Wolff

The last time

2011-06-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

This is the last time I'm gonna let an airline charge me over-weight fees on my baggage. American Airlines just charged me $100 one way for being ten pounds over-weight. That's the goal for the week starting Monday. How exactly this is going to go down it's hard to say. Free from the case my equipment weighs 36 pounds. That gives me 14 to play with. I'll have to get a light strong suitcase which will be 8-10 pounds I figure. Then I've got to build some sort of frame for my set-up that both conforms to the case dimensions and can be lifted out. I've got a little less than two weeks until my next flight so it's all gotta happen before the next Buckethead show in San Francisco. Never again....

Realization

2011-06-18T22:55:00.001-07:00

I just realized that The only Lebron James fans left out there are either Miami Heat fans or Buckethead fans. Buckethead is really in to Michael Jackson and Lebron James. I just saw a 15 year old kid in Flagstaff, Arizona wearing a Lebron James jersey. No way that happens anywhere else but at the Buckethead show...

Little things

2011-06-17T14:13:00.001-07:00

Just ate lunch at Little Poca Cosa in Tucson. Awesome. Good clean Mexican food. Sweet and energetic vibe. The owner gave me a hug before I left (she gives everyone a hug). I had the mole which came with a deliscious salad and fluffy rice and moist pinto beans. The salsa was killer.
The stereo on my rental car is great. You wouldn't believe the difference this makes on driving. The stereo on the rental in Europe was horrible and by the end of the tour Steve and I were going crazy.
It is hot as fuck here in Arizona...

Back in the USA

2011-06-16T19:52:00.001-07:00

One really nice thing about touring in the U.S. is that it's great having the complete use of my phone at all times (like being able to write this as I kill time before playing the Rialto theatre in Tucson, Arizona). I just read an article in the times questioning why data usage fees are so crazy across borders. It doesn't make any sense. I'm doing a lot of flying this summer for these buckethead shows and it's occured to me I have to figure out a way to lose a little over ten pounds on my electronics case. The over weight fees are killing me. The airlines are so arbitrary with them. I'm thinking I just new to find a really light case. The one I have has really held up great though. It's crazy hot here in Arizona. I think it hit 113 today. The other great thing about being in the states is understanding everything. It took me a minute to get my gps back from kilometers to miles. I'm watching the sun set outside the venue and it's really beautiful. The sky is so close to earth in these parts. Shit. Gotta get on stage...

Bent in Gent

2011-06-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

We spent quite an evening hanging with Roge the Mayor of Gent. Roge is of course not the official mayor of Gent although he might be if Belgium actually had a government. According to Roge they’re working on it. Gent is a beautiful town with an extremely high church to building ratio. We rolled in to town and enjoyed the sun and beautiful weather having a café and walking around a bit. Then we had an incredible Brazilian steak at the club El Negocito which is actually Chilean. The cook is a volatile little man who works in a tiny kitchen. It’s one of those restaurants that operates with one bartender/server and one person in the kitchen so things take time. When we finished dinner it was getting pretty close to 10pm which I found surprising and a bit unnerving as it was still quite light out. Roge showed up just as we were getting ready to unload the equipment. He suggested we take a walking tour and pick up another cymbal stand nearby. My natural inclination was that we needed to set up as I was responsible for putting together what little sound system they had at the club but as Steve pointed out if the guy who owns the club says it’s ok then it’s ok. We strolled down to the canal past a bunch of churches and theatres with Roge giving us little history lessons. Roge is one of those individuals I like to refer to as a force of nature. He’s a little under average height with fiery red hair flying out in all directions and he has a slight belly which is amplified by his posture which thrusts his little belly forward while his shoulders drag slightly behind him. His arms are constantly bowed and moving as he uses them to paint a picture of the words flying out of his mouth. As we strolled he would walk right out in to the middle of the street and continue to talk not even bothering in the slightest to check for cars. I couldn’t figure out whether he consciously assumed the cars would pause or swerve around him or whether traffic simply just did not exist in his world. At one point we turned down a tiny ally and walked into a crowded club where a trio of bass, drums, and saxophone was furiously belting out some free jazz. The guys playing were on Roge’s label El Negocito Records. Roge got us some deliscous Belgian beer and we drank it and watched the band try and squeeze as many notes out of each second as they possibly could (the free jazz thing but they were very good at it. As far as I could tell everything we drank over the course of the night, and we drank a lot, was brewed by a different group of Belgian monks and came in its own labeled glass. It’s a country very serious about both its beer (there are over 150 kinds of Belgian beers) and its monks. At a certain point I had the gall to ask Roge if we should be getting back to the bar to set up. “Relax,” he told me, “It’s my bar. I’m gonna pay you either way. There’s not going to be many people there but those that come will wait for us to show.”
Eventually we did leave and Roge continued pontificating on a variety of subjects. Roge kept saying the word “Alleiz” in every sentence which I thought at first must be some real word or phrase that the Belgians use. I asked him about it and he told me that it was the sound Justin Hennin made as she hit a tennis ball. For Roge it was one of those multi-purpose words that meant follow me or pay attention or look at this or isn’t this cool etc… Kind of the way someone from New Orleans might use “my man.” For some reason the phrase was extremely contagious and by the end of the night every action or statement included an “Alleiz” or two. We slowly made our way back to El Negocito and we picked up another cymbal stand at a little coffee shop. Roge knew people everywhere we went. Everyone had assumed his bar would fail he told us because it was right by the Red Light district and had been a famous brothel now ghost infested. He opened the place because there was a Chilean gentleman in town who could cook and needed a job. Roge convinced the landlord to let him use the building and opened the restaurant in order to create jobs for the people from Chile who were living in Gent. There are some great music schools in Gent and apparently Chile is renowned for its clarinetists, one of whom moved to Gent to teach at the university and thus there are lots of Chilean clarinetists living in town (this of course all according to Roge who consumed Steve Mackay levels of alcohol over the course of the evening).
Finally we returned to the club and set up and played the show. Surprisingly it was pretty crowded and many of the people who had come to eat didn’t leave in fear as we had initially worried. We’ve been discovering on this tour that we had pull off some quieter stuff and not just blast our way through every situation. After the show we hung out and drank many of the beers the Belgian monks had so diligently labored over. We took another walk and visited one extremely cheesy bar which we immediately left. We ended up at a bar which reminded of a cross between hippy and slow dark death metal. We got the most delicious Irish coffee I think I will every have. Roge dropped his mug on the ground and it shattered all over the place spilling all over Steve’s white converse all stars. “Alleiz,” I said to Steve, ”This way every time you look down at you shoes you’ll have a reminder of the force of nature that is Roge.” It took a while to pry Roge out of that bar as he had a great to deal say to the bar tender. Steve and I felt we had to leave because the slow creepy music was starting to freak us out. We headed nearby to another bar where people were just finishing up dancing to some great music a DJ was playing. According to Francois (our other friend accompanying us on this venture. We met a lot of quality Francois’s on this trip) the DJ wasn’t actually that good and we just had good timing which was backed up by the fact that the next and last tune the DJ played was kinda crappy.
At this point it was 4:30 in the morning and already getting light out. We headed back to El Negocito for more beer. Out the window there we watched groups of dudes and single creepy older men head down the alley into the local red light district. After they finished their business many of them came to the door of El Negocito and stared in hoping to get one last early morning beer. At a certain point Roge became hard to understand either because he was drunk or I was and with a big “Alleiz” I declared it time to crash. The stairs to where we were to sleep were narrow old windy and creaky. The upstairs had a dirty bombed out feel and I tried not to think about all the creepy sex that had gone on there as I drifted off to sleep. When I woke in the late morning/ early afternoon I had a strong compulsion to get the hell out of there. I stumbled down the stairs and got to the door of the bar and quickly realized that we were locked in. Roge didn’t answer his phone and we eventually had to call Francois to come down and bang on Roge’s door (he lived nearby) until he woke up. Finally we loaded our equipment, grabbed a cup of coffee at a sunny café and headed on our way to Brussels where we had a good rock show at Café Central. I kept the Belgian beers at a minimum but we did go to a bar nearby afterwards where a DJ from Brooklyn named Curtis was just finishing up a set. It’s a small world….

la batteria

2011-05-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. I love touring by myself. That's why I started this project in the first place. I was sick of dealing with and interpreting what was going on with my band mates. But it has been great have Steve on tour with me so far. The sound is just so much bigger and the playing is more fun. He's doing a great job at his job of what I call Wolff liaison, chatting everybody up and making friends. There is of course the drawback of expenses (I go from making money to losing money on the tour) but Steve is worth it. "cazzo di tiro!"

Do the art but don't do the shit

2011-05-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

We're in Marseilles right now having finished recording some audio and video with our buddy Jerome and crew at Divine Madness. I've been looking forward to this as I've felt like we've desperately needed good video for a long time. Last night in Milano was a tough show although I really loved the space (Biko club) and all the wonderful people that work there. I played Happy birthday for Fikri's little girl before the show which was hilarious but during the show I really blew my voice out. I could feel it coming on for a few days now as the hard living was catching up to my throat. We had to wake up at 8 in the morning the next day and drive all the way to Marseilles to make it in time to record and I was freaking out a bit that I wouldn't be able to pull off singing for the recording. I really wanted to get good versions of 2 new songs called drowning and Triumph of Delusion. Fortunately my body and my mind rallied (just barely) and it came out really good. One of these days we'll have proper video up of Steve and I (I think that has been holding us back in a lot of ways). Before Milano we spent a day or so hanging out in the Cinque Terre, a small collection of towns along the Ligurian sea. The water was incredibly refreshing. We slept outside on the side of a mountain in the car with the windows rolled down. Steve has been pointing out that there is an incredible smell of jasmine, magnolia, and orange blossom everywhere we go (a possible contribution towards my throat problems as I feel like I could eat the air to get at the pollen). I think I may be one of the few musicians who actually eats much healthier on the road. I find it much easier to avoid eating late at night and I eat a ton of fruit and well cooked meals with fresh ingredients. Actually I suppose that's the product of touring Europe (or perhaps California as well). We spent the couple of days before that hanging in a villa outside of Parma. It was originally built in the 13th century. I was nervous about the show because there wasn't a sound system (just a couple amps) and we needed to play very softly so as to not disturb the neighbors. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun and very interesting. Steve played with brushes and I did a lot more soundscapes and subtle dynamics than I would normally do. It got the gears turning in my head about different ideas for musical projects I've been pondering. Bologna the night before was a bit crazy. There were three bands and the first one didn't start until 11:30pm. Consequently we went on incredibly late. The show was at a big squat called X Mercato 24 (it used to be a market hence the name). Steve and I were commenting that it is amazing how counter culture steam punk kids dress and act alike all over the world. There aren't as many subtleties as you'd think.
It's the day of the Marseilles show which I'm very much looking forward to. This tour has been fascinating thus far as Steve and I have very contrasting styles of traveling. I think for him it's a bit more of a vacation vibe and I lean towards the all work and no play direction. It's been a helpful contrast. I never would have normally gone and swam in the sea figuring it was too far out of the way and would waste money. Also, I'm trying to get better at relaxing and soaking up my surroundings rather than worrying over details and pondering the future (much of that still needs to be done as there are always more details of this tour to take care of to say nothing of working out future touring and plans. That's life when you are your own booking agent, manager, tour manager etc...). I naturally want to stop at markets and supermarkets to get my food and eat it on a bench somewhere where as he leans towards sitting at a cafe or restaurant. He's been a godsend as far communicating with people and hanging. I can be a bit antisocial and with him here I am able to hover in and out of the collective hang without offending anyone. Anyway, as Eric said yesterday (he's the gentleman that kindly lent us his space called Divine Madness where we recorded), "do the art, but don't do the shit."

The tour begins...

2011-05-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

We pulled in to JFK airport and the shananagans began quickly. We had engaged in considerable deliberation over the best way to pack and had concluded that we would stuff as much as we could into one big suitcase. When I travel I check my big electronics case which is unfortunately over weight (one of these days I’ll figure out how to lose ten pounds) and my tuba which comes just under the allotted fifty pounds. So right off the bat I pay one over weight fee and a second bag fee. I carry on to the plane a bunch of pedals and my mixing board in a bag and usually a second bag with my computer and other assorted things. Steve was bringing a bag and a small suitcase to put in the overhead with his clothes. The big question revolved around the cymbal bag which he claimed he could carry on and gate check thereby avoiding being charged for it. The snare drum and the cymbal stand and his mixer and cables and the cds and the power transformer and some other odds and ends were left. Should we cram them all into one big case and pay the overweight fee or should we split stuff in two and have Steve check two items and pay for an extra bag. The overweight fee and the bag fee were equal so we went with the overweight figuring that if we didn’t get away with the gate check of the cymbal bag the fee for a third bag is astronomical. Amazingly everything worked according to plan although the suitcase was actually too heavy and we had to put the power transformer in Steve’s clothes suitcase. We flew into Paris no problem and all the baggage made it fine. We found the car rental place and I realized that in my stupidity I had reserved the car for rental the day before we got there. Fortunately the woman at the counter dealt with my stupidity well and we were on our way. The new gps worked like a charm and we drove through the night to Roma. The drive was pretty exhausting but went with few hitches. We arrived in Rome late morning and I decided to check and make sure all the equipment was working before we crashed out. My first attempt at cranking up the new power transformer (There was no way to test it when I got it) resulted in a loud explosion. Actually my first attempt was a complete failure but I quickly figured out that not all the outlets where we were worked. Fortunately is was just the fuse that had shattered and I had two more fuses with me. I popped in the second one, readjusted the settings on the transformer and plugged in and once again there was a popping sound. Fuse number two was done. I put in the third and last fuse and this time nothing happened at all. Fortunately after some panic I realized we had blown the fuse to the outlet. We fixed that and all was well. I plugged in all my equipment and miraculously everything worked perfectly. That never happens when I fly. At the very least something always comes unplugged. Steve and I walked around a bit and then found a couch at Forte Fanfulla (what we thought was the venue but it was actually right down the street. An annex of sorts.) where we promptly crashed hard and deep. So deep that we actually slept through a book reading which started up well after we had fallen asleep. We woke up and took our stuff down the block to the venue and set everything up. We ate dinner and by that time it was almost time to play the show. I was starting to feel quite strange which at first I thought was just a lack of proper sleep but then I started to feel like maybe I needed to throw up. I rarely vomit but I have had food poisoning a few times and I was thinking that was what was going on. It was almost show time though and though I felt like throwing up I didn’t know if I was ready. I wretched a couple times outside the club and went back inside and played the set. By the end of the show I was getting dizzy and was desperately trying to both not puke and not pass out. We played drowning (a song written for Steve Mackay) last and I felt like I was really channeling the vibe of the song as I furiously kept from falling apart. We played The Triumph of Delusion last and I immediately left the bar, walked out to the car and threw up all the crap I’d eaten over the last 24 hours or so. The volume was quite impressive. I immediately felt better but completely weak and exhausted. I went back in, packed up my stuff, told Steve I’d be out in the car and fell deliriously asleep. Steve stayed and sold cds and schmoozed with our hosts. Thank goodness I had him with me. I woke up confused in the car at about 5 in the morning and Andrea (the promoter) took us to his apartment to crash. I woke up still exhausted the next day and completely unable to eat. Steve grabbed a bite with Andrea at Fanfulla and then we loaded up the car to drive to Pisa for a show. I could tell Steve didn’t want to leave. These were really good people and the weather was beautiful and he was going through that thing on the road where you’ve had a great time and you wish you could just stay and do all the wonderful things people in that given place are telling you about and share all the wonderful times with them that you could have if only you could stay longer. Unfortunately there’s always another show to get to. I had to be the bad guy and end it all so we got in the car and started driving to Pisa where hopefully another adventure awaits. Preferably one that doesn’t involve me getting sick. By the way, Italy is not the place to get food poisoning. There’s too much tempting food everywhere you go.
The drive to Pisa was pretty easy until the last kilometer or so. There was simply no way to get to the club and the streets around it are incredibly confusing. After an hour of driving in circles I finally got out and walked to the venue and got the sound man (fonico in Italian) Eduardo to come drive us closer. When we got to the venue I sat down for a moment and broke through the chair which reminded me that last time I was here I busted the seat of the toilet (it’s still broken). Is that a sign I need to lose weight? I’m gonna wrap up here because we are about to play a show for what is, at this point, two people. Se va…

The last show

2010-12-17T16:00:00.001-08:00

There's a combination of exhaustion and a sense of loss as a tour draws to it's end. No matter how many problems there were and how difficult things were as the last show approaches one becomes nostalgic sad elated and tired all at once. I can't wait to go home but I don't want it to end. I played a last minute show in Paris tonight thanks to Mika. Getting there was a serious adventure. The night before was the last group show with the fellas in Le mans. I think though we were all exhausted it was easily the best show. I felt like steve and Kamil were actually listening to each other and were finally somewhat in synch. I still think we never quite worked out a whole set but such is life. The next day we woke late and Mika confirmed the show in Paris. We left around two and as per usual Kamil avoided the toll roads and consequently we arrived during late rush hour traffic. It was determined that if we tried to take the van to the center of Paris we'd be stuck in traffic all night. Roco, Vanessa, and I ended up getting out at the outermost subway stop and shlepping all my stuff on the train. I almost got stuck with my tuba on my back in the turnstile and it was pretty crowded in the train but we manages to both get to my hotel room and avoided clobbering anyone with my tuba case. After checking in we hopped back on the subway for a few stops to get to the club. At the last second I realized that I would need Kamil's power converter to plug my equipment in. Fortunately he was still dropping steve off at his hotel so he was able to get to the venue in plenty of time to make the show happen. The show almost fell apart due to equipment problems but I took a break and solved the sound issues and it ended up being really fun. After We hung out for a while and one by one said goodbye. I hugged roco and mike and Kamil and realized I would miss them all very much. We all struggled together and battled our way through five weeks and that'll either turn you into enemies or friends and I can gladly say it was the latter. The question of whether I would tour together again is a whole other issue that is more about how I like to do things than how much I like all these people. I know we'll all be friends for life even if we never get in to a van together again. I will miss Europe very much and I can't wait to get cracking on booking another absurd over the top adventure of a tour. Now we'll see if I make it home tomorrow as it was snowing after the show. The subway had stopped running and it was impossible to get a cab so that meant a 3.5k walk in the snow and rain. I'm totally exhausted but awake and wired at the same time...

A moment of some kind

2010-12-16T18:57:00.001-08:00

So we pull over at a tiny gas station in the middle of nowhere between Bordeaux and Britagne. It's Sunday and it's pretty dead and not much is open so we decide to eat there. It reminds me of a trucker stop in Texas. There's a small tv in the corner and it's showing a really absurd shakira video. We order some sketchy food that's edible but far from French standard fare. Truck stop food. We finish our meal and on the tv an Iggy Pop video comes on and there, briefly on tv, for 3 truckers and the two old ladies who work at the cafe to see, is Steve Mackay. I look over at Steve and he's discreetly throwing up his beef goulash back on to his plate and covering it with napkins. About fifteen minutes later after we're back on the road driving Steve receives a phone call. Who is it? Iggy Pop of course...

Good will

2010-12-13T06:31:00.000-08:00

Kamil is a great guy. He means really well and in many ways we are very similar. He tends towards a dark negativity with which I can relate but I do think it's important to fight that tendency and see good in people and the world around us. Otherwise what's the point. I do think our vastly different upbringings influence this difference though. He grew up under communist rule and spent a couple years in prison for political reasons. Though we have different ways of doing and seeing things it's mostly that we're both stubborn in our ways which makes things difficult. I think the responsibilities of taking care and worrying for steve have also accentuated all the trials and tribulations of the tour. Steve too is an amazing person. He's pretty straight forward about the drinking and he's certainly experienced everything under the sun. At this point I'm not sure this tour was the best idea for him. I hope that if he does this again he makes sure there is a certain level of comfort involved. I've felt like at certain moments there was just not nearly enough planning on Kamil's part in relation to how certain situations would effect steve. It's a serious responsibility and I think Kamil dropped the ball a bit. It's different for me and Roco and Mika. I can deal and adapt to any situation. I'm not sure Kamil fully understood before the tour what physical and mental condition steve was at. Also, musically Kamil obvious wants something specific and I think steve is not necessarily on the same wavelength and in the same place. I kind of wish they'd discussed what they wanted to do more before the tour but I don't think that's Kamil's style. He's a force of nature and he just plows forward without always thinking through repercussions and consequences and such. In any case there's not much that can be done now. There are three shows left and they should be pretty good and I've learned invaluable lessons and had some truly amazing experiences. I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna practice a lot and write new songs and I'm gonna learn some French and some Italian and I can't wait to book another tour...

Bread and cheese

2010-12-13T06:06:00.001-08:00

It's crazy how much better the bread is in France. Incredibly tasty and rich. Italy as well. Most of my meals have consisted of bread cheese and occasionally sausage. I think that's pretty much my favorite meal in the world at this point. I guess it's kind of like barbecue in Texas or fried fish in new Orleans or burritos in California. Who knows exactly why but the bread here is an entirely different meal unto itself

The good soldier

2010-12-12T04:50:00.001-08:00

I'm playing the good soldier. I'm good at putting my head down and doing the job that needs to be done but I can clearly say that I will never be the cog on someone else's wheel again. Im fully capable of following orders I don't agree with but it's a little soul sapping. This tour has explained quite clearly to me why I chose to do a solo act. I prefer living life on my own terms...

For example

2010-12-11T19:35:00.001-08:00

A good barometer of how I will do things different when I come back to Europe on my own is the way we've done hotels. We've only gotten two on the trip. One was a youth hostel type thing in Berlin and the other was tonight in Bordeaux. I initially found a good three star place online for 42 euros. Everyone else wanted to stay at a formula 1. Little box rooms with shared showers and bathrooms. I sucked it up but it really makes a difference if you spend a tiny bit more bit experience serious luxury

Quintessential moment of the tour

2010-12-11T19:31:00.001-08:00

Steve has a horrible hacking cough that makes me cringe when I listen to it. It's like listening to nails on a chalkboard. As we're leaving Claremont ferrond he's doing his basic disoriented thing and he's mumbling about how he needs a pharmacy but he's pulling the old martyr thing of how it'll probably be too difficult to stop but he really needs to get to the pharmacy. I try to calm him down and I tell him that we're definitely gonna hit a pharmacy on the way out of town.
After playing my song the night before we went back to the house of the promoters which was not that bad and crashed. Mika and Roco drove with a friend to saint ettienne after the show so that Mika could spend the day with his daughter who he misses very much. In the morning I got to talk to marlin one of the promoters for a while and it turns out she's very nice. I think the show exhausted her a bit because since they do the shows in different spaces there's a lot of equipment and food and drinks to move and set up. I forced myself to chat her up and get info about doing a show in the spring which changes my whole perspective on the evening. Turns out she's not nearly as indifferent as she appeared and I was impressed by some of her ideas and aspirations. Basically I figure all the absurdity of this tour is ok as long as I get something out of it that I can use. At a certain point in the afternoon we decide to head to saint ettienne and as it's only an hour and a half away I figure we're in no rush so I keep my eyes peeled to a pharmacy. Steve is chain smoking away as per usual and catching up a storm when I find a place. He's goes in and comes out with a successful impression on his face. A loud hacking coughing fit later and we diacover that no, he did not bother to pick up any cough medicine but he did renew his supply of over the counter codeine. Priorities people. Besides which he claims it's great for his cough.
The hour and a half drive to saint ettienne turns in to a 4 hour plus extravaganza as Kamil recommends taking the scenic route which involves crawling up mountains at 15 kilometers an hour. I do have to give it to him because I saw some of the most beautiful unreal serene scenery of my live. Incredible drooping expanses of trees blanketed in grey frost. My biggest regret is that I was driving and I didn't take any pictures. I feel like given the timing I'll never see something quite so perfectly peaceful again. My second regret is that of course made us late to the show and Mika was a little bit panicked. The bar where we played was not really a music venue so setting up sound was definitely going to be an issue. He really wanted his hometown show to go well. Kamil let me go first this time because he felt bad about the previous night which was nice of him. I did a good job of keeping the volume down and easing in to the set as I could tell that noise was gonna be an issue when I stood outside the bar during sound check. Chantel Morte went on after me and the hometown crowd lives it. Saint ettienne in the house! Afterwards I crashed at Ives place. He had let us crash there at the beginning of the tour and we had done a bit of recording. It's a shame we didn't really know the tunes at that point. If we'd done the opposite and left time to record this time through we might have gotten something worth using. He's a great guy and has the perfect temperament for a recording engineer.
The next day we drive to Marseilles and had a great show. We played in a little dive of a punk rock club in feint if a super enthusiastic audience packed in like sardines. It reminded me of playing in Austin way back in the early days of drums and tuba. I got to play first again and thus time I just went for it and blasted away. What's ironic is that this night was the most fun I'd had since Bourges and it turned out that a big group of people from there had moved to Marseilles and it was they who put on the show. Thanks to Jerome and the Bourges crew for a great night of food and music...
The next morning it was off to Bordeaux (not ideal routing) where we arrived to find a squat with a strong smell of piss and a performance space in the shape of a 50 foot narrow stone tunnel. Only at the highest point point could I stand comfortably without fear of banging my head. Two in a row was clearly too much to ask for. I had to get away from the others as steve was starting to freak out. He had done that on me the night before but he was completely wasted so it was easier for me to lack sympathy. Tonight I can totally relate and that makes it much worse to have to deal with the the 62 year old child thing. He's clearly afraid of having to sleep in a cold cat infested piss smelling stone squat. I'm pretty sure that if we don't get him a real place to sleep he's gonna lose it. Although I have been constantly impressed by his ability to recover from drug and alcohol induced states that would destroy a weaker person like me. Just when I think he's lost it he rallies at continues on.
One more week left. I can't figure out if that makes a night like tonight easier or harder. On the one hand you can smell the end so things should be more bearable with the end in sight but since the end is so close the prospect of freedom and release makes the lack of it so much more bitter. It's like when you're on your way home and you have to piss. I'm usually fine until I hit the long walk up five flights of stairs. The need to go multiplies incrementally the closer I get to my toilet...

One week left...

2010-12-08T19:00:00.001-08:00

I got three hours of sleep and drove 800 kilometers to play one song that I actually cut short in the hope I could cram one more in before the club shut down. I'm pretty sure this is the least I've played since I picked up the tuba about 16 or so years ago. I do play on Kamil's set. Not a whole lot though. I really only know half a set of songs. We get through those and then he plays a bunch of tunes he never really taught me. He still hasn't given me a copy of any of the songs to listen to. Each night I end up with a song about having sex with an an under age girl stuck in my head. At this point it's all fine because there's only a week left! Six more shows. Probably the only good one left is the show in Paris that got rescheduled for after my flight home. Ca va...

Following the bad weather

2010-12-05T12:00:00.001-08:00

At times on this tour it feels like we are following the bad weather around. I can't really remember a day that didn't involve some form of precipitation. We had a few hours of actual sunlight leaving Berlin on our way to Amsterdam. Possibly for the first time all tour we were running on time if not ahead of time when we got pulled over by the German police. They pull in front of you and never really put a siren on but they flash an LED message. I was driving at the time and Kamil had to explain to me that they wanted me to follow them to the next rest stop where the police station was located. They asked to look in back. It never hurts to have the tuba the first thing an authority figure sees. It's my theory that Drums And Tuba never had any boarder troubles for that reason. What's more innocuous than the tuba? Once the cop saw the equipment he told me to shut the door. I was afraid of a real search but I think it just looked like too much work. Next they took all our passports and the papers to the van and my drivers license to the station and presumably ran our identities. After a while they gave everybody but me their stuff back and they told us to follow them back a few exits to a weigh station because we looked overweight to them and they wanted to check out how we tipped the scales. We drove onto a large platform and then waited for calculations to be made as the policeman scribbled furiously on a pad. It turned out we were a little over a hundred kilos over what they said was our allotted weight. The young blond policeman smiled and put one hand over one eye and said,"I think we look z other way." We were now running late, exacerbated by the snow storm that hit us just as we were leaving Germany and lasted all the way to Amsterdam. It was slushy flakes all night long which wasn't great for the audience size. Of course there's always a viable excuse for why a show is sparsely attended. Excuses can always be manufactured...

Not so bad

2010-12-04T10:15:00.001-08:00

It has come to my attention that I'm painting a pretty dark picture of the tour and the people I'm touring with. Everything I've written is true but it only tells part of the story. The people I'm touring with are wonderful people. Steve is incredibly sweet and kind hearted. He has a wonderful tone on the saxophone. Kamil is a really good person and very smart and he get's shit done and im really thankful to him for having gotten me over here. I've learned Tons about how things work in these parts. He's a very good guitar player and he can really sing and his songs really get stuck in my head. The melodies are strong and memorable. Mika's voice is astounding and I really like all his crazy samples and he never ceases to crack me up. His stage presence is great and i like the way he challenges an audience. Rocco is the newest member of the trip. He just joined us in Berlin. He seems like a good guy though I dont know him yet. I'm looking forward to hearing him play his crazy percussion. We could definitely use some rhythm.
The shows have been a roller coaster ride but there have been some wonderful moments. Can't think of any specific ones off hand but I know there have been! The point is that all the stuff that goes wrong is the juiciest stuff to write about and it doesn't paint the while picture. I've met some incredible people and seen some amazing things and life is a wonderful thing.
Having said all that, stay tuned for more crazy stories. This next week is gonna be a wild ride...

Try to enjoy yourself sometime

2010-12-03T09:49:00.001-08:00

Endless negativity really drives me nuts. Don't get me wrong. I'm a dark guy and quite often I have the tendency to see the negatives in things and people but these last few weeks take things to a whole 'nother level. I think the worst part about it is always seeing people's worst intentions. Kamil assumes the worst of people and I think it comes from making the assumption that they assume the worst of him. I think he constantly feels judged. I'm sure it stems from his relationship with his parents. On our way from Prague to Berlin we stopped at his folks house for lunch and dinner. Kamil cut out with Steve to change the tires on the van and Mika and I hung with his parents all day. We went on a long walk through town with his dad down to the lake and to the golf course where apparently the president comes to play. His dad told us, or really I should say gestured us because he spoke very little English, that Kamil used to wind surf on the lake and that during the summer it goes from very few people to very many people. It's more or less a little lake resort town. Kamil's dad did describe a little too graphically holding an imaginary binoculars in one hand and jacking off with the other hand to the ladies at the nude beach. Perhaps more information than I needed. Otherwise it was a peaceful walk and I saw a couple cozy little cabins from which I could smell and see the smoke from burning wood stoves rising up in to the sky and I definitely remember thinking it's be nice to be alone curled up by a fire without any of the hassles of the tour. For a brief moment I imagined how nice it would be to live in a little town before I let the reality that I would quickly go crazy sink in. I could definitely sense that Kamil's dad loves him very much but also that he could be a little harsh or critical. He conveyed at one point, when I got worried that perhaps the tires were done and we needed to get back to the house to start our drive, that we could call Kamil's mom because Kamil's phone is never working. At that moment I could sense how Kamil might find them hard on him but I really think most of the criticism is in his head. He claims he gets sick every time he eats his mother's food but I found it tasty and not nearly as heavy as I was led to believe. I think it's more the stress of visiting that makes Kamil become sick. In his nature is a bit of constantly freaking out about things which isn't to say he's not good at getting things done and that he doesn't have things to freak out about. He's got a young daughter and he's very concerned about providing for her given the lifestyle he leads. Life ain't easy. I just think the constant conspiracy theories and always seeing the absolute worst intentions in the people around you just aren't healthy. The world can't possibly be that fucked up and if it is what's the point of dwelling on it that morosely. Try to enjoy yourself some time and even occasionally try to seeing some good in people...

WARNING!!!! Stop Reading If You're Squeamish

2010-12-02T17:35:00.003-08:00

Once upon a time if I had to take a dump I'd wait until I got home. Public bathrooms really weirded me out. I couldn't stand the thought of taking a shit with someone else in the stall next to me and I couldn't cope with the idea of sitting somewhere unclean. Eventually when I started touring I had two choices: I could get over it or I could die. I chose the former. Now I just plug my nose and do the deed as quickly as possible. Some of the places on this tour have really tested my metal. At a few of the squats I have chosen to simply hold it in a few days rather than go. At some point though there's no choice in the matter. Life on the road...

The last espresso

2010-12-02T17:35:00.001-08:00

After Italy coffee just doesn't taste as good. Even the espresso in the gas stations puts what I'm used to to shame...

The stupidest show of my life becomes three straight nights

2010-12-02T17:34:00.001-08:00

Kamil has a friend who played tuba on his record and who suggested that he could get us a gig in Rosenheim in between Vicenza and Prague. On the drive to meet his friend in Oberaudorf which is about 30 kilometers south of Rosenheim in a little old Bavarian village I said to Kamil "we're not playing outside today are we?" I was only half kidding. Somehow I had this sneaking suspicion that something was a little off. The show was supposed to start at 4pm and it was suddenly being suggested that it was a Christmas party at which the people there might be expecting, or at least hoping for, traditional Bavarian folk songs. It was starting to get really cold and there was plenty of snow on the ground and there was an ominous feeling that there might be more to come. We had just made it over the alps (not very pleasant driving in an old van full of heavy equipment) when I had my prescient thought about having to play outdoors. Some part of me knew what we were about to get ourselves in to.
Kamil's friend Lance told us to meet him by the church in Oberaudorf. We didn't have directions but we simply entered town and looked for the steeple, clearly visible as the tallest structure in town.
I had a very strong first impression of Kamil's friend lance. He seemed like one of those nice, aloof, well off, good looking people to whom fucked up shit never happens. We drove up an absurd hill to get to his family's farmhouse. We then sat around in a quaint wooden house drinking coffee. Prior to having the coffee I brought up the fact that we were already running late and that we still had a 80k drive to get to the gig. At this point only an instantaneous transporter would have gotten us there in time to begin setting up at the time the gig was supposed to start. Lance just shrugged and said it would be no problem.
The road we turned on to get to the gig reminded me of a show I did many years ago with drums and tuba in Canada at what was supposed to be a spring festival. We traveled for ages on dark winding roads until we came to what we thought was the right road for the show. It was barely a road at all and would have been muddy except for the fact that it was freezing cold out. We paused for a moment before driving on. There wasn't a soul in sight and we assumed we must have taken a wring turn somewhere. All of a sudden, materializing seemingly out of nothing a guy in a wheel chair road up to us. "follow me," he cried as he bumped along in to the darkness. The show that night was pure hell. The cold made it painful to play and made the guitar and the tuba painfully out of tune. Some hippy later told asked us whether we wanted a copy of the show and I was seriously tempted to murder him in order to insure that it would never be heard by another soul.
The road we turned on to reminded me of that one but even snowier and colder. We drove along and I couldn't see anywhere we could possibly be playing. After a few minutes we came upon a decapitated wood barn. The stage was located in a small snow-free patch of dirt under the overhang of the roof. We lay down a couple of dirty worn swathes of astro-turf like material and tried to decide what to do. At first I felt like it would be completely stupid to play. If Kamil insisted I would go along but I would play acoustic. It's be insane to chance unpacking my equipment for a few Bavarian families hoping to hear some traditional Bavarian music. After thinking I figured fuck it. We're here already and we're gonna do something and I might as well go for it and see how people react to what I do. I would never again in my live have a chance to play for people so completely removed from what I do. I set up and got two songs in when I was basically shut down. Ironically it was a young blond Bavarian teenage girl who complained incessantly that I was too loud that got me shut down and not the plethora of octagenarions eating sausages and mulled wine. Since I could sense the beginning of a bad snowfall I was happy to comply with the suggestion that I was too loud and inappropriate for the party. One older Bavarian gentleman did thank me for playing and told me that he liked what I did very much and that I reminded him of "the New York underground." He became overjoyed when he found out that I had indeed travelled from the New York underground to Bavaria to play for him. Later, when it became time to join Kamil for his set, I discovered that my valves had become frozen shut. I packed the tuba away and called it a night. We finished the gig and of course it was left to me to pack up the van as everyone else either was wasted (steve/Mika) or exhausted (steve/Mika/Kamil). We had to stick around for a while while lance played traditional Bavarian songs on the squeeze box and later tuba ( he had his own in much better condition than my clunker so it functioned even in the extreme weather. He handed his accordion to an older gentleman while he played the tuba). By this time the snow flurries had become a full blown snow storm. We were trying to figure out how we were gonna tuen around on the icy dirt road when lance came up with a really bad idea. Just keep on going deeper into the woods he told us. This road eventually wraps back to where we entered. Kamil thought this was a great idea. He felt we would get stuck if we turned around where we were. I didn't agree but went along. We wrapped around a couple bends and Kamil took a turn which I knew couldn't lead anywhere. He has a tendency to panic when driving and make some strange directional choices. In this case he drove us into a deep patch of muddy wet snow in which we bece stuck. We had to hop out of the van. Now keep in mind when you have a 62 year old junkie and a 38 year old Frenchman who weighs under a hundred pounds helping you push a van out of a muddy snow trap you're pretty much on your own. Eventually we got the van turned around and going back where we came from but not without Kamil making some panicked tactical decisions which drove me a little crazy and not without me getting thoroughly covered with mud buried beneath slushy snow.
The ride back to lance's place was pretty much terrifying. Had there been another option we would not have driven those 80 kilometers. The highway was covered with snow and German drivers zipped by like they were simply having fun fun fun on the autobahn. When we got back to lance's tiny village we had to park at the hospital at the foot of the hill where he lived. There was absolutely no way in the world our van was gonna make it up that thing in that weather. Lance walked to his house to go get his "jeep" which turned out to be a vehicle so small that we were able to fit only by pretending to be clowns. Tuba accordion bags and five people made for an uncomfortable ride up a winding road. It didn't help that lance took the turns like he was driving a formula one race car on a dry sunny track. A couple times I thought for sure we would plunge off into the snowy abyss. I think for lance it was a funny lark that we played that party. Sort of a f you to the traditionalists. He never really considered explaining what exactly we were in for a Kamil never really thought to ask. Easily the stupidest gig of my life and believe me I've done some stupid ones.
The next day we drove to Prague in the heavy snow only to discover that Kamil's friend had sold the club a week before we got there and it had subsequently been shut down. We got rooms and a hostil nearby and went to a bar nearby that would be the oldest rock club in Prague (vaklav Havel hung there) except they no longer actually did shows there. We got really wasted and met some very drunk and very strange Czechs. 2 for 2 crap gigs. The next night in Dresden was at a squat. The space was tiny but we managed to set up and fit. Shortly in to playing the cops showed up and shut us down. 3 for 3!

Italian story II (the sequel)

2010-11-29T10:24:00.003-08:00

We arrive at the show in Udine and we're pretty tired. Kamil had a lot of trouble with the sound at the last show so he was a bit stressed about wanting to get a real soundcheck and work on some songs. It makes me super in to the fact that I've made my sound and monitoring pretty fool proof either when I'm playing solo or when I'm playing as a duo with Mr. Garofano. Stereo line to the club and inner ears to monitor. It's hard to fuck it up. Even if the sound out front sucks I can always jam my inner ears in and it'll sound great for me.
I am not dying to work more on Kamil's songs but I do feel like I should do the job well (Playing somebody else's songs feels a bit like a job to me) and work on some stuff. Basically we have almost the 1st half of a good set and then the second half becomes embarrassingly sloppy to me.
The parking lot of the place has a very small entrance so we park in the street when we show up figuring it's not worth navigating the small entrance if we load in through a different place. Everybody gets out of the van and Kamil makes a comment about us being in the ghetto. I'm the last one to get out and everyone else has headed in to the building at this point so I lock up the van and head inside.
It turns out that Kamil has left his key in the ignition. As far as I can tell the keys are expensive and Kamil only had one before the tour so he made one copy and gave it to Steve because he's the most important of us. Of course, he's also the alcoholic who loses/misplaces stuff all the time. On this occasion he too has left his keys in the van. Kamil's first reaction is to yell at me about locking the van. My first reaction is to yell at him about what kind of a fucking idiot walks off with his keys in the ignition. I'm already feeling pretty sensitive about a lot of issues on this trip at this point and it is a fucking pain in the ass always having to track down somebody's help to get in to the van so instead of simply feeling like this is simply a problem to deal with I got really upset and took the go fuck yourself and deal with what could have been avoided had you given the spare key to me. Part of the problem breaking in to the van is that Kamil had made it very difficult to do so. Some futile attempts were made by the people who worked there but other than breaking a window which we didn't want to do people were stymied. Our host that night Jacamo knew a lock smith so we sat down to dinner and waited for him to arrive. Ages later he showed with a few crap tools and not a whole lot of know how. After an hour or so of deliberations and failed ideas he was able to get the front door cracked open by using a barely working pump and some wedges. The concept at this point was to push a rod through the crack at the top of the door and trigger the power locks to open. Unfortunately the protruding of the lock was very slight and it takes a significant amount of force to get the lock to move. Getting enough leverage and torque proved to be very difficult. The locksmiths tools were of very poor quality and the bendable bars kept snapping. At one point Kamil was getting close to opening the door and the locksmith was simply getting in his way and making things more difficult. Meanwhile it's getting later and later for the show. Finally after an agonizingly long time struggling with and against both the van and the locksmith Kamil was able to trigger the lock mechanism and open the door. We quickly unloaded and set up. The show sounded great for me but there were lots of equipment difficulties during the Steve Mackay set when we all played together. As per usual the first few songs went well and then things slid in to chaos. The guys at the club seemed happy to have me back so I was happy. Once again I was packed up 5 minutes after the show (a DJ started and people were dancing) and the rest of the band decided after a couple of hours to crash at the bed and breakfast and pack the next day...

An italian story

2010-11-29T10:24:00.001-08:00

Mika and his band mate Rocco have a joke which involves the speed at which they pack up. When they pack up right after they are done that is referred to as American style. When they lounge around for a while and have some drinks before packing up that's French style. When they just leave their stuff and pick it up the next day that's Corsican style. That's pretty much how this crew operates. At the end of the show I pack up. Ages later the other guys start to deal with packing their stuff then just decide to make arrangements to pick it up the next day. Italian style is apparently somewhere out there beyond French style.
When we arrived in the early afternoon at Gabice Mare it seemed like a ghost town. It felt a bit like one of those post apocalyptic movies in which you're the only people left in the world. The town itself is a summer resort spot on the Adriatic. It has the feel of a cross between the village from The Prisoner and Atlantic City. The club was closed up when we got there so we headed down to the beach which was only a few blocks away. I'd never seen the Adriatic Sea before. It was cold and wet out but it was still cool to walk on the vast beach without a soul in sight. Eventually our host Roberto showed up at the club. Apparently we arrived during siesta time which explains why all the shops were closed and no one was around. We needed to change out one of the tires so later on in the early evening Roberto hopped in our van to show us the way to his buddy's shop. The plan was to run a few errands as well. Roberto owns a few bars and restaurants around town and is the perfect guy for a successful bar. He's gregarious and nice. The kind of guy you'll order extra drinks from just so you can hang out and talk to him at the bar.
Before we dealt with the tire we went to the Italian equivalent of costco. Roberto does all his shopping for the bar there. I thought of my dad as I walked around all the shelves full of bulk items. We picked up a case of non-alcoholic beer for Kamil and headed to the tire place. Roberto's buddy hooked us up big time changing out one of our tires and only charging 5 euros (he came to the show later and we hooked him up).
After that the real adventure began. Roberto told us that we just had to pick up the bass amp and then we could head back to the club. Next thing you know we take the highway to another town entirely and then we start driving up a mountain. At this point it's getting pretty late and we still have to get back to the club and set up (not to mention eat dinner). Roberto is very nonchalant about the whole thing. "No problem," he says, though when I do the math I don't see how things get done on time. Just roll with it, I tell myself as I take a deep breath.
So we're driving up this mountain and suddenly Roberto tells us to pull over in to the small parking lot of an apartment building. "Are we there?" we ask him. "Is this where we pick up the amp?" He doesn't answer and after about five minutes of waiting this young hipster looking guy appears out of nowhere and walks up to the van. Roberto let's him in and tells us to continue driving up the mountain. Ten minutes of climbing later we're in a little town at whose center is a castle. It's not the original castle according to Roberto. That was destroyed in the war and then they rebuilt it because "some people live there. Now we have some wine," says Roberto as he promptly disappears. We stand around for five minutes wondering where roberto went, talking to the young hipster guy who plays in a hardcore band. The mysterious practice space where the amp is located is further up the mountain and our van won't make it all the way there so someone is coming down the mountain to bring it to us. Roberto casually reappears with a chunk of roasted pork and bread. "Now we drink some wine," he tells us as he leads us to a bar nearby. The bar is occupied by a group of grizzled old Italian guys animatedly playing some mysterious card game whose name no one with us knows. The bar has an old men's club kind of feel and apparently on the weekends there are strippers who give lap dances on a chair in the corner of the room. Roberto buys a bottle of local wine which is very good. We drink and eat pork sandwiches. Gradually a few different people come and join us. At a certain point I'm no longer able to contain my overly American need to complete the task we are actually there to complete so I ask Roberto about the amp mentioning that we still have to get to the bar and set up. "I'll phone the club and tell them to have dinner ready for us," he says as we get up. Apparently one of the guys who was drinking with us at this point was the guy with the amp in his car. When we go out to his car to get the bass amp we discover that he only brought the speaker cabinet and not the actual amplifier. He gets in his car to go back up the mountain and get the amp and Roberto says, "let's go have another bottle of wine!" I check the time and decide it's time to get all anal American style and I explain that we gotta get going and we're gonna wait right there until the guy returns with the amp. Finally he does and we load it up and head back down the mountain to the club.
When we arrive at the club we furiously set up and eat dinner and the show starts acceptably late which in Italy is right on time. Kamil feels that the over all show is best if I play last because I'm the most danceable and loud of all the acts. He does have a point that it'd probably be a little strange going from the energy of my set to his but I suspect somewhere in there he just doesn't want to go on after me. Consequently, since everything in Italy starts so late and because Kamil and Mika are naturally slow to get going, by the time I play it is very late and lots of people have left. I'm used to that though as it just reminds me of playing our regular Friday night shows at Pianos. I kick it hard for whoever is left and I make it happen. Most of all though I figure I'm auditioning for the bookers, laying the groundwork for coming back on my own. Roberto is excited to do a show in the spring on my own and I figure this town will be really hopping when the weather gets nice (there was a really nice crowd of interesting friendly people who materialized).
After the show I pack up American style. Everybody else hangs out a drinks and finally decides to just meet up at 1:30pm the next day to pack up. I arrive promptly at 1:30 and wait around an hour for the rest of the crew to show. By the time we're packed and ready to go we're already running late to get to the next show. And that's before the obligatory getting lost. When we arrive in Udine that night at the club we lock the keys in the van and have to call a lock smith but that's a whole 'nother Italian story which needs it's own telling...

The first sick person

2010-11-27T04:47:00.001-08:00

Well predictably Steve was the first one to get sick on tour. Mika and I are in the kitchen making coffee and tea respectively when Steve enters and announces his sick status. He says he knew it was going to happen after a week and a half living the we have. He's probably right but I diplomatically refrain from mentioning the possibility of endless chain smoking and consumption of pills and alcohol and marijuana until the wee hours of the night as having any connection to his body becoming tired and sick. At a certain point in his life a man deserves to live the way he wants to live without some self righteous prick telling him otherwise. Besides which he does have a point that Kamil said in front of all of us that we'd be staying in hotels. Not a big deal for me as I have not been expecting cushy accommodations but steve is used to traveling in comfort. Let me tell ya it's loud and smelly having four dudes sleeping at once in a room. Steve shouts talks coughs and farts in his sleep, Kamil snores, Mika is fairly quiet and I most likely snore or at least breath loudly. I generally put my headphones on in order to fall asleep. Last night I slept pretty well but was woken many times by steve's sleep yelling. Thank goodness I'm up early every day so that at the end of the night I fall asleep easily. Now the goal is to keep the sickness from spreading. Mind over matter...

I can see it coming

2010-11-27T04:46:00.001-08:00

At this point I can see it coming on. We're waiting for dinner. The hand is shaking a bit. He's kind of quiet. It's a day off and we're in the middle of nowhere at a farm house 60k from Boligna waiting for our hosts to cook some pasta. Someone breaks out a bag of marijuana and rolls a joint which gets passed around. It's the calm before the storm. When one of our hosts cracks open a bottle of wine it begins. It gets evenly distributed and people start talking. The Mike Watt stories gently begin to materialize. It's when the home made wines get cracked that I can see where things are going. One bottle simply has a plain white piece of paper attached to it with scotch taped which reads in italian, "this may not taste like much but it's definitely alcoholic." It's a horribly sweet carbonated sparkling wine presumably made of something like apples. When tastes are offered he says, "why not. I am an alcoholic," and fills his glass. Other mysterious home made bottles appear and other joints get passed around and I notice his glass emptying faster and faster. It's when the rest of us are encouraged to consume more that I start to worry. In this race one never wants to leave ones competition far behind. It's too lonely traveling far ahead of the pack. The name dropping is really starting to take off and the kids are eating it up. "you know Mike Watt? He's my favorite," elicits a string of stories I've heard before. The Iggy Pop stories come out in an effort to really impress and a host of other incidental names and places meant to be recognized. He's talking faster and louder now though it takes a certain kind of effort to squeeze the words out like he's getting down to the bottom of a tube of paste and he squeezes and squeezes until suddenly something bursts out. The hand gestures are more wild and the sentiments and conspiracies become more heated and dark. Ever the entertainer he brings his crowd along with him but it's a second hand fascination. He's the square geek who figured out a way to hang with and be accepted by the cool kids. Finally when to smoke and stories become too much for me I wade through the haze of smoke and words and head upstairs to crash.
I wake up early in the morning with nothing to do. I take a jog along the endless rows of olive trees. It's been raining a bit every day so by the time I'm done mud cakes my cons. When I walk in to the kitchen he's already started with some rum he found on the top of the refrigerator. It's gonna be a long day. Way to much time alone with his thoughts and nothing else to do. The sound check for the show is early and the show starts very late so there's plenty of time to keep the buzz from crashing. During Mika's set I can hear him talking loudly to Kamil and I know it's gonna be a sloppy show. I don't really care but I am up there as well. Guilt by association I suppose. He forgets to play at times. At other times he starts up in the wrong key and can't hear the difference so he keeps chugging along. He yells really loudly between the songs playing the part of front man. People buy in though and those that don't are not noticed. It helps that he's foreign and has a history so that the crazy antics become quaint and even possibly exciting. I try to laugh it all off and play my songs afterwards, doing my best to joyfully exorcise all my darkest thoughts. At some point the next day, back out in the country house, Kamil sees him finishing off the bottle of rum and Kamil brings up the wild and loose play from the night before. Perhaps in an attempt to get him to focus better. There's a little double speak back and forth between the two of them in which neither is willing to really come out and say what they think. He knows that he can get lost in the haze but he doesn't wanna take it sitting down from Kamil so he tries to get Kamil to get specific. Kamil just wants to bring the situation to his attention without it coming to a head so he is unwilling to point out any specifics of where things went wrong. I get briefly dragged in to it when Steve tries to pull me in to it and tell him where he fucked up. I want no part of this confrontation. I know what was wrong but I don't care. The music isn't mine and doesn't really speak to me and I just wanna put my head down and get through it and remember to only selfishly play for myself in the future. He tells Kamil not to worry about the bottle of rum he found fridge and polished off. You'll know it's serious when he buys his own bottle of vodka and carries it around with him, he tells Kamil. Until then it is what it is...nothing to worry about.

My iPhone

2010-11-21T23:49:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure if this makes me a dick or not but I love my iPhone. The power chord to my computer burned out so I'm basically using my phone for everything. Pictures. Movies. Games. Internet. Blogging. Email. Notes. I've been skyping all my calls which is super exciting to me. Calling anywhere in the world ( as long as I'm online) for next to nothing! I just wanted to put it out there that the shit is badass....

Roma

2010-11-21T23:48:00.001-08:00

The place was literally an impenetrable fortress. We had driven all day and night from Saint Etienne to Roma. All together The drive ended up taking about 17 hours although that included a stop at an astounding recording studio in Lyon called perpetual wasteland where Mika (Chantel Morte) had to pick up a stack of 7" records. My first thought upon arriving at the studio was that I had died and gone to gear heaven. I wish Goat (my engineer and gear geek buddy extraordinaire) had been with us to experience an off the charts level of gear geekdom. I felt like I'd walked in to an analogue gear museum. There were ancient mixers and mics in perfectly pristine condition spread about like a 50s audio wonderland. I remember one of my strongest thoughts being that I was witnessing something incredible, like an American watching Italy win the world cup, but that I just didn't have the knowledge and tools and history and background to fully understand the magnitude of what my eyes beheld.
Back on the road at 'round midnight in Italy Kamil hit the wall and asked me to take over and drive. I knew this moment was coming but I was still nervous. Not only would it be my first time driving in another country (Canada doesn't count!), but I hadn't driven stick since I was living in Austin, Texas and I drove Cito's little Honda Civic around. That was more years ago than I care to ponder so let's leave the math out of it and suffice to say it was a long freakin' time ago. Long enough that I just wasn't sure I could pull it off. I'd been studying Kamil's driving (let me note here that thank god he's a very good driver because that might have been the back breaker...) trying to remember when to shift to what gear (maybe I should rename this a multi-gear post). Fortunately driving stick is a bit like riding a bike. I was rusty but generally had no problems (no grinding!). Right on the outskirts of Rome though the power cut and I had to do some side of the road shenanigans and I panicked a bit gear-wise having trouble finding 1st gear but other than that all went well. Kamil took over to do the city driving. I don't think I'm quite ready for Italian rush hour. As far as I can tell the only rule is that there are no rules. Late the next night we drove downtown on an errand for a couple of nice girls from Forte Prenestino and on the way back we parked by the Collesium and walked a circle around it. The moon was almost full and the sky clear above the walls. When we left Kamil pulled out of the parking lot making what we thought might be an illegal turn and there was a police car which promptly turned on its lights and pulled out in our direction. Kamil was worried they were gonna pull us over but I wasn't. At that point I couldn't imagine a traffic maneuver short of crashing in to something large that would result in a traffic ticket. Sure enough the
Police cruised right past us presumably on their way to get the Italian equivalent of a donut. Which reminds me that in the middle of the adventure we were upon for the forte ladies some home made tiramisu materialized that was out of this world deliscious. Kamil and I spent some time trying to find the short in the starter but it is elusive.
So there we were the morning of Friday the 19th (day of the show), after having driven all night to get to rome, parked on the bridge over the moat surrounding Forte Prenestino looking through a slit in a wrought iron fence trying to convince a man who spoke only limited English to open the gate and let us in. The battlements were about 40 feet high and there were plenty of places from which they could have shot us with arrows were they so inclined. Apparently we were too early and so the gates were still locked shut. We waited for someone to show up, and the vibe was slightly nervous as apparently Kamil had promised Steve both that there would be no over night drives and that we would be staying generally in hotels. Steve is probably used to such treatment in the world of the stooges where in I am sure there are people whose job it is to make sure he is comfortable. Instead we had just driven all night to arrive at another presumably dirty squat. Granted it was in an ancient fortress in an historic city so a little grime was acceptable from my stand point. Also, the place turned out to be well organized and there's obviously been a great deal of money sunk in to it. We waited for an hour or so but finally our siege bore fruit and we were able to breach the battlements. The place was a little deserted through the day but as evening wore on there were many rooms converted in to a variety of venues. Beneath the ground in the tunnels that stretched below the fortress was a fancy wine bar with live jazz. There was a juggling show in the main bar by the entrance. A dining hall near that where we had an amazing dinner of gnocci and some mysterious gamey meat. After eating I got some tea at the tea shop and then the show began. Chantel Morte played first and I got to really see him for the first time. I liked what he did. It was sort of a cabaret country with a dark French twist. He calls it "cat cave.". Like bat cave he explains but with cats. It was a tough crowd though and I dont think Mika had the best time playing. Kamil didn't want to go on after me as far as I can tell because he played next and did a bunch of songs and then brought us all to join him at a certain point. I suppose we would probably be called the Steve Mackay band if you had to give us a name but when we play all together it's really all about Kamil (his stage name is Koonda Hola which in Czech means "shaved pussy". It comes from a joke about a town that has a famous church with the bones of many dead people they preserved during the plague when there wasn't enough money to bury people. The name of the town and the words Koonda Hola which is the phonetic spelling have a really similar name. It's kind of a ten year old's joke and Kamil started calling himself that as a joke when he moved to the states to sort of remind himself that he was Czech. He'd play on the radio for instance and the guy would announce his name and it would make him laugh. Seems a little Frank Zappa puerile and sarcastic to me but that's a whole 'nother rant). One of my pet peeves is when a performer starts giving a crowd shit for not paying the right kind of attention to them. Like telling people to shut up or telling them to dance. In a good piece of literature for instance the author should describe things and allow people to make up their minds how to think rather than just telling them what they're trying to do and how they should think about it. The art should elicit the reaction you want and you shouldn't have to resort to telling people how to react. In these first two shows Kamil has sarcastically berated the audience for talking too much and not properly paying attention to him. It makes me uncomfortable being a part of this on stage. Look, if you want people's attention demand it by what you do. If you start yelling at people than how does that make the person who is enjoying the show feel? Either way, I feel you should do what you do and if people aren't responding how you want them to then maybe you need to look at yourself and reassess what you're doing. Trying to bring in the fringe viewers is challenging and fun to me. It's easy to entertain people who like you. The trick is sucking in the other people. Having said that there are whole histories of bands I love that take the opposite fuck you and everybody here attitude. I guess if you're upset be honest about it and straight forward and direct and don't hide behind sarcasm and indirect criticism. The music with Kamil is definitely getting better as we learn the songs although at the end of the set he plays two songs I've never heard before and I have to decide whether to noodle around or to simply not play. I wasn't in the mood to noodle so just like when he was berating the audience I simply turn my bell to the audience and hide completely behind my tuba and try and think about other things. When the set is finished it's close to 3am so I launch immediately in to Screaming Tuba before the guys in the band even make it off stage. I'm a little sloppy but I blow hard and clear the crap out of my system. I think the set goes over well but it's really late at this point and people don't have a ton of energy. Its all very pianos. Afterwards I have a few drinks and hang out telling jokes which I hopelessly try to explain until daylight creeps out of the darkness. One nice guy asked me if I had any guitar player jokes and I told him the one about getting a guitar player to turn down by putting sheet music in front of him and he seemed to instantly get a little offended as this wasn't true for him because he could read music. I'm fair though as I had already told him the one in which the difference between a tuba player driving in one direction and a frog driving in the other is that the frog might be going to a gig. Turns out a gig is a gig in Italian.
We're on our way to Pisa now running a bit late because I hung out all Sunday afternoon with Francesca, one of the woman from the night before at the market in Forte Presentino which happens once a month. The food was all mom and pop kinda stuff from local places and was unbelievably good. Everyone was happy and eager to share not because they wanted to sell you something but because they wanted to share the wealth of what they'd created or made or grown. I bought some incredible wine and cheese and bread and if you hovered around a stall for a bit the person whose stall it was would inevitably make you eat or drink something. The guy whose bread I bought (Rustic, mixed with olives and nuts) gave me some grappa like alcohol made from apples. It was amazingly both smooth and harsh at the same time. Francesca and I had about 3 or 4 different home made wines all of which were equally deliscious. As she pointed out things might be economically and politically fucked up but the Italians could still savor and appreciate the basic beauties of life including food and good company. At one point we bumped into a machinist named Mario who recognized me from the show and he bought us all a bottle of wine and told me that he never stayed up until 4am but that the emotion of the tuba spoke to him and he was very inspired. He was such an honest and good guy and probably the last person on earth I would have expected to enjoy weird tuba music so it meant a lot to me. Francesca liberally translated for the two of us and Mika came by and we all hung out together and drank wine until the last possible minute before we had to take off for Pisa. It's raining and dark out but I hear the people who are putting on the show tonight are great cooks...

The first show...

2010-11-17T20:04:00.001-08:00

Upon our arrival in Bourges for the first show of the tour I had a bit of a WTF moment. It was a residence and not a club and we opened a gate and walked down a narrow alley and basically in to a backyard. We opened some doors and went down a short steep stairway which prompted me to make a vow not to crack my head over the course of the night as everyone had a story about doing so at some point (I did keep that vow. We flipped on the lights to reveal a small dark and dank basement. The entire thing was equally divided in to Four square rooms. At the bottom of the stairs was a little entry room. Strait on from there was a storage room mostly full of stuff. We turned left to the room in which we would play and my first thought was that there is no way that we will fit. The last square room contained a small makeshift bar. We set up so that I was crammed in to corner of the room as close as I could possibly get to the crumbling wall. As I set my stuff up water rushed loudly through the water pipe right by my head freaking me out.
I should note that I am totally paranoid about power over here in Europe. The one time I toured here was opening for the band cake about 8 years or so ago in the drums and tuba days. The first show of the tour there was a power surge that blew out a couple of my pedal power adaptors including the one to my whammy which is almost impossible to find. To this day I always carry an extra whammy adaptor with my equipment. Why they make those damn things so proprietary is a damn mystery but that's another rant entirely.
Almost predictably I'm setting up for the first show and one of my electrix repeaters starts to lose it. A bunch of the function buttons stop working. Including the record button an the undo button. It's possible that I could have dealt with this by setting up the foot switch to trigger record and by unplugging the machine after every song in order to erase the loops (there's no on off switch by the way which drives me nuts. Why build a complex machine which you have to unplug constantly?). We have a rehearsal as the full band which doesn't go very well (fortunately I don't need that repeater when I play with them. In fact I don't need most of my stuff. I just use a few simple fx). After the rehearsal while everybody else goes to work I try to fix the repeater. The record and undo buttons are in a separate chassis that I have never before been able to get open (another pet peeve of mine with equipment designed to never again be opened for repair). I discover a few tiny screws and next thing you know the innards of my repeater a strewn about all over the place. I did have an initial thought that I will be amazed if I put the thing back together and it works. What I discovered is that every button relies on a small strange looking rubber gasket and that some of them have mysterious expanded like they suddenly had thyroid problems. Maybe the pressure of the flight (although I've flown many times) or it got to hot at some point or the machines are just getting old and rubber is just not that reliable. The whole thing reminded me a bit of when Richard Feinman discovered the problem with the space shuttle explosion came down to some rubber o-rings which had frozen and broken in the cold. Even the most expensive and technological machines are only as reliable as their most cheap and simple parts.
So what the fuck was I gonna do? I figured out which buttons were absolutely essential and I swapped those out with the broken essential buttons. It was a serious balancing act getting the thing back together as each button just lightly sits in a small groove so that the slightest bump putting the face back on and the buttons spill out all over the place. Finally I got the repeater back together in one piece and miraculously it worked. I duck taped all the missing buttons so now it looks pretty ghetto. It was all a bit humpty dumpty. I had just enough time to eat some arigot and sausages prepared for us by our hosts. Arigot is a traditional French dish which is more or less super cheesy mashed potatoes. Deliscious. Unfortunately all the insanity of pre first show equipment failure had stolen my appetite because I wish I'd been able to eat more. After the meal Kamil comes up to me and says that they're thinking of not doing any openers and just having us all play together in his band. That wasn't gonna fly with me. I didn't shell out a ton of money and get my ass over here to play in his band. I was pretty desperate at this point to play my own songs and get my rocks off which I made clear and to which Kamil consented. I kicked a short good set and the place was packed and people were dancing and I felt much better! After that the whole band played and it was more or less a big sloppy mess. Kamil played a bunch of songs I had never heard before and i barely remembered the songs we practiced. Once again I got really frustrated that I did not receive recordings to learn prior to my arrival. The set seemed to go over well with crowd which just confirms by opinion that they're desperate for music here. Afterwards I was hanging out with some great folks (ah the French Wazoo's) and dancing to songs on the stereo when it occurred to me that I could probably play more if I wanted to. Chantel Morte concurred with this idea and he wanted to play and I wanted to hear him so I let him go first. He's a quiet guy and I have since found him to be the sanest person on the tour and probably the one with whom I have most in common. After he played I kicked another set and by the end I was feeling pretty well fulfilled. Let's just say it ended up being a lucky and wonderful night.
We were supposed to leave in the early afternoon but timing seems rather similar to a third world train. One pm departure is more like 5pm. Consequently after getting horribly lost due to gps craziness (we ended up in some serious backwoods parts of france. Red neck country franco style) we got to saint Ettiene too late to practice. We ate some sketchy kabobs (there are not many late night options in saint Ettiene) and crashed. The next day I woke up early and walked around. Its an old cool looking city. Noon rehearsal/ recording became more like 3:30ish. Once again trying to learn some songs I should know already. Too much time spent with music that's not mine as far as I'm concerned. Some of the stuff is gonna sound all right but it could sound a whole lot better. We took a break while kamilsky and I worked on fixing a short in the starter of the van and then hit a second session of practice. By this point steve mackay was pretty wasted on codeine and rum and hashish and was talking a non stop looping stream of intensity about every subject under the sun. The last song we played was one of his and he gave Kamil a hard time about not getting the lyrics right. By this point I was staring at my tuba wondering what the fuck I was doing with myself when I looked across the room and saw the same exact expression on mika's face. Mika offered to grab a drink afterwards on his way home (he lives here) and I gladly seized the opportunity to get away from steve's chatter for a minute. Mika bonded as we both have the same reservatiions and concerns. When I got back to Ives place (a super sweet man who let us stay and play at his place and even recorded us) steve was lying on the floor where my matters lay. Apparently he lost the keys to the apartment he was staying in and they couldn't locate the gentleman who lived there. He was still talking a mile a minute. Fortunately just as I was contemplating sleeping in the bathroom steve's host materialized and I was able to skype some calls and get some business done in quiet solitude. Thank goodness I got the new iPhone because the power adaptor of my computer burned out. That little thing is badass. I use it for everything now. It's truly amazing to call someone at their home while you are only operating on wifi. Tomorrow's gonna be a huge drive to as close to Rome as we can so I better call it...

Bands

2010-11-15T02:58:00.001-08:00

I'm definitely remembering why I don't generally enjoy being in people's bands. I like doing my own thing. I'm fairly tasteful and I can usually more or less play what other people want me to but it's simply not that fulfilling for me. It seems like we're basically in Kamil's band as the main act on this tour. We furiously tried to learn as much music as possible in the very limited time we've had. I pretty much gave up on receiving recordings of the songs so at this point theyre all a jumble in my head. I think the attitude is we're good enough to pull it off. Tight isnt the aesthetic. My personal take is that its europe and everybody can play and has a thing going so it doesn't really matter (it frustrates me though not really having stuff down and tight. The dynamic between steve mackay and Kamil is pretty much emblematic of why I like to do my own thing. They'll bicker about how a song really goes, citing the recordings (which I have mysteriously been unable to get no matter how many times I ask) and I can tell it goes a little beyond just the music. Steve is basically in deep. I think the tour is longer than he had planned on and we're probably slumming it a little more than he's used to wish iggy and the stooges. We slept in a garage last night at a squat in Paris which was considerably nicer than the squat in Aimes we were in last night (think the pikey village from snatch). I had a little bit of a panic attack after the day's rehearsal. It was occurring to me that this was going to be a long tour and that I didn't know these people (when you don't know people it's hard to Gage the seriousness of their being upset and arguing with each other) and what if the shows suck and what if there are problems with my equipment (funny story here. I think I might have done real damage to one of my electrix repeaters during rehearsal yesterday. I was taking out my 4th valve slide to empty it of condensation (yes it's condensation and not spit steve garofano! Well mostly at least) and my hand jerked as the slide separated from the tuba and bumped in to the side of my electronics case. Condensation splashed onto my repeater and I didn't really think about it. Now the record Button is on the fritz. Hopefully it'll dry out and be fine. I rigged a pedal to trigger it from the foot switch but it's a bit of a pain in the ass. The show must go on though) and what if I don't sell any of my CDs and I lose tons of money and why didn't I rent out my room and why cant i speak any french and why didn't I just stay home! I think mackay has been thinking a few of the same thoughts (although he does speak french pretty well) only I'm a lit younger and healthier and I can just put my head down and get through the month a lot easier (I have to deal with a lot more equipment though. It does make me wish that I was just acoustic. I shoulda just stayed in new Orleans and played in brass bands!). I think we're both on the same wavelength about making contacts and having to start somewhere in Europe and I'm sure once the shows get going it'll all get a lot better. I sort of just wish I was simply responsible for playing my own music and that's it but I'm sure it'll all turn out well in the end. It really helped last night that after the rehearsal and my panic attack all the folks in the squat cooked a big communal dinner and they were really nice and some of them broke out instruments (cello, clarinet, etc...) and it was a really nice family type hang. Steve then told lots of good stories and it all reminded me that life is good. I writing this as I walk around the old city in Paris and it's early in the morning and people are going to work and the sun is finally threatening to come out (it's been all rain up to this point). Kamil's worked hard to put the whole tour together and it ain't easy booking. Bourges tonight. Hope it's a good show...

Follow up...

2010-11-13T14:29:00.001-08:00

So everything made it and everything worked! First night of rehearsals. I'm trying to furiously learn all these songs. It's gonna work out and sound good but I really wish I had been given the songs ahead of time. I'm a quick learner but also a quick forgetter. Sometimes you lose track of lines when you're learning a ton of songs in a short time.

Flying...

2010-11-13T14:24:00.001-08:00

Well I finally made it out of town. Every time I leave New York City I spend my last night wallowing in nostalgia. There's so much I take for granted there and for some reason it takes leaving (and coming back) to remember those things.
I'm flying over the Atlantic as I write this though obviously I'll be sending it later. I mention that because right now I'm having my traditional panic over my equipment. Did it make it onto the plane (I show up super early for my flights figuring that increases my chances)? Will it all function properly when I get there (this one freaks me out a bit. My setup is weird. If something breaks the entire tour is screwed. Some of my equipment is not easy to come by. One time I got my baggage and the guy who had checked my electronics case for bombs or whatever obviously couldn't figure out how to get the lid back on properly so it was barely shut. I got real lucky it didn't come off completely. My tuba case isn't so hot either but what's a few more dents in that thing. It's already banged to hell)? I'm really not sure what to expect on this tour. In addition to doing my solo thing I'll be playing in this guy Steve Mackay's band. I have no idea what the music will be. I'm not even sure of the instruments. Are we gonna get together and write stuff or are there already song ideas. There had been talk of receiving mp3's of music to learn but that never materialized. We shall see. For now I'm just hoping and praying all my stuff makes it to Paris intact and functional. Everything else after that is just icing...

Friday the 30th

2010-05-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

This Friday's show was a pretty good one. The highlight was of course the appearance of steve's mom. She is what one might call a firecracker. My favorite part of the night was when we finished the first set and she had befriended two beautiful women who she prompltly introduced to her son as he got off stage. Nothin like you're mom pimpin for ya. At one point during the set I saw two women talking to each other and i could tell one was trying to explain to the other that the voice she was hearing was coming from the tuba. It cracked me up so I gave them a nod. I'm trying to be a little more aware of the audience and what's going on with them rather than just being completely caught up in my own world. The late Friday late night shows at pianos aren't really gonna get me anywhere as a musician long term. By which I mean anyone who goes to pianos late night on a Friday would probably never go to a real show and conversely anyone who might go to a regular show would never come to pianos late night on a Friday. So from an audience building career standpoint it's kind of a useless gig. But over the course of a night we can play to a lot of people and I really enjoy the challenging nature of the gig. I enjoy confronting someone who would never go see strange experimental tuba music. I like seeing their confusion and I enjoy the challenge of forcing them to enjoy something they never would have thought they'd like. This gig is all about that look of surprise on people's faces. Besides which you constantly read about people whining about the gentrification of the downtown scene and how's there's nothing experimental going on anymore and how you gotta go out to Brooklyn where everything is cool and hip and this is a little bit of my thumb in those people's eyes. Steve was working for Amy Arbus for a while and I remember him telling me about going to a party of a bunch of well off folks reminiscing about the old downtown days when crazy art went down and how those days are a thing of the past because nothing exciting or different goes down anymore. Well, as they say in new Orleans "fuck all y'all." you can say all you want about the dead end stupidity of playing electronic tuba rock music but I'll put it up against anything that went down at CBGBs back in the day creatively speaking. There's plenty of shit still going on out there people. You just have to make a reasonable effort to find it and if that effort involves squeezing your way through a sardeine can full of douchebag than so be it. Thanks pianos for keepin it weird in the face of normal

Everyone...

2010-05-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a story to tell. I happen to have a particularly useless one...

daunting

2009-09-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last show in Colorado last night in Crested Butte. Met lots of good people. The journey back to New York seems a little daunting right now. I was pretty tempted to continue on and go to burning man because many of my friends have been berating me about going. A few things have dissuaded me from going: first off it's another 2000 miles to my trip, secondly that costs money (gas and car rental time), and thirdly I have a shit load to do for the next leg of the bucket tour. I have to get my whole merch world in order and I have to work out a couple more songs. Unfortunately getting fucked up in the desert will have to happen some other time. All my blueman friends are building a big stage this year which probably won't ever happen again but what can you do...but get in the car and drive east instead of west...

limits

2009-08-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I forget that my body has limits. I tend to push myself with no thought of consequence. I don't need too much sleep to function so I'll stay up late. Maybe drive after the show, crash in the car until daytime and then walk around all day and this never used to bother me. I've managed to get sick on the last two tours though. A little throat congestion doesn’t really bother my tuba playing too much but singing has been really problematic. I guess I don't fully consider that when you're alone there's very little downtime. You can't just crash out in the back of the van while someone else drives. Also, I'm gathering new found respect for solo acts. It's tough being up there alone because there's nothing else going on to draw attention, even for a moment. Even if it's brief it helps to be able to step back out of the picture at a show. When you're the only one up there that's just not possible. Last night's show in Aspen was a bit of a struggle. I got a little light headed and my limbs were a little rubbery and I had trouble holding it all together. There's a lot for me to keep track of and manage during these sets which involves a lot of sharp, relaxed concentration. After the show I drove up the mountain pass towards Buena Vista and crashed in the car along a river. It was quite peaceful and beautiful. I woke up early and finished the journey to Buena Vista where I'm meeting a friend of a friend. When I hit town it was pretty early and I pulled in to a coffee shop/bakery. I asked the women at the counter if there was a drug store around at which I could get some allergy medicine which apparently was an invitation for a strange man to tell me all about his persistent athletes foot. Apparently it's really hard to clean that stuff out in between the toes. In addition he got the athletes foot doing work for a year for this guy who never paid him. Apparently this guy has the whole town fooled because he's really a drug dealer who goes down to South America all the time. This gentleman with the athlete's foot then pulled me aside and leaned in real close (a little too close) and told me that he was on death row but was exonerated and that the townspeople still see him as a criminal and that no one likes him and that, in fact, they're all out to get him. Apparently Buena Vista is really mostly a prison town in which either everybody's been to prison or there are lots of prisons or everyone is in the imprisoning business. It was a little hard to tell which. I tried to get a couple words in edgewise but he quickly cut me off having, it seemed, a whole lot that he absolutely needed to tell me in what he feared would be far too little time. I quickly found out that he studied the violin as a child. That he quit at an early age. That he has now picked up the mandolin. That he is very upset that people have asked him to play the mandolin for them in what I could vaguely translate as some kind of challenge of his abilities. I found out about his father's military career and various other sundries. All this was crammed into about 5-10 minutes of conversation as I attempted to escape to the pharmacy to get some drugs that would hopefully alleviate my pounding sinuses. Before I escaped he told me that he doesn't understand how people can not want to talk to each other and I decided not to point out that we really hadn't had a conversation. I think of a conversation as going in two directions. Nevertheless he needed an audience and I was happy to help him out...to a point.

Let me catch my breath...

2009-08-27T10:13:00.001-07:00

So apparently Breckenridge is over 9000 feet above sea level. I had forgotten about the altitude. As a tubist you have to be careful about the very real possibility of passing out. I walked around a bunch during the day which really helped me get acclimated. My legs felt like rubber but eventually I got a little used to it. It's a good thing I did because I definitely had a few light headed moments during the set last night.
I overheard someone say "I think it's gonna snow soon," and they might be right. I'm pretty sure it's still August but it was freezing cold last night. I had to crank up the heat in the car on the way back to Denver. All in all the show went well though. People were cool and I played okay. I've really been fighting the balance between the various loops and the live stuff. For some reason it's a real struggle right now. After the shows there's always someone with some kind of sound suggestion or analysis but inevitably I can't tell if they're thinking of things differently from me or if they're understanding which sounds are which. There's a lot of different shit that goes on when I play and even I have trouble keeping track some times. I had forgotten about the drunken hippie thing of telling you the same thing over and over and over again. I couldn't believe how many times one large presumably stoned and drunk man turned to me and said virtually the same thing with the same inflections, "I have no idea what I just heard but I know I liked it."

Made it!

2009-08-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm two hours outside of Denver and I call my friend Darin to make some plans to hang out and I'm thinking, piece of cake. That was easy. Smooth sailing. Once you get out west past Chicago the roads are straight and the speed limit is really high. Just point and shoot and you can eat away the miles. I get off the phone with him and suddenly the sky gets dark and there's lightning and it begins to pour. Now I've lived in New Orleans so I've seen real rain but this was pissing down so hard I thought to myself thank god I got full insurance coverage 'cause I'm pretty sure this rain is gonna crack the windshield. My wipers could barely keep up and I found myself unable to see more than five feet in front of me. Fortunately I outran the storm before too long and made it to Denver, hung out with Darin, and saw some music. Life is good...

Big Country

2009-08-25T10:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I really love new york. So I walk out my door and blocks away, wedged in between a great new falafel joint and a new sandwich shop which seems to specialize in pork sandwiches is an alamo rental car location. I usually get a compact car but I figure that since I'm insane enough to drive 18 hundred miles to a gig I might as well spring for a full size. I've got a few simple requirements for a car. I hope all my equipment can fit in the trunk so I don't have to worry about unloading the car every night and I hope that there's a direct line for the ipod because though I have one of those adaptors which allows you to listen to it on the radio they kind of suck. That's really it. I might have to add satellite radio to that list because this car came with it and I'm really digging it.
So I'm booking across the country and I pass Chicago and I figure wow. This has been easy. I'm practically in Colorado already. And then the realization dawns on me that this is a really big country. Chicago isn't even half way to Denver from New York. What the hell was I thinking? My conclusion is that the first thousand miles is no problem at all for me. It's the second thousand that's sort of a pain. Not to mention I gotta do it all again on the way back. Driving gives you flexibility though. I could still continue on to burning man, or I can change my route home and visit friends, or I can just book back.
I'll be in Denver by tonight. Can't wait to play tomorrow. Got some tough decisions deciding what songs to play. There's only so much you can cover in a forty minute set. I'm mulling over whether to do set lists or not. I prefer to just feel it out but I'm not sure I'm comfortable enough yet with the solo stuff to not plan things. I just found out that some of the shows I'm doing on september leg of shows opening for Buckethead will be twenty minute sets. Seems pretty weird to drive somewhere and set up and only play 3 or 4 songs. That's gonna be tough. That's barely enough time to get my rocks off. Same pay though so I can't complain.

Heading to Colorado

2009-08-23T13:04:00.001-07:00

It's time I started blogging again!
So I'm heading to Colorado today to do some shows opening for Buckethead. I probably should have flown but for some strange reason it seemed like a good idea to get in a car and go on a road trip. I'm not sure I really thought this through but I just didn't feel like getting on an airplane. I wanted to take a bunch of stuff with me and all the airplane logistics seemed daunting. In retrospect though it would've been a pretty convenient flight out and back. Can't cry over spilled milk. I'm gonna have a chance to catch up on all the music I've been meaning to listen to and all the thoughts I've been meaning to contemplate. Besides which I think a road trip away from New York city is gonna be just what the doctor ordered. Of course the real reason I was reluctant to fly comes down to voodoo, or at least what I like to call voodoo. To me that's the religion that governs all electronics. For some reason, and perhaps it's because I haven't been slaughtering the right kind of chickens, all my equipment has been incredibly tempermental lately. Every time I set up there's another problem to troubleshoot. Dodgy leads, computer problems, pickup connections. I've gotten really good at troubleshooting problems and fixing stuff but the thought of my stuff being tossed into the cargo bay of an airplane seemed like the possible last straw. That's also why I've decided, to the detriment of all my friends who've been on my case, not to continue on to burning man after Colorado. I can't say I wasn't tempted and I probably could have fit it in between Bucket tours but the idea of taking my testy equipment into a desert dust storm was probably not a good one. I'm pretty sure my stuff would not survive the desert. Oh and the money factor for burning man made heading home after Colorado seem like an even better idea...

A Boy and his Tuba (opening take 1 first person)

2009-01-08T18:47:00.000-08:00

My life changed in an instant. There was no flash of light, no explosion of awareness, no overwhelming epiphany. It wasn’t religious, it wasn’t spiritual. It was a completely mundane matter of fact moment without a hint of doubt of irony. There, in the window of sound exchange, on North Loop, in Austin, Texas, as the summer of 1994 was starting up, was a beat up tarnished old sousaphone previously owned by an old German guy who had put it up on consignment for reasons only he will ever know. I remember nodding matter of factly. I didn’t even get excited, but form one instant to the next I knew that was what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Now I’m normally a person who over analyses things from every excruciating and possible angle to the point of complete inaction. Looking back, for the life of me, I still cannot believe my lack of self-doubt. How could there not have been a voice yelling inside of me about the ludicrous nature of the situation.
“You’re an idiot. What the hell are you thinking? You have no idea what you’re doing and considering and you’re so caught up in a moment that you’re not even aware of past and future. Don’t you realize that at the age of 24, never having blown a note on the tuba, the idea that you’re going to spend the rest of your life dedicated to the playing of an instrument of which all you know is encompassed by having listened to some New Orleans Brass bands is both dumb and stupid.”
Somehow, at that moment, not only were there no doubts but I failed to follow an action to its future repercussions. At no point did I argue with myself that if I do this then it would lead to this and that. I saw no future but only immediate action. It was easily the strangest and most wonderful moment of my life whose significance registered only many years later.
I bought that sousaphone and started teaching myself to play. For some strange reason, even though they are virtually the same instrument (comparable to a trumpet and a cornet or a baritone horn and a euphonium), I really wanted to play an actual tuba. The sousaphone was $700 dollars and though I could barely afford that I was able to come up with the cash but tubas were well out of my price range. Even a cheap one was $3000. Doubts and obstacles were completely meaningless at this point though. Somehow I’d think of something and somehow I’d continue plunging mindlessly forward with no thought of the consequence of my actions…

drives me nuts

2008-09-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

The whole Iraq debate drives me nuts. Look, we shouldn't have gone in so that's a plug for Obama's argument. But we did invade the country so it really isn't too constructive to just go on and on about the origins without thinking about the future as McCain rightfully points out. But then McCain does the same thing and goes on about how Obama was against the surge. So what? It happened. It's what happens next in Iraq we should be talking about. Obama at least has a plan. A Sixteen month pull out. McCain won't say what his plan is at this point. He can only go on about how the troops can't come home as losers. I wanna know what that means. He said, she said is all fine but the bottom line is what are you gonna do in January and beyond...

Fucked Up About Race

2008-03-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally happened. with their backs against the wall, unable to make a viable case for her candidacy, the Clintons managed to make the campaign for the Democratic nominee for president all about race. It's a lot easier to create reasons why you shouldn't vote for a candidate than to make the case for why you should. The greater good of the party be damned. There aren't a lot of policy differences between Clinton and Obama so she's gone down what will turn out to be a problematic road once the general election comes along for whichever candidate triumphs in the end (if anyone ever does). It was bound to happen at some point I suppose. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that we are a country (and a world for that matter) that is still fucked up about race. People simply cannot understand each other and cannot or will not understand all the factors that leave other people believing what they do. It seems to me that Obama for the first time is really trying to be somewhat honest about race (truthful compared to his ideas of working hand in hand with republicans which we know is never really gonna happen) and to no one's surprise it's hurting him politically. All these pundits are up in arms over what Jeremiah Wright said in his sermon. Frankly it didn't seem like that big a deal to me. It's not something we haven't heard before. If I were black I'd be saying much the same things. It's fairly obvious that people are actually not treated equally and that we have not achieved the utopian color blind fantasy land in which most pundits live. I've been following the case in Long Island in which Daniel Ciccario Jr. was shot and killed by John White. Daniel was drunk when he went to White's home with four friends late at night to confront White's son Aaron about what turned out to be a bogus rape threat. Racial slurs were exchanged and the gun went off. Now I don't claim to know exactly what went down that night and I'm sure you could make a strong anti or pro gun case according to what perspective you have and it is a tragedy that a houng man was killed but come on. He was leading what amounts to a drunken lynch mob to a man's house late at night to do what? Talk civilly tohim? Where did these kids think this was going? John White was sentenced to 2 to 4 years and Daniel's dad freaked out. He has threatened Aaron's life and the White's property has been vandalized. The thing I find fascinating is Cicciaro Sr's claims of reverse racism. If White were white he argues White would have gotten a much stiffer sentence. As if blacks get so many privileges in our society. As if jails are not filled disproportionately with black men. Actually if the races were reversed and White was white and was confronted by a drunken mob of black men at his doorstep I doubt if he would be looking at any jail time at all. This perception of privilage amazes me. Your Geraldine Feraro's of the world claiming Obama is only successful because he's black and oh by the way I'm not a racist. Actually it seems he's been successful despite his color and now that it has been pointed out endlessly that he actually is black (to say nothing of the things that have been pointed out about him that are not in fact true) and race has become an issue in the campaign, lo and behold, Obama isn't doing so well anymore. Why was the Sopranos a huge hit and the wire wasn't when the wire was clearly the superior show? Because people are uncomfortable with race and with confronting the realities of the society we have created. And until we are willing to face those realities we will continue to do very little to change them. What you do not understand you cannot fix.

Mission Accomplishing

2008-03-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

I like to keep up with what people on both sides of the aisle are saying. On my recent tour in Texas I listened to a bunch of right wing radio (that's just about all you can get) and between that and your Krauthammers of the world I learned that apparently the war in Iraq is now a success. We're well on our way to victory and the democrats are being completely unrealistic and disingenuous about the prospects of withdrawal. The last part may actually be true. Far be it from politicians to lie to the public. It's not so easy to just aup and close down an operation of this magnitude. But it seems to me the republicans are being equally evasive. McCain knows it is unrealistic to expect to occupy Iraq for the next 20 years. We can't sustain troop levels and we can't afford what it costs. What I don't understand about conservatives is how in their own country they are against big government and they claim to want to reduce spending but they are all about prolonged nation building overseas. Yeah there is a certain threat imposed on us by terrorism but frankly it's not nearly as great a threat to American lives as the decaying infrastructure of this once great nation. Perhaps we could mix things up and try a little nation building here at home...

OKC

2008-03-11T23:46:00.000-07:00

Just cruised in to Oklahoma City. The weather is finally what I expected down here. Sunny during the day and crisp and cool at night. I was afraid that I had permanently brought the northern cold down south with me. I was just reading about the rep for Oklahoma City who said that Gays are a bigger threat to America than terrorists. What is it with people? Are they really so uncomfortable and so afraid? Today’s big political news is the storm back in New York over Eliot Spitzer and his thousand dollar prostitutes. Part of me truly doesn’t care and part of me has to wonder about a man who is so confused that he would actually prosecute one prostitution ring while hiring another. He should probably resign for that hypocrisy alone. As far as the bigger battle goes, seems like we’re going to go all the way to August. I am continuously amazed by what a mess the democratic system is in the United States. Anytime a contest is close we seem to learn how flawed and confusing the rules are.
I spent last week visiting the legit world of the tuba at Texas State University in San Marcos. I’ve got to say I had a great time. I was pretty nervous about how things would go over but everyone there was extremely open minded. It was a totally different experience for me as I’m used to rock clubs and such. I can barely remember the last time I was on stage in a concert hall at an academic institution. I used to get really nervous but I guess the key to that was just being really comfortable with the music you’re playing and I surely am that by now. I’ve got a few more shows to go here before getting to Austin for SXSW where I’m certain David Geffen is just waiting to sign me to a really big contract…
Tonight’s show in OKC was not great but let me tell ya a weird little story. At my instore in Dallas, Texas at Good Records I asked the guy there to recommend a cd. He suggested a band called HolyFuck. I liked the cd and bought it. So today before my show I open up the paper and they’re playing this same night down the street from me. A weird coincidence. So I go down there to say hello and see when their show is and I run in to Jay, one of the bartenders at Piano’s in NYC where I play my weekly show. His band is opening up. Two coincidences together make one big fat weird coincidence…

Super Fat Tuesday Celebration

2008-02-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

Like Haley's comet we recently had an extraordinary confluence events occur. Never again will so many people vote on the same day as Mardi Gras when the Giants are having their victory parade. Crazy! Well, my time in Canada is a little prematurely at an end. My show tonight has been cancelled and of course it is snowing...again. On the Republican side of things I must admit to being shocked that John McCain has all but wrapped up the nomination. How a man so reviled by the Rush Limbaugh wing of the Republican party could win is hard to fathom. I suppose it's more an indictment of the paucity of candidates than anything else. I mean, who couldn't beat a man named Mitt. And Huckabee, let's be serious. He is way too populist for any of those right wingers. Religion is fine as long as it doesn't involve sharing the wealth. So it comes down to McCain. Who would have thought last year that someone so in step with Bush on the war could have a really good chance of winning the presidency. Somehow the war has been spun as this huge success now. Because it is no longer a collosal horrible mess it is now a huge victory. There are strong anti war arguments to be made but the Dems are not really making them. Part of their problem was that they never really made a good anti war case beyond we shouldn't have gone in there in the first place. Yeah, true, but we did and now what? Neither side is being very truthful or realistic. Are we going to be there the next 15 or 20 years because that's at least what it is going to take. Whether or not you think the surge is working we just do not have the man power to sustain so we'll have to withdraw troops whether you are for the surge or not. Can we afford to spend a couple hundred billion a year (I'm sure it probably ends up costing even more than that). What about Afghanistan and North Korea and Iran and... Don't it make most of our threats and intimidation and influence empty when it is clear we can only just barely sustain the wars we are already fighting? On the Democratic side we're looking at a long drawn out slugfest. I suppose I'm one of these undecided people you hear about. I think I'm leaning towards Obama but I'm not entirely sure about his lack of policy details. He's great at the platitudes but it'd be nice to have some more specific proposals. At least he would avoid a quarter century of only two families ruling the most powerful country in the world (Go Democracy!). And on top of that he seems like a genuinely good guy. Not that it is necessarily the job for a good person. To me politics is like sports and I follow it the same way checking out all the scores and trades and it's pretty fascinating. The stakes happen to be a little bit higher though.

What the Hell is Wrong With Me

2008-01-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

The problem with being a solo act is that there is no one around to tell you what an idiot you are being. It's good to have people around sometimes who will edit your stupidist ideas. Like the bright idea of touring Eastern Canada in late January early February. I drove about 15 hours yesterday to get to Antigonish, Nova Scotia where upon arriving I found out that "people really don't normally come out on Wednesday nights." The difference between playing Canada and the US is that in Canada the people at the club still pay you and put you up at a Hotel and don't complain about it. In the US the promoter tells you that unfortunately even though you had a guarantee he can only offer you a few dollars. I have to admit that upon arriving in Antigonish I had a pretty hard core "what the hell am I doing with my life" kind of moment. For some reason my constant failure of technology over the past ten hours contributes greatly to this feeling. My gps apparently isn't programmed for Canada and my cell phone is being rejected although according to Verizon everything should be working fine. Somehow not knowing quite where I am and not being able to commiserate with anyone makes it easy to question things. It's back to a map and a pay phone. Old school--circa '95. So I decide that life is actually pretty good. First off, I'm alive. The weather was pretty hairy. It rained constantly and if it had been a little bit colder I never would have made it. Fortunately it didn't get cold enough to turn to ice until I finished my drive. Not only am I alive but I get to play music--granted I've risked life and limb for 4 audience members, 1 sound guy, 1 opening band and a handful of people working and just getting off work (eventually a few more people show up but not until well after I've started). Oh I almost left out the crazy old lady playing slots in the back. One drunk, crazy old guy comes up to me and wheezes "where are you from." I tell him but he's not really listening to me. He announces that he's from Sherbrooke. I reply that that doesn't really mean anything to me but once again he's too busy popping his teeth out of his mouth to pay any attention to me. His gumps mush together against the frame of his false teeth as he contemplates his next drink. They kick him out of the bar for being too drunk before I start which is probably for the best but it doesn't reduce my actual paying audience at the time by 25 percent.

More Texas...

2007-10-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Just as a follow up to my last Blog I gotta mention that I am continuously amazed at the number of huge battleship-like pick-up trucks in the state of Texas. Just about every vehicle on the road is either a pick-up or an SUV. The Houston show went pretty well. Super Happy Funland is a very strange but cool place. I just left Dallas and am now in Denton. What is with Houston and Dallas. These are huge cities which have almost no music scene. Dallas especially. That should be a thriving city but even the one little area that used to have stuff going on (Deep Ellum) is pretty much close to disappearing. There is hardly any place to play anymore and those places that do exist aren't that exciting. I did take the opportunity to catch up on some movies. What else is there to do but go to the mall and do a little theatre hopping (please don't turn me in!). I saw Darjeeling limited which I thought was excellent. For some reason it's gotten lots of negative criticism but I thought it looked beautiful and had the kind of characters with whom I was happy to spend my time. I also saw Gone Baby, Gone which had some potential but was kind of flawed. Strangely enough I thought the flaws had little to do with the direction and acting (Gotta give some props to the Afflecks) but more to do with the story. For something that was trying to be super realistic I thought there were a few leaps of stupidity I wasn't sure I could buy. Spoiler alert! When they go alone to the quarry I just wasn't buying it and the whole thing with the kid being alive was a little too obvious and I just wasn't buying the number of sacrifices these guys were making. In any case it was entertaining. I also watched Eastern Promises which was pretty mediocre. If you've got absolutely nothing else to do it was ok but it doesn't go too far and didn't really feel like a full length movie.

China

2007-10-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

So I'm back out on tour which means more blogging! Went to China late last night. China, Texas that is. After the show in Beaumont at the Vortex I went and crashed at my friend Herb's place in China. This morning he took me on a tour of his farm. They grow sun flowers and rice and grass and blueberries and a new crop called energy cane which is similar to sugar cane but is more easily converted to ethanol. Most american farmers have been making ethanol out of corn which really doesn't yield any significant energy savings because it uses just about as much fuel to make it as the end result produces. Apparently it also can't be transported in pipe lines necessitating shipment by trucks which burns a shit load of gas. Taking their cue from Brazil which is way ahead of the United States in this kind of stuff they're trying to produce ethanol in a much better fashion. The whole growing and converting thing should be up and running in a few years and hopefully will serve as a model of what can be done. I got to ride in the combine which is one scary and daunting piece of machinery. Herb also had a bio-diesel rig set up for which he gets restaurant grease and recycles it for fuel. The whole thing was pretty exciting to a city boy like me. All that stuff at the grocery down stairs from my apartment actually comes from somewhere...

Wolff at Wolf

2007-09-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Mixing has begun on the new records. I'm really excited. Played last night opening for The Rebirth Brass Band. It went okay. Might not seem like it cause of the tuba thing but that's not necessarily my crowd. Mostly tourists looking for the authentic New Orleans experience and I don't exactly fit that bill. I had a few people in to it though. It sounded good on the big soundsystem. Wolff at Wolf. Got a show at Mimi's on Monday which should be relaxed and fun but I'm a little worried at getting the sound right as it'll be me and a couple amps. New Orleans is definitely working that Baghdad vibe. The only police presence I've seen in the Ninth Ward has been military. At least I've seen some of that though. Last visit I don't think I saw anything the entire time I was here. The summer has been really tough on everyone here. Things have been really dead. Everybody's hoping the break from oppressively hot to just reasonably hot brings a little more action but I can tell that there's a lot of worry that business won't really pick up significantly. I gotta go meet Goat at the studio to do some mixing. More later...

It's finally happened

2007-09-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's finally happened. I now officially have a website of my own. Keep in mind it's still a work in progress. I'm workin' on a couple new albums these days as well which I'm going to mix in New Orleans at the end of the month with my good friend Goat. Pretty soon I'll pretty much owe Goat everything I earn for the next decade in compensation for being so cool about helping me out. Thank God he's as insane as I am. I'm a little apprehensive about heading to Nola on this trip. It's been depressing me a bit lately especially as I've gotten a lot of mugging stories about the kind of people who would not normally be mugged. I really feel like the country has let New Orleans down and that rebuilding efforts are not what they claim to be. No way Bush gives a shit whether New Orleans returns to the way it used to be. From where he stands it's probably best not to really bother repairing the levies properly. Anyway, I didn't really want to take this first blog as a moment to rant but it was just the two year anniversary of Katrina. More to come soon...