For a special New Year’s treat, here’s a first-hand account of the hard touring life of an Irish band. Shane Kinsella, drummer for greaser rock trio The Minutes, caught up with Hot Press prior to their December headlining slots across Europe, to fill us in on the realities of playing support on a November-long, 23-date tour with Flogging Molly.

With a fantastic 2011 fading to a close, a year which took in the release of their well received debut LP Marcata, a raft of gigs on the continent and ended with their first headline show in London, and a 2012 that will bring a trip to Eurosonic, their biggest-ever Dublin gig in the Academy and a spring tour of the UK ahead, it was the perfect time to take a snapshot of the band’s experiences.

You can catch them next at The Academy on February 11.

Speaking in a noisy Berlin bar as December drew near, Shane Kinsella was quick to point out that their supporting gig for Flogging Molly wasn’t exactly all glamour:

“We’ve been here for a few days off and been buzzing around Berlin, which is cool, but anywhere else we haven’t seen. We had a plan to check out everywhere we were going but that stopped at Manchester! There’s no time, you can’t even stop for a piss!"

When did you realise it would be a tough slog?

When we got into Copenhagen, that’s when the shit started hitting the fan, y’know?! I fell asleep in the back of the van in Norwich and woke up in Germany. It was mad. We rented this van off the dodgiest man I’ve ever met in my life in Manchester. We were meant to have a plug socket in the back for laptops, that wasn’t there. The TV screen and radio worked for about a day. From there on we were on our own. We’ve got no heating in the back of the van either! We’re all going around with sleeping bags on us nearly every night, fecking freezing.

What’s The Minutes’ touring set-up like?

Aside from the band we’ve got three lads working with us as well. Our tour manager/driver Jeremy, then Simon for backline tech and our sound engineer Matt. So there’s six of us in the van.

There’s been a couple of rows, shit’s gone down. It’s basically been the hardest thing we’ve ever done. No one really prepares you for something like this. We’d be driving for nine hours some days. Mark, our singer, helps out a bit with the driving but not much. Jamie’s been flat-out driving. After every gig, we leave the venue and drive for maybe two hours to get to the hotel, then get up and nine and start driving again.

We’ve been drinking every night, so I think if we stop drinking, we’d just cave in! It’s like a fuel that’s keeping us going.

And there’s been a few run-ins with the local law enforcement?

We’ve been pulled over by police in Germany about six times. For what? Drugs! They think we’re drugs smugglers or something . One day we were driving along and this little van pulled up beside and a man popped his head out the window with this little lollipop stick-type thing, flashing at us. Then the siren came on and we thought ‘oh shit’. They made us follow them into this warehouse, they pulled us in and closed the doors. We were all in the back like refugees with sleeping bags. Yer man opened the back door and started asking, ‘have you got any ecstasy or anything?’ and we said no. Though we fucking did! By the fifth time we were just laughing about it because they’re not going to find anything. We were driving this dodgy Mercedes Sprinter with an English reg and rust all over it. If you saw it going down the road, you’re going to think there’s something going on.

So have you had time to meet any civilians?

Yeah, we’re selling merch after every show. Merch money would be how we pay for diesel, food, stuff like that. We’ve set a target of €150 to make every night on merchandise and we’ve done it every night bar one. We nearly ran out of supplies actually.

But the people have been pretty cool. A lot of people speak English, so it’s been nice in that way.

It’s been going down well support-wise. Our music is completely different to Flogging Molly’s but we’ve been getting great responses. Some nights you get a really tough crowd and have to win them over, then on others, they just love it and we sell loads of CDs. And it’s a great experience for when we come back to do our own gigs.

So what have the highlights been so far?

Copenhagen was one of the best. The second gig in London, in The Forum was great. The venue is amazing and the response was brilliant. There’ve been three really, really good shows and we’ve been playing to huge crowds every night. There’s no real venues similar to Ireland. Oberhausen the other night was fucking mental. It was an old steelworks factory, really dark everywhere but one of the best shows we’ve done. There’s nothing in Dublin or Ireland that would really be the same. The places over here are like… mental warehouses in the middle of Sandyford industrial estate.

But it’s like Groundhog Day, you get into this routine of travelling. The time you’re in the van is lost time. It’s the first I’ve been away from my girlfriend for this amount of time as well. We’re all in the same boat. We’re all trying to Skype our birds every day and it’s awful. It makes it worse. I think [the glamour] went out on the ‘70s! It’s not all fun and games but I wouldn’t give it up for anything. It’s what we want to do.

The Minutes play The Academy on Saturday February 11. Tickets are priced at €12.50 and are on sale now from Ticketmaster outlets and [link]www.ticketmaster.ie[/link].