The Chalets have just been around Europe with Kaiser Chiefs. The Irish band's bass player, Chris Judge, who also illustrates Shane Hegarty's Irishology column, gives a blow-by-blow account
DAY 1 BARCELONA
It's 11am, and we in The Chalets - that's Enda Loughman, on guitar, Dylan Roche, on drums, Caoimhe Derwin and Paula Cullen, on keyboards and vocals, and me, on bass - are leaving a miserable Dublin with our old pals Ryanair. They usually charge us between €400 and €800 for excess baggage, which includes our instruments. Today, though, they don't ask for a bean, which makes for a positive start to the tour. Three hours later we touch down in Barcelona, where we are picked up by the big blue tour bus that is our new home. Claudia, our driver, takes us to Razzmatazz, one of our favourite venues. Pedro, the promoter, brings us into its maze-like bowels, where we meet Kaiser Chiefs and We Are Scientists, the bands we'll be sharing the stage with.
After some ham and cheese - two foods you can't escape when touring in Europe - we unload our gear. Our stack is dwarfed by Kaiser Chiefs' pile, which looks like an entire music shop strewn across the stage, and that's not counting the full lighting rig and visuals. We are suddenly suffering from gear envy. At 6pm, after a couple of hours of radio, TV and magazine interviews, we are ready for our soundcheck. It's a treat to play big venues - Razzmatazz holds about 2,500 people - as the sound is always great on stage, which makes for a better performance.
Then I join Dylan and Enda across the street for the most unusual burger I've ever tasted: raw meat in a baguette. Not for a delicate palate.
We are first on stage tonight, and the place is jammed. People don't always show up for the support bands, so it is great to have a full house. We play for 35 minutes, during which we start to win the crowd over. Many of them have never heard of The Chalets, so it is nice to see them warm to us. Next up are We Are Scientists, who we haven't seen before. They have the whitest teeth on the planet - and put on a great show. Kaiser Chiefs come on at 11pm and have a hoot.
DAY 2 ON THE ROAD
The bus leaves Barcelona at 7am while we slumber in our beds at the back. The first night of a tour always takes its toll. Pony lost her jacket, and Enda lost his dignity. When we wake up we are in southern France, crossing Norman Foster's Millau Viaduct, which stretches two and a half kilometres across the Tarn Gorge; its biggest column is as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Three eagles swoop over us with rabbits in their beaks. We stop off in Millau, a village that looks like a set for Manon des Sources. After six more hours on the road we stop at a service station to recharge the bus, and we spend the night watching DVDs.
DAY 3 PARIS
We awake on the outskirts of the city. We're heading for a Carry On Camping-style place full of tents and chalets. No pun intended. After some ham and cheese, we meet up with a few Parisian friends in possibly the world's tiniest bar. Several cocktails later, some of us are persuaded to hit the Paris nightlife. . .
DAY 4 PARIS
Le Bataclan, where we're playing tonight, is a beautiful old theatre on Boulevard Voltaire. The Kaiser Chiefs crew is busy setting up the huge light and sound system. The band haven't arrived yet, as they got to sleep in some fancy hotel. When the catering arrives, we sit down to a rare healthy meal of soup, fruit and vegetables. Then we discover it isn't meant for us. By 3pm we have eaten Kaiser Chiefs' food and taken their parking space, and we are about to get into trouble for being late for our soundcheck. It's like being back at school.
At 7.30pm we go on stage to a crowd of 400 people, which is normally a big audience for us, although we can't help noticing that by the end of the night it has grown to 2,500.
We later discover that the tickets read: "Doors: 8pm."
We Are Scientists play a great set while we guzzle all the beer from the dressingroom we share with them. We realise that our booking agent is still sending out our rider - or list of requests - from two years ago, which stipulates 15 beers, two bottles of white wine and "some snacks". It's probably the worst rider in rock history.
Kaiser Chiefs play a very loud set to a mental crowd, ending with a cover of The Slits' cover of I Heard It Through the Grapevine. By the time we pack up, it is snowing heavily, with flakes as big as Yo-Yos. At 3am we leave for the long drive to Amsterdam.
DAY 5 ON THE ROAD
Service stations, DVDs, blah blah blah.
DAY 6 AMSTERDAM
Heineken Music Hall, just outside the city, is the venue for Kaiser Chiefs' biggest headline gig. And it is huge. As Ricky Wilson, their lead singer, tells Enda later that night, he was so nervous that he had to disappear into the toilet seven times that day. Everything's on a mind-boggling scale. There are crew for everything. A catering company is serving incredible food.
The most impressive aspect is Kaiser Chiefs' private massage room. Three extra people are with us: Mike, our video guru; Chris's girlfriend, Cliona; and Paula's boyfriend, Eddie. Later on, eight more friends from Dublin join us in our dressingroom. Luckily, we have one of our own tonight, so we don't get into trouble for clearing out the fridge in minutes.
Peepee and Pony have ended up with some orange dungarees that clash beautifully with their pink wigs. Pony has also managed to dress Ricky in her pink granny cardigan.
The night spirals into chaos as the bands pile on to We Are Scientists' fancy tour bus. Enda and our pal Mike convince some poor Americans that we all belong to a travelling dance troupe and that Dylan is a shamed Inuit tribesman who ran off to the Netherlands because he married his sister. He has pale skin and a red beard. One of those nights.
DAY 7 SWITZERLAND
Frison, the venue in Fribourg where we're playing tonight, has a backstage beer tap that never runs dry. It can be pretty dangerous. We have dinner with Kaiser Chiefs and We Are Scientists, sitting at a long banqueting table in the backstage room. I heartily recommend the green-lentil soup. When we were here a couple of months ago, with Art Brut, Dylan and Paula had a massive beer-and-wine fight. It ended with Dylan crying himself to sleep. At tonight's gig a bunch of kids at the front is singing along to our songs. It's quite surreal for it to be happening so far from the ould sod.
DAY 8 AUSTRIA
We wake up in Innsbruck, a town that is towered over by mountains that make the place look like a Tim Burton set. We have hotel rooms tonight, so we'll be able to get away from each other, which we all badly need. The tour bus seems to get smaller every day. After an early soundcheck we drive up one of the mountains so that Enda can show us how to snowboard. He wants to prove that he's as good as he was at boarding school. He is. What a guy. When we arrive at tonight's venue - we're headlining this time - there's a shocking amount of booze for us. Much to our surprise, we polish it off by midnight, after playing to 400 crazy but very good-looking Austrian kids with a band from Munich called Five Fast Hits, who do Strokes-style, old-fashioned rock'n'roll.
DAY 9 GERMANY
The journey to Augsburg is unbelievable. The snow is about a metre deep - the most in southern Germany since 1942, we're told. It would look like Narnia were a big blue bus, full of hung-over, unwashed idiots, not driving through it. The snow has pretty much shut life down. Every car is buried in snow, and the drifts on the footpaths are three metres deep. The weather is so bad that only three ticket-buying people come to the gig. But despite the tumbleweed where the audience should be, we have loads of fun. Peepee and Pony decided to play the gig from the dance floor, and, for an encore, those space rockers Warlords of Pez treat everyone to a five-minute set.
Next month The Chalets play in Cork (Cyprus Avenue, April 13th); Killarney (The Granary, April 14th), Limerick (Dolans, April 15th), Galway (Róisín Dubh, April 16th), Enniskillen (Bush Bar, April 20th), Downpatrick (Down Arts Centre, April 21st), Letterkenny (the Casbah, April 22nd), Derry (the Nerve Centre, April 23rd), Belfast (Spring & Airbrake, April 24th), Sligo (the Left Bank, April 27th), Dublin (the Village, April 28th; Whelans, April 29th), Mullingar (the Stables, April 30th) and Drogheda (McHughes, May 1st)