A prelude to ARMADA... (Patreon)

Hello me Hearties, 

Today I would like to immerse myself back into this day in Aschaffenburg on July 6, of course, taking you along!

This was our very own release show. The day  before we were playing Castle Rock in Germany and the next day we were flying to Sweden to play Time To Rock. All these were considered release shows since they took place around our album release but the one and only real club release show, with our own crowd, was on July 6 in Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany.

We were all very excited for this show, the first one that we considered as part of the ARMADA tour. Sort of a warm up, a prelude.

Many things were taking place on that day for the very first time:

1/ Playing with our brand new ship structure on a club stage. We’re calling it, very simply “The Chip”. We had the chance to try it out on festival stages which are way bigger but this time, it was a first experience with it indoors, on a club stage. And we almost thought we wouldn’t have been able have it! Someday before the show we heard the stage height was below 3m when our stage structure is 2m80! At some point our technical crew stated that it won’t fit and that we have to play this release show without The Ship! Impossible! We did remeasure our structure and confront information with the venue staff and it appeared that it would be very tight, it could work but it would be a bit on the edge! In the end it worked out fine! We had to move some lights and our Ship took the whole back of the stage until the ceiling but it worked and we were really happy!

2/ It was our first time playing live “To Those Who Choose to Fight”, “The Land of the Free”, “Magic of the Night” and “Underwater”! So many new songs, so many risks that something could go wrong. We rehearsed as much as we could ahead of the show and worked on some of the light effects ahead such as my stage entrance on the intro as well as the whole stage concept for “Underwater”.
For this specific song, I have a very precise image in mind that I kept in case we would shoot a video for it! I had a specific robe made in dark blue-green tulle, so that once in front of the stage fan, it would gently move and imitate the movement of fabric in water. It was my first time performing with it, and I had very little space on stage to move since the stairs of The Ship were basically right behind our central front riser. The whole front of the stage felt a bit cramped!

Performing “Underwater” live for me this time required all my focus. This song is so intimate and so special to me, and it feels so different to sing it live compared to rehearsals and studio. I focused on singing it while finding my way to perform for it on stage with this new outfit. With the lights and the mood that were set up, the vision I had in mind started to become real and it turned into quite an emotional moment for me. Yet I think that my “floating” dress effect didn’t work exactly as planned with the wind from the fan being either not strong enough or not blowing the in the right direction to create the effect I was looking for! Oh well, I have 33 more shows to make it work haha! 

3/ We have new crew members, on drums and guitars, and this is always a challenge at the beginning because they don’t yet have the same habits and flow as the ones we were used to work with. However we could tell that they want to be a part of this, they’re proactive and helpful and it worked really well with their assistance too! I need one of them to help me put my crown right during the gig as well as grabbing the flag for  “Legion of the Seas” and while Robert and I have our queues and rituals, I still need to create these with our new fresh blood!

4/ At the Meet&Greet we tried something new as well: amplifying our vocals, mixing everything with the piano, bass and guitar on a new portable PA. Someone said in the audience “if it’s amplified, it’s not acoustic”. But I think I disagree with this statement as we were still using an acoustic guitar, and no backing track. It’s just amplified, especially for the vocals, to give the M&G audience a better audio experience and also for us singers, to make it more comfortable for our voices. It is very draining for the voice to sing naked in noisy places where the acoustic is completely different from one day to the other. Sometimes we could get some reverb from the surfaces around us, sometimes we had to sing in the driest rooms and this is more demanding than the actual concert. In order to continue deliver these acoustic sets that are so special to us and to you all, we decided to upgrade our performance with this amplification and it was way more enjoyable to me, personally. I felt I could really sing the songs, give them more life and colors, not having to struggle with the singing conditions.

We played new songs too during this moment, especially “Ashes to the Sea”, which became another beautiful emotional moment.

So the whole day we were preparing things here, going into details there… I took half an hour to reply to the Sailors’ questions with Julia who put together an interview that is going to be published soon!

📷 Lara Suffel, a student in photography was with us backstage and during the show to capture special moments for her diploma! All the pictures going with this post are hers. I really like her artistic eye, giving a wider, deeper and more poetic dimension to the subject and moments captured.

Now, for fun, let’s talk about what didn’t work or almost failed on this day!

Right before the show, a couple of minutes before hitting the stage, Meek realized that he hadn’t updated the setlist on our mixer (Tom is launching every song from it during the show but they have to be in the right order). The uploaded setlist was still the one from Castle Rock! In a rush, Meek asked for the USB key from the mixer, which was on stage, as well as his computer, which was in our dressing room. Our crew jumps to get him all of this and here he goes, sitting on the floor in his pirate outfit, opening his computer and editing the setlist at the time we should have been starting to play!

The key is updated and brought back to the player and we launch the show. After 15 seconds, the intro stops! We try again and it stops again! Chris (our drum tech), comes back to us with the key and says “the intro is broken” which was quite funny and yet stressful. Meek takes the key and changes the intro file. Chris runs back on stage and this time the intro works, the show is officially launched! 🥵

Everything went fine and was running smoothly until “Underwater”. Tom knew I had to get off stage before the song to put my robe on but while I was still at it, Meek gave a sign to Tom that I was ready and started to play the song when I wasn’t close to get on stage! And for once this song has a very short intro… There was no way I could have started to sing on time so we had to stop the song after a couple of seconds to give me the extra ones that I needed to come back on stage…. That was an extra adrenaline dose before this song for me ^^
Then, as described above, everything went fine!

This set felt so good, we love our new songs so much. They carry so much energy and drive. A setlist with a lot of songs from the 2 Pirates album goes by so fast and is so enjoyable to us! Every time I was looking at the setlist I was like “oh it’s this song now!!” or “yeah that one!!”, it’s so empowering! We had a lot of fun with this audience who kept freshly prepared for anything pirate-ish. It was wonderful to share all of these first times with some of our most loyal Sailors! It was a bit like a family reunion, even at the M&G!
And also backstage as Marina (La Torraca) came to the show and it was so nice to have friends celebrating this special day with us!

My only regret from the day was to not have been able to catch up with Blackbriar too much, @Zora, if you read this, definitely next time!

The end of the evening was a bit chaotic, we had to unload everything and pack as fast as possible as our flight to Sweden was very early and the nightliner had to drop us at Munich airport at 5am.

We basically slept 3h, hoped off the bus, flew to Copenhagen where we were picked up to drive to the festival site. I couldn’t sleep on the flight, I slept a bit in the van to the festival. We were all pretty destroyed. It’s great that we were playing later at the beginning of the evening so that we could rest a bit and eat well before the show.

So yes, thank you to many of you who were there in Aschaffenburg helpin us making a wonderful memory of our release show and warm up for the tour!

Now I am impatiently waiting for this tour to get closer!! And there are less than 30 tickets left in Paris that’s amazing!!

Thanks for reading and I wish you a very pleasant day!

 Hugs,

Clementine