THE BAGMAN'S GUMBOOT
My visit home felt very much like an assembly line version of being home—deplane, unpack, pack, re-board. I could have just left my guitar somewhere in Charles de Gaulle—if it had made it there on my flight from Chicago. But, it somehow decided not to come home with me and it hopped the next day’s flight. And of course, on my one full day home, I had to wait around at home ‘til 5.30 in the afternoon when United finally delivered it (and my bass which was taped to it). But, sometimes having a kind of rest imposed on you isn’t the worst thing.
GRAZ 11/1
Other than the slight panic caused by the airport shuttle coming half an hour early to pick me up, my travel to the first show was pretty painless. I flew on Fly Niki, who were generous enough not to charge me anything extra for my guitar and my suitcase, which was full of CDs. Fly Niki operates from CDG T3, the small and very easy to navigate terminal at Charles de Gaulle. I dozed and woke up during our extremely bumpy descent into Vienna. The plane came down very low, to avoid the heavy turbulence that was causing the passengers to whoop, and laugh nervously. We banked over the Neusiedler See, and probably over the Alois Kracher weingut, and headed into VIE. My stuff made it, and I strolled thru the EU passenger exit, my wares safely imported into Austria. Upon exiting baggage claim, Klaus, who put together almost all of these shows, and is also driving me to them, met me. Very friendly, and having his shit together, he’s a most welcome addition to my touring life. We had a coffee and hit the road to Graz.
This day was a national day of remembrance in Austria, shops etc. close and one is expected to pay a visit to the graves of relatives, and perhaps light a candle or leave some flowers. How it affected us was by making it pretty damn hard to find a restaurant that was open—the first one we visited for dinner that night was closing when we sat down—at 5 minutes to 8. We finally ate at the Hotel Mercure, and were basically the only customers in an all-too colorful and brightly lit place.
Before dinner, after soundcheck, we checked into the hotel, which was a place that divided itself between two nodes about 3 blocks apart. Naturally, we were staying at the furthest node from the club, and spent some time trying the keys at the various doors found around the perimeter of the closer one. We finally got the right information, checked in, and I took a shower. I had hoped that my fresh haircut wouldn’t need to be washed for a couple of days, but it was looking flat and greasy already. So I washed it, and then (now, to be fair, I already was charging a phone, a toothbrush, and a laptop) I managed to knock the power out on my floor by plugging my hair dryer in. I turned the switch off, and felt my way in the dark to my phone and called Klaus, who I knew was waiting down in the lobby, and he got the night manager to come up and trip the breaker. Actually, I think he found it and did it; she was clueless and probably about to call an electrician.
The event I was playing was a songwriter night called Platoo, which has been gaining quite a following in Graz. In this case it was held in a small kind of student bar called Café Mo.xx, which has a nice stage, and a grand piano to boot. And the bar itself is outside of the performance room, which always makes for a quieter show—the drinkers stay out there, and bartenders don’t throw me off when they toss empties into the bins or drop a handful of spoons in a metal sink on the last note of my songs. So this audience was pin drop quiet, and didn’t mind that I was a tiny bit rusty, having been a couple of months out of practice. I had two little zones to play in: in front of the stage, the Platoo organizers had made a little set with vintage furniture and lamps and half a mannequin—I played guitar there, and sang sans mic. Onstage, there was the piano, and also some more chairs and lamps and a Victoria. The audience sort of moved with me as I changed positions. It is always so wonderful to have a piano; this was a Yamaha but played quite nicely.
My support act was a young London-based trio led by one Josh Weller, who is a confessed Elvis Costello fanatic, and his demo certainly has some definite ‘This Year’s Model’ influence—including the wheezy keyboard a la Steve Nieve, played in this case on a Casiotone. Anyway, the guys are very cool, and Josh is a very knowledgeable student of all kinds of music; he’s 20 now, and I think will be a talent to watch for as his writing develops.
INNSBRUCK 11/2
The next morning we walked around looking for an internet café, which we found about half an hour’s walk from the hotel. Which meant by the time we got there, we had about 15 minutes to spend there before we had to head back to the venue to load our gear in the van and head on. Now, when I left Seattle last it was May. I put my winter things in storage, and didn’t really have a plan for when to get them again (although, at one point I was supposed to go to Seattle last month, but it didn’t work out). So I didn’t have a nice coat for winter and I didn’t have time to buy one in Paris while I was home. I quickly found that the tour would not be survivable with the herringbone jacket I brought with me (the one I’m wearing on the cover of Soft Commands—in fact, today I’m wearing that and the same Jill Sander shirt as in that photo as well). But there was nothing doing in Graz. I hoped for the best in Innsbruck. And we took a tram back to the hotel—there was no way I would walk back in the cold.
We drove out west to Innsbruck, which is far from everything else in Austria—the main freeway there actually goes thru Germany rather than the skinny little tail of Austria. I was asleep when we pulled up to the Weekender, feeling like a home away from home in Austria, as this was my third time playing there this year. When I played there the first time, in January, my longtime friend Justin was just doing nights under the name Weekender, at the venue that was then known as Nutopia. Since then and the Posies’ subsequent visit, Justin has purchased the place and is running Weekender as a full time club, with live shows and DJ nights 5 times a week, and a café nightly. There is now an apartment for the artists to stay in, which is also the dressing room, and it’s great although I will miss staying at Justin and Conny’s lovely chalet, it’s always great to be able to just float into bed after a show. Pretty much every aspect of playing at Weekender is a pleasure, from the dinner, to the really friendly staff, and hanging with Justin and his wonderful family.
For the show, I tried to present as much different songs…monologues…weird corners of the club to play from, etc. to distinguish it from my previous visit, and I think I did a bang up job, myself! And the audience seemed to be happy too—they were quieter this time, which is certainly a compliment.
SIGHARTING 11/3
The next morning, Justin, Klaus, a visiting journo from London named James (who is not Norwegian, and not only does rock writing but works for the Lancet!) and myself went walking in search of a warm coat for me and a konditorei for all, and Klaus looked for a net café. We nailed all three; I picked up a handsome and very warm coat with a black faux suede exterior and a grey faux fur lining. It’s cozy enough that I have been using it for a blanket when I take my evening naps. And it is very well made, high quality Italian design and manufacturing, but it doesn’t scream ‘money’ like a leather coat would. Just right.
Klaus & I hit the road around one in the afternoon, and started to navigate towards the village of Sigharting. We traveled by motorway until Salzburg, and from there on we went by ever smaller rural highways. We passed quickly thru Braunau, right on the German border, birthplace of a troublesome little vegetarian corporal. The countryside around there is quite pleasant, little villages with big churches, and woodland. You have to wonder when Adolf’s catastrophic disconnect with his fellow humans happened. I know that many a priest stopped believing in God during World War I, and I would pick that as a likely departure point from compassion for him. I wonder if he was connected as a boy to the fields and forests around him, if he was ever touched by the sweetness of nature and if he ever shared the young boy’s innate awareness that nature, humans, and earthly phenomena are driven by the same engine, composed of the same substance.
As I contemplated this, we banked along sweeping hills as dusk closed in around us. A storm front emerged, black as smoke, and like smoke appeared to rise from the ground rather than be falling towards it. When we reached it, the sky, which around the storm was perfectly tranquil and clear, suddenly lashed at us with massive snowflakes. But it didn’t last long. Soon we were back to driving under a pleasant, blue-purple sky, a huge moon starting to dominate the view, the fields around us a beautiful luna moth green—the still green plants were dusted with snow, giving all a silvering effect.
We picked our way along the little lines on the map, and finally arrived in Sigharting, at the Gashouse Berghammer. Sigharting is a very small village, just a few houses, a church, a couple of small shops and the Berghammer’s establishment, which has a bar, a restaurant, a few rooms to stay in, and upstairs is a kind of small dancehall, with its own bar, a lovely little stage, and a curved ceiling decorated with typical Austrian decorations, which remind me of things you would find on an Olympic medal, or on candy wrappers from the 1930s. The sound in this room is incredible—the whole place looks a bit rickety, with furniture strewn here and there, a creaky old wooden floor, etc, but somehow it all adds up to being a natural, acoustically well-balanced room that felt good with the hundred or so people I played to, but would I think be fine if you played to 20 people there or several hundred people as a couple of popular Austrian bands have done.
I spent most of the show down on the floor, even sitting on it at one point for a few tunes. The audience got it right away, and we had a great night. There were guys in the audience with grey hair, and there were punked out teenagers (including the lovely Berghammer daughter, who is going to be a real heartbreaker pretty soon—very soon, considering I told her about a little website called myspace). A lovely, lovely night, and the people not only loved the show but also took excellent care of me, ladling out some warm chai backstage, or giving me some nice wine after the show.
Most of the building is unheated, and this night was pretty chilly—they heated the venue with a contraption that looked like something built for Survival Research Laboratories, basically a jet engine shooting a blue kerosene flame straight out of a metal tube. In my tiny bedroom there was a space heater provided by the promoter, but it wasn’t able to combat the ambient chill very effectively. When I took a shower the next morning, I stuck the back end of the hair dryer in its mounting and left it running the whole time!
NITZING, 11/4
The Culture X Club is another combination venue/restaurant/hotel—albeit with heated rooms!—located again in a tiny village, which boasts one of the tiniest little churches you’ve ever seen—and not much else. It’s just outside the small town of Tulln, which is the birthplace of Egon Schiele. There is a small museum in Tulln, which unfortunately is closed from November to April. The Schiele family’s apartment in the train station (Egon’s father was stationmaster) is also maintained as it was when they lived there a century ago, as a satellite exhibit of the museum.
The venue is the basement rather than the attic, but you get the idea. The restaurant has a hunting season menu, and thus I had excellent venison for dinner. I had a nice nap, and wandered down to the venue at about 11.30 when Love (pronounced Loova) Wollberg was starting his set. He was a little shy, and the people became shy in kind, so he felt he didn’t really connect with the audience. I had my work cut out for me, but I coaxed a dozen or so of the kids in the crowd to come up to the stage, and sit in the chairs and onstage or whatever. The rest remained a bit aloof in the back of the room where there were some tables. This show was perhaps my favorite musically, the crowd was so quiet I could really take it down dynamically, and that felt great. The Berghammer show was probably the best night all around, but this was a very well played show indeed.
This morning we headed off to Croatia, the sky dumping very unpleasant rain on us as we pulled out Nitzing. We circled Vienna and picked up the motorway south, stopping in the wine country at the Slovenian border to taste and pick up some wonderful chardonnay and some eiswein, and drive around a bit in the hills and admire the gorgeous view of vineyards and wooded hills. Much of the little road we took through the countryside was also the border, and in fact when you are driving on it one way you’re in Austria and when you reverse and are in the other lane you are in Slovenia.
ZAGREB 11/5
This show seems to be the winner so far. The sad truth is, I’m so tired that I can’t bring myself to write that much. Maybe someone could email me a review and I will post it here! But, every detail was just perfect—the audience was incredible, I played and sang my best, *everyone* in Croatia seems to be very friendly. Were that they could all be this good! I might comment more on this show later, except there’s not much to report—no problems, no dramas, just a damn fine KS show made possible by a thoroughly excellent audience. Many thanks to a very enthusiastic fan, Natasha, for making the effort to make this show happen. Myspace comes thru! Andf thanks to Dolibar from Babmi Molesters for taking me to dinner, and showing us where the venue is!
Love
KS
Zagreb, CROATIA
