STREAM OF PASSION - New Guitarist

STREAM OF PASSION - New Guitarist Shares First Gig Experience

STREAM OF PASSION's new solo guitar player, Stephan Schultz, shares his experience playing for the first time with the band and the adventures he and the group had at their second gig.

"So there I was, standing at the bar at Het Kasteel after my first ever gig with Stream Of Passion, with two beers in my hand. I felt great...

The show went awesome (apart from my sweaty yet cold fingers and barely under control nerves (not as bad as I thought to would be, though). The hard work and the long rehearsals really paid off! We knew we clicked as a band and as people in the rehearsal room and now we know we hit it off on stage as well! Thanks to all who came out to see and hear us play. You looked great from an on stage point of view!

A even bigger thank you to everyone who came to talk with me after the show. I heard about Stream Of Passion's loyal fan base and they really weren't kidding. Thanks for the warm welcome. I felt right at home!

After a few drinks, nice conversations and some picture taking it was time to get going. The backline got stuffed in the vans and off we were. On to our second destination of the weekend, a town called Tournai in the south of Belgium.

We left Alphen around 2 o'clock and had a 4 hour drive a head of us to our hotel. Because Davy and I live half a mile apart we always travel together. It's a good thing we both like to talk, listen to the same music, eat potato chips and stop at gas stations for (mostly) midnight snacks. We really needed that in order to stay awake and be save...

When we finally arrived at our hotel we needed to get our guitars, pedal boards, MacBooks (all new Soppies have MacBooks, the old ones do not… haha!), travel bags etcetera to our rooms. Luckily for us there was no elevator and we had to walk up four stairs. Numerous times!

The worst thing was that we all knew we wouldn't be able to sleep longer than an hour and a half before we had to wake up again, get our asses in the shower, get dressed and go to the sound check at 10 in the morning (!).

Not really something I want to do every week. Hell, once a year is way too much! What was even worse is that there were some technical problems with the PA which had to be sorted out before we could do the sound check. That took forever! Luckily, the nice people that organized the festival made us some delicious sandwiches and plenty of beverages to keep us very happy during our wait. Thanks again to Luc and all the others at Tournai Progfest for the hospitality!!!

When we finally could do the sound check at around 12:30, we tried not to think of all the hours of extra sleep we could have had! Unfortunately, we were too tired to try really hard… The sound check went well and we soon got back to the hotel for some more hours of sleep. I got about 3 hours of catching Z's and together with the sleep I had before I was looking at 4.5 hours of sleep. More than enough…

Around 7 we went back to the venue to see some pretty fine bands in action! All very talented and friendly people… (Thanks again to the guys of 'Headline' for the Leffe beers (9%!!) they gave me at our own after party 'Stream Of Passion style' (that's with beer and whiskey and silly jokes!) back at the hotel which lasted to 06:00...)

When it was time for us to storm the stage I felt much more relaxed than the day before… I felt right at home and enjoyed the crowd, the songs and the energy of my fellow soppies! We really rocked hard (with our neck bones still hurting from the night before…). My amp and guitars sounded amazing and that was the icing on the cake! So to speak…

Time flew by as we rocked through the set… I had my eye on a stack of speakers, which was standing next to my amp at the side of the stage, the whole night. When we played 'Embrace The Storm' I finally decided that I would do the guitar solo when balancing on that stack of speakers. As soon as I had a musical rest I climbed up on my amp and onto the speakers… Man, was that one funky stack of speakers… I didn't have to vibrate any note of my solo because you could hear me trembling while trying to keep my balance up on the stack…

Nevertheless, the view was awesome! Nice to see the crowd from up there! It was funny to see some worried sound engineers holding the PA-stack when I decided to take it a bit further and climb the PA-system. Nice! Not so nice was trying to climb down to the stage again… it could've been my second and last SoP show when I come to think of it! Oh well…

I had a great time on the Tournai Progfest. Again very nice people who made me feel right at home! I hope to see y'all again some day!

Cheers, Steve!

PS: Anyone got any pictures of my climbing session? I would love to see them!

PS2: I guess you were hoping I would fall when taking the pictures, right? ;-)"

Check out more photos here.