Ken Stringfellow

You know, it’s always that thing, trying to absorb the last days of vacation, as if your eyes could see more, your face could take more sun and more breeze. It is what it is. The last week I spent on Ile de Re was stormy, in an up and down sort of way. The days would begin grim and end glorious, or vice versa. I managed to get a swim in every day, however. The last day I was there I biked down to the village to do my morning shopping, with sunglasses on. Before I’d sat down for my cafe, the clouds zoomed in and exploded, and by the time I was riding home, it was sunny again, and I was soaked, but warm.

Aden & I went out after dinner when a storm was blowing mist around, she was scared to approach the beach at dusk when the storm was whipping around…”It’s just nature”, I told her. As we stood watching the sea, a heron, completely in silhouette, descended on the edge of the exposed rocks before the surf. “That’s nature, cheri. It’s like the movies and songs but much more powerful.”

On the last day in town I managed to jab my hand with the oyster knife and it went thru the glove’s rubber pad, argh. Now, as a lefty, I’m at a disadvantage–it seems that an oyster turns itself clockwise, and thus, holding it in your left hand would be the best approach. I saw online that there are steel mesh oyster gloves….for $300!!! I mean, I love oysters, but…I could hire an on-staff shucker for that price. Evidently there’s one born every minute, how much can they be worth?

In the last week the island’s blackberries became mature, which meant I was either climbing geography to get them, or letting the local produce gardens do the heavy lifting. Melons are another regional specialty, I guess Americans would call them cantaloupe, but they’re not the same species as their N. American cousin. And, to be honest, the local variety are so much more fragrant and rich. Wow. Slap some jambon de Vendee on that and you’ve got my attention. Other island specialties are haricots verts, what we yankees grew up calling string beans; and an astonishing variety of lettuces, many forms and colors and all very very good. I also indulged my passion for figs (see also: the Posies album cover), tho these came from Spain. There are lots of fig trees in the village, but I have never seen them produce anything more than green bulbs.

Fish variety is of course excellent, amazing quality–from fat sardines to athletic looking bar (a kind of sea bass), to Gilt head bream (what the French call a Dorade Royale) to all the amazing plaice/turbot and related bottom flat fellas. The village has an amazing fish monger, not in the market but they have their own solid shop, Chez Manu. The second to last day I was there, a tiny, barely ambulatory woman came in and bought €100 worth of live lobsters (i.e., 7 or 8 of them) AND a pile of chipirons, the small squids. That’s an ambitious program–better have a lot of counter space, some big pots and pans, and an ample set of burners. Ahem.

Well, the last day came. Oysters were eaten (with a vengeance, after my hand stabbing incident). I swam in the ocean, even tho the sun was out the waves were pretty big and a little scary, but I had to do it. I’m no fool tho–if there hadn’t been another hardcore out there I would never have chanced it.

We had the last dinner at the house, and I was so sad, I could hardly eat. Aden and I took a last walk on the beach, where we had spent so much time smashing all the sandcastles built every day, as if we owned that beach, and at that time, we might as well have.

The taxi took us to La Rochelle, the train took us to Paris. Aden was very well behaved throughout, making the long journey as pleasant it could be–the journey that takes us away from weeks spent together 24 hours a day, playing in work-free joy in a magical, wild place. Aden and I really stick like glue in these times, and of course with a kid, you can’t hold that moment, she’s only six once, and will never see the world like that again. Aden’s insights and humor are always growing, but it’s fun to see her guess around the corners of her the work in progress that is her acquisition of knowledge.

Incredibly there was no waiting for taxis at the station in Paris, and I lucked out–I had *exactly* the fare and a small tip, without having to bum the cabbie out by producing a €50 note. I got the suitcase upstairs, ugh. Dom was still hours away from coming home, still onsite at the first night of the Rock En Seine festival, where she is the director of all the VIP accreditation–she has Paris by the dangly bits, in other words. I immediately had work to do–uploading huge files that are the high-res versions of my demos for the Posies album, to be used as bonus tracks by the label. They were waiting up for them in New York, and it took a couple of hours for me to upload them. They were just finishing when Dom got home at 3am, and of course, Aden had stayed up to see her too.

We were up the next morning at 8, to get Dom to work, and we got Aden half dressed and downstairs so we could break fast at the cafe. We said goodbye to Dom at 9.30, and in the 30 minutes I had before a UK phone interview, I managed, with Aden in tow, to pick up a package at the post office, shop for groceries, buy a newspaper, and pick up my dry cleaning.

After the interview I had to dive in to work, but it’s always so daunting, I never know where to begin on that front. It’s never efficient on those first days, too big a list to know where to start.

And that afternoon, Aden & I took the metro 27 stops to the end of the line, to the site of festival Rock En Seine, one of the biggest in France and certainly the biggest in the Paris region. It’s quite mainstream, so the lineup is not really my thing but it’s a great opportunity to hang a bit (the schmoozing sucked tho), I had a few friends there, and luckily Beth & Ed and their son Soren, who’d already been hanging with me on Ile de Re, were in town for another day. Being that French society is structured with the family always in mind, Rock En Scene has an amazing kids area called “Mini Rock” so you can drop the young uns there and enjoy the festival. It’s very well run, very safe, it’s off a bit from the noise (they run this service–for free–until 1am, by which time it’s storytelling in big tent, really cool) etc. Aden was there til she got tired around 7, we sent her back with her babysitter; Soren was there til we all left the festival. Now, as I said, most of the music that day was kinda….enh. Queens of the Stone Age, what I saw of them, were really good. I watched a bit of Martina Topley Bird, who was bravely minimal on a rather big stage, that was cool. On our way to retrieve Soren, Jello Biafra was taking his band thru a thoroughly authentic version of “Let’s Lynch the Landlord”. I had to leave soon after the one act I wanted to see, 2ManyDJs, started, but they seemed to be doing their job, the crowd was bobbing for all the apples thrown their way.

I went back on the metro with Beth/Ed/Soren, said goodbye on Line 1, and went to say hi to the Cambodian Space Project, playing at a little bar near Hotel de Ville; I missed their set but it was nice to see them, they were heading back to Cambodia the next day. I took a velib home, Dom was already back, and hit the sack.

Sunday morning now, I have to dive into mixing the rest of the Hannah Gillespie album, WAY overdue. Listening to album I recorded by Hanggai in Beijing this year, which comes out in September…wow. They’re actually playing in Holland tonite. Arcade Fire are headlining Rock En Seine tonite, but I just can’t muster the strength to go across town an hour each way again, just to see a band, even tho their crew is made up of many REM alumni. No sitter. Work to do.

Onward.

Love
KS
Paris

The storm that was promised for Monday arrived last night. We had dined under the stars last night, and I had been admiring a clear view of the night sky’s true cosmic clutter. 

At some unknown hour deep in the grip of darkness, the wind came up, and in fact shook the house and played an eerie, violent tune on the front gate. Deep, menacing, magnificent sub-bass thunder rolled, and the flashbulbs of God’s own paparazzi were covering the premiere.

As soon as I could see a crack of light above the closed shutters, I got up to open the house and watch the storm. Lightning arc’d and thunder went ever deeper in octave.

After breakfast, the rain stopped, and we went to the beach to survey the state of the morning; the wind had long since quieted down, so on the beach it was quite pleasant. The clouds twisted above, and over La Rochelle we could still observe lightning, a War of the Worlds spectacle, and not clear yet that the puny human race could prevail against such a shock.

The storm moved on, tho, and the walk to the village this morning was peaceful. Some of the tamaris in the park next door had been snapped in half in the night; all the plants had been slapped around enough that their herbal scents were rich in the air–yew, lavander, and so on.

This week I beat down the remnants of my summer cold, but canceled my tennis match just to give my scorched lungs a chance to recover. The summer finally delivered up some hot weather worthy of the season and I was on the beach every afternoon or morning, depending on the slow creep of high tide’s zenith.

I love the morning swims, when there’s hardly anyone around, the water seems warm, unconcerned, goalless. I’m happy to impose my attitudes upon it. I strike out for the moored Zodiac and the small fishing boat that live in our bay, each stroke of my arm in defiance of the fact that the opaque water, open to far ends of the earth and all its Here Be Monsters, gives me the total heebie jeebies.

Now in my 7th summer on the island, the villagers finally acknowledge me as local enough–I merit a ‘bonjour’ and even the occasional handshake now and then from the local merchants.

Tuesday morning I ventured off island, to pass the day with The Cambodian Space Project, an dynamic collective of citizens Australian, Cambodian, and French (to name a few), who revive the sound of swinging psychedelic Phnom Penh, i.e., where pop music in that country left off before things went very, very dark. Julian, my contact in the band, is a multi-talent from Tasmania who has been focused on Cambodia for the last few years. He heard singer Srey Thy in a bar and persuaded her to lend her talents to the music they both loved–vintage Cambodian rock. In addition to original songs of the period, and her own compositions, many of the American and European hits of the 60s and 70s were recorded by local artists, rewritten with Khmer lyrics by one of the premier artists of the era, and evidently the revamped lyrics are poetry indeed.

We spent the day in a garage, with my laptop, one mic, and their portable backline, and worked out a great, bluesy song which was a recap of Thy’s tribulations in getting a visa, and her experiences in what was her first time in Europe–only her second time out of the country (the band played Hong Kong earlier this year). Our hosts were old family friends of the Frenchman in the band, Gaetan, who plays accordion. The papa of the family makes his own pineau (the sweet fortified wine native to the region) and we had a nice apero before they shuttled me back to the island late that nite.

In the second half of the week, I welcomed what’s become an annual pilgrimage to the region for the family of Beth, Ed and Soren–Les Americains de Chicago–Ed you’d know as a founding father of Urge Overkill, Beth is his missus and manages the band to this day (as well having her own career in entertainment), and Soren is their 7-yr-old son; I think this is the third year in a row we’ve seen each other in France, the second on Ile de Re. We spent a couple of days dining, out or at my place, and hanging at the beach closest to my place. They had a super futuristic folding bike, and there was a hilarious scene when I got them on the bus to the train station, knowing the bus frowns upon taking bikes, as we duct taped garbage bags around the collapsed form of the bike. It was fun to speak some American for a couple of days, although it must be said the Beth speaks French quite well and Soren has been in a French school and speaks quite well too…

The sun came out this afternoon, and by the time the tide came up, it was fine for swimming, we got out there and Aden & I swam; Dom had to keep an eye on the clock before heading back to Paris tonite. Sad to see her go, and I will follow soon. Aden & I took in the Guignol performance in the village square tonite…I’ll be focusing on enjoying all that being totally idle means.

Love
KS

La Noue, FRANCE

I’ve been installed on Ile de Re now for two glorious weeks, most of which has been with the whole family, although Dom’s work obligations have called her back to Paris as well. I’ve played tennis in the blazing sun (and not particularly well, unfortunately), caught up on my movie watching (including a re-viewing of the note-perfect Let the Right One In, which is as much about the worst period of my life, being a pre-teen c.1980, as it is about a vampire forever in need of human companionship, locked since who knows when as a 12-year old). I introduced Aden to the magic of “Le Frisbee”. Somehow, I managed to contract some kind of weird summer cold, I think my tennis partner might be the source, he and his wife and their kids had colds, and after an afternoon of tennis playing (plus transportation in their itty bitty Merc) was when I came down with the symptoms–at first I couldn’t get warm, standing under a hot shower for half an hour did nothing but make me afraid of getting out. I had that weird, psychedelic feeling that a fever brings. In subsequent nights, I exploded with sweat deep in the silent heart of the night. A small cough kicked up, and that matches the progression of symptoms in my friends so…

But today I felt better cough notwithstanding and the sea behind our house was as tranquil as a glass of wine so in I went this morning at 10, knowing that clouds are on their way later in the day.

Despite the de-plugged nature of this vacation period, there has been a lot of activity on the Posies front–I’ve been doing lots of interviews for the press in the USA and UK, and our record release show in Brooklyn sold out 2 hours after going onsale Friday. I’ve heard from a couple of journalist friends of mine in various countries that they are giving the album strongly positive reviews. The dates for our North American tour are filling in well, and we should be ready to begin announcing them soon. Tho’ it’s the summer doldrums in Europe, we’re starting to move some tix for the European tour, esp. in Helsinki, which looks to be heading to a near sellout.

I’m tanned, and lean–although I put on about 5lbs since I arrived here, it appears to be all muscle–it doesn’t take long before the daily swimming I do starts to show up as defined pectorals. I am not a guy that puts muscle mass on my arms, so they’re still scrawny, like a chicken that looks too sick to be good eatin’. The only downside to my eat a lot, drink a lot, do a lot program is that you can’t stop for even one day–thus, on the day I was mostly in bed sick, I was obligated to do crunches in the mid-triple digits.

Food is the centerpiece of each day, I head out in the morning to peruse the marché and see what’s good–it can be vanets, which are small scallops; various freshly caught fish; fresh figs from Spain, local tomatoes, etc. Of course we’ve been tasting wine at every step. Too numerous to mention, and I don’t want to make my favorites so popular the price goes up. But I will mention each year Le Gouverneur, the local red which is a blend of who knows what, since you can taste in each drop the brackish terroir of this island, always in danger of inundation. This year the 2007 is in the stores, priced about five bucks, and totally enjoyable. They make a more expensive wine here, L’Ultimium, which I’ve tried and isn’t worth the €20 they charge for it this year (or the €12 they charged for it last year), and they make some cheap cheap stuff too. Unf., you can forget the rest except in emergencies, but Le Gouverneur is a fine daily quaff. Check out Ile de Re’s wine co-op here.

It’s siesta time sur l’ile. And I have the right, the time, and the inclination. Bye now.

Love
KS

La Noue, FRANCE

I’ve said it before, I’m sure, in these non-turning pages, and I’m sure I’ll remark upon it again and again in years to come–if I were to art direct my vision of the hereafter, it would hardly differ in any fashion from Ile de Re. With air of such purity that surely would benefit the respiration of the gods, golden light bathing everything in an end-of-film wash of apricot and honey tones…and all the ambrosiae that would end up on an Olympian’s menu–elemental and ancient–vines heavy with grapes, seas heaving with fish and crabs, and of course a true food of the gods–caramel de fleur de sel de L’ile de Re. I sleep late and go to bed early. My last activity is usually an after dinner digestive amble to the beach behind our house, to watch lava-colored water surge gently over the form of the ancient weir that encircles a football field-sized enclosure. My first activity as well is often to stroll out to the same beach before the earth has decided in which activities to engage, the waves not yet moving, the sun not yet searing. By day the air is trafficked by swallows and bees and butterflies; by night, the skies are just as busy, first bats and moths and then all manner of creatures–you have to stay up late and lay still to see it transpire but it’s an incredible parade of infinite variety, day business gives way to even more frenetic night business.

Dom & I visit our tiny village in the morning, do the shopping at the market, and eat at home generally for lunch (we had a quite a full house with Dom’s extended family this week–2 old folks, 3 adults in the 40-ish category, a teenager, and 2 single digit midgets). Afternoons are spent on the beach, evenings are spent eating at home, the Francophones get in a game or three of Scrabble, and I stargaze, and catch up on the stacks of movies that people have given me in recent months.

St. Martin, the main town on the island, with its Vauban-designed intricacies, and chalk-colored stone buildings (built to withstand bombardment both from Poseidon and the English) is even able to maintain dignity while around its knees swarm a steady procession of extremely poorly dressed tourists (myself included).

And that’s really it–I have something resembling a routine here, and I happen to stick to it. The routine is broken by events like the village fete–every 6 August the villagers head to the tiny Chapelle Saint Sauvuer, a truly humble little country church, for a late morning mass and benediction for all those going to sea (and in the village square that evening, a feast with singers singing the old songs, and yes, Mexican line dancing, for some reason. For the mass, we watched for a few minutes, and I noticed that all the old folks in their best duds were going to roast in the hot sun, and then get communion with Pineau, the fortified wine that the island produced and is not for the faint of heart–in fact, it may help toughen up your ticker.

The merry-go-rounds turn, the paint slowly bleaching every summer. Each year I return I pass in to a new level of hellos from various village characters–for some, being that I am not a true Rethais, I will never merit so much as a hello. More people come each year, but somehow there’s always a field, a place to be alone, and breath in fresh winds that you know were made for your lungs alone.

Dom & I found a massive June bug on a back road, worn out from his/her mating obligations, in danger of a good squishing laying there on the tarmac. So we let it climb into a little basket of newspaper for relaying back to Aden and her ‘cousin’. They touched, gently, and neither of them had the nerve to let it climb up their arms with it’s T-shaped claws. Earlier that day on the beach we saw a clump that had been a truly majestic jellyfish, layered like a wedding cake…the deflated orbs that had been its body were far more than basketball sized.

To be reunited with Aden after being apart for all of July–Aden on vacation here, me working without weekends in Paris–was also a slice of heaven. Tall, bronzed by the sun, endlessly clever (with its attendant dose of insolence, too)…she is a girl to be proud of, to be sure. She and her cousin LouLou are like cartoon adversaries, who run from cuddles to fisticuffs and back in the course of a single sentence. Hilarious, and tiring.

Dominique is the black haired, bespectacled, girl with the Mare Nostrum pigmentation, that I’ve been trying to marry for as long as I can remember–go look up a few of my old girlfriends and crushes, and you’ll find many a practice run for the girl that would end up being Dominique.

People chide me for my hard work, and wonder why…but I can tell you, to spend a month off in this place with absolutely no worries about paying the restaurant bill, the gingham dress for Aden, and so on—with nary a credit card bill to pay afterwards–is worth the effort. This year I worked out a USB 3G+ net connection so I can check emails in bed instead of heading to St. Martin by infrequent and tedious bus service…

Oh, yes, the Posies album is starting to leak. People love it. Well, whaddya expect, it’s genius.

Love
KS

La Noue

Two Big Stars have fallen from (towards?) the firmament this year. Last week original bassist Andy Hummel was brought down by cancer that was discovered to have viciously metastasized when he came to have hip replacement surgery. Jody had known Andy since they were teenagers. I had only met him on a couple of occasions, both at SXSW. I didn’t get a chance to know him well, I’m afraid…but still, the loss is palpable. Like Alex, he was 59.

This week was a race to the finish line and I have to admit this blog post will be similarly scrunched. I have an alarm set at 5am to get me up and ready to be out the door to catch my 7.15 train to La Rochelle to begin a much needed vacation.

I have not had a day off–a day off being one in which I

a) don’t work. Not in my studio, not editing, not mixing, not retouching mixes, not doing backing vocals, nothing nada.

b) don’t travel. Don’t land that morning at 7am at Charles de Gaulle so I end up spending the day completely zombified and drooling on the couch cushions, and nodding “yes” slowly and feebly to every question directed at me.

c) aren’t on a day off somewhere else away from home. If it’s on tour, it’s working. OK, you can dick me around on the days I spent in Moalboal in January.

– since Dec. 18. Dec. 19 I left to go to THE DiSCiPLiNES recording sessions in Tromsø and it’s been balls out since then. Seven and half months of solid work, no weekends, no ‘veg days’, no watching Seinfeld in syndication, no getting up and wondering what to do…maybe going here, maybe going there, maybe seeing what’s on cable, maybe going for an aimless drive. Forget it. Basically I stuff a bit of sliced lo-fat turkey in the machinery to keep it functional and lean over a hot computer all day, every day. Or play a show, and/or go thru a security line at an airport near you (or on the way to you).

The life I live is a gift. No doubt. And for all the hours I’ve been putting in, I feel pretty vigorous, all told. The only downside to this month is that Aden has been at our summer place since school got out July 2, at which point I was in Canada. it’s been over a month since I’ve seen her. Too long. We chat on the phone daily when I’m in France but that’s not the same. So this was a bit of a slog to get thru the time when I was away from her.

Not to say the work this week was unpleasant. I spent two days mixing two songs for Perth Australia’s The Stanleys, who apparently aren’t tools after all. Hahah. No, it’s classic sunshine guitar pop at its finest, with contributions from Michael Carpenter, formerly of the from-Australia-popular-in-Spain the Pyramidiacs, and Tomas Dahl, contributing ‘member’ of Turbonegro. The band is based around the DiRenzo brothers, who also have a band called Gigantic. Mark came to Paris for the adventure, and we had a nice, but super concentrated and busy, time working. Then he was out the door and Liisa was back in, we spent the last two days of this year’s session working on finishing up recording and then mixing a song called “Julian’s World” that turned into quite a production, totally crashing my laptop every few minutes but sounding pretty dynamite…considering just a couple of weeks ago the same session was a click track, a scratch vocal, and a Midi piano. Soup to nuts. Her man Trav came to town too, a gentle and bright fellow, we all got along famously and played loud music and thus Dom chose to….work late when possible!

I had interviews this week with NME, for an upcoming book on the Replacements, for an upcoming book on the grunge (again).

OLMEN, 7/30

I spent the morning listening to the “Julian’s World” mix and doing some adjustments with fresh ears, and Liisa and Trav came by to say bye, pick up the backup drive for the sessions with the latest mixes installed in various formats, and give a couple of prezzies (Liisa claims her only non-musical skill is that she can expertly gift wrap a book, having done that as a job during uni) which was very sweet. Being a vegan, she also left behind quite a chunk of tofu in my fridge, and I…made it into lunch! Muah ahah.

Heading down the stairs on my way to the metro, the handle on the top of suitcase, the one I would use most for getting it up and down the stairs so it’s upright not lengthwise, broke. Hmmm. This suitcase was really showing its age, it was a cheapy that Dom gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago and has been on duty non stop ever since, it’s the size for all the short hops I do. Long haul stuff is done with a big blue suitcase which also has a broken handle but I think will get me thru the next year or so yet.

I took my nearby metro–normally I would go to Bastille and hop line 5 for direct conveyance to Gare du Nord but Bastille station is all blocked off, the open exits are way on the other side from where I approach and I’m not even sure how to get to line 5 there at all. It’ll be done by the time I’m back in town, so this time I changed at Republique and got to Gare du Nord. You have to up several levels from the line 5 metro platform, and at the top of the first escalator (which usually doesn’t work) there’s a blind turn and then you look down a corridor at more escalators…and in this case…a MASSIVE PILE OF DOG SHIT. Who brings a great Dane or whatever it was into the station to SHIT and then NOT PICK IT UP. There are felonies, and there are capital offenses. Off with his head. The shit was well trod upon so sort of spread out like a bricklayer spreads out mortar…or a pizza chef spreads a ball of dough into an ever larger flat circle…if you get my drift.

I had printed my tix at home (I have a printer now! Incredible). so I had a little down time to sit on my ass and wait for them to announce our track, and then went to the train and only got a little ripped off when I had already paid my internet time on board when we had to switch trains unexpectedly in Brussels–’technical problem’ (like, technically, Thalys owes me 20 more minutes of net access), train waiting on the other side of the platform, NOBODY able to FUCKING READ A FUCKING SIGN and get on the right car. I was, by the way.

Then we got to Antwerp and two guys from the festival were waiting for me on the platform, and we drove to Olmen, it took some bad traffic in and around Antwerp to get thru but then smooth sailing. Olmen is a village, surrounded by farms–lots of turkeys, lots of sheep. There’s a canal, of course. And a massive zoo for some reason–evidently started by a local guy who worked on some big ship, and….stole animals from all over the world??

The guys were sleeping off their early morning departure from Oslo when I pulled up to the hotel, which was an incredibly stylish B&B, all grey and futuristic, but charming at the same time…homey, but mod homey. I dropped a few things and then we all went over to the festival and descended upon the victuals like we were freshly escaped zoo residents. It was a spread of Chinese stuff, and it was oddly perfect.

The festival site was a little space between a school, a church that’s no longer a church, and the residence of the priest who’s no longer there…they build a big stage outside, put vendors all around, have some bands in the church, too evidently. It gets about 1,000 people, which is surely several Olmen’s worth of peeps, paying €10-€15 to get in, so the bands aren’t massive, and we were, like…highly anticipated (by some). We sat around looking not busy, drinking crummy Aussie cheap wine, the endless free beers (not me), chatting about next year and signing a few tax docs, as one does when one has a band.

Finally we get to it. We had a great backline, lots of help, no problems. we set up, the people distracted by the band on the other stage (the bands were staggered all day, and prob. staggering by night). It got dark. I talked the backstage bar out of a little vodka shot, and we went on in a blaze of gore, since I crushed my lip like in the 2nd bar of the first song. There were a LOT of rowdy teens in the audience who kept chanting some slogan, for some little gang they had. Well I played along, and they liked it so much, that they formed a MOSH PIT. Many of the Olmen and Olwomen were terrified and stayed WAY back but you know, Flemish are pretty big & tough bastards, so also, people just sort of worked with it. At one point I was walking thru the moshers with my mic, and they kept missing me, I felt like Robert Duvall’s character in Apocalypse Now.

I think they liked us, it was hard to tell, it was the whole town’s nite to get hammered, and they did a great job. But people dug it…it was too dark for me to bother going out in the crowd with the merch, but when I went back in the catering many of the staff bought shirts and CDs, so it worked out. I parked the merch at the pathetic merch area….pathetic cuz NOBODY cared…it was in the BEER tent and like who is going to spend extra money on something they have to carry around and then have like, 5 less beers? No way.

When I went to pack up that night, having had as I imagined no further sales, I closed up the suitcase and extended the handle for rolling away and it spectacularly shattered. OK, that suitcase is done…except now it only had the side handle, and I couldn’t roll it anymore, and I had to get home.

We had friends at the show–from Brussels, from London, from Finland, from Breda–and I drank my scuzzy Aussie Chard (uh, last time I checked Belgium is next door to a massive WINEMAKING COUNTRY–where cheap wine is €2/bottle…what, exactly, is the point of importing the dregs of Aussie scuzz?) and got my buzz on, so I was totally fried by the time I got to the Inn, and crashed.

Up the next morning for breakfast, I felt like a chardonnay-flavored kangaroo had just kickboxed by medulla oblongata when I wasn’t looking, but the nice breakfast spread sorted me out. We did ‘the receipt thing’ and then a big van taxi took us to Antwerp station, and I literally ran saying my goodbyes as I humped that useless valise along with me to the lower platform, so I could jump that 13.03 and have a little more time to change in Brussels than the 13.38 B-rail recommended I take. I settled in with some badass looking dudes, a guy with long hair and rings on every finger nervously counting 50 Euro notes…that makes ME nervous. If you’re such a badass you don’t need to hide your money, but you’re also, like, shaky, jittery (is the safety on or off?)…yikes.

I got settled on my train to Paris after gobbling some quiche in the station, and became, like, the train’s IT guy. First the woman next to me needed me to compose and send a text message on her phone to her son to meet her at the station, she wasn’t dexterous enough to do it, the poor dear. That was sweet. Then the woman behind me asked if she could check her Facebook on my computer (yes, for whatever increment of €6.50 you care to chip in, dahlink) but it seems like I got the hour for free cuz it said the transaction did not complete, no email came with a receipt, and I got online for longer than the hour it would have been…hmmm.

I got home and unpacked and packed and packed a few things for Dom and some for Aden, and retired the broken suitcase, tweaked the Stanleys mix a bit, listened to some records including the album “Wild Aim” from Picture Day, which has a song called “Little Bigger” that was written by the band’s Eric Lichter (also of Green Pajamas), but performed almost entirely by me, recorded here in Paris a year or two ago (I don’t remember how long ago in fact). I play piano, acoustic guitar and sing. They added a vocal or two in Seattle and it sounds really really wicked, quite haunting and dark.

On those notes, I have a train to catch. Bye.

Love
KS
Paris

I was basically certain, as we watched our flight in Tromsø get pushed further and further back, that I would miss my flight to Paris and lose precious time on one just three nights off I had this month. They had been using the midnight sun and the clear weather to do maintenance on the runway, and it was supposed to have finished, but it didn’t get done until our flight was 30 min. late. Nothing to do. Me and Juliette Lewis and crew and band on the flight. Unbelievably, they held the flight back–I, and others on the same flight, ran from our gate to the new gate in Oslo and boarded, and was told before we took off that our luggage had made it as well. I really have to hand it to SAS, they seem to be among the best in working this kind of thing out. I landed that afternoon and spent a beautiful hot July afternoon hanging out with Dom. That evening Dom walked me thru the process of renting a Velib, and we rode to the Ile St. Louis, which of course was throbbing with tourists (who had their own bikes, thank Dieu, so we had space on the island’s only Velib terminal. We met up with Mike Mills and a friend of his at the restaurant Mon Viel Ami, and like the Doctor in Rocky Racoon, we pro-cee-ded to lie on the table. Well, actually we ate delicious food, told stories, and drank plenty of wine, and even took a bottle to go, we cabbed down after dinner to check out Le Batofar where Dom often organizes events but it was dead and closing up, so we ended back at Mike’s place, he was renting a flat for the week just ten minutes’ walk from our home. It had an incredibly groovy rooftap hang out that you access thru a hatch Jules Verne could have designed.


The next morning I wasn’t in exactly museum quality condition but I managed to have fine day of work with Liisa, and we hit a groove that continued thru the week, I went thru all the songs, loaded in our drums from our session the week before and got them sorted, and put bass on all the songs, and started to dig into the vocals. Monday night I was a bit wrecked but stayed up watching “Ponyo”, being a such a huge fan of Miyazaki ever since I went to see “Princess Mononoke” in the theatre with John Roderick while we were working on the Long Winters’ album some years ago. I’d bought the DVD in Indonesia (it’s the Japanese version, subtitled in English, which was fine for me, I can maintain my Hannah Montana-free existence a bit longer this way)–and I’d been savoring it til now, not watching it on purpose til I could sit down and concentrate and absorb all the details (impossible–just the opening scene alone is so rich I could frame by frame it for weeks). Tuesday night after the session I was interviewed for yet another book about grunge, and Wednesday night after the session I met Mike, Dom, Dewitt (REM’s guitar tech), his wife Jackie, a work colleague of Dom’s from the Rock en Seine festival (Dom’s working this one this year) and her husband, for drinks at my local (Le Motel) and an EVENTFUL dinner with about 6000 bottles of wine, at the ultra trendy hotel/bar/restaurant Mama Shelter. That’s *two* nights I kinda don’t remember how the hell we got home. Totally great way to blow off steam after a long day of work.

That’s also two mornings that making my way down to that first coffee in the morning was oh so difficult–and imagine listening to two loudspeakers all day.

Thursday Mills & I had a glass of wine after the session, but that was it (still, we sat on the terrace of a wine bar I like til about 2am). At one point this dazed looking guy stumbled up to our table and asked if we had a condom, presumably that he could buy from us on the spot but I’m still not sure.

On Friday night after the session Mills & I dined at Chez Paul, ate WAY too much, and went back to my place with a bottle of red and l had the privilege of hearing the REM album-in-process, which was a mix of songs with and without vocals, some of which I was excited to hear that the vocals were kind of mumbled and down in the mix–old school! Some beautiful recordings, great songs. Of course I played some new Posies and D’s songs and Mike was really impressed, esp. with the Posies (there’s some pretty far out bass playing on the songs I played). I played him one of Liisa’s tracks and he enjoyed that too. Oh, in fact I felt like crap for the THIRD morning that week. And, again, TOTALLY worth it. Mills traveled onward on Saturday and my diet began (or shall we say, resumed–there’s almost no time after age 40 that I have NOT been on a diet) shortly thereafter.

Saturday night was a movie night, Dom was at the summer place, it’s a little sad when the session ends and everyone goes home and I’m like…boo hoo. Tho I do enjoy a good putter around the house, but….not too many. One putter per month and I can put my putter in the golf bag where it belongs.

This morning I: a) felt absolutely fine. b) met Liisa, her fiancee Trav, and Mark from a band called the Stanleys, with whom I’ll also be working this week. Mark just came to say hi and hand off his hard drive, and then Liisa and I had a really good day in the studio, including some absolutely neighbor-arming levels of screaming in one song.

It’s pretty much been roll out of bed, take a coffee downstairs, start working, wrap 12 hours later, do a backup, check mail, and crash every day except those that involved going out and enjoying nights that would Bacchus himself check in to rehab. A heady mix, and my body was a bit confused by all the up and down…but I have a week to get it together (thru the magic of basically eating nothing unless Dom rams it down my throat (after perfecting the art of foie gras, I have to say the French are rather good at that) to look good at Friday’s DiSCiPLiNES show in Belgium….then it’s vacation time and I have a massive agenda of SLEEPING EATING AND SWIMMING and NOTHING ELSE. Almost.

Love
KS
Paris

On Sunday morning I met Liisa bright and early at my favorite local cafe and we walked from there to Gare D’Austerlitz, and had to quickly figure out how to get tix and board the RER C out to Dourdan, a suburb of Paris. The train ride takes about an hour, and we caught the train we hoped to. Snoozing in the sunlight on the upper deck, we got to Dourdan–the end of the line, so we didn’t have to pay that much attention. We were met there by Julien Audigier, drummer that I’ve worked with on many projects. He has a cool set up that’s very economical and musically satisfying for projects that don’t have the budget to use a big studio. In his small flat he has electronic drum pads, and we can use his sounds or select thousands of sounds from drum sample programs. We went thru and did drum tracks this way for most of the songs on the album; some songs will have only programmed drums. We managed to get all our work done and catch the ten p.m. train back to Paris…even with a long break where we went for a walk along a wooded stream, feeding stale bread to ducks and even muskrats (!), checking out the castle, etc. Around 9.30 that night I said instead of one more take at a song I was happy with, we should check the trains. We got up there and found there was one at ten and then the last one at 11, and of course after already working for 14 hours, I wanted to start my one hour train ride now. Except that Julien wanted to give me some files…so he RAN home, copied them, and ran back, and handed them to me thru the fence with 2 minutes to spare before the train left…now THAT’S service!

As we got back and walked (over a bridge, etc, nice walk) up from Austerlitz, there was a lot of commotion, cars honking, and the Spanish restaurant in my neighborhood seemed to be open oddly late for a Sunday. Just as we got to the point where Liisa was going to get on the metro, these little kids were yelling out a window above us…I couldn’t figure it out, but then I realized, that the general fracas was about the Spanish victory in the world cup…

We worked on Monday, too, and on Tuesday I left for Tromsø to play and record with THE DiSCiPLiNES. However, just as before I was to get my taxi to the airport, I managed to have a quick cafe with my friend Jim Dunbar, music supervisor to the starz, who was in town working on something for the new Scorcese film. Then I hopped my cab and got my flight to Oslo, and on to Tromsø. Pernille Sparboe, my host for the week, met me at the airport and took me to the grocery store than to her place, and I crashed….I was REALLY tired, been really pushing it for weeks.

The next morning our engineer from our Dec/Jan recording sessions, and for the ones this week, picked me up coming back from the airport with Ralla, and we went to Kysten, the studio we worked at for the rest of the album. We were booked to rehearse there–except that when we arrived, someone was recording still, Norwegian artist Moddi. Joel explained that goofups like this were common enough, there wasn’t really a manager of the studio per se and that had been a problem before. Well, within a call or two we were able to get the main room at the music conservatory, and the rest of the guys showed up (Baard in one of those booties you get when you bust your foot–he’d snapped his Achilles playing football) and we got down to working on some new songs. I wasn’t so sure about the work (I am now), it was hard to get emotionally attached to these songs that were so fresh…and we were trying to add some things to the album that weren’t balls out, so it was more of a challenge to work within restraints, stylistically.

TROMSØ, 7/15

I slept in til noon. I really needed that. I’d kept promising to take Pernille out for a coffee as a small gesture of appreciation but she didn’t mind–she was sick with a pretty serious cold. I spent the afternoon printing set lists and listening to the Posies master with new adjustments (approved!). We had the great fortune to have a glorious day for our show. Wednesday I’d woken up to a total downpour and I thought about the nightmare that could imply for the festival. A van came and picked me up and took me to the hotel we had for the night, and I checked in, chatted with the Sonics and discovered to my delight that Jim, who did sound for many years at the Central Tavern and the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle, was their live sound engineer. Old home week. Also, Lasse, who’d done our live sound for the last coupla years was ready to go so we drove on, and passed by the studio where the rest of the guys and Joel had spent the day setting up the instruments. Joel took Ralla to the hotel to get him cleaned up and back to the show, and the rest of us went on to the festival, and got busy looking busy. Great hangs with the very nice guys in Big Bang, etc. Merch and gear was settled, band assembled. Uh, we had to play soon…the sun was out, Big Bang was done (it was cold tho)…and then it was on. Yow. The local newspaper said we weren’t ready for the big stage, and I rather agree, it’s weird to play with no new record, but…there we were. And you know, people really LOVED it. And I was surprised how much energy I had–usually when it’s the first show in a long time (2 months for this band) I’m out of breath but I’d been dieting and toughening up my body for this moment and it was really good. REALLY good. People singing along, jumping…you could argue it was just part two of last time but less of a surprise and you’d be right but familiarity was not a problem for this crowd, this day. I was really proud of our performance and the audience made it easy…and then the Sonics came and tore holy hell out of the joint. These guys, looking like total bad ass dads in their slacks and leathers, laid waste to the crowd. The current bass player is one Freddie of a band “Freddie and the Screamers”, and in addition to being a wonderful, thoughtful Seattle-ite, c. 60 years old, he is…a screamer. What a voice. Wow. Also a good hang with Noel the soundman who was on tour with Dinosaur Jr, playing the next nite.

Big Bang who played before us were really good, too, they are known to be Big Star fans so you gotta love ‘em. Mew is a band that I think you have to be 100% Scandinavian to truly appreciate. I like things about them, but sometimes the icy-ness and airiness and digital keyboard bits and backing tapes…it’s all a bit…ice castle-y. They have some beautiful things about them, and they are great musicians, I may just be too dumb to get it…but often it feels a bit too much on the brain side over the heart side, and I guess I just like my music a bit more raw and a bit less composed, usually.

As Mew were gettin’ down, and after feasting on local cuisine–shrimps, salmon cooked and smoked and whale steaks–we got outta there and went to the hotel. I hung at the hotel bar with Jim and Freddie, and then got waylaid by an entire family of Norwegians, the 60-ish parents, the 20-ish kids, their friends, girlfriends, etc. , kept buying my white wines. Then the bar closed, and I looked for my bandmates–now about 1.30am. Blazing sun. Amazing. Surreal! Went to Driv, where the D’s and Posies have played before, that was the place to be, but it pretty much closed when I got there. So I went to bed; my bandmates and friends were off to get a kebab and NEW that was a bad idea.

The next morning I made it to breakfast–I felt like pure garbage, so I can’t even imagine what condition my bandmates were in. But we all assembled, I made a last minute run to the Dragøy fish shop to stock up on smoked salmon and gravlax, which is what I live on when I’m in Norway. We got to the studio and started to assemble a new song, “Kill the Killjoy”, which sounds like…Mew, kind of. Well, closer to Mew than anything the D’s have done before. It really turned into something far more intense and emotional than I was expecting, I loved it.

The studio was just as dead in midsummer as it had been at Christmastime when we recorded last time. Not a soul around. But perpetual light, which is always energizing…but strange. The atmosphere improved slightly when I threw out a massive helping of rice & beans that had gone rancid in the fridge, etc.

Day 2 we worked on a new song called “Laugh At Me” which tho I think is not as strong as Killjoy it’s still…classic and intense. We went down to the festival to drop off Ralla and pick up the merch I left at the merch table for the rest of the festival in case we could sell some on the other days, and picked up a nice pile of cash for my touble…went back to the studio and worked til about 3am, emerging in brilliant, massive sheets of pure sunshine. Now waiting for my delayed flight to Oslo, hoping I make my connection to Paris…

Love
KS
Tromsø, NORWAY

I made the most of my Sunday arrival in Paris, one of just three nights off I have in July, to hang out with Dom–Aden was already off to the grandparents’ for the summer. Which means I won’t see her for over a month. Woah. But on Sunday, I had dinner out with Dom. It’s these little moments, quite rare…we watched a movie, just did Sunday things…again, I have 2 more free nights in July, and one of them is the 31st, so…I know, poor me.

Well, I worked on my studio stuff, getting my ProTools running properly, still needed to do some more troubleshooting Monday morning, so when Liisa, the artist I’m working with on an album this month, arrived, I said “let’s go have lunch” while I was downloading a big software upgrade. She’s vegan; I had pig bits. Best of both worlds, shall we say! Anway, we spent the next couple of days going thru her songs and making guide tracks and mapping out what songs would need drums, and what songs we could program, and kind of sketch out the game plan. Then I spent a day programming drums, all the while updating software and such to make that job easier, since it’s not something I do often. Liisa came back and checked on my progress, and after we had one song quite developed we started adding synth basses and synths and more synths, and having all kinds of fun, of course talking music and philosophy on the way. Liisa has made some really exuberant synth pop recordings so far, and we decided we’d like to darken and dirty up her sound…her lyrics are not as sunny as the music, and the message could be a bit more consistent, we thought. So that’s what we’re up to now….darkening. Dirtying.

Paris has been sweltering, actually reaching a new peak today, it’s quite torrid sitting my a number-crunching computer all day, plus a tube compressor, and such. I have a fan on, and I swear the breeze it makes just solidifies and drops dead 6 inches away from the rotating blades.

Now, with jet lag, and allergies, and Liisa coming in with some sinus trouble, and Aden having been back from grandma’s last week possibly coated with grandma’s cold (“mamie” hasn’t been to a doctor since…uh…maybe never?) I suddenly went from bad allergies to a fucking cold that came on just like that. I was working one night, and just couldn’t, like I was falling asleep at the computer. I thought, “jet lag”. Dom said: “fever, dipshit. Go to bed. Now”. So, I knocked off half an hour early, but really, I was done. The next day I was really, truly sick. Sneezing, snotting, running like water out my eyes nose etc. Went thru like ten rolls of 2 ply. Liisa came over and surely was disgusted but bless her (bless her? *I’m* the one sneezing FFS).

HELSINKI, 7/9

So of course I was at the nadir when I got up to go to Helsinki. I wanted to enjoy the moment, but I was feeling truly craptastic. I had fallen asleep before Dom got home from working at an event, so we didn’t book a cab, but we managed to get one that morning, somehow (well, Dom has her ways). I dozed on the way to Charles De Gaulle, drizzle dotting the windows of the taxi. It was really busy at the airport, summer travel full on, and there was a massive line for the Finnair check in. But, they came and got all the people on my flight and moved them to the front of the line, including a truly wonderful/silly/typical looking goth rock band. Anyway, I got on board and crashed, deep deep asleep. Finnair has very nice new clean Airbus planes, nice seats. I needed that. Got to Helsinki, claimed my stuff, cabbed to the hotel and zzzzzz.

Around 7 I got up, and Milla, musician/promoter extraordinaire, met me in the lobby and we walked over to the Belly club, I’d been in there at some point for a drink, but never played there; Jon Auer has graced its stage at some point. First up was to do a kind of soundcheck, and to my surprise, my cold-plugged head (I took all the magic pills Dom sent along) was open enough to sing. Then I ran thru some songs with the Kabuki Kiddies–Lasse from Lemonator, Markus from the Latebirds, Milla, and bass player …uh…SHIT. I hadn’t met her before, so now…dammit. OK. She was great tho. Please remind me. Anyway…by the time that and some dinner and about 8 espressos were had, the KK’s were already playing their set of Cheap Trick/etc covers…and then it was my turn. I had sat down with friends at 8pm when the doors open, having a cafe on the terrace, and didn’t realize it til the band started that the place was packed. Woah! I really didn’t expect that anyone would want to be indoors in 83-degree heat and no nightfall…I mean, wow. And when I came onstage and played all my new stuff, man…that was one reverential audience. How could I not do great? My voice cracked a bit on one song, but generally, cold and all, I did just fine. It felt great, and I was able to really get into it. Of course I sweat like a feverish pig and even short-circuited my keyboard at one point but it was a great show..and then the Kabuki’s joined me, for “Doesn’t It Remind You”, wherein a roped in an audience member to duet with me, and then some covers–”In the Street”, “Surrender”, “He’s A Whore”, “Ontario”…and, they didn’t know that this was coming: “Voices”. Then we were going to do the “Hello There” that’s the “Goodnight” one…but Markus played the riff all slow, feigning the start of a blues jam…the band followed but it sounded so much like “L.A. Woman” that I played the piano riff and then sang it as “Oulu Woman” which went down well. Finally I sang the “Goodnite now ladeez and Gents” but instead of “Would you Like to do a Number with me” the song was slow so I could sing “Who would like to introduce me to the singers of PMMP” which also brought the house down! Of course that was supposed to be the end but the audience wasn’t going anywhere–so I played for another 40 min. or so by myself, and just had a marvelous time.

Felt like garbage this morning. Early flight. Had a row of seats to myself which helped. Left my glasses in the hotel. FUCK. Cuz I put my prescription sunnies on when I left. Worked with Liisa in the afternoon after a nap and listening to the Posies master for the new album….having a few doubts about a few details but it IS a masterpiece. Now…bed.

Love
KS
Paris

I had to get to work straight away after getting home on Monday…I had to do some redo’s on vocals for one of the Posies songs so Jon could finish his mix. At one point jet lag overcame me on Tuesday and I lay down for a nap, which was accompanied by the music of Le Prince Miiaou which was a TRIP. It was a day and half at home where I had to run across town and collect the guitar damaged at Sasquatch (and the guitar shop was closed, luckily, they were in there, in the back, and left the door unlocked so they had no choice but to deal with me…there were tons of other things to sort out, and while making a proposed sequence for the Posies album in ProTools when in rapid succession, BOTH my ProTools systems crashed. Uh….

So, it was with that in mind that I boarded a plane for Calgary Wednesday morning. It was a beautiful morning, and I was leaving late enough that I could enjoy a coffee on the terrace with Dom & Aden before I left. Now, I always forget this, but this was the first time I’d gotten on a plane in Paris since the beginning of summer, and Terminal 3 is woefully underdeveloped for the summer hordes who use it to access the budget airlines that leave from there. Checking in for my flight wasn’t bad, but the passport control line for non-European passport holders was a 2-plus hour wait. Long enough that even after my 2 hour experience in that line there were still 60 passengers trying to get thru and get on the plane, so they held the flight until everyone got on. This plane went to Montreal, the hub of Transat, and continued on to Toronto. I got off in Montreal, and spent a long time in line clearing Immigration (my papers were in order so my actual time at the window was like two minutes). I was so tired tho after the long flight that when I got to baggage claim, most of the other passengers on my flight long gone, I thought my bag hadn’t come, not remembering I’d brought my small grey suitcase for this 4 day trip as opposed to the big blue one I take for longer trips. I think I stared expectantly at the belt for 20 min. before shaking it off and realizing my error. I checked in for my WestJet flight to Calgary, and boarded, and found out the flight stopped in Toronto where we changed to another flight, same crew, same flight number, different airplane, different gate. Weird. OK, all of this took a long time, and I got to Calgary about 30 min. later than expected. I was picked up by Claire, one of the festival drivers, and taken to the hotel, where I checked in, and then went to the bar to have the two free drinks I’d been voucher’d for. Two glasses of wine and some charcutrie later, I was buzzed enough to justify bed, having passed the midnight/jet lag-busting mark.

CALGARY, 7/1

Long days of getting caught up on work, as I was at last stationary and not behind a mixing desk at all hours of the day and night. I woke up at 7.30 with a vengeance, digging into Posies, Disciplines, and Pro-Tools rescuing emails that took me most of the day. Spending time on the phone, at last, with the Posies label, I hadn’t had time to do that in weeks. Room service breakfast, and then lunch with Darius, Matt, Sled Island Festival organizer Zak Pashak, and various local musicians etc., at the festival canteen, Broken City Social Club, which was a fully functioning music venue that day. I used their office and and the festival’s counselor to do some Canadian-tax related biz, had a sandwich, and headed back to the hotel for a swim.

The band assembled in the early evening and we headed to the Republik, the latest incarnation of the club we played in 1995, albeit now in a new location a couple blocks up the street…Deerhoof had already soundchecked so we were free to set up. Of course, this was our first show in a couple of months…so…even soundchecking was hard to do, and little did I know it but I had a bad cable that was affecting the tonality of my guitar. But it *seemed* ok…we ran thru a song and then had to get out of the way for other bands. OK, we’ll see….

We went to dinner with Deerhoof, Zak, and SF’s Sugar & Gold, I had Alberta beef as a tartare…both bands were really fun and friendly so it was a great atmosphere. I think after dinner we went back to the hotel, to print set lists, and get ready. We ended up taking a cab to the venue cuz the traffic was so bad (it was Canada Day, big night for all citizens) our van couldn’t make it to pick us up. We were bogged down in a traffic jam but facing the fireworks display…

We got back to the venue pretty much in time to set up and get on with it. The show was a familiar sight now that I’ve been part of a few “Posies play at ultra hipster festival with no new album out” evenings: a mix of curiosity, skepticism, joy and contempt–in other words, the full range, which means, opinions are open. Our set was loud, well played, and will sound 1000 times better when we have time to learn these new songs. But again, while we’re prob. incapable of a slam dunk at this point, it was a hard fought, ably-executed, passionate and funny set. Then Deerhoof went on and people went absolutely nuts…well deserved, too. Amazing band. I shuttled off to the hotel to drop my stuff and hop down into the Palomino, the BBQ saloon across the street, to watch my friends By Divine Right, the perfect way to close out the evening, down in a cool basement with about 30 dedicated listeners, watching a great band crank out psychedelic rock with a massively strong songwriting core. We all went out on the sidewalk, so some could smoke, and shot the breeze til it was time to call it.

CALGARY, 7/2

I was up at 8.45 to order breakfast, and invite Jon in so he could use my other phone to participate in a label conference call. Then came more work, and another conference call with our publicist (there were calls these days from our agent, from our radio promotion person, etc). We lunched with Zak at a local diner and I got in another swim. In the early evening we waked around the corner of the hotel to the wonderful Legion Post #1, all vintage 1959, wonderful place. Kind of shallow stage but we fit up there, and by now, we had our sea legs and I’d sorted some tech problems, so we sounded much better (and in fact, this is a much better sounding room than Repbulik was). So, after soundcheck we were much more confident. We treated ourselves to filet mignon at the vintage eatery Ceasar’s (which totally fit the theme of the Legion, seemed to be the same vintage–but was actually founded in 1972). We took a couple of adjacent booths in the upper deck of the lounge and had the place to ourselves. After eating steak that was so rare it was practically sashimi, I needed a little rest up but we filtered back into the Legion in time for our set, and played a GREAT show. Augmented by a couple of shots of Jagermeister, we had a wonderful, great sounding set that went well past closing time, and the staff was absolutely OK with that. A great night, and we went to bed very happy.

The next morning I was a little too beat to get in one more swim, but did not suffer on my long travel home. Stopping in Montreal, I actually had time to run into the city and dine with friends at Thai place, and I slept every second of my flight back to Paris. Now back in my flat apartment listening to music, my ProTools is working again, life is good….so…prepared for the days ahead, I can rest a little today.

Love
KS
Paris

A blur of a week, brutal, in many ways: gentle, in many ways. We worked on the album for Can Can as long as we Could Could each day. From my Andean aerie, during the precious few hours I wasn’t in the studio, when I could have been sleeping, I supervised the Posies album, worked on upcoming shows for the Posies and THE DiSCiPLiNES, thought ahead about upcoming production projects, etc. Most of the hours of the 24-hour clock I was in the studio–I’d get out of there around 4am, drive the 5 minutes to Daniel’s house, check emails til almost 5. Sleep til 9. Shower up and hit the studio again by 11. We still ended up with a huge list of things we didn’t get to, small backing vocal parts and such….but we covered the general scope of the album’s 15 songs–all the lead vocals were done, all the main guitars were done, we were getting into, on the last day, all the little bells and whistles that give the songs eccentricity and uniqueness….on my watch, the recordings had become very grown up…I think my best and most important work was to tailor the vocal approach of Dnis (Denisse) the vocalist, to the mood of each track. Sometimes I would have her get breathy and intimate; sometimes I would tell her to sing with NO emotion, become a robot…and she did it all without becoming a cartoon of the intention we worked on creating–except when I asked her to sing like a cartoon–to me really mainstream singers that manipulate the listener with too much emotion are like cartoons–your Britneys, your Gwens. On one song I just wasn’t gettin her to give enough so I told her to be ridiculous and sing like a cartoon, over-the-top singer like that, and of course it didn’t end up sounding ridiculous at all.

There were many moments where things that I found very normal, that were alien to the band, esp. Daniel, who is a school-trained engineer running his own studio on a day-to-day basis, so knows quite a bit about engineering–he was distressed with how much I wanted a vocal to be distorted, he was distressed when I wanted to use his cheap ribbon mics as the drum overheads, when I wanted to have an amplified guitar signal with delay and crap blaring away in the same room as the acoustic guitar we were recording–to name a few examples. These are things that I felt were necessary to toughen up the sound–typical for me to do to a band to give them an edge, but it can look very cavalier when it’s your band being thrown on the operating table and dissected–you hope the surgeon (me) is taking out that organ or whatever by virtue of wisdom and experience….and not a because he’s a homicidal lunatic. With music production for the most part we don’t get a plaque on the wall to tell us when we graduated, we never stop going to school in fact. When a few of your patients are still walking around people start to get the idea you’re at least not incompetent–but did the surgery heal the patient or did they just heal themselves? It’s a question worth asking.

In the end, I insisted on all the things I put forward, and the band, sometimes without a fuss, and sometimes with a BIT of fuss, always acquiesced. Working the long hours, there were times when the band and I barked at each other, but I also used my EXTENSIVE knowledge of the Latin personality (remember, giggly French-Italian girls are Latinas too) to ground myself in the knowledge that we could argue and it would be fine 5 minutes later. We never crossed a line to where a debate was causing damage to anyone. No insults. Of course, when you’re producing a session you want ABSOLUTE DICTATORIAL POWER…like, if you’re in for a penny, get in for a pound and trust me all the way, right? But, in reality, a creative process should be FULL of debate, push and pull….on the Posies record we’ve argued too, but again, it’s never been to the point where anyone has gone to an unhealthy, inappropriate place during the debates. It shows how far we’ve come, in the case of the Posies. In the case of Can Can, I think we just got lucky….they are pretty gentle people.

We managed to get out and about on two occasions: one Sunday evening, there was a gathering at the home of Roger Ycaza from Mama Vudu, who hosted me and put together my show in Quito on my tour last year. Dnis from CC is Roger’s POSSLQ, which is how I came to know Can Can in the first place. CC, MV, and friends gathered for pizza, pot and brownies….and wine….and a steak for me. You can get a lot of good stuff delivered in Quito. Foodwise I mean. I am on a no carbs diet so pizza and bongs are both banned.

And on my last nite in town, Roger, Dnis, Daniel and Diego who was assistant engineer on the sessions (another great sentence for Daffy Duck to pronounce…athhhhhtitthhting me on the thhheththththtions…..) dropped in on the radio show ‘Vagon Alternativo’, a weekly alternative show on a commercial radio station run by the amazing Edwin Poveda, who if I remember correctly is a USA native with Ecuadorian roots who now teaches in Quito and collects CDs by the MILLIONS. Edwin is a friendly, fun, enthusiastic guy and we ended up spending an hour instead of the proposed 30 min. drive by at the station. I made a world radio debut of the Posies album by playing the freshly mastered “Licenses to Hide” on air and announcing the release date and name of the album (Sept. 21 and “BLOOD/CANDY” if you’re curious!).

Well, we hadn’t been sure when to drop by Edwin’s show, it’s a four-hour program so we had options. But fate decided for us: as we were cutting a vocal guest appearance by Roger, the power on the whole block went out. As Edwin & I chatted away, the band reminded me we had work to do, so we went back to the studio 1.5 hours after leaving and it was STILL without power. So, we did the sensible thing: we drank a bottle of tequila AND a bottle of mezcal, and played guitar by candlelight. Everybody took turns, Roger and Dnis sang together classic romantic waltzes, Daniel and Diego jammed on Argentine classics, etc. Then the lights came back, and we went back to work, for a few hours. The last hour or two in the studio was kind of a blur–let me say that I never really got that drunk—my brain was so sleep deprived that it just wasn’t impressed with anything. But the 20+ hour days were killer. Saturday night was the last night in the studio, I never went to bed, right–radio station to studio to shower to airport; Friday night when I finally shut down the computer at 4.30 Sat. morning, I couldn’t roust Daniel who had fallen asleep on the couch, so I turned out the lights and found a couch of my own, waking up at 10 feeling like dog doodoo. So, the last night was just icing on the cake. It sort of became a party, Andres the drummer (who was just amazing, BTW) came by with a bunch of people, a bottle of a vicious (but not particularly viscous) mentholated beverage called “Norteño” was produced (I should note that when I visited last year, little neighborhood groceries were able to supply wine around the clock–late nights they chained themselves inside the store and passed your stuff thru an iron grill; exactly coinciding with my arrival was the enactment of new Blue Laws–no alcohol sales on Sundays, no stores selling alcohol after ten p.m.–that made getting our party on in a spontaneous manner quite difficult), and things went south from there. I passed out on the couch and we stopped being productive but for god’s sake man….with the pace we set, something had to give. It was nice to have a send-off, too. We went back to Daniel’s and they puffed their magic dragons while I showered up, shaved (for the first time since I played that show in Angouleme a couple weeks back, not that it mattered) and packed up, and they took me to the airport and dropped me off, at 4.45 in the morning. I hate goodbyes so I was glad it was kind of quick like pulling a tooth–and we were all a little buzzed as to deaden the pain.

Soon I was checked in and just trying to stay awake long enough to get on the plane, and like that (it’s a short flight as intercontinental journeys go) I was in Miami, which is sort of like being in the US and sort of like an interesting portal where North meets South. I liked the vibe, I am not the biggest fan of the big bad USA’s tacky cultural kimono.

After an incredible, life-affirming Cafecito Cubano at Cafe Versailles, I went to the gate and got down to business while waiting for my flight to Madrid, my next step on my way home.

Tho mostly I was working on music, and music is music and computers are computers and guitars are guitars wherever you go–I was able to absorb little details, and little tastes while I was in Quito. First of all, as I discussed last week, Quito is equatorial but alpine–so at night it’s quite cold, and the days while I was there were mostly wet and grey, but it opened up towards the end of my visit. But still the jungle is an ocean lapping at the foothills and thus the diversity of that world means that the alpine adaptations of growing things are unique. So, there are unique fruits to be had–among them, things I enjoyed: uvillas (“Little Grapes”), which evidently are sold in the US as “Peruvian cherries” and in Britain as “Cape Gooseberries”, are native to Ecuador and are wonderful. They come in leaves that are enclosed like praying hands, and inside is a cherry sized yellow-orange fruit. No stone inside tho. It’s very tart, they have a folk-medicine reputation and you can’t help but taste a kind of taxoline note in the tartness of the flavor. I ate about a thousand of these things. They are far richer and more interesting than the ones I’d encountered in the states–which were so bland as to render them a decorative item that is only theoretically worth itemizing as a food source (see also: parsely).

Speaking of taxols, we should discuss here the taxo, or as some crap marketer in the US calls it (not that I’ve ever seen one there), “banana passionfruit”. Yes, it’s a kind of passionfruit. Yes it is sort of banana shaped. But so much more interesting. It’s cousin, the grenadilla, is another passionfruit with sweeter stuff inside, the taxo is kind of sour.

There was a pepinillo or some such thing, no one seemed to be able to confirm the name, that is like a squat cucumber, but yellow stained with purple, and this thing did have a sweet banana note in the watery cucumber vibe…yum.

On the meat front we tended to order in from this barbecue joint for excellent ribs, chicken, steak, pork, morcilla, links…cheap too.

Beyond food, the studio has a big window that looks over some grown over chunk of backyard, and the trees there attracted huge orange butterflies and emerald green hummingbirds–the warmer/drier the weather, the more likely it was to see them.

By the end of my stay, I was able to walk up the stairs briskly without giving myself an ice cream headache from the lack of oxygen at 9500 ft. I woke up most mornings, no matter what time I went to bed, at 8.30. Esp. when the sun was out again, it would tap me on the head about that time.

Dominique and I stayed connected on video chats, and in general I worked so hard as to make the time go by very fast.

The Posies album continues to take shape–some of the songs have been mastered and the last mixes are coming in. The artwork is starting to coalesce–the tours for the fall are coming together…it’s all quite exciting. Look for some extremely cool announcements about what we’re doing soon.

Love
KS
Iberia flt 6122 to Madrid.

Addendum: I arrived dog tired in Madrid, the flight a little late, and had to run about 300 yards full bore to make my flight to Paris…but I did.