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11/01/2005: "HALLOWEEN OCTOBER 31 2005"

i am off to do the neighborhood with the kids. luka is a punk rocker. lulu is a fairy princess. patsy was finally bob dylan. so here's hoping you all have a happy halloween. i will leave you with the scariest tour story i know....about a disappearing girl....almost a ghost ....read if you dare.


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FLASHBACK:
HOLLAND : GIANT SAND TOUR – WINTER 2004

We are on a sleeper bus. We arrive each morning and travel by night. I wake up as we are pulling into the parking spot next to today’s venue. I think we are in haarlam. The bus hits a parked car.

The first thing I see out the window is a dry canal.
I have never seen a dry canal in Holland before, so I make a mental note to head over there and jump down into it to have a look and see what lies on the bottom of those things.

All I can see from the bus is a layer of leaves that have fallen from the trees, completely coating the floor of the canal. Its winter time and it looks cold out there.

I pull on my jeans, avoid the new tom waits t-shirt a record company rep has gifted me with and tuck into my Danish Eskimo hooded parka. Its stunning how cold it is. Sun shining and tempting for a walk. I amble across a bridge and duck into a smoky café to find some internet action.
Not taking part in the local culture of weed allowed in these places, I leave with a buzz from the second hand smoke once my emailing is done. But the air outside is so frigid, I aim straight back for the club and bus.

The club is home for a festival of sorts, that we are a part of. I had no idea what it was up until now. But it appears to have a theme of texas style music. This kind of weirds me out some. But whatever. Arizona is close enough to texas I guess. Maybe somebody knows what they’re doing. I hope.

I suppose this happens a lot. I never really understand what the theme or event is we are going to be playing at. This is one of the slips from not having management. No one is here to make us understand what exactly is about to happen before it does. I don’t mind this. I figure the future has a mind of its own. So I poke into it to see what destiny has in store. The word destiny is such a wonderful excuse for anything that is about to happen.

Anyhow, right before our set, we mention to the promoter that our usual bottle of single malt scotch whiskey happens to not have arrived yet. This is something that is just a standard back stage rider item. Up until now he has been very welcoming and such, but now seems to shift a bit on his feet like he would prefer us not to have mentioned whiskey until after the set was over.

Disturbing.

Does he think we will get drunk before we go to work ?
Has he had this trouble too many times before with other bands ?
Do we have some kind of reputation that showed up before we arrived ?
None of it makes that much sense, except that all of a sudden it has become an issue.
So. Whatever. The whiskey warmth would have been medicinal, especially for playing here, between the freeze outside seeping in and the texas theme inside trying to get out.

The day progresses reveals more and more of a theme to this event. The bands are mostly American, but I have not heard of most of them. Texas. Whatever.

So finally, as we are on the way to the stage, he stops us and asks us if we please can hold off and start 15 minutes later then scheduled due to some other stage shows still going on?

Sure. no problem. Bring whiskey and we will actually have something to do to corrupt our momentum and stall for 15 more minutes.

Again he looks perplexed, knowing there will surely be trouble, but goes off to find us such libation. Comes back with a tray of vodka shots. Whatever. Heat is heat.

Then the set commences, and I attack it like one giant rock opera. So very tight that one song segues into the next, and these new songs to the uninitiated ear will all seem like scatter land. But I know we are delivering the goods in a high standard of display, only most of the crowd seems like they are being struck by the blinding light of an oncoming train. They hear the rumble, but do not get out of the way.

They have no idea.

Only the band understands.

I don’t think they think we sound like we are from Texas at all.

We pound the square set into our given round slot.
We are really good and no one knows it.

Its infuriating.

Cause then maybe you think everything you know is wrong and you really do suck.

We get done.

A few people seem clued in and hoop.

Others looks harmed.

We amble off stage, thick with professionalism, having finished our time in the exact amount of minutes allotted so the fest can continue on course and on time.

I am in a bad mood now and getting worse.

I amble to the bar and now look for beers to slam to defuse my set rage.

I am then set upon by a woman dressed like a biker chick from the 70s. its confusing to figure out her dress code.
She is brash, and semi taunting and acts like she has something figured out. I do not care to pretty up the conversation. I am at odds and can only manage to slam beers. She goes on about something Texas and how she loves it there even though she lives in Amsterdam. Ok ok ok . The next singer takes the stage and actually sounds like he has the entire state of texas on stage. It sounds good, and he has a great fiddle player with him. A sweet and skinny wisp of a woman in thick dreadlocks, but if you close your eyes, you can see west texas.

The beers need to keep coming.

Now this woman Is somehow together with another woman who happens to be hitting on someone from another band we are traveling with, and I wonder if that ‘s what this is or not. But it does not matter. Beers need to put out this fire in my belly. The evening empties itself early. Not a good sign. I might be achieving a wobble, but I am still way too angry to fit back in the bus.

This Texas biker chick from Amsterdam talks of another bar nearby where her friends are all at. Bus call is still hours away. So ok ok ok.

I grab my parker. I have never changed out of my stage suit however. I am still wearing my brand new suit, a one-of-a kind designed suit from a little shop I found the day before in Dusseldorf. It’s a 300 euro suit. I brought the whole band back to the shop to get a suit. Thøger got his snake skin there. Anders got one too. Peter, the “voice of reason”, avoided the trappings.

So we then head off to find this non-findable bar in the painfully freezing air now made ice-like from the penetrating stain of darkness .

It actually stings.

It is waking me up, if anything, to these whacked circumstances. So I give it up. I need to get back to the bus and just burrow.

On the way back the biker chick spies the empty canal. We follow along side it a bit to get back to the bus. She seems as genuinely taken with the oddness of a dry canal as I was, which is almost gratifying that it wasn’t just the fascination of me being a tourist plebe.

Inky blackness and the tree bowing in the slicing chill. Leaves blanketed all over the ground floor of the canal. The dead moon barely suffering through the clouds.
Way too cold.

She grabs my arm, shouts “come on!” and then leaps on down to the floor of the canal.

It might have been the whisper of the suit. Or maybe the ancestors that insist on taking these walks along with me. Perhaps just a sliver of sensibility surfacing in the muck of compromised common sense and beer slam.

But I hesitated like a good Arizonan facing any watery realm, dry or not. And that biker woman went down without me, disappearing in the seemingly empty canal below, barely making a ripple in the leaf coated waters that lied beneath. Completely gone. Like she was never there at all.

An amazing silence then. A loud nothingness. The suit wondering if it has to get wet now to go in and save her, assuming she really was here at all.
There was just no indication.

Now would be a good time to jump in after her and let the parker soak up like a 200 pound sponge and follow my lead heavy boots down to a watery grave.

How much time had passed ? The clock so cold, time froze a mile of tick between every tock.

She exploded back upon the surface, aggravating the silence with face distorted in awe and anguish and embarrassment bringing up the rear.

And she had no way out. You cannot get out of those canals. The sides are sheer and unforgiving. There are no steps or latters. nothing to grab. She is coated in the muck of the leaves that fooled an Amsterdamster.
Never was such a thing as a dry canal.

Fortunately, I stayed on the sensible shore.
I manage to yank her out of the muck without her yanking me in almost. She is moments away from hyperthermia.

She will not budge however, not wanting me to look at her. She is out of her mind, and finally rightfully so. She is a sea creature from the black lagoon. No more a texas biker chick. I waltz back into the now empty venue and find the promoter who did not want us to drink the whiskey. I request a couple of towels and inform him that a hot shower still needs to be had by someone outside freezing.

He looks at me like he knew all along there would be trouble.

Once she is safely showering in life saving singe, I head out to the bus to find something else for her to wear to get her home. All I have is some clean boxers and a new tom waits t-shirt. Nothing else would fit her. So there she is, as the bus pulls away, in her new outfit out there. No more biker chick from texas, more like an Arizona slacker girl void of drench with a confused aftershock frown. she climbs in to her shiny black Mercedes and revs away.

I thank my suit for sweet hesitation.


back on the mother ship, the rest of the band has some questions.