My hours working with Billy & the Firm, mixing their album, were pretty long. And after hours, I had tons of tour manager work to do. So I was really the walking dead, and it didn’t change until a couple of days into this little tour. But, I think the album has turned out really superb, the two mixing sessions have different personalities, but I believe it will all make sense together. But we were working so hard, the week is really a blur. It’s only this morning that I feel grounded again. At times I was working as late 4am, and getting up to do things in the morning. I was too exhausted to get up at 7 and take Aden to school some mornings, and Dom & Aden understood as best they could. By Wednesday evening, however, we wrapped the last mix at about 8.30, and spent an hour revisiting one song for some small changes, and then I bid Billy goodbye and got a little sleep. Her husband Shy was in town, too, but I barely saw him--we were just working too hardcore to socialize.
STOCKHOLM, 5/21
I was up at 4, after going to bed around 11. I had spent an hour or so just hanging out with Dom, we’d had very little time to do so in the last week. Then up at the crack of dawn and in my cab at 5. Oh, I should mention that at Charles De Gaulle my 7am flight time meant that nothing was open, and the airport itself was barely functioning--the moving walkways were yet to be turned on, so passengers going to our full flight had to walk the 200 meters to the satellite gates, going up and down stairs to do so. Fun! I slept everywhere--in each flight, in horrible, contorted conditions in Copenhagen airport--and landed at last at Stockholm in the early afternoon. I was greeted by our Swedish agent, Pontus--whom I’d only known via email so far. So we had a pleasant ride into town in his Honda hybrid car, and got to know each other, exchanged biographies etc. He dropped me off at the hotel and went back to grab the other guys coming in from Norway.
It wasn’t long before it was time to head to the venue--the Kagelbanan, where Big Star played in 2006; part of the larger complex of the Sodra Teatern--where Jon & I played the gorgeous main room in 2000 and the Cafe Teatern that adjoins the Kagelbanan, last April. This is one of those government subsidized wonders that just has a great staff, incredible acoustics, and a highly eclectic programmation. I met the guys from the Flare Up, our support act, and also my friend Love, who was loaning us some gear for the night (Love supported me in a small town in Austria in 2006). The guys finally fought thru the traffic and arrived, and we set up and did our thing. I was really tired but it was great to play, and the room sounds so good it was a pleasure, even to soundcheck!
After the check, the two bands and Pontus had dinner in the building’s restaurant and we were joined by my friends Melinda and Jorgen--Melinda who played bass in the Pusjkins, whose 1997 album I produced; and Jorgen, who recorded and played drums on the bulk of “Soft Commands”. They brought along their baby boy, who was lots of fun, already a pretty good bongo man.
Well, I felt about a hundred years old when we went onstage but there were these two teenage girls, whom I had never seen before, who were so into the Disciplines it was totally surreal--they sort of put the whole assembled crowd to shame, enough to back off the bulk of the audience a few feet while these girls went nuts and sang along to every word--in fact, they were singing the words even *before* we went onstage, just hollering and in general having a great time--they really stole the show, it was all I could do just to keep up with them! But it was inspiring for sure, and it made sure that despite my fatigue, I had to truly rise to the occasion! And I think we did just that, and then some. A great night. We got kicked outta there pretty fast afterwards by the rapid closing of the venue, which was good cuz by the time we got to the hotel, we had about 2 hours before it was time to get up and get ready to leave again...
AARHUS, 5/22
And so it was. I spent the two hours catching up on tour manager emails, and while I was writing them, my alarm went off indicating it was the surreal hour of 3am, time to shower, and get to the lobby for our 4am airport taxi. Now, I felt fine, really--I was still energized by the show. But then we got in the taxi, and in that 40 minute ride to Arlanda, I fell asleep. And it was hell from then on. Snoozing everywhere, sleeping on the flight and generally feeling like I had just been ejected from the mouth of the dog that was mauling me.
The domestic terminal in Copenhagen is a LONG way from anything else. At the very end of the longest arm of the ‘A’ gates...endless passageways and moving walkways later...we arrived at A30, as far as you can go in CPH. Our flight to Aarhus was delayed. MMM. More sleep. Finally we hopped over to the mainland. Aarhus airport’s decor is rather like the locker room of many a German tennis club I’ve changed in, all red brick tile for easy cleanup. The place is equipped with ludicrously small luggage carts, kind of a ‘why bother’ but we managed and ofund our way out to our driver. By now I was feeling a *little* better, but my voice, out of shape as it was for the Stockholm show, was even more ragged and the prospect of a matinee concert was a bit daunting. But the fact is, the Danish spring countryside was so beautiful and lush and green I never fell asleep in the hour-long ride from airport to town. We got the center of town, and then out the edge of the center of town, and pulled up to the enormous Musikhuset--the epicenter of the Spot Festival, the new music showcase weekend with a focus on Scandinavian up and coming bands, although there are also bands from the US, Belgium, and UK playing. But 85% of the artists are Scandinavian, and most of them are new to the public. The entire festival is put on by the Danish music export bureau, and not only do they foot the bill for the three-day event, but they fly in journalists and other music biz notables from all over the world to attend. The Musikhuset is a proper concert hall with several different concert venues inside, it’s also a vast rehearsal and teaching complex...it goes on and on. It has a bit of Lincoln Center look to it, squarish and important, but in a more futuristic, Scandinavian way...anyway, our hall, which could easily hold 600 people, was just a box it seemed but I am here to testify that this box had absolutely unquestionably perfect acoustics. Just standing in the room talking was perfect. So...this was probably the most pristine sound any Disciplines concert-goer will ever experience, and I’m glad to say the experience wasn’t lost on the attendees--the room filled up about half way, so there were a couple of hundred people there to witness a crystal-clear absolute decimation of the joint. My voice was more Tom Waits than Robert Plant, but it was fun. We had to contend with the fact that not only Danish audiences are quiet, but this was a show at a quarter to five on a Friday afternoon, so not exactly prime bacchanal hours. However, a couple of drunk punk rockers did the same task as the two mystery teens in Stockholm--not giving a flying fuck, and jumping around like fools, and that helped the rest to loosen up. A bit! However, after each song, the applause was rapturous and at the end of the set we could have easily done an encore but this was a festival situation. Good stuff!
After the show we hung around with our friend Tim, who we had talked to in the early days about management, but now were really just pals with and is always an inspiring, clever and kind person to talk to about all kinds of things not the least of which is music.
Well, by 7pm it was all over but the shouting, and I was about as happy as a man could be. We were driven to our hotel, Hotel Guldsmelden, which I soon recognized as the very same where Jon Auer & I had stayed in 2000, my only other visit to Aarhus. However, it had undergone extensive cute-ification, and the friendliness factor was way up (plus I was much more sober, so perhaps details that escaped me then reached me this time). So, in the evenings in the tiny lounge area in front of reception, they have complimentary wine, coffee, incredible apple-rhubarb cake, bread and two kinds of olive oil with herbs. And wifi--so, this was the perfect way for me to spend the roughly one hour of consciousness I had left in me.
ST. FELIU DE GUIXOLS, 5/23
12 hours of blissful sleep later, and a quick blitz of the righteous breakfast spread, and we were on the road to the airport, once again traversing CPH in all its cavernous-ness, and then were plopped into Barcelona. I slept every minute of every flight, again. I was still feeling a bit shaky--that week of all night mixing and the two brutal show/early early travel days were not out of my system yet. But things were looking up. Dominique was coming to meet me--we arrived first, and grabbed our stuff, and parked at a cafe, and I searched for Dom’s arrival area, located in Terminal C. Her flight was was about 30 minutes late, so our van arrived and we were all loaded up when she finally arrived. For me it was like waiting for the last day of high school, I was pretty excited. So, there she was, and off we went into the hills of Catalunya.
St. Feliu de Guixols is a little seaside town that doesn’t even have much in the way of tourists; it’s a getaway for Barcelona folks, but not much else. It has a fine little beach right in front of downtown, and a cluster of shops and bars and hotels, and a church that looks like a castle, and a nice theatre that serves the town. Not a lot of rock shows pass by here. Girona, up the road twenty or thirty clicks, gets some action (tho’ I’ve been touring Spain for 16 years and I’ve never played there). So, peeps were happy to see us, that’s for sure! We dropped our stuff in the hotel and went straight to eat (I like this line of thinking). Soon we were on a terrace looking at the water, by the Triton Bar, owned by one Jordi who was a real fan of Posies and related--and had never seen us live, and wouldn’t that night--the bar was his lady and she was a demanding mistress to be sure. So, he was just happy to have us there, and serve us from his mostly veg menu--tho he did have some damn fine hamburgers. All his food is organic and seasonal--so the anchovies were out. Not till summer he said. But we were well fed and lubricated.
We walked up to the theatre (nothing in this town is far away from anything else) and found there were already folks hanging around in anticipation of the show. What they had done was turn the venue sideways--exactly in the style of the Capitol Theatre in Olympia--if the show wasn’t big enough to fill the seats of the theatre, they just closed the curtain and put a riser on the stage, and the stage became the complete venue. This was the case tonight, and there was room for about 75 people, which is exactly the size of the crowd available in this village for a show, so it was, in a word perfect.
Hmmm, by the end of the show I was REALLY hot so for the encore, I came back in just my underwear, with a parasol. Quite a show. In the breakdown of this song, I ran into the back and found a T-shirt that I turned into a kind of loincloth, which made things slightly less obscene...slightly. But the rest of the show I was all over the shop--my best move was to leap from the top of the fridge holding all the beer onto the table that served as the bar and continue to ground level in two bounds, all while singing. Hot damn. When I wanted to crawl on the PA stacks, if someone had placed their beer there, I just chucked it out of the way, bear-slaps-salmon style...but playing small clubs in Spain is really the real shit, and I’m so glad I had the chance to show my bandmates what it’s all about and how great that can be...!
After the show I was well and truly fried. Back to to the hotel, the boys went out on the town. Then two funny things happened. One, I realized I’d totally forgotten to even think about being paid. So, a few calls later and some guys came to the hotel bearing several hundred Euros. Second, the pipes in the hotel were a bit rickety and something truly weird happened. Air in the pipes had given Ralla the illusion that he had turned the tap all the way off. But in fact it was just blocked by an air bubble, for a long time. Off he went to the bar, and later, the pipe came alive. It started to howl and moan like a horny tasmanian devil in need of a root canal. In fact, it woke up the entire hotel. We soon traced the sound to their room, and I had them and the hotel night manager, who was at home, on the phone, getting them to make it stop, which they did. Something also smelled like burning plastic, which gave an ominous tone to the proceedings, but in fact the hotel never did burn down, the night manager came and turned the tap off in their room, and the guys came back and said that they had turned the tap off--as far as they knew, but were fooled by the faulty pipes. No charges were brought, and the matter was settled in the nearest bar, prob. with Jager bombs or some such thing.
I woke up at 8.30 this morning, finally feeling like I had the exhaustion of the studio week and tour’s start off my back. Dom & I had a tranquil walk to a cafe for breakfast (man, they make big pains au chocolates in this country) a sniff at the Sunday market (cheap clothes and shoes from Chinese sweatshops) and a brief dip in the surprisingly icy Mediterranean.
Now, it’s post soundcheck in Zaragoza, and we’re at an outside table waiting for some grilled animal. I’m sipping a tinto de verano, suffering a bit from hay fever, but looking forward to rocking the tiny tiny Lata de Bombillas, enjoying seeing Sergio, aka the Posies’ best tour manager ever (better than me, even!) as he arranged this gig!
Love
KS
Zaragoza SPAIN
