This week has been ever so productive, spent in Larvik, working on new songs with The Disciplines. Larvik is the hometown of most of the band, and with a summer school break for Bjorn, this was the place to convene. Baard lives here year round. With all the connections the band has, it was easy to set up. Claus is living here now too. It’s true that he has retired from the band, and has taken an important position at Larvik’s gleaming new Culture House, which is opening this fall. So, Ralla is our man, and he came down from Oslo to work with us.
Larvik is small, and centered on its waterfront--they were wise enough to place the industrial harbor away from the center, so the main waterfront is for leisure, mostly. A ferry to Denmark leaves from one pier. But now running north-south along the water you go from a pleasant beer garden, to a tiny harbor for small craft, to a bit of park, to a pier for large boats (a three-masted schooner, the Thor Heyerdal, was anchored there at week’s end) to a pier with a restaurant on it; then the bay twists toward Stavern and on that part of the shore there is the Culture House, and brand new hotel and shopping center, and a stretch of sandy beach. Between the waterfront and the rest of town runs the railroad, and on the inside of the railroad is main street--and then the terrain rises rapidly and Larvik’s center is clinging to the slope. The town square is not level, it slides down the slope as well. So, main street and the center are two different things. North of the center along the shore is where I stayed, in the home of Claus’ best friend, Gunder Gundersen and his lovely little family. They were away on vacation so Ralla and I had run of the house, and then as the week progressed more and more people were assigned by powers unknown to me to crash there--a band was rehearsing there, with a singer, Lippie, from Paris (I had never heard of her or met her before but have since heard her music, and it’s very good). A brother and sister, both with hare krishna haircuts suddenly were crashing in the office. It was like being in the Jefferson Airplane’s house in 1967--without the sex or the drugs, naturlich. Luckily I had arrived on the scene before any of them and had grabbed a good room. Now, to put Larivk’s Mayberry-ness in plain view, Gunder lives in the former rectory of Larvik’s main church--there has been a church on that spot for about almost 500 years. Next door to Gunder--now will live Claus and his family. Next door to Claus--Claus’ parents. Amazing.
So, daily, Ralla and I used the bikes at Gunder’s to ride basically the length of Larvik’s Main Street, along the waterfront and the railway, to the Musikhuset, where there is a venue, more or less out of use, and places for bands to rehearse. We had the mainstage to ourselves, and Claus’ drums and the bands’ gear to play on. Instead of using the main PA, we simply plugged the out put of a wireless mic receiver directly into a powered monitor; bridged that monitor to another, and another and another. So only my vocals were amplified, and it sounded just fine. We set up on the stage (the drums on a carpet borrowed from Baard’s mom) sort of facing inwards in a rectangle, and the floor of the venue was used for me to pace around in. There was a beat up old piano for me to do vocal warmups, although before Gunder’s house filled up I would do warmups on his piano.
On the way to rehearsal I would stop off at Pakkhuset, the restaurant on the pier, and have an espresso--there was better cafe available in the center, but the ride uphill is really punishing so...I accepted lower quality for less effort. All in all, it took about 5 minutes to ride from Gunder’s to the Musikhuset. We worked on getting Ralla up to speed with the 3 new songs we’d worked up with Claus (which we debuted in Larvik earlier this year) and managed to write 6 new ones. The last song of the batch, which is not quite finished, is a monster hit, and we have some really amazing new songs. At one point, Baard had to run up to Oslo, so we were done in the afternoon; I borrowed a guitar from Bjorn and that evening wrote a song in literally 5 minutes that’s like Elvis Costello meets the GoGos. Awesome. What I truly believe is the best song in our arsenal was written on the last day, when we were feeling like we had squeezed the goose for all her eggs, and I was starting to feel concern that long days of singing were going to have an adverse effect on the show the next day. Bjorn pulled out a couple of loose ends, I made a rhythmic suggestion and in ten minutes we had this monster chorus and groove, like the Strokes on steroids. Unf. we haven’t played it live yet, the lyrics are incomplete but close. I think we’ll be able to debut it in September for our Swedish shows.
The days alternated in a ping pong match of awesome displays of nature’s fickle sentiment--one day we would be donning rain gear as streets flooded and lightning blasted the landscape--the next we would be shirtless and sweating in glorious sun. But the thermometer didn’t get too much of a workout--and I did not envy my Seattle friends enduring triple-digit temperatures.
Most nights I crashed straight after we were done; although the night that the extra French and Norwegian house guests arrived we all had an introductory drink at the waterside beer garden just 2 minutes’ walk from the house. I watched my DVDs of Reinlykke (Reindeer Charm), a superb series that follows a family of Sami reindeer herders for a year in the far north of Norway. Randomly, Ralla & I watched the Godfather Part II, which you know, is really, really good. I think I prefer it to the first in the series.
My responsibility was to make sure that Gunder’s daughter’s pet rabbit was fed, had its litter box changed and had water. A floppy, long-eared lop. Leaving a Frenchman in charge of a fat...delicious....rabbit...mmmmm. Super bad idea.
LARVIK, 7/31
I slept in to rest my voice and went down to the space at about noon. Our mugs were in the local paper, we had a good preview for the show (evidently there was a good review in the print version, I haven’t seen it yet). We ran thru the entire set, me singing at about 25% of full voice and avoiding high notes. Then I went back to the house, where Lippie and the band were rehearsing--piano, acoustic guitar, djembe, and multilayered vocal harmonies. I took a nap, it was actually good music for daydreamers. Then I headed to venue, walking up the hill to Cafe Passagen, which is beyond and above the town square by half a block. The Cafe exists as a patio, a courtyard, hemmed in by other businesses. You enter a passage at either end of the courtyard and you’ll find a few tables out in the open air inside a the walls. The interior portion of the cafe has two floors--one with the counter for ordering coffee, cake, ice cream, and simple foods; and then upstairs is a room with tables and a tiny bar in the corner. A very friendly woman named Hege is running the place. It’s a sunny, pleasant place, and it’s amazing she puts on serious rock shows--a small stage sits under an arch at one end of the patio--she even had a black metal band play recently. Electronica, hip hop, it’s all welcome. For the shows, one entrance of the passage, that enters behind the stage area, is closed with a gate. A stand for selling drinks and barbecue is set up, the tables and chairs are put away, and a PA is brought in. When I arrived, the band was playing ‘Gonna Get Worse’ one of the new songs. I hopped up and was able to finish it, and we ran thru more tunes. The sound onstage was excellent. We were fed, and then I went again back to the house to rest. When I returned a little while before the show, the place was filling up. We pushed back our start time, and I ironed Ralla’s shirt for him...while doing so, a journalist from OP came to talk to us for some quotes she could use in the review. OP had suffered a SNAFU that day--the morning edition, that we were in, went to bed the night before just as a major story was breaking--a ship ran aground in the area and spilled 1000 tonnes of oil near a natural seabird nesting habitat--and thus the big papers were able to break the news and OP lost out on a slam-dunk scoop. So our reporter was reviewing our show *and* returning to the accident scene *and* writing the pieces all before 11.30 when they start to lay out the next day’s edition.
Meanwhile, I prepared by careful, managed use of the Hege’s newfangled wine glass pouring machine--a rectangle refrigerated glass case that displays half a dozen upright wine bottles au choix. A nozzle brings wine out into the world from each bottle--in the meantime the machine maintains a level invisible cloud of argon gas on top of the wine, which means a bottle can stay open for weeks and still be fresh. It works for light, unpretentious wines and she had some nice French whites and a very good Crozes-Hermitage rouge amongst the selections. Below each nozzle are three buttons--one for a taste portion, one for a small glass and one for a large glass (most bars in Norway have two amounts that can be poured for wine that you can choose depending on your budget and thirst). You put a key card in that had credits on it--and Hege trusted me with it. I could have easily, in earlier times of my life, emptied that machine like it was a big, expensive shot glass. But I was a cheap date. Eyes on the prize on show day. Esp. since I knew I would be up early the next morning and have another show...and that combo cost me my voice in May.
The show was excellent. Amazing. We were simply on fire, and the small dimensions of the stage were so easy to work with....the uneven terrain of the patio was good for comic acrobatics, and I even ran into the cafe a few times--literally, once. The new songs were already woven in seamlessly--except that in many ways they are better songs...my voice was i perfect condition, and I made good jokes (best of the night: in the band introductions, since Baard lives in Larvik and is everyone’s buddy, he got way more applause than Bjorn. I played it as: “well, I can see which one of you has been using more effective birth control methods” as if Baard’s fanbase were illegitimate kids! Heavy!). People were eating that shit up like cottan candy made out of crack.
After the show Claus had nothing but praise for the band’s development, and Ralla’s addition in particular. And Ralla is ridiculously good. I hope we can keep him entertained enough to stick around. I think we can...and I think these new songs are gonna make us rich. I was Cpt. Sensible, I had one glass of wine and went back to the house and slept, because....
USKEDALEN, 8/1
...at 5.45 my alarm went off. I felt great. The sun was out already, it was already a radiant birdsong-y morning. I showered up, breakfasted on Leverpostei and knackebrod, and did my best to wake up Ralla. God knows when he got in. We uploaded the maxi taxi with all his stuff, then finally beat him with a stick and threw him the van. 8am flight to Bergen, and then Daidalos, the festival organizer, met us at Bergen airport, and gave me some dough for our twenty minute taxi ride into the countryside. We were dropped off at a small quay deep up some fjord and we boarded a small boat that took us (and a Finnish fan, Anna, who came to see these shows and was on our flight) on a 90-minute trip to Rosendal, a small hamlet between Bergen and Haugesund. The hotel had its own quay, and we disembarked and I went back to bed. Perfect.
I emerged only when it was dinner time. A van came and took us to restaurant about 15 minutes from the hotel, and brought us back to the hotel, waited for us for the 40 minutes’ downtime, and took us to the festival grounds which were, in fact, back by the restaurant. A big stage stuck on a paddock somewhere in farmland. Pretty full on production. We arrived, and it wasn’t long before we were setting up and suddenly, we were ripping in to it. The stage was about 9 feet high, and the audience seemed pretty far away. Plus, they were beering up in advance of headliners, so we really had to work hard, much harder than in Larvik. Getting down to the audience was quite a feat, there was a flight case I could use as a step, but everything was covered with plastic fabric...but I made it down and was able to jump around in the mud with the kids. So, in fact it was working. I think we were great, but, it wasn’t ‘our’ show, the night really belonged to Kaizers, and in fact they are really amazing live.
This morning at 7.30 when the car was waiting to take us to Bergen, a 2.5-hour drive, I had to get a key from the front desk and bust into Ralla’s room and literally pour him into his shoes. Very funny stuff! Then flew home. Paris is marvelous in August--empty streets, no traffic. Ahhhhhh. Vacation time is upon me, purely and solely.
Love
KS
Paris
