Ken Stringfellow dot calm

12.26.2005

IT'S IT'S THAT THAT TIME TIME AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN

I was just looking over my old posts, from a year ago exactly, and environs, and realizing the forum on KS.calm never reanimated. Well, the forum on theposies.net has a ken stringfellow section, so...feel free to migrate back and forth. Who would have thought that such a primordial concept would be the buzzword for so many technological issues...migrate....I even migrated without knowing it, evidently, this website migrated from one host to another when some tech deck was shuffled yet again. My cell phone service, and number, migrated to the big fish that swallowed the fish I was stuck to. All this migration...I have a migraine and I want to eat some magret de canard. No, not true. But, I have been a migratory species all my life it seems. I was lucky enough to come from a family that could afford to fly back and forth across the country to visit relatives, 30 years before the existence of budget airlines and the attendant fact you can now potentially sit next to a crackhead on a redeye flight from Seattle to New York (I did it on Jet Blue once--not fun, and no, I'm not likely to fly them again.) And, like ye olde hunter gatherers crossing the land bridge to Alaska, we followed my dad's jobs around, to several different cities (not to Alaska tho'). And I got the migration bug. It's probably the biggest non-survival oriented motivation I have in life. Go look at that map over the last year and perhaps you can also look up evidence of the travel I have undertaken every year for the past 15-16 years, and you will see that I am of some kind of species that needs to recalibrate those metallic rocks in my gizzard, periodically jumping continents so that they are pulled by the sun, the moon, the center of the earth and the bling graveyard, recalibrating themselves deep in my flesh thereby scratching an itch so deep it might actually be somewhere in my DNA.

Note: now that I am home, I can catch up on listening to music...I highly recommend the Briskeby album 'Jumping On Cars'--not just for my guest appearance on one track, but for top notch songs, playing, singing and production...

ZURICH, 12/18

well, we blew it out, last night of the tour should be like this...multiple teq. shots, and all the gear that we could lift over our heads--guitars, mic stands, drum sticks, and even, for a second before gravity returned it, a cymbal stand and cymbal were stuck up in the lighting rig and rafters. Glorious! I stood on some amp and did the frug in my undies, at some point a girl who used to work at the venue (the Abart) was playing drums, all that good craziness. bad bits--we invited friends and relatives down to the dressing room when the night was done, and I paid WAY too much for champagne that I didn't get to drink nearly enough of...and the friends also brought friends who weren't my friends...in the end a couple of things got busted in the dressing room that I can't explain. Including an ironing board--which is a real sin in my book. You don't fuck with your beauty tools. So, I am sad about that but all in all I have to say it was more about ups than downs.

I never really did sleep much. A little bit in the hotel lobby waiting for my cab to the train station. I had to board the TGV to Paris at 7am and I did sleep the whole way, as I had some cough syrup--not for recreational purposes, but because I was coughing, and pretty badly too. Well it knocked me out and I was slightly groggy (and very sore, the TGV is not so good for long periods of sleep) when we got to Gare de Lyon at about 1.30 that afternoon. Dom met me on the platform, and we grabbed my stuff and walked to a restaurant for a dazed but delicious reunion lunch. I had magret d'oie glazed in a mixture of honey and truffles...I mean, I was back in the shiz, cuisine francais style!

Since then I have been catching up on sleep and calories, playing with my girl Aden a lot, and spending time with my folks and Dom's, here in Paris. I had time to sneak out and see the Hard Ons play their end of the tour show (good, but, hey, I'll admit it--ours was better!) and ran into Thomas from Cheap Star therein. I even had my Roman Emperor moment--Dom fed me lobster & caviar while I was in the bath! It wasn't planned...

I've had the occasional email from my bandmates...but everyone is burrowed pretty much into their individual snowbanks. I don't blame 'em.

I'll emerge from mine on the 31st---see you all in Vaduz?

love
KS
Paris

12.18.2005

MEZZAGO 12/18

On our way to finding our hotel, we ended up being guided by the GPS to a one lane road in the middle of farm fields, which came to an abrupt end at an incomplete overpass. Ditches on both sides of the road...17 foot long van needing to turn around...hmmm. Eventually we found our hotel...total movie set...weird industrial park adjacent to what appeared to be abandoned tract housing. OK...go to mappy and see if the 'town' Trezzano Rosa' appear (well, you'll find it but you have to see this place to believe it...every band I know could film a different, fucked up video there!)...with the late afternoon sky, the 'On the Beach' level desolation...and then a four star hotel stuck in the midst of it all..the surreal factor was high, very high. Well, the internet was down. Fucking Swisscom! The gal behind the desk let me use her computer tho!

Mezzago is a little village about 30km from Milan...it has a great club/cinema/cafe/alternative book/gift/music store called Bloom; Nirvana, Hole, Tad, Screaming Trees all played there in the past (actually Nirvana played there twice--in 1989 and 1991). Our show tonight--what the hell? Inane/insane stage ranting from me; broken strings on every song; all the bass equipment blew up at one point, and during soundcheck, the mic stands fell off the drum riser! Excellent, excellent show.

I stayed at the club for awhile, had a drink with our promoter Roberta and the club's booker, and came back to the hotel at about 2, with the dwindling remnants of a Twin Peaks' worthy 'salsa party'...I saw, bless her heart, a 400 pound woman in the skimpiest black dress imaginable, which truly earned my respect. As I went to sleep they were dragging something metal and very unstable up and down the hall. At 3?

love
KS
Zurich SWITZERLAND

12.17.2005

OVIEDO 12/4

I knew this would happen. We’d get thru Spain, I’d come out the other side sick as a dog and happy as a clam…but, now…the memories of the preceding week are a bit…weak. This place, Oviedo, a first time for the Posies, welcomed us with open bar. Har har. That’s actually a joke. What was true is that the Sala Tribeca looks like the set of some hideous 70s TOTP-meets-the-deck-of-a-submarine TV show…with a bizarrely shaped stage, a huge rail, and…they strung a pathetic looking piece of rope at the audience’s throat level to keep them back from the front of the stage, as the PA is about 6-7 feet out front. Well, no one ever said shows in Spain had to sound good, did they? Just full of people (which it was) and full of energy (which it was). After the show, we made out way to a restaurant that was open, and ate barnacles. Again, no joke!

VIGO 12/5

The van pulled up to the hotel, and me, being a bit tired, slothed up to the room for a bit. Everybody headed to soundcheck and I eventually got it together, and realized I had no idea where the club was. So, I set out to find it. Within a block of the hotel, I found Sala Iguana, site of fantastic Posies shows in 1995 and 2001; thinking there’s no way we’d be playing a place on the same block I turned around and went a block behind the hotel. Nothing doing there. Went further in the first direction and found La Fabrica de Chocolate—not exactly a venue, but, a bar with a stage. Hmmm. How many presales? Like 200? And they’re gonna go where, exactly? In the end there were about 300 people crammed into this tiny bar…the fire marshal in Galicia must be a very busy guy…great show tho'. After the show we went for a drink at Sala Iguana, which, despite having a torn awning and being boarded up when I passed it at 7pm, was open for business and happy to see us. Big Posies poster on the wall in the downstairs bar…

BURGOS 12/6

This is a little two-way lesson. We will look at two issues here—how one monkey can stop a show—or at least 2-3 drunk fools can; and how clubs that free pour gin into pint glasses for their customers are asking for trouble. Since the second bit is fairly elementary, we’ll look more closely at the first.

I had a strange foreboding—I have been watching enough zombie movies in the van to basically sniff apocalypse in the wind at every bad omen…well, when we rolled up to the club I had been asleep all day in the van…I always fall asleep in moving vehicles if I’m not driving. When I woke up, we were at the club…which was in the middle of god knows where…nothing but Halloween-shaped trees as far as you could see. La Quinta Avenida--whose only resemblance to 5th Ave. in NY (second NYC ref. in two consecutive club names??) might be the land that each was laid out on, but in 1305--does boast a fine restaurant, but it’s not exactly a rock & roll club. It’s more like a golf course clubhouse meets Elks Lounge but not in a cool way. Some funny bits—the stage, which is covered in putting green/blackjack table green carpet, rises up and down from being flush with the floor to being at least, oh, a foot high. Impressive! A big red Q lit up on the front edge of it.

So there I was, enjoying some duck and steak, and I just had a weird feeling, this show wasn’t going to be a good one. Outta nowhere. Which is very unlike me—we have risen to the occasion against far more unlikely odds.

The slide began at the merch table. A young woman approached and bought a Posies shirt, in the feminine style, the black tank top with the ‘Rush’ parody logo. As she was one of the first customers, I didn’t have any change yet, so I told her I would hold the shirt for her and she could get change at the bar—just 6 feet to my left. The price of the shirt was €15, and she had a €20 note. She came back—having bought a beer at the bar (this was confirmed by the bartender later), and pushed all the money my way—a ten, a five, and some coins. She seemed really annoyed already. I took the ten and the five, and said ‘keep these, this is enough’. Then something really weird happened. She started to speak in a very agitated way to me in Spanish (she had earlier been saying how much she enjoyed Solar Sister etc). I called Zoe, our production person and translator, over, to find out what was going on. Turns out, the girl thought I owed her €5. I explained all that had happened, told her to look in her purse, the coins would be there…but she wouldn’t relent. She claimed she went to the bar and returned with only her note broken into two tens. I asked, why would I want two tens when I didn’t want a twenty? It doesn’t make sense. At this point, you’re thinking, just give her 5 euros and she’ll go away, but, dammit, I don’t owe her 5 euros so she can take a flying leap! Well, in the meantime, her friends, who are also members of a band, who gave me their CD before the show, are drinking gin in pint glasses and might have been on Ecstasy as well…one of them is in the front row, scaring away everyone else by being, well, intensely into it in a really scary way…he is screaming for Solar Sister…every second and a half—between songs, during songs, I mean, by the time we were three songs into the set, Jon & I were telling him to shut up—we’ll get there, and all the while it’s like he’s begging for a stay of execution with the words ‘solar sister’. Next rock number and he’s jumping around with a full bottle of beer and then thinks it would be fun and celebratory to spray it in our faces, mostly mine. Now I’m pissed. I don’t care what the local tradition is, if it includes beer in my eyes I’m out. Call me the ugly American, but I will beat your ass into the frozen ground if you do that at one of our shows henceforth. In this case, I just glared holes in the dude and Zoe led him off…finally, the crowd trickled back up towards the front. Not that there was any enjoying the show, no…in the meantime, the 5 Euro girl is in a psychotic pantomime, pretending Jon is the most handsome creature on earth and batting her eyes at him, then turning to me and flipping me the bird. Honestly, I have decided I hate these people, I don’t care if they are fans, they are now in the rarified category of ‘asshole’. Ah yes, their fuckin’ dad or whatever, a potbellied dude in a black turtleneck and leather jacket, waits for a pause in between numbers to request, to no one in particular, ‘Frankie Goes to Hollywood’. Sort of belches it out in the direction of the nearest wall. We oblige him of course. Hmmm. Cut (an agonizing 32 minutes later) to the end of the set, and finally, we are in position to do Solar Sister…I see the dude Zoe chased off with little saturns and @ symbols orbiting his head, at the bar to my right. I call out, to make peace with the fucking prick, and can’t get his attention—no one can, it turns out. Well, I tried. And when you wake up, you piece of shit, in a fucking mental ward, trying to remember the night you lost your mind, identity, and dignity, I tell you this—you fucking dribbled in your lap during the one song you wanted to hear the most. So fuck you, fuck your midget, addition-impaired girlfriend, and fuck your pedophile dad (who tried to pick fights with Jon and Zoe, respectively, after the show and almost got his head flattened like an overripe melon by me for the trouble)—don’t come within 800 miles of me or my band without the words ‘I’m sorry’ ready to be deployed preemptively. You ruined Burgos for the people who wanted to enjoy it—so eat shit, pigs.

MADRID 12/7

Was up at 8 (we checked into the hotel at about 3) to enjoy the nerve-tingling sensation of sending €6000 cash from merch sales to our accountant via wire transfer—from one country to another, with two languages, etc. etc. thanks to Zoe for walking me through it, and the money did make it. I was dodging bank holidays (in my next life, I want to be a banker in Spain or France—you basically work nine days a year) and working with a bank called ‘Banesto’, which, to be honest, sounds like a guy who would be robbing the villagers in ‘The Magnificent Seven’. Of course, there’s nothing like the sphincter-regulating sensation of carrying six thousand euros around Europe for a month. Anyway, we got to Madrid, and checked into the ‘Hotel Senator’ (which Scott McCaughey would find funny). Jon wasted no time in helping himself to a complimentary glass of cava, and I for my trouble received a free key to my room.

Our show tonight was at the fabulous, colossal, extremely well tiled disco called Sala Arena, which has nothing to do with sand as far as I could tell. What it did have something to do with is a stellar rock event—500 or so patrons losing it to the Posies…culminating in a nearly-nude-tastic ‘Jungle’. After the show, we were invited to a bar that didn’t open til 12.30, so, as our show was done by 11.30, we found ourselves with nothing to do. Which was just as well, cuz I was wrecked. Burgos had depressed me, getting up early to go the bank didn’t do anything for my health, and I gave everything I had to the cause in Madrid (including my trousers).

MADRID 12/8

So, naturally, the best thing to do was to get up at 10 and play another show! Barnaby, former lo-end wrangler for the Pleasure Fuckers, now a big time concert promoter, for us at least, picked Jon & I up in the lobby as the rest of the Posies band & crew were getting in the van and driving to Granada. We headed over to Moby Dick, scene of many KS appearances, and at least 2 other Posies appearances over the years, to play an all ages matinee (and of course we played ‘Matinee’) for a handful of brave souls willing to get up and check into a bar at 1pm on a bank holiday. It was great to do these songs in the duo format; it really allowed me to take another emotional perspective on the songs, i.e. one other than ‘hell bent for leather’. We jammed out an hour’s worth of…uh, jams, and headed for the airport.

GRANADA 12/8
Leading highlights of this gig—hilarious TV interview with burnt out Jon & Ken in possibly the worst lit hotel corridor; rock show in a gigantic industrial rock palace on the edge of town. Hundreds of fans; not, perhaps, the liveliest crowd of all time (methinks they wuz largely stoned)…but a damn fine showing all around. Monitor guy with the protruding brow took great exception to Jon gently laying the mic and mic stand to rest on the stage at the conclusion of the evening.

SANTA POLA 12/9

I get misty-eyed just thinking about Camelot. And my nose hurts. And I think about my life insurance policy and what a good idea it was. Our legendary exploits at this club in 2001 remain…uh, legendary exploits. Ahem. In fact, Camelot has grown, now in addition to a funky looking castle there’s several giant glass pod-bars, each with different music and smells. And the main room itself boasts a much bigger and sturdier stage then it had in days of yore. I would have to say, this crowd was perhaps the most intense, and for Spain, that’s saying something. Over 600 customers and we threw down in kind. Pinky the Promoter treated us to a grand dinner of paella and langoustine and wine at the hotel beforehand, and we worked that off in about the first verse of the opening number. As we went on at 2.45am, we didn’t end up leaving the club (free drinks and ‘Joe Dallesandro’ on the wheels of steel) til 7.30 and still managed to have a DJ party in our suite until it was time to roll at 10.

BARCELONA 12/10

Oddly enough we arrived in decent shape for our show here, at Bikini, site of 2 previous Posie appearances. And oddly enough, we blew the doors off the joint. Another hilarious TV interview (I think they filmed the whole show, too), another packed house, another blistering set. I could get used to this country!

PALMA DE MALLORCA 12/11

Well, payback is a bitch. I think all the festive nights, all the intense travels, all the physical full-on-ness of the previous 5 months of touring (that’s just the Posies tours—I’ve been on tour pretty much ALL of the last few years, it seems) caught up to me, somewhere during our descent into Mallorca’s Palma Airport, PMI—which I refer to as the Earth Evacuation Center (this is the biggest, emptiest, airport you are likely to see in your lifetime). Anyway, my head was pretty stuffy, and I was starting to ‘harsh out a bit’. I took a nap at the hotel, breathing some sea breezes, which actually helped. I drank a lot of tea. The venue this night was a rather functional if not comely theatre named after a dude named Xesc Forteza. But, it had a grand piano and very restrictive db limit so we advertised the show as an acoustic show. In reality it was a hybrid: Jon played electric guitar, I played acoustic, but thru an amp, Matt played comme d’habitude, and Darius played a little bit quieter. Also, the aforementioned grand gave us some serious lounge-tastiness. I am listening to a recording of the show as I write, and there are some ‘And the Range’-worthy moments on several tunes. We busted out some rare gems in this config—‘Last Crawl’, ‘Anything & Everything’, ‘Love Comes’ etc. and I have to say, a quiet evening spent sitting on my ass and concentrating on my licks was highly enjoyable…hint to promoters…Posies acoustic at your place…

After the gig we enjoyed dinner with friends, local musos, and grilled roadkill.

GENEVA 12/13

My health, after another flight (it’s the descents that get ya), started to really decline. We had a long haul to Geneva, we got there at about 1am, checked into the hotel, and I started to try and utilize the sleep cure. Didn’t take right away, although I slept all day (yeh, sing the freakin’ song). And hauled my carcass down to L’Usine in time for some prison curry and free wifi. I can’t say this was our best ever set, at least for me, who sounded like Ms. Love and I don’t mean Darlene. The scattershot audience (you know Swiss folks—lots of dreads but very clean) dug it enough and I was glad to see friends there—but I had no energy for it. Right back to bed.

TORINO 12/14

Still feeling pretty shitty. I was covered in sweat right as we started to play. Great club, small but enthusiastic crowd, it wasn’t a total loss but I needed another 15-20 hours of hush eye to start climbing out of the hole.

ROMA 12/15

Ok, this one was fun. My voice was starting to come back, and I had at least a little of my energy back. We had an incredible feast before the show, too. I loved this little club, too. I can’t say we were ever actually in Rome, but I enjoyed the visit to wherever the hell it was. I will say these are our first club dates in Italy, a place we never visited in the old days, so it’s no worry for me the crowds are modest here. We’re building an audience here. Our summer gigs both had built in audiences, and they were both great. These are taking a little more work, but it’s work I love doing. Especially when I feel good, and that’s coming back to me right here.

BOLOGNA 12/16

We threw ourselves onto the stage, tipsy from chugging a little Italian bubbly…people trickled in over the course of the night til we had a pretty good little crowd (admission to our show was free! The People’s Posies!) and for them we played a loose but fun rock gig…I can sort of sing again…this is welcome.

Highlight of the drive to Bologna—we bought a copy of ‘Fletch Lives’ to watch in the van. It’s the little things…

Two more shows on the tour…

Love
KS
Bologna. ITALY

12.04.2005

GENT 11/28

The Vooruit is a many-chambered beast originally built as a Socialist Party HQ and meeting hall. And bar. And lord knows what else. In other words, about 100 years worth of The Man-baiting. Now it’s a center of culture for the People, and evidently, the People have spoken and they want their Posies and their Bloodhound Gang, preferably all at once. And they got it! BH filled up the larger auditorium downstairs, while we took the freight elevator to a lovely old wooden salon up top, and set up on the very bouncy stage. By 9pm this wooden shoebox was crammed with folks…hundreds of ‘em. Two packed shows in one town on a Monday night. Amazing! We delivered the goods, for sure, and my mic bounced around like a…Ken Stringfellow, sort of. By the time I was packed up (meaning the merch was done for the night and put away) it was suddenly time to go, so I gave hugs and kisses to a few friends and Dom and I repaired to a mediocre hotel, that, on the floor our room was on, reeked of pot. And it was a chain, too. Hmmm.

PARIS 11/29

How bizarre to be back on the home turf, I hadn’t been to Paris since I flew home to start the US tour Sept. 1, and that was only a visit to CDG, arriving by train from our summer place. Before that, it was for the Posies show in mid July, and before that, it was the REM show in February. So this year, assuming we stay in Paris for the holidays, instead of going to Dom’s hometown (Tours), I will have spent a total of 19 nights in Paris, 12 of them yet to come! I ‘live’ there.

OK, the van pulled up to the Maroquinerie, and we stumbled out and Dom & I went home for a bit, then I zipped back for a brief soundcheck, and then I went back home in time to pick Aden up from the crèche. As usual, she didn’t know what to do with herself upon my arrival, she squeaked and kicked her legs up in the air while lying on her back. We spent a little time at home, and then headed to the gig. Oddly enough, that night I had about 18 friends playing competing gigs around town—WaFlash, my friends and collaborators from Senegal, were at the Batofar, and Tahiti 80, my neighbors and sometimes drinking buddies, were playing and DJing at yet another venue. What the?? Of course, being that I had my own show, and my family, and one day to spend at home, there was no way I could get to their shows as much as I would have loved to—having WaFlash in town, which is a rare occasion indeed, was especially heartbreaking. Our show was a good one, we played a long time, got the Parisians to ‘get down’ etc. Remi from Cheap Star celebrated his 30th birthday that night, and we made him dance onstage for some song I can’t remember which, but he did manage to fall down on his ass. Poor Remi—I can’t go into detail, but his night ended very badly, and we send him lots of love. I myself drank WAY too much—two bottles of champagne (minus glasses I poured for friends) and the whiskey bottle’s final 20%. Probably some other things I don’t remember. I know that I danced on a table, and had drawings on me the next day. Oof!

EVREUX 11/30

So, I woke up with some kind of plastic truck parked on my chest, and got myself cleaned up, taking a bath while the girls came in and out of the room to visit. I sheepishly lunched on cassoulet, apologizing to Dom’s parents for what surely must have been a noisy arrival at an unpleasant hour; all was forgiven. I kissed the girls goodbye and hopped the metro to St. Lazare and then boarded a very brown train to Evreux. I had a first class seat, which honestly on SNCF doesn’t mean much. Especially on a little spur like the Paris--obscure-bits-of-Normandy line, with its vintage 1955 train cars. A lotta Gauloises met their untimely demise in the ashtrays of this rustbucket.

It was freezing when I arrived at the station, and I waited some time for a taxi…I got to the gig and soundcheck was already done. I did my arrival things and checked email, and had dinner. This show had a pretty small audience so we decided to conserve our energy and play a compact, no nonsense set. About 14 songs with encore, and we took maybe an hour to do it—and it was great, actually. We barely spoke and we pumped out the songs with great intensity. Everybody was happy! I stayed at the venue answering emails until about 2am, and then spent another hour writing them back at the hotel!

ANGOULEME 12/1

My how the little La Nef has grown. An old stone abattoir, turned into a rock club with very good production, it used to sit in a field with nothing around for a good 200 yards in any direction. Now it not only boasts a massive new structure on one side housing offices and music studios and a new kitchen/dining hall, but there are shops all around. Like, the equivalent of the places in the US where you have a Best Buy, Home Depot etc.

Our hotel couldn’t have been further away and still be in the same state, so with the miserable traffic that seems to be a byproduct of the massive growth of this small town, it took the better part of an hour to get to the venue.

La Nef was the site of two very good Posies shows—one in the summer of 1994 and one in the spring of 1996. As it turns out, we’re 3 for 3 as of this last visit. The girls were in attendance—at one point, a song came to a dead stop and before the audience knew it was time to applause, Aden was heard singing the last note a capella –got a good laugh from the crowd. Other laugh-worthy bits were Dom, Aden and I fighting over the bits of magret de canard, and me doing everything I could to get people to visit the merch stand, including hanging from a coat rack upside down and drawing the price list on my chest!

The support band, Headcases, who really sound like a Sub Pop band circa Rein Sanction/Sprinkler era, and are very good, learned Grant Hart, and I came out and lead the charge and sang it with them—and then of course the Posies did it as well. Thank you Angouleme for another great night.

BILBAO 12/3

Too bad, but our Bordeaux show was cancelled. The venue was capacity 650, quite a stretch of the imagination for the Posies in France, and as of that week we had sold a whopping 7 tickets. Don’t cry for us—Darius said Preston School of Industry played there for a dozen people and Matt had been there with Oranger or Overwhelming Colorfast and played to similar numbers. I remember when we were supporting the Teenage Fanclub tour in 1993, to packed houses everywhere –UK, France, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, Benelux—they cancelled their show in Milan as ticket sales were…you guessed it, 7, as of the week before the show. So, it happens o the best of ‘em. We took the night off in Bordeaux and I was able to spend an evening with the girls not working for a change, and the van got to spend some time alone being broken into—loss: one window, one video camera (Darius had to learn the hard way—no vehicle is ever really secure!).

I put the girls on the train the next afternoon and we drove to Spain. The clouds literally disappeared as we crossed the border—and there had been a massive storm overnight in France. One poor person and their bicycle were sucked into a whirlpool of muck as a temporary flood receded into the storm sewers and drowned in sewage. Anyway, as we rolled into Bilbao, spirits dampened by the absence of a few objects (many thanks to Carglass in Bordeaux who traded us a temporary window--it will take us some searching to find the right part for our van--and a thorough vacuuming of safety glass chunks for one copy of EKOL.) were lifted by a pink sunset, glittering jewel lights on hillsides, and just tons of plain old folks out on the streets. And it was 61 F at 7pm.

How to describe a great Posies show in Spain? Hmmm. Like, low presales (70 as of the day of show) but suddenly the place is packed to the rafters, the place being the old cinema Café Antxokia, where we played in 2001 as well; glasses and beer bottles breaking, people yelling out songs even while you’re playing another one, ‘Posies’ chants between multiple encores, and being so into it we add songs in the middle of the set to be able to play longer. This last night was one of the classic Posies nights…spit, sweat, whiskey and joy.

And we get 8 more nights of this! And then Italy…and Switzerland…and Christmas in France--I’m a lucky, lucky boy.

Love
KS
On the highway to Oviedo, SPAIN, alongside the sea.

The latest release by Ken Stringfellow is a split EP with Spain's Muy Fellini, featuring never-heard-before music incl. Ken's take on Bob Dylan, released by
King of Patio records
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