Árstíðir & Kyle Woolard – Alte Brauerei, Annaberg-Buchholz; April 16th, 2016
Annaberg-Buchholz, middle of nowhere, Sachsen, another place I had never heard of before Árstíðir announced a concert there, but since it was a weekend, I had to go of course. The gig was a little strange with an audience that needed a while to warm up, but I loved it nonetheless. Loved the venue as well, it was just a really nice place with friendly staff.
We had to leave Dortmund at 7:48 in the morning to get to Annaberg in the afternoon so it was a short night for P., I. and myself. We managed to have some tea before we left and took our breakfast along. It as a long train ride with four or five changes, but to everyone’s surprise it went smoothly and we arrived pretty much at the scheduled time. Once there it took us a long walk up the hill to our hotel. A shower and a bit of sleep later I felt much better and we were ready to set out to the venue. It was a cool place with wall art and a surprisingly large selection of drinks. I immediately liked it.
Kyle had to work really hard this time. I’m not sure if it was because not all of the audience understood English or if they were just slow to respond. Either way, not everyone laughed at his jokes and it took quite some time before people got into it. They did well on the sing along though. 😉
In the beginning he asked how we were and I replied “Tired!” “Tired??” “It’s all your fault!” I joked. Kyle completely changed the setlist around, adding even a new song called ‘La Llorona’. He said it was about a guy who always had to have everything and had to have that woman too and La Lllorona is a legendary ghost of a crying woman. In the end there was a call and response sing along that worked surprisingly well.
Kyle did the magic trick again as well and this time the woman he asked for a number said “Seven”: He asked her twice if she was sure and if maybe it wasn’t a five to which I. commented “Five was so yesterday”. 😀 It turns out the number on his sheet of paper really was a seven so he showed it to us, raised his arms in victory and joked that it had to work at one of the ten shows he was doing. His set was a perfect warm up for the guys and after he ended with ‘Vancouver’ the audience seemed ready for more. I had missed that song in Hagen and was glad to see it back in the set.
Setlist (most probably not correct):
Blurry
The girl from Ipanema
Equador
Patagonia
La Llorona
Occupy Anchorage
Vancouver
I talked to Kyle for a while, telling him how happy I was to have ‘Vancouver’ back. He said he felt exhausted because he had to work so hard. It was worth it though. Then I talked to Ragnar until it was time for them to go on stage. He was just going to tell me a story, but that had to wait until after the show. 😀
Annaberg was as different from Hagen as it possibly could have been in terms of venue, audience and lights. Where in Hagen everything was big and bright, Annaberg was small and mostly bathed in red light. Yet were Hagen had suffered from too many people being busy with anything but listening to the music, the audience in Annaberg was much more attentive. Yes, it took them a while to warm up, but they really were into it by the time the concert ended. So for I. and P. who had really felt distracted in Hagen, this made up for it. For me, it was equally good.
As usual the guys were chatting with the audience, but it only worked partly. There was laughter when they talked about the things Annaberg has that Iceland does not (trees, nice weather) and Ragnar said he didn’t see any of those things because he was sleeping. Yet later, when they asked for recommendations of good local beer nobody replied. Still, it was clear that the audience appreciated the music.
For ‘Shine’ Ragnar told the usual story about going to Mars and the tings he would miss if he did: “Local German beer, nature, family, friends…” – I looked at P. and I. mouthing “Yep, in that order!” and we smiled at each other. We smiled at each other often that night, enjoying the performance. It was a good one overall, even though the guys had to work hard to win over the audience.
Still, in the end everyone seemed happy and when they stood in front of the stage for the first encore people loved it. ‘Systir’ was again a highlight for me but I also loved ‘Á meðan jörðin sjefur ’ and ‘You just have to know of me’. Beautiful.
Not so many people stayed after it was over so there was a lot of time to chat with the guys. Before we left I even talked the guy behind the bar into giving me the concert poster that was on the wall behind him. 😀 It was a nice night that ended in emotional conversations in our hotel room in the wee hours of the morning.
Setlist (probably incomplete):
Himinhvel
Things you said
Someone who cares
Moonlight
Silfurskin
Shine
You just have to know of me
Ljoð í sand
Á meðan jörðin sjefur
Ages
Systir
Shades
You again
Nú gleymist ég
Góða veislu gjöra skal
Heiðin
Árstíðir spring tour: 2 concerts down, 16 to go, next stop: Munich