- made lovingly by Julia M Esterlich
At last we receive word from our friends as they begin to tread innumerable European paths. (taken from the band’s Myspace page||myspace.com/benshepard)
January has arrived almost out of nowhere and the six of us find ourselves gliding glacially across the English channel to our second show of the tour, in London. The last ten days or so have been riddled with anxiety and desperation, as we struggled with numerous last minute challenges. David’s passport never came. We were on the phone for 72 hours straight trying to get that all sorted out, to no avail. After multiple admonitions that attempting to travel on his expired passport would only create more obstacles we bit the bullet and went ahead with the design. I stood behind the customs booth in the Frankfurt airport watching David hand his expired passport to the officer, trembling with trepidation, just waiting for the man’s signal to round up his cronies and ship David back to the states. Within moments he was passing through the turnstile with a garish grin, awestruck with our dumb luck. We stayed the night in Luxembourg at Valentin’s, gathered our equipment into the van, and ventured off to Lille in our giant, awkward vehicle.
We played at a little venue in Lille called La Malterie, with shallow rippling brick ceilings. Ryan could barely stand on stage without hunching over and we could scarcely exchange instruments without smashing a headstock or a horn on the ceiling. Despite a broken amp and a blown transformer, we managed to perform a decent sound check and played a pretty solid set of 12 songs. We have been accustomed to playing 40 minute performances on tour in the past, however, this time around we prepared much more material, clocking in at just over an hour. Even though we headlined most of the shows on our last Euro trip, I always felt sort of burdensome for playing much longer than 45 minutes. I think we are finally starting to feel more confident which makes the show more effective and fulfilling.
The crowd was warm and kind. This drunk girl kept stealing CDs and introducing them into her purse throughout the course of the evening. David would flirt with her to distract her just long enough to carry out a clandestine retrieval from the purse to the merch table. She could barely stay on her feet, falling frequently, breaking wine glasses and dropping her camera, until finally the staff found her locked in the bathroom at the end of the night, just barely audibly mumbling for help. I hope she took the bus home.
Dinner was a delicious vegetarian delight, accompanied by an assortment of fine French wine and Belgian beer. We had an interview with a friendly journalist named Benjamin and enjoyed very thoroughly the opening act before taking the tiny stage. It truly is like a dream to be back here again. This is what I live for. I am so fortunate.
Every day we are experiencing little miracles. Today we entered the UK with no work permit, a feat in itself. Performing with legitimate permission has proved impossible since the recent revisions to UK work visas, making touring for non-EU musicians an incredibly complex endeavor. After reading dozens of horror stories about bands being refused at the port of entry by the curmudgeons at immigration, we braced ourselves for the possible disappointment of losing 10 dates in the UK, crossed our fingers, and lied straight through our teeth. Our booking agent created a phony recording invoice to explain the van and the instruments, and Vale and I drew up a distro order to explain the merchandise. Neither document was solicited, and after a series of unchallenging interrogations, we boarded the ferry and crossed over.
Barden’s Boudoir is situated in a plush little basement complete with ornate décor and line drawings adorning the red walls. A Turkish man runs the club, goes by the self-appointed pseudonym of The Gov’nuh. We played to a small crowd of perhaps 60, muscling through more technical difficulties and performance anxieties. We’re getting closer. A young couple approached us after the show and asked us to stay the night in their industrial warehouse in Hackney. It’s day two of three here in our London sojourn. I’m sitting in a worn burgundy leather chair under a giant fichus, housed in a 90 gallon planter, policed by a small platoon of wooden tree frogs, beaming in all directions. I’ve been battling this little French guy all evening with the turntable. Every time there is a break in the music he interjects with an acoustic guitar, or the dissonant upright against the wall, dusty, exposing the felt tipped hammers that twitch awkwardly from the commands of untrained hands. When he stops to take a breath I drop the needle on John Lennon or Robert Smith. Hammocks, swings, and homemade chandeliers hang from the iron rafters, ladders leading to second story sleeping chambers. We’re scattered all over the floor on mattresses and couch cushions, even as we speak, some dozing, some drifting. I slept for four hours after our reparatory journey to Tottenham, where we encountered a stroke of luck in finding a music store that repaired hollow-bodies and accordions. Every person we have met so far has been so friendly and kind. A friend to the shop-keep stopped by passing out English biscuits and making conversation while we watched the guitar technician work his magic. Ryan and I ate some bagels and roasted red pepper humus, washed it down with a bottle of water and lugged the newly mended instruments back across town to the warehouse loft. London is wet, foggy, humid and cold. Driving on the left side of the street took some getting used to. I narrowly avoided a head on collision on our first day in the country and now no one else wants to drive. I’m just as nerve wracked when watching someone else behind the wheel, so I might as well keep the helm.
On the plane ride over, we sat atop a cottony cloud cover that just spread on and on into everything. You couldn’t see the turrets with their arms stretching upwards under it, gently rippling the sheets of snowy softness. As the night grew into maturity and the tiny filaments started to come into focus I felt the probability of it all. You can’t get outside of it, it’s endless on all sides. God is a lovely romance, but we’re just too small.
Someone just put on Ani Difranco, so I guess that means it’s time to take some sleeping pills, quash my conscience and call it a night. It’s not that I don’t like Ani Difranco, I just hate her music.
Sleep is a fruitless enterprise. I’m all caught up in the music. In the skitter of raindrops, the flitter and flee. Some sharply syncopated rhythms, of steady drizzle in sprinkling sparkling sky. You can’t walk across the room without changing your socks. The water coming in everywhere, beating lightly as hummingbird wings on my sleepy neck. Steady anesthetic drip, puts you down, in downy dreams, but lingers long to shake you to wakingness, such terrible steadiness! I dream of vampires. And the flicker filling everything. Little neighborly snores that rise, falling, in competing with the pitter pattering persistence. I’m fascinated by these sounds humans make, with no regard or self awareness to simple apprehensions. Grieving sleepingly, swelling ambiently… like a tiny rhino, on his back, groaning into the air.. Were he watching himself, were he privy to his own audible sleepiness, just imagine. Tender little animals, we are.
We played a muggy performance at Nottingham’s ‘Hand and Heart Gallery,’ a quaint pub carved out of a damp cave. Apparently the entire city is situated on a massive network of underground caves. Our instruments were soaking wet throughout the night, however, the humidity may have entirely eliminated a scratchy disposition that was weasling up my throat and fornicating with my epiglottis. Aside from intermittent violin feedback battling our bits, the show was decent. A concrete bust of the proprietor went missing, sending the matron into an accusatory rage but otherwise the experience was a pleasant one. We stayed at Simmo’s again and enjoyed another fine curry and to top off the day, discovered ‘Brass Eye,’ a brilliantly executed farcical British television programme that’s still got me in tears.
Ireland! What an enchanting emerald paradise! Cat Stevens on the player, bashful sun crawling up the horizon. Yesterday we chased a herd of plump sheep and climbed mossy rocks on Scottish shores before taking the ferry. Our Glasgow show was less organized than the others thus far, but we managed to play a truncated set and win over a few newcomers, as well as landing a futon resting place in the apartment of a lovely couple. Thank you Kim and Gordon. The tea, toast and eggs swelled and filled my tender belly for the better part of two days!
It was imperative to sleep on a mattress after so many lumpy couches. Touring the UK has brought new perspective to the European tour. Each person involved thus far has been extremely kind and generous, but the accommodations are definitely more luxurious on the continent. We are enjoying this new experience amongst our Anglo-Saxon kinsmen, but it would be a deceit to imply that we aren’t anxiously anticipating our German landfall in four days.
We encountered more technical turbulence in Belfast. Cables and power cords jiggled out of their slots as we ‘rocked’ the wobbly metal stage (no pun intended, seriously…) in Lavery’s Middle Bar, causing hums, buzzes, power outage, etc… The iron platform caused grounding problems that sent unsettling surges of electricity through the bass every time I touched the strings. The band before us unplugged Ryan’s guitar from his amp, which we didn’t notice until the second song and the monitors emitted zero bass response so we couldn’t hear the drum tracks and lost our way, eventually forcing us to strike any song with electronic beats from the set list. To top it off, a slightly schizophrenic lighting schema threw several of us off at various intervals, the jingle bells fell on the Juno creating a dissonant bass note that we didn’t hear until the song was over, and we broke another string on the autoharp. It was by far the worst show Uzi & Ari have played under the current lineup. You can only laugh about such a night. We still sold more records than the previous three shows. Go figure.
The last time I made this drive between Dublin and Belfast I slept through the journey on a night bus and missed this devastating countryside. The white houses and buildings, peaking pearly peepers, blinking benignly behind shaggy emerald eyelids. The hills roll and curl around and about, unconcerned with voyeurs and spectators. Every once and a while some medieval scrapheap of stones and mortar finds itself tucked into a gully or peaking out of a grove of trees in the shape of a worn tower or bullied fortress. We try to pause and inspect these ruins when time permits, to run our fingers across the rubble and feel the heaping heat of hands, the heavy heart of hopes housed through centuries within their walls. These structures were built by people who couldn’t have imagined that the world might still be standing today, let alone the fact that it still retains so many souvenirs of their generation. My time will soon expire like that of those of whom I speak, my entire life, a tiny instant, come and gone like the birth and death of a day. Sometimes you get so glum…
On the road to Dublin from Galway we passed through a tiny rainstorm parenthesized by a giant Irish rainbow, the termination of which likely sits atop our destination with a little pot filled with tonight’s fee! Hum’s ‘I’d Like Your Hair Long’ playing in the background as I type reminds me of a brightly beaming memory of rocketing through the windy roads of River Oaks in 11th grade, blasting the album through my custom stereo in my uber rare ’91 Honda Accord coupe that was later totaled on McDermott and lost forever. I remember my long hair blowing all over with the windows down and the heater on and the music punching my chest and the absolute euphoria of feeling powerful behind the wheel of my very own vehicular symbol of independence. It’s been ten years. I could have never imagined I would be rocketing down an Irish freeway listening to the same song in a van filled with five friends, a speeding stridently in a silo of song.
I woke up in my own bed this morning with a gaudy grin and a tiny headache. We absolutely murdered the set last night. We put a bloody bullet right through it, and not a moment too soon either. After Belfast, our spirits were bleakly burdened with the dejected film of failure glazing our hearts, gloomy and crestfallen. After last night’s performance we rose like a bloody phoenix out of the ashes. In celebration the five of us consumed a vast quantity of Irish beer (Catherine prefers the grape), and danced til 2 AM. By far the most accommodating gent we’ve come across in our travels, the lovely Gugai owns the Roisin Dubh nestled in a nook on the narrow ‘Dominick Street,’ and acts as promoter and late night DJ. We stayed in a quaint little apartment with Ben from Max Tundra just around the corner from the venue. All whom we encountered in Galway were charmingly sweet and pleasant and contributed to a delightful visit to the little bayside town. Regrettably, we haven’t been particularly consistent about taking photographs of the different cities, a pattern I hope will soon be interrupted, but it truly was a breath of fresh air blowing breezingly off the harbor.
The Dublin show was promoted by a close friend of Gugai’s and proved to be an even bigger success than that which we enjoyed in Galway. About two hundred people turned up for the show, twice as many as predicted, so we ended up getting paid about triple the amount of the guarantee that was agreed upon. Battling a piss pour PA system and a poorly designed acoustical space, we managed to win over the attention of about two thirds of the gregariously drunken Irish crowd. We had gourmet veggie and lamb burgers in a quaint little joint just off the Liffey before the show and stayed in a modest hostel before rising early to make the drive to an afternoon radio interview in Cork in the morning. The only hiccup for the trip was losing Garrett for the better part of the night and having to retrieve him myself in a taxi from a stranger’s house in Marino. Had the van key not been conveniently safeguarded in his breast pocket we would have surely deserted him. Anyway, all smiles now, these things happen.
I drove 160 km/h and arrived just seconds before our early scheduled sound check, jettisoning the van just outside the club in a parking stall barely adequately prescribed for our oversized behemoth of a vehicle. Another sonically challenged evening was to be had between the parallel surfaces and tile floors of The Quad, however another crowd of 250 or so Irish filled the venue and ameliorated the brassy acoustics with their fleshy bodies. We got another sizeable bonus for the turnout and went back to the promoter’s apartment for a couple of hours before heading off to Rosslare to take the ferry back to the UK. Garrett left his shoes at the apartment, and we were so pressed for time that Ryan had to become carsick out of the van’s window to ensure making the boat in time. I purchased the vouchers with two minutes to spare and we glided into our parking lane onboard as the gates were shutting behind us. Eleven hours of travel makes today’s the farthest and longest of the tour. We’ll miss load in by an hour, which couldn’t have been avoided, and play our last English show in Brighton. Ironically, tomorrow is our day off, and it’s the last for 45 or so more days.
I was really seduced by Cork, the antique cathedrals and crumbly castles on the waterfront. Diverse and colorful architecture together with the rich cache of preserved history in the town make it an epicenter on the island for tourist activity. There was an eclectic market in the city center just off Tuckey Street where we played that was full of colloquial cuisines and keepsakes, displaying Ireland’s unique contributions. Andrew and I enjoyed a couple of tasty sausages adorned brightly with red and green peppers and onions as we perused the kiosks. There are little punk rockers patrolling the cobblestone streets, wearing badges and pins and buttons and patches that denounce the machine of capitalism, as they support it unwittingly with a complex array of advertisements and band merchandise sewn all over their clothing. But maybe they are aware of the marketing tools they have become, which only exacerbates the self-loathing, so it still works.
It is certainly a consistent frustration to graze over so many marvelous countries and towns with only a day to breathe them in and make sense of their scent and make a sincere effort to carry that essence with you, to make it a part of you. In writing I’m weak, emaciated by a limited vocabulary, repeating adjectives and losing the ability to effectively enumerate a cogent metaphor to illustrate my perceptions. How do I describe the Welsh countryside that bears the familiar markings of Irish pastures? These fields delicately decorated with the same docile creatures and outlinings of uniform hedges that partition the property lines, the rolling Gaelic hills and scattered groves… It is different. There is a new energy. The naked trees stand like matchstick orchards with some sleepy sisters retaining the viney clothings of spring and huddling hyacinths draping mosaic tapestries along the freeway. My thoughts and impressions are common, suspended in a familiar headspace, into which I have passively settled. When I feel like this, like a tasteless mass of, I don’t know, cream of wheat, I just have to stop writing.
We arrived quite late to Brighton and loaded directly onto the stage for sound check and missed the first band while eating stuffed spinach ravioli backstage in what could only be described as a tetanus ridden terrorist holding cell, which would also later serve as band dormitory. The crowd was ample for a rainy Sunday in a virgin city, and the sound was quite good on stage so we enjoyed a fifty minute set and made friends with a few comrades that our friend and remix collaborator Simon had brought along. It was a quiet night. We had a few drinks and spilled confections all over the room, bathing Catherine’s laptop in peanut grease. I bought a couple of sweaters downtown in the morning and we picked up some backpacks and a coat for the rest of the gang. Garrett and I split a massive baguette and a spot of hummus to hold us over through the ferry. We took a windy road up the pier and said farewell to another charmingly understated city and continued on to catch the ship.
It was quite a distance to Hamburg from Brighton, so we stopped over at Fred’s ‘d:qliq’ in Luxembourg for the night and made asparagus soup and nachos. Ryan mixed a few drinks and we passed out like exhausted children home from summer camp, buzzing on through the night like a snoring choir. Fred was also kind enough to set up an interview in the morning on Radio ARA with Ben Andrews, a kind fellow who just finished work on a short film that displays one of our songs for its theme. We showered and laundered our clothing, somehow managing to dismantle the washing machine door and miraculously repair it again just in time for our exit.
Three hours or so from Lux we landed in Heilbronn to play our first show of the tour in a familiar venue. We were pleased to learn that our promoter Sergej met his current girlfriend at our last show at the Mobilat club just two years ago. I wrote last that he was absurdly drunk that night and fell asleep in my arms, but neglected to mention that he had smashed a glass on his head and bled profusely. Last night he explained the circumstances surrounding the self-imposed bludgeoning and wanton drunkenness. Apparently he kissed Annika at the show and was confused about his feelings, and oddly his remedy to this bewildering predicament was to club himself with a pint glass and drink like a glutton. ☺ They were both warm and friendly as usually is the case and prepared comfortable beds and supplied a delicious vegetarian meal cooked by Sergej’s mother, complete with cabbage salad and little lemon cakes for dessert. We ate the whole pan.
The snow is receding from the roadside and sinking surreptitiously into the forest, as if to direct our thoughts to sunnier days ahead in Denmark, but we know better. It’s still January and the chill is omni-present. Underneath the snowy faux tundra the lush German countryside is bursting forth with a vibrant enthusiasm, endearing but premature. I find myself looking forward more earnestly to the next hot meal over the usual anxious anticipation of the next performance. Last night as we worked our way precariously through roadwork in Frankfurt and Kaiserslautern, I looked out at the uniform buildings of the big city and the matching yellow lights, equally balanced wattage, floating all around in geometric patterns and I couldn’t help thinking how digital it looked out there. But the sharp edges and uniformity, the binary digitalism I beheld is contrasted sharply by the colorful analog towns we’re passing through now as we cross the country to Hamburg.
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