You know what’s easier than following around your fave pop stars, day in, day out, to see what they’re up to right that minute? Asking them. This month, we nab Martha Daniels from Alien Chicks.
6am → I wake up in a panic, wondering if my bandmates Joe and Stef have managed to wake up in time. We have an early flight to Vienna for Waves Festival, and they were at a party until 4am the night before celebrating English Teacher’s Mercury Prize win (this is a much more glamorous 24 hours than we would normally have). I call them a few times, and there’s no answer. I pack my bag, get ready, and practice some vocals in the shower in case Vienna is going to have to be a one-woman show. Eventually, Stef answers the phone and says he’s about to wake Joe up (this is a daily routine for Stef, as they live together and Joe sleeps so deeply that his alarm doesn’t wake him up).
8am → I get to the airport and find the boys asleep in a café. We plan in great detail for the inevitable argument we would have to have with Ryanair because we always buy only one seat for two guitars, which apparently goes against their policy.
9am → We get to the Ryanair check-in desk, and the steward immediately tells us we have too many bags. We go into great depth explaining the difficult plight of poorly paid musicians in the modern music industry and also our decision to save the planet by only buying one seat for two guitars. We are rewarded with a £65 extra bag fine and a threat of removal from the airport. We board the plane praying that festivals in Austria have free beers and food.
1pm Austrian time → We get to Vienna and are already 20 minutes late for our soundcheck, so we jump in a taxi (another financial mistake) and get a great view of the city on the drive to the venue. It’s sunny, and the buildings are very grand and pretty. None of us have been to Vienna before. Joe calls his grandma to show her the city and she says in her sweet Welsh accent that it’s a very lovely place and it’s very exciting that he’s there with his band.
1.15pm → We get to the venue, apologise for being late, and are surprised by the warm welcome and the free beer and snacks. The sound engineer is friendly and likes our songs (some people are bemused/confused/ mildly entertained, and some people completely get it straight away and love it – he’s in the second group, which is nice).
3pm → We check in to our hostel and have our usual competitions of who can do the loudest fart, who is the most tired, and who can insult the other two the most. Inevitably, all three of us have forgotten to bring toothpaste so we brush our teeth with water and have a long nap.
8pm → Gig time. We get to the venue, and it’s packed already, which gets us very hyped up as this is the first time we’ve played in Austria and only the fourth time we’ve played outside the UK. We start playing, and the crowd is insane – really lively, and there’s a huge moshpit and more people trying to get in at the back. This part makes all the travel, tiredness, Ryanair ordeals, and lack of toothpaste so worth it.
10pm → It’s time to go to our second gig of the night, which, believe it or not, is at ‘Wiener Wurstelstand’ – a sausage stall on the outskirts of the city. When they sent us a message on Instagram asking us to play there, we naturally jumped at the chance.
10.30pm → We arrive at Wiener Wurstelstand and are greeted by the sweet smell of sausages and a DJ playing pop bangers. The dream. We set up and wonder whether people will want to listen to jazzy rappy post-punk in strange time signatures while eating their sausages.
11.00pm → Our prayers are answered. People absolutely love it. They watch intently and dance around, sausage in one hand, beer in the other. They shout ‘one more song’ at the end. We hang around for ages afterwards, making friends. Who’d have thought playing at a sausage stall could make us feel like stars?
1am → We stumble home to our hostel giggling, preparing ourselves for the 4am wake up. We’re playing at Misty Fields festival in the Netherlands at 1pm the next day, and have a 6am flight to Amsterdam then a long train journey to get there. I fall asleep, hoping nothing is delayed (Misty Fields ended up being one of the best gigs of our lives, but that’s a story for another day!).
Taken from the May 2025 issue of Dork. Alien Chicks’ EP ‘Forbidden Fruit’ is out 9th May.
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