I am finally at home in my cozy bed after 2 weeks of FATT mayhem. I just realized that today's blog post may be a bit long. So instead of talking about everything that went down on the last two days of SXSW, I'm going to Bullet point and let the photos do the talking.
Day four went a bit like this:
11am: Interview with Best Buy Music
2pm: 30 minute Performance for KUT Radio at the Austin Convention Center.
Hopped in Van drove to IFC House
5pm: 5 song performance for Live at IFC House & Interview.
6pm: We Head at Spin Magazine Headquarters to meet Yo Gabba Gabba for a photoshoot.
6:30: Fitz and I go to Spin Mag and Diesel Dinner for an interview where I run into Dave of Chromeo (swoon!)
8pm: Break time
9pm: take a petty cab to Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop for our
11:15 pm Performance in a Packed outdoor Tent for the Dangerbird Official Showcase. Yes we rocked it and the crowd rocked hard!
1:30am: Bed Time!
Day 5
Left hotel at 11:30am and caught a shuttle to Stubb's for the Rachel Ray Party.
I raided the Bravery's Dressing room for Rachel Ray's angus beef sliders. For which I'd polished off three :). I watched about 15 minutes of Eli Paperboy Reed's 30 Minute set. Hung out with the Gang in the backyard area reserved for us artist. Then at
1:30pm hopped on stage for our 30 minute performance with Rachel Ray standing on the side lines jumping round to our MoneyGrabber Ending.
2pm We ended our SX experience, took photos with Rachel, kissed the Tantrum Boy's good bye and at 3pm, Me, Fitz and Lisa hopped in a cab for
our 5pm flight to London Heathrow.
We landed in London around 4pm were a car was waiting to take us to our hotel in St Pancras. We had the day to ourselves so we decided to catch a cab over to Soho for lunch and a stroll, where we ended up walking through the Royal Park near Buckingham Palace. We saw giant swans taking bread from passers by and little ducks with flattop haircuts. We later met a friend for some amazing Thai Food and went back to our hotel to rest up for our 8am lobby call and train to Brussels Belgium. This is where the fun begins!
The Train from London Brussels took about two hours. Upon arrival we met our Belgian marketing team who took us to our lovely hotel, The Dominican where we dropped off our bags, had a quick lunch and then drove to our first round of business in Europe. We were set to perform on a Belgian TV program called De Laatste Show with the Laatste Show band and audience members. It was a bit strange as this was the first time that Fitz and I have ever performed without the rest of our crew. However, the Laatste show band did a great job and the entire production team were extremely hospitable. We wrapped up our performance of MoneyGrabber with ease and went back to the hotel around 8pm. I've been to Brussels a few times in my past musical experiences so I had the opportunity if showing Lisa and Fitz a few sights. We walked over to the center of town, were locals and tourist alike come to sit on the cobble stoned streets surrounded by centuries old cathedrals. We saw the fountain Sculpture with a big name yet small frame, the Mannequin Pis and ate begin waffles in a romantically lit landscape. It was EPIC.
The next day we 3 met our marketing duo in the lobby if the Dominican for our day of Press. We took interviews from 10am till 6pm, with magazines and Radio. We performed an acoustic version of MoneyGrabber and Breaking the Chains for Studio Brussel & Radio 1. Fitz was in heaven with one station, Radio Nostalgie, as he got to show off his fluent French speaking. We ended our day with Belgian Fritz and Chocolate from my favorite chocolatier, Pierre Marcolini, kissed our marketing team good bye and hopped on our evening train to Amsterdam.
We started our day in Amsterdam the same as we'd started in Brussels. Woke up around 8.am had breakfast and drove 30 minutes outside of town to our partnering label, V2 headquarters for our first round of morning interviews. Fitz and I really enjoyed talking to the journalist on this Euro trip as the questions asked were out if the norm. It really felt like more of a conversation vs. just the standard interviews. There seemed to be a need to understand and explain why & how we chose the music that we do. How we found each other and how we feel about our current successes. We even dabbled into the creation of Dear Mr.President, and our feelings of social responsibility through music.
After our morning interviews we drove over to the largest radio station in Holland, 3FM, to meet the men that put us on the map internationally, Journalist Guuz Hoogearts and Dj Gerard Ekdom. The story behind this meeting and how we came to be in Europe, was in Guuz enjoying our music so much that he elected to send our record to every DJ in Holland to get them to play us on air. He sent MoneyGrabber to Gerard who happens to be the highest rated DJ at 3FM, and he played it immediately and every day at the end of his show for nearly 3 months. He made our song the top 18 of the most requested songs in Holland. This magical happening of two people spreading our music around is just another example of how important people like you all are to us. I really can't say thank you enough! Okay so we get the station and were greeted by some of the programing staff. We were walked into the building of this beautiful studio with flat screen televisions, large mixing boards, white walls and carpeting with 3FM shades on the large windows, opened the main studio door and were greeted with such enthusiasm by a man standing about 5"9, brown hair, brown eyes, a fashioned button down shirt and jeans, Gerard Ekdom. It was amazing, I felt as though we had entered a day party, Gerard was just a ball of energy and excitement. There was music, there was laughter, we had an on air interview, performed an acoustic version of MoneyGrabber, had a photo shoot in the lobby, had a workout session with Gerard performing MoneyGrabber with us and his Cowbell (see video Link below) FATT And Gerard then we kissed everyone good bye and headed back to the hotel for another round of interviews from about 4:30-6pm. We left the hotel around 7 and hopped on a 9:30pm train to Paris.
Our Parisian Visit was a bit more relaxed as Parisians are a relaxed society. In the morning we drove from
Our chic hotel called, Hôtel Du Triangle d'Or, to a music shop where we performed our acoustic set 4xs for two online magazines. We went back to our hotel for an hour 1/2 lunch break at the Cafe Olympia across from the famous Olympia Music Hall. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris the streets were full of people and we dined like royality on Croquet Madams and fritz. We went back to our hotel around 4pm and finished our day of interviews and photo shoots at 6pm. It was wonderful having finished early as we actually got the chance to visit friends and dine again. I had the Duck, Fitz had the Steak and Lisa The Sole, it was a Magical ending to a very busy two weeks.
Thank you for reading. As always enjoy the photos, and I will be back soon with more from the FATT Diary!
Xoxo Noelle
Scaggs and Yo GabbaGabba
Spin Diesel Dinner
Us & Rachel Ray
London Scene
Fitz Patrick!
Towne Centre
Ms. Scaggs in Brussels
Enter Amsterdamn
