STOCKHOLM, 4/13
The hotel in Stavanger was so comfortable, that I slept right thru my alarm, and had to hurry to get ready—I kept our driver waiting while I shoveled down some breakfast. Anyway, we had plenty of time. We checked in, and flew to Oslo, and I had time there to check in for our next flight, have lunch, check email, and pick up a new book—one of my favorite activities. I chose carefully, literally (ahahaha) consulting every single English-language title at the main bookstore in OSL. I settled for Pynchon’s faux-18th-century travelogue/tall tale Mason and Dixon.
We flew to Stockholm; our flight had been delayed by almost an hour and had switched gates about 5 times, so we headed straight to the venue. The Sodra Teatern is a lovely establishment, crowning a prominent hill in Stockholm’s trendy Sodermalm neighborhood. The elegant and stately structure has 4 venues inside—the main theatre, a mini-opera house where Jon & I held court for 3 hours in 2000; the Kagelbanen (bowling alley), where Big Star played in 2006; there’s a small bar that has live music; and the Cafeteatern, the other end of the former bowling alley, which is more or less a mirror image of the Kagelbanen, but with a tinier stage. We set up, and soon found that Jon’s amp wasn’t working well. They were going to get another one, but not during soundcheck, so we struggled thru and then walked to the hotel. I pretty much turned around and walked back, wanting to spend some time burning advance copies of the Disciplines’ album.
Presales were strong, but in fact the venue was truly packed when we went on, and we slid into a simply flawless performance—I can say that objectively, that from any angle I would want to analyze this show from—Jon’s and my level of comfort, number of mistakes made, audience reaction, audience respectful silence, sound quality—I can find not one single detraction from rating this show absolutely note-perfect. In fact, we went on to do extra encores, and just generally surprised ourselves with how well we were received and how effortlessly we relaxed into rising to the occasion. I saw friends old and new there—including my dear old friend Melinda, from the Pusjkins (band I produced in 1997). She’s plenty pregnant, so I was impressed she had the energy to stand and watch our two-hour show!
GOTHENBURG, 4/14
Another pleasant surprise, really—in the Pusterviksbaren, the second floor music venue that is attached to a larger theatre (which is only used for the dramatic arts, as far as I know). This venue has seen Posies shows in 1998 & 2000; KS solo shows in 2001 and 2004. I would say we know it well, except that now the stage has been moved to a logical part of the room, i.e., the closest end of the room to the backstage, and the stage is now a conventional rectangle shape, not the odd inverted triangle cutting across a corner of the room, making the audience choose which projected ray they want to align themselves with. We all remarked how the now-sensible setup meant that it wasn’t quite as funky/fun as the old days—but by showtime that seemed to matter not at all. Another decently full house (and this on a Monday, no less), and another reception full of enthusiasm. And more old friends—Kent from Sator, the ageless wonder that he is, slowly and steadily decimated our beers.
After the show I had the chance to watch
Iraq in Fragments, James Longley’s documentary made while living among Iraqis for two years, before Iraq was too dangerous for an American to travel freely. The film is a result of his extraordinary patience as a filmmaker: he worked his way into the local populations—including a Kurdish agricultural/brickmaking family, and the h.q. of the followers of Moktada al-Sadr—and became as invisible as you could imagine an American with a video camera could be; the result is that you truly feel as immersed as he would have been in the moments depicted—which could be someone telling you about their thoughts and dreams, or it could simply be images of the chaotic streets, or perhaps just roiling smoke erupting from a brick kiln. It’s life like we see it—our eyes jump from place to place, and rest upon the daily activities of men and women, and occasionally we focus on a conversation—one already in progress, or one we instigated. It’s fascinating, and, as you might expect, harrowing, depressing, and in my mind, suggested a conclusion then that has since been proven, but is still true now: the worst is yet to come.
MALMO, 4/15
Another oft-frequented by Posies venue—this was our 6th show at the KulturBolaget (known to all as KB Halle). The golden rule of tour: the nicer the hotel, the shorter the stay. I remember the one day off I had with REM where Dominique could come visit, after a string of 9-star hotels with enormous green marble bathtubs and such, was spent in Antwerp in what barely passed as a moldy Holiday Inn. Smelling of paint. Here, with a 6.20 lobby call looming, we checked into the Radisson SAS, and I had a huge room, with functioning wifi, a full length tub, and bed that surely warranted its own post code. I took a good look, as I wasn’t going to have much time to linger over this particular oasis.
Soon, we were heading to the venue, itself being rather like a bowling alley in size, shape and vibe. As usual, we rearranged the setup that awaited us to get us closer to the audience, and then knocked off a quick soundcheck. Dinner was immediately served afterwards, and following that I went for a stroll around the neighborhood, taking a café, reading home décor and design magazines.
KB’s a big place, and this show was oddly underpopulated this night—our 2005 show here was among the best-attended shows of the tour. Still, we played extremely well, and, I believe, warranted two encores. Magnus Tingsek was in attendance, and we would have loved to have his local guidance as we sampled the local alehouses, but, alas, we had an early morning departure, and I can’t afford the slightest hint of grog-gy feeling when I have to get us from points A to points B.
I was up at 5.45, making tea and making sure my bags were as compact as possible, and we were in a cab at 6.20—before breakfast in the hotel was even laid out. We were deposited on the steps of the train station, and I eventually figured out how to buy a ticket to Copenhagen airport and which track it was leaving on—in five minutes. We hustled, and got on the train. Note to Swedish national rail: not only is your website heard to navigate, but why not have a ‘Copenhagen Airport’ button for one stop shopping? There are all kinds of confusing buttons, and in one route, you’ll see ‘Kastrup’ nestled amongst the names of stops along the way. Well, we made it, anyway—it’s just that our train didn’t. At some point, we came to a halt on the tracks. Our train was fine—but another train had broken down, and we were effectively blocked from accessing the airport. Oh, sh*t. The minutes, which would normally be crawling in this situation, got up and ran—our flight time was getting closer and closer. A solution was enacted—we would bypass the airport, and go to another stop, where a train would pick us up and take us back the other direction a short bit, and we would make it to the airport. The only bummer in this solution is that Jon & I travel with slightly more objects than we have arms, but, we managed. The train that arrived to rescue us all was unfortunately half the size of the train we originally boarded, so far too many people were crammed on, SRO front to back (which makes moving luggage and guitars even more awkward). Incredibly, we arrived at CPH at 7.35, exactly one hour before our flight was due to take off. The check-in didn’t take too long, the airline didn’t charge us too much for our bulging suitcases, and we headed off to…an absolutely huge security line. I mean, there were easily 500-1000 people, in two converging lines 4 wide, being sorted to the various metal detectors. It was 8, and soon 8.15. 8.35 was wheels up—so finally I asked if we could jump the queue, and we did just that…at last, running the 200 meters to the gate, having thrown belts and wallets into whatever bag we had with us…only to find that we didn’t even start boarding until 5 minutes after the flight was supposed to have left. Ah ha…
So, breakfast in Sweden (there was an ‘early bird’ spread in the bar when we left); plane caught in Denmark; lunch in Germany; dinner in Austria, and ended the night in Hungary. Lunch in Germany was expensive--€13 for two pieces of bread with some salmon on top, €4 for a double espresso—but it was good to be back in the Eurozone again, and to have some Euros in pocket to spend there. In Vienna, we cabbed into an address near the Westbahnhof, a café colled Ronahi, recommended by our host in Wien, Phil. He came and met us, in fact—we passed the afternoon/early evening dining, having wine/café (the French speedball), checking emails, shooting the proverbial Scheiße. Phil was very kind to come and hang out with us, playing the host even tho’ we weren’t actually staying with him until 3 days later. He walked us to the station, helping us lug the gear, and got us to the correct platform for our train to Novi Sad. You might recall, it was Phil who helped me buy the tickets, which was done in German on the phone to the OBB, and then helped me pick them up at the Sudbhf, all when I was in town to play his birthday party in March.
The wagon-lits was at the end of the train, and thus, the first car we encountered on the platform. We found our compartment, and found it to be great—like a little Japanese hotel room! A bunk for each of us, and plenty of space to arrange the grear. Jon had bought a bottle of wine—no need to say that, after two airplanes, the stress of our morning travel, a belly full of adana kebab and a glass of wine, and the gently shuddering train, I was asleep ten minutes after we left. My head was propped up on a pillow, and there was a large window at my feet, so I watched the beautiful purples and greens of the verdant dusk—we hadn’t seen any leaves during our time in Scandinavia, so Austria was looking tropical by comparison—rolling by, adding to the hypnosis, and ultimately knocking me out cold.
We were woken up by the conductor at about 2 for a passport check on the Hungarian border, and then at 5 in advance of our arrival in Novi Sad. Jon & I stumbled around and hauled our stuff to the door, for a quick departure—although, staying on til Bucharest didn’t sound like an altogether disagreeable plan B.
NOVI SAD, 4/17
We hopped off the train, the predawn temperature was much warmer than we were accustomed to, so we were feeling a bit sweaty as we hauled our stuff into the main hall of Novi Sad’s station. After a short wait, Igor, one of the organizers of our show, arrived, bless him, and we crammed into his little car, and he drove us to the hotel—Jon had asked about getting two separate rooms, after such a brutal travel—the modest budget of the show meant that they were able to offer us a double room for our stay—Jon offered to pay the difference. As it turns out, a huge agricultural convention had booked up all the rooms in town. No worries, we said. But, when we arrived at the hotel, only one room had been vacated and cleaned at this hour—and it was the ‘apartment’, which had two separate bedrooms, and a large common room, plus a second level with a twin bedroom. It was up three flights of stairs, but, it was quiet, and very comfortable. Perfect—as Jon called it, it was the reward for our travel karma. We went back to bed and recovered from the journey.
Sometime after midday, I got up and cleaned myself up. I sent a text to Misha, the other organizer of the show, who came and met me at the hotel. My first request, having missed breakfast, and thus having gone 18 hours without food, was for a burek, the filo dough pastries that come filled with meat or sour cheese, and happen to be among the greasiest, and tastiest, things on earth. This accomplished, we headed out in Misha’s car for a short drive into the next small town, passing thru Novi Sad’s old city on the other side of the Danube, which lives in the shadow of the massive fortress and its miles of earthworks and ramparts. In ten minutes we were in Sremski Karlovci, a pleasant town, too big to be called a village. We paid a visit to an old family friend of Misha’s, one Radmilo Dimitrvijevic, known as ‘Rosha’. He is, like many people in this town, a garagiste, buying grapes from the Frushka Gora vineyards, and fermenting various kinds of wine, much of it from a pinot grigiot-like grape called neoplanta. Red is made as well. The white is made into a dessert wine as well as a dry table wine; and via various family recipes the white is transformed into a red concoction called ‘bermet’, which appears to utilize cloves, thyme, and some two dozen other herbs to make a spicy red mixture, bearing a direct similarity, with the use of cloves, to mulled wine as you might find it in Germany, e.g., but…they don’t seem to add sugar, or very much of it. It’s more intense and less obvious than gluhwein.
Rosha was happy to let us taste a few different things, and I observed all the small details, trying to ‘taste’ this tranquil and unexpected moment of slow living, and make notes for its recollection later. I watched him as he told stories to my friends, he had an everyday kind of look to him—his hair had thinned to a sparse white fuzz on top, his face was vital and energetic, too youthful to look like a granddad, but, he had all the ease and authority of a man who has been practicing his skills for decades. He was jovial, but not giggly. As I watched, his head was framed against a green door, that lead to one of the rooms in their small compound that contained tanks or barrels. Wine is sold in corked bottles or in two liter plastic ones. The place itself has a patina of exposure to the elements, to the point of fusing with them somewhat—a tree grows in the compound, moss eats into the stones that make up the driveway, spiders do their business amongst our feet. The scene felt timeless, but truly—meaning, when Rosha made a quick call on his cell phone, it wasn’t breaking the mood. Very kindly Misha gave me a bottle of bermet, which, due to traveling conditions, I knew I would have to enjoy that evening.
We stopped by Misha’s café, Graffiti, which I had visited on my first trip to Novi Sad, and treated me to a macchiato. We stopped by
Misha’s art gallery, next to the café, where he was showing lithographs from the late 60s, by art professor Milan Stanojev. Misha is himself a visual artist, and shows artists from around the world at his space—but this being a homegrown product was especially interesting. The colorful lithographs show scenes of daily life in 1960s Yugoslavia, but not without a subtext of commentary on class difference under the Tito regime (party members vs. non party members), the explosion of ideas and imagery of the 1960s, etc. There is a portrait of Tito himself, looking rotund and Mao-like, his hand curled into a fist, as photographers clamor around him. The artist was forced to chose between never displaying his work publicly or going to jail, after his first and only exhibition at that time.
Dinner was had in a small family run place on a leafy street that hardly looked like it would support restaurants or other businesses. I had a goulash of tender veal—plus the veal soup that was required tasting as a starter. By dinner’s end I was a bit bent over in trying to carry my bursting stomach, but another café at Misha’s helped, and by soundcheck I was feeling quite good. CK13, the Black House, is an alternative cultural center, usually putting on punk shows, but open to anything. Anti-capitalist posters adorn almost every wall. I hoped they were OK with us selling CDs!
The place was completely empty at 9, still so at 9.30, but by 10.30 the tiny room was full with about 75 attendees. Just before we went on, a local TV news presenter came in and asked about interviewing the band. She was tall, blonde, and in midriff-baring costume. When she found out we weren’t a local band, and there would have to be English translation involved, she couldn’t be bothered.
This being our first and only Serbian show, folks came from Belgrade and other places further afield, and the reception was definitely extremely warm, from the get go; one guy in particular sang along with almost every word. In the audience this night was young guy, who looked a bit like an unshaven version of Kip, the engineer I often work with in Seattle. Turns out he was the very guy that wrote to the Posies from Novi Sad, more than 15 years ago. I had sent him records and a Tshirt, which he wore to the show. In a way, our show was for him—he had been unable to attend my solo show last year, but he was there in the front tonight, and it was great to bring such a thing full circle.
ZAGREB, 4/18
Oh, the morning came all too soon. They always do, at this point on the tour. I was up at 7.45 and by 8.30 was winding my way thru the passageways in the center of Novi Sad towards a bakery that supposedly had the finest bureks in town. They are almost always sold out by the time place closes at 10am. For a Euro or two I came away with one meat and one cheese burek, since I was told that our bus travel to Zagreb might not involve a food stop. In fact, it did, but I’m glad we had the bureks…read on.
Igor took us to the bus station, which is really an extension of the train station, and we entered the boarding area. We were early, so we watched buses pulling into the other bays, loading up, and heading out. Some were city buses on local routes, others were heading to Macedonia, Slovenia. Each arriving vehicle brought speculation that we might be boarding such luxury liners as were arriving, but it was not to be…our bus was the one that drew ‘oh no’s when it pulled into the station—it was the short bus! A stunted creature, it was booked solid. After placing suitcases and guitars below, we took our personal items and Jon & I were crammed into tiny seats for our 6-hour passage to Zagreb. By the time we reached the border and underwent our formalities, I already had to pee—I asked about a ‘toilet stop’ and the driver indicated thirty minutes by flashing his open hands three times.
But, noon arrived and Jon & I were starving. Enter the bureks, which we managed to divide and eat, using our tray tables, managing to avoid the copious amounts of oil that had soaked the wrapping paper completely. Shortly after our repast, we pulled into a gas station that had a small café, selling substandard bureks and the usual gas station style factory made sandwiches. Plus, it was in Croatia, and we had dinars. Maybe they would have taken them, but we had no need to find out.
Some ass-cramping hours later, we pulled into Zagreb’s bus station. Our promoter arrived on his mountain bike, while I was navigating the mall-like interior of the station in search of a bureau de change. He gave us some money to get us to the hotel, and we were taken by a Rolling Stones loving, road rules ignoring cabbie who drove 80 miles an hour in full charge towards stopped traffic, swerving into the least populated lanes at the last minute to avoid slowing—all while looking over his shoulder at us and telling us about his brother in Chicago. Some tense moments later we arrived at the Hotel Laguna, the only hotel I’ve stayed at in Zagreb, and we checked in—and in about 15 minutes, we were leaving again, picked up by a guy from the student radio who is a dead ringer for The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. We climbed up the stairs to the radio station, with borrowed acoustic guitars, and upon entering the studio found a TV crew poking its apparatus at us—they were doing a report on the student radio itself, we in a sense were just extras. They stayed in the room with us thru our interview and performances.
After that, we headed to the Student Center Theater, where I had a wonderful solo concert last year. You might recall it's a circular room painted deepest black, built alongside another circular theater, a gift from the government of France sometime in the 20th century, that is on the point of collapse.
Soundcheck completed, I had a glass of wine and we sat in the courtyard, watching a hapless male turtle dove trying to present his mate with one last twig to complete the nest they had made on a light fixture. In an endless loop, he selected a twig, approached the nest, which seemed way too small to accommodate anything other than the female, let alone any of her eggs, found no purchase on which to land, then waited on a beam nearby, looking at the situation, then flew up on the roof nearby, dropped his twig, descended, reshaped it a bit, tried again. No luck. Another twig sought, and repeat the above sequence. They said he had been at it for days.
Again, at say half an hour before showtime, the place was nearly empty. The adjacent bar, which is solely staffed by a friendly 50-something guy, same as my last two visits, had a dozen or so people in it, some of which were theatergoers in for the play in the other hall. But, when we went on, the room was full, perhaps 100 in attendance. At first it seemed like nobody knew exactly who we were, and were there out of curiosity. But, as we warmed up, the requests started coming, and in fact, by the end of the night, we weren’t allowed to go—three encores later, and we were eating into any hope of getting some sleep before another brutal early morning departure. As it was, we stayed for a drink or two and got back to the hotel around 1. And, we were up at 5.45. Argh.
VIENNA, 4/19
We had been given a choice by our promoter in Zagreb as to which train we wanted to be on—the 7.30 direct train, or the 9.30 train with two changes. With the amount of stuff we had along with us, the multi change train seemed like the greater of two hassles. At 6.45 we loaded our stuff into a cab, and headed to the train station, and found to our delight that our train was on ‘Platform 5 track 1’ which doesn’t make sense to me. Why not just call each side of a platform a number that corresponds to the track number, like everywhere else does? We were too tired to sort thru that logic, but we found our compartment, and according to the little slips clipped to the wall outside, we had it all to ourselves, which proved to be true for 80% of the way.
We were so tired that we couldn’t sleep…you’d have to be a hardcore traveler to understand this concept, but trust me, it’s real. And thank god—as this was one of the most scenic train journeys I’ve been on. The show started with a torrential downpour, that commenced immediately after we boarded (a little luck on our side there). Lightning slashed the sky in every direction, but in an hour or so, we were looking at the little farms in the valleys coming to life. This wasn’t the boring agribusiness landscape like you find in central Germany or Iowa—these Croatian and Slovenian hills were little Alpine paradises, complete with frolicking goat kids, tidy chalets, outrageously vibrant cherry blossoms, and spacious orchards. It hardly seemed like any agriculture was going on at all, except that which happened by the default fecundity of the land itself.
The train had a bona fide dining car, in which we were able to spend the last of our Kuna, on excellent coffee, a cheese and prosciutto platter, a watery (but not altogether unpleasant) Croatian red, and warm apple cake. I read Pynchon and stretched out for hour-long naps. We had our passports examined, and were given multiple opportunities to confess to customs violations, which we chose not to accept. Eventually, in Austria, the train started to take on more passengers, and also increased in speed dramatically. We had stopped at every little hamlet along the way in the Balkans, but in Austria we stopped at just the border, then Graz, then Wiener Neustadt, and then Wien itself. OK, maybe one suburb as well. We had a new companion with each stop in Austria, trading them out at each next station. There was a woman, who had lived in Vancouver, and her dog; a shy guy with one crutch; a friendly man with his chatty daughter on his lap.
We arrived and threw our stuff on some carts, always a rarity at train stations, and used the moving belt ramps, the latter of which I basically skied down, hoping Jon would be off the ramp before I skidded into him.
We had a short and amusing cab ride to Phil’s place, and it wasn’t long before Stephan and Philipp from
A Life A Song A Cigarette were picking us up in a tiny car, already loaded up with the two guitar amps they were lending us for the evening! The boys were looking a little green, evidently the open bar at the Amadeus music awards was still with them, more than twelve hours later. I basically had to sit in Stephan’s lap, with my guitar clamping us down like a rollercoaster safety bar, on the way to the Flex. The Flex is a complex of metal shacks on the quai of the Donaukanal, you might remember my solo show in the café two years ago for Eva Umbauer’s birthday, and a handful of you might recall Jon & my show there in 2000. Not likely, tho’.
We set up our gear, wolfed down the massive spread, and had a quick and efficient soundcheck. Eva appeared, and she, the ALASAC guys and I went walking in the quiet sunny evening, and had a ‘café mélange’, which is the closest thing you can get to a macchiato in a proper Austrian café (in Austria a macchiato ends up being more like what we would call a cappuccino).
Presales for this show were a bit slow, I was surprised, since my solo shows have done so well here, but it seems I’ve cultivated a new audience that has not much to do with my Posie past. There were quite a few people that I spoke with after the show that were there because they had been to my shows, and were essentially novices to the Posies material. Flex can hold 500 people, so it seemed pretty empty when we went on, but people filtered in from the corners, and from sunning themselves by the canal, and actually, the crowd looked pretty health by the end of the first song. This show was one of my favorites; my expectations had been low, and it turned into a real sleeper—two encores, excellent sound and a great light show—including slowly swirling images coordinated across a bank of old TVs. Again, it’s these relaxed shows that I love the best, where playing with Jon feels like putting on your favorite old leather jacket, and effort is minimal for maximum effect. And for sure people loved it. We had great praise after the show from Daniel from Nada Surf, who was home between tours.
After the show, Phil and his friends, Jon & I hopped the underground home to his place. He had pulled some movies to watch from his collection of some 2,000 DVDS, opened some wine and filled an air mattress for one of us to crash on. That was the party killer—after I called Dom to wish her a happy birthday at the stroke of midnight, I had half a glass of wine and was out like a light.
I woke up when my alarm went off at 3.30, and showered, and, bless him, Phil was there to see us off, into the cab that he ordered for us at 4.30 to take us to VIE. On the flight, I dreamt as if I was awake and on the flight, but sitting with old girlfriends, famous people.
We arrived, claimed luggage and soon Mathijs from the Gasoline Brothers, our support band and hosts for the next few shows, picked us up, and drove us to Utrecht—we were laughing, as for once we * didn’t * have an 8 hour drive to the next show. We arrived at Roel from the GB’s place, to find comfortable couches, functioning internet, and Lars Von Trier DVDs. A piano. Recording equipment! Now commencing: the easy days.
Love
KS
Utrecht, NETHERLANDS
