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11/14/2005: "THE HAMBURG CRUMBLE - NOVEMBER SOLO TOUR 2005"

HAMBURG

…

I started out in mechelin, Belgium.
The day before was Lucerne Switzerland and an 8 hour train ride getting up from there for the show in mechelin.
Last time I was at this venue in Belgium I had a roaring fever and just needed to call in sick. That was that last giant sand tour. Being here again at the same hotel I succeeded in sweating out most of the fire then, brought back a slight pavlovian effect of feeling that firey night again.

So. I arrived a bit crumpled and late and dragging from my travels this day. Too long of a day to also have to play. It has become something I need to change now that I am 50.

I get to the show, and sound check, which goes on and on. But the folks there are so fine and sweet and I can’t just fail. Natalie is also there and has a great pair of boots we are going to split for sofie’s birthday. They are beauts. Byoots? 200 euros.

I eat and get pelted with the lovely poke of friends I will not see until I am only here. It is a dichotomy of what I adore and what I can barely have energy for.

I put on the show and I notice the crowd response is tentative and maybe somewhat unsure. Sweet but unsteady. And Miguel had shown up to film the set, which I remember during the show and works against me.

The piano is stunning though and I lean on it heavily.

When the work day is finally over I only get 3 and half hours sleep again, same as the night before. This is because the end of the night has a habit of dragging on with details and such and just getting back to the hotel is a crinkle on occasion.

The next morning I am up early. 7:30. I head down for coffee and a taxi. The line is already too long at the check-out desk. Too many business men up and eager at that hour. It is a bad omen. Then the clerk tells me the taxi will take an hour to come cause it is rush hour. Shit. I have to hoof it.

I gather my 2 guitars, dense roller bag and small back pack and make off for the train station on foot. Its cobble stones clacking the whole operation for the next chunk of kilometers. I get to the station finally, some 30 minutes later. manage to jump on a train right away.

Get to Brussels. There are 3 stations in Brussels. I get off at the wrong one. Walk up 2 flights of stairs at the ancient central station, and realize I need to run back down again with all my bags to catch a train in time for the next station.

I do. Barely make it.

Next station I find out I can wait an hour. Ok. I remember to stand in line and buy me a reservation, which I normally do not have to do with my euro-rail pass, but got severely boned on the last train of this company “thaly’s” cause they said it was a hard fats rule and then I had to just buy a whole new ticket on the train. Le bastards.

Ok. Get my ticket after missing my turn in line. Then amble to the platform. Get on board, and settle back some. 2 hours later I am in koln. I have a few minutes to catch the next train to hamburg. I should get in now about 17:10
(10 after 5) at this rate.

Ok. Once onboard I notice this train’s first stop will be dusseldorf. Hey, that’s the town where me and thoger got those weird wonderful wuits last year. I call the shop from the train and mention I might stop. He tells me the next train to continue on to hamburg will be 2 hours later. I wonder about this. I formulate. I come to a decision.

I get off in dusseldorf, grab a taxi, get to tino’s suit shop. There it is. The black lizard skin suit made without any lizards. It is kind of amazing. But the jacket does not fit. He hunts one down by phone. Promises to shp it up to the flensburg hotel, my last gig, in 2 days. Ok ok ok. I take a chance and buy the suit. He lets me have it for 200 euros.

I am back on the train to hamburg. I feel ok. I am about to settle in. I stash all my bags. I just happen to glance at the train schedule someone placed on the seat there. And hamburg is not on the paper. what gives ? this is the right platform and right time. Shit shit shit, I must be on the worng train. Man, I grab all my stashed bags and guitars and crash and slam down the narrow hall way to get the hell out before it starts to move. I finally get to the door, and freeze. What if it is the right train and I jump off now ? I will never make that show tonigh on time then. What if I stay on the train and it goes to berlin instead like it said on the paper ?

Nothing is making sense. I need more sleep. I yell out to the confused and startled people there on the platform. It is the wrong train someone manages in broken English.

I slump off of it. the right train is coming, but 20 minutes late or so. The cops had to arrest someone at the last stop.

Ok. Back on board the right train soon. I am beat. 4 hours or so later I get off at the right station in hamburg. There are 4 stations in hamburg. I taxi it to the club. The driver is cranky. I find the club down a shadowy lane. It is now about 8 o’clock.

It is good to see dirk the local promoter. I have not seen him in maybe 10 years. I get up for a sound check, and the electric piano the club provides is about the worst one on the tour so far. The amp is good and loud though. I will have to lean on that instead of the piano tonight.

So. That sound check took a while too. then I head next door to eat. The food is saving my life. You can taste when it is made with care and love. Life affirming pasta. Then its back to the stage to play. The club seems full. Someone mentions I am starting late, but am I ? I have no idea. I have not been rushed to the stage so it doesn’t figure. I commence. But the crowd is strange tonight. A very strange mix. I can feel it. I jump into a new song “pitch and sway”. Someone interrupts me after the first verse. The song is gone.

I go through a number of other songs, but there is some strange conversations with the audience. Maybe its all sleep deprived illusion. Someone asks for “stuck”, and I play a great version of it. the purest version in a long time. My voice has a new low buffered crackle to it tonight and it kind of inspires me to play with it. right after the solo someone interrupts me again, but I continue.

Somewhere during the night is also a great version of “saint conformity”, reassembled slightly and now making more sense. It felt satisifying. When it is time to finish up I think someone calls out for 5 more songs, instead of 5 more minutes which I though I had. So I stitch 5 songs together one right after another connected. And even that felt pretty good. A good show I though. The piano sound sucked, but that happens with these electric heaps.

When I am back stage, it feels uncommonly good to get a time completely alone. But then 43 seconds later the door opens and I have to address some folks. The german agnet is also there. He mentions reason there was only 150 people there was because there was another band palying in town called koko rosie. Whatever.

And then a woman in the hall has to tell me it is the worst show she has ever seen me do and she has seen many. I ask her to tell it to the agent who is standing down the hall, so he can translate exactly hat she means to me. Instead she thinks I said I have to go and talk to him, so she begins to leave and I do not have the capacity to explain. I am way over the line energy wise. I need sleep hours ago.

Then more folks wait and chat at the end of the night. After I mentioned on stage I now have the ability to remember names, I get them all wrong there and then. Even calling an old tour manager by a wrong name. I am wiped out. I need to crash.

The agent walks me to my hotel to finish up some accounting. the lobby looks great. Vintage from the 70s. a girl is there trying to have the clerk connect her to an incoming call there in the small lobby while at the same time he tries to check me in. its all getting tangled up. He keeps dropping the connection for her and she keeps having to talk through him checking me in. she is from the band koko rosie.

We finally get up to my room and it is one of those suicide rooms. The kind that used to be great when we were young and on tour. But now has a certain dangerous light to it. a trampled room of previous broken dreams you can feel. And no toilet either. That’s down the hall, old school. Just a shower standing by the bed looking like its lost. The agent insists I come with him to his hotel and he will get me a room there instead. I look at the bed and am about to refuse him. The bed looks way too good for the likes of crippled sleep me.

Instead I follow him back down to the lobby. While he discusses our leaving with the clerk, I amble into the dark closed down bar. There is another girl sitting at a shadowy table there with a beer sipping, and headphones on and looking concerned as she keeps tapping at a programbable old drum machine. It is another koko rosie member. Glancing up at me in drum machine pain.

So that was hamburg.

Next morning I went through the francis bacon exhibit at the museum on the way to the train station. I dropped 30 euros on the street and 2 guys got it back to me.
I got on a train and headed to munster, where I played the best show of my life. And it was also filmed by Miguel, only this time I was unaware of him there. The trick was only a 3 hour train ride, and I snuck in a 2 hour nap just before I had to play. Dinner was pushed back to after the show. Then it felt as good as italy with friends and food. Great show, great theater and great people working there. I remembered everybody’s name too. and even spoke a little Japanese with a girl from japan who happened to also grow up on the lake I fished when I was growing up in Pennsylvania. That was weird.

The last show after that was flensburg, right on the border of germany and denmark. Maybe a 5 hour train ride. Maybe a bit more and had an hour stop over in hamburg. I did some speed shopping then, finding a camera I had been looking for since japan, and cheaper there in germany.
200 euros.


At the flensburg show, I also get there late and right on time. Thøger has come down to jam this night. We play splendidly together. Maybe the best show ever. It si so great having someone to play off of. And his upright bass playing is always more propelling for me then joey’s used to be. It is a buoyant evening of sonics. We are in a modern church. It is acoustically perfect. And has a stunning old Steinway piano. The pa system is the smallest on the entire tour with no monitors and we have to run it ourselves. But it sounds way way better then any other system I have ever played through. We play a long time, not wanting the tour to be over, and having more and more energy from playing with thøger. We even take a break and come back and play some more. The minister had even managed to include a bottle of my favorite scotch on the rider, the balie nicol jarvie. We end it by me playing a recorded track from the upcoming gospel choir cd and me and thøger palying along.

After the show, there were actually a few folks there form hamburg who were at that show there. And this is the confusing part. One of the fellows also told me there that the hamburg show was amazingly bad, but he still wasinspired (?) enough to drive the 3 hours to come up to flensburg to see another show.

I still don’t understand what they heard that night exactly.

The next morning, it was a lovely rain. The ups man walked in and handed me my black lizard jacket from tino’s shop.
It fit perfectly. Thøger and I headed up to aarhus then. Coincendentaly, tonight will be marie franks’s premier Århus show representing her new cd release entitled:
“where the wind turns the skin to leather”.

So I gotta see her band with anders in it now and catch her new songs. Her drummer kent has also been working on our new giant sand record and recorded some of the best pieces for the AAAA record. It is a great night and a perfect way to end this tour. She calls me up to play the title track with her, and I do so in my new black lizard suit. “leather” and “shiver” sliver forth.

Next morning I find my way outa of denmark. I am in London connecting planes by bus. I text message robert plant to just say hello and mention today is rainer’s 8th year death anniversary. He rings back while I am stuck on that crowded bus, sitting next to a fellow from wellington new Zealand. Perfect.

I can’t find a plane to boston that day. It is the only day the plane does not fly to boston. So I have to fly to new york instead. I get there and head over to amy harrington’s apartment to crash for the night. I am trying to get to providence where sofie and the kids are. Funnily enough this is where I met amy 5 years ago, and now she has moved back from Tucson to the same hood. This night there is also a party at a bar just for Tucson scorpions; Folks born under the scorpio sign. Amazing timing. All the lovely sweet new york Tucsonans are there. Hours later, I have to leave and go crash, so i amble over to amy who is hi-jinxing with a pretty sweet friend of hers. Her name is lacey, and she is a drummer, but she didn’t feel like going on tour with her band this time and was not fond of hamburg.
Her band was koko rosie.

Dang.