Archive for the ‘Tour Diary’ Category
Tour Diary – Budapest (August 14, 2011)
Monday, August 15th, 2011
It’s a long travel day to get from Toronto to Budapest, especially for one gig, but when we got the offer from the Sziget Festival and we did the math and realised that it was economically feasible, we jumped at the opportunity. Budapest is one of those cities that is not on the beaten path of the cities that we regularly travel through and its one of those places that has always had a certain exotic allure. When you start saying “no” to opportunities to experience new places, just because of the hassle of travel, then you know you are officially “old”….and we’re not old, just a bit gnarled.
Margo, Pete and I decided to go a few days early so that we could pound as much pavement, eat as much goulash and sit in as many outdoor cafes as possible. It’s exciting sitting in a city for more than just a couple of days: one slowly figures out the geography and accidently discovers little pockets that one might otherwise miss. Another fantastically obvious thing about travelling is that, whether by osmosis or by sticking your nose in a guide book, one learns just a little bit more about another culture, another land, another history, another people. Oddly enough, in today’s world, which is so connected by economics, electronics and air travel, we all seem to be trying to crawl back into our own little shells (especially in North America), trying to create a false comfort, desperately clinging to a misguided belief that, “if I keep my head buried inside my shell then nothing on the outside can do me harm”. Travel makes you stick your neck out of that shell….it should be mandatory….raise taxes and give everyone a travel voucher to a foreign land….now there’s a platform I could get behind.
So, what did I learn on my summer vacation? Hungarians have had a tough time of it and they are a very resilient and independent people. Sitting smack dab in the middle of Europe between; the Romans and the Huns; the Mongols and everything else; the Austrians and the Turks; the Germans and the Russians; the Russians and the West, has made this land a bit of a stomping ground, but it seems that each time these people get stomped, they get back up and fight, once again, for their independence. The most recent example was in 1989, when it was the Hungarians who poked that first big hole in the Iron Curtain, which eventually lead to the whole structure tumbling down. So it is a blood soaked city. You can still see pock marks from large calibre weapons on many of the buildings in the core of the city. Castle Hill, which sits picturesquely above the Danube and looks out on the rest of the city, is a beautiful spot to spend a day, but it also happens to be the most strategic place to fall back to when under attack: it has been the site of 31 sieges in its recorded history. There have been some heroic moments; such as the Revolution of 1956 which saw the people rise up and overthrow the Soviet run government, only to be brutally crushed 12 days later by the Red Army; and there have been some very dark moments, such as the Nazi inspired (but Hungarian run) Arrow Cross Party that very efficiently rounded up over 450,000 Hungarian Jews and Romas in less than two months and sent them to their deaths. But there is more to its history than just struggle. There is also a very proud and rich history of the Intelligentsia (yes, I know, we’re suppose to hate the Intelligentsia these days, aren’t we? Socialist loving, latte sipping, book reading, music listening, high-brow thinking loafers…give me a narrow minded, power hungry troglodyte to lead us…that’s the way forward). In any case, as deluded as it may seem to some sections of the population out there, Hungarians revere their artists and thinkers and there are many of international renown. The streets and squares of this city are not only named for its political heroes but also its intellectual heroes.
So we wandered over top of the barricades, gazed up at the cast bronze faces of past Hungarian heroes, stumbled along the many pedestrian friendly streets, visited a few galleries, museums, synagogues and churches and recuperated at the outdoor cafes that line most of the streets in the cities core. That’s what I did on my summer vacation.
There was a bit of work as well…if you can call it that. The Sziget Festival is one of Europe’s largest festivals and that is saying something…European summer festivals are notoriously monstrous in size. This one is set over a five day period on an island in the Danube with over 20 stages; 60,000 campers; 400,000 paid attendance. As well as a side show of craft kiosks, zip-lines, bungee jumps, wellness centers, hundreds of food vendors and lots of beer and wine. It is basically a very large village that is set created for a week of festivities. It’s quite amazing, youth culture at its best, with a slightly buzzed but basically mellow and good natured vibe. We were on what was called the World Music Stage, which was kind of puzzling…listening to the bands before us, it seems that congas or timbales (or some other calf-skinned percussion instrument that emits a loud “thwock”) was part of the necessary instrumentation for this stage and we forgot ours back in Toronto. We didn’t quite fit in and unfortunately we didn’t play very well either. Maybe it was the full moon or maybe it was the vengeful spirit of Amy Winehouse (who was scheduled to be at this festival), or maybe it was the previous two days spent tripping over cobblestones, but for whatever reason, we kind of sucked. Not a great way to finish off a terrific few days. Now we have to wait for November to redeem ourselves. Home again, home again.
Tags: Budapest, Tour Diary
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Beijing – June 5, 2011 (Day 5)
Sunday, June 5th, 2011
Gig day….finally. It’s been a great few days but we are ultimately here to play some music and we are all itching for the opportunity. This show has been balancing on a cliff edge for weeks, teetering and threatening to topple off into nowhere with the government and its various agencies giving it little not-so-innocent shoves every now and then. It’s hard enough to put on a music festival in this country, these types of things are relatively new especially when they involve foreign acts. This particular festival is the brainchild of Youdai, who is a famous Chinese DJ (both on radio and in clubs), he was the first to play western rock music on the radio and is responsible for introducing this generation to scads of new music. Youdai is also a friend of Zuoxiao Zuzhou (ZXZZ) whose song I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side we covered on Renmin Park and who also contributed a vocal and lyric, A Walk In The Park, to the album. Zuoxiao is an extremely well regarded artist in China and his music has broken down many barriers, he is also becoming quite popular. When Youdai heard about our collaboration with ZXZZ the idea for this festival was born. Youdai went about the labour intensive process of contacting all of the foreign acts that he wanted to have perform and then after signing contracts with them he had to then undertake the massive job of getting all of the necessary permits and clearances needed from the various government and security departments. This included not only getting the government to agree to specific bands (bands that he had already signed contracts with), but also getting all of the repertoires translated and approved by the necessary departments. An example of the type of detail that he and his team needed to deal with was trying to come up with a translation of our name so that we wouldn’t be ruled out by the censors…our Chinese name is now Cowboy Fan. We also had a couple of songs crossed off of our set list; Sit Sadly because it contained the word “gun” and 3rd Crusade because, well, just because. In any case, he got all of the permits and permissions signed and then about four weeks ago Zuoxiao Zuzhou ended up getting into a political mess and banned from performing live or making any public appearances. At that point the advertising for the festival had already been put out on the street, radio ads had been created all with Zuoxiao Zuzhou’s name featured prominently. The government threatened to shut down the entire festival but a compromise was reached where the festival had to take pull back all of the advertising and take ZXZZ’s name off of it all; their beer permit was pulled; their capacity was limited and they weren’t allowed to sell tickets at the door on the day of show. And so they did. And I’m sure that this is just part of the story, I’m sure that all of the people that are responsible for making this festival a reality have had to jump through more hoops than we will ever be aware. It’s all part of bringing this country step by baby step into the modern world.
We arrived at the festival grounds for soundcheck in the morning only to find a jumble of cables and wires strung all over the place and a lot of stressed out looking tech people. The grounds are massive: an unused, uncared for swath at the south end of the Olympic Park. They don’t do anything small in this country. With a lot of patience and helpful direction, Jared and Tim got the stage set and we were able to do a proper soundcheck. The rest of the morning and afternoon was spent scattered around Beijing shopping for that last gift or taking in one more site. At around 4 o’clock we got a call from the festival saying that our set time had been moved up an hour. The curfew for the show had been moved earlier by the police and one of the acts was not taking the stage in a timely manner so they were booted off the bill. As you can imagine, the turnout for the festival was a little lighter than they hoped but from our point of view we finally got to play, had a fun show and capped off a great week. I don’t think our appearance will result in Cowboy Fan streaking up the pop charts in China but we hope that it will lead to a return to this country and a proper tour to half a dozen or so cities. We haven’t gotten enough of this fascinating country or of its resilient, friendly, outgoing people.
In the meantime our friend Zuoxiao Zuzhou was not even allowed to attend the concert (the large police presence had been given his photo and told to arrest him if he showed up) so it was arranged for us to get together with him at a restaurant after the concert. We had a great night with him, feasting on cuisine from the Muslim orientated province of Xinjiang, drinking lots of beer and sampling some of China’s finest “white lightening”. It was such a pleasure to finally meet him, his generosity was overwhelming his excitement at meeting us was thrilling.
Tomorrow we head home, tired and happy. This is my fourth time here and I still want more and I’m pretty sure everyone would sign up in a flash for another spin through this country. One layer only leads to the next and every layer is as fascinating as the one you just pulled back. Here’s hoping that we get back soon.
See you all in Hungary.
Tags: Beijing, Day 5
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Beijing – June 4, 2011 (Day 4)
Sunday, June 5th, 2011
Mr Liu showed up this morning (those of you not familiar with Mr Liu should check out the Renmin Park blog). He is a remarkable man and it was a great pleasure to see him again. He is eighty four years old and a twelve hour train trip from Shanghai didn’t even faze him, he could teach us all something about growing old and staying young. He brought along with him his “comrade” Mr Chen, who served with Mr Liu in the air force in the 40’s and 50’s. Mr Chen is a native of Beijing and he was keen to show us his city, so Margo and I headed off on the subway with these two octogenarian PLA vets in the lead. After a very good and cheap lunch outside the Temple of Heaven we said goodbye to the two of them at the Performing Arts Center (a spectacular building) and Margo and I continued on to Tiananmen Square.
It was an interesting day to be walking around Tiananmen Square (check the date and check your modern Chinese history). Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people walking on the square were, no doubt, oblivious to the significance of the day, a testimony to the PR powers of the Chinese Government. Despite it all, Tiananmen Square is an overwhelming space: with the Forbidden City at one end, Mao’s Mausoleum at the other and enormous government buildings running down the sides. The size and scope is hard to get ones head around. Going from the gigantic to the ginormous we headed over to the Forbidden City which is unbelievably vast and on a day like today hot as heck. Open courtyard leads to open courtyard and there is no place to hide from the sun. By the time we emerged from the Palace we were exhausted so we opened ourselves up to the extortion practiced by the cab drivers waiting for the sun-stoked tourists emerging from the City gates and we agreed to pay a driver four times the going rate to take us back to the hotel.
After a couple of hours rest, Pete, Jared, Blair and I headed back out in search of a brew-pub that we heard was hidden somewhere deep inside the same Hutong where we had dinner last night. Blair and Jared used their best Boy Scouts of America tracking skills and found the place. It was tucked away, deep inside one of the residential corners of the Hutong and it was well worth the journey. A very funky little place populated by Americans, Canadians and Brits all jonesing for something other than the German style pilsner that is served exclusively in this country. Bags of hops piled in the corner and tiny little home-brewing kegs scattered all about the place, and man, that IPA tasted good. Our luck ran out when we decided to try an Indian restaurant that we stumbled across on the way out of the Hutong. Horrible, horrible food. Luckily the IPA had dulled our senses. We bribed another cabbie to take us back to the hotel and we put another excellent day in the books.
Tags: Beijing, Day 4
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Beijing – June 3, 2011 (Day 3)
Saturday, June 4th, 2011
I guess our little get together yesterday with the Performing Arts Troupe was a success because this morning we were invited to drop by the Canadian Ambassador’s residence for lunch: quite an honour and the sort of invitation that one doesn’t pass up. So off we all went to the Canadian Embassy compound, which also houses the ambassador’s residence, and in true Canadian fashion we were treated to an amazing BBQ meal of fresh vegetables and steak. It was a very generous and much appreciated offer: excellent food and conversation and it’s always nice to have a powerful connection or two when you are 7000 miles from your border….a terrific start to the day.
After the meal we continued on our planned excursion for the day which is a visit to the Great Wall. There are two sections of the wall near Beijing that are readily accessible to tourists. We chose the section that is a bit further from the city, about 90 minutes, but it is also a little more natural and it is perched on a spectacular crest of mountain accessible by cable car. This was my fourth time on the wall and it is one of those experiences that never really gets “old”. It is such an iconic structure and such an absurdly grand civil-engineering feat that every few minutes you can’t help but stop, look around and think to yourself, “holy shit, I’m on the Great Wall”. My kids will tell you that the best part about this section of the wall is the getting off of it. In true Chinese fashion they have built a long, winding, half-pipe toboggan run that you can ride back down to the parking lot. It’s treacherous and fun as hell: a little Six Flags entertainment with your cultural explorations.
Back in Beijing we went off to one of the more popular Hutongs and had dinner in a fantastic restaurant that specializes in Yunnan cuisine. The Hutongs are the old neighbourhoods of Beijing which are quickly disappearing. They are made up of mazes of narrow alleyways created by small single floor residences that back on to the alleyways but open up in a common interior courtyard shared by four family residences. This restaurant has taken over one of these shared courtyards and the houses that surround the courtyard, which gives the place a great atmosphere. Yunnan cuisine is all about the spices and so we were treated to a meal of the most unusual and complicated flavours. Blair had the misfortune of swallowing something that wasn’t supposed to be swallowed and which incapacitated his tongue for much of the meal. Jared, Tim, Alan and I decided to stick around the Hutong after our meal to check out one of Beijing’s premiere rock clubs, Mao Live House. Unfortunately our jet lag and hike on the Wall caught up with us and by the time the first of five bands took the stage, we were beat. So we retreated back to the hotel.
Just another typical day on the road…..
Tags: Beijing, Day 3
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Beijing – June 1, 2011 (Day 1)
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
I still find it kind of magical that you can walk out of your front door in the morning and half a day later find yourself checking in to a hotel on the other side of the earth. Yeah it’s a lot of effort, and it does weird things to your body and it aint cheap, but what a better world it would be if some Galactic decree mandated that everyone had to visit the other side of their planet to get a glance at how the other half lives.
It wasn’t a bad flight by modern day standards. It was only delayed an hour, there was very little turbulence, the in-flight entertainment system didn’t pack it in and, as far as we know, the flight crew didn’t fall asleep at any vital moments. The only slight hic-up was that Jared’s bag was “disappeared”, not lost, disappeared…gone without a trace (as are the $800 worth of microphones that he was carrying in it). Just in case you were wondering, it takes five movies to fly from Toronto to Beijing; The Kings Speech; Biutiful; The Town; Blue Valentine and The Dilemma.
After checking in to our hotel, some of us went for a stroll around the neighbourhood in search of food. We decided on the one restaurant that had an available outdoor table and a menu with pictures. After about a half a dozen or so cultural faux-pas we got our food, matched them up to the pictures and puzzled our way through them. The overall consensus was that it’s hard to complain about quality when you’re only paying $40 for food and drink for five people. Then it was back to the hotel to see if we could trick our bodies into to going to sleep for the night. Tomorrow the fun really begins….
Tags: Beijing, Day 1, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – New York City (Feb 7 – 10, 2011)
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Well that was quite the four days. There is no question that this is the best city in the world. I know that it’s a boring choice but it is what it is. Sometimes you just got to give it up and strive for #2. We started the week off with two sold out shows at the City Winery: which is a nice way to start a week. Monday night was a bit dusty. We haven’t played live since November so the set might have been a little careful. Tuesday night we let it out, and remembered why we like doing this so much. During the afternoon I did a bit of browsing at The Strand, which is always a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Rich Wallach attended both shows and very kindly gave me a copy of Kerouac’s, The Subterraneans. As always, it was good to see him. Wednesday we taped the Jimmy Fallon show. It was one those classic TV days. Lots and lots of waiting and then BAM you’re on and BAM you’re off. All of the folks at the show from the stage hands to the backstage staff to the band to Jimmy himself, were exceptionally welcoming. On Wednesday night Al, Pete, I and a long time friend of ours, Mia, went to see Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye perform at St Mark’s Church. It was a benefit for the Poetry Project which has been running out of St Marks for 45 years. The sanctuary has quite the amazing vibe. It has heard the voices of Ginsberg and Corso and Carroll and Burroughs and Ondaatje and of Patti Smith, who 40 years ago to the day (less one), along with Lenny Kaye appeared on its stage, her live debut, in front of all the hip cats of the early 70’s New York scene . She blew them all away and the rest is RocknfucknRoll History. Tonight she blew us all away. She recited some of her early work; read a bit from her book; paid homage to a handful of mentors, most of them dead, many of whom were at that event 40 years ago; and said goodbyes to a few friends recently departed. She even sang a number of songs, just her voice and Lenny on guitar. It was astounding. That gig could not have happened anywhere else in the world but downtown Manhattan (I don’t care how hip Brooklyn gets it will never be home to the ghosts that inhabit the East Village). A wonderful sidebar to the night was the audience. The Old Guard, with their perfectly worn leather jackets, their scraggily grey hair, and their air of belonging, all sat in the first eight or so rows: along the walls sat the next generation, with their perfect skin, their teased, dyed hair, their unknown, exciting futures stretching out before them (god how I envy them and envy is not an emotion that is easily evoked in me). A perfect New York City happening.
Thursday night we participated in a concert at Carnegie Hall. In the afternoon I went for a walk through Central Park. It was cold but sunny, with high blue skies. The park was pretty much deserted and so beautiful. The show at Carnegie Hall tonight was a celebration of Neil Young’s music: twenty or so musicians and bands each performing one song and then getting the hell off stage. These things are always awkward, from both a performance and social point of view. I’m sure that there are some people that really enjoy the socializing backstage, being part of a fraternity, but I hate it. The biggest drag is you don’t even get the opportunity to let off steam on stage because you are limited to one song. But I think there was a lot of good music played tonight (Patti Smith and her daughter Jessie did a very delicate version of Its A Dream) and I hope that they raised a lot of money and that the money gets to where its suppose to go.
I love this city. It an inspiring and invigorating place. Friday we go home and on Monday and Tuesday we’ll continue to work on Sing In My Meadow. I’ll be letting you know how that is coming along. Keep in touch.
Tags: Carnegie Hall, cowboy junkies, NYC, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – Turnhout, Belgium (Nov 14, 2010)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Kevin got the bus moving last night but he didn’t exactly fix it. Throughout the night we made our way across Germany with only two operational gears, 45mph was our top speed, our scheduled six hour overnight drive turned into an eleven hour odyssey. We arrived in Turnhout at around 3:30pm, it was raining and already getting dark. From the little I saw of it, Turnhout looks like your typical Belgium town: neat, tidy and efficient with a healthy scattering of artefacts from its medieval history and plenty of looming reminders of its dark Catholic spine. I’ve always liked Belgium, there is mystery here, I think it is mystery stewed in death and blood, but it is mystery nonetheless.
The gig tonight was at a very nice modern theatre, a much needed respite from the insanity of the previous couple of days. It was a beautiful sounding stage and a very keen audience. We had a pretty good show, but I think we slowly lost steam as the night wore on. The double dose of Christiania and the Rolling Stone Weekender pretty much sapped the little energy that we had left. It turns out that Alan doesn’t have the Baltic Plague, but he does have strep-throat, so he is running on fumes and isn’t the bouncing energetic bundle of joy that is his norm. This has been a tough tour on us all, but especially on Jared and Tim, our crew. Road crews generally depend on a certain amount of cooperation and support from promoters and local crews to get the job done. It only takes a couple of disinterested promoters or a lazy local crew or two to make the life of a road crew miserable. Jared and Tim have had a couple of those on this run, along with all of the other pressures and stresses that come with being on the road (especially if that road takes you through Europe). They are both completely beat, but still maintain their sense of humour and still take pride in their work: they are the absolute best at what they do, we can’t thank them enough. Despite all of the drama, and the unbelievably bad weather, spirits have remained high throughout this tour. This has been a very tough, but strangely fun run. Europe never fails to entertain.
We thought we were through. The bus was loaded up and we only had a short fifty mile ride to the airport hotel in Brussels, nice and close to our flight home tomorrow. But…no, that wouldn’t be a fitting end to this adventure. The address that we had for the hotel was wrong as was the phone number. We drove around the airport in circles for a good forty-five minutes looking for this ghost hotel. Finally someone steered us in the right direction and we found it looming, like the Promised Land, attached to the terminal, but just like the Promised Land, we couldn’t quite reach it. As we drove up the airport road we were pulled over by the airport police, barely 100 yards from the hotel, apparently our bus, the piss-mobile, was too high to get underneath one of the overpasses. So we backed up and pulled out of the airport. In desperation Jared decided that he was going to run the half mile back to the hotel to try and get some help ferrying us and the gear to the hotel. About forty-five minutes later he arrived back at the bus in a car with a hotel employee. We followed the employee back to the hotel (but not before he stopped for gas) and he took us back on the same road from which we had just been turned away. A heated discussion took place in front of our 4 meter high bus, between Kevin and the hotel employee, with the both of them gesticulating wildly at a sign that read “maximum clearance 3.5 meters”. The argument was finally resolved, it was decided that the bus was shorter or the overpass was higher than posted and we finally arrived in our room at 2:30am, three and a half hours after we left the gig. And so it ends.
We fly home tomorrow, we have the Toronto show on Friday and then we begin our cold turkey attempt at staying off of the road for a year. I think deep down we know that we won’t succeed (we already have a couple of NYC one-offs scheduled), but the idea of getting at least some extended time off the road definitely has some appeal. We have finished Demons, it’s mixed, mastered and ready to go. There will be more news on the release plans in the next couple of weeks and there will be more blogs posted about the making of the album as well. And then we’ll start work on Volume 3, Sing In My Meadow…more news about its content is imminent. We’ll see some of you at the Toronto show…make sure to stay in touch through the website. Keep safe.
Tags: cowboy junkies, Tour Diary, Turnhout
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Tour Diary – Weissenhauser, Germany (Nov 13, 2010)
Monday, November 15th, 2010
From the sublime, to the surreal, to the ridiculously surreal: this seems to be the arc of this week’s narrative. We woke up in the parking lot of a low budget resort-hotel on the shores of the Baltic Sea. I haven’t had a chance to do any Googling but this place had a distinct Eastern Bloc feel about it, very bare bones and hard edged. But I think we are too close to Hamburg for this area to have been in the East so perhaps this is just the way the German hoi polloi enjoy their vacation time. Today was Day 2 of The Rolling Stone Weekender Festival. A two day event that brings dozens of bands to this odd little enclave and spreads them over three stages; one main stage under a huge temporary tent, a second stage in a low ceilinged convention room inside the shopping complex that is part of the resort and a third stage (which is where we played) inside an odd little room, next to the mini-putt. The promoter made all of the right sounds in apologising for putting us on the smallest stage, saying that we were so late to confirm the gig that ours was the last slot available. Not only were we scheduled for one of the smallest stages that we have ever played, but we also had the much coveted 12:30am slot. So when I woke up in the parking lot at 8:30am this morning, I only had sixteen hours to go before show time. It was a tedious day, but not a bad place to be marooned. We had a couple of rooms in the hotel that we used, so we could escape our multi-wheeled urinal; there was a beach and a boardwalk to stroll along if you could handle the bone chilling winds peeling off of the Baltic; there was this odd little retail mall with a bakery, restaurant, pub and vendors in stalls selling vinyl and other indie-rock wares; there was a wireless internet room in which the network was down all day; a cafeteria which served up some very good food and, of course, starting at 5:30pm there was live music. I saw the Black Keys; John Hiatt; Tindersticks; Blittzen Trapper and an assortment of other bands that I had never heard of and will probably never hear from again.
The biggest drama of the day was supplied by Al who has contracted the Baltic Plague and was bedridden all day with a very high fever. It was touch and go, right up until gig time, whether he would be able to perform. The last thing that we wanted to do after a day of waiting around was to do an acoustic set, we needed to get some ya-ya’s out. But he rallied right before show time and did the show semi-comatose, sitting in chair. We had a jam-packed little venue to play to and they seemed to enjoy the set. On stage it was a little difficult from a sound perspective, but we did our best. We were the last band to finish playing at the Festival so when it came to load out the gear, most of the local crew had disappeared and the key to the small cargo truck that had carried the gear to the venue was nowhere to be found. It was a long load-out for Tim and Jared. When we finally got rolling at around 3am, we pulled out of the parking lot, drove for about 100 meters, there was a loud crunching noise down below, the bus rolled to stop and the interior of the bus went completely dark. We all simultaneously broke out into howls of laughter: there just wasn’t anything else one could do. The final turn of the screw was that all of the gear had to be loaded out of the bus (it is travelling in the bus bays), because Kevin had to get to the transmission which was accessed through a panel in the bottom of the cargo bay. Fortunately he was able to fix the problem, and once the gear was re-loaded, off we went on our little “Carry On Touring” adventure.
Tags: cowboy junkies, Tour Diary, Weissenhauserstrand
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Tour Diary – Stockholm, (Nov 10 and 11, 2010)
Friday, November 12th, 2010
Pete, Jared, Tim and I fuelled ourselves for our long day of travel with a classic English breakfast. Greasy eggs, beans, fried mushrooms, wilted buttered toast, limp bacon and a rasher (kind of a fried potato cake). All that was missing was the blood pudding. A disgusting way to start the day, but necessary for your unapologetic English pub crawler. The bus left directly after the gig last night with all of our gear and excess baggage. Kevin was heading for the coast to catch a 5am ferry which would take him 14 hours across the North Sea to Norway and then another five hour drive thru Norway to Stockholm. The idea was that the bus would get to the gig on Thursday just in time for load-in at 3pm. Knowing the vagaries of European travel we were wondering when we would actually see our equipment again. While Kevin was bobbing away on the North Sea, we all piled into a cattle car disguised as an SAS jetliner and flew to Stockholm. We arrived, around 9pm, a little later than projected, because of snow (fuck, it’s back). After checking in to our rock-n-roll hotel (“check in and rock out”), we all headed out to a steakhouse (including our token vegetarian, Tim) to drown our pain in good old fashion blood. A few thousand Kroner later we retired to our rooms to enjoy the rest of our “day off”.
This is a great city. I have always loved it and whenever I return (which is way too infrequent) I fall in love with it all over again. It is urbane and sophisticated and very beautiful…just like its citizens. Yes, I have Swedish envy. Yah, I know they pay a lot of taxes, but man they have a great society, funny how that works. After tossing and turning all night, trying to digest the lump of flesh in my belly, I spent the day recovering by taking a long brisk walk in the cold Swedish air. I walked the perimeter, explored the old city, relaxed in a couple of cafe’s and explored a phenomenal used instrument store with some beautiful old guitars, I didn’t even bother to look at any prices and it wasn’t raining, it was a good day. As semi-expected the bus didn’t show up until close to 6pm. So we repeated our Manchester drill and did the setup and soundcheck in 90 minutes…ate some Swedish meatballs (no shit, and they were tasty)…and then we were on stage. After three nights of performing in reverb chambers, we found ourselves in a small theatre on a completely dry stage. It was very disconcerting. I felt that we were a little off tonight. It wasn’t a terrible night and there were many good moments, but I felt like we never picked up steam. After the show we climbed back in to our disgustingly putrid smelling bus. The heater was fixed in London and now all of the smells have taken on distinct personalities and have completely taken over the bus…we are the intruders. Together we head to Copenhagen.
Tags: Stockholm, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – London, UK (Nov 9, 2010)
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
The day started miserably, but ended magnificently. There is no heat on this bus, it smells like mould and piss, the bunks are the size of “cozy coffins” and the lounge is just about tall enough for a Hobbit. It’s a miserable vehicle. We hit stop-and-go rush hour traffic outside of London at about 6am and that is what we did for two hours, stopped and go’ed. Not the best for sleeping. When we finally got to where we were supposed to be, a parking lot near the gig, the bus got stuck in the narrow entrance and our driver, Kevin, had to attempt to free himself but raising and lowering the suspension, which inside of our coffins, sounded a lot like one would imagine it sounded like in the hull of the Titanic as it ran up against the iceberg. Definitely not the best for sleeping. Abandoning ship seemed to be the best alternative but it was 8am, cold and pouring rain. As I said, the day started miserably.
Fortunately, Jared, our tour manager, is resourceful and responsible beyond his years and spent the next three hours in the rain securing a spot for the bus right next to the Stage door entrance, which made getting in and out of the venue and loading the equipment a lot easier in the continuing rain showers. I abandoned ship at one point to do an interview at the BBC (which was strike free today) and the rest of the Hobbits, alternately, wandered around and tried to catch up on their sleep. The gig tonight was at Union Chapel which is exactly that, a chapel. It’s a beautiful, but deteriorating old building, but it has a certain charm and a history of live music. Backstage it smells an awful lot like the bus and is perhaps a few degrees colder. I know now why all of those Kings and Queens were such miserable cusses: living in those castles and palaces they were forever chilled and no doubt they had the same sewage issues that seem to plague modern day London. In any case the whole day evaporated once we stepped on-stage. It was a sold out show, with a very enthused and excited audience and we played a very good set. One can put up with a lot discomfort and inconvenience if at the end of it all you get the type of lift and buzz that this type of night delivers. As I said, it ended magnificently.
Tags: London, Tour Diary, Union Chapel
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