Youth Man discuss touring Germany and share tour photos
It’s been one hell of a year for Birmingham punk trio Youth Man. Not only have they been signed to Gallows’ label Venn Records, they’ve also just come off a German tour with Adam Angst – where sold-out of all of their merch and had to make DIY copies of their EP on the road – and now they’re straight back in to a tour with Tigercub. We caught up with the band to discuss the tour of Germany and what they’ve got in the pipeline.
So how did the tour come about? “The guys from Adam Angst got in touch with us a few months before and asked if we wanted to jump on the tour with them,” said bassist, Miles Cocker. “We said yes straight away because we’d heard Germany was an awesome place to play… It did not disappoint.”
Despite gigging for a long time, their German tour experience was the first time the band had been away for longer than a few days, as frontwoman Kaila White explained. “We were excited about going out there – we’d never been away for 2 weeks solid before. From previous experience we expected that touring in Europe would be majorly different to touring in the UK. When we’ve been out to Europe before the hospitality has been head and shoulders above anything we’ve experienced at home. Germany absolutely lived up to and surpassed all expectations we’d previously had.”
Of course, Youth Man couldn’t have done all of this on their own. They needed their trusty driver and engineer, Miles added. “We took a couple of guys from Birmingham, Dave Bentall of Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam fame – he was taking lovely pictures to make us look beautiful, and generally being our mommy – and Mike Conroy, who’s a great soundman and tour manager – he’s been doing it for years! They shared all the driving and did most of the heavy lifting so we could piss around at the merch table.”
Hospitality in Germany is something the band really enjoyed, as well as the unique places to stay. “The hospitality in Germany is great. They seem to appreciate the efforts going into touring,” drummer Marcus Perks added. “We got a bed and a warm meal every night which made it all a lot easier. At one of the first shows we drank all the beers in the fridge (something that became a bit of a habit) and came back five minutes later to find someone had filled it back up again. That happened pretty much everywhere.”
“Most live music venues in Germany have bandflats somewhere in the venue. We stayed in some cool little apartments built into the places we played. We stayed in a wicked place in Bonn called Basecamp – it’s a huge aircraft hangar full of vintage caravans and train sleeper carriages. Actually, we stayed in a train carriage in Jena too! Maybe they like disused trains in Germany.”
However – all good things do come to an end, even if the endings are pretty rad. “The last show of the tour was cool,” said Miles. “We all invaded the stage while Adam Angst were playing. There was a constant stream of crowdsurfers. It properly went off.”
Now Youth Man are back from Germany, they’re well in the swing of things. Supporting Tigercub for pretty much the entirety of November, the band will be visiting some new places as well as some old haunts, as they play The Rainbow in Birmingham on Friday November 6th. “We’re gonna be out til the end of November, then we’re putting the finishing touches to our new stuff and getting in the studio to put it to tape. Super busy! Not complaining though.. We’re playing the Rainbow in Birmingham this Friday and we’re looking forward to seeing all of our Birmingham homies.”
Youth Man support Tigercub at The Rainbow in Digbeth on Friday November 6th – tickets are on sale now via birminghampromoters.com.
Photographs by David Bentall.
Founding editor of Counteract. Freelance travel and music journalist.