Yamaha artist Hannah Vasanth continues to tell us about touring on Anastacia’s European summer tour with her Yamaha MOTIFXS6 and MOTIFXS8 synths. We last left her at rehearsals in London just before the real adventure began.

On the 3rd of June I walked bleary-eyed into Heathrow Terminal 5 for our 6am flight to St Petersburg, just enough time to grab a quick coffee and then find Dee our tour manager who from this moment on would be the one telling me what day it was and what country we were in! By the time we boarded the plane the bleary eyes had disappeared and excitement was in the air – this was it, no turning back now!

This was my first time in Russia – what an experience! The buildings looked exactly as I’d always imagined, grand and imposing, but no time to take in the sights, after a quick stop at the hotel to dump our bags we were off to the venue to sound check.

We were lucky enough to be joined on this tour by Tony Blanc who was on front-of-house duties and the brilliant Becky Pell, monitor engineer. These guys had already put in a whole lot of work during rehearsals making it all sound great - thanks to the wonders of digital technology they were able to recall all EQ settings etc on the digital desks, so our monitor mixes were retained. This is a godsend on a big production like this, and saves valuable time during sound check which can be spent fine-tuning rather than having to start from scratch over and over again…or at least it would have done if Maria Q and I hadn’t somehow got our in-ear packs mixed up before getting on stage for our first sound check!! Imagine my shock when I reached to play a couple of chords on my MOTIFXS and all I heard was really loud vocals - all Maria heard was wall-to-wall keyboards. We quickly worked out what had happened and things were back to normal….a very funny moment!

Our next stop was in Helsinki, Finland, an indoor arena gig this time. In a complete coincidence we met a couple in the hotel lobby the night before that had just gotten married. It turns out that the Anastacia and Eros Ramazotti duet “I Belong To You” was “their” song, so we immediately put them on the guest list for the next day.

After the gig we finally got to see the tour bus that would be our surrogate home for the entire tour. I’ve seen a lot of tour busses in my time, some good, some bad, some so awful that you immediately want to go home! Luckily this bus was definitely up to scratch – pimped out with 3 lounges, playstation and of course TV/DVD… gotta have those home comforts, especially when you’re travelling so much.

After a 12 hour ferry ride (yes 12 hours!!!) we got to Stockholm, Sweden. What a beautiful city! Anastacia was on top form and took the time to speak to individual audience members during the gig, which gave the whole show a really personal feel.

I’m just in the dressing rooms in Soenderberg, Denmark where we are playing in a few hours…It is pouring down and yup, you’ve guessed it, we are playing outside…It’s all good though, a little rain never hurt anyone and it’s all part of the fun!! Hope I don’t catch a cold!