The 10,000 Hours in Hamburg Tour

Storytown to Pay Their Dues in Homage to The Beatles

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York - March 9, 2021 - You undoubtedly know about the many months that The Beatles spent performing live in Hamburg, Germany, honing their craft and becoming a great band – all before their ultimate commercial success in the UK, the USA, and the world. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell famously encapsulated this key to success in the “10,000 hour rule”. Well, we get it, and we are DOWN with the plan. We know that Storytown is a darn good band, but we aspire to more – to true greatness. So, we are proud to announce our upcoming 10,000 Hours in Hamburg Tour!

For a variety of reasons, it’s not feasible for us to book a multi-month gig in Hamburg, Germany, so we’ve come up with what we think is a great and equally destined for greatness Plan B: A tour of the many Hamburgs that one can find in these old United States. You may not know it, but there are towns and cities named Hamburg all across our fair land, from Connecticut to California. It’s gonna be GREAT. We’re still working out the tour dates, but we’ll keep you posted. Stand by……

OK, the above is fake news. I had this idea a while ago when bemoaning the challenges of trying to play regularly in NYC. Actually, the idea was to create a fully elaborated but fake tour of real venues in real towns named Hamburg — complete with photos, set lists, tour dates and dispatches from the road, chronicling hijinks, bad food, unruly crowds and the fulfillment of growing a fanbase the old-fashioned way.

Well the pandemic put the kibosh on all that, didn’t it! Well, the truth is that a music artist marketer whose opinion I value felt that the whole thing was largely pointless unless we in fact did a real tour. And, since Storytown isn’t a bunch of 22 year olds living together hand-to-mouth in a cheap, run-down one bedroom apartment waiting for our big break, cramming ourselves into a van for weeks (or months) wasn’t in the cards. (I’d be more than happy for a big break though, so I’m still working on that. Any help is much appreciated.)

Back to the tour. I did get as far as finding all 22 Hamburgs in the US: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin. My next task was to work up an itinerary that didn’t have us zig-zagging too much:

That roundtrip to Hamburg, CA was going to be grueling. In a fitting nod to Spinal Tap, we were pumped about our hotly anticipated appearance at Lexington, Kentucky’s renowned Hamburg Pavilion - an extra added venue that was to be well worth it.

We can dream, can’t we?

Please share your thoughts about anything, either in the comments on this page or by emailing me directly at guy@storytownband.com. Until next week….

Storytown killing it at the Rodeo Ranch Bar, Hamburg, Tennessee