RAISE A ROCK FIST FOR ROCK FEST
Week: tour managing. Emails. Phone calls. Not so interesting. Unless of course, you’re me. In the course of my week, I negotiate rates for tour buses, hire and fire, beg for info, reward and punish for giving/withholding the same. I also take my daughter to school, empty the dishwasher, take Pilates classes. See my shrink.
I had dinner with Dom at the Ritz…I had one of those big scores in that one of the cheapest bottles of wine that I scraped up on the wine list there happened to be outstanding. Dom. de Perdrix ’95. Nothing special, according to Wine Advocate. But, delightful, complex, and absolutely worth every minute of my attention.
Thursday night found me at the Herbaliser show at Trabendo. Every other minute was kinda corny, like “Flintstones” era B-52s, but the intervening minutes were fun, funky, and certainly vocalist Jessica Darling was a highlight.
HAUGESUND, 6/14
Friday morning I flew up to Oslo, spent the afternoon meeting with our label about strategies for the Disciplines album, and spent a quiet night at Claus’ (almost completely) redesigned and rebuilt house. It’s an architectural masterpiece, really—a wonderful design showcase. From the house, we could listen to the Norwegian Wood festival, with QOTSA. That is, we didn’t have to endure the torrential downpour that at one point looked like it was going to start eroding the high ground. Claus had yet to hook up the internet, having just moved in (and details are still in progress) so I caught up on some music work, and read, and fell asleep before midnight.
We were up early the next day. The house comes with a few hi-tek gadgets built in—an espresso machine, that works wonderfully; and a stove that works thru the miracle of electrical induction—meaning, if the cooking vessel isn’t of the correct level of conductivity the stove simply won’t function. Guess Claus needs a new kettle, but when I put a stainless pot on there, the 2 in. of water in it was boiling in about 40 seconds. Spooky physics.
Anyhow, 3 of us drove to the airport, checked in, and started funneling into the same line as many other obvious rockers. We got on an SAS jet, flew to Haugesund, on the west coast of Norway. From the moment we landed, every minute was a pleasure. Rockfest is a wonderfully run, friendly, mellow festival that has the right to have audience members as young as 15 (usually, because of the alcohol for sale, the age limit at festivals in Norway is 18). Haugesund (where the father of Marilyn Monroe was born) is a small harbor town, which thrives on fishing, and hi-tech service to the oil industry. I met a young man tonight who runs a company designing, building and selling robots that can operate on underwater building and repair projects.
We were all (the Disciplines, Ingrid Olava and band, the Delillos) greeted at the airport, and put in vans and Range Rovers—and driven not to Haugesund, but to a small quay, and boarded a vintage tugboat, to enjoy a pleasant, hourlong ride to central Haugesund—munching on endless piles of shrimp, and chatting in the sunny late morning. They pulled up to the quay which runs alongside the downtown area, and we walked the 100 yards or so the hotel. We more or less had the daytime free, so I set about painting my nails (Maybelline Black is Black #700), etc. We checked out the site, and the backline, and found that everything was perfectly in place. No soundchecks usually at festivals—so we were free til the band before us was done. There were two stages, perpendicular to each other—the mixing position at front of house had two desks, also perpendicular to each other. We were on the ‘main’ one, although really the acts were distributed around—the set up was designed so that the music could continue without pause—while one band played on one stage, the other could line check on the other, which didn’t interfere too much if done discreetly. For example, Claus played along with Kine Nesheim’s set, and we paused the line check whenever there was a pause in a song. And at least for the acts on the second stage, their music was also run thru the mainstage’s PA, gluing the perspectives together rather effectively.
The festival commandeers not only the main park in the city center, but also two hotels (our hotel on the waterfront is where most of the bands stayed), one by the park serves as a kind of backstage, hospitality provided in a pair of adjoining conference rooms. Next to the stage, there were some camping trailers—we had the right to use both, but we figured it was just easier to use the camping trailer right by the stage. The festival also takes over the city’s concert hall—the restaurant inside is where all the bands take dinner, and the spacious lobby and the restaurant house the after party. It’s not everyday that I have a concert hall at my disposal, so I recognized I had a great opportunity to do my vocal warm ups with a piano. Ideally, I do this everyday—hard to do on tour, but at least doing this at home on my keyboard each day keeps my voice from going too slack between tours, thereby lessening the shock of a Disciplines show when it occurs. Doing my warm ups on this day was important—it was the first show I’d done of any kind in a week, the first Disciplines show in over a month, and we would be outside in brisk, dry air. So, after making enquiries I was directed to the lobby’s piano after dinner, and I started on my warm-ups. Evidently I was louder than I thought, and tho I was 50 yards away, I was bothering the CC Cowboys as they tried to have dinner. I apologized and ended up finding a practice room deep in the building, and finished my exercises.
On the way in to the hall we spotted a VW van with the word SHIT in 2 foot high letters on the front and sides. Inside, there was guy sitting on a couch in a red sweatshirt covered in speech bubbles saying “SHIT”. We got to talking, and it turns out that SHIT tm is a skateboard clothing co., and Johan, the owner hooked me up with some, uh, Shit—including a kid-sized hoodie and T shirt that’s perfect for my little shit at home! Check out the shit
here. Obv., they can’t advertise, they can’t even be Googled in the USA, so my fellow Americans—be the first on your block to get covered in SHIT and have a little First Amendment fun while you’re at it!
We headed to the festival grounds in one of the festival’s fleet of Range Rovers; the nice thing about playing a small festival like this is that you can get the head honcho on the phone—and he comes and picks you up. So, we had no security hassles, even in moments where one of us might have forgotten their passes, etc.
Now, the show—I was nervous, which is nice. Much better than being blasé. As people watched Haugesund’s own Kine Nesheim, we set up and line checked, I taped down set lists and set out towels.
And then it was out turn. We gave 5 minutes pause for people to reposition, and then without warning (our show starts with 2 beats of me singing a capella, then the band kicks in, no stick clicks, etc) we were on. And we really gave an enormous performance—abetted by what started as a curious, but grew to a thunderous, crowd. We hadn’t played in weeks, but we picked it up like we’d been playing every night for a week. I have learned how to hold back a bit at the beginning of the show so I a place to get to by the end, to conserve energy, so as not to look like the show peaks somewhere in the middle. And it just kept getting better. By the time I was jumping up and down with everybody in the crowd, I knew we had really won everyone over, and we received a lot of love. Bottles broke onstage, people grabbed me on the barricade—it was a winner all around. After the show, I jumped down and sold CDs right over the barricade—sold everything I brought. And got to shake a lot of hands and further cement the good feeling that we created. A job well done by my band, the festival audience and staff, and, hey, even I feel great about my own performance. It really started to take off for me when I had the feeling that I was riding something bigger than the sum of its parts, about 75% of the way thru the set, the show took less and less effort, and seemed to be motoring on its own steam (plus the energy of the audience). There were a couple of uh-oh moments, regarding my knees, when I jumped off the bass bins onto the dirt in front of the barricade (after I got home from Seattle and the intense Posies shows, I could barely walk down the three flights of stairs in our building). But all in all, an incredible show. We were a tough act to follow, and I had to hand it to Ingrid Olava, whose music is much more delicate than ours, having to follow us couldn’t have been easy but she did a great job. She had mentioned in the hotel that she really loves “This One’s On You” from Touched, and at one point she was playing a song and I thought for sure it was going to be a cover…I guess she borrowed a bit of the same chords, either subconsciously or not—either way it would be an honor if actually true.
You can see a local newspaper article on the show, with photos,
here.
After the show, I changed out of my muddy clothes and into some fresh SHIT. We did an interview with the local radio station (Radio 102, playing ‘Oslo’ in heavy rotation); Egil, the DJ is a super nice guy and a real music fan, we always end up chatting and chatting after interview time is done about records and shows. The interview was done in Claus’ room. Then we watched an amazing video of Aden at her school dance recital. Then, we went to the concert hall for the after party at about 12. I was, to be honest, absolutely exhausted. I was falling asleep having a glass of wine in Claus’ room. But when I got there I drank an espresso and was feeling OK. I spoke with a LOT of fans, and some of the musicians from the festival (esp. the Delillos ’85 and crew). But, I was soon out of steam, and after helping Johan from SHiT DJ (I put on “Dragon Attack” by Queen, “Paid in Full” Eric B & Rakim, etc), I headed back to my room to watch a movie and sleep.
We were up this morning, many of us on the same flight back to Oslo, to see the day begin in glorious sunshine. It’s almost the longest day of the year, so about 2am when I was walking back to the hotel, it was already dawn. When we got back to Oslo it was pissing down rain STILL, an unbroken squall since Friday—I am sure the Norwegian Wood Festival is taking a hit, but I guess some of it’s sold out or nearly in advance. But, I had to accept it as lucky that we got Øya instead—we were going for both, and I think Øya is much, much more prestigious and vibier than Norwegian Wood, tho both have good artists on board. But there’s a good chance Øya will be in the sunshine.
I was thrilled to hear ‘bon fete, Papa!’ from Aden yesterday morning for Father’s Day. Last night I fell asleep at about 8pm, woke up in surreal state at about 10, with the echoes of Alanis Morissette drifting in from the Norwegian Wood Festival nearby. In a daze I called home to wish my dad and stepdad a happy father's day, then crashed. Up at 4 to catch my flights to Vienna. One misplaced suitcase and some other stress later, I'm in studio with
A Life A Song A Cigarette, doing preproduction for our album sessions starting tomorrow.
Love
KS
Stockerau, AUSTRIA
