The last time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."