‘Thunderstruck’: Kila at a festival in Spain

We had a festival gig in Carbajo, 4 hours southwest of Madrid last weekend and drove after a flight into the wee hours of the morning in a Mercedes’ van, spaced out on tiredness and struggling to cope with the distance. It was a really tough drive. One band member in particular was really upset and seemingly unable to continue to suffer the journey. This was after we made a ‘piss stop’ an hour from the ‘Sicario/Better Call Saul/Narcos’ type remote dirt track Villa that we were staying in. Admittedly, he had a point, it wasn’t organised so well by the promoter in terms of us going so far and just for one gig. I was watching ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ in the van on the way, a recently released remake of a film about WW1 and the harrowing, vicious deplorable treatment of, and the suffering of these young naïve German boys. It is a terrible and terrifyingly brilliant anti-war film. Then I realised that… actually… tough as the drive was… in comparison…we were going to be ok!

On a lighter note, for the last 10 minutes of the journey, at about 4.10am , driving up the forever donkey rut track to the villa, The Last Mile Home if you will, I noticed my phone pinged a ‘welcome to Portugal’ phone carrier message! Did we really drive that f**king far? The hour went back to 3.10 on my phone, but on the other side of my seat in the van, Eamonn, the deputy piper, said his phone said 4.10 and was still in Spain. So one half of the van was in Spain and the other in Portugal!

This switch kept happening over the 2 days that we stayed there and to make things even more confusing the hour went back the morning we were leaving. We had no idea when to leave for the airport. Mind you it’s not unusual we don’t know where we are or what time of day it is! Or what day it is.

The festival show itself was hammered by thunder, lightning and torrential rain and they had to eventually cancel the show as the PA system was not covered properly and was seemingly destroyed. All the festival goers crammed into the long beer tent ( video) and cheered us as we arrived through the bepuddled football pitch to the tent. Word went around quickly that we were going to do an ‘acoustic’ impromptu session for them anyway and the people were incredibly happy that we did and despite the bizarre sound set up ( a few vocal mics through 2 guitar amps) and lack of any PA or monitors, we played for 70 mins at the end of the tent and they were drenched full of joy and spirit throughout ! I played Djembe ( on the Indy Rock 'never play one of these' list) instead of a full drum kit, which was a blast from the past. I also played the steel chrome ring on the edge of an unused seat onstage for a marching rhythm within a tune, Pota Or, and got loads of thumbs up from side stage! Major improvisation. Our sound engineer Tom Skerrit said it sounded great! I can add this plastic seat to the '2 sup teacup' to bring to sessions going forward! On the way back we stopped in a beautiful old medieval town Trujillo to break up the journey, so we were all chilled out when we got to the airport to go home after 3 days in a deep musty nether region of Spain, and a gig that was cancelled.... and then uncancelled.