How to Make a Baby Elephant

Early on in the process of doing this blog I started keeping a list of what I/we were learning. I don't claim this to be a definitive or authoritative list of tips for touring, just something to add to the discussion, things to think about before you head out, while you're out. I'll try and section it out below. I'll start with pre-tour details, then move to directions, electrical power and gear. Last, and maybe most important, is about getting along as people.

Before you hit the road:

#1 - Advance everything.

Leave as little to chance as you can. Not only payments, load-in and soundcheck times and stage plots. Advance the directions, lodging, parking. Accept you’ll be dealing with people who mean well but don’t understand that for the band, uncertainty accretes.

If every night entails a surprise of some sort, it accelerates the wear and tear of the road. If lodging is a hostel or hotel, check in before or immediately after load-in and soundcheck. Advancing the directions and parking is especially important if you’re playing in an old town, especially a preserved medieval town like Regensburg, with its narrow cobbled and winding and often one-way streets. Advance work is also very important if the club is in the center of town where parking will be tight and expensive. Know the dimensions of your car/van, ask if the underground garage they're suggesting will fit your vehicle.

Use map quest or google maps to print out directions from point-to-point. Make sure to print detail maps for tricky interchanges, and for the start and end points. I put together a tour binder, with advance details for each show and printed directions for each leg.

Bring maps. Make sure you know how to read a map. If you don’t, learn how to read a map. Smart phones and GPS are great, but if the signal’s weak or the maps are incorrect, or the phones get lost, stolen or break, you’re screwed. You never know when you’ll need to make rerouting decisions using a big map that gives you a broad view of the area you’re traversing.

Speaking of smartphones...

There are many different phone options…you can buy sim cards at the airport, but make sure they’ll work in different countries if the tour takes you across borders. Most US carriers offer international plans. Look into how much texts/data you use at home, and estimate upward from there. Smart phones are great tools for navigating unfamiliar terrain, you’ll use them more than you might think.

Make sure the phones charged *before* the driving begins. Don’t leave for a long drive with little or no juice. Charging in the car takes much longer than via a wall socket. And if there’s 3, 4 or 5 of you competing for the car charger, someone’s going to be left short of power, unless the drive is a long one.

Equipment:

If any part of the tour involves flying, you're going to have to deal with getting your gear back and forth in one piece. I asked around and the most common answer for guitars was the Mono case.

It was as good as advertised, worth the investment. My bass flew SFO-Frankfurt, Copenhagen-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-London-SFO. No scratches, dents, cracked head stock, neck...Mono cases are made by musicians for musicians. Even if I don't do another tour where I'll have to fly, it's worth it as a sturdy gig bag if I'll be loading the bass into a trunk or van with amps and other gear.

If you're touring outside the US/Canada you'll need to deal with differences in voltage from the US. In Europe that means 220 volts, twice the 110 we run here. This is not something you want to be ignorant about. Ignorance will mean a blown fuse, in more ways than one.

First, understand that you can run your US 110V pedal, keyboard, laptop, drum machine on Euro 220. But you need to know whether you'll require an adapter or converter. Look at the AC adapter or the appliance itself. You're looking for what it takes as an input. If you see something like "Input 100-240 V", all you need is an adapter so that the US-style plug will fit into a Euro-shaped socket.

If all you see is "100 V" (or 110 V) for input power, you'll need to buy a converter so that the 220 volts get ramped down to 110 and you don't fry your gear. Don't fry your gear.

Buy the adapters or converters in the US if you can. They'll likely be cheaper.

Other things to buy in the US before you go:

* Batteries - much cheaper here and good to have for pedals in case there are power issues. Just remember to take them out of your pedals after the show.

* A multi-USB power adapter. Good for charging multiple phones or iPads at the same time.

* Buy or bring a car charger. Voltage isn't an issue here, no adapter needed.

* Guitar strings, drum heads...you don't want to roll into town after shops close in need of these things. There's also no guarantee that you'll get the things you prefer to use.

Transportation & lodging:

Ok, you'll likely need a van. Unless you're a 2 or 3 piece and can backline everything. Then a car might be fine.

If not, a van it is. Do some research and get a sense of the size you'll need. try and fly into a central airport with a good rental car stock. It'll likely be Frankfurt. But here's the important part...

Do not, do not, do not rent from Thrifty and their affiliates if at all possible. In Frankfurt, maybe all of Germany for all I know, they subcontract to a company named Buchbinder, who are borderline horrible. They'll upsell you on everything, coerce you into unneeded insurance by saying the insurance you might have on a US credit card is invalid . Spend the extra $$ up front and get from Hertz or Avis. And figure out what kind of van you'll likely get so you know the dimensions. For parking garages, ferries and other instances it'll help to know this.

Also, you'll need an international driving permit. Get it from AAA. Thirty dollars, inclusive of the passport photo they take. Fifteen for just the permit if you bring your own passport photos. Easy process. Get maps while you're there.

As for lodging, if the promoters or club can hook you up, great. Or maybe you'll crash on couches. If hostels aren't an option, AirBnB is a good option ahead of time or on the fly, so have an account or two set up. But whatever you do, advance this as much as possible. Know where you're going to sleep. It'll save some stress.

The human element:

You may be great friends before you head out. You may be casual friends. You might be a hired gun...friend of a friend of a friend who had a couple weeks off and filled in for the drummer who just moved to LA to be a studio musician.

Regardless of what your relationships were before you left, what you don't want to be is at each other's throats on the road, or leave as mortal enemies. So you'll have to get along together.

Accept that your band mates are human and dealing with whatever life situations they brought with them on the road. Jobs, relationships, other life concerns...you may be 9 time zones away, but those things don't get left at the airport.

Day after day of close quarters, late nights, long drives, being out of your comfort spaces…this can fray the nerves. You'll see each other at your best and your less flattering behaviors and personality quirks will come out. Try not to take your moods out on your mates, and try not to take it personally when that’s done to you. Make sure to get some time away, even for short spells for a walk, finding a cafe or park to sit, or even a nap in the van. If something flares up, try and deal with it right away, or as soon as makes sense. Above all, communicate clearly and effectively, Don’t be afraid to express your needs and desires, just do it with respect and be respectful when your band mate is telling you what she needs. The tour should be fun, a great adventure. You're in it together, so make sure you take care of each other as well as taking care of yourself.

That's enough for now. If I've left anything out, feel free to leave a comment.

Conversation 16

“So how was the tour?” she asked as they settled in with their drinks at the table out back. The fog never really hits this part of the Mission, but still there was a chill in the air. The kind you get in July in San Francisco, even with the sun shining brightly.

“Well…”, then he paused. “It was great. Tiring at times. It was essentially work. But it was a ton of fun. I mean, we did it just about on our own. Got lots of advice and help booking a couple of shows via promoters we met. But it was a real indie operation.

Yeah, it was hard at times…10 shows in 16 days. The last stretch of 7 shows we did in 9 days. But to get to work at your craft like that, in so concentrated a time. I mean, I’ve prepared for albums with intense periods of rehearsal, but I got to sleep in my own bed and didn’t have to get up the next day and drive 500 kilometers. But that kind of sustained playing…I mean, we started playing well, in that professional sense. We knew the songs, we’re good at our instruments. But over the course of the tour we got good. “

“Tight?”, she asked? “Yeah, tight. Funny about that…in college, freshman year. I had a professor who used that word to describe a band. It was from some student comment card or something. We were asked to submit comment cards or whatever after lectures. He read it aloud. I forget the name of the band he associated it with, but I’ll never forget the way he said the word. Straight at first, then sort of, uh…incredulous. Or wondering how in the hell you can describe a band as tight. But I understood immediately, even though my own musical education was still in its infancy.

So yeah…we got tight.”

“Are you sad it’s over?”

“Yes. I mean, it was great to get home, back to my own bed, my friends. A routine that didn’t involve packing a van, driving for 3 hours, loading equipment into a club and staying up until 2am. That’s the romantic version of touring, and it is fun when you’re in the thick of it. But...and maybe this is because we're all working adults who've gotten used to creature comforts of home, not under-employed 20-somethings...you need a break from it. You need to sleep well and eat a bit healthier. Have a couple fewer drinks per day.

The funny thing is, by Copenhagen we were all tired. Relieved in a way that it was the last night of the tour, looking forward to life again. Scott would be traveling around Europe for a few more weeks with his wife. Geoff and Jules heading to New York for the summer. That was Saturday night. We hung out again Sunday, heading up to see the Louisiana Museum, then Kronborg Castle. But we didn’t talk too much of the tour, as we had a few other folks with us.

But a couple of days later, Tuesday…after we hadn’t all four been together by then for a day and a half. We sat at this bar, watching the US play Belgium in the World Cup. And we all agreed, after Geoff or Jules said it, that we wished a second leg of the tour was going to start soon. Maybe in Amsterdam, or Paris. Or Spain or Italy. Somewhere…we wanted to keep playing. A few days of rest, showers, laundry, the same bed for more than a night…we were ready to get back at it.”

“You missed it already?”

“Yup. It’s easy to see why it’s addictive. The endorphins or whatever is released in those 30-45 minutes on stage each night. And the anticipation beforehand. Especially as you feel yourself getting better. As our drone outros became more than just parts that we were trying to make fit in, but parts that fit in because we were listening to each other, playing off the repetition and variation. All that. We wanted more. “

“Are you going to do it again?”

“We’ve laid out ideas for more touring. Maybe some US dates in late spring. Festival and other dates back in Europe in the summer. We’ll see…I hope it comes together. I’d love to see what we can do with some more time playing, knowing what we know about how to take care of ourselves and how to pace a tour.

Yeah, I’d love to get back out there."

Golden Ball

Now that the World Cup is over, Germany having beaten Argentina 1-0, this is as good a time as any to write a bit about how the tournament was a constant presence on the tour.

I'm probably the biggest futbol fan of the group, with Geoff a close second. For me the World Cup is a big deal. Has been since before ESPN was providing comprehensive coverage, when outdoor viewing screens in major US cities wasn't a thing. I knew going in that I'd probably watch less of the tournament than if I were at home.


To watch any matches would require some planning and some random luck, given we were often either soundchecking or playing during matches that mostly started at 6p, 9p and midnight Central Euro time. We ended up watching games in a variety of settings in 5 countries...from small hot dog restaurants to large outdoor beer gardens to our rooms in Bruhl.

Our time in the van commenced with the first match of the tournament. We landed on June 12, the day of the opening match between Brazil and Croatia. Our plan all along was to get from Frankfurt to Leipzig in time to watch, and we succeeded, even with the slight detour to see a castle.

We were in Berlin when Germany played their first match against Portugal. Whenever Germany scored loud cheers came from all over the city. I bounced from a small bistro near the apartment where I stayed to meeting the rest of the band in an outdoor space in Friedrishain that not only had a big screen for watching tv, but a rock-climbing wall in the same space. Good combo that...beer and rock climbing.

The US v Ghana match didn't kick-off until midnight, and as I mentioned, I watched it sitting outside a corner store where the owner had put a tv in the window.

A memorable night came in Regensburg. After a fantastic show at Mono Bar, the staff lowered a big screen, fired up a projector and showed the US v Portugal match. Another match not starting until midnight Central Europe Time, it made for a late but incredibly fun night. Portugal's last second goal to tie wasn't all that much of a downer, all things considered. We had a blast watching the match in what seemed like a clubhouse with an open bar and fun people.


Even when there was no tv, as at Chmury in Warsaw, we made do to watch US v Germany with my laptop and the on-line stream from Polish tv.

The Germans were definitely most into the tournament. Fußball is by far the most popular sport in Germany and it showed...every bar, restaurant, corner store and coffee shop had a tv tuned to whatever match was showing. When Germany played, outdoor spaces all over the country drew hundreds of thousands of people.

In fact, one of the reasons we ended up in Strasbourg France for the June 21 show was because no German club wanted to book us. Why? Germany played Ghana that night. We were told nobody would come out, and most bars would be showing the game anyway, and didn't want to risk people not coming in if they saw the match wasn't on but we were.

And what about Strasbourg France? I had trouble finding a spot to watch Argentina v Iran. Might have been the neighborhood surrounding the place we played, but even the one sports bar type place I found had horse racing on, no soccer.

The Danes were fairly lukewarm to the World Cup. Our team (yes, our...remember, I was born there...I root for Denmark first, US next) didn't make the final 32, having been bounced in qualifying. Also I was told the national tv networks made it a bit expensive for bars and restaurants to show matches. So we had to work a bit to find places to watch Germany v Algeria and the US v Belgium.

The night of the US-Belgium match was also the last night the four of us would be together for the rest of the summer. Prior to the match we had a wrap-up meeting, then were joined by my sister and a bunch of friends. Gathering for a World Cup match was a fitting end for a tour where the biggest tournament in football loomed in the shadows during the biggest thing any of us had done in our music lives.

Visionary Road Maps

The Talkhouse has quickly become a favorite read for me...their tagline is "musicians talk music" and that's indeed what it is. This post, wherein Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg talk about life on the road, gets at the tone/voice I was shooting for...but then he's a better writer and has a better bunch of stories from which to chose and does a good job of putting them into readable snippets. The stories are culled from the liner notes to Shearwater's Fellow Travelers album.

Mushroom Cloud of Hiss

Warsaw, June 26

Our last show in the old eastern bloc..Lepzig, Berlin (we played in what was East Berlin), Prague, Ponznan and now Warsaw…

This show had us buzzing for a long time after the last notes of glorious and crazy noise finally quieted from the speakers. The spirit and energy at Chmury, the space we played in Warsaw, is vibrant, unpretentious, and varied. The Facebook page describes it as a clubhouse - an apt description.


Good coffee, great beer selection, an incredible vegan hot dog…the coffee-shop front half of the space is a good place to spend an afternoon. The bartender/barista for the evening rolled up to the club dressed in all black, dark shades and black scarf, hair dyed a greenish white…she looked like a goth Audrey Hepburn heading to a funeral. But like everyone there was incredibly nice.

The back room performance area features a good-sized stage and a very good sound system run by a guy who really knows what he’s doing. Knows the equipment, knows the room. Sound engineers like that make a touring band’s life so much better.

It’s set back in a cobble-stoned courtyard in the Nowy Praga (New Prague) part of town. Chmury shares the courtyard with a bigger club, theater space, a bar that looks like it’s right out of the Paris Left Bank circa early 1900s…cool art on the building walls…when we rolled up we knew it was going to be a good night…the vibe was spot on right away.


This was our 3rd and last show with Evvolves, a band Geoff and Jules found in the course of booking the tour. A bit noisier and low-fi than us, they have a compelling sound and look. Two women, two men…Bibi plays keys, Maciek Mat on bass (which he plays on guitar, using effect pedals to change the sound), Magda plays electronic drums, but live…doesn’t just call up pre-programmed patterns, actually plays the keypads live as the band plays. Her boyfriend Pawel Gie is on guitar. Pawel and Magda strolled up to the club hand-in-hand, she dressed up hipster smart, he looking a bit scruffy…like I imagine Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon must have looked walking up to CBGB’s in the early days of Sonic Youth. We bonded well with them…they’re a blast to be around. It was Julie’s birthday, so during Evvolves set they got the audience to sing the Polish happy birthday song. They seem to be part of a very cool indie scene, centered around the club.

All of this combined for an amazing show. We were in good form, this being our 3rd show in 3 nights, the second 3-in-3 we pulled a 7-day span.

At a pre-soundcheck meeting we discussed the idea to use the Illuminate outtro to fold in a couple of minutes of the Joy Division song Transmission. Jules had the song in her head since at least Regensburg, singing it aloud as we walked along that town’s streets. With no real rehearsal, just a brief pass at soundcheck, we pulled it off. Geoff got the guitar line, I was able to pull that bass riff from memory…it worked in the way it’s going to work when you’ve been playing a bunch of shows or rehearsing a lot in a concentrated stretch of time.

We invited Pawel and Maciek up on stage with us to make noise on guitars, Bibi and Magda sang a bit. Once the crowd caught onto what we were doing they were all in, singing along to the “dance, dance, dance to the radio” line. Maciek and Pawel stirred up some great noise..they were the last to leave the stage.

We were spent…our most energetic set in a great space, great crowd…I’ve already written that Copenhagen was an incredible set, an amazing end to the tour. Before the Copenhagen set we weren’t sure it would be able to match the spirit of the Warsaw show.

That’s how good Warsaw was for us.

Warsaw set list:
Black and White
Mountain
Day for Night
Duck and Cover
Slowboat
Illuminate (w/ Transmission in outtro)

Wow and Flutter

Copenhagen show, June 28 at the Artists Collective.

Going a bit out of order because this night was so special...

Getting to Copenhagen from Warsaw is a long day, so Friday went on and on.

The ferry was a nice respite from the 7.5 hours of monotonous 140km/hr hum of the the A2 and autobahn….driving from Gedser to Copenhagen was a mostly pretty ride past rolling farmland and small towns.

Ended up being a late night after dinner, but for me it was great to be back in Copenhagen…I was born here, lived in Denmark until I was 5 years old and still have family here, including my father and sister. It’s isn’t home for me, but it feels like it could be.

The show was at the Artists Collective, a 4th floor warren of artists studios located in a former city hospital across the street from the backside of Tivoli. Jules & Geoff have known Michael, one of the collective's founders, for a few years.

He's long wanted to arrange a show with us where short films made by Collective artists would screen behind us as we played, and this tour was in part built around this show.

It was possible that this show would be sort of a denouement after the electricity, great vibe and end-of-set mayhem of the Warsaw show. Indeed we all seemed a bit hung-over from Warsaw...not in the alcohol sense, but in the adrenaline come down and knowing we were at the end of the tour.

The adrenaline surged again from the first notes. Once again we played a fantastic set in a small space. We've dialed in our sound to make small rooms work, maybe even better than larger spaces. Here we had the crowd of about 50 people right on top of us, and the films were projected to a screen behind the drum kit.

At my request, Race to Mars was the starter before we ramped up the pace. Only Repeater slowed things down later, but the crowd stayed with us on everything we did. Of course it helped to have a roomful of friends and supporters, but even my friends who didn't know much of the band came away impressed.

It was our 10th show in 16 days, 4th show in 5 days. We were playing the last notes of the tour in the city of my birth, a city the rest of the band came to love right away in a space that was perfect for our sensibilities...the night was all adrenaline and emotion combined with the musical cohesion that comes from playing night after night. I'm pretty sure it exceeded all of our expectations, and we couldn't have had a better end to the tour.


photo by Rachel Znerold using my camera

Copenhagen set list:
Race to Mars
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Black and White
Repeater
Day for Night
Slowboat

For the 1st time on the tour we got a raucous request for an encore, so we obliged with Illuminate with the Transmission outro, with Geoff handing off his guitar to a guy in the crowd (who turned out to be a good friend of two of my friends) while the rest of us banged and clashed and created a wall of feedback and noise. We went off loudly into a very good night.

If there was a denouement, it was the late-night döner that Geoff, Julie and I had with Michael. Standing out front of the main railway station in the cool night air we were able to breathe and relax a little bit, share good company, good doner, and let our emotions settle.

Provincial towns you jog 'round

Strasbourg-Regensburg, June 22

One day beyond the autobahn and we’re were right back on it for a 4-hour ride to Regensburg, north and slightly west of Munich, in the heart of Bavaria.

Regensburg is a lovely medieval town on the banks of the Danube as the river flows eastward out of Germany and into Austria. Dating back when the Romans ruled the area, the town grew rapidly from the 6th century on. It was an important city in the Holy Roman Empire from the mid-17th to early 19th centuries. It’s the living embodiment of preserved medieval charm. It’s filled with students and stylish vacationers.

It’s also a got-damned pain in the ass place to be driving a van.

Narrow, curved streets, most of them going one-way then leaving you with no outlet. Clearly designed to confuse and repel marauding forces and rock bands in vans.

Parking issues aside, we had a blast. The folks promoting the show did a great job getting people out, and the crowd were fabulous and enthusiastic. They took wonderful care of us. After the our show they kept the bar open so we could watch the US v Portugal World Cup match. And they put us up in a hostel just down the street. The Mono Bar staff were incredibly cool and gracious.

The space is super-small, we barely fit. Knowing that we had to keep volume down, and this being the 3rd show in 3 nights, plus the vibe of the people and the room, we had a great show.

We opened with a dreamy Race to Mars and then kept a nice pace going for the next 40 minutes and 7 songs. By now we’re hitting the changes and tempos. The drones are getting more interesting. I found a space where I could focus on changing rhythmic patterns ever-so-slightly every 12-16 bars. I found new ways to move through the long drones and add to what the others were playing, filling in spaces, supporting when needed…when things click like they did in Regensburg it does produce a certain euphoria. It’s easy to give yourself over to the moment of playing, knowing you’re locked into what’s happening all around. A sublime show, our favorite yet of the tour.

Regensburg set list:
Race to Mars
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Wired
Illuminate
Black and White
Day for Night
Slowboat

French Disko

Köln-Strasbourg, June 21

Our first show outside of Germany was in Strasbourg, France. This was a get-in/get-out experience; late afternoon arrival, driving from Köln, out early the next morning for a long drive to Regensburg. No time to see anything of Strasbourg beyond where we were playing. Normally about a 3.5 hour trip, we added time for Scott to meet up with relatives at a highway rest stop in southwestern Germany near the border by Strasbourg.

The show was at Hall des Chars, an art/performance space on the outskirts of the town centrum, a short walk across the river from the Petite-France area. A DIY kind of night, we played in a long room, the gear set up on the floor about 1/3 of the way in. As with all of the DIY/art spaces where we played, the people treated us very well. Josh, who runs the Hall, was also bartender for the night and put us up at his apartment.

For this show, we were joined once again (and for the last time on the tour) by The History of Colour TV and a Scandinavian free-form jazz combo Yes Deer.

Once again, we played to around 25-30 people. Not only was the venue a bit out of the way, we were competing with Fete de la Musique, a day of music across many countries. Scott took pre and post-show strolls downtown to check it out, reporting back on good-sized crowds and good music.

By this point we had played 4 shows, and this was the 2nd in 2 nights. We could feel the build from the Köln set…even better attention to dynamics and to each other, especially on the drone outros. We took advantage of the plentiful space behind the stage to add some showmanship to the opening…Geoff beginning with a few minutes of noise loops before we walk from behind the stage to our instruments to start with Little King. From that mellow opening it was a steady stream of uptempo, right thru a strong close with Slowboat.

Strasbourg set list:
Little King
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Wired
Energy
Day for Night
Slowboat

If you've noticed that Anon has been missing from the set two straight shows, that's no accident. After it didn't work that well in Oldenburg, we decided to strike it from the rotation.

The only damper on the night was finding out the the History of Colour TV van was broken into…passenger window smashed, GPS and a sleeping bag stolen. For Marcus that meant a long ride back to Berlin sitting next to a bed-sheet covered window. It also meant explaining what happened to the guy who rented them the van. But he rents vans to bands for travel, so this can’t be the first time a window’s been smashed.

It was a blast touring with HoCTV…they’re good people, good musicians, fun to hang out with. Their sound is a bit darker than ours, but listening more and listening closely, plus hanging out with Jaike and Marcus, you see that there’s a strong melodic sensibility there. It ended up being a good mix of bands...different enough, but similar at the core. Jaike’s vocals are a bit buried in the studio mixes, but live, especially in sound-check, we could tell that he’s got a great voice…expansive, expressive. We’d miss touring with them…the next show would be just us, followed by a few dates with other bands, mainly Evvolves.

Thanks to our gregarious and gracious host Josh, the night was late and sleep was short. Awaiting us Sunday was a long drive to the Bavarian city of Regensburg.

This is the New Art School

Oldenburg-Brühl-Köln, June 19 & 20

A very late post-show night in Oldenburg led to a 2pm departure for Köln. Along the way we had a kernel of an idea to head to Brühl, about 20km or so south of Köln. Why Brühl? Well, that’s where the Max Ernst Museum is. While I know of Ernst, I’m not all that knowledgable about him; the others in the band were keen to go so it sounded like a good idea. And it was. We ended up having a nice off-night in Brühl, a small-town respite from the mostly big city settings on the tour.

From the road we booked a place through air bnb, the top floor of a building owned by a local artist named Günter Wagner. Rain and traffic slowed down the drive, so it wasn’t until about 5:30pm that we got to Brühl, too late to see the Ernst museum, which closes at 6p. After check-in we relaxed for a bit, had a beer, watched the Columbia and Ivory Coast World Cup match, then went to Brühl centrum to find dinner and a place to watch what turned out to be a rather disappointing England v. Uruguay match (disappointing for me, rooting for England). Turned out to be a disappointing dinner as well. In the compromise to find a place showing the game and still serving food at 9pm, we ended up at what seemed to be the TGI Friday’s of Brühl.

The next day would be the drive into Köln, but beforehand while waiting for the Ernst Museum to open we took a walk around the Schloss Augustusburg, worth it for no other reason that to be outside in fresh country air after 5 days in cities.

Except for the Warhol and Rodin Museums, I can’t recall having been to too many museums dedicated to one artists. Special shows, yes, but not entire museums. When well curated, as is the Warhol Museum, you’ll get a perspective on the artist along both chronological and thematic axis.

The Ernst Museum did a good job of combining the two approaches, leaning a bit more on thematic. What I didn’t know about Ernst was how accomplished he was in multiple media - painting, sculpture and illustration, and how instrumental he was in the formation of the surrealist and Dada movements.

One of the more touching sections was the two walls dedicated to the paintings he gave his wife Dorothea Tanning, one per year for more than 20 years.

After Ernst it was on to Köln and more art, this time at the Ludwig Museum and its collection of modern and contemporary, including a fair number of Warhol and Picasso. As you’ve probably guessed by now, art and football have more or less been our top two priorities after music.

When it’s made sense, we’ve made the effort to get to museums and other art spaces. The World Cup groups stage matches have been at 6p, 9p and midnight Central Europe Time; when we’re not setting up or playing, it’s easy to find a spot to watch a match. More on that later.

That evening there was business to take care of, a show at the Tsunami Club. It’s a smallish space with a small stage, but a good vibe. Dennis and Michael, the promoters for the night, treat the bands well, both at the club and after - they each graciously opened their homes to us after the show. My cousin Marius, studying in Köln for a few months, made it out to the show with a couple of friends. It’s good to have friends and family along the route, to seeing familiar faces among all the new people we meet.

The show itself was excellent. We’d now played 4 shows in a week, 5 since the June 8 show in SF, and we can feel the performances getting better each time. It’s becoming less about remembering parts and more about listening to each other, playing well as a unit and starting to stretch the possibilities in the drone parts. This show marked the first of a three-show in three-night stretch. I’m now especially interested to see how that pace will affect performance.

Set list for Köln:
Black and White
Mountain
Wired
Illuminate
Duck and Cover
Day for Night
Slowboat

Next stop…Strasbourg, France.

Paddle forward

What kind of day has Friday, June 27 been? A long one. It began in Warsaw with a departure at 9:30am. It's now 1:40am, and I'm in my sister's apartment in Copenhagen. Along the way we drove 811km to Rostock, Germany, took a 2 hour ferry ride to Gedser, Denmark. Then drove another 160+km to Copenhagen.  Had a lovely meal at Mother. Were surprised to see the sky so bright at 10:00pm. I was surprised by the next-door neighbors having a loud dance party...which has now subsided.

No real updates since the Berlin-Oldenberg run. At least nothing posted...plenty has been written.  Time to turn the sketches into stories. For now it's enough to think about how we have one show left in the tour...it's been two weeks since we started, and this feels at once like it was yesterday and it feels like it was long ago...

The Extension Trip

Thanks to intermittent wifi and a sped up pace of city-hopping, updates have fallen by the wayside. So before the next full update comes, a few pics...

First, from the Oldenburg show, a couple of shots taken by a friend of the promoter Alex. Unfortunately I can't remember the name...

And here, from today in Warsaw. How we watched the US-Germany game before and after soundcheck. I'm hoping to write a bit about how the World Cup has shaped the trip.

Ok, time to go play a show...

The Race is on Again

Berlin-Oldenburg June 18

After our north-north-east swing from Frankfurt to Leipzig to Berlin, it’s time to head west to Oldenburg. The day started with gear load in at the History of Colour TV’s rehearsal space.


Then it was onto the Autobahn for the 4+ hour drive. After three days of staying put in Berlin, the city-hopping now begins…mostly one night in each city until Copenhagen.

Loading up the History of Colour TV's van.

Again, a mostly uneventful drive westward. Construction and accident delays ate into our slack time, so we were a bit late getting to the radio station for Geoff and Jules to do the interview and a couple of songs on acoustic guitar. Polyester is located in the center of town, across from the museums, near to the pedestrian shopping area. The club doesn’t host that many live bands, about 1 or 2 per month we were told.

.......At a halt on the autobahn

Alex, the promoter for the show, is a very gracious guy. Made the show flyers, helped us with promo to get Geoff and Jules on local radio to play a couple of songs and talk up the show. He even put us up at his live-work space.

The work part of live-work was made plain when the people who work in the office where me and the 2 HoCT guys slept (me on a couch, with the best night of sleep I’ve had so far) came into their space at 10am to work. Clearly Alex had hosted many bands before, so they were used to seeing strange people on their couch and floor. They tolerated us being here for a couple of hours…even made us coffee.

We played to about 20-25 people. Mostly they appreciated what we did. We tried a variation on the set; less of the full-on drones - no Illuminate, Black & White or Duck and Cover. We ended with Little King, which provided a nice dreamy counterpoint to the power of Slowboat right before. Little King starts quiet and builds in dynamic...not so much a tempo change as a volume and intensity change. If we play it well, there's a moment..a surge...that takes over. I felt it in Oldenburg...I dug in deeper on the notes on the repeating outro pattern while Scott's tom-heavy part built up to a nice crescendo.

Anon, which went over well at the Hemlock in SF and Leipzig, fell flat tonight. I couldn't tell if the crowd wasn't into the drawn out mid-tempo parts of it or if we didn't play it as well as we could have. Sometimes you know if you messed up or if the crowd just isn't into what you're doing. Not sure where on that continuum Anon was tonight.

Oldenburg set list:
Mountain
Wired
Day 4 Night
Anon (I, II & IV)
Slowboat
Little King

We didn’t get to see Oldenburg at all…only a brief pre-soundcheck walk through the centrum, just the pedestrian mall parts of it. It took a bit of time to sort out where we’d be storing the gear so sleep didn’t come until after 3am. On a day that started at 10am. No surprise that we didn’t get on the road the next day until around 2pm.

I've heard a rumour from Ground Control

Berlin layover June 13-18

The drive from Leipzig to Berlin was unremarkable. Mostly highway, little traffic. A smooth ride on the Autobahn. We did have to rush a bit packing up in our Noch Besser Leben rooms (*)…after coffee and bagels across the street, we came back to find the cleaning woman about to start breaking down the beds…she saw us and waved her hands and told us to start packing and go. So off we went.

In Berlin I stayed with a friend I know from SF, on the Kreuzberg/Mitte border, on a block where the Berlin Wall ran. Chad’s apartment is right where the border used to be. Now there’s a big pond, some greenery…it’s situated near Oranienstraße (a main shopping/restaurant street in Kreuzberg) but is on a quiet block. The best of both worlds. The rest of the band landed an Air BnB place in Friedrichshain, nearer to the club we were playing. My sister Louise and her friend Signe joined me there. Chad is an uber-mensch for putting us all up in his place.

I’d been to Berlin before, for a week back in June 2009. So I didn’t need to spend tons of time sightseeing. The only must-do on the agenda was the David Bowie exhibit at the Martin-Gropius Bau.

Louise & I went on Monday…a good choice. It wasn’t crowded, we didn’t need timed tickets, just walked right in.

...Stools, part of the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at Martin Gropius Bau

The exhibit was career-spanning, though in time-line mostly stopped the detail at the Berlin period of Heroes, Low and Lodger. Everything up to and including that era was presented in rich detail and context, so we see where his initial influences came from (the London singer-songwriter movement spurred on by the Beatles) to how he started to create personas and mold his music to the characters and situations he created. I’ve long been a Bowie fan; this exhibit deepened my appreciation for him. The Berlin era is my favorite, and that period received excellent treatment. We saw a few candid shots of Bowie, Iggy, the recording staff, recording space…you saw how the Berlin of the late 1970s affected the change in his music.

Beyond that, the time in Berlin for me was mostly about wandering. To get to the Bowie exhibit we walked from Chad’s apartment. To meet Scott the next day at Pergamon I walked.

....Miletus Market Gate at the Pergamon

Getting back to the apartment from Museum Island I walked along the Spree as far as I could on the river walk path. On Sunday, Chad, Signe and I walked through Charlottenburg, then into Tiergarten near the museum. We met up a bit later with another friend of Chad’s, watched football in a biergarten…generally meandered. We did finish the night at a somewhat fancy cocktail bar, the Green Door. Good drinks and great people watching form some regulars, friends of the bartenders. Including one guy wearing a white shirt, white pants with large black checker boxes, white belt and white shoes. French, of course. Takes a bold man to make that fashion choice work. Or maybe it helps being French.

Monday night was a big World Cup night. Germany-Portugal and the US-Ghana were the key matches. The Germany match started at 6pm Central Euro time, the US match at midnight. You didn’t need to be watching to know when Germany scored…the entire city seemed to yell at once. And they yelled 4 times in that match. The first half of the Germany match I watched at a cafe/bistro near Chad’s place, where a tv was set-up outside. Needless to say, just about every place with beer and/or food, had this kind of set up for the World Cup. I needed up watching much of the US match seated at a picnic bench on the sidewalk in front of a bodega-type shop. Bought a soda, sat with some other folks, we talked and made friends for an hour.

Berlin is one of those cities I appreciate but don’t connect with in any immediate way. Some of it might be because I grew up in Philadelphia, which is laid out mostly on a grid and on a numbering system that makes logical sense. Between that and some downtown landmarks visible from much of the area, it’s easy to figure out where you are. Berlin’s streets curve and angle. Some change names every few blocks. You can look up and see the tv tower, but because it’s mostly the same on all sides with nothing else as tall for reference, it’s not immediately obvious what direction to go unless you know the angle of the sun and shadows. I suppose being there longer I’d get to know which U-Bahn or S-Bahn stops are where and they could be location markers.

* Noch Besser Leben provides lodging for bands in a room or two down the hall from the music room. Meaning load-in is a 20 foot walk. Nice and easy.

Written in Reverse

As I mentioned in the Berlin show notes, it’s important for me to get some down/quiet/alone time before a show. I need to collect my thoughts and focus on playing. Especially if the day has been (or still is) hectic and no-stop. Berlin was a late night after a couple of hours or so of driving and plenty of socializing before the show.

I figured out that I need this a few years ago. My band Gosta Berling was playing at El Rio in SF, as part of pour short-lived Vie le Rock series. We would invite one or two other bands to play, and also have a local film-maker present some work. In this case, I’d set up the whole show, from bands to film-maker. I was keyed in on set-times, flow of the night, setting up the stage to show the film…I was both musician and event coordinator. I got a bit amped up and was scattered…all over the place. I played like shit.

Since then I’ve made a point of making show nights as relaxed as possible. Minimize distractions, focus on the set. If possible get some down/alone/quiet time beforehand…a walk, sitting in a dressing room or quiet space in the venue. Think through the set.

I’m making sure I do this each night on this tour. We’re doing long-drives, usually 3-4 hours though unfamiliar areas. Sometimes we don’t go on until 11pm or so, after being up and packing and on the road from 10am, after having been out late the night before. And we have no road crew or tour manager, so we’re doing everything. Managing the brain is as important as managing the body.

Our Trinitone Blast

Leipzig-Berlin, June 14

Berlin was a long day.

We drove from Leipzig, leaving around 1pm for the 2.5 hour trip.Soundcheck was 6pm, and took a while to get monitor and house sound right. Then we didn’t play until after midnight. Plus I had a bit of extra nerves playing in front of my sister, her friend Signe (neither had ever seen me pay and came to Berlin from Copenhagen for the show) and friends Chad and Monal (and friends Monal brought).

Now I know why touring bands need quiet dressing rooms, or down-time in the van or bus to chill a bit before the show. At least those musicians with some amount of introvert tendencies (like me…about a 55-45 split on the IE scale in most tests I’ve taken). Introverts like people, we just need to recharge alone or in quiet. From experience I know that to be at my best for a show I need 10-20 minutes of down/alone/quiet time if I’m to play well and clear my head enough to be in the moment and respond to what’s happening on stage. In Berlin, my tactic was to look at the set-list Jules gave me and mentally run thought the changes. I did it while The History of Colour TV were playing and then again during the stage change-over. It helped me calm and focus.


The set was hard and driving...

Black and White
Mountain
Division
Duck and Cover
Energy
Repeater
Illuminate
Day for Night
Slowboat

No real let-up in intensity. Even Repeater, which we deliberately put in as a break from the drone, is heavy and mid-tempo, almost dirge-like (but a higher BPM dirge). It felt like we were pummeling the audience with power, speed, and drone. Day for Night and Energy, two of the ostensibly poppier songs in the set (relative to songs from the EP and 1st side of the new album), featured long drone outros that built up in intensity as we laid into the beat.

Berlin as a city, and Antje Öklesund as a space, seemed appropriate for that kind of approach. Antje Öklesund is in a former furniture-making factory in the Friedrichshain section of Berlin, in what was East Berlin near Karl Marx Allee. It’s on Rigaer Straße, up the block from a bunch of squatter buildings that apparently draw police action on Saturday nights (*).

Friedrichshain in general is a bit grittier…apparently what Prenzlauer Berg used to be, what parts of Kreuzberg used to be. The room itself is all stone…floors, walls, with high ceilings. Though there are lovely bits of geometric pattern shapes hanging from the ceiling for color and depth, it’s still not a warm room, like Noch Besser Lebben. The vibe of our set fit the vibe of the room and the neighborhood.

* - Before the show, the same squatters who drew multiple police vans were staging shopping cart races down Rigaer Straße. After the show, we walked down Rigaer Straße to see what was going on. Near as we could tell the police were more there to intimidate the squatter crowds, and there was no real intent for violence. Just posturing. Though we did see one forlorn attempt at a mattress fire.

Tomorrow is Already Here

Thirty-six hours in Leipzig didn’t leave me with any deep insights about the city, but I did notice a few things.

Most important, after being corrected a few times, know to pronounce it lipe-zig, not leep-zig.

It seems to be a city that skews young. Or at least, the areas in which I spent ay time, Centrum and Lindenau, a bit south and west of Centrum, about a 10 minute tram ride away. Centrum is the downtown, the older part of the city. The University of Leipzig is there, so there were plenty of students around, even in mid June. Enrollment is around 28,000 and in a city of 530,000 that many students will stand out. Also, per this October 2012 piece in Der Spiegel, Leipzig has become a magnet for young artists thanks to a low cost of living.

The Lindenau neighborhood, where Noch Besser Leben is located, looks to be on the verge of gentrification. Next to freshly painted and (I’d assume) rehabbed buildings are unpainted, graffiti marked walls. Noch Besser Leben is in one of the (for now, I assume) unpainted buildings. Though there was a guy working on the hallway, fixing the plaster moulding, painting…so maybe the building will look very different if we were to come back in a couple of years. A few doors down from Noch Besser is a fancy juice bar and health food store. There are art spaces all around, hipsters on bikes (not too many fixes though), parents pushing prams. For Philadelphians, think Northern Liberties before the demand really hit. Or Fishtown once Northern Liberties over-developed, but before Fishtown would change. For New Yorkers think Williamsburg or Jersey City when those areas were in transition. Then mix in an unconstrained graffiti culture and the lingering remains of post-Eastern Bloc decay.

Ur-Krostitzer is the local beer, and pretty good.

I now wish we had a bit more time to hang in Leipzig. But off to Berlin we had to go…

Five Cornered Drone

Leipzig June 13

Can’t say enough good things about Noch Besser Leben in Leipzig. The staff there treated us very well, especially Timm who helped us arrange back line and then did our sound.  The music room is on the second floor of the building, above the bar. It’s essentially an apartment - two main rooms and a small bar area that likely used to be the kitchen.  No stage, so we played right on the carpeted floor, with about 20-25 chairs set out facing us. The carpet and the wood moulding made for a nice warm sound, and meant we didn’t have to turn the volume down as much as we thought for such a small space. Once the room filled up with people plenty of sound was being absorbed. Good sound combined with the adrenaline rush of it being the first show of the tour made for a very good set, a great start to the tour.  We played a mix of old and new, including almost the entire new album. 

Set list:

Black and White

Mountain

Division

Race to Mars

Energy

Anon I, II & IV

Puzzle

Wired 

Illuminate

Slowboat

Mountain, Energy and Illuminate ended up in some intense sustained drone outros with some cool in-the-moment bits like Geoff sitting in an open chair in the first row, Jules with some keyboard vamps and sounds and me (on Illuminate) taking advantage of the drone in D to play the open D and repeat the opening riff underneath. We played for a little over an hour, long when you consider most sets in the US on 3-band nights are between 35-45 minutes, usually 40. We could feel a bit of a drag in The Puzzle and Wired but we finished strong on Slowboat. Getting used to playing longer sets will be a good thing…we'll learn how to manage energy and intensity on a longer arc, how to read crowds and keep them with us as we vary tempo and dynamics.

The crowd were great. We had about 25 people there, none of whom likely knew much if anything about us. They paid attention, there was hardly any chatter, hardly any staring down at smartphones, warm applause when songs finished. After the show a few folks also came up to talk, and we sold a few records. All in all, a very successful start to the tour.

Flying Lesson

San Francisco-Frankfurt-Leipzig, June 11-12

“Spec Bebop” by Yo La Tengo was the first song to play on the shuffle as I drove to SFO. I’m taking that as a good omen for the tour.

The tour…finally here after months and months of planning, discussing, working out schedules, emailing with promoters and bands, routing and re-routing. Julie gets most of the credit for making this happen. She was tenacious in tracking down like-sounding bands, convincing them to book dates with us, getting them to help us back line, figuring out payment and lodging details. Others chipped in as well, me with putting together maps and directions, booking the car, a ferry, a room in Prague, arranging lodging in Copenhagen. But most of the credit for making this a reality goes to Jules.

(pro-tip...Mono cases for checking instruments on flights. As good as advertised)

The flight itself was routine. We took off, we landed. Meals were served, including pretty decent (as airplane food goes) vegetarian curry. But, this being United, certain things were lacking. No free wine or beer (unlike Geoff and Jules on Lufthansa), no seat-front entertainment. I ended up in the first row of coach behind business class, with nothing but a thin curtain, never fully closed, between us. So I got to see the full service…linen on the tray, real tableware, plastic cutlery at least colored silver, free flowing wine. The oddest thing about United b-class on this plane was the configuration. The rows were alternated front and rear orientation. Which meant for the entire flight I was looking right at a guy facing to the rear of the plane. It was also a bit disorienting getting on the plane…seeing half the rows facing rear made me wonder which side of the plane I boarded. 

We all met up in Frankfurt, got the van (with a bit of sticker shock on insurance costs), and off we went to Leipzig.  Scott got to talking about castles with a guy working at a rest-stop and he suggested Wartburg Castle above the town of Eisenach (where Martin Luther studied for a bit, JS Bach was born). Ended up being a grand idea. By the time we got there, a bit after 6:30, the crowds were gone and we had the place almost to ourselves. We were rewarded with spectacular early evening views of the valley and the quiet of the nearly deserted castle grounds. Sometimes it’s the detour that makes the trip.

(our ride)

We arrived in Leipzig around 9:30p, and after wrangling the room situation went off in search of food, beer and fußball, which we did find at a little joint up the street. A nightcap, then finally off to bed.

(Wartburg Castle)

Big Day Coming

Music has been my main creative outlet since I was 19. With one brief exception when my band the Idle Wilds went to Memphis to make a record for RCA (but didn't come out on RCA...that's a story for later), I've never attempted to make my livelihood from music. Though music has always been much more than a hobby, it's never been my career.

That said, I'd still say I've had a a career in music. I've played on all or parts of 4 LPs, 3 EPs, a couple of singles and a bunch of demos and one-off recordings. I've gotten to play places like CBGB's in New York, The Roxy and the Echo in LA, Bottom of the Hill in SF, the Khyber Pass and JC Dobbs in Philadelphia. I've signed the aforementioned major label deal and had the all-too-common major label dumping. I've had some transformative experiences, some really great, some not so great. Magic moments on stage, in the rehearsal or recording studio. Good times with bandmates and shitty band break-ups. 

For all the things on my rock-and-roll resume, I've never done a proper tour. 

This summer...this week, that changes. 

I'm heading to Europe to play bass with Slowness, in support of the just-released album (on which I played on a few tracks) - 

How to Keep From Falling Off a Mountain 
(stream & buy mp3 here, buy vinyl here)

Between June 13 and June 28 we're playing 10 shows in 10 cities in 5 countries. 

June 13 Leipzig Noch Besser Lebben
June 14 Berlin Antje Öklesund
June 18 Oldenburg Polyester Klub
June 20 Cologne Tsunami club
June 21 Strasbourg Hall de Chars
June 22 Regensburg Mono Bar
June 24 Prague Rock Cafe
June 25 Poznan LAS
June 26 Warsaw Chmury
June 28 Copenhagen The Artists Collective Tietgensgade

The plan is to use this space as a tour diary...show recaps, travel stories, random observations. Updates will come as often as decent wifi service allows.

We had a great start to the tour (in the same way the Tour de France sometimes starts outside of France) with a show this past Sunday at the Hemlock in SF. Hopefully the magic will continue through the next few weeks. Check this space to see what happens...

-greg