CALLING TRISTAN EGOLF.
ALSO: HELP ME EASE MY 'CYCLONE GRAVES' KARMA-DONATE NOW FOR RELIEF FOR VICTIMS OF CYCLONE SIDR.
It's estimated that at least €30,000,000 is needed for clean water, food and shelter (as well as helping repair damage to aquafarming and other livelihoods' infrastructure). I gave approx. 10% of my income from the tour. No amount is too small, or too large. BERLIN, 11/18
The show turned out to be great, the setting at Bassy was so beautiful, it looked like a movie set, and us set up in a circle in the center of the floor was nice, I was able to move to different areas and sing to different parts of the audience. In honor of the cowboy theme that the bar’s décor revolves around, I did a fake cowboy song sung by a fake cowboy—or thereabouts, I did “the Little Ole Wine Drinker”, a hit for Dean “Rio Bravo” Martin. I’m not sure I know anything about frontier America that didn’t come from a movie or TV show about the Wild West. So, Dean is just as legit as anything else in my memory banks. In fact, it fits very well, as there is a huge following in Germany for a writer,
Karl May, who wrote about the wild western USA a century ago, tho he didn’t visit the country until near the end of his life. You’ll find Germans nowadays who, having read these books, move into teepees (I mean, permanently) and/or put on stage productions of stories from the books, and perform them in natural settings.
HAMBURG, 11/19
In the morning, having finished the book I was reading (Noah Levine’s
Dharma Punx), I stopped into the bookstore next to the East Seven hostel, and found they had a small section of English books. Mostly classics, and I was looking for something a bit meatier, more contemporary. Then I spied an unusual title, in between the Russian and Spanish language books: Kornwolf. The title could have been for a book in German, and the writer’s name on the spine was Egolf, also likely of German origin, but, I pulled it out anyway. Kornwolf? Surprisingly, it was a novel in English—and the writer,
Tristan Egolf, was American. On the back cover the blurb compared him to
George Saunders, one of my favorite authors (there’s a certain kind of deadpan humor, that you find in Saunders, Faulkner, Brautigan…that just resonates with me), so that sold me right there. I bought it and started to read it in the van on the drive to Hamburg. As it turns out, the book is fantastic, and stylistically right up my alley. I will have to pick up his other two books—I was crushed to find that Egolf killed himself in 2005; in fact, he was only three years younger than me. He lived in Paris for a while, and played in bands. Reading his work, I wish I could have known him. If anyone reading this did know him, please write me. I’d love to know more about him than I can get via Wikipedia.
Hamburg was freezing when we arrived. We were early, and lucky to find someone was in the venue, someone who could call the promoter down. The Grüner Jäger is a musty old clubhouse in a park…sort of like a building you’d find in central park, that would be used for storing lawn mowers. But it’s very lovable, and despite its weird layout, it’s a great place for playing—I don’t think it would be pleasant to see a loud band here, but for our quiet show, it seems like it’s the best venue for our show…as I keep thinking this was the best show of the tour (unless Zürich tomorrow beats it!). The audience was very responsive, I’ll say that—and up til then we hadn’t seen a house quite so full. Sometimes, playing the kind of show I play, that’s so fragile, I just land on a night where everybody’s on the same wavelength—here, we all were. Monday nights are great for this show—everybody is mellow and sensitive, and all the drunks are sleeping it off somewhere else. So, the show went way into overtime, we weren’t allowed to stop playing—so, this show must have clocked in at somewhere within sight of the three hour mark. It goes fast the way we do it—in little alternating groups of songs by Subterfuge (with me playing guitar along) and by me. We eventually hit on groups of three being the magic number—enough time for each performer to get into it, but keeping the action moving.
After the show I had a couple of drinks at tiny bar up the road, on the way to my accommodations—another hostel. I wasn’t in a hurry to get there. This particular establishment, according to the promoter, was created to give traveling artists an ultra affordable place to crash—backpacking troubadours and the like. For the astonishing rate of €15 per person. However, you get what you pay for, and it’s very basic. At first, they put us in one room with 5 beds. Still a shared bathroom in the hall. Hmmm. The band actually protested and insisted that the promoter pony up for my own room. Sure, he said, but it wasn’t sure there was another one available. He found one, but at the annex down the street. Fair enough. No radiator in my room, so it was a bit chilly…and in the morning, the tiny shower room ran out of hot water in roughly 40 seconds. Hmmm. The thing about hostels is, you don’t get a towel included. Why they assume backpackers would want to lug a wet towel across the globe is a mystery to me. It’s not much more work or expense to provide one when they already provide a sheet, pillowcase and duvet cover. I myself was employing the pillowcase as a towel, but due to the water situation, it never saw action. It’s always a shitty feeling when you have to go on the drive with the last night’s gig film coating you. Now, most hostels offer to rent you a towel (prices on this tour ran from 50 cents to one euro). But, there was no reception at this place, so nowhere to rent one. The owner comes to meet you with keys when you check in, and at that time, the promoter assured me that we could take the towels from the gig with us (there were none, so, in a kind of mime's logic, he was right). Anyway, I definitely respect the promoter keeping things affordable so the show could happen, 5 people could have a place to stay (within walking distance of the club, no less), and we could get paid decently even tho’ wehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif’re not playing to big crowds. However, at that point, I think I would rather stay at someone’s house, where I’m sure to be able to borrow a towel, and they probably have an internet connection…but, Hamburg still wins as the best show of the tour so far, I think because we really clicked here and were up to speed, and there’s nothing like the first time! The preceding shows were great too, but we had enough experience by Hamburg to really take it to the proverbial next level.
DUSSELDORF, 11/20
Here we split—after breakfasting in one of the famous Portuguese cafes of the district of Hamburg we stayed in—I went with Kai, Subterfuge’s bassist, in his car direct to Düsseldorf (I can’t write umlauts when it’s all caps, BTW). The other guys went to pick up our unbelievable new van—part of VW’s “
Sound Foundation” program—they lend, free of charge, a brand new VW Transporter to indie bands in Germany. There wasn’t one available for the first days of the tour, so here we were getting it for the last 2/3s of the trip—it easily accommodates the 5 musicians, our gear/merch/luggage, and Carsten, who became our merch guy and helper for the tour. It’s Carsten who introduced me to the music of Subterfuge and proposed this tour take place, and for that alone I can’t thank him enough. But, he’s a very easy guy to travel with: polite and helpful, and if you want to know anything about the German music scene—he knows it, having been a music journalist for as long as I can remember. He even tracked down some (I shouldn’t reveal this, but) cheap KS/Posies CDs and vinyls on Ebay in Germany, bought them, so I could buy them at cost from him and resell them as merch on tour! Now that’s thinking!
In the meantime, Kai had some work to do. Kai is chttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifo-owner of
Skyline mastering, and is the main engineer there. It’s housed in a tall skinny building that also hosts a film production co. and another small recording studio. At the top, next to the small recording studio is a shower etc, with a huge skylight. I went in, and surveyed the situation—including the Grandma glaring at me from her balcony next door. We sorted out a way to wedge a towel into the skylight (it is on the side of the room—you could call it a window, but it coats a wall that is angled in a pitch that places it somewhere between wall and roof—the grandma was looking down on me directly from her 4th floor balcony; I was on the third floor, hoping to disrobe unseen. It worked out—she did eventually go inside and the hanging towel did the best it could to protect my ‘modesty’. I emerged back on track, and as it turns out, I had the afternoon free to sit in an unused office, listen to music, get and receive calls (the building has a receptionist that works for all the companies inside) and use the internet. Ahh. The receptionist even brought me a macchiato. When the guys and the van showed up a few hours later, I was begging them to reconsider the necessity of a soundcheck. In their hometown. Cooler heads prevailed! I tried not to kick and scream too much.
We loaded into the club, Pretty Vacant—upstairs a little mod bar, downstairs a brick bier bögen painted in lipstick red. It smelled oddly like a pet store, distinct odor of gerbil and wood shavings, down there. Well. As usual, we set up everywhere but the stage, distributing us around the architecture of the place in such a way that the public would be amongst us, and on at least 3 sides of us. Our set up on this tour is to almost any other band’s what
3-dimensional Star Trek chess is to regular, earthly chess.
After soundcheck we stopped at a café for some further internet and macchiato fun (at this point in the tour, I’m having about 6 a day!). And then we went to a local bier hall for some real Düsseldorfer chow. My friend
Cuca, who is from Spain but now lives with her German husband and their young son in Cologne, came up for dinner and to see the show. Cuca and I worked on some music a few years ago in a completely insane studio, owned by a freshly minted internet millionaire who lived on the other floors of the building—and was determined to share the wealth thru the magic of getting FUBAR with as many half-comatose flunkies and hangers-on as possible. The music is still pending release, but in fact Cuca is working with a label based in India, and is touring there next year. I might try and hop on the caravan if there’s room. Anyway, we had dinner with the band in this boisterous medieval times-like place (roasted goose for me!) and then immediately went onstage. Well—we walked back to the club, and I needed a café, so, being that the place was packed, I asked the owner if he could sneak back and get me one. It was impossible to get the attention of the bar staff. He went back (I watched the door for him) and returned with the worst possible answer this side of ‘no’: ‘Yes, it’s being made, just ask the bar staff for it.’ I told him my dilemma and he said, ‘ah, no worries, just go behind the bar and get it, it should be ready by the machine. So, I went back and promptly got chased out by the attitude-heavy bartender—and I didn’t get the café. Later, I finally got the attention of the other bartender, and got the café. Well. My revenge on the barmaid was taken by dedicating ‘Fireflies’ to her, and telling the story—and I know they could hear me from down there…anyway, the show went very well, and the place was packed…after another 2 hours of playing, it started to gravitate upwards to the bar, but about 60% of the people stayed to the end, three hours after we started…afterwards I had a birthday drink with the lovely Hammi, our friend from Cologne who used to live in Seattle—it had been his birthday the day before, and we had a drink, caught up, and then it was bedtime.
REGENSBURG, 11/21
Long drive to Bavaria, but the aptly-named Transporter is capable of speeds on the autobahn that definitely give rise to the illusion that Scotty is at the controls. We got to town early, and headed to the Alte Mälzerei, where I had a great solo show last year, and a really fun Posies show (see ‘An Tour with the Posies’ on TMF Belgium) earlier the same year as well…run by the über cool indie vegan, Dieter, the reception at the Mälzerei is always warm. We had café upon arrival, and leisurely loaded in, and checked into the hostel-style rooms upstairs. We set up the show. We were served dinner in the dressing room, which is kind of a wall of shame for cheesy tour posters from unknown ghosts of yesteryear (with a couple of exceptions)…dinner was pasta which I don’t really eat but there was baby spinach salad and freshly roasted pine nuts…it was all I could do to not dump the bowl in my mouth…OK, on to the show, I saw many of my friends from the last show there…and we did our thing, and did it well. Upstairs in the main hall (our show was in the same submarine-themed bar I played last year) there was a kind of improv musicomedy night, for which a piano had been brought in, and thus, when it came time for the encore, I dragged everyone upstairs for a few songs at the piano (incl. “O-o-h Child”). Then back downstairs, and everybody wanted more stuff, at first I offered to just be a lounge singer, and play the Wurlizter and do covers (which I did…“Sister Golden Hair” incl.!). But then there were more requests…so I did some more songs, and then said good night—but there were more requests…so, back to the piano, for the last hardcore group (we’re talking 3 hours after I started…my lounge set was at least 40 minutes) of staff and fans. Then at last, downstairs, with our stuff all packed up, we busted out the acoustic guitar…Lars from Subterfuge and I did TFC’s “the Concept” and I finally shut ‘er down with a version of “Back to the Old House” by the Smiths. So, all the folks that were left went up to the dressing room for a last glass of wine, about 6-8 of us, and then I went to bed. I do believe people got their money’s worth on this one! Also notable: our collective encore of “Keep On Lovin’ You” by REO Speedwagon…I didn’t know people outside of the Tri-State area even knew that band existed…but the Subterfuge guys whipped it out! I also realized it’s essentially, in the verse, musically parallel to “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League—big mistake, as I have been singing the REO song in my head but with the words “I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…when I met you…” Try it. You’ll hate me in the morning.
STUTTGART, 11/22
This show was just weird. The day started out fine—although the house iron at the Mälzerei was steam-disabled, and thus it took me a hell of a long time to get my outfit together. But we walked around the historic center of Regensburg, and took a long visit inside the Dom, which, I have to admit, is quite impressive. There was the requisite trip to the Würstkuchl for lunch (see the entry from last November’s Regensburg show for more details) and then we headed to Stuttgart. In my 2005 visits to this city, which were the first times I visited Stuttgart, we weren’t in the historic center, and this time, the venue was. The venue is a tiny jazz club called Kiste. And in fact, our show had fallen during the week of “Jazztage XL” which is a multi-venue jazz festival, in which Kiste plays a role. We’re in the posters for the event and everything. My indie rock friends from the region didn’t know this venue. So, it was a little meeting of worlds to have me play there. The old neighborhood on one side of a huge main road, where the club is, and the one on the other side, where we had dinner, is really straight out of a kind of German film noir…especially the red light district behind the club—vintage 1950s signage on tiny little streets. Anyway, the club is so tiny that it has a staff of exactly one person—and he didn’t really know what to expect, he didn’t get the memo. So, he was kind of freaking out, for no reason, really—we were happy to set up the PA and get things going, and even tho’ he had no knowledge of the deal, he ended up giving us a better deal (originally, we got, say, 60% of the door plus dinner—here, we got 100% of the door, but paid for our own dinner—no big deal, we definitely made money on that deal). Stuttgart has a reputation for being one of the un-rockin’-est cities in Germany, and I do believe it’s well earned. The Posies show in 2005 did rock, tho’, and was well-attended, and of course REM’s 2005 show was great. This show was simply plagued by weirdness and luna-tic behavior. The audience was motley enough—60-somethings who thought they were attending a jazz festival; a guy who looked like he had just quit Lenny Kravitz’s band, looking more and more bummed out the better his date got into the show; a couple of Asian guys who I am pretty sure were sent by their hotel for a night of jazz in Stuttgart; a few fans; a few friends of Subterfuge; and some friends of Carsten’s…including two guys who had been at my NYE show 2005 in Liechtenstein. Evidently, these guys had been at a seminar that afternoon that involved more than a little social drinking. So, one of them pissed, to the gills. And using a fresh-off-the-plane intern from Bulgaria in ways possibly not in the work contract. The thing is, he was the guy, that I love to have at my shows, especially the quiet ones, who is talking, full blast, in the front row. And of course the guy from the club was too timid to even speak to * us * the whole night, let alone silence a motormouthed drunk. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore…he kept asking, at like boat horn volume levels, if I remembered Liechtenstein. Well, yes, I did, and after being asked 500 times I was over it. So, I got off the stage, and in a very kind manner told him he was talking too loud and too much. I assumed, incorrectly that the 6 foot tall woman beside him was his g.f., and thus in a position of authority to gag him. But, she wasn’t, and in fact, I believe she was a) overwhelmed by the situation, and not really knowing how to deal with it, and b) equally hammered, just able to hold her liquor, and her tongue. Well, it didn’t matter, his friends eventually moved him to the back, and he calmed down a bit. The show * eventually * got good…but I wouldn’t call it an extraordinary example of our craft…I was just too…distracted to really get into it for the whole time I was dealing with Drunk Dude. But, people did enjoy it, and eventually, I did too. I did meet one Robbie Stringfellow, originally from Christchurch, who has a blues/rock group in Germany called
Stringfellow. We met on myspace…nice fella! And one of the Drunk Dude’s (male) colleagues was from Bulgaria, and we are working on a way to hook me up with some shows…hope for the best on that one. No need to say, with this club being as tiny as it was, we had to set up on the stage itself. Boring! There was a piano tho—the 4th venue of the tour with a real piano…when does that ever happen? The tiny club enabled me, when I hopped off the stage to go remote, to actually get out the front door with my cables…
VIENNA, 11/23
You can’t beat Viennhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifa for a great KS show. Once again, no exception this night. Once again, the show was at the B72. Once again, I had a great (enormous) room at the
Hotel Fürstenhof, the family-run establishment across from the Westbahnof, with fantastic 70s décor. Old world charm indeed! I love this hotel, I really do. My room smelled di-stink-tly of smoke, and I am one of those freaks who love the smell of smoke. So, I was happy. Between the look of central Stuttgart and this hotel, I was in an endless Teutonic episode of ‘
Macmillan and Wife’. Anyway, we got down to business, and Vienna is always full of KS business. We set up and soundchecked at the B72. Being old pros, they took tons of extra care to really work with our insane, not-on-the-stage-but-in-the-middle-of-the-floor setup, resetting the lights, and putting down white tape around our zones. Cool! Then we went to dinner, in a very typical Austrian diner, with décor unchanged for sure since the Beatles were a 5-piece. I had veal intestines with a knödl, aka a big ball of bread. My friend Tina, from NYC, was in town—she wasn’t able to come to the show, but she joined us for dinner. Tina works for a big rekkid label, and last time the Posies played, she was out of town and FedExed me her keys, thus I had my own flat in NY! My friend Robert (who had also been in Hamburg, as he has a band there) put on the show, much like he did my first solo show there, early last year. In a way, the success of that show and the connection I made with audience has really set in motion all the great things that have happened to me in Austria since then, and thus I owe him a big debt, really. His label,
Siluh Records, is supposed to put out my covers EP (it’s just that the guy with the master tapes, from the Norwegian label that proposed the idea, has disappeared!! No joke!) in the German-speaking countries. I guess I’ll have to make another tour later…with pleasure! Anyway, Robert is an actor as well as musician, and despite the fact that I believe he’s quite successful in Germany and beyond (I haven’t seen one of his films yet, but I guess he’s very good at what he does!) in music mode he is 100% indie rock guy; in other words, he really has his shit together, and is genuinely helpful to the music scene—he’s not looking for cred, he’s just…doing stuff. We need a few more like him! So, one of Siluh’s bands (the label is co-run by the lovely Bernhard as well) caught my attention—
A Life, A Song, A Cigarette—and even tho’ they are too popular to be opening for the likes of me, they agreed to appear at my request in a skeleton-crew fashion—normally a 6-piece band, they arrived as guitar/vocalist, cellist, and drummer (under the name Leroy Simmering and the Sinking Ship Friends!). The cellist is incredible—great parts, perfect intonation, able to hang in the rock mode, fantastic. So, they proposed I do a song with them, and that song was proposed to be “Love Hurts”, in the manner of Gram and Emmylou. They provided a lyric sheet, and off we went. But, first…I told them to delay the start of the set (we had their set, my two hour show, and the inevitable encore to attend to by midnight, as B72 becomes an indie rock dance club on weekend nights) until I could get back from taping a small video performance for a video blog; me, playing two songs, in various deserted Vienna neighborhoods. So it was like: soundcheck, run to the restaurant to order my veal guts, run back (300 meters each way) to B72 to soundcheck with ALASAC/2, run back, eat, run back, meet up with video crew, run to the location (another 300m) tape the two performances, run back, and bless their hearts they waited to go on, even tho’ everybody knew it would be a stress at the end to get everything done under the wire of the curfew. And they were great. We did “Love Hurts”, and it was really sweet. Hugs all around, and then, we got on with it, and the way our set up worked, we interlocked with the crowd perfectly. B72 was plenty crowded, and the audience knew to keep quiet (unf. people in the balcony never pick up their chairs, thus…SKRONNK SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEK every 5 minutes, it’s been true all 3 of my shows there). I risked life and limb to deliver “Don’t Break the Silence” from a position of standing on the bar, which means I can barely stand up straight, only if I go out to the absolute corner of the bar, which juts out further than the balcony’s overhang. From this unique position, I could serenade the balcony almost at eye level, go down and sing to the crowd on the floor, and also the crowd seated on the unused stage. I felt like one of those split-eyed archer fish, and I did indeed manage to hit my targets. The set was great, and the crowd dug it, but they demanded WAY more—I looked to the sound/light guys, who shrugged in encouragement. Curfew be damned! I know I did “You Drew” and I can’t for the life of me remember what else. Eventually I called it a night, and people cheered way after I left the stage—everybody loves a good curfew-defy-er! I hung with various friends, fans, etc—the people who own the the place are super friendly; there was the contingent from Bratislava, who are really nice people (and I finally figured out that two of them are twins, I thought it was one person with two different myspace profiles!! Idiot! when they wrote me asking about ticket info and other stuff). We all headed over to a squat bar, yet another movie set-worthy locale, for another drink, I was starting to crash so I skedaddled after that one drink.
WINTERTHUR, 11/24
The longest drive of the tour—some 8 hours, but it really wasn’t so bad in the end. I slept, I devoured (haha!) Tristan Egolf’s werewolf story, tried to enjoy every rest stop to the max (I have really warmed to the idea of Sanifair: clean toilets, and foamy soap, and you actually get your money back, as opposed to the pay-to-play German toilets you find elsewhere). Anyway, we rolled into town, and checked into our bizarre little concrete hotel (friendly, but broken phones—I couldn’t get a call placed to my room and I couldn’t call the front desk). Carsten said it looked like a Guatemalan prison, on the outside…inside it was basic but cool 70s flavor for the hallway décor…I was looking at my front door for several minutes before I realized what it was I was looking at. They had this double key system…you are given an ordinary set of two keys when you check in, which serve as your key to the front door and your access key…which you plug into a wall panel in the lobby to release your room key, a standard large fobbed item. I felt like I was emptying the contents of my Swiss bank account, or that if two of us did it at the same time, we’d launch the missles.
Then we went to the Salzhaus (‘where’s Sal”?) to load in. This place has its shit TOGETHER with a capital ‘T’. Unbelieveable—loaders, food and beverages already in the backstage room (including still hot spinach pastries and huge, gooey dates—I felt like a Turkish pasha!). Ethernet connection? No problem. Myléne, who was doing sound that night, was superb to work with and gave us a copy of her recording of the show afterwards. We had a lot of space to work with, and the rest of the folks had numerous sofas, the stage, the bar and floor space to work with—and that’s only * half * of the club—they curtain off the back half until the disco gets started. They cooked us a fabulous dinner, and just took care of us from beginning to end. And the Swiss audience…they know how to be quiet. Damn! I told them “it’s like playing to a roomful of Japanese librarians on Valium!”…this is a * good * thing in KS land BTW. So, naturally, we played great, feeling as good as we did, and the peeps loved it. The place filled up as we went on, and it never got any louder. Again, we had a disco curfew, but they let us play some encore songs since people were so into it. But it was still done by 22.15, and thus we could hang out, use the net, eat dates, and chill with the locals. Lorenz from STFG was getting killed by the flu, tho—he immediately went to sleep on the couch after the set. The rest of us stuck around, until my eyelids started to droop. So, we went back to the little Guatemalan prison, and I slept the sleep of the…guy who’s been on tour a lot.
ZURICH, 11/25
Bells woke me up the next morning. Then my alarm. The guys actually went and loaded up without me—bless ‘em. We drove into Zurich, which is just a half an hour down the road, and went to the train station to get Kai sorted out—he had to leave us this afternoon. We parked ourselves at the
Hiltl, an incredible, multi-level vegetarian buffet restaurant/electro music venue/café and did our official tour biz—money and stuff, over delicious plates of cruelty-free cuisine. Then we checked into the Etap hotel, yes, it’s one of those ‘nothing but the very basic-est’ Euro Motel 6 equivalents. Lorenz and I had come to the same conclusions—the one-piece beige toilet and its surrounding cell looked like what we imagined the loo on the Millennium Falcon to be like…but, hey. I spent the afternoon there (in the hotel, that is…) and we loaded into the Hafekneipe. Which means ‘Harbor Bar’ in Swiss German--You always want what you can’t have!! Also, it’s really tiny, 100 people max. So, I’ll be making jokes like: “so, here we have Hafekneipe—next time, I’ll order a whole one!!” But, you gotta love any bar with a dedicated nautical theme (think my favorite hellhole in Seattle, the Baranoff). For the last show, minus Kai, I was in charge of playing bass for all of Stfg’s stuff…
OK, stop the presses! I was writing this up until it was time for us to soundcheck, and now I can safely, from the comfort of my bizarre-ly colored room at the Etap Hotel, say that this was really the best show of the tour…I was so into it…and the audience was superb…it was a great way to go out. We played our little hearts out. And there’s nothing like the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantalons style of show…which means for me, I was playing bass for Subterfuge's whole set…hey, it was great! I can’t say anything bad about this show—the club people were superb, the audience was too, and we were totally on it! In our quiet way. Nice encore, and everybody’s happy! I really felt like this show was special…and it’s perhaps the best played show of the tour. OK…plus, we got to hang with Marc Bernegger, who we’ve worked with from a label and management point of view in the Posies, and is just a great guy. Yes!!! This was an amazing tour, and I realized that I like touring now even more than I ever have…it feels good when you have your
personal/spiritual/mental/emotional shit together--you can be of more use to more people, and enjoy the moment so much more; and the little things don't make your ears steam.
I bade goodbye to Subterfuge and Carsten this morning, and since then have been camped in the bar at the Novotel next to the Etap, sipping Perrier and having a steak tartare. I can't thank the Subterfuge lads enough for making this such a great experience and for taking such good care of me.
Best secret to survival of the tour: the Transporter had heated seats (but no CD player...then again, no one had to listen to the demos I was handed on the tour)
Best example of KS' wild luck: I grabbed some flyers from the Grüner Jäger; I always take souvenirs of the tour adverts, posters etc. Later, someone in the band gave me a tiny Kinder chocolate egg. I forgot about it. The next morning I was searching my pocket for something--this would be the inside pocket of my beloved grey herringbone coat--and found to my horror that the egg had melted. But, it had merely leaked onto the the club flyers I had put in there, having fallen between two of them--all the chocolate could be lifted out out and disposed of, no sticky remains in my coat pocket whatsoever!
This week, it's time for the Posies acoustic shows in Helsinki, London, Toulouse, Paris and Oslo...I'll be home for less than 12 hours! see you out there?
Love
KS
Zürich, SWITZERLAND
