I arrived in Honningsvag after my surreal day of travel from Macedonia, via Zagreb, Vienna, Oslo and Alta--and two and half hours drive from there, ever Northward, to Europe’s northernmost point, Mageroya Island, and its town of Honningsvag (there are a couple of villages further up island, but H-vag is the town of the region). At the top of Mageroya is North Cape, the Northern tip of Europe, at 71 deg. N and then some. The seas here used to eat ships for breakfast (a 16th century English expedition with three ships in search of a passage over the top of Asia, famously froze 2/3 of the crews to death and ice crushed the boats--the survivors sought mercy and found none on the frozen Russian coast, but a handful found a village and were able to travel by sleigh to Moscow, and presumably, find a heart-warming beverage or two). But in fact, the Gulf Stream here means that the sea doesn’t freeze, fish are abundant, and temperatures don’t fall as low as they do in the interior of Finnmark, where you can find Siberian extremes of fifty below (F or C, at those extremes it’s roughly the same). Here is was -4C, or about 25 deg F, and it didn’t even feel that cold.
I arrived at the hotel, and my driver, Ole, who is pretty strong dude, picked up my suitcases like they were match boxes and brought them in. His sister Ele, one of many helpers around this show that I was there to play, sat with me while I wolfed down a stew of reindeer and whale meat, and then handed me off to Carolyn, who has organized the U-Kultur 2009 event, and with whom I’ve been in contact with for months as we discussed the idea of me playing. Carolyn is Scottish, married to a local fella and now perfectly at home in the Arctic. Knowing that to make this show happen required a bone-crunching day of travel on my birthday no less, she arranged a little parry in my honor--a local nightclub, or the local nightclub I should say, was commandeered in my honor. Carolyn took me over and there were folks prepared to make me feel welcome--local dignitaries, pals, and students from the local cooking school, who had prepared hors d’oeuvres for all. I was given a bottle of bubbly and plunked myself down at a table of locals--mostly teachers, which is what Carolyn does for a living too, teaching English. I also was introduced to the members of Dallas-based bands
Downlo and
The Cast--who have most of their members in common--and singer Howard Hancox to the Cast and you mostly have Downlo. Clint Barlow, drummer for both bands, is now the owner of Trees in Dallas, the club where the Posies have played on Dallas stops in the past--it closed down in the 2005, not long after we did our last show there, having run afoul of bad business decisions. It sat dark for a couple of years, then in stepped Clint to take it over. He also plays drums for Vanilla Ice, how cool is that? Hey, that was actually a good unintended pun. Ice, cool. Well, we have been in the Arctic, so we think this way...
In Cast configuration, they did an impromptu mini acoustic set--Todd (who plays bass or guitar depending on the band), Nabil (who plays guitar in the cast and runs sound for Downlo) and Bryce (who plays guitar in both but is the main singer in the Cast) busted out a few of their tunes and a cover of ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’--these guys have impeccable, three part harmonies thru a lot their music. You can detect some hard rock influences--the heavy sounds and dropped-C tunings bring to mind Alice in Chains and that kind of post-metal, but with the harmonies and a more musically diverse program they are an evolution into something unique. Cool people, too.
Well, of course there was a cake, and I made a little speech, and it was great fun. Then the Cast/Downlo guys bought me a few shots, and then it was time to get outta there...hehe. I think it was closing anyway. I am such a lightweight, that a few shots means I can’t totally tell you if that was the case. But I do know that we went back to my room and drank some wine, and then I was able to crash at last.
HONNINGSVAG, 10/31
Let me tell you, 10am came *way* too soon. I didn’t have a hangover, no headache etc., but it seems that I had some seriously accelerated jet lag...my eyeballs were glued shut. The mission this afternoon was to head to the North Cape, and touch the top of Europe’s head. It’s about a half an hour drive to the other side of the island (people used to live there in greater numbers, but the introduction of a motorized fishing fleet mean that people could live further away from the fishing grounds, on the inside passage of island. Oh--I didn’t mention it but the island doesn’t feel like an island, since the coast is so jagged anyway it’s hard to tell what is and isn’t an island there, and you access Mageroya via a 3-mile long tunnel and never see the water you are going under. So, we drove up over the island’s moonscape and ended up at the visitor’s center at the tip of the island. It’s a big building with a restaurant, a movie presentation with a panoramic film of island life and scenery, and of course viewing decks where you can observe the point from behind glass. However, you gotta get out there and have a look, and that’s what we did, walking the 75 yards or so out the fence at the edge of the cliff. Now, we can describe a wind as howling, but that wouldn’t do this wind justice--it was bestial, roaring, terrifying. I would guess it was blowing about 80mph. Almost impossible to walk against...fun to let it push you around tho. It wasn’t so cold as you’d think, but the strength of the wind, shooting up thru deep cuts it had gouged in the rock that concentrated and directed the gusts--well, actually, the day was comprised of one continuous blast, not gusts--it left me dizzy after a few minutes of exposure. Unf. clouds had descended to our level, blocking out nearly all the view. You could see over the cliff’s edge, tho, down into a sea of pure black, about 600 feet below. To my amazement, a small fishing boat emerged out of the whiteout and chugged pleasantly along the vertical coastline, as if it wasn’t in the midst of nature’s full fury.
After we took in the sights we headed back to Honningsvåg, I was still jetlagging so hard that I fell asleep in the 30 minute drive back, and could barely open my eyes as I navigated back to my room in the hotel. The wind was moaning and beating on the building here, too. I shut the curtains and was in pure black. So tired I was, that I immediately went into REM sleep and embarked upon an elaborate dream, where wakefulness and dreaming were confused--sometimes I thought I was awake in my room, but with the lights on, people coming in and out and talking to me. Sometimes I was exploring our hotel, but it was enormous and labyrinthine, not the modest building I was actually sleeping in. This went on for what seemed like hours, and then I woke up, and looked at my phone to check the time. I had been asleep for ten minutes.
I went back to my nocturnal work in the daytime, until 5, when it was indeed night. We all assembled for soundcheck, which wasn’t much for me--I requested a different guitar than the one provided (a tele instead of a strat), dialed in a sound on the Line 6 amp which was cool cuz I could save it as a preset. The piano provided had two keys that didn’t work; they had another one there but they couldn’t find a power supply for it. Ok, done!
Next, we were taken to the home of Tonnelise and Alf Roger, who I had met at my birthday party the night before, for an incredible meal--boknafisk, and rypa, both of which had been fished/hunted by Alf Roger, and cooked to perfection by him too. A few of the folks from the night before were there, plus T&AR’s kids and their friends, and Pernille Sparboe (I produced Pernille’s brand new EP “Buzz” in Tromso earlier this year, check out her myspace
here). Boknafisk is cod that has been hung to dry and reconstituted by boiling it, but just right--you don’t want it to fall apart. Rypa is ptarmigan, and its flesh tastes a bit like liver, if you like that kind of thing, and I do. It’s just strong red meat, you’d never guess it was a bird if someone plopped a steak down on your plate. This was followed by local blueberries and cloudberries, and of course coffee, conversation, and wine, too. Great people and great company.
Afterwards, we walked over to the venue, which is a kind of community theatre, vintage 50s. You won’t find but one building here from before WWII--as the Germans pulled out of Finnmark to divert resources to the two fronts on the continent (tho’ Hitler had been convinced that the Allies invasion that manifested in the D Day Normandy landing was going to occur in Norway) they evacuated all the inhabitants and burned every single building in every single town to the ground. In Honningsvåg, only the church remained. And it’s here that the town’s inhabitants lived while they rebuilt. Honningsvåg wasn’t even supposed to *be* rebuilt--the government, in good socialist the-needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few efficiency, had decided to consolidate many of the towns and hamlets in Finnmark to further centralize services and administration. However, these were people’s recently destroyed homes we’re talking about, and they weren’t having it. They wanted to go back to the places they knew. And they did.
The building now has a kind of 50s gym vibe, but there’s a real stage. When I came back from dinner, local band Moilrock was ontage (tho it’s about the band’s ability to rock, too, “Moilrock’ is a local slang for ‘dirty’, nasty wind--dirty in the fact that if it’s not frozen, a strong wind can pick up loose topsoil and make a dusty mess. They are kind of a hard rock band, and somehow Todd from Downlo/the Cast ended up playing bass with them, including on songs he’d never heard before.
Then Pernille played, alone, with her acoustic. She has a stunning, incredible voice. Her thing is no frills--she plays her songs, sings, and chats a bit. Very natural and easy, and everyone loves it.
Next up was my deal, originally I was headlining but we all agreed that it was better to have the rock bands go last, plus the Downlo/Cast guys had been there all week doing workshops and different events, so they had really bonded with the locals, they earned the top spot.
I had to earn my stripes too, and since most of the crowd was seated at tables, I felt just hanging back onstage wasn’t really gonna do it, tho I opened with “110 or 220V” from the stage, I quickly abandoned the idea of a concert setting and hopped down to the crowd, and got them to stand up and join me. I finished at the piano with people all around me, on the stage, and off. I even did a solo version of “Oslo” knowing that people would know that song, and they did. Fun--and over in about 40 minutes. Prob. the shortest show I’ve done in a LONG time, maybe ever! But people loved it, the merch table is always a good sign and I sold about €275 in solo EPs, Disciplines t shirts and badges. Pernille’s freshly minted EP sold well too.
I had been pretty tired before the show with the jet lag but like in Macedonia two nights before I was energized by the performance and was happy to stay and watch Downlo and The Cast, who ended up doing acoustic sets with electric bass regular rock drums. I thought it was so good they should always play that way, it brings out the vocals in a great way. People loved them, and they are really charming, cool peeps, great singers, fantastic players. At the end there was demand for an encore so they had Pernille and I join them for an impromptu version of that Kings of Leon song that has “ooooWOAHooo--ooWOAHooo-oooo” in the back of the chorus...you’ve heard it, trust me....after show was done, and the attendees went home, all the musicians gathered upstairs in the trophy room (it’s a kind of football team HQ as well as a theatre, dance hall etc) where there was an incredibly groovy vintage Hammond console organ from the 70s), to drink a little wine, eat peanuts and meatballs, and joke around. Then...bedtime. Ahh,
I slept for ten hours, easily. Got up for breakfast and went back to bed for an hour or two, then Downlo/Cast/Carolyn/Pernille all went to lunch together, and then the Americans, Carolyn and Ole the driver from Friday headed to Alta, a drive that took 3 hours. It was a clear day, and in these latitudes in November the day is short but the twilight is really long, and gorgeous. But, also, I slept pretty much the whole drive--so we’re talking 15 hours of sleep that day. I needed it, but the short polar days also trigger that a bit too. Carolyn, having spent the week with the Americans and having already been friends with them from before, was tearful as she bade us farewell.
It’s a two-hour flight back to Oslo, and I had time to watch “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”, which has some of the funkiest art direction ever. We landed and claimed our bags, and then tried to sort out where to catch the shuttle to our hotel. Which turned out to be damned near impossible. The airport info people told us one thing, every bus driver we asked told us another, and it was impossible to get anyone from the hotel on the phone.
Finally we gave up, after searching all over the airport, and grabbed a cab, which turned out to be cheaper for the 7 of us to be in a van than individual shuttle fares. We got to the hotel and tho I had dined on a sandwich on the plane, I joined the guys for dinner and I consumed a small bottle of South African dessert wine, and then said my goodbyes, and watched “Big Man Japan” before going to bed (oh, and gave the two DVDs to the guys to watch on the flight home). All that concentrated sugar in the wine, the decompression of all these adventures, and the heat seeping in from the heated bathroom floor meant I had a little trouble sleeping--oh and the fact that I had spent half the day sleeping already! But I finally got a little sleep in, then was up at 5.30 to start my travel home.
Love
KS
SAS flt 835 to Paris
