well respected horn player on the London scene and who has been recently touring with the artist Lemar, came in on trumpet.
Rebecca Owen joined us an additional backing vocalist, a well respected session singer from Birmingham who has worked on several albums
The multi talented Mr Steve Wilson also joined us out in Faak and as the keen eyed amongst you will already know, Steve has set the standard for our great footage and debut single ‘ Turn it up’ video as seen on ‘youtube’ and The Road-Kings website. In addition, he is also somewhat of an extremely talented bass player and performed with us at the following weeks invite only performance at the Gibson studios.
Morning of the gig we had to leave the hotel early to get through security and be a jump ahead of the thousands of bikers that make there way to the event . With the sound check complete by lunch it was sometime later at 8.30 that we took to the stage.
The band roared through the opening numbers ‘Fat boy Blues” ‘Turn it up’ and ’The Road’ and the rest of the set flew by and was all played and performed to a high standard , just as we had rehearsed.
The crowd loved the band and we got the rare opportunity to do an encore (not the norm) on such events thanks to the crowd’s appreciation. Apart from a strict finish time on the event from a band performance and perspective it all went really well and was a blast.
Sound, lighting and the hard working stage crew, who I have to say had a lot of bands and ego’s to deal with that day, were totally on it and were a pleasure to work with ! Having done many similar music festivals before, tempers can get frayed quite quickly in the heat of battle.. but for us , all was cool…
We done ourselves proud in hospitality after the gig, needless to say we were all nursing a slight twang in the head the following day when we had to return to the UK with a heavy heart.
On a personnel level I would like to ‘big up’ all involved on the R-K’S side and hope that my own personnel performance will only serve towards us securing more of the same next year. Bring it On !!
Brad.x.
