North-America: On our way home 22.12.

A couple of days of partying in Vegas really took it out on me, nevertheless I sat in on a jam at some weird little bar, we met Vinnie Paul and took some pics.This was actually during the Sin City Sinners show on the 18th @ The Hard Rock Casino, which we hit totally by accident. By the time we got to L.A. the whole bunch didn't look to fresh anymore. Did the last show @ The Whisky (Which was sold out btw) and started to get our shit together for the long way home. Gene Simmons popped in during the evening before the show and said hi which was mighty nice I think. We pretty much left as fast as possible after the show, straight to the hotel and quick showers, from there it was time to drive to LAX and get checked in. Made it in time, without any panic...and around 5 and half hours later we're landing in NYC. I managed to sleep the whole flight so that was nice. In NYC we had some hours so there was time to eat etc. At the moment we have around 1 hour left before Helsinki, didn't sleep that much on this flight but checked out The Bourne Legacy and the new Total Recall, both were kinda ok I guess. We still have one more changeover in Helsinki and then an hour of flying to Oulu (for some reason there were no flights to our hometown today, weird ) and about an hour and a half by car to get home.......let's hope we make it, at least for now the world has not come to and end.....

cheers & Happy Holidays,

Henkka

North-America: Las Vegas 18.12.

Survived Detroit, and after that we did Joliet. Before the show me & Tommy went out for dinner.....afterwards I hit a local bar with Marko and a bunch of people, it was just for an hour or so before we had to leave for the bus and a looong drive towards Denver. Had a short stop in Omaha, went shopping and eating and most of the guys managed to go bowling in the evening as well. Well over in Denver, Marko & I decided to go to the hotel for showers just before the show. Screwing around with the local taxi-dudes we almost got lost but luckily we managed to get back just in time for the show. Weird shit, dude. The audience in Denver were very much into it despite it being a Monday night. From Denver we started our long drive to Las Vegas, it's abit over 700 miles, so with the bus that would mean around 16 hours. I pretty much got straight into bed when we left so consequently I got up around 8 in the morning. Which puts us here. I'm the only one up and we still got about 500miles to drive. I'll probably go back to sleep at some point but right now it's time to enjoy the solitude and as I'm watching out the window over Utah, I think I should make me some breakfast.

Tonight and tomorrow we'll be in Las Vegas for our final off-day and on the 20th we'll be in L.A. playing thelast show this year. Then it's time to head home and spend christmas with our families. The tour picks up again by the end of January and goes on until next fall....unless the world comes to an end before that.

cheers,

Henkka

North-America: Detroit 14.12.

What a great day for a hangover, don't you think ? Since Toronto we've been to Pittsburgh, where I spent most of the day in front of the computer doing business....quite boring I might add. At the moment everything is pretty much worked out except for some final edits for our 3:rd video from this album. And no, I won't tell you which song it is but it'll be out in the forseeable future. During Losing my insanity in Pittsburgh, Elias guitar went out of tune and when he run to the side of the stage to change it, he stepped on my soundswitching pedal and made me fuck up as well....haha, we almost got lost which was interesting for a change :-) Other than that I don't remember any major mishaps during these past few shows. In Cleveland we played at the Peabody's for the 4th or 5th time, I don't remember.....and I'm too lazy to check it online, so there you go: the bloody truth :-)

At the moment I'm waiting for the soundcheck, just ordered dinner and thinking about going across the street to get some white wine for tonight. I'll probably do it a bit later....or have someone do it for me yeah !!

cheers,

Henkka

...just read about the shootings in Connecticut. What the fuck is wrong with people ?

North-America: Picture update

A big thanks to Tommy once again....here we go:  

Punky, tourmanager from ....., I don't even know

It's hard to quit smoking when you have the monkey on your back......

Just a little detail from the bus....yeah we're not good at math....

A nice card and a gift....thanks a lot, that was sweet :-)

Late night massage for the tired bass player.......

Tero is really happy, this was the second time in his life that he got a fan-gift,

thanks for making him a happy dude !!!!

cheers,

Henkka

North-America: Toronto 11.12.

Wassap ?

Still alive and we even managed to get across the border to Canada. Last Sunday we got to play at the Empire...formerly know as Jaxx.During the day I went shopping for wine with Tony and later I did some programming, fine tuning some keyboard shit. Appeareantly I was a bit tired because during the show I realized that some of the sounds were in the wrong key...shit. It was a quick fix to edit about 10 sounds, the first ones during losing my insanity which made me stop playing for about 12 bars or something. The rest I fixed during Tony's speech about....actually I have no idea what he was talking about....anyways, interesting things happend when you least expect it :-) ...at the moment everything should be working ok, I just checked it during the soundcheck. Yesterday we had an offday, we just drove across the border (got some Baileys and Chivas from the duty-free shop :-) ) and stopped somewhere at some mall...I still don't know where it was...somewhere in Canada....after having drinks and dinner and trying to avoid to shop too much crap, some of us managed to do it, others didn't.....we had a couple of ciders at an Irish Bar. Later we drove the bus to our hotel parking lot and spent the rest of the night drinking, dancing and listening to music. In the morning we drove to the Opera House where we're right now. Just finished doing an interview with Marko and soon it'll be time to get changed and ready for the show. For those of you who have been missing the tourdocumentaries from Tony, don't worry...he's on it and has many episodes done already...just waiting to be uploaded when we find some internet that actually works :-)

Anyways, business as usual and we now have 5 shows in a row before the chaotic end with driving days...an off day in Vegas and the grande finale in LA. Let's see how this goes and remember to have a good time all the time !!!!

cheers,

Henkka

North-America:A couple of stupid pics

Hola,finally some decent internet :-).....so here we go some pics from Tommy:

Hey babe, I'm a rockstar !!!

 Our home for this part of the world tour..........

Appeareantly Tommy has a thing for buses...hmmmm...

The Awesomes do NYC on the arrival day......

North-America: Springfield, 9.12

Nothing changes but the name !!

So at the moment we're somewhere on a closed down mall parking lot. How exciting ;-)  In Worcester (

yeah I learned how to spell it now) we had a really cold show, during which I checked the temperature

with our guitar tech and movie star Tero. The readout was 12,5 degrees celcius (54,5 fahrenheit) during the intro of Replica. Just before soundcheck a CO2 fire estinguisher (...how the hell do you spell that anyway ?) tipped over, broke down and shot all over the room, triggered the fire alarm and all of a sudden we had no power and the place was crowded by firemen. Interesting. After the show and showers we headed on towards West Chester. It was the smallest stage on this tour but the crowd was very into it and it turned out to be another great night on tour. Showers at a nearby hotel and off we go, which brings us to this moment.

cheers,

Henkka

Got a couple of pics from Tommy I'll upload them if I get a decent connection someday :-)

North-America: Worchester, 7.12.

What's up ?

Managed to get off the plane and into the US without too much hassle. Naturally our busdriver was at the wrong airport so we had to wait for a couple of hours or something before we got to board our home for the next two weeks. The first night was spent in Manhattan, food...drinks...the whole 9 yards. Woke up in the bus in New Jersey so appeareantly we got home ok. After some breakfast and showers it was time to drive back into NYC and go to the venue. Our day was spent walking around in the city, having dinner, exchanging money and whatnot. In the evening we played the first show on this tour. As it was the Finnish independence day we used Finlandia instead of our usual introtape. Being that it's about 7 minutes long it was a bit much but whattahell, it only happends once a year if we have a show on that day so, you'll live with it right ?

There were no showers at the venue so as you can imagine we're a smelly bunch at the moment. Luckily there are some showers here at the Palladium so as soon as I get this done I'll hit that. During the busride last night we got pretty hammered for a change but I guess it's just something we can't change.....and why should we ? So as said, at the moment we're in Worchester and tonight will be the second show of this tour, we changed the setlist a bit since Europe because we couldn't take our acoustic guitars with us. Last night we played The Last Amazing Grays and Last drop falls instead of that.....and Elias had a solo thing as well. We'll see if there will be further changes along the road but as it looks now, those are the songs we'll be using for this tour....blah blah......gotta go. Keep it real...or something along those lines...

cheers,

Henkka

European Tour: The last days, getting home and back out

Hola chicas,

So we did two more shows in Europe, first off was Vienna and then Munich. In Vienna  they served some traditional type-christmas food thing....whatever it was it didn't really work for me and subsequently I felt a little powerless during the end of the show. Well, nevertheless it got done and the audience was pretty excited so I guess everyone was happy at the end of the day. Munich of course being the last show on the tour was a bit out of hand. Before the Battle Beast show, Janne their keyboardist did a dance show dressed up at Darth Vader, with a couple of his friends  joining in as well. Funny as hell, I don't know what's wrong with those keyboard players ? During our show everything went quite ok, at the beginning of Replica Tony decided to sing this penis-song that he picked up online some time ago and during my keyboard solo in Cinderblox, I was suprised to see that Janne and Pyry from BB were dancing behind me, dressed only in their boxers. Good times :-)

We spent a few days at home, enought to wash the dirty laundry and show my face to the kids....and soon it was time again to head out to what will be the last tour this year. As you all know we'll be in the States until Christmas. Put your thumbs up and let's hope that we survive ;-)

Last night we flew into Helsinki and after a short meeting with our manager it was time again for Bäkkäri Bar and getting smashed.Done.Great. At the moment I'm on the flight from Helsinki to New York and we have about 1,5 hours left. I'll post this whenever and try to get some pics from Tommy if there's some left from the European Tour. I'll also try to keep this up during the tour but as it looks now yours truly is getting a bit tired and you never know what will happend...I might even take some pics myself :-) However I'm pretty sure that Tony will be doing his daily tour-soap-opera-documentaries......at least I hope so.

Anyways, let's find out what kind of drinks they have left in this fucking plane, at least the red and white wines are out. Wonder who's been drinking it all, it wasn't me.....I think.

cheers,

Henkka