Migratory

We're moving! I say "we" but I mean "I". The Royal We.
Anyway, the new home is http://raggedend.wordpress.com/
Dig it.

We're Back

This is how my neighborhood celebrated the election....

North By Northwest

After the Dandy's tour wrapped up in Portland, I stayed behind for an extra week of running around the NW with Malia. We had gone to see My Bloody Valentine in LA which was pretty astounding in it's sheer volume (especially during the 17 minute noise jam) and on the first day after tour we saw Sigur Ros from the front row in Portland. I normally don't like to be quite THAT close for a show but it was fucking amazing. Malia got some good pics with my phone despite her being devastated that she didn't bring her camera in.

MJ at breakfast in Portland...
Sigur Ros...

We spent a couple days in Portland before going to Seattle for a day. We spent the rainy day doing typical Seattle things...coffee & record shopping on capital hill, wandering the Experience Music Project & Space Needle... we had an amazing mexican dinner before getting on the road south.
Shooting the deserted amusement park in Seattle...

We stopped in Grant's Pass, OR to sleep and had breakfast & looking around before spending the day meandering down to Arcata. We woke up there & after breakfast cruised south thru the redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants and on out to the coast, stopping in Ft. Bragg for dinner and rolling the rest of the way to San Francisco. We had a nice couple days in SF meandering around SF & Marin. We got to witness Angel Island (an undeveloped island in SF bay) on fire which was pretty crazy to see. All in all it was a super fun way to wrap up the tour. I flew home from SF and MJ headed home to LA.

The redwoods...
Orick, CA knows what America needs...

News reporter talks about the fire...

September Mourn

The fall US Dandy's tour will have to get the glossing over treatment, both because the day to day happenings aren't as interesting as in Europe, but because my memories are largely blurred together anyway. We were out for a month, starting in Minneapolis, heading east to the coast then down and back across the south to San Diego and up to Portland. We had 2 bands that supported us on virtually all of the shows. Darker My Love is from LA via SF and The Upsidedown are from Portland and on the Dandy's label. Both bands were great musically but also especially good people to have around on a daily basis. There was much love going around on this tour, culminating in a big family dinner with everybody at a long table in Aspen. If you have the chance to check out either band, do. They bring the rock.
Now...pictures:

The Summer of Love Tour US 2008 Team Photo...

I did a sight-seeing day off with Nicole in DC. We went to a modern art museum and to the Mall and the monuments and even the White House...

Tildy in Nashville (by MJ)
Seriously??

Aspen...
This is Malia shooting the Dandy's in Aspen. Between mustache guy looking over her shoulder and blurry hair-shaky lady this was quite possibly my favorite front row of the tour. Malia was doing some old-school psychedelic projection light show shit for Darker My Love. It rocked and so does she.
Tildy just got sick...
We had 2 days of between Aspen and San Diego so rather than go to Vegas or LA like most bands would, we went and stayed in Springdale, Utah at the entrance to Zion National Park. The place was as amazing as expected. It was a great place for time off. People (with healthier backs than I) rented bikes and rode into the park. My gimpy ass went with Zia & Tildy for a mellow walk in the canyons and some light exploring of the park. I didn't do as much as I wanted but it was a great day and the landscape is unreal.

Iron, Lion, Zion...

The view from my hotel balcony...

Tildy took this of Zia...
And her self-portrait...

The Ace Hotel-Portland, OR...

Summer In The City

I was supposed to fly from Dublin to Newark, go home for 3 hrs, fly from JFK to LA, stay overnight there, then fly to Australia to start the Albert tour. However, the whole thing cancelled on a couple days notice so I went home and sat on my ass for about 3 weeks. I made the best of it and saw lots of movies and shows. I saw the Police play their "last show ever" at MSG, which was pretty great despite sound that seemed to indicate that there was no bass or drums in the band. Oh well, it's not like the rhythm section is vital to that band's sound or anything. I also saw Radiohead a couple of times, once at a festival in Liberty State Park and once down in Camden, NJ. Both were stellar as usual and strangely, both involved a ferry ride.

NYC from Liberty State Park...
Kerri on the ferry to Philly...

Then it was Wilco at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn which was also stellar. It had the added bonus of seeing Tim Robbins pass out (twice) and seeing Susan Sarandon try and balance her concern for him with her desire to watch the show. He's a big man and went down hard.

I was getting antsy so I booked a little California vacation. I hit LA for a few days just visiting with friends and cruising up the 1 in a convertible then flew up to SF where I saw both Radiohead & Tom Petty in the park, did some camping and some visiting before heading back home in time to jump a train up to Boston for a couple Sox games and have a few days home before heading back out on Dandy's tour. It was a fine way to close out the summer. Here's some pictures I took at Baker Beach.


This girl was doing some ballet-like dance with the waves. She was quite graceful and while it was a bit corny, looked pretty sweet silhouetted against the sunset...

Finally back!...Another Euro Summer Part 3

Sorry for the extended absence people.  Yes, I'm ok, still alive, etc.

While the memories are getting fuzzy at this point, I'll do my best to pick up where I left off...

We woke up in Cornwall, which is arguably the most beautiful part of England, way down in the southwest corner (and ironically the only place I've ever surfed despite 5 years living on the coast of California).  The festival was a fundraiser for the Lanhydrock house which is an old estate house that's been preserved like a museum.  The festival was in the fields just below the house so we got to take a tour.  It was pretty amazing, mostly the 'backstage' elements like the multi-room kitchen.  They didn't let us take pictures so I can't show you but you can always google it if you care.  The grounds were impressive as well with all the manicured bushes and whatnot.  All in all a nice place to spend the day.

The festival itself was kind of a weird, family-day sort of thing with a bizarre range of acts you've never heard of (except maybe the Hollies who looked about 70).  There were some pretty impressive fireworks at the end of our set.  

We packed it all in and headed back up to London for another festival and a club show.  The festival (Lovebox Weekender) was in Victoria Park.  Because of the layout and concern for preservation of the park, we couldn't bring the bus near the stage.  The geniuses that organized the production for this thing decided that we could move our 4 tons of gear the mile to the stage with a couple golf carts.  Then they couldn't even get us the golf carts until 45 minutes after we were supposed to load-in.  And of course after being repeatedly told it was "physically impossible" to tow our trailer down there, someone with brains (and a tractor) came along and did just that.  After that it was another clusterfucky festival day.  After we finished I wandered to the main stage to watch some of the Flaming Lips set.  Always a good time.  It was Courtney's birthday so there was much merriment.  

Behind the scene with the Lips...

We had a couple days off in London before our club show, one of which I spent running around picking up my Japanese visa and just wandering London.  The other I think I spent in bed.  While I was out wandering for food one day I came across this strange scene.  Just after crossing this street to check out a restaurant, I turned around to see this bike just laying in the middle of the street, not 30 seconds after I had been walking there, with no owner in sight, just a handful of confused looking English folks.  I took a picture and looked at another restaurant and when I looked again, it was gone without a trace.  It felt like I was in some English David Lynch movie.  

We did the show at Shepherd's Bush Empire and headed off to Ireland.  The fun part about taking a bus from England to Ireland is the inevitable early morning ferry ride across the always-placid Irish sea.  It's hard to say what element of the ferry is most appealing...the many, many options for delicious, healthy food...the wonderful people to interact with...or just the peaceful journey itself, which is in no way nausea-inducing.  Nevertheless, we arrived in Galway in time to have most of a day off.  I stayed put in the hotel for most of it, but I wandered thru the touristy madness to try out the "must try" fish & chips place.  It was pretty good, but as expected, overrated.  We closed out the tour with another festival style show, though this one only had 2 bands, us and Ash.  Then it was off to Dublin to catch the 9am flight out.  Another European summer touring adventure had come to an end.  Overall it was one of the better ones...

Another Euro Summer Pt. 2

Driving overnight from Italy, we woke up at a mountainous, lakeside resort in Klagenfurt, Austria.  We had to stop for 10 hours so the bus driver could sleep (they have very strict rules here) so we killed a hot summer day at a strange but beautiful resort filled with Austrians.  Austrians are an odd bunch, more German than the Germans I say.  Still, it was a pleasant enough day with swimming and sunning and trying to order food without meat in German.  Then it was back on the bus to Ostrava.  I'd never been to the Czech Republic before, and I didn't get too much time there, but it definitely felt different than anywhere else in Europe.  We did a weird festival where catering was in a castle.  

Zia & Dylan at the short table, Ostrava...

Then back on the bus again.  This time we did our driver stop in Nurnburg, Germany.  Some of us had a nice wander through the old part of the city, which is encircled by old walls & a moat (which is now like a park, with grass and a bike path).  It was a really beautiful city and a decent day off.  

Nurnburg moat...

Nurnburg river...

Nurnburg statue...

We then went overnight to Liege, Belgium for another festival, followed by another overnight to Amsterdam.  This bus ride featured the mother of all back lounge parties.  I can't divulge the details.  My mom reads this.  

Of course Amsterdam was a welcome, though short-lived, stop.  We did our own club show which was nice for a change and Chad & Erin happened to be in town so I got some time with them.  Unfortunately we had to get on the road towards Oslo with yet another driver stop in Copenhagen.  This was a more annoying day as the day room that 4 of us had to share was tiny and the weather wasn't great.  Plus we had to wait until 3:30am for the bus to pick us up.  On to Oslo...

This is what Danish kids play on...

Oslo was another club show.  Norway is my favorite of the Scandinavian countries and this trip was another fun one.  After the show we moved to a private, basement bar where we took over the DJ booth and have yet another rock and roll dance party.  This band has more rock and roll dance parties than any band I've toured with.  They are not afraid to have a good time. 

Oslo... 

I fell into bed for a few hours before having to go to the airport to fly to London, where I am now.  I had a pretty relaxing day off, with a trip to the Japanese Embassy thrown in for good measure.  Tonight we roll down to Cornwall for some strange family-day festival.  Should be interesting...

Tildy asleep with waffle...

Another Euro Summer Pt. 1

I started this Euro trip with a couple days to myself in Amsterdam. I landed in the morning off an overnight flight and made my way to the hotel. I spent the day wandering the city, napping off jet-lag and seeing a bit of Beck that night. The next day was much the same only RadioheadWesterpark in the afternoon to visit some friends on the crew and see the show. It was stellar per usual. The new, all-LED light show was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Of course it sounded brilliant and it was great to hear the new stuff. The next day, after my third pancake of the trip, I hopped a train to Paris where I met up with team Dandys. From there we were picked up by the tour bus and were off to Bilbao, Spain for the first show of the tour.
I woke up and stumbled off the bus in Bilbao to find a field of horses overlooking the whole city. You could even see the Guggenheim (which we didn’t have time to visit) shining down in the distant valley. The festival site was great, all hilly and green. Things ran a bit…Spanish as far as the show went but it was a fun day nonetheless.

Bilbao & the horses...
The next day was another, smaller festival in Cluses, France. We pulled into town (after a LONG journey during which the bus AC was broken.  This always happens somehow.  We took to holding bent pieces of cardboard out the hatch in the roof, angling the fresh air into the bus) to find out the festival was in the middle of this little town nestled in the French Alps. There were towering peaks in all directions and it seemed everyone in the little town turned out for this free festival.
Of course catering was filled with glorious, stinky cheeses, fresh bread & salads. We closed out the show just as it started to rain, which only added to the surreal feel of the day, and were off to Zurich.

After a non-eventful day & club show in Zurich, we headed to Italy. The whole purpose of our trip to Italy was to spend some time with Galo, a friend of the band's and great artist, who has a country mansion built by one of Napoleon's generals outside of Torino. We arrived at our hotel around noon on Monday. It was a family run place on their farm in the Piedmont countryside.
It looked like this...
I'm pretty sure we were the only one's staying there. For meals we'd sit out on the terrace with this view...
...and eat some of whatever they made that day. It was always fresh, delicious and simple. Octopus carpaccio, caprese salad, tagliatelle w/ricotta, lasagna. Oh, and the theme of this part our trip was 'rivers of wine'. Now, I'm not a huge wine person, but it's hard to deny how good this wine was.

So, after showering up we piled into a mini-bus organized by Galo with our whole group (minus Lee), Galo, his girlfriend Sasha and Chas & Tina (Chas is another artist who works with Galo and Tina is his wife. He's English & she's Croatian. They live in Amsterdam. They are awesome). We took a 30 minute drive through the vineyards, sunflower fields and farms into a little village for lunch.
Another beautiful patio, a really nice couple who run the place and absolutely ridiculously good food (and the aforementioned rivers of wine).

Later we meandered around the village taking pictures and digesting before heading back to the hotel for a nap before Galo's party.

Fathead & Sara...

Dylan getting his shot...
People who like wine...
Matilda...
How quintessential Italian is this?
Multiple angles...Galo's house is about a mile down a country road from the hotel. As I said it's an old country mansion with gorgeous, walled in grounds and is just about the most bucolic setting you can imagine. I showed up at dusk to find tables & chairs scattered on the lawn with people gathering around the food table which had a progression of goodness churned out of the giant kitchen by some catering friends of Galo's, including this cheese that had a rind made out of the grape stuff left over from making wine. It looked absolutely disgusting but was quite possibly the best cheese in history. So we stayed there until 6am, eating, drinking and getting rocked by Zia's DJ prowess. We walked home along the dirt road and I fell into bed for a few hours before getting on the bus to go to the gig. It was definitely one of the best days/nights ever. Wish you were there.

The general who had it built...
The gig was in Cuneo, which is about as big as you'd think. It was a wall-less tin-shed with all the accoutrements you'd expect from a rural Italian gig. Italy, like Spain, is one of those places better left to time off than to working. The highlight of the day was the pizza from the concession stand (which they fed us for dinner). It was made in a wood-fired brick oven by a greasy, round man from Naples who was apparently trained by the world's best pizza master (or whatever). Regardless, it was the best pizza I've ever had and it was the concession food at a shitty venue. This says a great deal about the difference between American & European culture (or at least SOME European cultures). Everyone was so spent from the night before that there was no aftershow that night. Just sweet sleep with no checkout the next morning.

The Dandys rock Cuneo...

The next day everyone except me & "the family" (Travis, Zia & their daughter Tildy) went into Torino with Galo & crew for a day in the city. I opted for a lazy day in the country and was glad I did. Lots of time relaxing on the balcony and 2 great meals on the terrace, between which I took Tilde for a walk through the farm fields to look at ponies. Now, Tilde is 3 and a half. I've never had a kid on tour before and it definitely adds a whole other dynamic into the mix. Luckily she's about as sweet & well-behaved a kid as you could want and it's actually been really fun having her around. She's at an age where pretty much everything that she says is either hilarious or cute enough to break your heart. She was pretty disappointed that the ponies we saw didn't talk like her 'Pretty Ponies' toys, and she really thought that they liked her enough that they'd let her ride them. Still, we had fun.

We got on the bus at 1am to head towards Ostrava in the Czech Republic, leaving behind the Italian goodness...

Westerly

After a day at home in Manhattan, I had to fly off to Portland, OR to start rehearsals with my newest employers, the Dandy Warhols. Because of the ridiculous price of flights these days, I got stuck flying JetBlue. Most people I know like JetBlue, and for short stuff I don’t mind so much, but I’m not generally a fan. The one thing I was excited about was that, since they have DirectTv on board, I could watch the Celtics/Lakers game on the plane. Can someone help me understand how they have a channel called “Big 10” which shows reruns of Ohio State basketball games from the 80s, but they don’t have ABC? They have every network EXCEPT ABC. After being delayed 3hrs on the runway, we were off, arriving in PDX at around 2:30am. I picked up a car and drove to the too-hip-for-it’s-own-good Jupiter hotel; my home for the next 8 nights. I could go off on a rant about this hotel, but I’ll just say that they have wireless internet, but not that reaches the rooms. Oh and they thought it a good idea to hold a lesbian rave in the courtyard outside my room. The Djs only went until 2:30am though, so that was thoughtful of them. Oh, and they did it 2 nights in a row.

At least there was a view...

Hotel annoyances aside, being in Portland was pretty sweet. The weather was stellar the whole time and I got to spend some quality time with some old friends. The Dandys folks are all really cool and they have an amazing headquarters/rehearsal space/recording studio/clubhouse (dubbed The Odditorium). I can’t really begin to describe the place, and somehow I didn’t take any pictures, but it was a great place to work all week. They’re very conscious of aesthetics and every room & nook had it’s own vibe. The week culminated with an amazing dinner, prepared by a couple chef friends in their semi-pro kitchen, with about 15 of us around a big wooden table. Suffice to say, I like their style.

After rehearsals we had the weekend off which I spent hiking around out in the Columbia River Gorge, one day with Amy, one day by myself. It was a bit crowded as it was the weekend and beautiful weather, but it was beautiful anyway. We climbed up, around and under various waterfalls, basking in their misty goodness and trying to remember why I would want to live in a place where the only wildlife gives you the shivers when it darts across your path and into a pile of trash bags.


Horsetail Falls...
Top of Horsetail falls...

The Footbridge...

Standing On The Edge....

The next day I got in a van with Travis & Nicole for the drive/ferry to Victoria. It was a pleasant enough drive, complete with the best strawberry milkshake ever (thanks Mrs. Beesley!) and the ferry ride was great. It was sunset and the water was as smooth as any ferry ride I’ve ever been on (certainly no Irish sea in winter!).


Our little warm-up mini-tour took us to Victoria, Vancouver & Seattle, all nice places to be in summer. Things went well and the shows were fun. All in all I feel pretty good about running around with these guys for a few months. I had a couple days off in Portland on the tail end (made a day longer when JetBlue cancelled my flight home) which was nice. Then it was off to NYC for about 5 days at home before a 7-week stint that has me doing a month in Europe with the Dandys, then straight to Australia & Japan with team Albert Hammond, Jr. In fact, I write this 35,000 feet above the Atlantic en route to Amsterdam where I’ll have a couple days to myself and a Radiohead show to see before I jump down to Paris to meet up with the Dandys and head to Spain for our first Euro show. Forget about the ball team from Harlem, we are the true Globetrotters. Good times ahead...

Staring At The Sea

After a couple post-Euro weeks in NYC, I headed up to Maine to spend a week at my dad’s cottage in Ocean Point. It’s rare that I get to spend time there in the summer as I’m usually working, so I made sure to take advantage of the opportunity. I ended up spending 5 nights there by myself, mostly focused on gorging on local delicacies, watching Red Sox games and enjoying the lack of city noise. I spent a good bit of time advancing my first tour as a production manager. I won’t bore you with what that means, suffice to say it involves lots of emails and excel spreadsheets. It also involves getting paid more, which I like. It was one of the most relaxing weeks I’ve had in ages. The tourist season hadn’t really arrived and the solitude felt particularly good after life in Alphabet City. I got 2 lobsters one day for lunch and got so much meat out of them that I had a big pile of lobster meat to use the next day for breakfast. Nothing wrong with a lobster, avocado & Grafton 4-year cheddar scramble to start your day. In keeping with the theme of overdoing local eats, I made a tasty dinner one night of broiled haddock (the best whitefish there is) and fiddleheads. I also consumed approximately 2 gallons of chowder over the course of the week. If you’ve never had seafood in Maine, you don’t know shit about seafood. And with that, I’ll leave you with pictures of food.

Cloistered

In an effort to actually leave my neighborhood and see some more of the city, I set out one day to check out the Cloisters. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the website told me it was the medieval wing of the Metropolitan. It also told me that it's way the hell uptown. I took the 'A' train (cue Duke Ellington) to 190th st and made the 10 minute walk north through a very hilly Fort Tryon park. It was a pretty stellar day, a bit too hot in the sun but nice in the shade.
I followed the signs and found myself high on a ridge overlooking the Westside highway, Hudson river and the vast forests of North Jersey. The Cloisters is a museum where the building itself is part of the exhibit. There were all sorts of arches, doorways and well...cloisters built into the larger building (the link explains it better and more thoroughly). The building and gardens were smaller than I expected, but it was pretty amazing. If it wasn't for the sound of the highway, you could pretend you were in 15th century France. Well, I could anyway. Medieval art has never been something I knew or cared too much about, but the stuff they had was pretty awe inspiring. It was mostly religious artifacts with a lot of super ornate bowls & goblets. It's all pretty pointless to try and describe and most of it didn't photograph well, but I highly recommend it as a New York activity.

Euroween

After returning to NYC from New England, I had a couple weeks off before heading across the pond for some Ween shows. I filled it with a nice combination of keeping busy and being lazy. I ran back up to Boston for some more baseball, went to Brooklyn for culture twice in a week! (once for a Paul Simon tribute thing, then for a Samuel Beckett play with John Turturro), saw a Godot film with Bridgett Bardot at the Film Forum, and saw a friend's band (Film School) rock the ass out of the Mercury Lounge. Then it was time. Packing. Taxi. Airport. Plane. Airport. Taxi. Hotel. London.

I had decided to fly into London early which worked out perfectly as Lucas was in town (and at the same hotel) with his latest rock-n-roll combo, Death Cab For Cutie. In order to avoid paying for a night of hotel out of my pocket I crashed the first night with Lucas. I flew overnight and arrived at the hotel in the morning. After a lovely wander around the shit-hole that is Shepherd's Bush looking for that elusive, edible English meal, I promptly passed out while Lucas went to load-in. After sleeping all day I got up and found my way over to Camden, which is one of the "cool" parts of London, to take in a perfectly acceptable rock show. The DCFC folks seemed like a fine bunch of folks to spend months at a time traversing the globe with. We had some hotel room drinks and laughs and I was off to bed while they were off to Boston.

The Doc brightens up a rock-hole...

The next day Beana rolled into town so I made my way thru Hyde Park over to Waterloo Station where she was taking pictures at the Cans festival, which was basically a long, abandoned tunnel under the station that had been turned into a giant canvas for some really cool street artists. It wasn't typical graffiti-style stuff, more like Banksy-type stuff. I took a couple pictures but you should really check out Beana's.
Here's a small taste...

The Queen's gardens...

Hyde Park...

We then headed back to West London and Hammersmith Apollo where we were lucky enough to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It was a stellar show. I've gone off enough about Nick Cave here already so I'll just leave it.

Now it was work time. We played the first show at Shepherd's Bush Empire, which is a fine little gig for London. Then it was on to Camber Sands, on the south coast of England. I should point out here that the weather was perfect the entire tour with the exception of some rain in the morning before we flew out of Amsterdam and in Dublin the morning we flew home. This was particularly amazing in Camber, given that it's an English beach resort, which usually means you'll be cold and damp. The gig was the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, which is sort of the English king of small, indie-hipster festivals. The lineup was full of all the bands you see mentioned on Pitchfork constantly but no one you know has ever heard. The festival was held at an old 'holiday camp' which is basically a cheap, family resort that was popular before it became so cheap and easy for the Brits to go to places that are actually nice for their holidays. It hasn't been remodeled since then either. All the bands stayed in "chalet's" which were basically shitty little motel apartments. Well, all the bands except Ween. They stayed in a nice hotel next door while they stuck their crew sharing the 'chalet'. Overall it wasn't a bad couple days. I spent some time on the beach, which was pretty empty the first day but absolutely packed with what looked to be the cast of a movie about the attack of the pillsbury dough people. I've never seen so many bloated, pasty and/or pink ugly people frolicking in the sun in my life.

I thought about swimming until I saw how much nasty was floating on the edge of the surf...
They had the lamest Go-Kart track in the world...

Housekeeping waiting for us to vacate our 'chalet'...

They should've been working on the bathroom window in the dressing room...

The show was the flattest of the tour as the hipster crowd wasn't really built for a 3hr Ween set. I didn't really see any other bands except Sebadoh for a bit. They were good. Everyone said Redd Kross was amazing. I couldn't bring myself to care. Afterwards, while I was sleeping off the jetlag, Mickey was partying with the Meat Puppets and, in an effort to avoid walking way out of the way to get to his hotel, jumped a fence (as one will). Instead of climbing down the other side of this 12ft. high gate, he jumped. Two words suddenly defined our tour: Man Down.
A broken heel and the other foot not much better. A big ol' cast and some crutches. It looked like we were going home at first but Mick's a trooper and muscled through. He played the rest of the shows sitting down with his cast up on a stool. He hates being in England/Europe already. This didn't help his morale.

Hospital Use Only...

Soundcheck...

Getting searched...

His mellow has been harshed...

Even his luggage was special...

And so we were off to Paris. After spending the afternoon at the festival/beach waiting for word from the hospital where Mickey & poor Dan Mapp (our illustrious tour manager who bears the brunt of every inconvenience) were getting the foot looked at, we hopped a train through the Chunnel and got to Paris in the early evening. Beana had made her way from London and we found a nice place for dinner and walked down to the Seine and Norte Dame. It was a gorgeous Saturday night and the river was lined with people sitting on blankets with bottles of wine and picnic baskets full of no-doubt delicious food. I could totally live in Paris if I could find a way to get these people to stop treating me like a leper. The Paris show happened, I can't offer much more than that, which is true of all the shows there except Zurich was really good and Dublin was pure madness. After soundcheck in Paris Chip asked me "have you seen the electric chaircut?". I had not. The venue was attached to an avant-garde type arts space and there was a cafe full of people facing a stage. On this stage was a guy with an amp on his back and all sorts of effects pedals strapped to him. These were hooked up to a set of electric clippers and some scissors (which must have had little microphones on them). He then gave audience members 'haircuts'. First, of course, he had to tape them to the chair with electrical tape, also taping over their eyes and mouth (surely symbolizing how society binds us and blinds us and forces us to conform to its idea of style, or some such pretentious bullshit). As he trimmed & snipped, noises came out of the amp, all twisted by the effects. The clippers made droney sounds and the scissors made percussive sounds. It was all very original and surreal, but also not really very good and seemed pointless. All I could picture was being at Art School and having to sit thru everyone's final presentation and all the talentless kids trying so hard to do something original. At least it was something I hadn't seen before. I wish I could've got video but all I have is this shitty phone pic...

We continued on thru Koln, Zurich, Amsterdam and ended in Dublin. Koln was forgettable. Zurich was like an entire city of the Upper East Side, so rich and uptight. The show was good though. Amsterdam was comforting as usual but way too short. Dublin isn't nearly the romantic place it pretends to be. It's mostly wall-to-wall drunk English assholes or posse's of English girls on 'hen-weekends', all dressed alike and embarrassing themselves one last time before getting married to one of the previously mentioned drunk English assholes. The show was great though. It was a tiny venue and the kids were packed in and going nuts the whole time. Fists in the air, beer flying...as it should be. Here's a video clip of the end of Blarney Stone, complete with Mickey's "tour diary" verse...



I didn't take many pictures of the shows but here's a couple from the Paradiso in Amsterdam. If you want to see some good EuroWeen shots, again, check out Beana's.


The tour ended in perfect fashion as we sat in the hotel lobby, preparing for our 6:30am lobby call to fly home by drinking pints of Guinness (which really are way better in Ireland). The previously mentioned drunk English assholes were represented in the hotel bar by about 5, 20-something, wasted (or 'pished') douchebags who proceeded to talk to the wife of a 50-something, drunk, hard-assed Irish guy. First there was yelling, mostly in an Irish accent, followed by some punching and lots of rolling on the ground and tearing of shirts. Security had all they could do to restrain the Irish guy, who wanted nothing more than to "tear out you throat you wee fuckin' prick!".
The police came and we thought this guy was going to jail, but this is Ireland and the nationalism runs deep. No Irish cop is arresting an Irish guy twice his age for beating up some sally English pricks. Ah, the bonds of country. Speaking of which, I'm back in mine, which is my favorite, even if it is in the shits.

Roots

I spent a couple weeks after my grandmother's funeral bouncing around New England in what seemed like one long episode of "This Is Your Life". I visited a steady stream of family, friends and places, many of which I hadn't seen in years. After a few days with family I headed to Portland to visit with Ben & Paula. Ben & I went for a drive up thru Cumberland (where I grew up) and Freeport, where we did some walking along a nice point at low tide. It felt good to get back to the places that feel most like home to me, even though I haven't lived there since I was 12. Back in Portland, we had a nice dinner at what I call "Takahachi North", a small sushi spot that Ben & Paula have made their own. The next day Ben & I headed NW to VT to visit with Jimmy & Anna. Jimmy's house in Mud City is where Jim, Ben & I lived together for a while. It was great to be together in that place again. There was still a ton of snow up there so we did some hiking/snowshoeing and just sucked in lungfulls of air bereft of exhaust and urine.
After dropping Ben back in Portland I went and stayed at my dad's, who now lives in Newmarket, NH which is where I had my first apartment ever in college. I stayed there on & off (more on than off) for about a week or so, venturing out to visit various friends in the area and see a couple Red Sox games and an amazing Bruins playoff game (both things I haven't done since I was in high school). While at my dad's, I had to go through about 12 boxes of stuff that have been languishing in various attics & basements over the years. This was where the 'memory lane' theme of this whole trip culminated. I spent hours looking thru box after box of mementos from all phases of my life, from early childhood to high school, college, dead tour, phish tour, and a hundred other tours I've done since. It felt good to be so immersed in the past for a couple weeks. If nothing else it really hit home how much of your life you forget.

The house I grew up in...

A real country fairground...
Ben loves the Maine coast...

Mussels at low tide...

Jimmy & Anna...

Shoes...

Ben loves Beaver Meadow...

Local fare...

Manny at Fenway...

Bye Nana

My Nana died today. This is the last time I saw her, at my Dad's wedding last September. She liked to dance. Love you Nana.

Hawaii

Usually after being out of the country for a while I'm pretty psyched to get back to the states, if only for familiarity's sake (and the abundance of ice & napkins). Coming from New Zealand & Australia I was less eager to return. I could've easily spent the rest of their summer down there, returning north in mid May or so. Of course, the fact that we were going to Hawaii on the way home made leaving that much easier. I'd never been to Hawaii and was looking forward to a few days in paradise. I hadn't figured on Waikiki. Now, I know it may seem utterly ridiculous to most people to bitch about being 'stuck' in Waikiki, and I certainly enjoyed it as much as I could. But this place is like Orlando, Vegas and downtown LA all puked in a pile on an island. The absolute epitome of a tourist trap. Shitty, cheesy hotels and chain restaurants in all directions. Busloads of the kinds of tourists that thrive in these ready-made, one-stop vacation hell holes. I spent the first day on the beach getting a sunburn and swimming, drinking beer at a resort bar and fighting the newest wave of jetlag. When you fly from Australia to Hawaii you cross the date line, so we left Sydney at 8:00pm on Sunday and landed in Honolulu, 10 hours later, at 9am on Sunday. On top of that you're going from summer to winter, which in Hawaii doesn't affect you so much temperature-wise, but length of daylight-wise it's a bit of a headfuck. I crawled into bed early, cursing how strong the sun has become and sticky with aloe lotion.

This is what you want to see when you get off an 11 hour flight...

Kapiolani Beach Park, Waikiki...

Not a bad place to battle the jetlag...
Hotel Balconies, Waikiki...
Sunset in Waikiki...
The next day was show day. Mine started as every day in paradise should...with drilling and hammering across the hall at 9am. We were supposed to be staying at the Sheraton on the beach but the promoter-cheap, slimy bastards that they are-switched us at the last minute to the 'Renew' hotel, a couple blocks off the beach and completely under renovation. I could go off on a profanity-laced tirade about this hotel, but that'll be no fun for anyone.

ANYWAY, the show was at a club called the Pipeline, which actually wasn't too bad of a room. I was stuck right onstage next to Mickey again. Like Perth, it was an amazing place to be for the show, but far too visible for my tastes. Still, I settled in for the last show of the tour and watched the band proceed to play for almost 4 hours (3:45 to be exact). It was probably the best show I've seen them do. The encore alone will go down in Ween history. It was definitely a fitting way to end this run. I even got Mickey to do 'Goin Gets Tough' for me. They finally wound it down with LMLYP and the usual stage full of dancing girls. I don't think most of these girls understand how long they'll be up there when they jump on stage. They usually get to the point where they don't know what to do with themselves. Rock and roll ain't what it used to be.

Pipeline, 2 minutes to showtime...

Does this happen at your work?...
The club had these crazy jets that would come on for like 20 seconds and cool the place down by blasting the crowd with CO2. They looked amazing...
Gabe changes the 1000th string of the tour...
I had basically 2 more days there after the show. The first day was spent sleeping in and hanging out in the beach front park, using the palm trees to hide from the sun. The next day Chip & I rented a Mustang convertible (as you do) and drove up the coast to the North Shore. This was much nicer than Waikiki and much more like paradise. Still, you get the impression that Oahu isn't the nicest of the islands. The waves up north were unreal. We met a local on the beach who, after hearing we were not, in fact, from Hawaii but NYC, hugged us both and called us 'Brother Chip & Brother Jamie'. I couldn't help but laugh to think of how a more 'typical' New Yorker might have reacted to this overture. Me? I just gave him a squeeze and said 'mahalo'...

The east coast of Oahu...

I hate zoos and even more I hate seeing birds in cages. Especially big ones like this guy...

A sure sign that you're in some shitty tourist trap is if you see a guy spray-painted silver being really still. You know, like a robot. This robot is apparently a big Mighty Ducks fan as well...

It's funny how in one day you can go from this (North Shore of Oahu)...
To this (Newark, NJ)...

Last Days In Oz

Ween's tour of Australia ended with 2 shows in Melbourne at the Forum and a slot at the Golden Plains festival in Meredith, which is a couple hours outside of Melbourne. The Forum is an old elaborate theater that's actually been split into 2 venues. We played the main room with all sorts of statues and whatnot looking all grandiose and yet rundown and haggard. The balcony is walled off into it's own all-seated theater which seemed to be used as a movie theater. There's all kinds of passageways and dark, closed off places, giving the place better than average character. Both shows here were top-notch and well-received. The last night ended with the whole band playing Claude's drum kit.

The Forum, pre crowd...

Mickey, pre-show...

The backstage at the Forum hasn't been so much as painted since it opened. There were all kinds of cool, old signs painted in the dank basement halls & stairwells. I like that kind of shit so I took some pictures...

A more typical vantage point for my world than Perth...
Chip works the smoke...

Johnny On the Spot...

Debating the encore...

The drum jam...

The day of the 2nd show I walked around Melbourne a bit and checked out the Nick Cave exhibit. Mickey couldn't get his head around the idea of an exhibit for a guy that's still alive and making records, but I think this made it more interesting as Cave was involved with choosing what went in and wrote and recorded stories about various items. It was a lot of photos and typical memorabilia type stuff but there was a bunch of really cool stuff that belongs to him that gave a different sort of insight into the man's creative process than a normal museum exhibit would. Pictures were tough to get but I got a couple.

A couple random Melbourne shots...
The Nick Cave Exhibit...

The last day we made the hour & a half drive out into nothingness for the festival. It was one of the most remote festivals I've done and one of the smaller ones too. It was a bit lacking in amenities but they made up for it with good vibes and an accommodating attitude. Saw Iron & Wine play which was good but I prefer the solo acoustic setup to the full band. The gig itself went well once it got going but the 30mins before were a nightmare getting ready. Typical festival. On the ride back into Melbourne you could see more stars than I've seen in years. No ozone to get in the way I guess. After one last night in a "serviced apartment", it was back to the airport and off to Hawaii.

The road to Golden Plains...

Hospitality...
The Pink Flamingo...
Chip is a city boy who was shy about the cows at first...

But we had him up to speed soon enough...
The Front Row...
Festival crowd...

Chip & Gener wait...
And back to America. There's no place like home...

Perth>Melbourne

Perth. They say Perth is the most remote western city in the world. It's on the west coast of Australia, a million miles from everywhere. I've never had any time off here, so I've never ventured out of the city center, but apparently the beaches are amazing and never get crowded. I wish they could say the same about the rock venues. Our show was at smallish nightclub that was more set up for disco nights than rock shows. The stage was so tiny that I literally had to set up ON stage. Like I could put my feet up on Mickey's amp if I wanted. It was actually an amazing spot to sit except for feeling like a completely conspicuous douche up there where everyone could see me. The whole day was a nightmare trying to get everything happening. Plus there's a smaller club that's attached where some shitty scream-o bands were playing, so we were battling their noise all day. The gig itself was packed & sweaty. The band played a great set, marred again by gear troubles for Mickey. Poor Mickey, between playing in Ween and being a Philly sports fan, I now know what he means when he tells me "welcome to the losing team". Still, he knows how to dig his heels in and overcome. Here's a bunch of shots from the show. I was so drowned in the lights that most of them came out bad, but you get the idea.

To give you an idea how close I was, these were taken with no zoom...

I had to lean way back for this one...
Mickey playing inside the sun...
Dave rocks it...

The Mollusk...

The end of You Fucked Up...

Good night Perth...

Yesterday we flew to Melbourne where we had a night off. A bunch of us went to an Italian place called Pelligrini's that was one of the coolest restaurants I've been to. It's a hole-in-the-wall family style place. You walk in and there's a long bar on each side running the length of the place. It was full when we arrived so they sat us at a long table that was literally IN the kitchen. They don't really have a menu, they just ask you what they want and make it for you. They offer you seconds or to try different stuff and you just agree on what to pay (we paid $20 each). The food was good but not amazing (the pasta's pre-cooked so it wasn't as al dente as I'd like). It reminded me of Papa Frank's back in Vermont. The experience was great though. The owner & staff/family basically hang out and talk & serve you. It's more like being in someone's home than a restaurant. We ended up sharing our table with some nice folks and the whole thing was just a great experience.


We're in Melbourne for 3 more nights which is a nice break from all the flying. We have 2 shows in town and then a festival a couple hours away. I'm going to try and see the Nick Cave exhibit in town, which will likely lead to me gushing about how cool that guy is.

Adelaide

Another early morning flight today. This time to Adelaide, which is a lot like southern Arizona. Which is to say "hot as fuck". Oh, but it's a dry heat. Never mind that there's no ozone and the sun feels like an evil laser beam. The show was at one of those clubs that is a total nightmare to make a show happen in, but the band love playing. To be fair, these types of places usually have the best gigs, but it's no fun getting it there. Tonight was one of those gigs. The band played a really long set with a lot of stuff that doesn't get played very often. That's always a good sign with Ween. The whole thing ended with Never Squeal On The Pusher with the usual drum solo. This somehow devolved into Claude moving from drums to bass, Dave moving from bass to guitar and Mickey moving from guitar to drums. The ensuing madness made for good theater.
I also managed to take some random pictures today. Travelling definitely resurrects the inspiration on that front. Show in Perth tomorrow. Only a 3 1/2 hour flight in the morning then. On we go....

Claude Coleman...

Aaron Freeman...


G-Blaster...

Kirk & Chip...

A Slanty Building...

The thing that sucks about Adelaide is that "the MAN" is always trying to keep you from drinking the toilet water...