The second leg of the Rail Tracks Tour is over. The first leg started in England in January, the third one will start in April and last until June. There will be shows all around Switzerland and a showcase in Paris in May. I'm pretty happy to take a break now and I'm looking forward to being on stage again with my band and full of energy in April.
The last show was in Geneva at FNAC Rive, my first showcase ever. It was further the first time I had to announce my songs in French. I haven't taken any French lessons since I left school in 2010. But thanks to my promoter Sophie, who was born in Paris and helped me with some vocabulary and some sentence structures, it went pretty well and the audience seemed to enjoy my effort to speak French.
Nevertheless, I made mistakes I've never done before. I sang lyrics I've never sung before and I played chords I've never played before. I don't think the audience has noticed it, though. But it was weird for me, as I played a similar setlist since the Rail Tracks Tour started in January. I guess I started to rely to much on me. So it's good to take a break now. If you're interested in the setlist, you'll find it below.
I'm really looking forward to this break, as I feel pretty exhausted. Besides playing nearly 30 shows, I wrote a new album (which I finished a few days ago) and worked on a poem collection. I don't know what happened, but I've never been as creative as I've been within the last two or three months. Creativity is an interesting thing: It doesn't come when you expect it. Often I went to bed and in the middle of the night I woke up with either a full text or an idea for a text. It was as if my mind was working all the time - and that was also the way I felt in the morning. It was not kissed by my mused, it was more like a rape. As most of these texts or ideas were created unconsciously, it was interesting to analyse them afterwards. Of course, the lyrics were not finished unconsciously. It always requires a lot of hard work and discipline to work on lyrics, as one has to find the right words and a structure that fits the topic. However, these new lyrics turned out to be very sarcastic .. and crazy. They tell stories about psychopaths, life and death, and fading beauty. I don't know yet what will happen with this album. There is no release planned for one or two years. I also mentioned the poem collection: I've become very interested in writing poems. It is similar to writing songs. The words are like chords that have to fit together. But there are so many possibilities to use language; there are so many figures to explain the image one has in mind. I recently had a chat with a friend about language. We asked ourselves if it is possible to change the mood of a story only by changing its words: Good to evil, fun to tragic, happy to sad. In general, I'm very interested at the moment in the topic of contrasts. In every story is a good person and a bad person. What defines the bad person as "bad"? Is it possible to change the point of view and to see the bad one as the good one? Let's take "Harry Potter" as an example. Obviously to the readers, Harry Potter is the good guy and Voldemort is the bad guy. If we wrote the story from Voldemort's point of view, we would probably understand his reasons. I don't want to say that I sympathise Voldemort. But if the story was based on Voldemort, we would probably hope that he wins. Let's take "Frankenstein" as another example. Most people believe that the monster (which is not called Frankenstein) is evil; probably because its face is often used as Halloween costume. But if we follow the monster's point of view, it is not "it" (or him?) that is evil, but the society that rejects him.
We often take our lives as standards and compare ourselves to all the other ones. Who says that we are right? Who says that are beliefs are true?
Anyway... I should finish now. It's the second time I'm writing this blog today. When I wrote it a few hours ago, something happened and I lost everything I had written. Hope it'll work this time.
I hope to see you at one of the shows. Check www.gionstump.ch for further information.
I'm going to take a break now... no writing, no blogging, no music; and I'll be back full of energy in Arbon on 13th April.
Until then... take care!
Gion
Setlist, FNAC Rive, Geneva:
1. Full Moon
2. Book of Love
3. Only One Place
4. I'll Cry Forever
5. A Better Day
6. Little Baby Girl
7. Shackled & Drawn
8. Man in the Middle
9. Across the Sea
Encore 1:
10. No Control
11. Lucy
Encore 2:
12. Sin City
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