6.28.2009 My flight to Frankfurt got in late, we were about 45 minutes late out of Newark and going east there's a headwind. So we we touched down over an hour late. My flight to Paris was already gone, but I was already rebooked on another--but the connection was quite tight. Evidently there's a way to go directly to the gates w/o security but the signs all lead you to security for those particular gates. And of course, with my boarding pass belonging to another flight, one that had left, I was not allowed to pass. Another interesting twist: the woman who checked me in was a trainee, and was quite nervous, and it wasn't til I was on board my flight that I realized she had neglected to give me my luggage claim checks. So, I went to the transfer desk, and was booked on a flight for noon, and he was able to look up my luggage and give me the numbers. I was hoping to have lunch at home, but now I would arrive while Dom was already at work and Aden at school. Anyway, I had work to do--I pretty much went straight back to mixing the Pernille Sparboe EP, the last song was left somewhere shy of completion, it was hard to tell how much, I hadn't listened to it in 2 weeks. It needed some tweaks, and I sent the results off to Pernille for approval. I was of course falling asleep at my computer from jet lag. Friday morning I was up to take Aden to school at 7, and by 9 I was working on a TV mix for the last Pernille song (an instrumental mix for use on TV shows that don't permit a live band but can accomodate a live vocal). I had a last listen to the final mix and thought it was good, and got approval on it later. In the meantime I started in on a project for Bob Wilcox, a Canadian artist who is doing elaborate pop with a mix of vintage and modern elements. I added guitar, keyboards, vocals, and tambourine to 4 songs over the course of Friday and Saturday. With my work done by Saturday afternoon, I was free to check out the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 that I brought back from the states...I set up my computer to play thru my stereo, since the discs are DVDs that have mostly audio content. You play a song, and the screen shows a vintage record player or tape machine playing. There are things to click on and see photos, old documents, etc. from Neil's early years. Evidently there are two hidden tracks on each disc, and I haven't for the life of me found how to locate them. Any help available out there? I looked online a bit. Of course the dominant news of the weekend--Friday morning I logged on to Twitter and saw that the leading trend was MJrip and so I pulled down the BBC headlines tab on Firefox and saw the news. Read this sobering article that implies his death as a fait accompli. From the Daily Mail UK, I found it via the Drudge Report. It implies his death was related to anorexia, itself related to anxiety about making an embarrassing spectacle in a show where he would reputedly only appear onstage for 13 minutes...at £1000/ticket. Yikes. We're off to picnic in the park. Love KS Paris 6.25.2009 I spent days chilling at my dad’s place in New Canaan and watching torrential rains fall on Connecticut...occasionally the clouds took a coffee break and I was able to get my carcass on the tennis court for the first time in a year. Most of the time I was catching up on emails, having dinner with my dad, his family and friends, and enjoying some down time at home. NEW YORK, 6/16 I zipped in to the city for a brief guerilla appearance at the 140 characters conference--I described it as an “ad hoc emergency council of elder geeks” (not that the attendees were old but they reign high in the Olympus of tech eggheads) to muse, debate and articulate the impact of Twitter and it’s short message universe. It was put together by Jeff Pulver, one of the developers of VOIP, and had Wyclef Jean, the Today Show’s Ann Curry, and many many more people speaking from their different business and personal perspectives. My role their was a little unclear, I called myself a a ‘palate cleanser and right brain stimulator’. Basically as the attendees returned to the theatre after lunch break, I played a couple of songs and told a couple of jokes, and that was that. But, the panel that preceded lunch, on Twitter’s impact on newsmedia, was quite fascinating. I really enjoyed Ms. Curry’s passion, integrity and her ability to articulate it. Our brief conversation afterwards was remarkable because of her ability to radiate that passion and inspire you to share it and take it on. On Wednesday I was in the city that evening to check out Loudon Wainwright III’s free show in Madison Square Park--just down the street from the Gramercy Theatre, so, when I found I was there with time to spare, I returned to the Live Bait Lounge for more shrimp cocktail and oysters. The Ipod providing music was stuck in the ‘B’s so the Beatles, Beach Boys, and...Big Star were playing over and over. Reminded me that BStar is long overdue for a full length NYC appearance--we did the Little Steven Underground Garage show in 2004, but that was only 3 songs. We haven’t done a headlining show since the 90s. Big Star seems to be bubbling up in coolness again now in the US...on a morning talk show to promote ‘Year One’ Jack Black and Michael Cera spontaneously start singing ‘Ballad of El Goodo’...and evidently ‘Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist’ opens with a Chris Bell song. Vanessa Paradis was covering ‘El Goodo’ on her last tour, too. So maybe we can play Paris sometime? I watched LWIII (has he ever played with Bob Log III?) for an hour or so. He had sardonic songs about the idea of Heaven as place to eat, drink, snort, smoke and screw with impunity; his grandad (No. 1 in the series) and more. About 1000 people were sprawled out on the lawn to watch. 9 songs in to the set I walked over to Madison Square Garden (which despite the names are not very close together) and checked out Earth Wind & Fire who were...well, on fire! They sounded totally vintage and played hit after hit of course. It was a weird co-bill with Chicago, where the two bands play together in a big jam, then EWF did 50 minutes on their own (the part I saw) then Chicago did a set of similar length, then another big love-fest at the end. I liked the fact that I saw 45 minutes of focused funk intensity and before long was on the train back to New Canaan. BROOKLYN, 6/18 My tennis plans were washed out. It rained like vengeance, like a curse put on humanity by wronged and thirsty trees. Like the severed jugular of some clear-vesseled beast. I don’t have the stats handy but I’ve heard it’s rained some 28 of the last 30 days in and around NY. So, I loaded what I needed for the weekend into a town car and headed for Brooklyn. The rain had softened the ground enough to let a heavy tree break loose from the earth and fall onto the highway, so we had to dodge to an alternate route. Pulling up to Littlefield, a sustainable artspace in Gowanus, there was nothing to see, not even the street number, and the driver and I missed it. After circling and calling I had Caroline, the booker, out and waving us down. I know Caroline from when she worked for REM’s promoter in Australia 4 years ago, specifically taking care of Bright Eyes, our support for the tour. She tracked me down after my set with Robyn the previous week and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, in the race to get Littlefield on the map. It’s only been open for a month, and most of the locals still don’t know it yet. It’s a great space, tho, and I am sure they will develop a clientele over time. Now, the rain, the short notice, the lack of familiarty, and probably Andrew Bird’s Radio City show made for quite a series of obstacles to overcome but I did get some people out. The bar is in a separate room from the concrete-floored showroom. So my quiet show was eerily quiet, people sat on the floor and took it in. There were photographers there who were pinging me with flash shots every two seconds which was kinda weird but I do love attention, and it had a weird effect of breaking the ice--my show is so intimate that it’s kind of awkward, and with a new audience especially it’s very much like a high-school backseat grope--there isn’t an established checklist of procedures to get us from awkward silence to harmonious lovemakin’. So, I could play off the flashbulbs and put the audience’s attention on other aspects of the room than me, and the reverence is downplayed a bit. I played many ‘new’ (post soft commands) songs and lived up to my promise to play a couple of hours, and people were truly floored. On Friday I flew to Chicago, and started getting calls that the Posies were not going to be happily reunited that evening--Matt’s flight from Austin and Jon’s connecting flight from St. Louis were canceled due to weather. My flight from LaGuardia’s Marine Terminal was just fine, if a bit bumpy. The Marine Terminal as it sounds was built for the old ‘clipper ship’ seaplanes of the 1930s. Most of the building as you use it is bland modern non-architecture. But the main rotunda of the terminal, off to the side, is a fabulous WPA structure with a similar kind of vibe as Grand Central. But it’s quite compact. Built for times when travel was the rare haunt of the privileged, it has just one small bathroom for each sex. Not that the modern terminal offers much more. I liked that they were selling Clear passes just the week before the company that offers the service went out of business. Of course there was nothing to eat on the flight, not even for sale, and as we sat on the ground for awhile I couldn’t take and ate my sandwich, balancing the plastic container on my already boxed-in knees. I had been lucky to ask about what was available and to grab something from the limited--and expensive--selection in the waiting area. I arrived to Chicago Midway, and claimed my gear, and cabbed to our friend Vince’s place. I had a panoramic view of Chicago as we basically skirted the downtown, and saw the weather attacking it from all sides--lashing wind, snaking lightning, and whipping, bullet-like rain. It had, however, calmed down substantially by the time I got settled and decided to go out. In fact, as there were no cabs in Vince’s neighborhood, I thought about walking all the way to the Double Door, about 4 miles. It got boring after awhile tho, and I flagged a cab for the rest. I soon found Darius there--and as soon as I said hi this girl in a prom dress chatted me up about how humanity needs to move to other planets etc etc. she seemed smart enough, and she was young and pretty, but mystifyingly driven to make sure I never had time to respond. Was it a pickup? I couldn’t tell. And I certainly wasn’t going to find out. We were all there to see X, with Billy Zoom in the lineup it was a first for me (The Posies played a couple of shows with the Tony Gilkyson lineup in the early 90s). They sounded amazing, but little did I know they would sound even better the next night. This was night #2 of a three-night stand at the Double Door (where the Posies had a near death experience in our two night stand in 2001 and a decent inning in 2005). I was tired, tho, and headed back before the show was over, just staying up late enough to beet CHICAGO, 6/20 Matt and Jon arrived early in the morning. Matt managed to get on a flight at about 4am out of San Antonio and Jon was diverted to Minneapolis--he even played in a hootenanny that night. When I got back to Vince’s place he was still at the X show (Darius stayed with friends from hight school). I had the place to myself, and could have grabbed one of the beds upstairs in the attic/office. But I was too scared to go up there in the dark! I fell asleep on the couch in the front room. In the morning I was up early and Matt came in while I was pretty much starting my day. I went out and looked for sustenance. Vince’s neighborhood is a traditional Polish neighborhood--in most shops people speak Polish to each other, even the younger ones. There are a few Mexican/Ecuadorian etc restaurants and businesses. But the Polish community is very much dominant here. It’s old, working class, and yuppie free. So, no soy latte’s to be found. I did find a Polish bakery and enjoyed an apricot jelly doughnut. But no coffee to be had. I ended up in a Mexican bakery and had a very large cup of coffee that was a ‘chico’ so I had to wonder what a ‘grande’ would be like. I found out that in Mexican Spanish, a croissant is a ‘bigote’ (moustache). I thought that was clever and made the idea of eating one ever more amusing. Most intimidating item: a cone, basically of pie crust, laying on its side and filled with oozing, weeping custard. Knife and fork? Hands? How would you approach it? I was proud we conducted our entire transaction in Spanish, and in fact they made quite a fine sugar cookie. While I was scouting the nieghborhood, I found a lot where one of the typical buildings--old, brick, square, not more than two or three stories--had once stood. There was concrete covering all of the lot--the light sandy kind, like around my grandparents’ swimming pool. In fact, the place had become a swimming pool. The perfect rectangle of the foundation had filled with water. Only one piece of the actual building remained--a door, floating now in the water that had filled up the rectangle to a depth of a foot or two. A few scraggly weeds had erupted from a collection of rubble that filled out one corner. On the floating door, there was a mating pair of mallards and one scrappy duckling. The tallest weeds had attracted the attention of enormous dragonflies. Photo from my phone...made just before a local came up and delivered an anti-arab tirade since the 'arabs on the corner' were 'not treating the ducks right'. Then an old man in a green suitjacket and a cowboy hat walked by with a stuffed lion... Well, I came back from my breakfast run, sweating. Having no other clothes, I was dressed for the show--long sleeve shirt, tie. The evidence of yesterday’s storm was completely obliterated and it was now about 85 degrees. I built up my strenght and convinced Matt to go out with me to look for more eats, for lunch. I had spotted the small supermarket with the giant deli counter earlier, offering sausages in a remarkable variety of sizes, shapes and colors--from cadaverous grey to deep purple. Now, I thought it was funny that this place was next door to a pet store, and I hope you do too. I mean, surely there must be some two-way trade on leftover, expired stock. America recycles! Except this store, too was a little slice of Poland. You could get Polish magazines, DVDs, and even bottled water, which was exactly as cheap if not cheaper than Dasani or some other American product. Because we can’t read Polish and didn’t pay attention, Matt & I ended up buying water that was strawberry flavored. But also...smoked kielbasa, enormous blood sausage with chunks of tongue, smoked pork ribs, and other wonderful meat treats. A little more than we needed for lunch, but it wasn’t expensive. Vince had warned me that calling a cab to his place would take a long time, and it took even longer than his estimate--so we arrived to the grounds of the Taste of Randolph St. Festival a little later than our 4pm get in. But the band preceding us was still in full swing, and Darius had already arrived and sorted out the backline. We got settled and I started tour managing--making sure we got the French white wine we had been promised, and more importantly...making sure there was bottled water in our trailer. It was still very hot out even tho the sun had done its worst. When the band before us finished, we went into action but it was such a smooth set up that we had time to kill even after setting up, taping everything down, setting our monitor levels, etc. The crew was very good. I had time to indulge my pre-show need to pee every 2 minutes. And then the Poetry Man, who writes poems about bands right before they go on and reads them as an introduction, did his poetry thing before us. Unfortunately, he was on Jon’s mic and I had earplugs in and couldn’t really hear him. So, we took off in the hot sun, and did our Frosting on the Beater show. And you know, we were really good. It’s hard to rock in the daylight. Sound just doesn’t travel as far as it does in the suggestive dark. I hit plenty of weird notes and I was beaten down by the heat but it didn’t matter. We pushed it and played with some seriously unrehearsed fire, giving back what was being dumped on us from above, heat and light. I saw familiar faces in the crowd and just lots of people singing along. Awesome. I broke a string and changed it all in the first verse of “Lights Out” and didn’t break a sweat. Darius had some things fall apart due to heavy rockin’ and used the guitar/organ breakdown in ‘Burn & Shine’ to repair them. We were quick on our feet and played with passion and a kind of elephantine grace. Yes, it’s possible. After our set Matt had agreed to help get my stuff offstage and Jon & I jumped down to sell merch on the pavement. From that point, we were free to enjoy the rest of the day/night which was truly and epic night of music: there was our show, in which we shared a bill with Urge Overkill and Tinted Windows; there was the X show at the Double Door; there was the Lemonheads show at the Abbey Pub; the Church and Adam Franklin at the House of Blues; and Wooden Birds at Schuba’s. All friends, in a way. And we saw almost all of them. And many of them saw us-- I was pleased to find John Doe backstage at the festival saying wonderful things about our set. Evan Dando was there too but in a rather...otherworldly state. John from Starling Electric drove from Ann Arbor to see the show. And so on. We got a big time shout out from the Urge, who were on fire and have a great new lineup. Tinted Windows were quite cool too, it’s like you’ve heard it all before but that’s also what makes it great--it’s a tribute band in many ways, but the quality is extremely high. About halfway into TW’s set Jon & I hopped cab to the House of Blues where the Church were in encore mood. We got to hang backstage with Adam Franklin for a bit, and spent some time with Stephen from Second Motion, the Disciplines’ label, while he worked the merch table. It was amazing that everywhere we went that night, people recognized us. Chicago is really our town. We cabbed to The Double Door and watched X, all four Posies, from the soundboard. And they were even better than the night before, and played the songs I missed from Friday--White Girl, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts...etc. They were just astonishingly good and the benevolence of John Doe makes me like them even more. After the show we spent some time in the creepy basement of the Double Door and I had a great chat with D.J. Bonebreak. Note: they should really consider using the Double Door’s basement as the set of the next installment of the ‘Saw’ franchise. So, the Posies, Vince, Ed from Urge and mrs. Ed, aka Beth, who has become something of a superstar in the burlesque/burlesque fashion world, piled into Vince’s van (it should be noted that Jon & I each had a guitar plus a bag with pedals and merch to carry to all of these different places), the van itself being from slasher film central casting, and headed to the Abbey Pub which is a long way from Tipperary. There we watched the Lemonheads who were very very strange. If Evan was trying his best, then his best days are currently on suspension. If he was phoning it in, then he should retire. His drummer was really good, and the two teenager who play guitar and bass wouldn’t even *look* at him. Other then the obvious references to blood additives, I’ve never seen *less* chemistry on stage. It just wasn’t on. They looked like they were paying a debt, not playing a show. Matt was starting to fall over, speaking of cooked geese. It was time to go. We went back to Vince’s and I nodded in and out of ‘New York Doll’ the biodoc on the late Killer Kane. It was a great film and I really wanted to get into it but look at my day--I was spent. On Sunday, I was up before everyone else. I helped myself to the rest of my blood sausage and cabbed it to Midway. Despite my delayed flight I made it to LaGuardia just a few minutes late and my dad was soon there to pick me up. We drove into New Canaan and as sure Mussolini’s trains the rain came crashing down again. But we had a lovely father’s day dinner and after I had drained the house of dessert wine my half brother Scott, his g.f. Sam and I got in a town car and drove to Hoboken, where I crashed on his couch. Monday morning I was picked up by Tony Shanahan, my lovely friend who plays bass for Patti Smith, and is a major part of my album Touched. He and Emery Dobyns have a studio in Weehawken (next door to Hoboken). Emery is a gentle and modest man who makes incredible records--Antony & the Johnsons, Noah & the Whale, and now--Strings & the Angel. Well, I was guesting on recordings for Tara Angell. Tony & Tara go way back and he plays with her on occasion. Originally, I was coming over for one Posies show in Brooklyn. That became two when we added the NYC show the next day. From there I was planning on going to Nashville and producing an artist there, and playing a show or two while I was in town. I don’t know if I witnessed a breakdown or if one had already occurred and was just well masked at first but it soon became apparent that my potential client was not going to come thru and was in the midst of some kind of crisis. The plane tix from NY to Nashville were never bought, no deposit was sent in, but it was always ‘just about to happen’. Well, I had made my return to Paris two weeks after my arrival to accomodate the session. When it didn’t come thru I tried to make the best of it, and in fact, this trip was full of rewards that I wouldn’t have been able to reap, and all in my best interests--the NY solo shows, the Chicago Posies show, getting to see all those great bands. And I got to spend some time with my dad, which of course is something that has no price tag. Now, the client finally admitted the session wasn’t going to happen some time ago, sometime in May. Travel was purchased. The calendar started to fill up with these new activities, but the days after Chicago remained open. Tara Angell made a record for Rykodisc around the time that my solo album and the Posies album were released. I picked up a copy from our Swedish distributor when we came thru town at one point and really enjoyed it. And one day, I received an mp3 in my webmail inbox, from Tara herself. A demo, with not much explanation. I liked it and asked her to send me more as she wrote more. And now and then I got some more. In recent months, the frequency has been increasing--and so has the quality. Seemed like a record was soon to be made. I really wanted to be involved, but there wasn’t a budget to hire me at my normal rate. And normally I might have to pass because of budget concerns. I gotta go with the stuff that pays over the stuff that doesn’t, unless it’s *really* exceptional. However, Tara’s stuff is. It was worth it to me to be involved simply because I detected a great record in the making. So, with days free on the calendar, I wrote her with a challenge--find the studio, and my services to whatever end she needed--playing, writing, engineering--would be free. I figured I should at least be productive and here was a chance to give back a little generosity. And when she arranged for us to work with Tony and Emery--well, i knew it would be a great meeting of musical heads and the hang would be ample reward. And in two days we did 4 amazing tracks. Some adapted from her Garageband demos, some done from scratch. Emery is a minimalist drummer but somehow hits everything that needs to be there. Most of the drum sound is a Wunder Audio mic just out in the middle of the room and it sounds incredible. I also loved singing on this mic. Over the course of the days I sang, played guitar, and some keyboards. Results: fabulous. After the second day we went for a celebratory drink as Emery has a really big gig coming up. Not only that, but Noah & the Whale are on Radio 1 so he has plenty to be happy about. He’s one of those wonderful people who treat every project with the same enthusiasm, are never negative or dismissively opinionated. A reminder that the truly great--think Rafa--are humble, and stick with the important stuff. I can think of a few people who are less impressive, crying over the fact they didn’t get handed the right statuette at the right time, and telling everyone who can’t get away how great they are. I spent my last night in the US at the Renaissance Inn by Newark airport. I chose it not only for its proximity and free shuttle but because it had a swimming pool. I tried to watch American TV and get all excited about the hotel experience, but the programming is so awful I turned it off after 5 minutes. Up in the morning I had a swim and did some excercises, and then had a photo shoot with Jen Maler, who was at the Posies show and offered to do some work. I didn’t have my best clothes to work with, being the end of the travel, but I just tried to be my natural self and see if we got the goods by chance. One thing, tho, is when we were done it was time to hop the shuttle to the airport and I totally forgot to take out my contacts until long after my bag was checked. So, I still have them in. No place to buy contact lens stuff after security either. You can buy a toenail clipper, but not a lens case. As usual, Lufthansa has horrible movies. Goodnight! Love KS Lufthansa flight 403 to Frankfurt 6.16.2009 FLOURENS, 6/7 Was this a show? We drove to the little town of Flourens, maybe 20 minutes from Toulouse. What were the odds that this little village of a few hundred people would have not one but two shows on the same day? Hmm. There was the village fete with cover bands playing day and night...we were kind of an extension of that...playing in a great little restaurant on a small lake. We arrived and I went straight to the lounge where a TV had been set up so interested parties (which turned out to be me and one other guy) could watch the weird and wet Roland Garros final. When it was done, I was expecting to see the rest of the band, who had scattered to run errands, pick up supplemental gear, and get their voting done in the general election that day, any minute but that dragged on. Anyway, there was a big party happening, perhaps a wedding dinner of some kind? and we couldn’t set up until they left. And they went on and on, as was their right. A couple of fans of mine actually came at the advertised time--I had been told we were going to play at 5 that afternoon but it turned out to be more like 8 when we played...and they left long before we started. Funny. So, in the end, it’s not even clear the place was open, we basically played for the owner and some friends of the band. Kind of a rehearsal, with a lovely dinner afterwards...the owner of the resto grilled us some amazing brochettes. Wine flowed. We all talked and laughed. I DJ’d. The owner’s 4 year old daughter played the drums now and then. It was starting to get a little intense and then the owner of a local recording studio, who wasn’t a friend of the band’s, so basically a stranger at that point, got on the drums...I chased him off as the other guys in the band were too timid. Leave it to the ugly American. I had to be pretty stern, and he was huffy trying to save face but later when we had the chance to eat and drink and talk it was all cool and he understood, no hard feelings. Quite a talker this fellow...he gave me the spiel about his studio, for, man, 40 minutes? Hard to say. Jolly guy. While we played this kind of private show, or rehearsal with dinner as I like to describe it, we did the entire set....it was getting close to ten and I was HUNGRY. So at some point I just said “dinnertime”. Enough! It was worth the wait tho... TOULOUSE, 6/8 Gloriously slept in. We were really late in looking for lunch, most restaurants were closed when we were starting to get organized at 3...so I had my first visit to a Hippopotamus...a chain, there’s many in every city. Eric was ashamed to take me there, but I didn’t mind. In terms of status it’s rather like a Denny’s. I had a steak tartare, and you know, the fact is, a cheap French chain restaurant is so much better than its American equivalent. Even the wine was far from vile. Le Saint de Seins. “The Saint of Tits”. Saint and Seins are homophones. I guess it’s funny...?? Well, it’s a student bar, so a place to get cheap beer (they actually had no red wine, a bar in France, imagine). Decent stage, but the PA sounds pretty horrible. It took them forever to try and EQ the feedbacking frequencies out of the monitors. The club looks very new and is quite tastefully done but on closer inspection you see that the toilets don’t work, and that the construction in general seems to have been done in a hurry. Nice thought when you have a 700 pound lighting rig hanging over your head....now, this being a student place and a place for students to drink as cheaply as possible, the very inexpensive 5 euro cover charge was seen as a royal bummer to the regulars. But, still people came. I guess about 40. The band was hoping for more for their big Toulouse show--but I said, hey--40 people on a rainy Monday night paying to see a band that has only released a 7 inch single, and recently at that, is really good. It was only the Sad Knights’ 4th show, right? And despite the kind of crappy stage sound (after so many years of touring, I just ignore these things and play on) we had some great moments. The jam on ‘Who Do You Love’ was particularly demented...I was working this kind of ‘snake charmer’, egyptian sounding kind of mode (or should I say ‘scale’?) and stomping on the wah pedal and pushing the bass keys til they were throbbing and pulsing the PA and obliterating their original tonality for something that was registering more in the lower intestine than the eardrum. Fabulous. I played lots of flashy licks, and in fact I drew a few young people who I am pretty sure were just there for whatever and ended up coming over to check me out going apeshit on the piano and Farfisa. Props! It was a bit painful to be up at 7 the next morning (actually I blame the cot in Eric’s office that I slept on...it pretty much undid the work my osteopath did to set me right after my Primavera Sound tumblin’ dice move) but in fact we had to fight thru awful traffic to get me to the airport and my flight. I came back home and was soon back to working on the Pernille Sparboe mixes...I got one more song done and got pretty close on the 4th and final song but much to my chagrin I had to call it a wrap Wednesday night before it was completely ready. So, it’s waiting for me for next time. Pernille was totally cool to wait another two weeks to hear the last song! But anyway, I said from the beginning that I would try to get it done in early June, but it was probably going to be end of June that I could finish everything. So already Thursday it was time to go--took Aden to school Thursday morning and that night I played in New York. BROOKLYN, 6.11 I always have the same feeling when I go to the states. Intercontinental travel is exciting and all, and I look forward to seeing my friends but at the same time I always think...argh, the states. Time to start falling on deaf ears again. Last time I played the US the vibe was partially hostile, you might recall my run in with some frat dudes at my show in April-- a minor annoyance that luckily didn’t derail what ended up being a very good show, but the fact is...why should I even bother with annoyances when everywhere else I play the audience is comprised of ADULTS. Even when it’s an all ages show and some of those ‘adults’ are 11. Even the 4 year old watching the We Build Airplanes, the solo acoustic opener for the Sad Knights shows, knew not to talk during his show. Now, my flight from Paris to Munich got in late, so I was running to catch my flight to Newark. I ran straight to the front of the passport control line, and happened to encounter one of those little clerks who wants to let you know he’s in control. He spent forever giving the guy in front of me shit and then took his sweet time. I told him my flight was boarding. He said it was ‘not his problem’. This kind of thing. Then he told me I needed a new passport and that there was no place for him to stamp. I said it hadn’t been a problem before (true) and that I would be happy to find a place for him to stamp (Let me tell you I wasn’t thinking of my passport when I said that). I am sorry, but I am not going to let a foreign polizei tell me when to get a new American passport. I’m not particularly patriotic, but I draw the line there. Also, there are two blank pages and plenty of spots left. So screw him. I ran to my gate, and found out that they were holding my flight back because weather problems had delayed lots of people trying to make that connection. So, all was well, and this meant my luggage was going to make it too. FYI, Lufthansa has SHITE movies. And I’m stuck with them on the way back, too. So, I landed that evening at about 6, had no problems getting thru customs quickly and was soon looking for the guy with the ‘Stringfellow’ sign that was supposed to be waiting for me. Only he wasn’t there. I called the venue, I called the car service. The guy answering at the car service said ‘I am very very far away’. Not good. So, I found a car service there and there soon ensued a three way debate between myself, the venue contact and the driver about the best way to get to the Bell House. We went thru the Holland tunnel and over the Brooklyn Bridge, and soon we were in a land of scrapyards, oil recycling trucks, etc...in other words, Gowanus. Pulled up the Bell House, and Jack and Ben from the club came out and paid the driver, and I went in and started to unpack, look for my merch that had been sent to the club, and say hi to Scott, Peter, Robyn, Bill....Robyn’s TM Brian, an old Seattle homey; Angie, the Disciplines’ publicist, and her man Jon Wurster (Minus 5/Superchunk veteran) and so on. Lots of friends in the house, lots of fans in the house. I brushed my teeth and put my contacts in, at the grimy work sink backstage. eew. Takka Takka were wrapping up their set (Posies fans it turns out). Soon I was plugging my stuff in. My guitar took a few minutes to get up to speed, it was having trouble with all the travel. I set up, went off, and a few minutes later came on for the set. Such a different story playing to a packed house of Robyn fans in Brooklyn. The audience was mine from the git go, and I opened with a challenge--a mic’less ‘It’ll Be A Breeze’. My voice had a little trouble with the long hi note--”it’s exACTly how I feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel” but gimme a break it was my first solo show since the Delancey two months prior and I just walked off a plane from France FFS. All told, it was a big success, and people loved it...I sold hundreds of dollars worth of merch afterwards, so that’s still the great litmus test...then Robyn played and I watched from the wings, I hadn’t seen the Venus 3 and they were on fire. At the end of the set I came up and sang Waterloo Sunset with them, but then...we came back again and I sang my favorite Robyn song, Airscape, with them, and then we ridiculously jammmed on Roadhouse Blues...yes, you read that right. I played ‘blues harp’. Hahaha. Oh, I sang ‘Give it to the Soft Boys’ with them too...epic! BROOKLYN, 6.12 The Posies arrived to town on the 11th and made it to the Bell House but after the show was done. But it was a fun hang. I was kicking back some fine wine with McKenzie from Midlake, who is in town rehearsing with Regina Spektor, til...er, later than late. Good times! So the next day I was lucky to have jet lag on my side waking me up early and bright. About midday the Posies all hopped in a town car and headed in to the city to meet with the fantastic team at Rykodisc, and then schlepped back to the hotel with a very cranky cabbie (a cranky cabbie, in New York? Really?) and headed to the Bell House. Tully Hall was setting up and Darius’ drum kit was delivered from the drum co. that sponsors him. We set up and started to run thru stuff. Woah, it was rougher than Jamie Farr’s 5 oclock shadow. We hoped for the best. It’s not so easy to find good eats around the Bell House. It’s a wonderful venue tho--it’s pretty new, but feels lived in in a lovely way. It’s already a classic joint. And the people working there are just cooler than cool. So friendly and pro. Now, if we could just get some more restos in the area...after soundcheck the band, my friend Brian from Seattle, Posies fan Jason from Idaho, and Karsten who released the Disciplines album in Germany, all walked pour chercher manger. We split up but K/B/J and I found a little Italian place that had great wine by the glass, and they managed to whip me up a grilled chicken salad in an incredibly swift manner, as I had to rush back to the venue to do an interview with NPR, on how musicians make money in this time and day. Should be really interesting and it should air in a couple of weeks. The Brunettes were on first, I played with them in Auckland a few years ago, and they’ve grown up since, they are a really quirky, really interesting and fun band. And it seems they live in Brooklyn now. Tully Hall reminded me a bit of a vaudeville act, they even dressed like it....I was expecting them to do ‘the old Bamboo’ from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, tipping their straw boaters and all. Now it was time for us to play. FOTB is an easy, solid thing to play, so I wasn’t feeling tenative. But we did have a few tuning issues and a few patches of potholed road...but the crowd was so into it, it kept us aloft. There was a lot of singing along, esp. in ‘Earlier Than Expected’ and we fine tuned the set as requests came in--so ‘Ontario’ was a late addition. We closed the night with a surprisingly raw and visceral ‘Beautiful One’. NEW YORK, 6.13 I was still up pretty early. As it turns out there’s a great organic coffee shop around the corner from the Holiday Inn Park Slope so we brunched there. Then we were picked up by a battered van and driven to a recording studio in Williamsburg, where we did a live session and interview for Jack Rabid’s internet radio show. We did three songs with the band and ‘Throwaway’ just Jon & I. Snack of the year: chocolate covered pretzels. There were only 8 of them. Thank God. It was about 3.15 when the interview portion was wrapping, and we got in the van (studio was on 4th floor, and the freight elevator had been condemned) and drove into the city. It was pissing down rain. With great effort, we circled around and pulled up to the Gramercy (formerly Blender) Theater. What a great venue--seated in the back, sloping floor in the front. Full NY crew, like any big union venue. So we were well taken care of. And the backline was much better for this show...Tully Hall’s stuff was weird. I had this AC30 that the more I turned it up the quieter I got and the speakers sounded out of phase. I fired up the twin at the Gramercy and was like hallefrickinglujah. Everything about this show was just so much more blessed with flow than the Bell House show, but the Bell House show had this great crowd that made it work (and the Bell House itself). My favorite parts were a long spiel about Tequila Tom and the fact he had a doppelganger standing right behind him. My dad, stepsister and stepbrother made the gig, my favorite tennis pro from New Canaan, Xavier was there, lots of old friends. Ticket sales had been damaged by the fact that when the name changed from the Blender (as in the now defunct mag) to the Gramercy, the Blender Theatre domain name became available and was bogarted by a scalper site that listed tix for our show at $60...and even $300...so that scared a lot of people off. That and the fact that most people don’t know the venue that well, and the fact that John Vanderslice was playing the Bowery was all collateral damage. But, still, the venue filled up more than I thought it would, and we really played extremely well. At the end we did a final encore of ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road’ with Don Fleming, FOTB’s producer, a 6’ 3” crazy man (who Jon referred to as Spalding Gray) singing and diving in the audience, the drum set...I had to dive on him when he crashed the drums. Awesome. After the show Tequila Tom and other friends and I inhabited the rooftop bar at La Quinta Inn, it was weird.... On Sunday I took the train to New Canaan, it was intense to lug my guitar, my massive suitcase, my computer bag and the small carryon that had my merch and guitar pedals etc to and thru Grand Central (and I added a weighty Sunday NY Times to that) and got on the train to New Canaan. Actually, I arranged to go to Darien and have my dad meet me there so I didn’t have to go up and over and change trains. But in Stamford I had to run out of the car with all my stuff as track construction in Darien meant that only two cars would open at that station...we had to walk on truck plates to get to the platform. My dad’s neighbors, just across the street, are very cool. Bob is a wine enthusiast--fascinatingly he has never had a sense of smell, but his palate has developed to compensate. And he loves Rhone wine, and we bonded on MANY issues. Like me, he has lists of things to get, and lists of what his cellar contains and when it will be mature. We had some extraordinary Chateauneuf, Ermitage blanc and vintage champagne, with a plate of snacks incl. cheese and grilled steak...well, with three days of nonstop rock & roll action straight off a plane under my belt this pretty much killed me (but in a great way). So by 9.30 I was in bed. Monday I spent just hanging in the house, catching up on business. I got out on the tennis court for the first time in a year with Xavier who gave me a great lesson and got me hitting again. My dad cooked an absolutely gourmet chicken recipe with basil, olives and grape tomatoes. We watched ‘Man on Wire’ but I was already starting to crash. I downloaded Tweetdeck...I *think* I understand it...I watched the ‘Crack Fox’ episode of the Mighty Boosh. I totally got that. Love KS New Canaan CT 6.06.2009 Most of this week I was hard at work mixing the Pernille Sparboe EP. Some late nights, even tho' I try and avoid that when I'm home. The results so far are great, tho--this has been a mixing experience that's been less about problem solving than about how far can I push it to ever greater heights. So many insanely good vocal takes to choose from. Etc. I had the chance to sneak out for a bit and see the Miserable Rich, an excellent UK band, that basically seems to be comprised of some fiddle-playing farmers, with great songs about drinking and...what you do when you are about to be or have just been drinking. They were supporting Rodriguez. 6-Rod had a shit hot band, really playing a great 60s groove--Hammond, bass, guitar and drums. The Man Himself has this nice reedy Dylan-like voice, so he just automatically rings of authenticity and righteousness (I would love to hear him cover 'Royal Jelly' by Dewey Cox)...until he stops singing; then he seems a bit befuddled, with really weird stage banter. There was a really long one about the Pope, North Korea, and Amsterdam that was like...wooooooah. But it actually drew applause...somehow. On Thursday I flew to Toulouse to rehearse with the Sad Knights, learning the 22 song set in...well, no time. We just played. And I played along, and I pretty much nailed it. After rehearsals we checked a bit of Sonny Vincent, quite a fascinating guy, really. His show was kind of rock rock rock but he has been involved in many things over the years... ALBI, 6/5 This rock & roll show was held at a great little bar owned by an incredible man, Fabrice. Originally from Normandy, he lived literally around the world--Reunion, Madagascar, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Australia--working as a radiologist and also playing bass in a few awesome garage bands. I guess he's in his 50s now, and in the last decade he moved back to France, opened a venue in Bordeaux for awhile, and then in the last three years, this modest little bar, Le Jour de Fete, which is able to entertain and feed the rockers of Albi pretty much 24-7. And he cookedd us dinner, breakfast and lunch during our stay. The show itself was super fun, basically I got to beat on the piano like a caveman, playing all my 50s lixx and then some. People actually danced to the rockabilly numbers. So, there's your answer right there. The monsoon-style rain didn't scare the peeps away. And in Albi we find small-town folks who are really civilized. I guess to them it's not a small town. LAUZERTE, 6/6 After lunch with Fabrice, we drove on the back roads to get to Lauzerte. We stopped in Cordes-sur-Ciel, a quaintly crumbling medieval village, built on a little plug of of a hill or mountain...the kind of place you would build a little medieval town on, to keep it safe from the baddies (like the 'English' that the French fought for a hundred bloody years, who were actually French, but coming from England, who ruled a French speaking England which had more land in France than did France itself at that time). I bought some foie gras and some sweet Gaillac wine. We drove on to Lauzerte, which also turns out to be a little medieval town clinging to a pointy rock, from which you can survey the country for miles and miles. On the way, we drove thru oak forests (I never saw how much this part of France resembled Connecticut til now), along massive limestone cliffs, and thru dazzling, dreamy wheatfields. We passed a fantastic destination in itself--the village called 'Bonnemort' or 'Good Death'. Heavens! I assume they meant something about cramming your own throat with throat-crammed goose product, until you explode like Mr. Creosote. We finally drove vertically into Lauzerte, and absolutely did not bother to set up our stuff. We worked on the foie gras/Gaillac combo, and I explored the town. Show--we had a real piano, and our Farfisa, and it was a quieter show tonite--instead of Christian on the drums, we had Jenny on the cahon. I knew people were listening, at least to the webcast, so I tried to really play as incredibly as possible...success? At one point, Jenny's lack of experience showed--but only at one, because otherwise she is excellent--when she had never really heard a Bo Diddely beat, and played 'Who Do You Love' in a kind of double time shuffle. So, I waved at her, and got her to play with one hand, and hold down the root note on the Farfisa; then I got on the kit and blasted out a Bo Diddley bumpdebumpdebump bumpbump til she got the point, then she grabbed the sticks and took over. I picked up the bass, Eric moved to Farfisa, and Simon walked around the room amongst the ever drunker-villagers...awesome! Eventually the bass amp broke, the so I picked up the stand up bass and we finished like that. Love KS Lauzerte, FRANCE 5.30.2009 ZARAGOZA, 5/24 It all was going so well. This was a classic Spanish show, dirty, sweaty, unhinged. The club was tiny and I was crawling all over it. People danced. It was exactly what I hoped it would be. They didn't want it to end--finally we ran out of songs and I closed the evening with a solo version of "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" by the Beatles. You know...'so I'll go-za' so I could wrap it up with 'Zaragoza'. After the show I chatted a bit with Cuca, aka Hada Quimica who I worked with in Zaragoza on her record, just being released now, in 2002. We actually went to this bar one night, according to her. She lives in Germany now with her guy and their boy, but were in town visiting and found out we were playing. The next morning I woke up early--we had to hit the road at nine. I couldn't speak. I thought with rest in the van it would go away. It didn't. When we got to Castellon, it was no better. I could only croak. Now, I did go pretty crazy during the show, but that's a Disciplines show--I didn't do anything I haven't done at all our other shows--scream, yell, howl, act like a fool. Forgot to mention the funky freestyle that we did in Stockholm to get people up to the stage in my review of that show...hahah. But, I guess that the long hours during the previous week's mixing, the two super early morning flights in a row, the fact that a late night show in Stockholm was followed by no sleep and an afternoon show in Denmark...and then I got hit with allergies in Zaragoza, just knocked me out. Boom. We got dropped off by Sergio in Castellon, and the promoter took a long time to meet us at the drop off point, so we were sitting in this park with our shit for like half an hour. Finally he came and in the meantime I had already found a doctor recommended by my insurance online. Our promoter had brought a friend along to translate, so she walked with us to the hospital which was just a couple of blocks away, and we made an appointment for later that evening. We were all staying at the promoter's mom's flat--she was out of town. I went to bed. Got up at 5.30, and we went back to the hospital while the guys, optimistically, went to soundcheck. I told them not to get their hopes up. We ended up waiting well over an hour past my appointment, but finally the doctor had a look. No problems beyond ordinary laryngitis. It would go away. He prescribed a cortisone shot, and soon, I was getting one. But, this would take at least a couple of hours to take effect and the show was in like an hour--and who knows what kind of damage I would do that would effect the important festival show the next day. With great sadness, I felt it was necessary to cancel. We'd sold 50 tickets in advance and the club only held about 50 more so I guess it would have been sold out. So sorry about that, but we'll be back. Dom & I went to dinner at the Casino Antiguo a pretty fascinating place that seems to be a private men's club of *some* kind...we weren't allowed to sniff around and find out much and they ain't tellin'. But it's a lovely old building, with glorious heavy wood beamed ceilings in the lobby, and simple tables set outside in the garden. It's right in the center of town, and they are not hiding from customers, but they aren't trying too hard to bring 'em in. It was Monday, too. But they were open. The restaurant clings to one side of the edifice, the side that faces the garden where we ate. The lobby shows a couple of salons closed in glass, with groups of old dudes smoking cigars and what not. Up the stairs...who knows. A security guard chases you off if you get curious. The food was outstanding, however...totally weird little world worth checking out if you find yourself in Castellon (which is right by Benicassim, so if you're in town for the festival...have a look). BARCELONA, 5/25 I woke up and was totally OK. I could speak. No pain. It was eerie. We went and got my prescriptions for anti-inflammatory meds and the pills to protect my stomach from their harsh qualities. We went back to the Casino Antiguo for breakfast--again, almost no one there, and we had a continental breakfast--espresso, pains au chocolates, and fresh orange juice--for €2.50 each. I mean, really. They must be doing some serious business in those back rooms. This was basically free food, and we paid a couple of Euros for them to bring it out and let us eat in the garden. The promoter had a tiny car in which we stuffed Bjorn and all our gear, and the rest of us walked and...eventually...found the train station. The first thing we came to was the *old* train station, in front of the Corte Ingles...this little tiny building that says Ferrocarril on it. It's used as some kind of tourist office now, but they could barely describe where the real station was. But we found it. And got on the train, with some stress--it pauses at the station and we had guitars, bags and 5 people to get on board--same kind of stress getting off. But all fine. We checked in to the hotel and I sms'd the production to tell me when they were really ready for us, and when they said to come soon we walked to the Apolo. Reigning Sound were still checking, so no stress. We got up and did our thing. And it was going to be fine, and I knew it. It was so weird. My voice was 100% gone 24 hours earlier. And now it was like nothing happened, almost. So, the show began. It was a Tuesday, 8pm. Not many people there, but the place filled up during the set and we did our special set restructuring to put the hits a little further back. By the time the set was halfway the room had plenty of people, dozens of photographers and I was pushing, pushing my body to do all the things it knew it shouldn't be doing one day after being in a hospital. It accepted the challenge...at one point, I launched myself from the dance floor onto the stage as a flip on my neck and shoulders into a standing position--there was a mighty 'crunch' and I knew I'd be paying for that one...but anyway, the voice was great, we played super tight, people rocked out, and we did real real fine. I made the after show which was held at my friend's bar Las Guindas--chatted with admirers and all my colleagues and friends, and also Reigning Sound's organ player, Dave Amels--who is a very fascinating guy--he co-founded Bomb Factory, for starters--but I knew not to push it and thus called it a night by about 12.30. I know my bandmates had a good time and represented! DONE! Mission accomplished. We made it to the Primavera Sound Fest., we did a great job. I celebrated with Dom by doing...nothing. We checked out of the hotel and went across the street and had tapas for 2 hours. We checked into our next hotel, closer to the main part of the festival, and rested. We went to see the Star Trek movie, and listened to the city tense up and then completely spooj when Barca won the cup. We went to Arola Restaurant and had a glass of wine with Nacho while he DJ'd. Again, I knew not to push it, so a lot of my friends were partying around the city, I had a lot of options, but I took a nice quiet one and again got to bed by 1. On Thursday Dom & I walked to the beach and I swam a bit. We had a great lunch with Lydia Lunch, she is always a machine gun of ideas and energy and wit, and inspiring and ready to bring it, now. We went to the festival, too. I had a very narrow agenda. Jaime from Houston Party told me to check out Women, and I did--seemed like 4 guys kinda standing there playing guitar, so I have to admit I didn't really give it too much time, but... I watched Kiwi pop legends the Bats, and I thought...these guys are really old, not super charismatic, they don't move too much...and they are on a big stage, and people are loving it. There's hope for me yet...I ALWAYS feel too old and behind the times to really be welcome, but in fact, if these guys can be up there, so can I. They have some really great songs, I'm not knockin' em, I'm a fan. Just sayin'. We watched a bit of Spectrum on the main stage..."here's our new single"...and then 20 minutes of the SAME CHORD. It was AWESOME. The sound was so enormous, and heavy...usually, to be honest, it's hard to find a UK band that plays with such brutality, but these guys were HEAVY. I loved it. Then we watched the Vaselines, and they were great too. It rocked a lot harder than I expected...It's Frances & Eugene with some Belle & Sebastian bits to round it out. Superb. We tried to watch Phoenix do their acoustic set in this little tiny tent but it was impossible. I had my picture taken with about 20 fans. Fun! But time to go. Dom & I went and had some paella, and then I met up with a guy who puts on a festival in the Dominican Republic. We ended the night listening to MBV from our room...it was an incredible sound...a weird distortion of what the people in front of the stage were hearing, an abstraction made by echo and bass throb, but totally absorbing. And on this day, Aden turned 5. She had a party at school, and was happy to have her party with us postponed til our return...more presents spread out over more days. I was really pissed off that I kept hitting my head on this stupid light fixture over the desk in my room so I kicked an ashtray in the elevator instead of breaking this ugly glass thing that prob. costs thousands of euros. The door opened and a tech for some band said "Isn't that the guy from Big Star?", while the top half of the ashtray was still rolling around, decapitated from its base. Good for the legend. BRYNE, 5/29 Up at 7.30, so it was wise for us to have retired early--I still had a show to do, and I was still wary about pushing my body--and thus my voice--too far. We checked out and I ran into my friend Brian with all the Andrew Bird folks waiting for their van--Brian is tour managing, and he worked for REM and of course at the Crocodile in Seattle so I've known him for heap long time. I checked in for my flight, and went to have a cafe with Dom, then ran back to retrieve my laptop from the check in machine, still waiting for me. Damn. Flew to Copenhagen, flew to Stavanger. Bag with the merch and our backdrop didn't make it. Made arrangements that the other guys could get it when they got in. Waited for Baard's flight, coordinated with our driver, and headed to Bryne, about 20 minutes from SVG. Glorious sun, blazing green meadows...and stretches of pure white beaches. What a place. We pulled into the Jaeren Hotell, for the Jaernatta Festival. I played the exact same place with Brikseby in 2006, when the D's made our first recordings, May 2006. Now three years later...well, a lot has changed. What an amazing thing grew out of this. Funny I famously kicked an ashtray that morning before we drove to Stavanger too. So, some things only change by...degree. I was so glad to have some quiet time, and so...somewhere else. A couple of days off, a medical scare, a massage at the hotel...wanting to be home for my daughter's birthday...and sort of a mission accomplished feeling after our great shows at Spot and P Sound...hmmm. Plus, there were other things going on, too. I am not going into those details here. But, let's say that the night was bigger than the show, and the show was smaller than the night. All in all, I was intersecting the show from a completely different angle than the audience, which is usually not the case. When it was almost showtime I walked down from my hotel room into the lobby (the show was in the hotel ballroom) and the place was packed with drooling drunk folks. I mean, this is normal for a Norwegian party and it's totally OK. But I was just not there. And when we played, it was hard to get a real connection with the audience, they were just too hammered, and the stage was all skinny and weird, and I was just not able to make it as awesome as I wanted it to be. There were people into it. There were also lots of people just staggering off and the room was less crowded when we finished than when we started, and it was really late, but still, that wasn't a good morale booster. It all sort of seemed like it didn't matter, and that's a bummer, because I want EVERY show to matter. But this was sort of ending the great week with a whimper. We weren't terrible. But we were in danger of being OK. That's not good. I went to bed immediately afterwards, and slept for an hour and a half. The hotel was loud. Then, at 3, when I woke up, it was quiet. Light was starting to emerge again outside. I ate a sandwich and some fruit from the dressing room for breakfast, and had a bath. I didn't really start to crash til I was waiting in SVG to board the first flight. So, in the cab going to the airport, which took no time at all so I was there WAY too early. It was, as it always is, psychedelic to hurtle thru the sunrise past the kneeling cows and steaming streams and popsicle colored morning light. Sleeping on the flights and in CPH airport. Incredibly, my flight to Paris was at the adjacent gate to the one I arrived from SVG to. I got home and it was a great big party, granparents, Dom, Aden, and LOTS of presents. We had been sticking presents away for months, actually--I picked up a Furby at Value Village in Bellingham in Janaury. She got a tennis racquet. DVDs. Lots of stuff. A package from my mom. She made out like a bandit, and we had cake & candles. I will say, she was so happy to have me home that she fed me the candy bits off her piece of cake. That's love. Dom & I went for a walk later, having a cafe and walking on the Promenade Plantee, an old elevated railway that's now an elevated walkway with all manner of flowers--a parqueduct, as it were. We stopped an bought a bottle of wine on the way home. It was finally warm here in Paris. Glorious. My files are uploaded. I'm going to bed and not setting an alarm. Love KS Paris 5.24.2009 My hours working with Billy & the Firm, mixing their album, were pretty long. And after hours, I had tons of tour manager work to do. So I was really the walking dead, and it didn’t change until a couple of days into this little tour. But, I think the album has turned out really superb, the two mixing sessions have different personalities, but I believe it will all make sense together. But we were working so hard, the week is really a blur. It’s only this morning that I feel grounded again. At times I was working as late 4am, and getting up to do things in the morning. I was too exhausted to get up at 7 and take Aden to school some mornings, and Dom & Aden understood as best they could. By Wednesday evening, however, we wrapped the last mix at about 8.30, and spent an hour revisiting one song for some small changes, and then I bid Billy goodbye and got a little sleep. Her husband Shy was in town, too, but I barely saw him--we were just working too hardcore to socialize. STOCKHOLM, 5/21 I was up at 4, after going to bed around 11. I had spent an hour or so just hanging out with Dom, we’d had very little time to do so in the last week. Then up at the crack of dawn and in my cab at 5. Oh, I should mention that at Charles De Gaulle my 7am flight time meant that nothing was open, and the airport itself was barely functioning--the moving walkways were yet to be turned on, so passengers going to our full flight had to walk the 200 meters to the satellite gates, going up and down stairs to do so. Fun! I slept everywhere--in each flight, in horrible, contorted conditions in Copenhagen airport--and landed at last at Stockholm in the early afternoon. I was greeted by our Swedish agent, Pontus--whom I’d only known via email so far. So we had a pleasant ride into town in his Honda hybrid car, and got to know each other, exchanged biographies etc. He dropped me off at the hotel and went back to grab the other guys coming in from Norway. It wasn’t long before it was time to head to the venue--the Kagelbanan, where Big Star played in 2006; part of the larger complex of the Sodra Teatern--where Jon & I played the gorgeous main room in 2000 and the Cafe Teatern that adjoins the Kagelbanan, last April. This is one of those government subsidized wonders that just has a great staff, incredible acoustics, and a highly eclectic programmation. I met the guys from the Flare Up, our support act, and also my friend Love, who was loaning us some gear for the night (Love supported me in a small town in Austria in 2006). The guys finally fought thru the traffic and arrived, and we set up and did our thing. I was really tired but it was great to play, and the room sounds so good it was a pleasure, even to soundcheck! After the check, the two bands and Pontus had dinner in the building’s restaurant and we were joined by my friends Melinda and Jorgen--Melinda who played bass in the Pusjkins, whose 1997 album I produced; and Jorgen, who recorded and played drums on the bulk of “Soft Commands”. They brought along their baby boy, who was lots of fun, already a pretty good bongo man. Well, I felt about a hundred years old when we went onstage but there were these two teenage girls, whom I had never seen before, who were so into the Disciplines it was totally surreal--they sort of put the whole assembled crowd to shame, enough to back off the bulk of the audience a few feet while these girls went nuts and sang along to every word--in fact, they were singing the words even *before* we went onstage, just hollering and in general having a great time--they really stole the show, it was all I could do just to keep up with them! But it was inspiring for sure, and it made sure that despite my fatigue, I had to truly rise to the occasion! And I think we did just that, and then some. A great night. We got kicked outta there pretty fast afterwards by the rapid closing of the venue, which was good cuz by the time we got to the hotel, we had about 2 hours before it was time to get up and get ready to leave again... AARHUS, 5/22 And so it was. I spent the two hours catching up on tour manager emails, and while I was writing them, my alarm went off indicating it was the surreal hour of 3am, time to shower, and get to the lobby for our 4am airport taxi. Now, I felt fine, really--I was still energized by the show. But then we got in the taxi, and in that 40 minute ride to Arlanda, I fell asleep. And it was hell from then on. Snoozing everywhere, sleeping on the flight and generally feeling like I had just been ejected from the mouth of the dog that was mauling me. The domestic terminal in Copenhagen is a LONG way from anything else. At the very end of the longest arm of the ‘A’ gates...endless passageways and moving walkways later...we arrived at A30, as far as you can go in CPH. Our flight to Aarhus was delayed. MMM. More sleep. Finally we hopped over to the mainland. Aarhus airport’s decor is rather like the locker room of many a German tennis club I’ve changed in, all red brick tile for easy cleanup. The place is equipped with ludicrously small luggage carts, kind of a ‘why bother’ but we managed and ofund our way out to our driver. By now I was feeling a *little* better, but my voice, out of shape as it was for the Stockholm show, was even more ragged and the prospect of a matinee concert was a bit daunting. But the fact is, the Danish spring countryside was so beautiful and lush and green I never fell asleep in the hour-long ride from airport to town. We got the center of town, and then out the edge of the center of town, and pulled up to the enormous Musikhuset--the epicenter of the Spot Festival, the new music showcase weekend with a focus on Scandinavian up and coming bands, although there are also bands from the US, Belgium, and UK playing. But 85% of the artists are Scandinavian, and most of them are new to the public. The entire festival is put on by the Danish music export bureau, and not only do they foot the bill for the three-day event, but they fly in journalists and other music biz notables from all over the world to attend. The Musikhuset is a proper concert hall with several different concert venues inside, it’s also a vast rehearsal and teaching complex...it goes on and on. It has a bit of Lincoln Center look to it, squarish and important, but in a more futuristic, Scandinavian way...anyway, our hall, which could easily hold 600 people, was just a box it seemed but I am here to testify that this box had absolutely unquestionably perfect acoustics. Just standing in the room talking was perfect. So...this was probably the most pristine sound any Disciplines concert-goer will ever experience, and I’m glad to say the experience wasn’t lost on the attendees--the room filled up about half way, so there were a couple of hundred people there to witness a crystal-clear absolute decimation of the joint. My voice was more Tom Waits than Robert Plant, but it was fun. We had to contend with the fact that not only Danish audiences are quiet, but this was a show at a quarter to five on a Friday afternoon, so not exactly prime bacchanal hours. However, a couple of drunk punk rockers did the same task as the two mystery teens in Stockholm--not giving a flying fuck, and jumping around like fools, and that helped the rest to loosen up. A bit! However, after each song, the applause was rapturous and at the end of the set we could have easily done an encore but this was a festival situation. Good stuff! After the show we hung around with our friend Tim, who we had talked to in the early days about management, but now were really just pals with and is always an inspiring, clever and kind person to talk to about all kinds of things not the least of which is music. Well, by 7pm it was all over but the shouting, and I was about as happy as a man could be. We were driven to our hotel, Hotel Guldsmelden, which I soon recognized as the very same where Jon Auer & I had stayed in 2000, my only other visit to Aarhus. However, it had undergone extensive cute-ification, and the friendliness factor was way up (plus I was much more sober, so perhaps details that escaped me then reached me this time). So, in the evenings in the tiny lounge area in front of reception, they have complimentary wine, coffee, incredible apple-rhubarb cake, bread and two kinds of olive oil with herbs. And wifi--so, this was the perfect way for me to spend the roughly one hour of consciousness I had left in me. ST. FELIU DE GUIXOLS, 5/23 12 hours of blissful sleep later, and a quick blitz of the righteous breakfast spread, and we were on the road to the airport, once again traversing CPH in all its cavernous-ness, and then were plopped into Barcelona. I slept every minute of every flight, again. I was still feeling a bit shaky--that week of all night mixing and the two brutal show/early early travel days were not out of my system yet. But things were looking up. Dominique was coming to meet me--we arrived first, and grabbed our stuff, and parked at a cafe, and I searched for Dom’s arrival area, located in Terminal C. Her flight was was about 30 minutes late, so our van arrived and we were all loaded up when she finally arrived. For me it was like waiting for the last day of high school, I was pretty excited. So, there she was, and off we went into the hills of Catalunya. ??St. Feliu de Guixols is a little seaside town that doesn’t even have much in the way of tourists; it’s a getaway for Barcelona folks, but not much else. It has a fine little beach right in front of downtown, and a cluster of shops and bars and hotels, and a church that looks like a castle, and a nice theatre that serves the town. Not a lot of rock shows pass by here. Girona, up the road twenty or thirty clicks, gets some action (tho’ I’ve been touring Spain for 16 years and I’ve never played there). So, peeps were happy to see us, that’s for sure! We dropped our stuff in the hotel and went straight to eat (I like this line of thinking). Soon we were on a terrace looking at the water, by the Triton Bar, owned by one Jordi who was a real fan of Posies and related--and had never seen us live, and wouldn’t that night--the bar was his lady and she was a demanding mistress to be sure. So, he was just happy to have us there, and serve us from his mostly veg menu--tho he did have some damn fine hamburgers. All his food is organic and seasonal--so the anchovies were out. Not till summer he said. But we were well fed and lubricated. We walked up to the theatre (nothing in this town is far away from anything else) and found there were already folks hanging around in anticipation of the show. What they had done was turn the venue sideways--exactly in the style of the Capitol Theatre in Olympia--if the show wasn’t big enough to fill the seats of the theatre, they just closed the curtain and put a riser on the stage, and the stage became the complete venue. This was the case tonight, and there was room for about 75 people, which is exactly the size of the crowd available in this village for a show, so it was, in a word perfect. Hmmm, by the end of the show I was REALLY hot so for the encore, I came back in just my underwear, with a parasol. Quite a show. In the breakdown of this song, I ran into the back and found a T-shirt that I turned into a kind of loincloth, which made things slightly less obscene...slightly. But the rest of the show I was all over the shop--my best move was to leap from the top of the fridge holding all the beer onto the table that served as the bar and continue to ground level in two bounds, all while singing. Hot damn. When I wanted to crawl on the PA stacks, if someone had placed their beer there, I just chucked it out of the way, bear-slaps-salmon style...but playing small clubs in Spain is really the real shit, and I’m so glad I had the chance to show my bandmates what it’s all about and how great that can be...! After the show I was well and truly fried. Back to to the hotel, the boys went out on the town. Then two funny things happened. One, I realized I’d totally forgotten to even think about being paid. So, a few calls later and some guys came to the hotel bearing several hundred Euros. Second, the pipes in the hotel were a bit rickety and something truly weird happened. Air in the pipes had given Ralla the illusion that he had turned the tap all the way off. But in fact it was just blocked by an air bubble, for a long time. Off he went to the bar, and later, the pipe came alive. It started to howl and moan like a horny tasmanian devil in need of a root canal. In fact, it woke up the entire hotel. We soon traced the sound to their room, and I had them and the hotel night manager, who was at home, on the phone, getting them to make it stop, which they did. Something also smelled like burning plastic, which gave an ominous tone to the proceedings, but in fact the hotel never did burn down, the night manager came and turned the tap off in their room, and the guys came back and said that they had turned the tap off--as far as they knew, but were fooled by the faulty pipes. No charges were brought, and the matter was settled in the nearest bar, prob. with Jager bombs or some such thing. I woke up at 8.30 this morning, finally feeling like I had the exhaustion of the studio week and tour’s start off my back. Dom & I had a tranquil walk to a cafe for breakfast (man, they make big pains au chocolates in this country) a sniff at the Sunday market (cheap clothes and shoes from Chinese sweatshops) and a brief dip in the surprisingly icy Mediterranean. ??Now, it’s post soundcheck in Zaragoza, and we’re at an outside table waiting for some grilled animal. I’m sipping a tinto de verano, suffering a bit from hay fever, but looking forward to rocking the tiny tiny Lata de Bombillas, enjoying seeing Sergio, aka the Posies’ best tour manager ever (better than me, even!) as he arranged this gig! ?? Love KS Zaragoza SPAIN My hours working with Billy & the Firm, mixing their album, were pretty long. And after hours, I had tons of tour manager work to do. So I was really the walking dead, and it didn’t change until a couple of days into this little tour. But, I think the album has turned out really superb, the two mixing sessions have different personalities, but I believe it will all make sense together. But we were working so hard, the week is really a blur. It’s only this morning that I feel grounded again. At times I was working as late 4am, and getting up to do things in the morning. I was too exhausted to get up at 7 and take Aden to school some mornings, and Dom & Aden understood as best they could. By Wednesday evening, however, we wrapped the last mix at about 8.30, and spent an hour revisiting one song for some small changes, and then I bid Billy goodbye and got a little sleep. Her husband Shy was in town, too, but I barely saw him--we were just working too hardcore to socialize. STOCKHOLM, 5/21 I was up at 4, after going to bed around 11. I had spent an hour or so just hanging out with Dom, we’d had very little time to do so in the last week. Then up at the crack of dawn and in my cab at 5. Oh, I should mention that at Charles De Gaulle my 7am flight time meant that nothing was open, and the airport itself was barely functioning--the moving walkways were yet to be turned on, so passengers going to our full flight had to walk the 200 meters to the satellite gates, going up and down stairs to do so. Fun! I slept everywhere--in each flight, in horrible, contorted conditions in Copenhagen airport--and landed at last at Stockholm in the early afternoon. I was greeted by our Swedish agent, Pontus--whom I’d only known via email so far. So we had a pleasant ride into town in his Honda hybrid car, and got to know each other, exchanged biographies etc. He dropped me off at the hotel and went back to grab the other guys coming in from Norway. It wasn’t long before it was time to head to the venue--the Kagelbanan, where Big Star played in 2006; part of the larger complex of the Sodra Teatern--where Jon & I played the gorgeous main room in 2000 and the Cafe Teatern that adjoins the Kagelbanan, last April. This is one of those government subsidized wonders that just has a great staff, incredible acoustics, and a highly eclectic programmation. I met the guys from the Flare Up, our support act, and also my friend Love, who was loaning us some gear for the night (Love supported me in a small town in Austria in 2006). The guys finally fought thru the traffic and arrived, and we set up and did our thing. I was really tired but it was great to play, and the room sounds so good it was a pleasure, even to soundcheck! After the check, the two bands and Pontus had dinner in the building’s restaurant and we were joined by my friends Melinda and Jorgen--Melinda who played bass in the Pusjkins, whose 1997 album I produced; and Jorgen, who recorded and played drums on the bulk of “Soft Commands”. They brought along their baby boy, who was lots of fun, already a pretty good bongo man. Well, I felt about a hundred years old when we went onstage but there were these two teenage girls, whom I had never seen before, who were so into the Disciplines it was totally surreal--they sort of put the whole assembled crowd to shame, enough to back off the bulk of the audience a few feet while these girls went nuts and sang along to every word--in fact, they were singing the words even *before* we went onstage, just hollering and in general having a great time--they really stole the show, it was all I could do just to keep up with them! But it was inspiring for sure, and it made sure that despite my fatigue, I had to truly rise to the occasion! And I think we did just that, and then some. A great night. We got kicked outta there pretty fast afterwards by the rapid closing of the venue, which was good cuz by the time we got to the hotel, we had about 2 hours before it was time to get up and get ready to leave again... AARHUS, 5/22 And so it was. I spent the two hours catching up on tour manager emails, and while I was writing them, my alarm went off indicating it was the surreal hour of 3am, time to shower, and get to the lobby for our 4am airport taxi. Now, I felt fine, really--I was still energized by the show. But then we got in the taxi, and in that 40 minute ride to Arlanda, I fell asleep. And it was hell from then on. Snoozing everywhere, sleeping on the flight and generally feeling like I had just been ejected from the mouth of the dog that was mauling me. The domestic terminal in Copenhagen is a LONG way from anything else. At the very end of the longest arm of the ‘A’ gates...endless passageways and moving walkways later...we arrived at A30, as far as you can go in CPH. Our flight to Aarhus was delayed. MMM. More sleep. Finally we hopped over to the mainland. Aarhus airport’s decor is rather like the locker room of many a German tennis club I’ve changed in, all red brick tile for easy cleanup. The place is equipped with ludicrously small luggage carts, kind of a ‘why bother’ but we managed and ofund our way out to our driver. By now I was feeling a *little* better, but my voice, out of shape as it was for the Stockholm show, was even more ragged and the prospect of a matinee concert was a bit daunting. But the fact is, the Danish spring countryside was so beautiful and lush and green I never fell asleep in the hour-long ride from airport to town. We got the center of town, and then out the edge of the center of town, and pulled up to the enormous Musikhuset--the epicenter of the Spot Festival, the new music showcase weekend with a focus on Scandinavian up and coming bands, although there are also bands from the US, Belgium, and UK playing. But 85% of the artists are Scandinavian, and most of them are new to the public. The entire festival is put on by the Danish music export bureau, and not only do they foot the bill for the three-day event, but they fly in journalists and other music biz notables from all over the world to attend. The Musikhuset is a proper concert hall with several different concert venues inside, it’s also a vast rehearsal and teaching complex...it goes on and on. It has a bit of Lincoln Center look to it, squarish and important, but in a more futuristic, Scandinavian way...anyway, our hall, which could easily hold 600 people, was just a box it seemed but I am here to testify that this box had absolutely unquestionably perfect acoustics. Just standing in the room talking was perfect. So...this was probably the most pristine sound any Disciplines concert-goer will ever experience, and I’m glad to say the experience wasn’t lost on the attendees--the room filled up about half way, so there were a couple of hundred people there to witness a crystal-clear absolute decimation of the joint. My voice was more Tom Waits than Robert Plant, but it was fun. We had to contend with the fact that not only Danish audiences are quiet, but this was a show at a quarter to five on a Friday afternoon, so not exactly prime bacchanal hours. However, a couple of drunk punk rockers did the same task as the two mystery teens in Stockholm--not giving a flying fuck, and jumping around like fools, and that helped the rest to loosen up. A bit! However, after each song, the applause was rapturous and at the end of the set we could have easily done an encore but this was a festival situation. Good stuff! After the show we hung around with our friend Tim, who we had talked to in the early days about management, but now were really just pals with and is always an inspiring, clever and kind person to talk to about all kinds of things not the least of which is music. Well, by 7pm it was all over but the shouting, and I was about as happy as a man could be. We were driven to our hotel, Hotel Guldsmelden, which I soon recognized as the very same where Jon Auer & I had stayed in 2000, my only other visit to Aarhus. However, it had undergone extensive cute-ification, and the friendliness factor was way up (plus I was much more sober, so perhaps details that escaped me then reached me this time). So, in the evenings in the tiny lounge area in front of reception, they have complimentary wine, coffee, incredible apple-rhubarb cake, bread and two kinds of olive oil with herbs. And wifi--so, this was the perfect way for me to spend the roughly one hour of consciousness I had left in me. ST. FELIU DE GUIXOLS, 5/23 12 hours of blissful sleep later, and a quick blitz of the righteous breakfast spread, and we were on the road to the airport, once again traversing CPH in all its cavernous-ness, and then were plopped into Barcelona. I slept every minute of every flight, again. I was still feeling a bit shaky--that week of all night mixing and the two brutal show/early early travel days were not out of my system yet. But things were looking up. Dominique was coming to meet me--we arrived first, and grabbed our stuff, and parked at a cafe, and I searched for Dom’s arrival area, located in Terminal C. Her flight was was about 30 minutes late, so our van arrived and we were all loaded up when she finally arrived. For me it was like waiting for the last day of high school, I was pretty excited. So, there she was, and off we went into the hills of Catalunya. ??St. Feliu de Guixols is a little seaside town that doesn’t even have much in the way of tourists; it’s a getaway for Barcelona folks, but not much else. It has a fine little beach right in front of downtown, and a cluster of shops and bars and hotels, and a church that looks like a castle, and a nice theatre that serves the town. Not a lot of rock shows pass by here. Girona, up the road twenty or thirty clicks, gets some action (tho’ I’ve been touring Spain for 16 years and I’ve never played there). So, peeps were happy to see us, that’s for sure! We dropped our stuff in the hotel and went straight to eat (I like this line of thinking). Soon we were on a terrace looking at the water, by the Triton Bar, owned by one Jordi who was a real fan of Posies and related--and had never seen us live, and wouldn’t that night--the bar was his lady and she was a demanding mistress to be sure. So, he was just happy to have us there, and serve us from his mostly veg menu--tho he did have some damn fine hamburgers. All his food is organic and seasonal--so the anchovies were out. Not till summer he said. But we were well fed and lubricated. We walked up to the theatre (nothing in this town is far away from anything else) and found there were already folks hanging around in anticipation of the show. What they had done was turn the venue sideways--exactly in the style of the Capitol Theatre in Olympia--if the show wasn’t big enough to fill the seats of the theatre, they just closed the curtain and put a riser on the stage, and the stage became the complete venue. This was the case tonight, and there was room for about 75 people, which is exactly the size of the crowd available in this village for a show, so it was, in a word perfect. Hmmm, by the end of the show I was REALLY hot so for the encore, I came back in just my underwear, with a parasol. Quite a show. In the breakdown of this song, I ran into the back and found a T-shirt that I turned into a kind of loincloth, which made things slightly less obscene...slightly. But the rest of the show I was all over the shop--my best move was to leap from the top of the fridge holding all the beer onto the table that served as the bar and continue to ground level in two bounds, all while singing. Hot damn. When I wanted to crawl on the PA stacks, if someone had placed their beer there, I just chucked it out of the way, bear-slaps-salmon style...but playing small clubs in Spain is really the real shit, and I’m so glad I had the chance to show my bandmates what it’s all about and how great that can be...! After the show I was well and truly fried. Back to to the hotel, the boys went out on the town. Then two funny things happened. One, I realized I’d totally forgotten to even think about being paid. So, a few calls later and some guys came to the hotel bearing several hundred Euros. Second, the pipes in the hotel were a bit rickety and something truly weird happened. Air in the pipes had given Ralla the illusion that he had turned the tap all the way off. But in fact it was just blocked by an air bubble, for a long time. Off he went to the bar, and later, the pipe came alive. It started to howl and moan like a horny tasmanian devil in need of a root canal. In fact, it woke up the entire hotel. We soon traced the sound to their room, and I had them and the hotel night manager, who was at home, on the phone, getting them to make it stop, which they did. Something also smelled like burning plastic, which gave an ominous tone to the proceedings, but in fact the hotel never did burn down, the night manager came and turned the tap off in their room, and the guys came back and said that they had turned the tap off--as far as they knew, but were fooled by the faulty pipes. No charges were brought, and the matter was settled in the nearest bar, prob. with Jager bombs or some such thing. I woke up at 8.30 this morning, finally feeling like I had the exhaustion of the studio week and tour’s start off my back. Dom & I had a tranquil walk to a cafe for breakfast (man, they make big pains au chocolates in this country) a sniff at the Sunday market (cheap clothes and shoes from Chinese sweatshops) and a brief dip in the surprisingly icy Mediterranean. ??Now, it’s post soundcheck in Zaragoza, and we’re at an outside table waiting for some grilled animal. I’m sipping a tinto de verano, suffering a bit from hay fever, but looking forward to rocking the tiny tiny Lata de Bombillas, enjoying seeing Sergio, aka the Posies’ best tour manager ever (better than me, even!) as he arranged this gig! ??Love KS?Zaragoza SPAIN 5.16.2009 This week I have been catching up on all my tour managing duties, doing a little editing on the Pernille Sparboe project, signing various contracts and what not, and trying to squeeze in a little time just enjoying being home. On Tuesday night Dominique and I went to see Beirut's sold out show at the Bataclan. I like the band, but somehow I felt that the instrumental parts were the most interesting bit...the singer is not exactly a dynamic or versatile singer. He has a pleasant sound, but it's kind of a one-trick pony. But, he has assembled a great band and the instrumental sections of his songs are undeniably magnificent. Now, having not been too complimentary about his singing I will admit that he did a brilliant, spot-on Serge Gainsbourg cover...I don't know if they learned it just for shows in France, but it certainly got the audience singing along. One other thing: when the bass player played his stand up bass, and the keyboard player wasn't playing Wurlizter, it was music played on no electric instruments, and it was LOUD. Bravo! Kite & Butterfly, who I knew as itinerant musicians, and produced some songs for way back when, but the world now knows as fashion designers, are in town this week and Dom, Aden & I met up with them and Kite's tiny daughter Lavender Blue and went to the museum of magic, in St. Paul, so not too far from our place. Aden participated in the magic show, and was as surprised as we were when her empty hands that she had palms down on the table suddenly were filled with the foam balls that had been in the magician's hands seconds before. Good one. After the magic bit, we went to have a coffee next door in a courtyard that has a cafe, an antique shop, etc. Turns out this little place had lavender ice cream, a fetish of mine. Not long after my cone was consumed, a little rain started to fall. The awning was lowered to cover the terrace. Good thing--ten minutes later the skies erupted with thunder, lightning, buckets of rain, and chiclet-sized/shaped hail--for the next 45 minutes we were pinned at this place. I've never seen it rain like that in Paris, ever. On Friday Billy, from Tel Aviv, arrived. The wife of Shy Nobleman, who put together my tour of Israel in December. I have been mixing Billy's band Billy & the Firm, and she came to be a part of it--I did the first half of the album in March, and since I had less time to work with now I thought it would be much quicker if she was here to give me feedback. On the first day I ended up playing guitar on the song, and in fact I'm not sure it's going any more quickly but we're having fun. We took a break tonite to see Kristov & the Commoners at La Scene Bastille which is pretty close to my hood. He did a great job, you can tell the band is a bit new but you gotta love a drummer who not only plays great but sings awesome backups. La Scene is weird tho, it's a showcase club, so no vibe of its own, and not the most cozy place on earth. They didn't even give the band a 5-minute warning, just cut 'em off, which was really awkward of course. Dumb place. It's rained every day this week. Remi from Cheap Star & I had two tennis dates, both foiled. I think it's gonna be quite awhile before the racket gets taken out again... Love KS Paris 5.14.2009 I added some new photos to the photos section, including some exclusives, just to keep old fashioned things like websites alive. Love KS Paris 5.12.2009 LOGRONO, 5/3 For the last show of the tour, we were pretty tired, but in buoyant spirits. The sound on stage was a little weird, so for the first few songs I struggled to find my singing pitch but got settled in eventually. We interspersed nearly every lyric with references to our support act’s drummer, who organized these shows, Edu Ugarte. Partially to razz him, and partially because ‘Edu Ugarte’ is really fun to say. Things like singing the Police’s “De Do Do De Da Da Da” as “Edu Du Du, Ugar ga te” and many more elaborate schemes. To add to the fun, we altered many lyrics, of songs we pulled out of the air or the Posies songs in the set, so include the story, which is true, that Edu dates the sister of his bandmate Juan. We had lots of fun with that in a surreal riff on “Rocky Raccoon” that I am sure left Posies fans scratching their heads and any casual onlookers completely in the dust. We did play our songs seriously too. But the mood was not somber. Another guy, whom we remembered as a crazy dancer from our 2007 full band show in the same town, was moved to stomp his booted feet and bounce up like a dolphin at Seaworld at feeding time (thhis was a jazz club, so tables and chairs in forn t of us, so he was REALLY sticking out)--when I say stomped his booted feet, he was slamming out Morse code punctuation to the music--and then at other times he couldn’t control himself and would shoot up to standing position and put his hands in the air and writhe and wriggle. His girlfriend was laughing, sort of bewildered but you couldn’t help but enjoy his ability to let the spirit move him. For a Sunday, the show was quite late, I don’t think we got out of there before 2am. And at 5.30 I was up, to be in the lobby by 6.30, when Angel, a friend from the 2007 show, had offered to pick me up and drive for the hour or so drive to Bilbao, where he works twice a week. I watched the dramatic landscape go by under low hanging clouds--it was surprisingly lights considering it was 6.30 and overcast, so it was strange and beautiful, the hills, and later, massive crags that we drove through to get to Bilbao. We never spoke, and listened to a live Wilco show he had in his CD player. Traffic came to a standstill in Bilbao, and it was starting to make us both really stressed, but we didn’t say anything! But, we had built in an extra 30 minutes (the drive w/o traffic should be an hour, but I gave it 1.5) so I was dropped at the terminal at 8.05, exactly one hour before my flight, plenty of time to check in. My travel was long: first I flew to Barcelona; waited two hours, and flew to Oslo; waited two hours and flew to Tromso. Having left the hotel at 6.30, I landed in Tromso 14 hours later. And went directly to work. I was in Tromso to produce an EP for Pernille Sparboe, whom I’ve met at the Disciplines’ appearances in Tromso last year. Pernille is a very shiny and fresh young woman, very kind and very positive. By appearances you would prob. guess that is she is a few years younger than she is, and you might think she is a fashionable college student. She looks like a hipper version of the small town girl that she actually is. But there is much more to her than appearances. She is of course very bright, and quick to laugh (a good quality). By day she is a police investigator, and has worked the street beat as well--so she has seen dead bodies, murderers, domestic violence, etc etc. This seems to have only reinforced her ability to stay optimistic and be of service to her community. And when she sings, if you are expecting girly--you would be dead wrong. She sings with a rich, soulful, powerful voice...reminds me a bit of Carrie Akre but perhaps even more R & B, even tho’ her music is not funky per se, but it’s delivered with mountains of soul. I knew her demos, acoustic guitar and voice, and with a band behind her powerful enough to match her dynamic (her acoustic guitar by itself didn’t stand a chance versus a voice like that) the results are really stunning. ?At this preproduction rehearsal, I had a chance to hear the band better than the few youtube videos I’d seen from her shows. Espen the drummer; Frank the guitarist; and Hogman the bass player. E & H had played in a very 90s-rock (STP/AiC/Candlebox) style band called Hangface that spent some years living the dream in the USA. Living the dream means working with legendary engineer Eddie Kramer, touring casinos nationwide with Pat Benatar, dating Miss Norway, this kind of thing. So, the guys were young but had been to school, as it were. So they had great feel and great chops--that American thing had rubbed off on them, I think. So, in the rehearsal my suggestions were quite minimal. They made good choices, and played tight, and we simply adjusted a few small things--a drum fill here & there, etc. The studio we were working in was put together by a local music visionary (who used to book Briskeby’s shows in Norway) and Jon Marius, whom you might recall as the engineer/collaborator for the Disciplines album. It’s in a building that looks a heckuvalot like an old mental hospital--nobody seemed to know what it used to be. But it had a nice big room and within that room a control room and an isolation booth had been built, and the rest of the space was open, very high ceilings, with no parallel walls, and lots of ducts and other things making the space random (this is good for sound--you don’t want featureless, parallel walls in a recording space. Go clap your hands in an empty house and you’ll see why--you get rapid, bizarre sounding echoes, esp. near the corners). They have tastefully assembled a great collection of equipment, so working here was a breeze. Jon Marius was my engineer for the first day, the difficult day when everyone played live together--lots of channels to put together, lots of headphone mixes to make for the different musicians, etc. After that, I pretty much had the hang of it and was able to work on my own. So, the first day we got the basic sounds and did two songs, with the bass/drums/guitar all live. The second day we did two more songs and then electric guitar overdubs. There was a hilarious episode where I had to try and coax/coerce/inspire/force Frank to play in simple, bluesy style. He had way too much Steve Lukather in him. After awhile, it was like “Play like a moron! Imagine you have 4 notes to play in the entire song, and you don’t know where they should go but if you play in the wrong places your family will be killed!” That actually worked--til he played some crappy L.A. jazz lick and I had to tell him he lost a cousin, but the fat one who picks his nose and nobody liked anyway. In the end even I had to play one or two guitar licks...it’s hard to go back to simple after you learn to be a virtuoso. So I never learned that... On those first two days, since the musicians had day jobs, we worked from 6pm til maybe 2 or 3 in the morning. On the third day, Thursday, we worked from 3pm til 4am. Just Pernille and I, doing all her vocals and her acoustic and electric guitar parts. The last thing we recorded was an insane harmony on an already insane vocal part...we were trying to figure out what it could be and we were going crazy trying it...finally we got it tho. I think! It was hard to tell at that point. With all that done, what was left was vocal editing and keyboards, and I had determined that my home set up was actually better suited for what remained. So we didn’t end up working on Friday. I slept off the 13 hour work day, and in the evening we went to see a kind of play, a performance of a poem, ‘Fever’ by Knut Hamsun, set with action and singing and bizarre movements and set pieces. Of course it was in Norwegian but you could get the gist (a screen also showed lines from the piece in English and German occasionally). There is a female role, hard to describe but theme of the poem is a man who loses a woman’s love and goes thru rage, despair, all the rollercoaster of emotions, but being Hamsun, it’s dark and he generally is in a violent, hateful rage. The woman is somewhere between sprite and ghost...making strange movements and noises, and always being remote, otherworldly. The role was created uniquely by Anneli Drecker, who is Jon Marius’ girlfriend, well more than girlfriend--they are not married but have children & live together. She’s from Tromsø and that’s how they came to live there now. So, she is a regular performer at all kinds of high art things in the area, and this particular piece was a perfect showcase for her unique talents. She squeaks and chirps, and her face contorts and pantomimes. And she sings. She has the gift of pure, perfect tone and pitch. Pure enough to be hallucinogenic, really! So, the production, the staging, etc. of the piece was most interesting, but Anneli’s voice was the star of the show, really, at least for me. On Saturday I flew to Oslo, to spend some time recording on a very intense project, organized by Street Magazine (similar to UK’s Big Issue or Seattle’s Real Change), featuring songs written and performed by the magazine’s sellers, who are homeless. Many are drug addicts, or suffering from other forms of dysfunction. But the magazine’s staff managed to get them into a studio (imagine trying to organize a recording date with someone who has no phone, no address, and a set of priorities that don’t involve a music career). The results are rather what you might think--sincere, ragged, sometimes haunting, sometimes just right on, and sometimes, right out there. I played piano and sang on one song, and sang harmonies and what could become a duet for another. That night my hotel, due to a shortage of available rooms in the center, was way out in the industrial part of town, near where the Disciplines’ label HQ is. A big concrete building with “33” sculpted on the side. Well, I checked in and was told the restaurant was fully booked from 8pm so if I wanted dinner...I should go now. Hmm. I had already made my mind to stay at the hotel since going back to town was quite a journey and there wasn’t anything going on in Oslo that I felt like I needed to check out. It was 6.30, so I dropped my stuff in my room and headed up to the 9th floor to try and get my nutrition on. Upon arriving, to a mostly empty restaurant, I was told that they couldn’t get me in and out in time for their 8pm seating. I pointed to the panoramic view, currently showing a torrential downpour, and reminded them that the front desk had indicated that I dine there as long as I was done by 8..it wasn’t even 7 now. They claimed not to be open yet but upon enquiry the chef was happy to start, he was prepared for a full house and one more meal wouldn’t throw off his calculations. So, I was seated, and as I started to read the menu, I asked for some help as it was in Norwegian. At first they refused to translate the starters as they said there was no way I was having a starter and a main. By this time, I wasn’t angry, but I was playing the ‘exactly what kind of reviews do you want me to post on my blog, or tell my colleagues about this place?’ card. They eased up, and actually my server was really friendly and told me to relax and enjoy, he’d work out the timing. In the end I was done eating by 7.35, so plenty of time to set the table again! When you dine alone, it goes quick! I had some seared foie gras that had sliced coconut and salt infused with vanilla...and wonderful reindeer steaks that seemed to be marinated in lemongrass. I took my unfinished bottle of Cotes du Rhone back to my room, and drank myself to blissful, long sleep. Except at 7.30 daylight in my window woke me up half way, just enough to stretch a bit and rollover, intending to drop back into deeper levels of sleep. But, upon stretching, I gave myself a leg cramp that was absolutely brutal. I couldn’t even scream! I was just making a kind of rr-r-r-r-r-rrr-rr-r-r-r-rrr-r-r-r sound and hoping it would stop. I got up to walk it off, and decided to go down and have breakfast. I thought it was starting at 7 or 7.30, but soon found out that it was starting at 8, and I, who had put some herring on a plate, was chased off and *yelled* at in Norwegian...I thought...’oh, but this is what blogs are for’, so here I am complaining for you all. I went to the front desk and complained...and was told ‘they are under stress, preparing breakfast for 400 people’. To which I said ‘it’s their JOB. If they find it to stressful to serve their customers and be pleasant, perhaps they should try something else for a living...’. In the states or UK if you treat a customer like that, you’re on your fanny that minute on the sidewalk. Anyway, the point is, I got home to Paris, after months of travel, and saw my daughter, who was gone when I was home last month, for the first time...extreme shock at her two months of growth followed. My flight home was fun as we had a good view of the countryside around Paris on our approach to Orly, I love spotting all the chateaux around, huge homes stuck in the woods, with gardens and tennis courts. On Monday I had French songwriter Kristov over, to give him some feedback on his new songs, we spend a couple of hours not only dissecting his recent compositions, but also talking philosophy and singing technique and all kinds of things. And then I fell asleep at 7.30 in the evening, and slept for 12 hours. Love KS Paris

The latest release by Ken Stringfellow is "the Sellout Cover Sessions Vol. 1 EP" released by Sellout! Records in Norway on April 7, 2008. You can order it in Norway from Platenkompaniet in the rest of Europe from http://www.cdon.com/ and in the US from Parasol http://www.parasol.com/ Subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date on all things KS! older news : 8/3/2003 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008 10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008 12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009 02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009 03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009 05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009 06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009