STORIES
Whenever I go to a bar or restaurant and see it on a menu, I order a Peroni. Why? Because it reminds me of one of the most transformative and fulfilling performance experiences I have ever had in my life: Scarlet Roads tour of Southern Italy.
The tour happened because of Claudio, our Italian guitar player, who convinced our manager to book our band in his hometown of Pomarico, Italy. This idea turned into a three show mini-tour that brought us to the majestic city Metera and the coastal town of Bernalda.
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After a harrowing journey through seemingly endless flights, buses, and rental vans, (most of which I was completely unconscious throughout) we made it to the Hilton Garden outside of the ancient city of Matera.
As the third-oldest continually inhabited settlement in the world, you can clearly see the many layers of civilization stacked on top of one another along the mountainside - from modern, to Victorian, to ancient Roman, to the literal caves dug in the side of the valley. The days that we spent roaming the city before and after taking endless photo of the epic vistas, which felt like there were something out of an open world historically-themed video game.
For our show in Matera, we played at a restaurant and venue built in the remains of a large underground Roman cistern. It was an incredible show to start the tour, though I can't describe how deafeningly loud it was to be in a massive oval-shaped, stone room.
For our next show, we ended up in Claudio's home village of Pomarica - a farming community just under 5,000 people in population. The city featured an outdoor amphitheater in their main square where we would be performing. Rather than a “green room” directly behind the stage, we had a “green view” of literally the most epic pastoral view I have ever seen. I remember struggling to focus on our soundcheck as we kept wanting to look back at the fields before the sun went down.
After sound check, we visited Claudio’s parents' house, where we were surprised by a large gathering of family and friends from the village. They had all gathered for a surprise party that featured a cake with our band picture created into the icing - which was totally mind blowing and incredibly gracious. While the festivities continued, we were getting closer and closer to our scheduled show time. Kaylee was so in demand by the party-goers that she did not have time to get ready for the show, so the rest of the band went ahead to the stage. While a modest crowd began to gather, we did a quick sound check only to realize that we were so loud that we set the bank alarm off in the building next door. It took nearly 30 minutes for the bank manager to come into town to shut off the alarm. Finally, Kaylee arrived several minutes past our start time. As soon as possible, we jumped into our opening songs and were very surprised to see what little reaction the audience was having to our performance. Other than some very light and polite applause, none of the audience members seemed to enjoy the music and all were standing at least 25 ft away from the rim of the stage. I remember vividly the blank stares and the near complete silence in between songs.
Meanwhile I can see our band manager’s face at the side of the stage looking extremely concerned and irate, which is how he always looked when he felt the show was going badly. I remember trying every trick I had in the book at the time to try and encourage some audience engagement including walking out to the audience and encouraging people to come closer. The band was playing harder and more intense than ever, yet still no reaction Kaylee in particular called out to the audience many times to try and get them to react what they were literally stone-faced.
While this was happening, I noticed throngs and throngs of more people were crowding in towards the back of the square in what seemed like an endless sea of people. Between songs, I walked over to Claudio and asked what's going on, and he said that there was a football (AKA soccer) game that just ended and that's where all these people were coming from in the back. We played a few more songs and we're nearly done with the first set without yet having any real reaction from the crowd.
At this point, our manager Peter was boiling and Kaylee was yelling “free CDs” to the audience to try and entice them forward. Not a man, woman, or child moved an inch.
We played another song and Kaylee picked up a CD to try again, when finally Claudio tapped her on the shoulder and said “say gratis…Say gratis.” Kaylee looked at the CD, looked at the audience, held the disc aloft and said “gratis.” Instantly, one young child came up stage to take the CD, shortly followed by several more children, and then a few adults, until it was a near rushing of the stage by the entire front row of people. At the same time, I could see that the hundreds of football goers now looked like thousands. It is as if the entire community was there. From then on out, it was an entirely different show with people dancing, cheering, and roaring with approval.
We played for what seemed like an eternity after that and when we finally finished our last encore, we remained on stage while the mayor of the town gave a speech on stage praising our band and presenting us with a commemorative bottle of locally-made olive oil. Following this, we were rushed by hundreds of people with CDs in hand asking for autographs. I probably signed between 150 and 200 CDs over the course of the next 2 hours and stood for hundreds of photographs with our newly-minted fans.
After the last members of the audience left, we got a chance to talk to Claudio and ask him why everything was so awkward in the beginning of the show. He told us that the problem wasn’t the band or the music; it was the fact that this small village had never in its history ever witnessed nor imagined a performance like this in their own town square. In fact, this outdoor venue had just been built and we were the first band to ever play on it. The audience was in absolute shock that an LA-based musical act would come perform for their little community. He then explained that “gratis” means free in Italian,, which is why the audience suddenly started flocking the stage.
After the show, we packed up and headed to our last performance in Bernalda, which happened to be at a Memphis-themed right in the middle of Southern Italy. Oddly, this show felt the most familiar as it was more of a bar-like atmosphere. I remember very little from this show unfortunately as we were all pretty exhausted at this point, but I do remember walking along the bar chairs and walking through the audience.
When it comes to my time performing in Italy, I will forever cherish the incredible people that took care of us throughout that journey and the amazing experiences I was fortunate enough to share. Most of all, I will remember how an entire town turned out to see us play and seeing the joy in their faces once we all got on the same wavelength.
