LLOSETA, 5/9
Dom’s flight stumbled in late, but just in time that the driver could still grab her from the airport and bring her to the hotel to drop her stuff–then we all just piled back in the van for the 30-minute drive inland to Lloseta, to the town’s municipal theatre, which we also played in 2008. I was just to excited to have her there that I practically forgot to do anything but follow her around while she smoked outside, sit in the dressing room eating cheese and drinking wine, etc. Oh, yeah…last show of the tour. I should get on that. The stage at this place is very big, production very pro. It’s a theatre but the seats all pack away so it looks more like a college student union hall, a big box, you know. But good sound…and run by grown ups. Soundcheck was quite easy. While we were setting up Jon & I were approached by the support band, Monster Ones, to play with them. You see, as we were covering Teenage Fanclub’s “A Catholic Education”, they were responding to the theme by covering 5 songs from the Beatles’ “White Album” , in a garage band style. The band is a real disparate assemblage of styles and looks–almost cartoonishly so. There’s a female singer, all goth’d out-velvet dress and Betty Page bands, whiter than white face, blacker than black hair. The guitarist, who has only recently started to develop his craft, is small, kind of metal-y, wears athletic wristbands like an old school punker. Bass player is tall, silent, with giant arms, seriously, he was a knuckle dragger. Drummer looks like a Catholic monk. They soundchecked one of their songs, a very long garage-y riff about Halloween. They looked absolutely terrified–mouths open, stiff as boards. Then Jon & I grabbed guitars and joined them for “Helter Skelter”. They barely knew it, and it quickly became apparent that the guitarist and bass player were playing it in different keys. For some reason, the guitarist wanted to play it in F#. I explained that the song is twice as fun playing in E, which is the original key anyway, and it’s ten times easier to play. The riff in the chorus, which is the fun part, he couldn’t even play, I tried to teach him, but….not gonna happen. We offered to play the riff, and we sort of guided them thru the structure, or, follow the singer.
By the time this was done, the show wasn’t that far away. We joined up for the Helter Skelter finale, and it worked pretty good–they were a little less terrified, but, still scared enough to keep ‘em honest. Then we went on and tore up the joint. It was fun to have Dom there, she sat on a corner of the stage just out of the light, no one noticed her but me and I couldn’t help but make faces etc. The place was full, the Monster Ones were down in front and center, we played and no one got hurt. A few beers died for our sins.
After the show, Jose, our driver, shuttled us back to the hotel in town. I was beat. Evidently Jon & Matt went out to eat, even tho it was like midnite on a Sunday, of course you can still get grub in Spain. They drank three bottles of wine and put Matt on a plane at 8am (meaning 6 at the airport). Unfortunately for Matt, the volcanic cloud over the north Atlantic was causing planes to detour around it–hence flight times were longer, hence Matt spent the night in Dallas.
Meanwhile, we spent Monday in Palma. Dom & I walked around the old city, I calculated that I walked roughly two miles in flip flops. Jon, Darius, Dom & I met up for dinner at Simply Fosh, the re-energized restaurant in El Refectori, and had a great meal. Again, with the tour behind me, I was basically crashing after dinner, and getting up at the last possible second for breakfast.
I also used the hotel, and the Nixe Palace which we checked into on Tuesday (the promoter, Ana, for the show in Palma gave us two nights of free hotel, which was generous), as an office–I had the staff there copying, faxing, etc. at a furious pace. Two hours on computer, a walk, lunch, two hours on computer, two hours on beach, two hours on computer, dinner. Perfect recipe. I caught up on things I’ve been trying to get to for months. And calling from hotels in Spain is cheap–I spent literally hours on the phone to the US, calling airlines, Expedia, being put on hold over and over. I think the total cost of all that was like €40. Nothing. They didn’t even charge me at the Tryp hotel for a 25-page fax I sent.
On Tuesday night Dom & I dined at Na Burgesa, which is a little outpost on top of a mountain (speaking of outpost, so many times on Mallorca I felt like I was in Silverlake, Mulholland, some alternative LA Basin) which serves fine food and wine. A view looking over the entire city of Palma, the surrounding hills, castles, mansions, villages on the mountain…it’s astounding. Watching the planes land at PMI, watching the night fall upon the little towns below us.
Wednesday we walked to a nearby marina, and had lunch at the marina’s little HQ, which was a sailing school, the harbor office, a swimming pool, and a bar/eatery all in one. We asked for stale bread after the meal and bit by bit, sitting on a floating ramp that extended into the water, dropped bits of bread in the water, and watched as the fish, which were numerous and pretty big, went nuts, darting upward ahead of their competitors with such force as to leap out of the water when they made contact with the bread crumbs (“guys–it’s just a BREAD CRUMB; chill!”). Sometimes we’d be leaning out over the water and the fish would leap up, nail the bread and scram, splashing us as he/she did the reverse flip to head down. If they met our eyes, they wouldn’t come up. If we kept our hand on the bread chunk, they wouldn’t approach, with a couple of exceptions. We had a blast. I love days off, those few moments where we can engage in absolutely unproductive behavior…what’s not to love?
On the last night we dined in the hotel restaurant and brought a nice bottle (that I’d bought in Vigo) to enjoy, but the hotel restaurant didn’t do corkage. We enjoyed a bottle of Mallorquin red (Anima Negra, 95% callet) and I was sloshed when we finished–we had dinner at 8, because I had to be up at 5 to get my 7.30 flight–so we were done with dinner by 9.30. In my haze I did not do the math, but left a decent tip (by European standards) and went to bed.
LARVIK, 5/14
It’s only when I got up at 5, and was showering etc that I realize that they didn’t charge us for the wine…nice. I kissed Dom goodbye, and made my way to the airport, caught up with Jon at the gate. Got all the bags on for free–that’s important, and, unusual, for Air Berlin. I crashed hard on the flight to Berlin. Jon & I had lunch at the cafeteria-like Terminal C of Tegel, then flew on to Oslo (more sleeping). Claimed our stuff and walked out to meet our driver, with his Posies sign. Two-and-a-half hour drive to Larvik. More sleep. As we got close, it was clear we’d made good time. Per, the driver, hardly spoke any English (quite rare in Norway). I tried to indicate that we should go to the hotel first, drop our bags there and check in, and then walk over to soundcheck (the venue and the hotel were separated by all of one building). I asked, expectantly, raising my eyebrows in collusion: “Hotel?” Per, good naturedly: “Bolgen” (that’s the name of the venue, the Kulturhuset Bølgen, the incredible, massive, modern, hi tech gift that Larvik gave itself last year, and which is run in part by Claus, my former bandmate in the DiSCiPLiNES.) Me, more firmly: “Hotel.” Per, resolute: “Bolgen.” Me, tour manager: “Hotel!” Per…”uh, Bolgen.”. Finally we agreed: “Claus.” So, a call to Claus gave Per the green light to drop us 100 yards from the target. We checked in to the Farris Bad Spa Hotel, another new entity in Larvik, all dark slate and no curves. After a brief pause, we walked over to the venue, our gear already dropped by Per. Standing outside the place was Hege, who put on the D’s show in Larvik last summer in her cafe. Turns out she’s running the Cafe in the Kulturhuset, and has another one opening in the waterfront mall next door. She showed us in and we found the venue, the main hall of the place. It has tons of seats, theatre style, but the first chunk of them fold into the wall behind them, under the seats above them, and you then have a club sized space, in which they put chairs and tables. We had a little stage that jutted out from the bigger mainstage, and next to our little stage was a grand piano. After some time spent changing strings, and checking out the nice spread backstage, we soundchecked, and then had dinner in the cafe, with beautiful Puillly-Fume. Then back to the hotel, where I went for a swim in the super cool, black stone-sided pool, which had all the jets and things to use, like the strong ‘death from above’ jet that’s great for pulverizing aching neck and back muscles. I swam my 20 lengths, showered and dressed, and came back to the venue with about 15 minutes to spare before showtime. Perfect. As it turns out, the first part of the evening, Thursday night’s quiz, was still in progress, so we waited, and then, went on–it took a bit for people to switch gears, you know quiz nights are kind of rowdy, but people really enjoyed the show, a lot, actually. We sang great together–it was amazing to do a show after 3 days off, plus the swim to wake me up, etc…I was so relaxxxxxxxxed. My voice sounded great. With the piano, we had the chance to do some cool things–”Love Comes”, “Last Crawl”, and the new song “For the Ashes”. It was a cool show, well attended.
After the show, we had friends backstage and we polished off the beers and a bottle of Italian red. I gave away the fresh avocados that had been provided for us that we had no time or space to eat. Baard Disciplines was in the house, etc. We stayed for about an hour afterwards then it was time to get some rest in advance of the early wake up call.
5.45 the next morning we were up, showering and dressing. Out the door at 6.45, the hotel breakfast hadn’t started yet so they gave us each a take away breakfast–quite generous– a yoghurt (and a metal spoon to eat it with–I ate mine in the lobby and left the spoon in the sink behind the bar), sliced sausage, fruit. The 2.5-hour drive to OSL was used for more sleep. Then we checked in, painlessly, to our Continental flight to Newark, boarded (I caught some wifi to chat with Dom and Aden), and after a couple of movies I crashed out. Landed at Newark, and then it was like….’welcome back, suckers’. Like, the computer system for Immigration went down, and the foreign nationals were mixed in with the US citizens, so…EACH person took like ten minutes to process. Uh….this sucked, big time. Took forever to get in the dang country. Customs was no prob, and I did the trick of putting back in the small carryon bag that I took out in Oslo to keep my bag from being overweight, and re checked my suitcase.
Our flight to Memphis was delayed almost an hour, and we circled a bit avoiding heavy storms that were lashing the Memphis area. We finally got to a gate, got our stuff, and David, the transport captain for the show, was waiting for us, with this cool Buick mini wagon that was like Lexus version of a Subaru. There was a van, too, but all our stuff fit in the Buick’s cargo space. One of Jon’s guitar cases was totally cracked open all around the edge of one full side. A couple of packs of strings had fallen out and a luggage handler had stuffed them in the handle.
We went to our hotel, winding thru the lush tree-dense roads of outer Memphis. We were at this Hilton out on the edge of town, and we all said, when we saw its glass tower, “Die Hard!” We checked in, and got outta there, a local friend of Jody’s, Dean, came and picked us up and took us to his lovely home, where he had generously offered to let us use his rock room to rehearse for the show. Brendan Benson, Amy Speace, local hero Van Duren, Jody’s brother Jimmy, keyboardist Rick Steff, all assembled and we worked on quite an ambitious list of material for the show. Brendan was there with his missus and their tiny, 3-week old baby. Dean’s missus put out a great spread of food and wine, and we worked til midnight on songs we hadn’t attempted before. No need to say–that was a day of more than 24 hours, in fact…so no problem to crash HARD up in the Die Hard Hilton.
MEMPHIS, 5/15
With jet lag, I was up early, and got to work. Fed Exes were sent out, all kinds of online stuff was done. I had breakfast in the cafe, next to what I’m afraid to say is a typical American couple, i.e. on the rotund side. The dude had his breakfast in front of him, as he sat down just before I did. A muffin, some other small items….and SIX FRIED EGGS. SIX yolks in a sea of white. I was…stunned. Gawd.
With that in mind, I hit the pool for some laps and then Jon, Sondre Lerche and I assembled in the lobby and the magic Buick ferried us over to Ardent Studios, where all of Big Star’s albums (and many many more things) were recorded. Proprietor Jon Fry, who engineered the original Big Star albums was on hand to greet us, and the crew making the Big Star documentary was set up all over the place. We were in studio A, the big space where….”In Space” was made in 2004. We did some more run thrus with Van, Brendan, Amy Speace, Rick Steff, Jimmy and also Mike Mills, Jon Davis and Susan Marshall were on hand, and of course Sondre as well. This was all filmed and participants were also interviewed for the film. Family and friends were in attendance too, it was quite a crowd. It was sort of weird to rehearse with so many people looking thru the glass and cameras rolling and all that, but you gotta step up. Always.
After this, which of course ran late, we went over to the venue, the Levitt Shell in Overton Park. I had always heard that Overton was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, but this is in fact not true. Anyway, the band shell was installed in the 1930s, a WPA project. Famous for being the site of Elvis’ first professional appearance, it stands today thanks to the dedicated efforts of private foundations. It got a major overhaul in terms of restoration and updated production a couple of years ago.
We arrived in a caravan of various vehicles and production manager Cecil sorted us out. Passes arrived. Our FOH engineer, Dawn, was still tweaking the system. We settled in, and eventually we had a soundcheck, running thru whatever songs had unique instruments. This took quite awhile but we felt good about the sound and set up.
After the soundcheck, there was lots to do, not the least of which was to chow down on delicious BBQ from the world famous Rendezvous. I spent time on the phone with Fed Ex trying to sort out a billing problem with the packages I sent out that morning. I signed CDs, posters and humans in the VIP area. Jon, Amy, Jody & I did run thrus of songs we were doing together. I spent 20 minutes downloading a ridiculously huge printer driver for the HP printer in the production office so I could print lyric sheets. I wrangled everyone’s guests to make sure they had what they needed.
So, the show. We ‘moved up’ support band Star & Micey, because we heard a storm was a-comin’. We cut their set short. It all meant that basically, we went on on time. The entire lawn in front of the shell was full. We were introduced and we went bang on with ‘Back of A Car’, three-piece style. I felt great. Not nervous. Just inspired. Next up three songs with Jon Davis (of Superdrag, not Korn) who was absolutely awesome. The dude has BLACK GUITAR STRINGS. Next Jon (Auer) led the three piece on “I am the Cosmos” playing Chris Bell’s Gibson 335. Jody sang ‘Way Out West’ and I thought…last time to play this amazing bass line. Van Duren howled (wonderfully) thru ‘Mod Lang’, which we’d never played live before. My version of ‘Daisy Glaze’ was very well received. Mr. Mills came out for ‘Jesus Christ’. Jody’s brother Jimmy came out to play his awesome Fender bass on ‘For You’–in fact, it’s Jimmy who played on the original version. I played Chris Bell’s vintage Gibson J45 acoustic. Jimmy had offered to let me use his precious instrument for the rest of the show, so I used it on a never-before-done-live version of ‘Give Me Another Chance’–me on bass and singing, Jon on guitar and BVs, Amy Speace and Jody also on BVs. By the end of the song, the rain had started to pour. I quickly ran back to the wings to give Jimmy his bass back and took the rental out. We huddled and Jon wondered if we should skip ‘Lady Sweet’ but I said, no–skip nothing. I asked the crowd if they were ok, and if we should skip any songs…YES and NO were the resounding responses. So, we brought out Rick Steff to play accordion on ‘Lady Sweet’, great version. Then Sondre came out to play a solo version of ‘I’m in Love With A Girl’ (Brendan Benson came out and held an umbrella over his head), and then Sondre sang ‘Ballad of El Goodo’ with us, both excellent. A sad but sweet version of ‘Thirteen’. I rocked out ‘Feel’. Mills came out, with Susan Marshall and Amy Speace (the Dut-Do-ettes) to do ‘Thank You Friends’. Then, Jon, Susan and I did a spooky version of ‘Nightime’. Jon, Amy & I did our almost bluegrass harmony ‘Try Again’. The set closed out with Brendan Benson on guitar fronting us for awesome versions of ‘O My Soul’ and ‘September Gurls’–of course, Mills and Sondre and more came out to sing BVs. End of set.
The whole crowd came down to the front, everyone wanted more. Jon & I went out to perform ‘Take Care’, duo style. And then I got everyone out to join us for a ridiculous, slippery, fun version of ‘Whole New Thing’–which we dedicated to Alex’s current condition. I think it’s the only part of the show he would have really enjoyed, actually! Mills played guitar and we made him take solos–and when the song ended…we all hugged and laughed…and I started it up AGAIN. Now that’s a party.
I wrote this as a list, which doesn’t convey the feeling, but actually, it was one long mood of joy, it was not emo, maybe during the ‘Give Me Another Chance’ ‘Thirteen’ and ‘Take Care’ segments…but generally, we all expressed the love for the music, purely. It was an amazing program, with lots of stuff that had been put together the night before, and performed with excellence.
After the show, we were all hanging backstage, photographers everywhere, Chris Bell’s brother David thanking us…wow. It was…pretty amazing. Lincoln from Red Jacket Mine had flown out, I dug out some PBR from our private stash for him and his friends. A final nip at the BBQ and we all trooped over to Ardent, for an incredible listening session–with the documentary cameras rolling, we listened to the masters for ‘Radio City’, Big Star’s second album. Jon, Mills & I were able to solo up tracks, listen to unused instrumental parts…it was…gawd, every fan’s wet dream, seriously! When Drew, who was filming asked Jon to ‘get technical’ and make commentary while the music played, Jon said ‘Technically I have a boner right now’. We had brought a few friends over, and some wine…we were feeling pretty good so we pressed our luck and went over to the Hi Tone (Posies, 2005) to see Rick Steff’s band play, rockin’ swingin’ old school music. The cool thing is–people were dancing, in fact, the doc crew was getting DOWN. Drew especially is a pure madman. Love it. An old Seattle friend, Eric, gave Jon & I a ride back to the hotel when the place shut down. Now that was a night to remember. I mean, really!
The next day, I had time for a swim, then checked out, and Sondre and I had a final ride in the Buick and bade farewell to our man David at the wheel and to each other; I saw Brendan in the elevator on the way down. The nice thing about Memphis airport is that you go from the curb to the check in for American Airlines in about 12 steps. I upgraded to first class which was actually cheaper than paying for my second bag (my guitar) and my massive, 60-lb suitcase. Wow. The airport was quiet on Sunday, so security was no problem. It was about here that I found out that Jon had missed his flight that morning…oops. He was still at the hotel, and was looking forward to another nite in Memphis. I haven’t heard how that played out…my flight was delayed slightly, but I made my connection to Paris and arrived this morning. Spent most of the day unpacking after being gone a month. I picked up Aden at school, and of course she was thrilled to have me back, we had a great time traveling to a photo studio so she could get passport photos taken; as it turns out it was near Dom’s work so we stopped by and spent time with Dom at her work, Aden set up tables for the crew of the TV show Dom was working on, had a hot chocolate for her labor then we walked/scooted back home, dined at the Chinese place next door. While we were in there, French singer Daniel Darc came and ordered take away, poor fella is bent in half like an old man, shuffles like a grandad. He’s 9 years older than I am.
Maybe I’m a little older today…a little sleep should straighten that out…
Love
KS
Paris
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by E.J @loudersoft. E.J @loudersoft said: The always terrific @KenStringfellow has proffered an update on his blog about the Big Star show at @LevittShell http://bit.ly/dD1tXI [...]