Posts Tagged ‘Tour Diary’
Tour Diary – Spain: San Sebastien and Madrid (Nov 9, 10 and 11)
Saturday, November 12th, 2011
San Sebastien (Nov 9 and 10)
We were leaving Paris last night when the bus came to a very abrupt halt on the expressway and pulled, suddenly, to the shoulder. Before we could figure out what was happening we saw our back-up driver, outside, standing in traffic, futilely trying to stop oncoming vehicles. The tunnel that we were about to enter was too short for the bus so the only way out was in reverse, 50 yards back up the expressway on-ramp. It may have been midnight, but in Paris the traffic doesn’t stop, it was just car after car after car with the occasional truck blowing by. After spending about ten minutes watching our driver’s failing attempts to stop the flow of traffic, Farns couldn’t take it anymore and forced his way off the bus (yes, Sir John Farnsworth is back on the crew for this run, after the past several years spent in stasis at the Casino-Rama Nirvana). He quickly and forcefully organized the impatient Parisians, stopping and redirecting traffic with the confidence of a New York City cop. It was quite something to see. He actually diverted traffic on a very busy, very fast Parisian street. I think if they gave Farns a chance he could probably solve the Euro crisis...those Greeks wouldn’t stand a chance in the face of Farns’ determination, the Germans and French would become fast friends and move forward with a single purpose, the Italians and Spaniards would be humbled and would quickly get their houses in order...heck, he might even be able to get the English to come join the party. After that he could turn to the US and sort out that mess. What the world needs now is a little more Farns.
We were a little disappointed with San Sebastien. We broke the cardinal rule of touring, which is “No Expectations”. We had way too many expectations for this day off, in this town. We had visions of a small, quaint, seaside town, tucked away in Northern Spain between the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay. Well, it’s not that small, it’s not that quaint, and there is garbage tumbling in the surf. I get the feeling that one comes here on vacation to do a lot of drinking and to be seen by others. But it’s the off-season and it’s time for the locals to relax and perhaps let the town crumble for a couple of months. Aside from that, it’s a beautiful location, the weather is great and it’s hard to complain too much when you’re sitting on the patio of a seaside cafe sucking on a beer watching the local surfers take on the waves. No wonder the Spanish were so taken with California, this could be a Northern California coast. This sure is better than spending a day-off in a hotel on a highway somewhere in the middle of the US, but it ain’t no Bruge....man, we’re getting spoiled.
The audience tonight was close to spectacular. Their enthusiasm transformed this show. I think we were in danger of letting this one get away but the audience kept us focused and inspired. It’s very exciting when something like that happens. Chalk this one up as another very good show.
Madrid (Nov 11)
We got in to town at around noon and we all jumped off the bus and tried to take in as much of Madrid as possible in the few hours before soundcheck. Al and I went for a stroll along the magnificent Paseo Del Prado and ended up at the Prado Museum. I spent the day marvelling at the madness of Velazquez, Goya, Caravaggio, Fra Angelico, El Greco and the absolute bats-flying-out-your-ass maddest of them all, Mr H. “pish-posh” Bosch. I have only had a few sniffs at Madrid in the past twenty five years. We’ve never had a day off here and we have only passed through town (mainly on PR runs) a couple of times. But I’ve always liked what I’ve seen and now I’m more keen than ever for a return visit. I would love to have a few days to explore these streets. This city has a terrific energy.
This was a very tough day for Jared and John (especially for John). Because of the location of the theatre we couldn’t get the bus close to it, so it meant loading the gear from the bus on to a van and then driving the van to the theatre and loading it into the theatre and then repeating the whole ordeal at the end of the night. Two load-ins and two load-outs make for a very tough day for the crew. It’s hard to describe tonight’s venue...a modern facility built underneath a public square, the whole facility was underground. The theater itself was very bunker-like, low ceilings and large comfortable leather chairs for the audience. It was an odd night on stage...it’s hard for me to judge our performance because I had a tough time with my sound and never really settled in (too many images of dying Christ’s and weeping Mary’s in my head). It definitely didn’t have the energy or excitement of some of the best gigs on this tour, but it had its moments. The highlight of the night for me was Pete heading off on some tangent, in search of Max Roach, during Working On A Building. We definitely need to get back here soon.
Tags: Madrid, San Sebastien, Spain, Tour Diary
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Tour Diary – Germany: Hamburg, Hannover and Berlin (Nov 3 – 5, 2011)
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
Has it really already been a year? At the end of our European tour last November we decided to take a year off the road. Our most extended break in over a decade. There were a couple of one-offs that we couldn’t pass up like in Budapest and Beijing, but we haven’t seen the inside of a tour bus for twelve months: funny how it seems like only a month or so ago that we battled the bus from hell across Northern Europe.
It has certainly been a busy year. After we got home from Europe we finished off Demons, we recorded and released Sing In My Meadow and have made huge inroads into volume 4, The Wilderness. I also recorded and released a couple of albums for Latent: Ivy Mairi’s No Talker and Cootes Leland’s Trail Of Smoke, as well as working on a number of other smaller projects in our studio. Perhaps that is why this year has passed so quickly.
Hamburg (Nov 2 and 3)
It’s always hard to get going again. The disruption on the home front is always unsettling. My way to assuage the guilt of leaving is to go around the house changing all of the burnt out light bulbs. Once that is done I feel that I have left the family on a firm footing. The flight across the pond was thankfully uneventful (except for the $1700 excess baggage fee) and we arrived in Hamburg without the loss of a single bag or instrument case. On Day 1 the only struggle was to try and stay awake long enough to trick ones internal clock in to readjusting to the time change. Fat chance. The 3am wake-up is inevitable, you’d think we would have learnt by now.
Day 2 was gig day. It was a new venue for us, Fabrik, located in an old factory of some sort: a very beautiful old building (in an industrial kind-of-way) that has been intelligently reconfigured. When we walked in we weren’t quite sure of what it would sound like, but we were quickly won over at soundcheck. Tonight’s show was the type of gig that is responsible for keeping bands like us out on the road for 25 years. One of those magic gigs where the sound on stage is perfect and each player is reacting to what the other is doing, where the band moves as a single organism, growing, growling, collapsing and reacting as a unit. It’s the type of gig that when one comes off stage you think, “I never, ever want to stop doing this”. The audience was also in tune and was willing to come along for the ride as we dipped deeply into The Nomad Series and Sing In My Meadow in particular. The songs on volume 3 are particularly fun to play live and I have a feeling their intensity will grow over the coming years.
Hannover (November 4)
We were due for a bit of a letdown. All of the travel, a couple of days and nights of fighting jetlag and all of the energy spent on the first gig was bound to take its toll. We have never been to Hannover, but it was hard to do too much exploring, my body is confused and sometimes it’s best to just stay relatively still and let it orientate itself. It was a nice enough venue tonight, but it seemed set up for more of a rock band: a very high stage and a PA that was much too powerful for the room. Jared had trouble controlling the sound out front and consequently we had a tough time finding our sound on stage. It wasn’t a terrible night, but not nearly as good as last night. It was more like work tonight, but enjoyable work. Once again the audience was terrific. We have been, and where possible will continue, dividing the show into two hour long sets and reserving the entire first set for songs from The Nomad Series and then playing the “hits” and some obscurities in the second set. It seems to be working and, so far, the audiences seem to be reacting well to the concept.
Berlin (November 5)
Last night was our first night on the bus although we sat all night outside the gig and didn’t move until 7:30 this morning. A four hour trek along the autobahn isn’t the best way to start a day, but what can you do, this is Europe, you roll with the punches. Berlin is one of those cities that you can’t really get a feel for on just one visit. We have been coming here for over two decades (our first time was right before the wall came down) and I can’t say that I have figured this place out. All I know is that it’s got the energy and insanity of all the great cities of the world. It’s always a pleasure to come here. One nice feature about this bus is that all of the bunks have windows in them. This morning I lay in my bunk, watching Berlin roll by on this beautiful fall morning.
This is our fourth time playing this venue (Passionkirsche) and yet I’m still not exactly sure where it is located in Berlin. The neighbourhood surrounding it is very active and full of young families. The square across from the church was occupied by a flea market today and the food market just beyond was full of families out for a late breakfast. I spent some time wandering through the neighbourhood’s old graveyard which was especially spectacular in its fall colours. I even saw a few types of warbler-ish birds that I’ve never seen before. If I had a life list I’d have something to add to it.
The Passionkirsche is a beautiful and still active church that has a lot of musical events, although most of them are acoustic. It’s always a little tricky turning up the amplifiers in here. Fortunately we have some experience dealing with its sonic challenges. We had a magical gig tonight. It wasn’t as musically locked in as the Hamburg show but there was fantastic energy and there seemed to be a real communion between the band and audience: really fun night on both sides of the stage.
That wraps up the German leg of the tour....tonight it’s an overnight drive to Belgium and a day off In Bruges.
Tags: Germany, Novenber 2011, Tour Diary
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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 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 – Copenhagen, (Nov 12, 2010)
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
I’ve always felt that Copenhagen had a slightly seamy, dark vibe to it. There is an underbelly that isn’t always apparent to the tourists gawking at the Little Mermaid or strolling through the Tivoli Gardens. Today we spent our day deep within its bowels, in Christiania: a very surreal day.
Christiania is a community that grew up around an abandoned army base, a few minutes walking distance from the center of Copenhagen. When the army moved out in the 1970’s the squatters and self-labelled anarchists moved in. It’s gone through many changes over the past few decades and the community has fallen in and out of favour with the local governments and the “straight” citizenry, but today it is a thriving community (it seems to be run much like a housing co-op) with its own restaurants and schools and hardware store and all the mod-cons that your average anarchist comes to crave as he or she grows older. It also has its very own thriving hashish market…and this is where the sleazy underbelly begins to expose itself. When I say “hashish market” I don’t mean that there are a bunch of guys standing around with their hands in their pockets whispering surreptitiously to passersby. This is a full blown market with stalls set up so that the consumer can see the various bricks of hashish for sale, as well as jars of various strains of marijuana and all of the necessary accoutrements for your smoking pleasure. The market has a heavy atmosphere with lots of tough young punks looking on with lots of ill tempered dogs in hand. Large signs everywhere scream of a “no photography” policy. There are oil drum fires every dozen feet or so, so that the goods can be quickly disposed of when the police make one of their fairly regular raids on the compound. We were told by the locals that this area is run by the Hells Angels and it certainly has that feel to it. It seems that drugs have always been the Achilles heel for this community. Back in the late 70’s when the police would pick up a junkie they would simply dump him or her in Christiania because the heroin problem was so rampant in the community that they figured it was easiest to corral them all in one location. Today they have been able to establish a “THC only” policy within the community, but it’s the market that gives this place a bit of a freak show vibe. The general aesthetic is also a bit Mad Max-ish. It kind of has that post-apocalyptic vibe with lots of open fires, strung lights, large iron works, odd-ish sculptures created from found materials, graffiti on every possible surface and lots of facial hair and dreadlocks.
We played in one of the communities’ venues, a low ceiling, narrow, pit of a club. The promoter never showed up and there was a general who-gives-a-fuck vibe to the day. Despite that, the people who worked at the venue were very nice and as helpful as they could be and the show was sold-out. It was a standing gig, with people crammed up against our foot high stage. So we tried to crank it up a bit and blow through the bodies. We had fun and I think most of the audience did too.
Tags: Copenhagen, cowboy junkies, Tour Diary
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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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