By Andrew Bansal
Huntress’ 7-week Fall 2016 US trek marched onto its fourth week and beyond, and this installment of my ‘In The Lair Of The Huntress’ tour blog brings you stories, thoughts and anecdotes from quite a sizable chunk of the tour, the ‘business end’, so to speak, with some major cities as well as B and C market towns along the way through mostly lengthy and rarely short drives. Before you proceed, catch up with Part 1 and Part 2.
Day 21 (9/29): Country & BBQ
Picking up from where I ended Part 2, we arrived at Sokol Auditorium in Omaha, Nebraska on 9/29. While setting up merch, I heard a country song about this dude being drunk on an airplane on the local radio which was being played on the venue’s PA, and just in case I didn’t know I was in Omaha, this radio station’s playlist sure made me aware of it, as did the great and affordable local BBQ dinner I had. A few hours later, this 1500-capacity hall was packed with metalheads. It always amazes me whenever I visit these places that I didn’t imagine having a metal fan-base, and these people come out of the woodwork to fill such venues and sing along to every song played on stage by the band they come to see. This was once again a dominantly Sabaton-centric crowd. The Sabaton singer wasn’t at his best and sounded like he was sick, which their fans obviously didn’t notice or care about. But based on what I heard firsthand from some Trivium first-timers who visited my merch booth, Trivium comes across as an undeniably impressive live band, regardless of whether you’re a fan of their albums or not, and Matt Heafy’s frontmanship is exemplary. I was told he wasn’t doing as much of his harsh/growling vocals in recent years, but is certainly back to delivering both variants of his vocals on this tour and any singer that can switch between the two has to be commended for his/her talent. I’m fortunate enough to be able to appreciate not one but two such vocalists on this tour, Matt Heafy and Jill Janus. Trivium the live band is also boosted by strong, catchy guitar harmonies and solid rhythm section and great backing clean and harsh vocals, and the fact that they don’t use backing tracks makes me respect them even more. The Iron Maiden influence is very clear in their music and artwork, and may be I’m not one of the cool kids after all, because as opposed to the first show of the tour I now find myself liking this supposedly mainstream metal band. Trivium’s brand of Maiden-inspired modern American metal is quite alright in my book, and unlike the main support act’s 60-minute set, I’m more than fine watching and listening to Trivium’s 80-minute set every night.
Day 22 (9/30): Chaos In Mill City
Next up was Minneapolis, always an important show of any tour, with bigger crowds and more press coverage than other cities. Mill City Nights was a sold-out affair. Luis had switched to controlling the Huntress mix using his iPad instead of the house mixing board, and Omaha was the first show with the new system. As with anything sound-related at these shows, it takes at least one attempt to get things perfectly dialed in, and working through the kinks in Omaha, the mix was already far superior in Minneapolis and it only got better through each show after. In most aspects, this proved to be a great venue, but not where it mattered most for me, i.e. the merch area. There was a serious lack of space for the merch lines, and it quickly became a traffic jam of people trying to buy merch with those that were just trying to get a higher vantage point to watch the show. Things got even worse when Huntress came out for the meet-n-greet, as they do every show after Sabaton’s set. It was a miracle for anyone to have even reached and met the band, such was the human congestion. But later, while I was still dealing with a difficult night, the guys went to a karaoke bar across the street and sang Madonna songs with some of the Sabaton dudes, from what I’m told. The Huntress tour bus after-party carried on for a while but in contrast, I hit the bed in my bunk as soon as I was done loading out my boxes. Amidst all the chaos, the highlight of my night was that one blind Huntress fan not only attending and enjoying the show but also coming up to me and buying merch. This has happened on a couple of other occasions on this tour. Such is the power of music. On the flip side, a good friend and fellow journalist cursed me for “ruining” Sabaton for him by telling him that they use a ton of backing tracks. Isn’t the truth painful?
Day 23 (10/01): My Heroes
It was nice to get away from the big show for a bit, with our next show being a headline gig at Top Fuel Saloon in middle-of-nowhere rural Illinois, a town called Braidwood. The bar gigs are easier for me in terms of the workload and allow me more time to interact with the locals. Plus, the enticing prospect of not sitting through 60 minutes of Sabaton for once already had me in high spirits. Completely opposite to the on-the-dot schedules and the fixed daily routine of the Trivium shows, these small headline shows throw in an element of unpredictability, which is what rock n’ roll is all about. By this I not only mean load-in/soundcheck/set times, but also the nature and quality of the local talent that opens for Huntress. This particular gig treated me to an opener that played butt rock covers, including ‘My Hero’ by one of my least favorite band on the planet, Foo Fighters, a rendition so splendid that it made me want to blow my brains out. Again, such is the power of music. I survived that but they almost had me by following up this cover with their version of Chevelle’s ‘The Red’. There was also that one extremely drunk person that stumbled upon and almost fell over my entire merch table with a tall can of beer in each hand and was ejected from the bar. All sarcasm aside, it was a fun night for all of us, the band got to play their full 75-minute set on a more-than-decent stage, people tipped me generously, the staff was super-friendly, and the owner got us hammered on multiple shots after the show.
Day 24 & 25 (10/02 & 10/03): Doobies & Wings
We had a very short drive to Peoria for the next show which wasn’t until October 4th. This was far from ideal, and being stationary and stuck in one spot on dead off-days is what I hate most about tour life. My ideal itinerary would have absolutely no off-days, specially when you have a singer like Jill who takes such great care of her health and voice that she doesn’t need off-days. She should write books on how to sing on tour, but may be she should do that after she retires, because you don’t want to give away your trade secrets while you’re still in business. Anyway, here we were, in Illinois with nothing to do for two days. Aside from camping the bus in Walmart parking lots and not listening to Sabaton, we got stoned and ate a ton of chicken wings for dinner on both nights. This marks the first time I’ve ever had wings for two consecutive dinners. We also indulged in some mundane activities like going to the mall. I bought a heather navy ‘Ride The Lightning’ Metallica shirt at a Kohl’s and I’m now a poser.
Day 26 (10/04): In The Limelight
The Limelight Eventplex in Peoria looks like a warehouse from the outside but is a lovely venue on the inside. The show though was mostly uneventful, not drawing as great of a turnout as what’s become the norm for this tour. But as usual, people were buying Jill’s jewelry at the merch table, which I talked about in the previous blog installment but one thing I’ve noticed more and more is couples coming up to browse the display and chicks asking their dudes to buy them necklaces. A lot of the times the dudes clearly seem unwilling, but do it anyway. The jewelry comes at a price but the contrast of the looks on the faces is priceless. Another aspect of doing merch for Huntress is coming across so many seriously dedicated superfans, the kind of dedication I’ve very rarely seen when working for other bands. In my own opinion, some of these people get too obsessive and inconsiderate as they don’t want to stop talking to Jill and the guys even when there’s a line of others waiting behind them, but this band is still nice to all fans and I commend them for that. On the positive side, superfans bring us lots of presents including pickles, personal drawings for (and of) Jill, iHop gift cards, snacks, drinks, fruit and much more. Some of them bring weed too. More of that would be nice indeed and we would vey much welcome it. So if you feel like fulfilling our need for weed, come and talk to me at the merch table.
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