BERGEN 11/14
As it turns out, our boat did make it, the seas eventually ceased to roil. In fact, I awoke at about 9, and found we were sitting in a port, somewhere along the way. I had breakfast and spent the rest of the morning, and half the afternoon (as the boat was now going to arrive quite late) reading, sipping coffee, and standing on the deck admiring how shockingly beautiful Norway is. We called ahead to let the record store that Jon & I were scheduled to play at 2 that afternoon that we would be a little late. Indeed. The boat pulled in at 2.30, and we were practically the last vehicle to drive off, and we sat waiting for approval to drive on from Norwegian customs. It turned out to be a long wait. Our van, luggage, gear, and persons were searched top to bottom. Dogs were sent to sniff us and our stuff. In all, we waited in a tiny room for about 2 hours while they tore us apart—for nothing.
We still did the damn instore, albeit 3 hours late. People were there, still!
We did our thing and then went down the block to the Garage, where I played last year. The ever-friendly Dennis, who really can look like the Rocky Horror guy with the long hair (I kept saying ‘castles don’t have phones, asshole!’ that night at odd moments), greeted us, and made sure we had everything we needed…and then walked us to the hotel and dinner afterwards. At dinner, we joined our favorite promoter, Trygve, for another hearty Norwegian meal (I won’t tell you everything we ate, so you won’t have to be horrified).
Our show tonight was perhaps a little shaky—too much banter, a few botched intros, etc. – but the crowd was great and I will say it was one of the best encores of the tour—we bore down and dealt out a series of hammer blows. After the show there was much merriment made upstairs, and at some apartment down the street, I had a few sips of this and that, and walked home in the cool wet air to my super weird hotel room—like, two Murphy beds side by side, and a yellow dining table, like the informal table that inhabited the kitchen when I was growing up, with like 9 chairs around it. Huh?
STAVANGER 11/17
I couldn’t even bear to have breakfast, and I was still pretty tired when we left at 9 or whatever it was. There are 3 ferries on the route to Stavanger; the first two are short hops I didn’t even wake up for. The third is almost an hour and vehicle passengers are required to leave the car deck. So I went up and slowly opened my weary eyes to the golden light of a Norwegian late afternoon—it has that eerie, after life quality to it. More or less the sunset takes all afternoon to do its thing. On this day, the sky was cloudless, the water bouncy, a chef’s salad of finely chopped blocks of color. Other ferries and islands were available to view on the peripheries. By the time we got to the other side of this particular fjord or whatever it was, Stavanger was just a few more miles down the road. Norwegian miles?
Tonight’s venue was a student bar, that’s been a live music institution since at least the late 80s, called Folken. Great student bar with a pretty massive stage, actually. Well, this may not have been the smallest crowd of our three Norwegian shows, but damn if this wasn’t musically one of the best of the tour. And truth be told, there were almost 150 people there—it’s all relative in Norway. We were interviewed and the performance was filmed for a documentary on what goes on backstage at shows…we were hardly in the backstage tho…our hotel was next door so I spent my down time there…and then there was our failed mission to see Nazareth play across town, at what appeared to be a Red Lobster crossed with Chilkoot Charlie’s in Anchorage…they were having equipment problems that even their 5 techs couldn’t solve...not their fault but it still seemed a bit Spinal Tap. A 6’5” tattooed guy grabbed Darius’ nose and said he was too young to be at this show…well, we told him to get lost, he was awfully drunk, and he sort of behaved…amazing how easily drunk folks can be programmed.
Our show this night was stellar. We just hit every mark. The crowd was there for us, a bit shy at first, but they couldn’t help but be moved by our efforts. Yes!
OSLO 11/18
This day we arose at 7am which and drove for hours and hours…I was asleep for all of that, thank god. As when we got to Oslo, basically we immediately headed to an instore performance at a big record shop in a downtown mall…abysmal sound, unfortunately, but we worked with is as best we could. Oslo is kind of a can’t-go-wrong kind of place, and I can only say that the show was totally on, and the audience there for us.
TRONDHEIM 11/19
Now this place was something else. Again, we were up at the break of day, and we hopped a train up to the industrial northern city of Trondheim. Beautiful ride thru snow covered forests and rough-hewn mountain waterfalls—in other words the real Norway. It took all day to get there, but once we did—well, we felt pretty comfortable. I had enough downtime to go and record with the band Jim Protector, I played organ and guitar and I sang on a song, which was sounding really cool when I left—I might end up mixing the thing later. This show---shee-it, I don’t even know what to say. It burned. It seemed like every pint glass in the building was smashed by the end of the gig. The audience clapped when you would want an audience to clap; they sang along; we gave and gave and gave. It was a perfect night. Rowdier than, say, Stavanger, but no less musically sound. I quickly added this city to my list of favorite cities to play.
And after the gig, we watched the video show on NRK 2—and saw the ‘Conversations’ video (twice) and the Briskeby video that has a ghostly appearance from me…
Love
KS
Helsinki FINLAND
