Well, Dietmar came down with COVID and so I didn't get to see Counting Crows, but I did get to see Jesper Lindell play a tiny club in Hamburg to a total of 11 people...with a six piece band...they did a full hour of tightly-played country rock to that small but appreciative crowd and then disappeared into the dressing room to count their losses. Live music is struggling to find its way back everywhere it seems.
There was a better crowd the following night at KNUST, also in Hamburg, for the Oysterband, who were fulfilling a cancelled run of dates - the audience was around three quarters full, which was OK, but my German friends Jorg and Gundula who I was with said that they'd always played to sell-out crowds in the city before. Last time I'd seen the Oysterband was in Congleton Town Hall - and guitarist Alan Prosser played solo upstairs in the Biddulph Arms...
I then didn't get to see any live music for the next three weeks (I'm not counting the bloke with backing tapes singing Schlager Musik tunes at the Potato Festival in Busenberg). Got back from interrailing on Monday 10th October and then made the trip over to Kilkenny - a town I'm very familiar with, having played the Roots Festival trail for six years in a row from 2007 to 2013 and having played there out of festival season since - and visited the Roots Festival as a punter. Met up with friends on the Friday and managed to get a ticket in Cleere's for the sold-out return of local grunge-rock heroes Kerbdog.
Then it was about 100 yards down the road and up the hill to St Canice's Cathderal, a magnificent venue, with fabulous acoustics for the rearranged RH gig.
Next up, I'm promoting Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage in St Lawrence's Church in Biddulph.