I woke up about an hour after we got to dresden. everyone else was already up and going through the bus, making sure all of their belongings were accounted for. two gallants had been on the bus for two or three weeks before we met up with them, so they had shit everywhere. I tend to keep a tight rein on my stuff so I didn’t feel the need to do such a thorough search. surprisingly, my head didn’t really hurt- there wasn’t even an egg where I had smacked it. the sides of my neck and my shoulders were killing me, but I figured that was a lot better than a concussion and shook it off.
I went outside and morgan looked like he was having a tag sale- a low wall by the bus was now covered in his clothes, books, shoes, all kinds of random crap. he was repacking all of his stuff and singing made-up songs to himself. I brushed my teeth outisde, using an empty bottle of vodka that had been refilled water to rinse with, and had at least two older men just stop and stare at me in disbelief. sometimes it’s fun to fuck with people.
there was another artist’s apartment at the venue that we had access to, not as nice as the other one but fun because it seemed like more of an actual place to live. there was a room with three sets of bunk beds and another with two single beds, a living room with an open kitchen, and a bathroom. we ate yet more bread with cold cuts and cheese and fruit for breakfast (I don’t think I’ll be eating sandwiches for a while when I’m done with this tour) and started getting sad about it being our last day together. we spent the day mostly doing our own things. I walked around dresden a bit and wondered what it had looked like before the war. someone had likened it to me as the vienna of germany, just staggeringly beautiful. they also told me that the bombing of dresden had been without any real military goal, kind of more a punishment than anything else. I made a note to learn more about world war II when I got home.
we had all decided to buy something for jacob for being such a wonderful, patient tour manager and great friend. at first we were all going to chip in and get one big thing, but then everyone just started buying their own present for him so I went to a bunch of stores looking for something appropriate. a joke had been going around the bus about how hopeless we were without him, and how he constantly had seven people going ‘jacob, how far is it the next venue?’, ‘jacob, does the club have wifi?’, ‘hey jacob, will you ask them if they’ll give us more booze?’, ‘jacob, what time is soundcheck?’ ‘jacob, what’s my name?’ so I bought him a silver lighter at a headshop near the venue and wrote on the box in sharpie ‘hey jacob, do you have a lighter?’
the club was ok, not very good sounding but bigger than the last few we had played and fully equipped with five foosball tables, which was slowly becoming a priority. donny had decided he would do sound for us for the last show, which was such a treat. even though I'd been told that sound guys in europe better on average than american ones, we’d still run across a few stinkers and were delighted to have donny behind the board. we decided that we were going to perform, for the first time ever, my smash hit song ‘cock and balls and shit’, but it would be totally straight-faced. it was the only way. I was nervous, but up for the challenge, and after running through it a few times at soundcheck I felt ready for it.
dinner was to be at a restaurant around the corner, but they didn’t have our reservation so we just ordered take out from them and went back to the apartment. after we ate we presented jacob with his presents and he was really taken aback. we all got a little emotional (or rather, e-bro-tional) and once again reiterated to everyone that this had been a great tour, truly one of the best, and that we would all miss one another. it’s funny how quickly you can become close to people when you spend every moment with them, awake and alseep. three weeks ago I had never met these people, but suddenly I was waking up to them shuffling around the bus or talking with them until six in the morning about baseball or music or our families, or going out for dinner with them in countries where we had no idea what we were even ordering. it’s a situation that I imagine can go horribly wrong if you’re stuck with the wrong group of people, but as far I was concerned, we had hit the jackpot.
we took the stage around ten, and I spotted adam and tyson sitting on the side of the stage of near the ladder up to the dressing room because the floor of the venue was super packed. adam was in my line of sight, and when we started ‘cock and balls and shit’ I couldn’t make eye contact with him or think about any of those guys because I knew I would blow it, that there was no way I would make it through without laughing. yet somehow, I was able to block all of that from mind and pulled it off and the audience had no idea. they politely clapped, just like it was any other song. brilliant. I bit the inside of my cheek and moved onto the next song. the one other surprise of the night was a shock even to kate and me- eric’s nod to one of donny’s hilarious musings on having a fake metal band who’s album is called ‘in the night! tonight!’, giving the final t’s a kind of grunt at end, grossly overenunciating. eric did it the middle of ‘new drunk for the old drunk’, throwing himself off enough to miss a chord and sending kate and I into hysterics.
morgan, jacob, kate and I watched two gallants’ set from the same spot they had watched ours. we’ve been so spoiled to be able to see these guys perform every night, I made sure to soak in as much as I could; watching the spray of sweat from tyson’s hair every time he flips his head forward, the way adam glares forward and kind of shakes his head when he’s singing, the constant interplay of energy between the two. the crowd was crazed that night and started a mosh pit during ‘las cruces jail’ and there was even a crowd surfer. a crowd surfer! it was also during that song that there’s a quieter part where adam sings and it took me a second to realize through my earplugs that most of the crowd was singing along with him. I couldn’t help but smile and feel proud of them, and for them. adam caught my eye really quick and smiled back before jumping back into the loud part of the song. the two songs they played for an encore that night were unfamiliar to me, but apparently were jacob’s and morgan’s favorites.
we had to hang out at the club until the bus picked us up at two thirty, and we spent most of it upstairs in the dressing room because it was much cooler up there than in the club. at one point when there was maybe eight or ten people in the room when someone starting singing ‘cock and balls and shit’, and then suddenly everyone joined in and there were all these people, singing my tour song! I wish I had a tape of it. it was pretty impressive.
the ride to the airport in berlin took us about three hours, and while everyone else crashed to get a little sleep before a full day of travel, donny and adam and I took up residence in the lounge for one final bro-down. I was pretty exhausted at that point and probably a little drinky so I don’t remember much of what we talked about, but we exchanged numbers and email addresses and heartfelt promises to keep in touch with each other, and when donny’s favorite townes van zandt song came on the stereo we all put our arms around each other, adam to my left and donny to my right. I closed my eyes and sang along and felt a little teary, because I was pretty sure that with all the geographical space between us, we would never be that close again, but it was a lovely moment to cap an amazing experience, just the same.
andreas woke us up over the loudspeaker, announcing our arrival in stuttgart. we had to get there by noon for some undisclosed reason, and then he would be driving the bus about twenty minutes away to park it somewhere, so we had to load in and get all the stuff that we needed for the day immediately. when I was getting out of my bunk I saw adam and morgan doing yoga in front of the club (sun salutation, perhaps?) it was a smallish club that operated as a café during the day, so at least they had coffee. the dressing room was downstairs and ran as a bar on some nights, and as such was full of fruit flies.
the two gallants and eric had a radio thing to do, and I opted out of going since we couldn’t really bring the keyboard and I just didn’t feel like it. donny, jacob and I stayed behind, and richie the promoter showed us where the club apartment we had access to was located. it was super cool, well- decorated with three bedrooms that each had their own sink and stuff, and then a bathroom with a shower. no kitchen. they all showered, but I was still exhausted and crawled into one of the beds for a power nap. when I woke up we had a little bro-down/ tour recap and talked about how much we were going to miss everyone.
by the time we got back to the club, they had set up the green room for us, with the usual snacks and soda and beer and coffee and fruit and little sandwiches. donny and jacob tried to recall donny’s top five tour smackdowns (mostly soundguys, but there was a wayward dressing room hanger-on somewhere in france that he kicked out), and then donny and I decided to try to do some christmas shopping. we wandered through what was basically an open air mall, very boring and american-looking, and just when we were passing by an old clock that had been rebuilt after world war II, donny said ‘that’s where we want to be’ and points down an alley that, to me, looks like nothing. I shrugged and followed him, and suddenly we were at a big christmas market, rows of stalls with bratwursts and ornaments and nutcrackers and fish cooked on sticks. donny spotted a glühwein stand, which is a hot, mulled red wine germans make for the holidays and explained to me that when you bought it, it came with a commemorative mug you could keep. we sipped our drinks while we milled around and bought gifts. we found a skating rink and briefly discussed going skating, and it sounded really fun but then I got all worried about not having health insurance and breaking a limb or something and decided against it. as we were walking back towards the club, some church bells started ringing and we stood in the middle of the christmas fair, drinking the last of our wine, smelling the sausages and kebabs, soaking in the ridiculous perfection of the moment.
when we got back to the club for soundcheck at five, we found out we weren’t allowed to soundcheck until seven, which is when we were supposed to eat dinner, so adam and donny and I decided to go skating after all. we walked back to the skating rink, and on our way there, we spotted a guy that was selling prints of drawings he had done of famous rappers, dre and snoop and jay-z and tupac. adam bought one of the tupac ones for his brother for christmas.
they gave me hockey skates at the skating rink, and I didn’t realize how different they are from figure skating skates until I stepped on the ice and tried to push off with my toe and nearly fell on my face. adam had played hockey in middle school and took off fearlessly across the ice. donny had only skated three times in his life, so he was as wobbly as I was. we shuffled along, pinwheeling our arms once in a while to keep upright, while adam lapped us and skated backward. there were little kids skating that had these penguins or trolls about three feet high on runners with handles they could grab to steady themselves. I wished I had one my height.
after about thirty mintues I was feeling pretty steady, my fear of a shattered elbow fading. it was then that I heard adam’s voice behind me say, ‘miranda, spread your legs wide’. I knew what he was going to do, but for some reason I thought that if anyone could pull it off, it would be him. I pushed my feet out and saw his head poke through my ankles and then part of him hit the back of one of my skates and the next thing I knew the back of my head hit the ice with a hard thwack. we slid to a stop in the middle of a pool of freezing cold water, in front of a bunch of people who were gathered by the edge of the rink to watch the skaters.
‘oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.. are you alright?’ adam held my shoulders, looking me in the eye.
‘I think so’ I said, waiting for something to happen; searing pain, blood, blurred vision. but after a minute of sitting on the ice, our pants becoming soaked with ice water, I seemed to be ok. adam helped me up, and we took a few more laps before deciding to call it quits. we walked back through the christmas fair and stopped for more mulled wine before heading back to soundcheck. other than a dull ache and the feeling that it was going to hurt a lot more the next day, I seemed to have escaped major head trauma.
after a super quick soundcheck, the place filled beyond capacity within a half hour and we played to a polite but not terribly excited audience. there was a drunk, annoying woman who stood right in front of me during the show, talking loudly and asking us to play ‘happy songs’. she was, according to adam, just as annoying during two gallants’ set, too.
the show was over by midnight but andreas wasn’t picking us up until two thirty. the club was more than generous to us, giving us everything from bloody marys to cognac to tequila shots, which they serve not with a lime wedge but with a slice of orange with cinnamon on it. I tried one, and it was quite good.
once back on the bus, donny and I put on the beatles’ ‘revolver’ and had another epic bro-down in the lounge, this time arguing the age-old beatles versus rolling stones debate. I was stones, he was beatles. we came to a peace after we had listened to the entire album, with my ultimate argument being that while I respected the beatles songwriting and musicianship more, I responded more to the stones.
the place we played in münster was a smallish café place called gleis 22. I went to the day room to take a shower and then walked back past the venue and towards the train station. there was this weird little carnival-looking setup out front that consisted of just one ride called the ‘flying crazy train’ or something that didn’t appear to do anything, a hotdog stand and four little tents with shoes and belts for sale. I went in the train station and found a coffee stand and got a latte and walked back to the venue, where I traded my latte (too milky) for a proper cup of coffee and answered some emails and stuff. it was a boring afternoon. I spent about two hours trying to find an mp3 of townes van zandt’s ‘fare thee well miss carousel’ with no luck.
the venue cooked us dinner, possibly the best meal we’d been prepared so far this tour. a big pot of tomato basil soup, some kind of broccoli mushroom casserole, pasta with a cream sauce, a big salad of bean sprouts and peppers and cucumbers and greens, bread, chocolate pudding.. I needed it so badly. I had been feeling pretty toxic and that revived me almost instantly. jacob found out that the saddle creek guys that were supposed to be coming with the merch couldn’t make it, their flight having been delayed too long to bother. I felt bad for both eric and two gallants. they were losing a lot of money because of it.
the show was super packed, and after we played I could barely get through the audience to the back by the sound board, where there was some space blocked off behind donny. kate and I stood there to watch the show, but after about four sings I got tired of the smoke and heat and trying to watch over everyone’s heads and decided to go get some air and clean up the bus, as it was suffering from the effects of a few nights of serious throwing down.
after the show we hung around the venue, socializing and drinking until they kicked us out, and then we went back to the bus and did the same, with the addition of some poker (eric won again) thrown in for good measure. I have to get better at that game.
the dressing room in frankfurt was up three flights of spiral stairs, which I was kind of grateful for. I had been noticing the effects of not exercising and drinking lots of beer and felt like a few trips up and down those steps would do me some good. the stage on the ground floor was massive, facing a floor made out of huge metal steps and a balcony with rows of seats. the dressing room had about twelve individual little vanity stations along two walls, with their own broadway-style litup mirrors.
the constant overcast, rainy weather killed my desire to wander around, so instead I enjoyed a boring afternoon of lounging around the club, eating snacks and playing a new version of the bottle cap game which had been bred with the game ‘pig’ and involved jumping off the couch, spinning around and flicking the cap at the clock on the wall. after soundcheck the promoter, richie, took us out to dinner at a restaurant next to the club. I love our tradition of all eating together, especially when we go out to a proper restaurant. it’s something I’m really going to miss. there's something so comforting about sitting down and having a meal with a big group of friends. I got the schnitzel- I didn’t even know what is was, but richie’s vague explanation of it being some kind of fried pork cutlet sounded good enough for me. I mean, you have to eat stuff like schnitzel when you’re in germany, right? and while it could’ve used some kind of sauce, or onions or something, it was still pretty good.
during our set, when I was off to the side of the stage for a song I didn’t play on, flavie and adam came over and flavie said she was leaving. I gave her a hug and wished her well, and promised I would say goodbye to eric and kate for her. I couldn’t figure out how to get to the front of the club without going outside during two gallants set so I watched it from the side of the stage. I love watching tyson play drums; he’s so energetic and talented, a blur of arms and long hair.
we had the usual bro-down on the bus. there were a few stragglers I didn't know who were hanging out, plus another couple of adam's friends, daniel and his girlfriend who's name is either marie or anna. or anne. I'm not sure. they were going to be staying on the bus for a few days as well, but I didn't mind. they were very sweet.
the club, called flex, was alongside a canal covered in some pretty serious graffiti. I made a mental note to take some pictures of it before it got dark (which I then promptly forgot to do) and went inside for breakfast. not only did they have a huge, old-school espresso machine, but the promoter was there taking coffee orders and making drinks for all of us. a welcome change from bologna.
the club was huge and they had already sold five hundred presale tickets. behind the stage was a wall of tv screens, maybe twenty of them. the club was very post-industrial looking, very german. two of the bathroom walls were clear plastic with tons of penny candy behind it, and each of the bathroom doors were mounted with screens that played the show while it was happening. it was very dark, all metal and exposed pipes and blade runner. a foosball table in the back room proved quickly popular with donny and adam. an old friend of tyson's named jeff met up with with and was staying on the bus with us that night and traveling with us to frankfurt.
they told us that everything was closed because it was sunday and that the only thing we’d be able to get for dinner was pizza. I scraped the cheese off mine because we were about to go onstage and I didn’t want to get all phlegmy, but it was still really good.
the crowd was amazing. it was packed, hundreds of people, but they were completely silent during our set and applauded enthusiastically in between songs. in between our set and two gallants’, morgan had put on a pair of gold lamé pants/tights and stuck a huge english cucumber down it. we thought it was hysterical and persuaded him to go onstage. he was just drunk enough to do it, and from the backstage we heard the crowd hoot and clap. he yelled something out that I didn’t quite hear and ran back to the dressing room. after two gallants took the stage he told he was afraid he had bummed out adam and tyson's pre-show vibe, but I told him not to worry about. I had seen adam laughing when he came back.
two gallants nearly sold out of merch that night. I think there was maybe four t-shirts left and a handful of their first cd. eric didn’t have many cds left, either. they were supposed to be delivered in münster in a couple days. this wasn't the first time they had run out of merch, and it was becoming a constant source of aggravation, since that's how you really make money on tour.
the backstage hangout party that night was a lot of fun. I twisted the top of a pineapple off and flavie fastened it to my head carmen miranda style. then came more fruit on top of my head, and then the deli tray. we sang for the two gallants crew our favorite tour songs, ‘pecan log’, ‘road gay’ and ‘cock and balls and shit across the ocean’, and they sang us their ‘ball sac’ song. the promoter got level five and started seeming a creepy towards flavie and I, so we kept an eye on each other and intervened to save the other one if she got cornered by him. donny and adam then persuaded the promoter to open the back room where the foosball table was. he brought them back there, opened the door, stationed two security guards by the door, shut it, and left. they later regaled us with stories of this, their most epic of foosball games. stadium lighting, posted sentries, a match for the ages. adam won by two goals.
I poked my head out of my bunk around one thirty in the afternoon and saw adam sitting at the table.
‘did morgan make it back?’
‘nope.’
‘really?’
‘really.’
I got up and went outside to get clothes out of my luggage in the cargo bay. it was overcast and foggy out. the club wasn’t open yet, so donny, jacob and tyson started up a game of football in the yard. adam went off to meet up with his new parisienne girlfriend flavie, who was taking the train to bologna to meet us. eric and kate wandered off. I was just a little hung over, not too bad, but I really wanted some food and a proper cup of coffee. I walked down the street and found a cafe, with eric and kate in it. I asked for a cafe au lait, but got a macchiato and wasn’t really in the mood to argue. I joined kate and eric at their table, and shortly after I got there adam and flavie showed up. the macchiato was too much for me on an empty stomach, so I left to find batteries for my camera and some water.
a little way down the road I saw signs for mcdonald’s and shopping and stuff, so I kept walking, and walking, and walking, and before I realized it I was about a mile and a half from the bus, still without finding a store, and just when I saw the golden arches not too far in the distance (I really didn’t want to be the american who goes to mcdonald’s in italy, but I thought maybe they’d have drip coffee and besides, I was hung over and a burger and fries sounded amazing), it hit me: we have an instore today. at like, three o’clock. and I didn’t have a watch, but seeing as how I had gotten up at one thirty and got coffee and walked really far, I was sure it was about that time. I promptly turned around started walking, really fast, back towards the bus. then I started jogging. then I was out of breath and had to walk again.
donny was the only man on the bus when I got back, and he informed me that everyone had left ten minutes before I got there. awesome. I felt like an asshole. and I also noticed that something smelled really, really bad on the bus. donny said he thought it smelled like a fuse blew or something, and all the power was out on the bus. the club now had staff but wouldn’t let us in (‘we’re not ready for you yet, come back in half an hour’), so we sat on the bus, in the dark, hanging out until about five, when they allowed us in. it was cold and cavernous, and even though they had let us in the building, they still wouldn’t let us in the green room (‘we’re still getting it ready’). I had just about had it at that point. I was cold, hungry, and hung over. I didn’t want to sit on a hard bar stool in an empty, gross, flourescently-lit bar. I wanted to be on a couch, in a warm room, with snacks and coffee. another forty-five minutes later, they informed us that we could go upstairs. donny and I gathered our belongings and talked about all the awesome snacks we were gonna gourge ourselves on (I mean, it had taken them about two hours to get our room ready, it had to be awesome, right?), and walked into a room smaller than my bedroom. there were a few piles of crackers, some salads in the fridge that I quickly discovered to be moldy, a cooler of heineken cans and, blissfully, a couple bottles of red wine. there was enough room for maybe four people to sit down. I was bullshit. I mean, I knew that in the grand scheme of things I was incredibly lucky; I’m not dodging landmines, I’m not fleeing a war-torn country, I’m fucking touring europe, in tour bus no less. but I feel like in light of that, my needs are pretty simple, and they were nowhere close to being met.
I pouted in the green room, playing on my computer, until one of the club guys started bugging us about when the others were getting back. ‘but we have to order food now’ they kept insisting, and I kept telling them ‘I have no idea when they’ll be here, I have no phone, I don’t know where the instore is, I don’t know how to get a hold of them, I don’t know what to tell you’. finally donny and I decided to just order for everyone. a friend of tyson's, adam's and jacob's met us there, a girl named jessica who lives in london and who used to do two gallants press in the states. she was traveling with us for the weekend, up to frankfurt. I liked her immediately. she was from philly, a northeastern girl that was much more on the same page as me as the rest of the guys on the bus who, god bless them, were very california and seemed to bristle at my intermittent swearing.
everyone showed up not too long afterward and then two gallants soundchecked. it was then that I discovered that the compressor on the bus was totally fucked, and that was why it smelled so awful. poor andreas, instead of sleeping in advance of our twelve hour drive to vienna the next day, had to go to buy a new compressor and install it. the food showed up right before two gallants finished soundchecking, and when we asked the soundguys if we could eat really quickly before we soundchecked, and they said no. great. fine. awesome. we told the two gallants crew to just eat without us, but they politely and steadfastedly refused. we soundchecked as quickly as we could, but of course by the time we were done, everything was cold. we choked down what we could (the food tasted like it probably wasn’t much better when it was hot), and when one of the guys from the club walked by and said ‘that must be cold by now’, it was all I could do to hold my tongue and not say ‘yeah, no thanks to you, fucker’.
during dinner, tyson told us that andreas had told him that if he hadn’t fixed the compressor, the next time he plugged it in to a venue, the building would blow up, and I completely lost it. I started laughing and couldn’t stop, a deep, cathartic laugh that diffused all the tension that had built up during the day. tears were just streaming down my face. it felt really good.
the one good thing about the day was that thanks to jay and the crazy english hippies, morgan was returned to us. his passport was on the bus, so had to talk his way into the country (which is something only morgan could do). after the show, flavie decided to stay with us for another day, so she and adam cozied up at the front table while tyson, jessica, donny and I hung out in the back. I think we stayed up until about six.
the one drag about touring by bus is that unless you have a really long drive, you miss all the scenery while you’re sleeping. what little of switzerland I saw while on our way to lausanne was really beautiful. lausanne is in the french speaking part of the country (zurich was in the german), a lovely town on lake geneva where there is, apparently, little to do. the club was nice enough to open for us at noon, with a huge green room supplied with cheese, meats, bread, yogurt, the usual stuff, with one bright exception: an espresso machine. I’m honestly pretty tired of espresso (donny and I like to fantasize about having huge, american sized cups of drip coffee, which they just don’t really have here), but espresso is better than nothing. but I had never seen this kind of set-up- the espresso came prepackaged in containers that were a little bigger than individual half-and-halfs, and you just popped it in the handle where the coffee usually goes and put it in the machine. eric had nine of them.
I walked around some, but there wasn’t much going on in town and I wanted to catch up on some computer work, so I went back to the green room. adam and morgan were there, and we spent a couple hours just hanging out, morgan and I noodling around on computers and adam trying to figure out a townes van zandt song we’ve been talking about having everyone cover for our last show. he also played (per my request) a beautiful song called ‘rock salt and nails’, which he said he thinks is an old utah phillips song.
the dinner they had prepared for us was outstanding- I really can’t get over the hospitality in europe. it’s incredible. when we got to the dining room, there were bottles of red wine, soda, and water on the table, and hors d'oeuvres consisting of different kinds of fish, smoked salmon and other stuff kate and I happily passed to the boys. they then clearerd our plates and served us (served us! like, at our seats!) plates of eggplant pasta served in a hollowed out half of an eggplant with a nice salad. it was really all too much. I couldn’t thank them enough.
they took some pictures of us in this little red and black room with a big skull painted on it where they photograph all the bands that play there, and then we lounged around until we played. a friend of adam’s and tyson’s named jay had driven down with three of his friends from london, and they were quite entertaining. jay was this raspy-voiced hippie guy with an endless stream of hilarious tales and anecdotes, quite a character. it was birthday, and as a surprise birthday treat, we had him open our show. he played about fifteen minutes, witty songs about myspace and obesity and politics.
the backstage post-show party was the usual debauchery. we got back the bus at about three, minus jacob’s cell phone and morgan. eric, adam, donny, and I sat in the lounge for a while, deciphering some townes lyrics and playing poker and drinking until about six thirty in the morning. the last thing I remember hearing before going to sleep was adam telling the bus driver that morgan still hadn’t appeared and that he was going to figure out what to do about it.
a whole day off in zurich, and it’s pouring rain. my jet lag has manifested itself in such a way that no matter what time I go to bed, I wake up at six or six thirty in the morning and can’t fall back asleep for hours. I’ve been tired for days. kate and eric and andreas and I try to figure out the metro to go into the center of the city but realize it only takes francs and we only have euros. we walk down the street to find a money changing place or an atm. we pass by a vietnamese restaurant and return there after getting money to get some pho ga for lunch. it was expensive, but everything in zurich is expensive and it was money well spent- the pho was delicious, hot and really spicy, and big enough that kate and I each took half of ours back to the bus to have for dinner.
eric went off to find an internet cafe, and kate and I returned to the bus and had a massive cleaning party. the bus had gotten fairly gross, particularly the refrigerators and bathroom, and everyone else was out wandering around the city so we had the place to ourselves. we retired to the lounge when everything was finished and watched a little of ‘the insider’ and smoked cigarettes and drank some jagermeister-ish digestif we found in the liquor bottle area of the lounge. it could’ve used some ice.
tyson showed up around five thirty and the three of us went to go meet everyone else by the big cathedral in the center of the city. we stopped by a gas station on the way and bought a bottle of red wine to drink on the tram. the downtown section of zurich is amazing- huge old churches, cobblestone streets, tasteful, beautiful christmas lights, fancy, well-lit stores. we walked over a bridge that spans some sort of body of water that bisects the downtown, and the view, with the reflections of all the city’s night lights, was just awe-inspiring. we met up with morgan, donny, adam and jacob at bar, where we were then joined by a couple of two gallants’ friends, martina and christine. I started to feel a little too inside my head, just thinking about my life and everything I needed to figure out when I get home from tour. I didn’t want to be there anymore, and thought about taking the tram back to the bus to have some time to myself, but decided to try to shake it off. I figured I should be social, there will be plenty of time to be mopey when I get home. I went outside and walked around to try to clear my head, and donny came outside and gave me a hug and had a smoke with me. he could tell I wasn’t feeling it, and I appreciated his efforts to cheer me up.
we walked around downtown for a while and ended up at a neat tapas bar, with a huge skeleton hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of cool paintings and such on the walls. we ordered wine and snacks and hung out for a while. I started to get a little too pensive again and didn’t realize I was staring at the table (god, I HATE being that girl, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself) until jacob grabbed me by my shoulders and gave me a really rough back massage. he said that sometimes when you’re too inside your head you need to get inside your body and that it was a good way to do it. I quashed my feelings of wanting to leave again and picked my head up and tried to get back into the community spirit. I had a nice conversation with tyson, we talked about our respective families and growing up with older siblings. I feel really lucky to be on tour with such genuinely good people- I’m already feeling sad that it’ll be over at the end of next week.
after tapas we went to someone’s house (martina’s?) with four bottles of wine and sat around drinking and smoking at a big, wooden table in a kitchen on the ground floor. it was fun, hanging out at a person’s house and not just in the club or on the bus. we stayed until about two thirty, and then walked back to the bus, where tyson, donny, jacob and I had another round of our favorite bus game, which is where you curl your hands into loose fists and put them over your eyes so that your eyes are protected but you can still see through the little tunnels you’ve made, and then someone else flicks a bottle cap at you. juvenile, to be sure, but when you’re drinky it can be pretty hilarious.
a short drive to strasbourg in the morning. we woke up out in front of the club at about eleven, and while I was tempted to go back to sleep, the promise of a big breakfast spread with coffee got me out of my bunk. the club was enomorous, and we found out that there were actually two shows going on at the same time that night, us and some dancehall reggae band on the other side of the venue. adam asked me if I still had his hat, and at first I had no idea what he was talking about. I stared at him for a second, and said no, still not really remembering the night before. then it came back to me, and I said that I remembered wearing it, but I had no idea when or where that was, but that I was pretty sure I gave it back to him. he didn’t seem convinced and went inside to get breakfast. I couldn't tell if he was really mad or not.
most of the day I spent hanging out in the club, answering emails and such. I did walk around the city a bit, and it was gorgeous, as it seems every european city is, old and full of history. there was an amazing old train station, the view of which was unfortunately obscured by a massive construction project. it was also rainy and dreary so I didn’t feel too bad about spending most the day inside. besides, the catering room was well-stocked with really good food, soup and salad and bread and coffee, and I spent a lot of time walking back and forth between there and the green room, where there was a little alcove/balcony that got a wifi signal from the office in the back.
our show had decibel limit of 105db, which proved troublesome for the two gallants, as they’re quite loud. I spent most of their set in the green room, hanging out with a stage hand who’s name escaped me but that we referred to as ‘ponytail’. he was really nice, and we took turns playing a game with bottle caps and chatting about nothing in particular. he disappeared to go work when two gallants was done playing, and they came upstairs a little upset about the sound of the show because of the decibel limit. donny and I went on mission to find more beer, because they had only given us one case for both bands (which clearly wasn’t going to cut it). we decided to raid the dressing room of the opening band, as they had left early. or so we were told. but we busted into their room without knocking and startled three guys rolling a joint. we apologized profusely and explained that the club had told has they had already left, and that we were coming to steal their beer. they laughed and offered it to us, saying they were on their out anyway.
our show in evreux was in this big rec center kind of thing, with a basketball court and three floors of big rooms and offices and stuff. the club that we were playing inside the center, however, was tiny. I think the capacity was 100 or 120. we had some coffee in a room above the club with some people that worked there and a gnarly old dog named smoky and then had lunch down the street with the promoter.
donny, jacob, kate, tyson and I decided to do laundry, with assurances from the promoter that the laundromat was right down the street. but after wandering around for a good half hour we couldn’t find it. the group implored me (as the only person there that spoke even a little french) to ask a passerby where it was. I approached an elderly lady walking by us and asked her, in french, where the laundromat was, hoping she would notice my obvious foreigness and speak slowly. Instead, she prattled on for about five minutes. the only words I got were something about it being at the end of a street by a hotel, but I didn’t know which hotel she was talking about, and it didn’t seem like she really did, either. we thanked her and kept walking, eventually stumbling upon one. the rest of the day was spent running errands, writing postcards, doing laundry, maintenance stuff.
the show was sold out (which isn’t saying much, but still), and we all had a good time. I saw graffiti my friend scott biram from austin wrote in a bathroom by the green room. we drank a bottle of cognac upstairs after the show, and then went downstairs to the bar where they fed us beer until at least three in the morning. this is where my memory starts to fail me. I vaguely remember talking to a guy in an orange sweater that donny referred to as ‘the great pumpkin’. I remember wearing adam’s hat for a while in the bar. but I don’t really remember leaving, or what we talked about in the lounge of the bus for an hour after we left the club. cognac will do that to you.
