IT
This is about all you get from me for a bit. Oh, I’ll write from time to time but I don’t have any performances for over a month so the tour diary bit will be going dark. Well, I may find something to write about each week. I can always write about not having anything to write about. Fun, huh? Like those episodes of Seinfeld where they are pitching their show where nothing happens to the networks. I am, to be sure, capable of kvetching at a Seinfeld-ian level…maybe I can do that.
CRANS-MONTANA 3/11
Dom and I took the train up a day early; we were due a little vacation as a couple to be sure. Aden was surely bummed out to only have me for a day. But we made the most of it, playing and goofing around. And then Dom & I took the train to Sierre, passing thru Dijon, Lausanne, Montreaux and the lot. The area around Dijon was quite flooded, mostly farmland was under water but a few buildings were in standing river. It’s terrible of me to say but if you could take out the human suffering from the equation, the mix of land and water was beautiful. There’s that beautiful-deadly thing that nature does so well. But like I said, mostly it was farmland that was deluged; when you think about it, humans have been living in this part of the world for tens of thousands of years, and I believe they have a pretty good idea about where to build and where it will flood.
We got to Sierre in the evening and were picked up by a car from the festival Caprices, and taken to our hotel. Hotel de la Foret, which is built on the bones of a chalet that’s been a traveler’s stop for over a century, is now a typical Swiss construction, meaning built in the 70s and not really redecorated since. Cozy, to be sure, and family run. Family run means the same old guy served us dinner and couldn’t figure out how to print the invoice when we left. And, we were told to sit at the same table for each meal, in the rather large-ish dining room, even when it was totally empty. Thankfully it had a view! I had been fighting this cold that started when I got rained on in NZ, and reached its peak when I endured the layover in Bangkok. My ears were doing the weirdest things. Like, I couldn’t really hear out of my left ear, and when I moved my head looking up or down, my ear opened up, like a door hanging on its hinges was in there. There’s a nasty cough that’s producing blood to this day, and an awful, swollen throat (as I have no tonsils anymore, I have little recourse on this one). I wasn’t feeling so hot on the train, and was looking forward to a quiet night. I didn’t have much to do. We ate dinner at the hotel –fondue, accompanied by a marsanne from the nearby vineyards, which I enjoyed. We went down to the festival and watched Robert Plant; under normal circumstances I would go to the after party but I was ill enough to just want to go to bed (in fact, I hate to say it but both Dom & I fell asleep at one point during the show—someone threw a plastic cup {empty} at Dom and neither of us noticed til we woke up and it was on her head) so I did just that. Jet lag woke me up at five fucking thirty so I played guitar and took a bath and waited until I could wake Dom without guilt and we could have breakfast together. Then I managed to go back to bed and sleep. In the afternoon I went to ‘the Village’ of the festival, a large exposition hall where food and drink vendors were, plus booths and displays from the festival sponsors. Where the public could hang when they weren’t in the big concert tent. It had its own stage, the ‘jam’ stage. On this stage I rehearsed with Marc Aymon and band, his band and he had done a smashing job of learning ‘Je Vous En Prie’ and I had learned (tho not as well, mind you but I made up for it by being a quick study in rehearsal) a song of Marc’s called ‘L’Aviateur’. We made a soundcheck as we were the first band on the mainstage, and in the actual set I thought both songs sounded superb. I had a serious Mark Lanegan thing happening with my froggy throat, but I think it actually helped the songs, esp. mine. Many thanks to James Trussard, who lent me one of his fantastic metal guitars for my performances this night; the strings on my Gretsch were just too caked in blood to sound right and I didn’t have any spares. And many thanks to Marc and his band for doing such a fine job on my tune!
So, after dinner and watching a bit of Lou Reed’s set Dom and I returned to the Village, and I took to the jam stage for my set. Originally, I thought I would be doing a typical KS set, and the jam stage just happened to be the one I was using. Of course, everyone else assumed the ‘jam’ was still on so as I started playing, people crept up and started bashing along. What the hell, I thought. No choice but to go for it—and actually, the people that came up, for the most part, were great. I did some covers and a pretty damn good version of ‘Lover’s Hymn’. Then I booted everyone off and did a few of my own songs, and then brought everyone back up for some hilarious stuff—Beatles and Led Zep and whatever. Martina Tipley-Bird was cajoled into coming up, and she improvised a very nice thing over equally improvised music; at one point some dude came up while I was trying to play a Neil Young song and just farted all over the keyboard. He had comic book squiggles for eyes; I don’t know what he was on (other than, marginally, the keyboard). Later, I kid you not, I saw him on his back, eyes open, mouth opening and closing like a fish, in the gangway that connects the Village with the other building that comprises this ‘salle des reunions’ that the festival lives in. He was later loaded into an ambulance.
All in all, I ended up onstage for about 2 hours, and was sweaty and happy—I transitioned myself out of there at about 1am. After getting paid I thought about having a drink at the bar, I was feeling physically much better, but all the bars were playing loud techno and I just didn’t want to deal. So, Dom & I got the last runner to take us to the hotel, and that was that. Good call.
Dom & I are now on our way back to Paris, where I have the week off to spend with my family and try lunch at a different café everyday. And cook for my daughter! God help the poor child.
Love
KS
On the train between Lausanne and Geneva SWITZERLAND
