With all the stress of last week--the cancelled show, the nearly missed show, the late nights with shows and travel and early mornings and all that....well, I started to get sick after the last show. I spent Monday-Wednesday laying as low as possible; working out of our record label offices during the day, and getting to bed by as early as 9pm in Claus' amazing house. Meanwhile, he laid sod, planted roses and such. On Wednesday morning he and I went to P3, the station that has been arguably our biggest supporter in Norway, for a morning interview--8.30, to be precise--and they asked me to do a verision of 'Oslo' on their beautiful Steinway. How could I say no? Even tho I had never played the song on the piano before...so I picked an easy key for fingering and singing, and did it live on air...it turned out very nice! A couple of slight stumbles but they are part of the charm. Since then, P3 has been playing that version as well as the album version in heavy rotation...
TROMSO, 7/17
This show was truly wicked. The Bukta festival is held in a lovely spot about 15 minutes out of town from Tromso. Tromso is arctic, but in summer the woods are exploding with wildflowers in purple, Queen Anne's Lace, and lots of greenery amongst the birch trees. Think of Monet's WaterLilies and you get the intensity of the colors. Tromso is on an island, and the festival site is on the water of course--in fact there's a perfect crescent of beach at the backstage area. Ran into many friends--the third time, as predicted, I saw the Posies former TM Menko, who was doing sound for Woven Hand. And my friends from the Patti Smith group, incl. Tony, bassist on much of 'Touched'. So it was in this inspiring atmosphere, in the dazzling sunlight of an arctic summer night, that we did our headlining set on the second stage of Bukta festival. We razed the place. Seriously! It was hellacious. Another amazing crowd, singing along, jumping up and down with me. We really went for it. It seems these shows have been going so well I don't have much to write about except 'amazing' blahdy blah...we almost need a less than amazing...ah, read on
TONSBERG, 7/18
We were up way too early for anyone's good. I had a couple of glasses of wine with Tony, PSmith's sound engineer Emery, and PSG guitarist Jackson (Patti's son). The intensity of the Bukta set, the fact that I didn't successfully defeat my cold despite resting all week--throw a little aftershow wine and talking and you have the perfect recipe for f***ing my sh*t up. I was super croaky all day. So I did my best to not talk at all, except I am the tour manager. After the flight, we drove into Oslo, got a trailer, stopped in at Tim Wendelboe's for a perfect macchiato, loaded up the gear, and drove 2+ hours (incl some awful traffic) to Tonsberg. Tonsberg's quiet country arm, Notteroy, is the hometown of my stepmom, and also of Lise from Briskeby. I know the area well, having just spent the weekend there with my family last summer.
Our show was part of the Slottsfjell Festival, a pretty big festival for Norway..mostly big Norwegian acts, but also this year had Stereolab and Lethal Bizzle for international entertainment...but what we played was more like the afterparty, but it was public. Called 'Kastelnatt', it was a multimedia extravaganza held in a huge abandoned factory. Sounds like a gas, yeah? It should have been, were I not feeling like cold dogshit. We soundchecked and I could barely croak out a song. Uh oh.
We had to rush after soundcheck to the main part of the festival, a 10 minute drive, and ran to get to catering before it closed at 8. Oh, except it closed at 7. The weird thing is that all the food for catering and the public were being cooked in the same place--it was a massive barbecue. So we couldn't see why they were acting as if there was no food left--behind catering were about 10,000 roasting chickens and hamburgers. OK, they finally got us some food, but we weren't allowed to have beverages. Hey, thanks!
I went back to the hotel and slept for some 4 hours.
I was up at 1.15. That's a weird feeling. I gargled some warm salt water. I was starting to get scared. Could i sing at all? I made sure my stuff was all packed and ready to go, and walked downstairs with some records under my arm. The bar was raging in the hotel. I walked up and asked for hot water, and made a tea, and strode on. Out the back of the hotel, and crossed the channel that divides Tonsberg in two, via a graceful footbridge. It was just drunk Norwegian soup everywhere I went. I was trying to be invisible. The flow of people walking around wasted in the night was converging on the Kastelnatt. We were supposed to be onstage at 2--as I walked in to the complex it was 1.50, my phone was ringing. I went backstage and grabbed the CDs I had stashed, and made my way into the room we were playing. 500 plus people waiting. Shit shit shit.
Everyone asked if I was OK? Not really, I said but I would try.
The band went on. I followed. I started the show saying I was sick, and I would try my best but I didn't know if I could sing. But I was ready to give it my all.
And in fact, I did. The first couple of songs were hard, my voice was careening to the wrong notes but I was determined to go on. Finally it settled into a rough but usable kind of tone, and in fact once I stopped thinking about my voice, it was pretty much fine. Now, it was a full moon, and these were people who had been drinking for probably 8-12 hours. So, in one way, many people were weird and hostile, but in another way, many people were ready to be entertained and didn't miss the finer points that my voice was falling short of. The hostile bits would be things like--a guy with that psycho I-am-a-drunk-man look, kept offering me beer. I respectfully declined. Later, when I was in the crowd, which was going absolutely nuts, BTW, we were jumping so much I actually thought people might get hurt, the same psycho beer guy poured his beer on my head. In my eyes. Now, was he being generous, or was he offended I didn't drink his beer? We'll never know, but I will have his beer scent in my clothes for days to come. Also hostile: the guy who was screaming in the front row, kept wanting the mic, and after the show wanted a free CD because he 'sang along'. I said, I hate to say it but we actually charge money for these things. He told me to fuck off! This is a classic example of the drunk guy who suddenly thinks the whole night is about him. Notice I say drunk guy that's not a sexist accident of language--the girls don't get so aggro. Now, those were the rotten apples but the rest of the bushel of people at our show were actually darlings, and the Oslo singalong was insane. To remain unbowed by my voice i insisted we do not one song but two in the encore--No Vacancy, which is really hard to sing, and Dropped by the Hand of God, which we haven't played in months.
I was disappointed that I wasn't at my best, but the more I think about this show, the better it seems that it was. I think we did a great job, and people loved it.
Er, after the show I had to run back to the hotel, grab my stuff and get in a van, with Aussie hipster teen sensations Operator Please (who were at the show and loved it), and drive 2 hours to Oslo airport. Fuck that was hell. I smelled like nasty beer and was soaking wet. Oh, I forgot to mention that in the second song, I gesticulated wildly and bashed my hand on Bjorn's guitar, blood streaming down my hand the whole show. Punky. It was a festering mess by the time I woke up on the van seat as we pulled into the airport.
MALAGA, 7/19
I checked in for my flight. I was told I would have to pay extra for my guitar, but that this was done at the Sterling ticketing office which didn't open til 6am. And then I was handed my boarding pass and the tag for my guitar. So you know what I say? Fuck that. I dropped my guitar at special handling and went on my merry way. The flight ended up being delayed 45 min. but finally we could board, and I fell promptly asleep. Remember my untreated wounded hand was oozing blood all this time. I emerged feeling basically OK when, after waiting forever for my luggage, I came out of the baggage claim at Malaga airport. Among the many drivers and tour group operators holding up signs was one chauffeur holding a sign for 'Ms. Marla Maples'.
Miguel, my host, was there to receive me. I felt that the pressure was off--but now I *really* didn't know if I would ever sing again! Did I go past the point of no return last night, and get further out with the brutal after show travel? I decided there was nothing to do but relax. We went to Miguel's place, and his architect father and he and I sat down for a glass of Pedro Ximenez. Well, how bad could I feel at that point? We went to a pharmacy to get stuff to treat my cough and bandage my hand. Then we had a 3-hour lunch by the beach, with fried everything. Sardines that are roasted over what looks like burning driftwood, calamares, gorgeous gazpacho. A few of Miguel's friends joined us and after a cortado he and I pulled up on a stretch of typical Malaga beach--which no one in Malaga likes, they will all tell you the beaches are awful here. Well, I wasn't going to complain. The sand is dark grey, which means it gets extremely hot. It was about 90F, and direct sun. I put on sunblock, and dozed a bit. The Mediterannean is cold here, and of course filthy. But I swam (sorry, hand). Back to the flat to have a bath and nap for a couple of hours.
I was pretty worried about this show, but also trying to be philosophical and calm about it. We went to the venue, a little bar called Siglo XII, and set up the gear and soundchecked. I could sing, a little rough, but it was functional.
I went and hid backstage while
Dani Llamas, my support act for these Spain shows, played his set. You know what? He has amazing songs. I kept thinking they must be covers as they were so freaking good. Miguel played guitar with him, and I stayed backstage on a couch enjoying the music from afar.
My turn. I went out to the small stage and helped get things in place, and then I was ready. I put the mic down in the midst of the crowd, and just tore into it, my voice was husky but super emo. In fact, I really liked how it sounded. I could still hit the notes, and even sing loud (I played most songs in a lower key tho). Eventually the PA actually stopped working, and while they set up another one, I even did what I had thought impossible--sang without using a mic. It was intense! But it was a really great show. The second PA gave me shocks when I was playing guitar so I did several songs without a mic, then went back to the piano. At one point in the mic-less guitar part, I did Solar Sister, and the entire place, out of nowhere, was singing the guitar solo when I got to that section of the song! Awesome!
So, in the end, this was a great show, and my voice had a kind of freaky intensity that my normal, glass-pure tones don't get, so I was into it...
Love
KS
Malaga SPAIN
