Roma

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...

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

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...

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...

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

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...

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