Yesterday was a really exciting day. My boyfriend’s band was performing as a warmup band on a really small festival and I even got a surprise for myself too.
WillRock is a 3 days rock festival which takes place in a park in Wilrijk. This year they made it so that small bands could submit their music and have a chance to be picked to play on one of the days. My boyfriend has been in a band for more than 3+ years and they decided to try their luck. It was a really happy surprise when they got the told that they had been picked. It was only a 30 min performance, but just being there was great for publicity.
The day started quite normal. Boyfriend had a small band practise at around noon so that the band could just make sure everything was in order. Last time they were practicing for a performance, the guitarist broke one of his strings and funny enough he did the same thing before yesterday’s performance. Some people say that breaking a string is good luck, not sure if they see it that way xD. After their practise we headed to the park.
Upon arrival the boys slowly started to bring all their gear up onto the stage. Then the drummer turns to me and says “do you want to take some backstage photos of the band?” I agreed on doing it and made a comment about studying “media and communication” in high school, which led him to lending me his VERY expensive camera stuff so that I could take better photo’s. Just like that, not even 10 min in and very on the spot I was now the band photographer. The guitarist arrived and they did their sound checks and then they were ready for their performance.
I tried my very best to take as many photo’s as I could and I tried my best to make sure that they looked alright. Walking around to get different angels, making sure the exposure was well balanced etc. I was quite nervous since I wanted to do a good job and make sure that I didn’t trip or fall. It was really great to hear them play as always and they even played a song that I hadn’t heard before.
After their performance we just stuck around a bit and listened to the other bands before heading home. The second band even shouted out my boyfriends band a couple of times, which was really nice of them. My boyfriend and I even started talking saying that if the drummer ends up liking the photo’s I might be allowed to do it more in the future. Since they would want to have it for their portfolio and even thought the drummer has more experience and would love to do it himself, he obviously can’t since he’s too busy playing. Boyfriend still has to take it up with his band, but that could be a fun thing for me to do whenever they have gigs and stuff.
The rest of the day was just spent streaming and playing with friends. I really did have a lot of fun taking their photo’s and I hope I get to do it again this upcoming Wednesday for their 3rd concert where they get 1h to preform.
If you want to know more about them or even hear some of their music, check them out here – https://linktr.ee/weareonhold
The Anna behind Yannani 