It’s Valentine’s Day. I haven’t had a Valentine since I was in grade school. I remember saving up my allowance at 12 to buy little candy hearts, flowers and a Valentine’s card, and a little white Teddy bear holding a big crimson cardiac to give to the love of my puny pre-pubescent life, Paige Harrell. The feelings I had for that girl were stronger than any I have ever felt since. It was the first time my heart was ever broken and I never got over it. I remember sitting next to her in English class in 10th grade and still feeling the same uninterrupted magnetism towards her. We didn’t have much in common, but her mildness, her sweetness and reserved innocence took complete control of my heart. Last night I dreamed of her, as I sometimes do. She was mortally stricken prematurely with some degenerative disease. I visited her and her husband, cried with them. I woke up in tears. I’m driving down the road through beautiful central Italy, looking out at the fortunate circumstances that my work has brought me and still, I feel a little sad. I would have always rather been sitting in a little apartment in Allen, Texas watching a ‘Friends’ marathon on TV, with a home cooked meal on a tray in front of me, feeling the warmth of that girl, our legs intertwined on the couch, my fingers in her shiny black hair. Once I wrote her a letter when I was 19, I just wanted to be her friend again, we hardly knew each other in high school. She never responded. I exchanged letters with her mother while I was in Chile, and lost contact thereafter. My attachment to nostalgia is so bizarre, these spotty recollections and scattered attempts to keep in contact must seem odd to all involved. I gave up years ago because I know that the quality of the relationship between our two families is vastly different in my mind than the memories fostered by the others. I wept bitterly when that fickle twelve year old sent our mutual friend to deliver the divorce letter, it was an exquisite pain that permeated every region in my body, for years. I will never be so insensitive to my child as to declare that his feelings are puerile and vapid, a shadow of what he would some day feel for a woman, as my parents told me. What does a twelve year old understand about love? Everything. Above all else, is the unconditional capacity that exists, untamed, uncorrupted, undefiled, unconditioned. Experience, heartbreak, deceit, betrayal, all of those things eventually dry that well. She could have killed someone and I would have spent the rest of my life concealing her, absconding the arm of justice, I never would have questioned her motives. When I think of those feelings, the profound sadness I carried for years, the closest adjective I can find to describe my mental state is that of derangement. But that acute sadness, that unendingly profound melancholy carried me, formed me, instructed and delivered me. No other disposition has so presently accompanied me through the years. I don’t know who I am without it, or how to make sense of my shape. I can’t put it out, put it away from me. Were it taken from me my body would inflate, the heat replaced with a buzzing numbness, anchorless and directionless, my hollow vessel floating capriciously and carelessly through weather systems and wind currents. It’s a necessary weight to charge on my back. Happiness comes in fleeting instances to lift it for a moment, for a respite, and perhaps to prevent the sores from healing, forming around the load, hardening and becoming callous. Then the weight rests again and the sting is unquenchable for a season, and I think to myself, ‘I’m alive.’
The car sickness in this van is a physical manifest as we wind up the corkscrew mountain passes into Montefano. We played for 500 Italians in Perugia last night, the show sold out about half way through our set. After we loaded our gear into the van we got heckled by a drunk opposite the fence, and another bold party-goer squeezed his way through the security line and into the loading area. Ryan intercepted him and tried unsuccessfully to persuade the young gentleman to abandon the pursuit. After a lot of confused banter passing between the two, the lanky Italian landed a couple of punches with his impressive reach before being tossed outside the fence. I haven’t been in a fight in years. I wasn’t totally convinced that taking the role of security guard was at all our designation, but after Ryan was assaulted I stood beside him. I landed a good one square on the Italian’s cheek and pushed him back to the front of the club, where the bouncer escorted him the rest of the way. I felt awful. He was tall, handsome, gregarious, and probably would have been a friend. He left his apartment energized to go to the club and meet his friends for drinks on the dance floor, desperate to get inside once tickets became scarce, only to leave minutes after his arrival with a black eye and a bump on the head from the steel fence that kissed his skin, at the hands of the Moore brothers. Ryan has a shiner of his own this morning, I’m missing half a fingernail, and Garrett has tonsillitis. The convalescent sunshine of southern Spain waits just a week away.
We were ousted from the hotel at noon, limping lethargically down the stairwell to take a coffee and hit the road. Italy has been sunny and pleasant and full of surprises. We’ve certainly met some of the kindest and some of the most hostile characters of the tour here. The shows in Modena and Rome blur together as I strain to recollect them. We have been so exhausted lately, stricken with infirmities that won’t run their course, sleep deprived and claustrophobic, and a million other unpleasantries. I haven’t given it my all this week, though truthfully I haven’t had it to give, either. I’d love to take three days off and pick up again, but as it stands, there isn’t a break in sight. I’ll just have to grin and bear it. I just want to lay on my back with the sun in my eyes and the salty sea swishing around my ears, buoying my briny body, floating out into an oceanic infinity. Instead, queasy and nauseated I’ll penetrate time and space in this sardine can on wheels for the next three hours to the next city, exit the vessel, vomit and collapse in a muddy field. Don’t wake me.
I’m laying on my back on top of the covers of a little bed under a window, the shadowy Montefano darkness tugging at the dim screen in front of me, in an effort to persuade me to rest. My belly is stacked to capacity with a four course meal and my heart is full from a magical evening in a little historic theatre situated in the center of this old town. We played to a sold out crowd, comprised of spectators representing just about every demographic, from adolescents to the elderly. After the show, we spent almost as much time dispensing hugs and handshakes as we did performing on stage. I don’t know what it is about these small towns, the people seem so grateful and appreciative, and expressive about the experience. Sometimes the kindness is too great. It is really visceral to get a hug from a sincere old woman who was moved by this loud and raucous music, when your own parents are so detached and disinterested in your art. Il Teatro de la Rondinella was built over 200 years ago in this little town, serving as a cultural center, venue, theatre, and meetinghouse. Our hotel, located about 15 kilometers outside of the city-center, could more aptly be described as a bed and breakfast. The house chef uses only ingredients grown on the premises in his garden; even the wine is produced from a vineyard on the property. If the feast we enjoyed earlier this evening settles and spreads out a bit overnight, I’ll enjoy a gourmet breakfast in the morning, before ending this beautiful Italian romance in Milano on Sunday. Now I lay me down to sleep…
It’s 2 am. Tonight we played with Franklin in a giant venue called Le Cabaret Aleatoire. A hip-hop group headlined the evening, two charming gentlemen from Minneapolis on their first European tour. We played to a small but enthusiastic crowd and quickly loaded into the van afterwards and headed to the venue’s hostel where we sit scattered between several rooms for the next few hours before leaving early in the morning for Perpignan. Yesterday we met Frank and Camille of Franklin, the band which joins us on the 7” split to be released in March on Wool Recordings, Frank’s label. Their music is calm, atmospheric, and pensive. We thoroughly enjoyed their company over the last 48 hours, in Montpellier and Marseille. Both cities were equally attractive and alluring, though the former is quite the headache to navigate in a colossus such as the Ford Transit. We had a lovely time, reticent as always about acquainting ourselves so meagerly with each town.
The sun has mercifully shined upon us these last few days in the southern corners of the continent. My withered body, soft and smudgy, it’s holding fast to the radiant rays and raising resiliency. The cottony cloudscape which once brought comfort and calm feels brazen and burdensome. It was a shame to pass along the Italian coast through intoxicating towns like San Remo and into France, through Monaco, Cannes, and Nice, without having the opportunity to stop and give adequate attention to each. We just nod and wink, as if to say, ‘we’ll stop for a cup of tea on the flip-side…’
Milano was a bit of a stressful evening, as Garrett convulsed damply in a bed of cold sweat and fever blisters, feeble and earnest in his attempts to shake a nasty bacterial infection. I rushed to the city center to find a vitamin supplement to restore his depleted immune system, rocked by a donated antibiotic usually prescribed to chemotherapy and HIV patients. We pushed through with broken strings and no sound check for about 45 minutes and slept a good, strong 8 hours in a 4 star hotel across the street. The breakfast was divine. It was a pleasure to meet some kind friends that have exchanged letters and emails with the band over the last few months, to put faces to names. We are blessed to meet so many sincere and genuine folks from such diverse backgrounds, I truly feel blessed that the music we create touches such an assorted cornucopia of listeners. I never imagined it.
I cherish so deeply this time alone, this quiet solace, profoundly. All sleepy inclinations I once felt have fled, passionately, and yet, irony prevails. The laptop battery is depleted, curtailing my stream of conscious… There is so much to say. I hope I remember in the morning. How cruel. . .
I cannot aptly describe the sensation that overcomes me each time I penetrate the Spanish border. Immediately, it’s warmer, brighter, lighter, easier to manage and digest. We met a small group of young people in Mataro that would easily coalesce with our own friends in the States. It was so refreshing to meet these people who hold no pretentions or inhibitions, no obstacles to transparency and authenticity. After the show, the crowd emptied out and we danced alone, the six of us, until wearied, and retired back to Salva’s place to smoke some hash and get some rest.
All of the stress and anxiety of touring seems to melt away when we come to Spain. The warmth of the sun and the people seems to heal the physical frailties as much as the mental fragmentations. I feel like I’m spinning in some dissonant spectrum of disease everywhere else, and yet this country irons out all of the wrinkles and pacifies me. I’ve simply got to relocate. I’ve got my sights set on Madrid. We’ll be there in three days. Perhaps I’ll just get lost…
We seem to be getting a handle on the technical challenges which have accompanied us most nights, we’ve gotten pretty good at repairing the instruments and keeping replacements on hand. After the van was towed in Montpellier we’ve gotten a little more serious about preparedness and precautions, parking in secured and gated areas, obscuring all valuables or simply transferring them to the cargo area. Another unexpected expense could exhaust the band fund completely, we’re treading shallow territory as it is.
Two days ago we passed through Perpignan and played a little acoustic showcase at a department store called FNAC to a mixed crowd of unsuspecting consumers. I signed a copy of ‘It is Freezing Out,’ purchased by a woman of about seventy, who congratulated me profusely, scrambling to explain her sentiments and gratitude in a simplified French that I could understand. It’s always bizarre to me, to see someone moved by my music, from a generation so far removed from mine. I’ve mentioned before that my own parents haven’t given more than one or two supportive spins of the records out of some sort of duty, they couldn’t be less interested in the songs or the stories behind them. I suppose the gap between us isn’t so profoundly expansive due to time, as much as it is a product of ideological incongruence. For the staunchly religious, there is perhaps but one fountain of truth and beauty, and any divergent efforts to create meaning or to shed light on the heavy questions are void and trite. We don’t recognize each other anymore.
After the department store set, we walked across the street to El Mediator to play the full set with the band. Etienne promoted the show and cooked us two enormously satisfying French meals, paired with an impressive selection of cheeses and white and red wines. The seafood bisque was comprised of fresh fish and potatoes with New Zealand clams and savory shrimps, served whole. We had onion and leek quiches for the appetizer and an apple tart for dessert. I can’t believe these meals. Never have I known such extravagant hospitality.
We meet such unique and intriguing people out here. One of the promoters recently sold a restaurant that he initially founded to bring bands over from the states that pleased him, with the chief objective of ultimately bringing the Violent Femmes for a special concert among family and friends. Two of the members of the band don’t speak to each other any longer, but some how this guy managed to get them back together on a stage in little Perpignan, traveling in separate buses, separate hotel rooms on separate floors, separate dining arrangements, etc. He enthusiastically displayed a video from the evening, his favorite band on his restaurant stage. He was singing back up vocals in the shot. After his goal was realized the restaurant was no longer necessary.
A lot of strange coincidences have been occurring lately. The other day we were remarking on our good fortune of maintaining the integrity of the violin strings, which are so expensive to replace. We broke one on the same day. Yesterday I was speaking to Andrew about the narrow roads we traverse in this bulky box on wheels; I was shocked that we never got stuck in an alley or had to move a vehicle to pass through a small street, and we were met with such a situation today, wedged at a compromising angle in a tiny avenue. We lifted a car onto the curb but still needed another six inches to correct the path. A line of cars behind us were blaring horns and swearing, until one of the drivers exited his vehicle and demanded we allow him to remedy the situation. With less than a centimeter on either side and seemingly no safe direction to pursue, he rammed it into reverse, roared back with intimidating confidence, straightened out and put us back on course, all in less than 20 seconds. Hats off to you, universe.
The old familiar car sickness lifts and fills the cabin as we wind through the Pyrenees, towards Bilbao. My insides are winding, too with parallel velocity. I need a glass of lithium to quell the volatile cocktail of bundled nerves and agitated fluids, before a little bump in the road ignites a tiny spark inside my bubbling belly, turning this van into a swelteringly vomitous homage to lava lathered Pompeii.
We saw the Dali museum today in Figueres. Once again, I’m humbled by the staggeringly prolific output of one man’s lifetime. The Persistence of Memory was already painted when the artist was my age. Twenty-seven years old, Dali was already establishing himself as one of the most important visual artists of modernity. I have now seen his work in three different countries, between New York, Italy and Spain. There is another Dali museum in Florida and dozens of other galleries that house his expansive catalogue of drawings, paintings, lithographs, sculptures, and jewelry. And what do I have to show for myself?
Markina is a tiny village nestled in the mountains just about twenty minutes east of Bilbao, in the Basque country of northern Spain. We played in a small cultural hall, funded by the local government in an effort to bring diverse performance groups and artists from around the world to entertain the town. The crowd was comprised of a miscellaneous blend of young and old, with a wide range of artistic sensibilities. They cheered wildly after the first song, clapping in unison as we scrambled to switch instruments and make it to the next song. A man wrote me a Neruda poem on a little index card with a silver pin in the shape of the Basque country, as a gift for the intimate performance.
A kindly woman named Fina runs a little bed and breakfast up in the mountains of Bizkaia, situated on a lush green hill with forest and rolling hills surrounding the charming cottage. We arrived after the show to a warm cake baked by her hand topped with fresh milk drawn from the farm on site, and clean sheets on giant comfy beds. Catherine and I awoke to a braying herd of sheep and baby lambs scurrying just past our open window, up the grassy hill to the grazing spot. Then we went downstairs and did some grazing of our own. Fina washed all of our laundry and cooked an authentic Spanish breakfast in the morning with homemade ingredients taken from the farm: walnut butter and red bell pepper marmalade spread on crispy toast, farm fresh scrambled eggs, hand squeezed orange juice with a hint of lemon, and various assorted jams and marmalades concocted in house… I could have kissed her on the mouth! I can’t imagine how much it must have cost to put us up in that little fantasy lodging place. We are blessed.
The Spanish shows are well attended in comparison with our first visit to the peninsula. I’ve been humbled greatly by the outpour of gratitude and emotion we’ve been gifted from these dear people. After our set in Zamora several spectators proclaimed that the Uzi & Ari show was the best they had ever seen in the town, a couple of others remarked to me personally that they had cried during the performance. It’s hard to believe that this cumbersome six-piece, swapping instruments and cables and amplifiers mid-set have come to discover the delicate balance necessary to execute these songs with the requisite accuracy and detail. Only a month ago we were gritting our teeth and shunning our own faces on stage as we embarrassedly, wrenchingly wriggled through two awkward public performances in Utah, wondering to ourselves, are we nuts? We’re in over our heads. Perhaps there is a little wind left in these sails.
Last night we slept in a little bungalow in a small wooded village about twenty kilometers outside of Leiria. We came out of the chilly cave in the morning to a sunny and warm Portuguese sky, enjoyed some fresh oranges from the adjacent orchard and loaded into the van. I didn’t think I could be more pleased with scenic landscapes than I was in Spain; I’m happy to be mistaken. It’s no wonder to me that these civilizations once governed the globe. This country is breathtaking! I feel energized, overflowing with optimism, ambition and vigor, traversing this land. The geometry of these mountains is so intricate! Notches and ridges line the faces of the hills, so uniformly. Standing on one ridge you can see over a dozen giant hills with houses scattered from top to bottom every which way. The freeway runs on top of all of it, looking down you see everything all of the time.
Portugal is so lush, green and wooded. On all sides little orange rooftops bleed into the horizon, globular hills popping up like earthy bubbles, rising out of the gullies and valleys, pulsing and breathing slowly and softly. The chipping paint fades brightly from the buildings, there is vibrant color everywhere. I stood in a cathedral from the 16th century last night, just beneath a historic castle on a hill overlooking the venue. Little archways stretch over the petite avenues, too small for cars so everyone walks, interacts, living all over each other. It is magical. We had gourmet pastries in the center plaza where children danced and played soccer in princess costumes and superman capes in celebration of Carnaval. The vivid energy is contagious. I’ve carried this smile brightly since the border.
We live too fast in America. We work too hard, too long, too isolated. The social fabric of our country is splitting up from a once majestic quilt into a bunch of paltry pot holders. What does capitalism afford us? A bigger TV, ritzy cars, over-sized houses. We have no health care, no vacation time, no retirement. And we eat garbage, three meals a day. I was misplaced at inception. I’ve recognized the scent, though; I’m on the trail. After I graduate, it’s going to take an army to keep me from these shores.
Several shows have come and gone since I last wrote, each bearing the scar of some new malady that has befallen us. We began this tour with a complete cache of sound instruments and equipment, almost without blemish. Now the autoharp is shedding strings, the accordion has lost its brilliance and accuracy, the power cord to the Nord keyboard has skipped town, rendering it useless. We’ve spent more money on guitar cables and strings than French tolls in these last six weeks, the input on David’s telescaster is broken and two thirds of my computer screen is destroyed. But the latest monetary debacle trumps them all. After we finished playing Perestroika in Bordeaux, one of the show’s organizers whispered in my ear that the van had been hit while parked out front during the show. The back doors, smashed in like an aluminum can, trap our merch as well as my suitcase with all of my clothing. We have all of the instruments packed in the passenger area, scattered amongst us. As we speak, I’m camped out on the middle bench to safeguard the gear through the night. We’ll meet Valentin in Brugges tomorrow and sort it all out, I hope.
I’m exhausted with verbal descriptions of these twinkling towns, I’ll never make anyone see the gentle beauty of it the way that I do. Though charmed by Braganca, and truly Portugal as a whole, none of the cities we have visited on this tour compare to Porto. We walked along the pier and had a delicious lunch together in the sun. I took some photographs of the dark and richly vibrant painted buildings along the river. In the morning we left the hotel early to spend a few minutes at the beach. The sky was clear and sober. We shed our earthly clothings and penetrated the oceanic plane that intersects with the celestial bodies, swimming out into the horizon. The water was frigid, but reassuring, cold sand rising underfoot. The Portuguese adventure christened with a salty baptism, we wandered back to the van and drove to Madrid.
At the border the van was searched for illicit substances and paraphernalia. Unwittingly I emptied my pockets, placing on public display a small zip-lock bag with resin and sediment from several rolled cylinders that once held residence there, in my coat pocket. The officer inquired ‘Es tobacco, no?’ To which I replied, ‘of course.’ We got back into our rolling refuse heap and clutched our beating breasts. I couldn’t decide which event had most effectively damaged my shoddy nerves… the prospect of sitting in a holding cell on the Spanish-Portuguese border indefinitely awaiting amnesty from the American embassy, over a thimble of ash, or the resonant echo of thieving gunshots in the alley behind the club in Leiria while we hurriedly loaded thousands of dollars worth of equipment into an overtly conspicuous lime green van under a luminous lamp post… Either way, the universe was applying with great consternation equal force on all parts of my person to keep it from disassembling and spreading out all over everything.
We arrived quite late to the club in Madrid, playing to a warm crowd of perhaps 75 or 100, I don’t really remember. The organizers were lovely and both in temperament and appearance. The city is overflowing with beautiful people. It was a comfort and a blessing to stay up late speaking Spanish, candidly crushing on our kindly promoter, Salome. She is intelligent, assertive, confident, and pleasant. Come to think of it, I think she is the first woman I have spoken with for more than ten minutes on this tour. It was refreshing. Thank you, Salome.
We met with some familiar faces in Zaragoza, returning again to ‘La Lata De Bombillas,’ and played an enjoyable set to an enthusiastic crowd in the south of France on the following day, before the van was all but rendered useless. We were happy to meet Kalou and Ruth who have been indispensably integral in sorting out this vehicular debacle. We stopped off for a couple of hours in Paris to play at Edith Piaf’s old stomping grounds in Bellville, caught a nap in the van where I commenced this scribble, and took to the north for another Belgian show in Brugges. Things start to get blurry here, I apologize. I remember a gourmet dinner on the plaza by the clock tower and a quick nap in the Hotel Verdi where we stayed two years ago before leaving at 6 am to get to Munich on time. Beyond that, the details smear and bleed into each other, I can’t trace the boundaries where each end and begin. As I type this afternoon, the exhaustion and the nausea have subsided momentarily, almost enough to extract some aspects of the last few days, due in great part to the acquisition of a new van and driver. Praises to you, Valentin, our chivalrous champion!
I ate about a pound and a half of vegetarian Lasagna in Munich and slept uninterruptedly for nearly eight hours, a feat in itself, tour or no tour. I don’t expect that to happen again any time soon. We’ve now passed through Duisburg and Berlin and stop today in Prague before two more shows in Leipzig and Offenbach. I think some of us have already left this continent, our bodies dragging limply in the dirt behind the buoyantly exuberant effigies of our sickly spirits, locked on a tractor beam that leads to a quiet convalescent home in Salt Lake City. All I remember about Berlin were three blueberry pancakes wrapped in tin foil and an awkward meeting with a stranger. We rested on the railing overlooking the Spree, I muttered unintelligibly about first impressions and happenstance encounters, such as ours. She looked on, nodding politely. I have no rhythm, no gift. I’m an ass.
I hope to all the imaginary gods the mind of man can muster that one sound hour presents itself to me in this city to spend alone in the busy streets, under sharpened skies, amidst the crisply crackling currents of willful winds, swiftly swirling sweepingly… The sorely neglected confines of solitude demand declaratively that I remove my hat and stay awhile, it’s long overdue. I’m going to take a trip alone soon. Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps the Middle East. I just want to wander, to drag my toes in the topsoil of unacquainted terrains, forget my name and shed my comforts, fall off the radar. I’m a clouding cluster clog.
No such luck. Prague was a drague… Rainy and overcast, the city burped and tossed our misguided van onto a chance hillside that housed our elusive venue where a crowd of riotous rockabilly fans would soon be surprised to behold the six of us pouring onto the stage to play a sixty minute set of sentimental music that scarcely approached their musical sensibilities. We enjoyed meeting New York’s ‘O’Death’ and witnessing an extremely electric performance perhaps paralleling the steamy sweatiness of our own. It was a weird matchup but welcomed just the same. We slept in an apartment downtown and saw nothing of the city. What’s new?
Ironically, we finished the tour in Offenbach, at the Hafen 2, where I penned the first entry in the European tour journal two years ago. I only hope that this perfect closure is impermanent. It’s nearly April, I’m home in Salt Lake, and there is a defiantly withering winter blanket on the ground due to last night’s imposed precipitation, gritting icy teeth, drooling meltingly down the neck and jowls. It’s been two weeks, jet lag has begrudgingly abandoned me and the lucid light of remembrance is seeping back in.
The Leipzig show unfolded like a paper dream, donning a packed house of enthusiastic listeners, and an old close friend who came along for the ride. We played our most enjoyable set and limped to squeeze out one more performance in Offenbach, like a flattened tube of toothpaste, scraping the insides for one last go. We played exhaustedly, slept, then said our goodbyes in Frankfurt, Valentin gripping the back of my neck at the check in desk, his forehead resting wearily on my shoulder. He turned away abashedly, wiping the tears from his tired eyes, waving one last time without turning his head in our direction, and walked purposefully through the automatic doors and out of sight. Though we have our differences, there is a tender admiration and respect between us; we’re two frighteningly similar neurotics, with too much on our plates. When I feel that my brain is broken, that my lungs are exhausted of all their strength, when my heart is weary and my hopes depleted, that man is still one step ahead of me, pushing on in the obscurity, working under conditions that no one would legitimize. There are none kindred to thee, Valentin Sanchez. You walk isolated and alone. Godspeed you, dear friend.
I could write another 200 pages of reflection on this little whirlwind jornada, but my heart fails me. It’s already sunk down too low into the fleshy chamber, excruciatingly deep, impossible to extract without substantial injury. Perhaps once it has forfeited and risen to the top like a dead gold fish, perhaps then I will lift it by the sullied fin and inspect the bruising and the ruptures at the gills, the discolored scales and distended underbelly. Perhaps then, we’ll make some sense of the implications of such an excursion, and the cost-benefit analysis of such an odyssey of the mind and body. Just thinking about attempting to encapsulate the grueling two month tour that is now in the past, to definitively tack on the last bit of mortar, fasten the final button, apply the last brush stroke… It’s dizzyingly daunting. Suffice it to say, we’re going to live…. and we will return.