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