SRF & DOWNload

We were going to play Sweden Rock Festival, the biggest Swedish rock festival, headlining the second stage. That was huge for any new band at our current level, considering we’d only played 17 gigs so far, but we also got offered a slot at the Download Festival the day after. We had a slight problem, as headliners, we were on at midnight and the Download gig was early afternoon, 3 or 4 pm. We figured it maybe was gonna be too tight, and that we wouldn’t be able to make it in time. At some point we finally decided to go for it, you never know when you get to play Download again ;-) So after the SRF gig, which was magnificent, the van got loaded and at 4 am we set off for Kastrup, the Copenhagen airport. After the usual check-in ordeal, we flew to Gatwick where Steve, our driver, was going to pick us up. He only got an arrival time because our TMs phone died so Steve had to figure out our flight number and gate in order to meet us, and he apparently did it!. Left Gatwick at 10 am looking at a 3 1/2 hour drive to Donington Castle. At Download you can’t drive to the stage/dressing room area, you have to wait in a parking lot for a shuttle. So we waited while Steve got our passes, 30 min later we arrived at our dressing room. I went directly to the stage to check it out so "Herbie" could do his job. The gig went well in spite of not having slept for 36 hours or so. Because of the lack of sleep and the strain we decided beforehand that we were going to go back to the hotel immediately after the gig. Thing was that when we got back to the backstage area after the gig, Down wanted to hang with us! Imagine Phil Anselmo hanging out with some unknown Swedish dudes for hours and he even invites us to play with Down on stage on their last song, with our guys on guitars and drums. "Bury me in smoke", introduced as "Bury me in Ghost" for the occasion. Forget about sleeping! Thank you Phil, that meant a lot!! Without the support from generous guys like you, we would never have made it. -Airghoul on Facebook
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