Denver Bands Overseas

Indigenous Robot is another Denver band working on making their name international. The four piece indie rock group has added a Japanese leg to their current #Revolting Tour, which kicked off September 13 at the Ink Lounge in Denver. They head overseas November 7 to perform a run of five shows on Japanese soil. We caught up with them to get the word on how this came to be, and the album, Revolting, that inspired the tour.

CMB: So, Japan. What are you most excited for, nervous about, etc?

Kyle South: Culture shock
Elyse Elam: Experiencing a different crowd
Ryan Longenecker: Hanging out with Zarigani$
Vince Graeber: Playing internationally
CMB: What are you going to eat first?
K: Teriyaki chicken
E: Fresh fish
R: Vending machine food
V: Convenience store noodle bowl
CMB: What’s on everyone’s mind is, how the hell did this come to be?

R: We met Zarigani$ and Love Panic Records during our IndigenouSXSW Tour earlier this year promoting our previous release Castles. 
CMB: What are the logistics like on a tour like that? What are you doing as far as equipment, van, hotel, etc.?
R: In Japan they have live houses that already have most equipment available for touring bands to use. Traveling between cities we will use the mass transit system as well as renting a car.
CMB: Tell me about the new album and the process of making it.
R: We recorded Revolting after coming home from our 5 week Psychedelic Castles Tour. During that time we had already been performing and perfected some of the songs. The last two songs of the album were written just a few weeks before tracking. We recorded at Black in Bluhm Studios in Denver, Colorado. Chris Fogal mixed and mastered the album. Revolting was tracked in two days. The first day all of the instruments were tracked simultaneously and the second day all of the vocals were tracked.
CMB: What are your biggest tips for a band heading out on its first tour?

R: Have reliable transportation, keep packing to a minimum, make sure you know the people you will be living with for your tour duration, and start saving money now for all your expenses.
CMB: Where can we pick up the album?

R: IndigenousRobot.com
iTunes
Spotify
Bandcamp
Twist N Shout
Mutiny Now

Online: facebook.com/indigenousrobot

Brent Loveday is the long-time front man of Reno Divorce, and has toured Europe multiple times with the band. He has accumulated plenty of stories from his travels, and here are a few of the best. A rockabilly punk-rocker raging his way across the olde world? Sounds like a great time to us.

We’ve got quite a few interesting European tour stories… A lot of them involve German authorities and are quite incriminating, so let me think of one where a statute of limitations won’t come into play. Ok, I got it! We were somewhere in Germany in 2011. We had just played a killer gig with U.S. Bombs and for some strange reason, we had opted to go back to our hotel instead of hanging out with the locals. This particular hotel was a very quaint bed and breakfast, and when we got back to it, we were starving. This was a small town, so there were no 24 Taco Bells that most Americans take for granted. On our way up to our rooms, we happened upon a small unguarded refrigerator in the lobby and, being the ugly Americans we are, we proceeded to raid its contents. All that was there was a few links of sausage and some bread. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? So, we took our quarry back to the room and proceeded to get wasted while we scarfed down this stolen foreign sausage. We were so hammered we weren’t even sure if it was cooked. We were reheating it with the room’s hair dyer    We eventually passed out and thought nothing more of it until I’m in the shower and our merch guy is beating on the door asking wtf we did to the sausages. It turns out that they belonged to a guest, a very lovely older lady and her son and his family, and they were intended to be ate during a picnic by her father’s grave, as today was the anniversary of his passing. And, of course, it was Sunday, so the whole country shuts down and their picnic was ruined. And here’s the kicker… each one of those frankfurters cost 20 euro each. Turns out they were former deer sausages, and just hours before they were being devoured by Conaire wielding rock and roll psychopaths just a few doors down. The casings were still on our table! The merch guy, who incidentally had stayed with locals and brought two girls back to our room at 8 in the morning, was furious because he caught the blame when grandma walked in and say the carnage in our room. I had to pony up my portion and face the family at breakfast. I felt about a foot tall! I offered my humble apologies, in English of course. I’m not sure if she understood me, but I definitely understood the look she gave me, which said, “get back in your fucking van and never let me catch you in my village again”. Fair enough, right? Ironically, the last show of that tour would end with an even gnarlier nite in an even more quaint bed and breakfast with those same two chicks, but this time, the roadie and I wrecked the whole fucking place, Eagles-style. And the next year when we came back, guess where we had to stay?

Scott Risch is a vocalist and bagpipe player for Denver punk rockers Potato Pirates. He has, in the past, whored out his services to other groups, including a run as the drummer for Reno Divorce on their European tour in 2010. Here, Risch recounts some experiences from the trip.

In May of 2010 I was lucky enough to tour Europe on the last Bad Boys For Life Tour with The Bones(Sweden), Street Dogs and Left Alone while I was filling in on drums for Reno Divorce. We played 11 or 12 shows in Germany, and a few other dates in Antwerp, Prague, Graz and Solothurn. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

I was barely 21, it was my first time in Europe, and the first time I had toured playing drums for a band. Reno hit me up because their old drummer, Andrew, had recently left the band in either February or March of 2010 and they heard I played drums from a few people. I learned most of Tears Before Breakfast before the first practice and they asked me to fill in and come with them. We landed in Frankfurt and this massive nightliner tour bus with a trailer that could fit a regular tour van inside of it. We had a badass driver named Mike who had an Agnostic front shirt on and an extremely badass tour manager named Ralf, who was powered off of zero sleep, red bull and an amazing work ethic. The bus fit all 4 bands plus crew so 25 people and each person had their own bunk with a mattress, reading light, outlet, heat/ac, bed sheets, pillows……NOT WHAT YOU USUALLY GET! Not to mention we had food and booze guarantees at every single show. It was surreal. The Street Dogs, Bones and Left Alone, whom all have been touring 10, 15 years plus told me that I had gotten very lucky to be touring like that. They really put it into perspective and made me appreciate it a lot. Don’t get me wrong though, it was a lot of fucking work. But that’s the best part, honestly.

One of the best memories I have touring was playing this old World War 2 bunker in Aachen, Germany. We had to use this old 3ft by 3ft floor elevator to load in 4 bands worth of backline, gear and merch. For the guitar and bass cabs we had to take our belts off and put them through the handles to balance them while they went down on the elevator because there was nothing but the base of the elevator, nothing to support them. But it was crazy! I mean such a huge piece of history that was turned into a venue but almost seemed to have not even been altered much since the war. It was a smaller room, probably about a little bigger than the Marquis. Most of the shows were between 500-1500 people, one of the dates was a tattoo convention that I think had almost like 3,000 people it seemed, I don’t remember exactly though.

All the cities we played were awesome but I absolutely fell in love with Germany. The people, environment, beer, food, everything was perfect. Being on a tour like that you get to experience Europe in a whole other way. You’re stuck at a venue for most of the day for like 10-15 hours, rarely we had time to go out and adventure and even when we did there wasn’t too many cool things to see. We weren’t in touristy parts of the cities so really when we were playing these shows it was for the locals and hanging out with all of them afterwards was great. We’d talk and drink for hours and have amazing conversations. Not to mention that the crowds always had tons of fun and are way into having a great fucking time.  It was humbling to have that experience and getting to really play for the local community. We did manage to find time to go to the Charles Bridge in Prague which was pretty amazing.

I want to go back so badly, it’s a lot of money but totally worth it. Hopefully the next time over will be with Potato Pirates! I literally cannot express how great that tour was and how many friends and memories I have because of it. I could tell stories for days. I’m really trying to get back over there though; only time will tell.