Kato – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the electro-pop artist, Kato, gives the details of one of his crazy stories from touring. You can check out the story and stream his newest single, “Motions”, after the break.

The year is 2010 – It’s my first time touring festivals in Denmark, and I’m about to perform at ”Skive Festival” in front of 20,000 people.

At this point in time, this is the largest show of my career. I had a photographer hired for this show, and right before I go on stage we’re talking back and forth. I’m telling him that he’s granted complete access to the entire stage, but that the most important part, is that he remembers to shoot that classical DJ picture, taken from behind with the crowd in front of me. I really did spend a lot of time instructing the photographer, and telling him that nothing was as important as this one picture. I even arranged for an extra tall flight case for him to stand on, in order for him to get that one perfect shot.

The show is rolling, the crowd is going crazy, and I can sense that the photographer is taking a lot of pictures from behind me – This is amazing!

At the end of the show, I’m playing one of my biggest domestic hits, “Turn The Lights Off”. The singer of the track “Jon” is with me on stage performing it, and in the last part of the song, I leave the DJ booth to run to the front of the stage. The crowd goes crazy, but I think to myself that it can get even crazier. I jump down from the stage onto the fence between the stage and the crowd. At this point guards have to keep me from being dragged out into the crowd. The photographer sees the opportunity to get a great shot and moves to my DJ booth to get the perfect view, and right before the music drops, I’m counting down.

3… The photographer steps forward in the DJ booth
2… He leans in above my DJ equipment
1… At the very second the beat was supposed to drop, the photographer accidentally hits the “stop” button.

There’s complete silence. Trying to keep it cool and rock ’n’ roll, I’m still standing on the fence, with one arm raised over my head. As I start to think about how there’s way too far back into the DJ booth, the crowd starts to scream. The photographer is still taking pictures, not yet realizing what he has done. I decide to keep my arm up, pretending that it’s all on purpose. While keeping this pose, and hyping the crowd, Jon sneaks into the DJ booth pressing buttons, one after the other. In the end, Jon manages to start the song over, and while I maintain my pose for the next 4 minutes, the crowd parties on, unknowingly of what just happened. Well… In hindsight, they probably knew all along, but at the time, we certainly thought that we had them fooled.