Roma

Rome, 12/2/10


We pull into Rome before the sun sets and it feels SO GOOD to be back in a real city. We take our coats off for the first time since Barcelona and roll the windows down in the van. The club is tucked under an ancient Roman aquaduct that winds through the city like a bridge to another time. Kate and Margot and I grab some beers from the green room and take off, following the aquaduct down alleys and boulevards, taking in the welcome energy of the city and the incredible oldness of the ruins. After soundcheck we hustle back out, on a mission to see the Colosseum before we play. We cut through a sprawling park just south of the ancient stadium, passing lovers and teenagers and bums and feeling at home in the city. We have to scale the locked park gate to get out onto the street and I feel a rush of gratitude to be in the company of such excellent babes. The Colosseum is mind-bending and huge and beautifully deserted at 10:30pm. Stray cats pass through the gates with impunity and I try to take pictures of them but they are too quick. We run back to the club and change clothes for the show and someone tells me I look like I am a witch from the future, which sounds about right to me! We play to a decent crowd and when we are done I wander around the grounds of the club, which has a maze of gardens and patios all filled with the hum of people drinking and smoking and talking. I talk to some American girls who are studying in Rome and a group of frat guys that loved the show and my mind races off with a plan to sell everything and move to Rome with Chris to study painting and ride Vespas. We go out for a late dinner with Luke at a little restaurant that stays open just for us and it is fantastic. Wine and pasta and chicken and amazing tiramisu for dessert. It starts raining as we walk back to the club to load out and all the handsome Italian booking guys help us with our gear and send us off with kisses and ciao bellas. 

Colossus

Alps

Northern Italy, 12/1/10


Another night, another Etap, getting colder. We stop to pee somewhere in the middle of the night on the border and I have to hold my cape on top of my head to keep it from dipping into the toilet aka the hole in the ground. The Alps are ominous hulking beasts keeping a careful watch on our tiny cold van as we chug through the night. Kate and I stay up and talk to Luke about clothes and girls and the clear cold night feels magical and dark. Luke says that the Italian Alps are alright but that they pale in comparison with the Austrian Alps, which in his opinion are the best of all the Alps. Things get radically better the next day when we stop for lunch at an Autogrill and I have the MOST AMAZING pesto gnocchi I have ever had in my life. There are loads of stylish Italians sipping espresso and wine and eating delectable foods for lunch at a REST STOP like it is no biggie. Luke and I are starting to really bond on the enormous importance of good food and drink and Frankie thinks it is hilarious that I am such a hobbit at heart, as I am trapped in the body of an elf. I find Luke's hobbitlike Britishness very appealing, and am tremendously fortified by the good food and being out of the mountains. 


It is dark again by the time we get to Ravenna. The club is in a sprawling warehouse on the outskirts of town and it feels a little bit otherworldly. Wavves are there, already causing a ruckus in the green room when we arrive. There are several fog machines going at soundcheck and the stage looks awesome. We walk to a restaurant that looks like a lost suburban house in the middle of a field about a mile from the club for dinner and then Luke passes out in the van while we set up merch and flirt with Wavves' hot Italian tour manager. The show is weird and feels empty after the tiny venues we've been playing. The audience seems sedated and we play a short set in all white with fog swirling around our feet.

Breakdown

The Rhone Alps, 11/30/10


We eat breakfast at a weird slightly-more-upscale French version of Chili's called Hippopotamus where Luke convinces us that we can definitely make it the two hours to Lyon and that there will be a better chance of getting the van looked at there. Frankie points out the Mercedes garage right across the street from the hotel but we defer to Luke and soldier on. We get halfway up the first mountain on the road before the van just totally craps out and we have to pull over. Whoops! All my enthusiastic French from the night before seems horribly lacking in this situation of practical necessity, but we manage to get a tow back to a small garage just outside of the town we had spent the night in. After 4 hours of sitting around in the garage cycling through various options we get another tow back to the Mercedes garage that Frankie had spotted right before we left town to begin with. Luke arranges for a rental and we decide that he can drive back down to pick up the Sprinter when we have our day off in Paris in a week. By this time it has gotten dark, we are all starving, and Luke has been gone for what seems like FOREVER picking up the rental. We spread out in the waiting room at the garage, crack open a bottle of wine from the night before, and watch the first hour of the 5th Harry Potter movie on Frankie's laptop. Finally Luke shows up with the rental and we rush to get all the equipment from one van to the other and get on the road with enough time to make the show in Lyon. The rental is TINY compared to the Sprinter, with room for 2 to squeeze in the front and the narrowest bench seat I have ever seen in the back with a perfectly upright backrest that does not adjust. It is hellishly uncomfortable.


Le Sonic



























Lyon, France 11/30/10


Two hours later we are on a dark and desolate road running alongside the river in Lyon, with no signs or lights in sight and the GPS insisting that we have reached our destination. We just sit there for a few minutes scratching our heads until Frankie is like, "Oh, I remember this place, its on a boat IN the river!" Sure enough, there is a houseboat/barge situation strung with x-mas lights just out of sight behind the riverbank. We manage to load in and get ourselves through the crowd into the green room where, thank god, there is a huge table spread with food. These kids are punks and there was vegan lasagne and lentil casserole and rice galore, which was a welcome change from the cured meats we have been sustaining ourselves on all week. Everyone is in a terrible mood and the boat is freezing and the last thing anybody wants to do is play a show. The booker is super sweet though and there is a great crowd and we do our thing to a packed boat. There is a really nice guy who wants to talk politics with me in French but I am just too tired to take it. To top it all off when Luke goes to set up the merch we realize that we left all our records in Bordeaux. SHITTY! Kate does an awesome job speaking to the proprietor of the bar in Bordeaux on the phone in French, and we arrange for him to ship the records to Paris for us to pick up in a week. Everyone is exhausted and pissed off, and we get back in the terrible new van and drive into the night. 

Glou Glou, Miam Miam

Bordeaux, 11/28/10

We play at a tiny wine bar/bistro whose name I forget but there is a sign outside that says "Glou-Glou, Miam Miam" and one of my new French friends tells me that these are universal noises that people make when they drink and eat. I am happy to be able to use my petit peu de francais instead of just saying "si" and "gracias" constantly. There is a bad-ass girl throwing the party and DJing who plays a lot of riot girl and a really nervous young guy doing live sound for the first time who I talk with a lot. We are showered with amazing wine and offered this glazed caramel and chocolate tart as soon as we arrive. We set up in the corner and our soundcheck kind of morphs into our set since the whole neighborhood seemed to be crammed into the space ready to go at 5:30 on the nose. There is a curtain seperating the stage from the kitchen and we change clothes wedged between countertops and cases of wine. The proprietor keeps up a steady stream of conversation and food preparation as we are setting up, and by the time we are done playing there is a beautiful spread of pate and chorizo and watercress salad and rustic loaves of bread layed out for us with wine and sparkling water and that epic tart for dessert. The show is super high-energy and there is a little girl on her mom's shoulders in the audience. I drink copious amounts of incredible wine and am feeling pretty awesome about my French, talking to everybody and making friends and asking lots of questions. Two cute boys invite us to their recording studio and the next day one of them sends an email saying nice to meet you and that he wants to marry Kate. I don't want to leave but Luke wants to get a head start so we can have some time to hang out in Lyon the next day, so I grab two bottles of wine for the van and stay up in the backseat talking to Margot about marriage. I pass out on the floor of the van at some point and wake up several hours later to a loud grinding noise and horrible shaking. We creep along at 30mph through the mountains for what seems like forever until we find an Etap and everyone stumbles in to bed, too tired to do anything about the van until morning. 

Madrid - Bordeaux

Basque Country, 11/28/10

We pass the Plaza de Toro on the way out of Madrid and I wish we could stay to see the bulls fight. Flat wooden cutouts of EL TORO dot the hills north of the city as we drive through farmland and small, ancient towns. North to the Basque Country. The sky spits rain and melts into sunshine sporadically and we stop somewhere in the foothills and get cheese and tea to go with the leftover fruit and bread we have saved for lunch. The van shakes as we tunnel through the mountains into the south of France and the sun is still speckling rays of light through the rain clouds when we get to Bordeaux.

Sweet Old World

Basque Country
November 2010

Palais Royal

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

Ordination a San Francisco el Grande Basilica

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

Margot & Kate

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

golden handcuffs

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

comida

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

corners

Madrid, Spain
November 2010

this little piggie went to market...

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

castles in the sky

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

Madrid, 11/27/10

The club is called Hot and Nasty or something like that and it is totally hot and nasty. We can barely get the van down the street that it's on and the place is already filled with cigarette smoke at 4 in the afternoon when we show up for soundcheck. We backline our newly borrowed gear and then I slip out and take myself on a sojourn back down to the Musea Prado, which Margot & Kate & I had skipped earlier to go see Guernica at the Reina Sophia. Being alone in the city makes me feel so free and so alive I literally feel like I am walking on air. I buy Chris a cheesy bullfighting poster in the park and totally kill knowing exactly where I am. The museum is heavy with violent and grotesque pre-Renaissance Christian art that is beautiful and suffocating. I plow my way through the Friday night crowd to find The Garden of Earthly Delights and I let myself get lost in it. It feels like a literal portal to the cultural imagination of another time and place and simultaneously like a blueprint for all the spectres of Christianity that continue to haunt the corners of our western world. I rush upstairs to see Goya's Black Paintings and the 2nd & of May and just as I reach the room they cordon it off and people start flowing out of the museum. I absorb the scenes of revolution that went down right outside our hotel from behind the velvet rope and my mind and my body feel perfectly synched as I take in the light and the dark and the power of the work. I let myself wander on the way back to the club and when I turn my 3rd corner I come face to face with a wall of forest undergrowth on the side of a building. Magic! When I get back the club it is totally packed and everyone is intensely engaged in Guadalupe Plata's set, which is gorgeous and amazing and involves heavy guitar and roaring melodic vocals and a washtub bass. We exchange clumsy compliments that are halfway lost in translation after their set and then we play. I can't hear my bass at all but Tweakbird are there again and they like it, so I feel pretty good. Kate's friends come to the show and we go out with them afterwards, to an Irish Pub playing American rock 'n roll filled with twentysomething Spanish hipsters. Paying for beer at the smoke filled bar is too much for me and Margs but we give Kate's friends our wristbands so they can all go to the Teenage Fanclub show later that night. Margot and I go back to the hotel and crash and Kate stays out all night getting into trouble backstage at Teenage Fanclub.

Farmacia 

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

temple

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

matador/flamenco

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

wooded wall

Madrid, Spain

November 2010

pink

Madrid
November 2010