Back through Germany

So we've only got one show left on this epic journey.  We play Nijmegen in Holland tonight.  The last two nights of shows in Germany have really been something special.  Definitely two of my favorite nights on the tour.  Good folks have really made the experience.  I really can't even express it.

This is a very different life from the one I normally live.  And its tempting to give it all up for the road.  I dunno.  I can't write it all down right now.  There's lots going through my head.

Switzerland

The days and shows in Switzerland were all sort of interesting.  I think tour really set in a bit and I started missing a lot of things.  As a result I don't think I played quite as well as I had.  Its weird how the first thing I really started missing was my roommate's dog, Diesel.

The first show was in Geneva and I had really high hopes.  There were some misunderstandings at some point and I wound up with a short unplugged set sitting up on the bar.  I screamed my heart out to be heard and heard some positive reviews but it was the first set I played that I really struggled to draw positives from.  We played with Born To Lose and Pipes and Pints who were both really solid bands.  Also played again with our good friend Greg Laraigne and his band once again.

The next day we drove to the Huttwil area and immediately went exploring in some caves and were fed with the most delicious BBQ I've had in a long while.  The venue was totally empty until just before Greg Laraigne played the opening set and then it filled up with lots and lots of really drunk people.  My set went well and the Tim Vantol set was just an absurdly drunken endeavor.  The crowd was just stumbling over itself.  They seemed to be enjoying themselves, but I wasn't really into it in my sobriety.

Last night we played in Lenzburg which is one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in.  There's a castle on the top of a big hill in the middle of the town.  We also got a 4 star hotel somehow.  Three of us ran up to the castle which was awesome and I continued a run off into the Swiss hills and woods.  Despite how much I enjoy the company of my tour buddies, it was nice to get away on my own off into the woods.

The show was in this pub owned by a couple of Scottish brothers.  The night got a bit out of control.  That's all there is to say about that.  ....well, not entirely.  There was a guitar sold to some Swiss guy.  There was some video footage that no one will ever see.  There was some head shaving.  Tim played a gazillion encores.  Good times.

Montpelier and Chambery (and cockroaches)

We arrived at the venue in Montpellier to hospitality and an awesome bar.  The stage was in the basement and it was TINY.  Probably the smallest room I've ever seen a band play in.  It was the type of venue where it would feel full if there were 15 people there.  Our meal consisted of pizza from down the street but when we looked closer there were cockroaches running across our pizza boxes.  It turned out the entire venue was infested with them.  We had to look through all of our gear when we packed up and knock off cockroaches.  Once again we were put up by lovely folks who gave us food and coffee in the morning.  And we headed out for Chambery...

The venue was one of the best we've played.  The other acts were Greg Doh and Greg Laraigne (with his band).  Both of these guys are awesome and if you haven't heard of them you should check them out. They're both based in Geneva and write good, heartfelt songs.  The show went well and we had great conversation with a tattoo artist from NYC named Joy.  She told us all about suspending herself on hooks and all sorts of other interesting stuff.

Chambery also happened to have some of the most beautiful mountains surrounding it I've ever seen.  But thats become somewhat of a pattern in the days that have followed Chambery

Paris ad Toulouse

God I'm tired.  We were awake till 5am hanging out with some of the many pretty French girls.  Toulouse is an incredibly beautiful city, both the city itself and the lovely women here.  But let me tell the story in order.

Two days ago we played in Paris.  We played a small club called Cafe Rigoletto.  One of my best friends in the world, Lei, travelled all the way from Wales to come see us.  I felt so grateful to play in front of her and for the dedication she showed to our friendship to travel all the way to Paris with her son.  The show was a bit rocky, but we made the best of it and slept well that night recovering from the ridiculousness of Rock Im Kabuff.  Then we woke up early to make the long drive to Toulouse.  We got here late, soundchecked and played well.  My set was well received and the band's set was probably our tightest yet.  Then we hit the town with our friend Greg.

We witnessed bouncers pepper spray and then beat the shit out of some kid.  They had him on the ground and were pounding him with the pepper spray can and then one of them kicked him in the head with heavy boots.  What he could have done to deserve getting kicked in the head like that I have no idea.  I'd rather assume that the bouncers were sociopaths who took the excuse to beat some kid down because they were bored.  It was a really intense experience.

We wound up spending lots of time with these girls, one of whom had gotten some pepper spray in her eyes and spent the whole evening wiping her eyes out.  Asshole bouncers.  Another one of the girls gave Justin a tap on the junk that left him almost in tears.  Funny.  We wound up back at Greg's place and were up super late having our usual brand of ridiculous conversation and shenanigans.

Anyways, we woke up all feeling tired as all hell.  And thats about where we stand right now.  I'm going to nod off and try to be in a more energetic state for the show tonight.

Rock Am Kabuff

There is no way to put last night into full sentences:  Two human pyramids (the bottom sucks).  River swimming.  Duct tape soccer.  Stealing duct tape back when Ms. Buzzkill takes duct tape away.  Continuing to play duct tape soccer.  Skinny dipping in a random pool at 2am.  Tourmanager trying to jump the fence while naked and falling on his face.  Crashing a party with a bunch of folks over 50 and only agreeing to leave in exchange for a bottle of wine.  Trading a beer for a bracelet and then for exchanging the bracelet for a watch.  Duct taping a drunk guy who got on our nerves.  Picking Tourmanager up and throwing him over a fence.  More two person summersaults (Justin plus Matt = success!).  Girl offering to sew a hole in our pants.  Girl sewing hole in pants.  Tim stagedives and then gets dropped... hard.  Tim asks crowd to do a human centipede (look it up).  Holding off The Situation away from the mic so he can't sing along.   Nice kids booking us on a show and then showing us lots of respect.

The Anal Triangle

The tour is officially underway.  We played Aarschot, Belgium last night at a ridiculously awesome venue.  There were automatic dispensers that sold exclusively the following items: drum sticks, guitar strings, and condoms.  I was flabbergasted.  It's a publicly run youth center named De Klinker that has practice space for bands and two stages and a skate park.  We spent the pre-show period backstage watching Bear Grylls and nursing a bottle of Jameson.  There were also attempts to do a two person summersault, but thats all I'm going to say about that.  Other than the fact that Mark and I were the only successful team.  It left me feeling cheap and used.

We then spent the night in a cheeeeaaaaapp hotel.  Everything seemed to be automated: showers, toilets, breakfast.  I felt like I was living in a machine.  Not that it wasn't nice to have a clean bed and breakfast and coffee ready when I woke up.

The anal triangle refers to three towns in Belgium that seem to have reference to butts.  Few have ever left alive.  It is suspected that they simply never reemerged from the depths.  Luckily we did not suffer the same fate.

And lastly, Tha List (aka El Listo).  Its our bucket list for the tour.  Most of it will remain a tour secret, but I will reveal one goal for the trip: to be accepted into a pack of animals.  We don't fuck around.

Alright, for real this time.

So the last days have been spent in Wegberg, Germany.  We've been practicing, making fun of Bon Jovi and Bear Grylls, getting to know each other, and living it up.  Last night was the first show of the tour in the Tsunami Club in Cologne.  It was fucking amazing to say the least.

I got a really solid reaction to my solo set.  Then the Tim Vantol Band somehow coalesced and became formidable after only a couple days of rehearsals.  To say we rocked would be a serious understatement.

I'd really like to make this more entertaining and have some great stories and shit.  But for now my enthusiasm is the best I can do.

First show

Oh my fucking god.  That is all.

Practice and what not

In a bit of a time crunch.  We've got our first show tonight.  These guys are awesome and we've all hit it off well.  We had our first practice yesterday and it rocked.  Real smooth transition into a band.  I'll write more soon when I get my laptop all sorted out.

Berlin

So I'm getting things started over in Berlin with my old friend Jan.  The trip over included lots of really bad airplane sleep, a couple hours with my friend John Paul in Boston (where a guy kept staring at him while having conversations with a stuffed toy), a couple hours in Zurich, a distinctly average romantic comedy (No Strings Attached), a lost (forgotten) book (the only one I brought), lugging a 50 pound instrument through 4 different cities, and being thrown back into speaking German after 13 years.  Definitely a good start.

The most notable incident involved me taking my pedal steel off the conveyer belt only to find the case OPEN and the whole thing wrapped in about 5 pounds of duct tape.  Granted, they had to ensure that the case wasn't full of illegal stuff, and it was packed pretty full.  But they clearly were opening a really delicate instrument and the case had obviously been closed when they received it.  So obviously it was capable of being closed.  So they took the most expensive thing I own and left the fucking case open and just covered it in duct tape while it travelled in cargo holds across the ocean.  I was pretty fucking pissed needless to say.

I slept 12.5 hours last night I feel tired, sick, and really really really excited for the weeks to come.  (There's also a German rap song on the radio that came out when I lived here in like 95).

Tour: pre-departure

So I'm currently packing in preparation for this tour.  For anyone who doesn't know, I'll be heading across the pond for a European tour.  Its my first tour as a solo artist, but I'll also be playing in Tim Vantol's tour band.  I'll be keeping this blog as I experience all the different types of ridiculousness that will transpire.

My current headspace is conflicted on a few levels.  I've had some recent disappointments in my personal life and I'm definitely looking to the tour as a means to get away from them.  I'm also conflicted about the ethics of it all.  In order to finance the tour, I'll be selling CDs and Tshirts.  But I'm also pretty idealistic about living with a degree of humility and selling Tshirts with my name on them doesn't really appeal to me as a result.  That being said, I probably wouldn't be able to do this if I didn't have a bunch of merch to hawk.  So self-interest trumps ethics I suppose.  Isn't that the way it always is?  Its fine, I'll just blog about it so the world at least knows I'm conflicted about it.  That'll absolve me.

I'm also trying to figure out whether or not I intend to drink on it.  I know what half of you are thinking: "its fuckin tour, idiot!".  But I've really been feeling like alcohol is holding me back in some ways; a recent period of sobriety was one of the best times in my life.  Then a girl wandered into my life and sent my head into turmoil and I got away from that sobriety.  And now the debate rages.  Definitely falling on the side of sobriety at this point.  But who's to say really?  This debate has been a constant in my head for a decade or so.  Sure makes it less fun to drink.

Anyways.  I'm going on tour and its gonna be ridiculous.  Keep up with the shenanigans here.

"Yes, I DO think you're fat!"

0.3% of women look like supermodels.  And yet, models occupy the cover of nearly every “lifestyle” magazine along with newest fad diet or workout routine the purports to help you, the consumer, achieve that level of beauty.  Assuming for a minute (unjustifiably) that women who occupy magazine covers actually qualify as universally beautiful, it seems statistically improbable that only those women would wind up on magazines without some underlying cause.  That cause of course, is that it sells; more specifically, it sells to women (of course, images of beautiful women sell to men as well, but for the time being we’ll focus marketing oriented towards women).  

A quick visit to “Women’s Health Magazine” (ongoing sneer quotes) has links to how to “Unleash Your Hottest Body”, as well as the “Deadline Diet” and the “Fat-frying Workout”.  Accompanying all of these titles are images of women that occupy the aforementioned 0.3%.  Now clearly the women in these images aren’t the ones who the articles are written for, so why are their images chaperoning a diet or workout article?  The answer, I would argue, is that these images make women feel like shit about themselves.  They’re intended to make the 99.7% of women who don’t look like supermodels (read: target market) insecure and spend their hard-earned money to get the new secrets to beauty (which don’t exist).  Making people feel unattractive is a massive business, and I feel deep down that its diabolically evil.  Imagine what people would think of me if I went around pointing out women’s love handles and cellulite.  Furthermore, imagine what people would think of me if I made money off of it.  This might sound like an unfair comparison, but I would argue that this is exactly what “Women’s Health Magazine” is doing in putting images of incredibly thin women next to fad diets and workouts.  
Now, these magazines come out monthly (or weekly, or biweekly) with new secrets to health and beauty every time.  Meanwhile our species hasn’t changed significantly in many millennia and yet every couple of weeks or so there are new “miracle ” diets and workouts advertised in supermarket check out lines.  So lets recap: our bodies haven’t changed since well before the invention of paper, and yet people make millions of dollars telling other people new and improved ways to be healthy, ad infinitum.  Sooner or later you’d think people would have a pretty decent idea how to be healthy and not need to buy a magazine to tell them how to do it.  Well, of course, they do they just don’t like the answer.  
Clearly, “Women’s Health Magazine” doesn’t have any interest in making the other 99.7% of women look like supermodels, because they would go out of business.  They have an interest in giving their readers the impression that the magazine is a vital part of their health goals.  Part of that includes distorting those health goals to the point of being unreasonable, as the worse someone feels about themselves, the more likely they are to buy magazines that claim to have the answers.  Its also worth noting that the same ruse exists in Men’s Health magazines (“1000 Sex Secrets to Please Your Girl!”, “8 Pack Abs in 8 Minutes!”).  
Another good example of this phenomenon is in hair loss commercials.  Not only do they all claim to have a (likely fallacious) solution to a man’s receding hair line, but they all include before and after images that show how much more handsome a man has become since using their product.  Implied in the whole farce is that men are less attractive without hair and that hair loss is something to fight.  Again, the intent is to make people feel like shit about themselves in order to motivate them to buy a product; these companies are actively working to make people feel worse about themselves in order to make a profit.  Ultimately, the only fail-safe way to treat hair loss is accepting it and perhaps finding a suitable hair cut (specifically not the ponytail).  
In conclusion: they’re assholes so don’t buy their crap.