12.21.05: New York City

Now let's see. The last tour diary entry came from Hannover on the 16th of December. And then nothing. I'm sure that all of you are convinced that we were eaten by the German cousin of the Loch Ness Monster or that we proved Columbus wrong and drove off the edge of the earth somewhere around Dusseldorf. Or maybe we all joined some cult that eschews email and tour diaries in favor of pepper steaks and Dylan bootlegs. It could happen, you know.

But instead, I fell prey to the usual end-of-tour frenzy that just doesn't allow for much time at the typewriter keyboard. Not only are there shows to play, but also luggage and equipment to divide and designate for geographical assignment. Itineraries and logistics become more stringent as the risk for missing a wake-up call or hitting traffic becomes higher and more costly. After nine weeks on the road, nobody wants to miss a plane or even throw one of the last gigs in peril.

No such thing happened. The last two gigs went without a problem of any kind. First, there was the Blue Rose Christmas party in Heilbronn or Edgarpalooza as I prefer to call it (pardon the Very Nineties tendency to conclude any phrase with "palooza," just a bit of 20th Century nostalgia in effect). What did Dorothy say at the end of "The Wizard of Oz?" Something like "and I had this dream and YOU were there and so were YOU and YOU and YOU!" That's what the Heilbronn show felt like. We saw so many faces that we had seen throughout the tour and it felt like a good end-of-tour party. We amused ourselves and confused the crowd by coming out in matching "...Tick...Tick...Tick" t-shirts and played the new album in order before leaving the stage, changing into matching "Days of Wine and Roses" t-shirts and then playing a Dream Syndicate mini-set. High concept, my friends, and a high concept that may have been lost on some of the audience. But after 48 shows you just gotta amuse yourselves sometimes. And after being a "Tick" tribute band and then a Dream Syndicate tribute band we left the stage and became a Rolling Stones tribute band for two songs ("Honky Tonk Woman" and "Satisfaction") joined by labelmate Cindy Bullens and her band, who had played earlier in the evening. Good fun, late night, long drive to follow. Tick Tick Tick indeed.

But there was one last show and what a show it was! We finished our tour at the beautiful large room at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. It easily the best venue of the tour--a stage larger than some clubs we played, a large room that was surrounded by walls covered with star-like lights that twinkled and glowed at various times of the show. Exhaustion be damned, this was our last show and we let loose with a wild, no-holds-barred FreakPunkPsychoLoveFest that concluded with a deconstructionist version of "John Coltrane Stereo Blues" and then it was time to talk to fans, pack up gear and return to the hotel for a party that lasted until 4am with a 9:30 plane to catch. Ouch. Set the alarm clocks, get a wake-up call and make sure that Carsten knocks on all the doors. Can't miss that plane.

We did not miss that plane. And now I'm home listening to a Wake Ooloo (Feelies spinoff) CD that I bought in Utrecht. The local transit workers are on strike so there are no buses or subways which gives me the excuse to stay home and catch on things like, uh, well like Tour Diaries. It's been fun having you all along for the ride. And, as always, stay tuned to this website--there will be a lot more touring (and tour diary action) in the new year. Happy Holidays and a Wonderful 2006 to all of you.

12.16.05: Hannover

Sitting backstage at the Blues Garage and waiting for Carsten to adjust the PA, set up microphones and ring out (i.e. eliminate the bad tones from) the monitors. Sorry to get all technical but this is our world before we sound check which is our world before we eat which is our world before we play our music for YOU. It's all connected and when this part of the evening goes well, it usually bodes well for the following pieces of the ritual. So far, so good. I really love this club and wrote about it extensively when we played here in 2003. Essentially, it is a biker bar in Alabama circa 1975. You almost expect Lynyrd Skynyrd to walk onstage at any moment. Old pinball machines, various rock posters and album covers (including a copy of "Get Your Ya Yas Out" signed by Mick Taylor when he played here), pool tables, lots and lots of wood in the form of tables, bannisters, stage, etc provide the decor. There are old American trucks and limousines in the parking lot, vintage radios and hubcaps line the walls. The front of a late 50s Cadillac juts out from the front of the stage. Blues records were playing from the moment we walked in the door. I was told there was hashish in the cookies but I'm hoping that was a joke.

Erik is testing out his bass. Jason is looking to see if he got a text message from his girlfriend Sylvia who is moving to New York from Croatia next week. Linda is tuning her drums. Thomas is setting up the merch table. I'm looking nervously at the cookies.

Today was a rough day. It should have been only three hours from Koln but we hit a hailstorm, heavy Friday traffic and our trip turned into six hours which meant we had to skip the hotel and go straight to the gig. No big deal but I've always found that even five minutes in the hotel before sound check tends to be comforting as you have a feeling of HOME during the hours at the club. When your suitcase is stashed in the proper corner and various appliances are plugged in and some shirts and jackets are hung up and you know exactly which channels you can get on the TV and have determined the force of the shower and know if there's internet and what time breakfast is finished--when you know ALL of these things, you feel that the city in which you are playing is, in fact, your home. It's all psychological but after many years of touring, you know what works for you.

Carsten is saying "Hello hello hello" repeatedly into my microphone so that it will sound nice for me. I'll have to remember to say "hello" a few times tonight to get the full effect.

The Koln (Cologne to those of you back home) show was one of the best of the tour, easily in my Top 10 (with Belgrade, London, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Rome, Utrecht and a few others). The room was full, the audience was enthusiastic, we were inspired and the sound on stage was perfect. And then all the lights went out on the third song. This could have been a reason to stop the show or at least wait for pandemonium to ensue but instead it gave a catalyst for a mood shift, a sightless intimacy and even for a members of the audience to pull out flashlights (where did THOSE come from?) and give us homemade spotlights. By the time the lights came back on, we were in some kind of voodoo campfire zone that lasted the rest of the night. Carsten lives in Koln so he and Thomas went back to his apartment. The four band members went back to our friend Hammi's place and stayed up until the wee hours, sharing cocktails, jokes and visits to the WFMU website (www.wfmu.org) to watch, among other things, Mark E. Smith reading football results. Oh, and I got Jason to do a dramatic reading of the lyrics to the Jefferson Starship's "Miracles," something that I recommend for any party that you might be throwing in the near future.

Linda is being called upon for the drum check which means that the bass will be next. And then the guitars. Maybe I have time for one game of pinball.

12.14.05: The road to Bremen

This particular road contains water. Right now we're on a Danish road, somewhere past Roskilde although I haven't looked out the window in the last 20 minutes. But soon we'll be on a ferry to Germany. And then we'll be on a German road. These are fixed details that provide some kind of order to the final days which involve needing to know too many details about everything.

You see, my friends, this tour (and this tour diary) is approaching the end. Suddenly, every item in the van is subject to the Trash-Or-Keep test, knowing that the latter choice involves cramming the Kept item into a suitcase and having to Put It Somewhere upon arriving back home. That copy of some magazine that has good pictures but can't be read without an intensive language course? Trash. The half-consumed bottle of lemon-lime soda? Trash. The stack of Dylan bootlegs. Hmmm, gotta keep those. The books I've read, know that I'll never read again but really don't want to throw away? See if I can get Jason to take them. He's currently inspecting "Interviews With Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace, a book I just finished and really, really liked but also don't particularly want to carry back home. Let's see if he likes it.

We played at Loppen in the Christiania section of Copenhagen last night. I've written about this unique place many times before. It's a self-governed and maintained commune in the midst of the city and has been independant and living outside of the law since the 60s. It's a mix between hippie way-back machine, punk anarchist political forum, new age healing center, reggae soundsystem and a set for the Danish version of Blade Runner. The last time I visited was in the Fall of 2003 and I had heard that the community was going to be shut down by the city, something that it had just barely eluded for years. But Christiania still stands and is still independent (and still houses the Loppen club), although increased police attention has shut down one of it's most unique features: the sprawling and non-clandestine street market of hash, weed, mushrooms and cookies that contain any or all of the above. Gone. I noticed that the reggae band Culture had played the club earlier in the month. I'm sure they were extremely disappointed.

But the show was one of my favorites of the tour. All of the pieces were in place. There was good sound on stage (and off, I'm told), lots of enthusiastic fans, the presence of Our Hero, Wynnweb founder and manager Thomas Mejer Hansen, and even one crazed guy (from Sweden, everyone made the effort to tell me) who seemed to have found some of the now-illegal substances and was on some other planet. Our Freaky Flying Friend spent the evening removing a seemingly endless layers of clothing, tossing shirts and sweaters onto the stage and even walking up to Linda during the encore and handing her a purse with two mittens inside. I'm not kidding. He also, at one point, looked me in the eye and then proceeded to empty the contents of a full pint of beer right over his head. Yes, friends, Christiania still is the site for aberrant behavior and will never be Just Another Gig.

I see the boats up ahead. This is the end of the road. It's time to set sail.

12.12.05: The ferry to Denmark

Here we are on the overnight ferry from Norway to Denmark. We usually have one of these treks on each tour and I really look forward to them. It's fun to have 12 hours of bouncing from bar to casino to duty free shop to restaurant to ship deck to bunk bed and then back again. Sleep would have been the sensible activity after the wild night in Egersund but good sense and touring don't always go together. And when we saw that there was going to be a band and "show" coming up at 9:30, we knew that the night was just getting started. Erik noticed on the bulletin board that the entertainment would be a guy named "Scott Fitzgerald." "It can't be the same one," he said, pointing out that someone of the same name had a huge hit (at least in Holland) called "If I Had Words " (with Ivana Keely) back in the 70s. Well, it turns out that it WAS the same Scott Fitzgerald and after the backing band had played a set that included reverb-laden versions of "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Rock Around the Clock," and "Cuando Cuando Cuando", the big show was ready to begin. Scott Fitzgerald arrived with a formal white dinner jacket setting off his sculpted grey hair and toothy grin. He shook hands with the older (than US!) crowd and the show began. Man, he was the consummate entertainer. He came out and started with "Amarillo" and suddenly five dancing girls clad in red vinyl miniskirts joined him on the floor. Eight songs and five costume changes later, the show was over but in the meantime we were dazzled by "Only You," "Delilah," "Knock On Wood," a Cats-like dance routine and a saucy joke about Scotsmens kilts (our man Scott was, in fact, from Scotland but had also lived in Holland for eight years). Jason remarked, "the next time someone asks me for my favorite show of the tour, I'm going to have to say it was THIS one." Amazing. We left the bar and went looking for more adventures but Erik stopped and said, "Wait a second, I have to talk to him." He had no luck as Scott Fitzgerald was swarmed by adoring Norwegians but later in the evening, the great man himself was walking down the hall and stopped to talk with us. He asked where we were from, exchanged a few words of Dutch with Erik and then excused himself to get "a wee whiskey." We were entranced and are now determined to get a few gigs on cruise ships next time. When when when? Ah, cuando cuando cuando!

12.11.05: Leaving Egersund

I was talking to our promoter Roald a few hours before our show last night. He was recounting a conversation with American country songwriter Tom Russell who said "Oh yeah. Norway on a Saturday night. You know what THAT'S going to be like." And I knew. I completely knew. Norwegians are not shy about their love for beer and not at all inhibited about letting loose at night--never mind the morning, never mind the hangovers. We're gonna party right NOW! And on a Saturday night, you can print that manifesto in bold, 48-point type. It's party time!

Three hours later we were on stage at the GrandKjellen, a venue that was actually in the basement of our hotel. Perfect. Your hotel room is your backstage which made for a good chance to catch up on some rest after the intense travels of the previous two days. I walked downstairs to the club at 10:50, just ten minutes before our show and I felt like I had walked into a Fellini movie. Everywhere I looked from the stage was some kind of extreme, freaky or contradictory behavior. There were older (than us!) couples in formal evening wear, having just come from Christmas parties upstairs. There were wildly drunk guys, swaying in front of the stage. There was the guy who kept shoving a shot of Southern Comfort in my face, unable to comprehend that having both hands on my guitar meant that i just could not take the drink from him. He kept shouting for me to play "Carolyn," even after I had actually played the song. There was the guy who literally gave me the shirt off his back (a yellow jersey of the local football squad) and spent the rest of the show bare-chested, covered only by a loosely fitted coat. And then the woman who sang every word with me even though I could tell from the movement of her lips that the words were completely different from what I was singing. She seemed both enraptured and completely out-of-it and it shouldn't have surprised me when she came on stage for the encore, stood right next to me and asked "Is it okay if I stand here while you're singing?" Her boyfriend gently led her away. There was the previously mentioned bare-chested gentleman who came up to me while I was packing away my amplifier and asked if I would wear his football jersey on the encore. I had to explain that the process of putting my amplifier into the case pretty much signified that the show was over.

Crazy.


And yet, we were so invigorated by the whole event that we were ready for more. Erik, Linda and I went into town in search of the post-show party hosted by Roald. Strips of smoked sheep were wrapped around a bone and placed on the table to be chased by shots of Aquavit which were then chased by a glass of local Christmas Beer. We even got the chance to be the audience for a change when a local comedian went on stage and entertained us with some impromptu comedy bits (in English) that had us laughing to the point of tears and feeling almost as crazy and demonstrative as our audience had been only hours earlier. However, I did not offer him my shirt.

12.10.05: The road to Egersund

I've been delinquent in my on-the-road dispatches lately. Sorry. It just seems that time has flown. Well, time hasn't exactly flown but we have. Since Thomas dropped us off at the Stockholm Airport Friday morning, we have had a 36-hour run that included two flights (one delayed, another missed), one very choppy four-hour ferry and a gig in Bergen. There is something very comforting about traveling in the van--you have your assigned seat and all of the things that you need to pass the hours and allow you to deny the actual process of motion and captivity. But the "by-the-clock" demands and the cartage and logistics of flights and ferries can be exhausting. Right now we are in a taxi from the port in Stavanger to the venue in Egersund and I know we'll all be happy to see our Big White Home On The Road.

But let's talk about that ferry ride. We usually travel on ferries that can house vans, trucks, buses and trains and, therefore, are pretty gigantic. They tend to be almost like shopping malls on water, making the motion of the ocean almost negligible. Today was another story, an approximately 100-seat, high-speed boat that navigated the fjords and hit some rough waters in the last hour. All of my travel pals are pretty green around the gills right now, seasick and stunned into silence but I seem to have dodged the affliction, maybe by staring at the screening of Finding Nemo above my head, lulling myself into thinking I actually WAS a fish and, thus, immune to seasickness. It's just a theory and not really a good theory but the ends justify the means and I'm not green, or so it seems. Please recite the last line in the cadence of Muhammad Ali, Don King or at least in the voice of your favorite Beastie Boy.

There's not much spare time when you're rushing to catch planes and ferries (or when you're pretending to be a fish) and I haven't had the chance to talk about the gigs in Oslo, Stockholm or Bergen. What can I say? They were all very satisfying in different ways. We had the chance to hang out with old friends and make new ones. We played many of the songs that we have played night to night while tossing in a few oddities as well. Exhaustion was denied for the two hours that we were on stage. Everything went well considering our band was led by a fish. Well, a Pisces anyway.

Playing shows in Norway is always an exercise in nostalgia for me. In the late 80s and early 90s, I found myself as close to the mainstream as I ever have in any other country. My records made the charts, I was on TV and the shows were much bigger than the usual clubs that I play around the world. I wrote "That's Why I Wear Black" for a local band called Somebody's Darling and it went to #1 on the pop singles charts, going double platinum in the process. I would play 20 gigs a year in a country of only five million people. Maybe I overdid it but it was hard to resist. Norway is a beautiful country, the fans are very enthusiastic, the promoters treat you well. And it might have been the results of overexposure or the natural swing of the pendulum but my success in Norway gradually receded until it was about level with all of the other countries which is to say that it was just fine and enough to keep going to the next record and to the next tour. But sometimes it feels funny that a country that was a kind of second home has become just another stop on the tour. Everything is familiar and events long since passed periodically through my mind but I also know I'm just passing through. Of course, a country that goes for entire months with little or no daylight (at least up north) has a great history with melancholia so I guess I'm still right at home.

Or maybe it's just the jet lag and seasickness.

12.07.05: Halden

I came off stage at 8pm last night after sound check and I was fried--a magic combination of headache, exhaustion and disorientation. It certainly wouldn't have stopped me from playing a good show--I have all kinds of tricks for overcoming such a state--but I was glad to hear from our promoter (and old friend) Tom Skjeklesaether that we had enough time to go back to the hotel room. I figured that a short nap and some placid thoughts would do me right but instead chose to watch 30 minutes of Animal Planet and that was even better. Just a mere half hour of watching the mating and killing habits of leopards and hyenas and insects and other animals was enough to put me right back into the fighting spirit needed for a two hour set. I need to remember to put Animal Planet on my hotel contract rider. It might become an essential part of my pre-show preparation.

Tom has been a good friend since the mid-80s when I was making my first visits to Norway and he was a writer for the very hip (and now defunct) Beat Magazine in Oslo. He has always looked after me, not the least being when he discovered a couple of acoustic guitar-strumming girls busking on the sidewalk and asked me to write a song for the album that they were about to record. I gave them a song called "That's Why I Wear Black" and they took it to the top of the charts, the single hitting number one and the album going double platinum. Tom married one of the two singers (Tine, with whom he now has two children) and the band (Somebody's Darling) is still together and currently making a new album. It's all a very happy, Scandinavian fairy tale.

12.06.05: The road to Halden

We're driving through Sweden with farmlands on the left and right side of the highway. There's not a building in sight. I've got Elvis Presley (Memphis Sessions, 1968) on the headphones and for all I can tell, I actually have been transported to another decade. In fact, it feels like it could be another century. Except for Elvis. and the van. And the rock band on tour thing. Oh, and the McDonalds. Otherwise? 17th Century all the way!

We had a night off yesterday. I had called it a Day Off but Thomas wisely corrected me. He had, after all, driven 10 hours from the middle of Germany to the Southern part of Sweden. That's a lot of driving. And we had to watch him drive. And eat chocolate. And take naps. And listen to the new Fall album (me, anyway). And read Bob Dylan, Hanif Kureishi, the Herald Tribune, magazines about trains (take your pick--match with your favorite touring party member). Tough work, I tell you. And then there were the ferries. We had two 45-minute ferries which allowed just enough time to explore the various duty free stores, stare at open-faced sandwiches, wander on the deck, get cold and hunt for coffee. Day off? Give me a break!

Okay okay--outside of Thomas' task behind the wheel, we had a pretty easy day and the end of the day brought us to a Swedish bed-and-breakfast farmhouse inn that Carsten had discovered on a previous tour with Clem Snide (I get so jealous when he talks about his Other Bands). There was some movie I saw recently where a character was accused of not being a "bed and breakfast person" and usually that's true for me. I like sterile hotels, with predictable accommodations--all the better to impose my own personality in the limited time I have during my stay. Where are the AC adapters? How many TV channels? A bathtub? Internet connection? The mundane concerns make for the ability to crawl inside yourself and see what still exists. But, it turns out, we were all happy to spend a night in the warm, friendly confines of our country inn. We brought in some wine, sat in the living room and watched "Arrested Development" (great surreal show--I need to see more episodes) and a BBC soul program with performances by Gladys Knight and the Pips, Bobby Womack, Bill Withers, Ann Peebles and more. Asleep by 1am with the intense silence waking me up from time to time (I know, I know. It makes no sense) and we woke up to a breakfast that was more "Home For The Holidays" than "Breakfast buffet served until 10am." If you know what I mean. You do know what I mean, don't you?

It's Sinter Klaus day and Thomas told me that if our shoes were clean, we would wake up to gifts from the bearded man himself. And it worked! We found a bunch of chocolates in box under our seat in the van and Thomas hand-delivered a 2006 calendar with fantastic jazz photos that he claims had been hand-delivered by Mr Klaus himself. Thomas knows so many famous people. I wonder if we can put Santa on the guest list for one of the Scandinavian shows. I hear that he runs a bed and breakfast hotel in Sweden during the off season.

12.04.05: Kassel

We have one hour in the hotel before we have to leave for soundcheck. You learn to do a lot with the time you have. Maybe a nap is a good idea. Maybe organizing your suitcase, shifting the dirty clothes to the bottom of the case and encouragingly placing the remaining clean ones on top would be nice. And then there's always the opportunity to stare at the TV set which means choosing between the mind-numbing MTV and the soul-killing CNN. Me, I've chosen to drink some soup out of this thermos and write about the last few days.

For one thing, we've managed to leave Holland with additional chocolate letters (thanks, Heijn) and without being kidnapped by those pesky elves of Black Pete. So, I guess that means that Spain is out of the picture.

We were visited by Larry Lappin who came to Amsterdam for music and adventure. We provided the former and some of the latter. I'll leave the rest up to Larry's memoirs, soon to be adapted for a major motion picture.

We played on a bill at Amsterdam's Paradiso with Jon Spencer's new band Heavy Trash. I ended up talking to friends and fans and record label/promoter types (and sometimes that line does blur) and ended up neither seeing their set nor hanging out with the band. Too bad. I'm a big fan of his stuff, particularly the "Acme" album.

The clubs in Holland are textbook examples of what a club can be. Great sound both on and off stage, helpful staff that help you load gear and seem honestly happy to be hosting you for the evening and it's no surprise that the clubs we played have been around for several decades. Sometimes you hear that live music is in trouble and that clubs are in danger of going out of business but, somehow, the ones that do it right manage to stick around.

I listened to a bootleg of Robin Hitchcock performing the White Album, ate potato chips and read a book about Dylan in the van today. What can I say? Sometimes Sunday is just that kind of day. And I can see that the hour is ticking away so I think it just might be time to sign off. See you in Scandinavia

12.02.05: Westerbroek

It's 11am and I'm sitting at the dining room table of my buddy Jaap Bos. Most of you reading these pages are acquainted with Mr Bos. I've known him since 1986 when we met in Groningen at Club Vera He came backstage after the show with a bunch of bootleg cassettes of my shows and wanted to know the names of some of the songs that he didn't recognize. I later learned that he had over 500 different shows on tape and was hot on the trail to collect more and more. I was stunned. A few years later he presented me with a list of every cassette complete with song titles, source information and a grade for the quality (but thankfully not the performance). Now I realize that some people might have feared a potential stalker but that was certainly not the case. Jaap was a high school teacher (he's now a principal!) and had kids and I could tell that he was a stable, very cool guy and kindred spirit who just happened to have a very interesting hobby.

Anyway, since that time we have become great friends. I've spent so many days and nights in his home and he often visits me in New York and, in fact, was (along with Linda) the ringleader in the tribute CD and concert that happened last year. And last night we played the legendary Club Vera and even though the club has very nice apartments upstairs from the venue we chose to come back to Casa Jaap and have a post-show party with Principal Bos, his wife Corrie, gig-taper and old pal Jos and also Willard Grant Conspiracy keyboard player Yuko (she lives in Holland) for what could have been a very relaxed and civilized post-show chat. Nope. That wasn't in the cards. I can only imagine what Jaap's students would have thought as they watched their principal and his friends turning up the stereo to ear-shattering levels (poor, poor neighbors) and dancing to some of the following tunes:

BENNIE AND THE JETS--Elton John
TV EYE--Stooges
BABA O' REILLEY--The Who
MR WILSON--John Cale
first half of COSMO'S FACTORY--Creedence Clearwater Revival
YOUNG AMERICANS--David Bowie
TEMPORARY SECRETARY (!!)--Paul McCartney
REMAKE REMODEL--Roxy Music
I SAW THE LIGHT--Todd Rundgren
DE POLDER--Deheleboel Haim
7+7 IS--Love
I'M JUST A SINGER IN A ROCK AND ROLL BAND--Moody Blues
WAKE UP AND MAKE LOVE WITH ME--Ian Dury
MYSTIC EYES--Them
YOU REALLY GOT ME--Kinks
DEAR MR FANTASY--Traffic
entire CD of CALL ME--Al Green

See? Now you can recreate our night. Go ahead. Just turn up your stereo to about 200 dB and let it fly. Now it's 11am and we're drinking coffee and things are just a little bit more quiet. Time to pack the bags and head off to Amsterdam. Principal Bos is taking the day off.

11.30.05: The road to Groningen

When we last met, I was racing against time as my 30 minutes in a Brixton cafe were ticking away. It wasn't Summertime, the first weren't jumping, the cotton wasn't high but the living was easy. We were in the midst of a succession of short drives and we were well-rested. And that was the beginning of a 36-hour run that tested our endurance, sanity and the overall logistics of time and space. Let's take a little journey, shall we?

Tuesday 4pm...Having shown the discipline to leave the internet cafe after only 30 minutes, the four of us (Miracle 3 + me) wandered around Brixton and decided that our best entertainment option lied in a local pub and a pint of Guinness. I still can't get used to the idea of cold Guinness but I forgot to specify otherwise and the idea seems to be catching on. No problem. It put us in the right mood for all that was ahead. I was in search of an indigenous local snack and found it at a restaurant specializing in food from Ghana. I had a plate of rice with a very spicy sauce, topped by a whole fish that stared at me in appreciation as I enjoyed the meal. The others showed more sense and went for a yuppie snack bar, opting for hummus and sandwiches. What can I say? I'm a taste bud thrill-seeker.

Tuesday 9:25pm...We hit the stage at the Windmill in Brixton. What a great club. It's a medium-sized local pub with a stage in the corner. It almost reminded me of the South London version of the Lakeside Lounge in New York City (Eric "Roscoe" Ambel's place where I regularly play/drink/hold court/see great bands). It's not a venue, it's just a good hang with good friends. And we were the house entertainment, playing for 90 minutes and ending with a version of "500 Girl Mornings" that featured a cowboy-hatted Barry Everitt on tambourine. Man, it was hot. We were drenched and could have used a few minutes in a giant washing machine on spin cycle. That might have done the job.

Wednesday 1:00am....Still hanging out at the Windmill. We should really hit the road since we have a two hour drive to Dover ahead of us with only a few hours to sleep before we catch out 9am ferry to Calais. But we're hanging out with old friends and making new ones as well. Tim Perry books the club and despite a recent bout of migraine headaches, books the club. Seven nights a week, every day of the year. No problem--he's ready to chat and take the night as far as it will go. And what's this? The club owner/building landlord Seamus is pouring shots of Jagermeister? Oh my, this looks like trouble.

Wednesday 2am.....We're on the road. Thomas is behind the wheel, eyes straight ahead and taking us safely to Dover. Jason has returned to DJ Jason V mode and is feeding us a healthy diet of Roxy Music and the James Gang. Sleep would make sense but the music is so good. Sleep? Overrated--let the good times roll.

Wednesday 7am...Fortified by our two hours of sleep at the Premium Travel Inn at Dover, we are tossing ourselves back into the van and heading to the Ferry terminal. Everybody looks dazed and, well, confused. But it's time to move on. What I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee....

Wednesday 9am....With the white cliffs of Dover receding in the starboard (or is that port? or Starbucks? or Bucks Fizz?) side of the boat, we are all standing on the ferry in a line of zombies and waiting to plunk down six pounds for a Farmer's English Breakfast. Well, we're not exactly farmers, but we're pretty excited about the fried egg, ham, sausage, fried bread, tomato and baked beans. Is that really all on one plate? I must still be dreaming. That's just not possible. I'm a little freaked out by the stewed tomato and try to remove it from my plate only to drop it whole into my cappuccino which at that moment strikes my touring mates as the funnniest thing of all time. Ah, the joys of sleep deprivation. I suggest that I have just invented the latest taste sensation of the "Ketchuccino!" All of the buzz of coffee with the delicious taste of tomato. And, my friends, I have already procured the patent to don't try to steal this idea. My lawyer will be in touch.

Wednesday noon....In the van. Sleeping. I have no idea where we are.

Wednesday 3pm...We've arrived at the Ekko in Utrecht a few hours ahead of schedule. This means it's time for MORE coffee and MORE record shopping. Erik, Jason and I check out DaCapo down the street where I pick up CDs by Wake Aloo, a David Axelrod comp and one of those wonderful "Songs the Cramps Taught Us" collections (original versions of songs covered by the Cramps--just amazing). The day of sleepwalking continues with a somnambulist stroll through Utrecht and then back to the club for soundcheck and some Surinams (Surinamese?) food. We are joined by Jaap Bos and also Erik's girlfriend Barry. Food. Good. Yes. We have been reduced to monosyllabic cavemen.

Wednesday 9:15pm....The club is packed and the enthusiasm of the Utrecht audience has revitalized us. It's time to play. And despite the last 24 hours, we play an intense, wild rock show. I think the Windmill had us billed as "Intense Voodoo Rock" and that describes the show. The DJ follows our set with "She's Like Heroin To Me" by the Gun Club. I love that song. And it sure sounds like our set closer "Days of Wine and Roses." What can I say? I was a very impressionable 21 year-old.

Wednesday 11pm.....So, the show is over and we're still going. Time to pack up and go to hotel and get some much-needed sleep? No way! It's time for ANOTHER show in ANOTHER city. I've agreed to do a midnight set at the Club Lek show at the VPRO Studios in Amsterdam. It's only 33 kilometers (20 miles) between cities and the wonderful Mr Bos has agreed to drive us to the station (they have a full backline there--we only need guitars and drumsticks). This seems challenging but also possible which is enough for me. We run out of the club after saying hi to a few friends, signing a few CDs and grabbing a bunch of items from the backstage. And everything's looking good until....

Wednesday 11:30pm...We've hit a standstill traffic jam. NO!!! but after 15 minutes of panic, the "stau" subsides and we're back on the road. Hit the gas pedal, Jaap! The show must go on!

Thursday 12:10am....We get to VPRO Studios and run in the door. The drums and amplifier is onstage, the audience (and DJ Jaap Boots) is waiting and we plug in and within 10 minutes we're playing the first chords of "Bruises." I can't believe it. No sleep, no soundcheck, running completely on fumes and we blast through 30 minutes of frenzied, punk rock, weathered, torn, beaten, battered but beautiful versions of four songs from the new album. I think it's archived on their website if you want to hear for yourself.

Thursday 1am....We're done. And we have a 90 minute drive ahead to Erik's house in Deventer where we'll be sleeping. We really should be going but--what's this?--they've just brought out snacks. Cheese! Leverworst! Fruit! Beer! Maybe we'll stay for just a FEW minutes. And it's always nice to chat with DJ Jaap (how can it be that two of my favorite people in Holland are named Jaap Bos and Jaap Boots? And the good times continue to roll)

Thursday 3am...Back in Jaap's car. Jaap and Erik up front, me with Jason and Linda in the back. I'm somehow staying awake.

and

Thursday 4am....My head hits the pillow in the attic at Erik's house. Over and out!

11.29.05: Brixton

Just got into town a few hours ago. It's 2pm and our soundcheck at the Windmill (for our 11th Hour, just-added gig at what is said to be the hippest joint in town these days) is not until 7pm. That gives us a full afternoon in an area of London that I've never seen before. We got some tips from our pal Ghurbir last night about good record stores and various food delights (Indian! Carribean! African!) that will tempt us within an hour or two. But, for now, we are all typing away in this internet cafe on the High Street. If you're perplexed and wondering why anyone with five hours of free time in a new city would spend any portion of that doing something that you can do at home in your living room, you haven't been on a long tour. Internet time is golden, infrequent and essential. As I type these words to you (my highest priority, dear readers), my bandmates are paying bills, greeting family and loved ones, checking football scores, booking hotels and maybe even reading these very diary entries (a moebius strip of activity that will soon cause the world to implode).

Anyway, we've all bought only 30 minutes of time, limiting our connection to the high-speed umbilical cord. And then we're outta here. Really. No kidding. The strange thing is that I'm just not tempted to buy many CDs today after my shopping spree in the West End last week. There are a lot of good neighborhoods for whiz-bang, fast-and-frenzied shopping in this world. Haight Street in San Francisco, St Mark's Place in New York City and any Amoeba store in California comes to mind. But I'm happiest walking down Berwick Street in London (Selectadisc and a few others), taking a left onto Broadwick for Sounds of the Universe and then ducking back down to Oxford Street to pick up the bargains at HMV and Virgin. Made that route in under two hours last week. Might be the first time on this tour that I actually lost some pounds (currency joke....uh, never mind).

Hey, I see that my time is running out. And I'd love to tell you about the gigs in Birmingham and Bedford or the sad, tearful goodbye to Nicole Victor at the train station in Rugby (or was it the rugby station in Train?) But I've got some jerk chicken to track down. And the Clash's "Guns of Brixton" is stuck in my head and ready to be my sidewalking soundtrack. See you in Holland.

11.27.05: The road to Birmingham

I played Liverpool for the first time last night. I don't know why it took so long--most likely because I usually play Manchester which is just about 30 miles down the road. Anyway, our only look at the city seemed as though it was going to be the short stroll from the venue to the yuppie snack shack where we had dinner. The gig was over and we were driving in the van to our hotel which was about a half hour South of the city and on the way to Birmingham where we are playing tonight.

When you're on the road for eight weeks, it's so easy to just go for the path that offers the fewest detours. Sleep and TV and internet connection and a warm, strong shower and a good snack down the road often wins out over a rambling, unplanned day of tourism. It shouldn't be that way but it's often the way it works out. I just read an interview with Frank Black where he said he rarely leaves the hotel when he's on tour. I'm not nearly that bed but sometimes I have to kick myself to get out the door as often as I should. And, so, when we were driving back to the hotel I was surprised but ultimately grateful when Erik and Linda made a strong lobby for a return to Liverpool the next day for some Beatles tourism on the Magical Mystery Tour bus adventure. What's an extra hour of driving when you can see the Woolworth's where Cynthia Lennon sold perfume while she was married to John.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it was two hours well spent. The tour guide and his driver were both old friends of the Beatles and were able to pepper much of the commentary with "and Yoko once told me...." and "your driver Les was born in the same hospital on the same day as Paul McCartney. And you know that they sometimes switch babies at those places." Homes, schools and venues of the fab four, 251 Menlove Avenue, Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields (I thought it was in New York!)--you name it, for two hours it was Beatles Beatles Beatles. I was particularly impressed to see the pub where Ringo's mother worked that ended up on the cover of Sentimental Journey. Don't know why. And I got all choked up when "In My Life" came over the bus speakers while we were driving past all of the childhood sites of the band members. Hey, sleeplessness always makes me melancholy and unless someone offers up a Led Zep or ELO tour tomorrow morning, I'm expecting a full night's sleep in Birmingham.

11.26.05: The road to Liverpool

THE ROAD TO LIVERPOOL--I've been doing this tour diary for the last ten years. Now I guess it would be called a blog. I don't know when a diary became a blog. I don't even know the difference or if there is one. Maybe a diary is about more personal things, stuff you would keep under lock and key and hide beneath your mattress. And a blog is more like personal things, stuff you should keep under lock and key and hide beneath your mattress. But you don't. Because it's a blog.

Beats me. But I try to do these things every day when I'm on tour. I try. Really, I do. But there are things that derail the progress. For example

DIARY KILLER #1--THE JUICE IS LOOSE, aka THE BATTERY IS DEAD---A long drive from Regensburg to Calais (where we slept before catching a ferry to the UK) would have been the perfect time to tell you all kinds of things about the show the night before. Let me tell you, I was worried. A Tuesday night in a small Oberpfalz town with competition from not one but TWO big football matches being shown in other rooms in the same venue AND another band playing downstairs should have been recipe for disaster or at least loads and loads of room for wandering in the audience. But I have been playing at the Alte Malzerei club for many years and they loyalty is mutual. We had a great, enthusiastic audience and responded with a set that included only the second live performance of "Charity" (by request). Score this one TOURING LIVE MUSIC 1, FOOTBALL 0. But I neglected to juice up the battery on my computer and was unable to tell you this story on the long drive the next day, a drive that included a
cheesecake & coffee stop in Heilbronn at the home of Edgar and Beate Heckmann.

DIARY KILLER #2--POOR OLD VAN, aka IS IT TIME TO PUT THIS BIG WHITE VAN OUT TO PASTURE?---For the third time in four weeks, the van died on us. As we were preparing to board the ferry to Dover, Thomas turned the key and--voila! (we were in France, after all)--nothing happened. The kind staff at the ferry towed us on board and then towed us off once we hit UK soil. And that was it. See you later. Adios Amigos (or cheers, mate!-- we were in England, after all). It was 2pm with a two hour drive ahead of us and there was some concern that band and equipment would not be able to make it to the Borderline in London. But I have only missed two gigs in 25 years (I'm proud of that track record) and it takes a lot to stop me from getting to the stage. We managed to get to a Hertz rental company, picked up a cargo van and left Thomas behind to get our van fixed. It was a pretty hectic day, all of us combining our ideas, skills and patience to get us on the road and at the club two hours before set time. We were frazzled, cold (especially Jason and Erik who rode in the back of the van--sorry, guys) and hungry but ready to vent all of the frustrations out on our instruments and entertain the London crowd with a ferocious punk rock set. Did I say hungry? Well, this particular gig was on Thanksgiving Day which in the US would be a day of gluttony--turkey and stuffing and cranberry and pie. It's a nice image but we had no complaints when we finally managed to slow down enough to eat a big, greasy schwarma at 1am as the van was running behind the Borderline. No complaints at all.

DIARY KILLER #3--LONDON SHOPPING--Hey, what are you gonna do? A free day in London could mean rest and recuperation (and diary writing) up where we were staying in Crouch End. But a quick combo of a double decker bus and a ride on the Piccadilly Line was all that separated us from the West End and a day of record/book/clothes shopping. And that's exactly what we all did. Jason bought nothing (!), Erik picked up some books (the Greil Marcus collection about Elvis and a few others) and the Rutles DVD that we've all been telling him about for weeks. Linda got a mod Keith Moon-esque target shirt as well as treating me to a very groovy heavy, oh-so-Mod jacket (I think it's called an anorak) that will keep me from freezing in Norway. And I made a blitzkrieg bop through the local record stores including my absolute favorite--Sounds of the Universe on Broadwick Street. This store is the retail outlet for the incredible Soul Jazz record label and they have an incredible collection of, well, soul and jazz and reggae and blue and R&B, all cherry-picked by the staff to include only the best of the best. It's a very dangerous place for me and I feel like I was being disciplined by only getting four CDs--a Best Of Dave And Ansel Collins, collection of Studio One female vocalists, a Michigan soul/funk comp from the early 70s and some crazy Haitian voodoo drumming workout. The day was topped off by some fiery, intense Balti food that inspired both sloth and hallucination and, really, you just don't want me writing the tour diary in THAT state, now do you?

DIARY KILLER #4--BARRY EVERITT--As you long-time readers (of both the diary AND the blog) would know, Barry was my tour manager/soundman/manager/agent throughout the last half of the 90s before he retired from the road to manage and book the Borderline. So, I have gone from seeing him every waking hour of most days of the year to only seeing him when we are together in the same city (usually London, NYC or Austin). I almost always stay at his place in Crouch End (north London) when we are in town and the wee hours following the Borderline show found me and Linda trading stories and shots of a fine Scotch whiskey with Barry and his fiancee (and our opening act) Bex Marshall until the sun came up. And I could have done the diary during this session but I really don't think that this diary or blog has to be a tell ALL--just tell SOME. When I can.

But now we're in the van, on our way to Liverpool. The new Fall album is on the stereo. And we are joined by Jason's sister Nicole who is in the UK on business. And it's a four hour drive in a working van. With a fully powered computer. Welcome back my friends to the blog that never ends.

11.22.05: The road to Regensberg

I've been getting email from people about the mysterious gap in the tour diary. It seems that all roads led to Rome and then none of them led back out again. Well, the tour diary is alive and well but it has been held captive by my laptop which is refusing to talk with phone lines in some kind of technological adolescent temper tantrum. I've tried everything. I've sent it to bed without a byte to eat (sorry, couldn't resist) and even threatened to send it out into the internet world without it's virus protection but it just won't budge. Damn phone lines. Damn AOL (you heard me!). But if a diary is written in a forest and nobody is there to download its content, does it exist? And the reality is that now that you are reading this (you, not being ME, of course), that means that I finally found a way to get the Mac to cough up the goods. Ha ha ha! Man is stronger than machine. Stanley Kubrick was right!

But the lack of working phone lines, internet connection and clubs with production offices has caused me to fall into creative inactivity and I have indeed stopped keeping this diary for the last few days. So, here are some highlights:

--WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WEATHER? Just a few days in Rome, we were tempted to explore the city in t-shirts (ideally with some kind of impossibly cute message like "My band went to Rome and all I got was this lousy sound check" or something like that). And now, just a few days later we are staring at nothing but white as the snow falls in Austria. Snow in the fields, snow on the van, snow everywhere. I wasn't dreaming of a White Thanksgiving, Bing Crosby, but it looks like we're heading that way. In other words, it's COLD. And beautiful.

--RIP LINK WRAY. He was one of the best guitarists ever and influenced everyone who influenced me (i.e. Townshend, Cipolina, Dylan, etc). I was tempted to open our show with "Rumble" in Innsruck last night and then found out that Dylan had done exactly that in London the last two nights. Damnit, he's ripped me off again.

--SPEAKING OF BOB. On every tour, there is always some other act that seems to following (or preceding) you in every town you play. It's inevitable--you're on tour, other people on tour, the roads are the same whether you're a superstar pop act or a punk band playing squats. And on this tour we seem to be sharing the highways with Sam Prekop, Teenage Fanclub, The Posies and Bob Dylan. He has been within a day of our shows in Hamburg, Zurich, Munich and now he's paving the way in London. He has even been covering my old Dream Syndicate song "Blind Willie McTell." What? You're saying that "Blind Willie McTell" is a Dylan song? Please, don't get in the way of my revisionist history.

--SPAZIOMUSICA. I was on a promo trip in 1996 and after a day of interviews in Milan, I was driven about one hour to a city called Pavia to play an acoustic set that would be broadcast on Italian TV. Just a basic hit-and-run. Get in the car, do the show and get back in time to get some sleep in Milan. But instead I ended having one of those very memorable evenings that happens when you meet very special people on tour. The club was called Spaziomusica and the owners were a wonderful couple named Bruno and Daniela. He had an impossibly bushy beard and looked long a poster of Karl Marx come to life, she cooked an incredible dinner. The show was great and I had been meaning to play the club again for a long time. Sadly, Bruno passed away a few years ago and I had exchanged some emails with Daniela since then but I didn't make my way back until last Sunday. The club had been handed off to a very cool guy named Simone who booked me to play one of the last shows in the club before being sold off. So, naturally, the evening was a little bit melancholy but also another great, memorable evening. I had joked that if we just didn't stop playing, the club could never close. We did end up playing a pretty long show and then outlasted most of the sold out audience, raising toasts to the memory of Bruno and a great club.

Well, that's it for now. I see the signs for Regensberg and I'm hoping to be able to send this one off. Man over machine and all that.

11.19.05: Bologna

On the way back from dinner last night, I was met at the entrance to the club by the members of the Tucson Flat Sellers, a band who presented me with their t-shirt and a recent set list. To my surprise, the set included about eight of my songs ("Tell Me When It's Over," "Make It Up To You" and "Daddy's Girl" caught my eye) as well as three by Green On Red. Now, had I known about these guys when we were stuck in standstill traffic outside of Bologna yesterday afternoon, I would have just called ahead and asked these guys to fill in for us. That's the way it would have been in some b-movie from the 70s (or some current film with Mark Wahlberg or Brad Pitt). "Hey, guys," I might have said, "I just (cough, gasp, wheeze) can't make it. You've got to carry on for me. Gipp one for the Wynnner." Or something like that. I can't resist a good pun, even when it makes no sense.

But we made it. The traffic subsided and there was time enough to change strings, untangle cords, untangle chords (bad muso pun), hunt down internet connections (failed for Mac kids SW and JV, success for PC Carsten) and even head across the street for dinner to a place that had seemed to have more in common with an American pizza parlor than an Italian field of epicurean dreams. Bright lights, laminated mass-produced menus, a table of screaming kids celebrating something right smack dab in the middle of the room. My bandmates went for the safe choices of pasta and pizza but I spotted one of my favorite dishes near the end of the menu. The area of Bologna and nearby Modena is known for their balsamic vinegar and the dish called Aceto alli balsamico (basically a steak smothered in a sauce of balsamic vinegar and other items) is a personal favorite. I remember having it one time in Reggio Emilia years ago and almost crying right there on the spot. I pointed it out to Thomas, who has become my Co-Conspirator of Carne on this trip and we both were rewarded with a meal that has vaulted to the Top Three of the tour.

Oh, did I talk about food again? Sorry.

A wonderfully schizo show last night. Didn't play any tunes from the Tucson Flat Sellers list but we did play a very soulful version of "Blue Drifter." Funny. It was Friday night in Bologna, a room packed with excited fans and I laid out a menu of ferocious rock and pop songs only to find that the gentle touch was the key to the collected hearts last night. You just never know. Steak in a pizza joint, ballads in a rock club (rock in a hard place?). That's the beauty of playing shows every night. Like fingerprints, snowflakes and Jason Victor guitar solos, no two gigs are the same.

11.18.05: The road to Bologna

It feels like we are starting a brand new tour. I mean, you just don't get four days in the same city in the midst of a tour. It doesn't happen. I think I must have moved to Rome. That's it. The hotel desk clerk seemed a little puzzled when I asked him to hold my mail until I return. And then they told me that I couldn't sublet my room. This is insanity. Don't they know that I now officially live in Rome--Rome is my home. Moon. June. Spoon. See? I can even work it into a song.

All right, all right. Three days does not a new residence make but, on the other hand, we made the most of those three days. We all scattered to different points of the city, each to come up with their own version of tourism, shopping, culinary thrills (don't get me started), only to meet up again each night at Big Mama where we played the last two nights. I can only speak for the lead vocal/drum contingent of the entourage but the highlights include: osso buco, boots (green), Joe Strummer CD (101ers retrospective), pizza with impossibly thin crust, Keats' deathbed/museum, sardine-packed subway trips and Herald Tribune scanning at the Spanish steps. Oh, and the soundtrack of the Maria Callas performance of Bellini that my friend Giancarlo gave to me. I couldn't understand the words but I think it was a tragic opera about someone in Rome who eats beyond the point of all possible appetite and then sees the perfect sandwich. Tragic, just tragic.

Ah, the deadly sins. I must repent.

As always, the shows at Big Mama were special events. As some of you know, I have played more shows at Big Mama than any other club in the world--I think I"m up to around 25 times at this point. And it's not your typical gig. The club is cozy, situated in a basement in the Trestevare zone of the city. Most of the audience is seated and the vibe is closer to a jazz or blues venue than the average rock club that we play. The management prefers bands to play two sets, something that I usually avoid but because I can't say no to the Big Mama, we ended up playing four sets in two nights, doing our best to avoid repetition. Here's how it all worked out

WEDNESDAY

set one
DEATH VALLEY RAIN - CINDY, IT WAS ALWAYS YOU - CALIFORNIA STYLE - WHAT COMES AFTER - WHATEVER YOU PLEASE - BRUISES - WIRED - YOUR SECRET - KILLING ME - NOTHING BUT THE SHELL - NO TOMORROW

set two
THE MEDICINE SHOW - THERE WILL COME A DAY - SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LINE - UNDER THE WEATHER - FREAK STAR - STARE IT DOWN - WHEN THE CURTAIN FALLS - THE DEEP END - THAT'S WHAT YOU ALWAYS SAY - AMPHETAMINE

encore
MERRITTVILLE

THURSDAY

set one
HALLOWEEN - CINDY, IT WAS ALWAYS YOU - WATCH YOUR STEP - BLIND WILLIE MCTELL - WHEN SHE COMES AROUND - WIRED - YOUR SECRET - BRUISES - KILLING ME - THERE WILL COME A DAY

set two
NO TOMORROW - THE AMBASSADOR OF SOUL - FREAK STAR - DROUGHT - 500 GIRL MORNINGS - WILD MERCURY - THE DEEP END - THAT'S WHAT YOU ALWAYS SAY - AMPHETAMINE - THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

encore
FOLLOW ME - WHEN YOU SMILE

There you go--43 songs, four sets, tourism, walking and visits with so many good friends (Helmut and Siggi from Berlin, Gianluca and the other Mosquitos and, of course, everyone at Big Mama). Thomas mentioned that sometimes staying in one place is more exhausting than changing cities every day. He might be right. But we're back in the van, I've got The Fall in the headphones and it's time to move on down the road.

11.16.05: All roads lead to Rome

Even the lengthiest of roads end up in Rome, it turns out. And with some van trouble sidelining us for a couple of hours today, the journey from Winterthur to Rome looks to be about 15 hours. No problem--We have two days off and there's plenty to amuse us in the van. Books (just finished "Farewell Waltz" by Milan Kundera), newspapers, magazines, candy, conversation, sleep--the possibilities are endless. And then there is the essential touring musician's buddy, the iPod which means it's time for another round of iPod Roulette. Let's see what pops up on the random shuffle setting today.

EARLY IN THE MORNING--The Gap Band....This one still sounds as incredible today as it did when I first heard the 12" back in the early 80s. Just the hardest rocking bit of Houston funk that you're ever gonna hear. They made a few other perfect singles ("Burn Rubber" and "You Dropped a Bomb On Me") and then dropped off the radar, as far as I know.

SURF'S UP--The Beach Boys.....I saw Brian Wilson play this at Carnegie Hall last year when he and an 18-piece band performed "Smile." It was amazing. And my friend Dave Rave saw Brian himself wandering around 7th Avenue that afternoon, confused and trying to find a way into Carnegie Hall. Other than practice, that is. Dave Rave also once gave a cassette of old blues songs to Bob Dylan who was blown away and gratefully replied (add your own Dylan imitation here) "Tapes. I've got no tapes." There are a million Dave Rave stories. Those are but two of them.

The song is still going. I'm typing quickly today. Must be the espresso I just had at our first Italian road-stop of the trip. I've waxed poetic about the Italian road stops before but they really are amazing. No AM/PM mini-markets here. Gourmet sandwiches (I just had one with prosciutto and provolone cheese), great coffee and you can buy a 25-pound salami if that's what you think you might need to get you down the road.

GIVE ME A KISS--Van Morrison.....forgot about this one. I used to play "His Band And the Street Choir" all the time when I was a kid but this song is one I hadn't heard in years. I go in and out of phases where I play a lot of Van the Man. It's kind of an all-or-nothing thing and maybe it's time to go back to some of these albums.

ICE AGE--Joy Division....I listened to TONS of Joy Division back in the days right before the Dream Syndicate began and they were a huge influence. I remember listening to "Closer" late at night shortly after Ian Curtis committed suicide. The lights were off, the songs were dark and creepy and when I turned on the lights, a thousand cockroaches scuttled to the corners of the room. Scared the crap out of me.

WHITE RABBIT--Jefferson Airplane.....This one always makes me think I'm watching a "Best Of the Sixties" commercial on TV. I mean, I love the song but it's almost the cliched soundtrack for All Things Sixties. Even though I love a handful of their songs, I never was a huge Airplane fan. Everyone freaked out over Jorma Kaukonen's guitar playing but my favorite Bay Area freakout kings were Fogerty and Cipolina. On the other hand, the ending makes me think of "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" and that's never a bad thing.

SOUL THROUGH THE BULLET HOLE--Mystic Chords of Memory.....I don't even know where this one came from. What the hell is this? Could be from any of the last four decades but I'm guessing it's by a current band that had that very intention. Why don't I know anything about this? Must have been something I snagged from Jason's iPod. Very trippy stuff. Lots of flutes.

RAISED EYEBROWS--The Feelies.....Now, you're all saying "Damn, doesn't Steve have anything on his iPod that came out in the last 25 years?" I do. I swear I do. I guess that the machine is just getting a little nostalgic. Must be the big white moon that's passing over the landscape on the left.

and that's about it for this edition of iPod Roulette. We still have six hours to Rome but book lights abound as do other distractions. And the lure of a day off on the other end. And it's time to sign off to the dulcet tones of "Harriet Brown" by Opal--hey, Kendra .

11.13.05: The road to Winterthur

Do you know that city? I hadn't before. It's in Switzerland, not far from Zurich. I have only played about ten shows in Switzerland in my life. The first was in 1986 when the Dream Syndicate opened for the Pogues. We finished our set, packed up our gear and got ready to go out for dinner. As we were just about out the door, the promoter came up to us with a look of panic on his face. The Pogues had (surprise, surprise) been stopped at the border and he wondered if we were willing to do a second set if they never showed up. We had played a pretty frenetic set and as much as we would have liked to play more, we were more interested in getting some good, local chow. We said that we would be willing to play more after dinner if it was necessary. Well, dinner lasted over two hours and we were surprised when we came back to the venue to find an angry crowd milling about the street. The Pogues still hadn't shown up and we were a little buzzed from dinner and the local wine but began to think about setting up again. The show must go on even if it's not our own. But as we mulled over the logistics, the Pogues showed up. They looked much more weary and buzzed and absent and disoriented than we were but piled off the bus and got ready for a set that would begin three hours after the last note of our show. We would have stuck around but there other adventures to be had.

I'm listening to the new live album by Chris Cacavas, featuring our Jason on guitar. It's a great set, recorded at the Laboratorium in Stuttgart last year and it comes with a DVD as well. You really should pick it up. In a perfect world, this would be his "Frampton Comes Alive."

And in today's episode of Old Dogs, New Tricks--After 23 years of touring, I've found a rhythm and method for most things I do. It makes the whole touring thing that much easier. Most of the things we do are done with minimum time and even less margin for error (ah, I'm making it sound like the Marines. Where do I sign up?) But our new bass player Erik Van Loo is having an effect on me. I had always shunned pedal boards which, for the non-musos out there, are the pre-fab containers or platforms that hold all of your various guitar effects boxes. They're very organized and neat but always seemed just too, uh, professional for me. I thought that one such item began the slippery slope to being Yngvie Malmsteen or something like that. But when Erik offered to put together a homemade version of plywood and velcro-like covering the day we left his house in Deventer, I figured it was worth a shot. And now I've learned to love the convenience and the absence of pedals sliding all around the stage. Likewise, I had been teasing him at the start of the tour about having a thermos from which he sipped tea during the long drives. And then I found myself abruptly victimized by Thermos Envy and bought a very nice one in Vienna last week. I just finished enjoying some delicious instant chicken soup. Now, these are pretty simple New Tricks, but you get tricky where you can.

11.12.05: The road to Munich

Just got out of the truck stop after getting some fried eggs and now I've got some gospel music playing through my ears while I watch the green fields pass by the windshield as we head South. Where are we? Kentucky? Alabama? No, my friends, we haven't suddenly broken through some tenth dimension into another universe. We are right here in Bavaria, getting close to Munich in the middle of the afternoon. It was my friend and Gutterball bandmate Bryan Harvey who once pointed out that The South is the same in every country. It tends to be the part of the country that moves a little more slowly, eats heavier food, is looked down upon by the Northerners for being a little less sophisticated and worldly. Bryan was born and still lives in the South (RIchmond, Virginia) and he should know. Personally, I dig Richmond and I dig Sicily and I dig Andalucia and I dig Bavaria and all of the other Southern areas that I visit on these tours. Hey, I'm a native Southerner as well. Southern California, that is.

The K4 in Nurnberg is one of those clubs that I play on almost every tour and at this point it always feels like coming home. It's a no-frills room with a small stage shaped in a semicircle. It almost feels like a community theater or a place to hold a political rally. The stage is only about ten inches high and you get to get right in the face of the audience. It's not all that unlike preaching in a Southern church, when you get right down to it. We were greeted at the club by Wolf who had seen this very diary and picked out a few of our favorite things for the backstage spread. Along with the usual rolls and cheese and ham and coffee and soda and candy bars, he had tracked down some guacamole, gummi bears and that day's edition of USA Today. Wow. And after the show, he gave me some CDs of gospel music from the incredible "Goodbye Babylon" collection, the very music that is giving me that old time religion at this very moment. What a guy!

Edgar and Beate Heckmann were at the gig and showed us an early edit of "Killing Me" from the DVD of the Geislingen show. It looked great and Edgar (the Scorcese of Schwaben) hopes to have his Director's Cut finished and for sale by next Spring. Beate gave us a box of SOMETHING that we're not supposed to open until December 6. Any of you taking bets to see if we have the discipline and patience to wait that long? It could get ugly. We turn to savages on drives longer than five hours.

By the time we have a day off on Monday, we will have played 20 shows in 21 days in seven different countries. I thought that last night's show might have shown a touch of the exhaustion that one would expect at this point but, in fact, it was a spirited, eccentric, scrambled (not fried) set that included some new morsels of musical goodness like "Ambassador Of Soul" and "Still Holding On To You." It's important to avoid the Mid-Tour Crisis of ennui and routine by introducing some new elements of surprise now and then. In the meantime, set your compass for the South! The devil may have gone down to Georgia but we are heading into Bavaria.

11.12.05: The road to Nuremberg

There's a whole lot of sleeping going on the van right now. In fact, I'm typing this in my sleep right now. Last night we stood on clouds in our pajamas while the school bus was driven by Tom Petty and then everyone started talking backwards and then all of our mothers baked us pies from which lizards began to emerge and sing the second verse of "Come On Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners. It was all pretty wild and....oh wait, that was a dream. I think I just woke up.

Really great show in Zagreb last night. We played at the KSET (pronounced "set" as opposed to the more Rock Radio sounding "K-Set" that I said on stage last night). The club has a capacity of 300 but we had about 350 in the room last night and it was quite packed. Funny club. There is really no backstage and with that kind of congestion, we pretty much just stood by the side of the stage when we were finished and tried to appear to relax and consider whether to return for an encore. Everyone was watching! It was like....well, it was like being naked in your dream! Maybe I WAS dreaming. Oh, I'm so confused. Anyway, we love to play and went back for two encores before the midnight curfew hit like an overripe pumpkin and the house lights came on and the night was over. Otherwise, I think we'd still be playing. But instead of guitars, we'd be holding fire hoses made of brie cheese and....oops, fell asleep again. Maybe it's time to close the computer before I say anything embarrassing

11.10.05: The road to Zagreb

Gather around my friends and let your pal Steve tell you some stories about the Old Days, the wild and woolly times of the 80s. Remember the 80s? Goofy fashion, quirky bands, right wing politicians, Bon Jovi videos and--oh, wait. That's right now. I get so confused. But one big difference is that back in the 80s there wasn't a united Europe and that was bad news for touring bands. Every border crossing involved dragging out a multipage document called an ATA Carnet that listed all of your equipment and had to pored over for hours by guards who would keep you waiting for hours and then would come into the van and stare at you for a few minutes with a look of utter contempt before letting you go. If your drive involved a border crossing or two, you knew that meant a 6am departure from your hotel "just in case." Ah, the 80s. There are some things that just do not evoke nostalgia and I have really come to love the ease of open European borders and a single currency (in most countries, anyway).

Well, yesterday, the 80s were BACK. We had to cross from Slovenia into Croatia and then again into Serbia. We had done that trip two years ago and a smile and a wave of the hand was enough to send us on our way. But we had been warned that the borders had become tougher and, sure enough, we spent many hours putting together documents and having the documents studied, passed around and studied again. This was hell and tedium for Carsten and Thomas who had to deal with the guards while the band and I dealt with the tedium by listening to DJ Jason V who sat in the front seat and gave us selections from our various iPods. Lots of Derek and the Dominoes, The Who, Isley Brothers, Steely Dan and--hey, wait, now it's the SEVENTIES! I'm getting so confused. Anyway, we managed to make it to Belgrade in time for a quick sound check, a few slices of pizza and (for me) five lightning fast interviews for local radio, TV and press. In other words, it was a day of mind-numbing slow-mo activity followed by hurry-up frenzy, just the right amount of schizophrenia to set us up for what we all agreed was the best night of the tour, so far. We had 600 people jammed into the Dom Omladine club in Belgrade, pouring out their hearts and love and enthusiasm. We responded with one of our best sets and some highwire antics, particularly when Erik leapt to the top of my amp and then up on top of his bass amp. It looked like fun to me and I followed suit, only to watch my Fender Vibroverb tumble from beneath my feet, sending me falling into a heap of amplifier, mic stand and guitar. Nervous? My bandmates saw the tour (and a few broken bones) flash before their eyes but I managed to fall just right and miss only about two bars of "500 Girl Mornings." See? You pay for a rock show and you get a circus. Ta-Da!!! Anyway, the final score was Belgrade Audience 600, Border guards nil. Ta-da, indeed!

Now it's Thursday and the border crossings are treating us much better today. The young guard at the Serbian customs booth was happy to get an autographed CD and that's all right by me. Let me put it this way--I've got the new Franz Ferdinand on my headphones and I'm digging the vague nostalgia but as far as long waits at borders? You can keep that for the 20th Century. I'm a 21st Century Man!

11.09.05: The road to Belgrade

One of the strange things about the indie rock touring circuit is that there are many bands and performers working in your circuit that you begin to feel that you know even though you have never spent time together. I would include the Walkabouts in that group. We are both signed to German labels, have German agents and play many of the same clubs around Europe, sharing many of the same friends and have both been doing our thing for the last 20 years. I always here things like "Oh, the Walkabouts were here last week" or "You and the Walkabouts have played our club more than any other band" and I'm sure they hear the same about me. And I have exchanged many emails with the band's singer/songwriter Chris Eckman over the years (he also did a great cover of "Follow Me" for the tribute CD that came out last year) but the truth is that he and I have only crossed path for three brief moments. We had a five-minute conversation in a hotel lobby in Thessaloniki, shared a stage at a festival in 2001 and I saw one of their gigs in Groningen back in 1999. That's it and yet I feel like I really know the guy.

Well, we finally got to hang out in Ljubljana last night. Chris lives there most of the year with his Slovenian wife Anda and he was off the road, enjoying life in his adopted city. He came to our sound check with the current copy of the International Herald Tribune in hand, knowing of course that this is one of the things most sought after by all touring US bands. He joined us for dinner, hung out backstage and then joined us for wild, Skynyrd-esque (three guitars, dude!) versions of "500 Girl Mornings" and "The Days of Wine and Roses" and stayed with us into the wee hours at the club. In other words, we spent more time together last night than all the previous times in the last 20 years combined. I hope we meet up again soon.

It reminds me of my one meeting with Jeffrey Lee Pierce. We were both LA natives, had many friends in common, shared a label and producer (Ruby/Chris D) and many of the same influences (although Gun Club was a big influence on me and I'm not sure if Jeffrey felt the same way about my band). We had the same booking agent, we played the same clubs. We were doing the indie touring thing at a time when not many bands were daring to blaze the trails of "New Wave Nights" and "Half-Price Beer Night for Ladies, featuring Live Music" and stuff like that. And, yet, we never crossed paths until we were both on the bill for a "live" (read: lip synch) TV show in Germany back in 1984. Check out this bill for the day's show: Dream Syndicate, Gun Club, Pete Shelley and JETHRO TULL! Wow. Anyway, Jeffrey and I met up sometime after sound check and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon in a local bar, drinking German beer and, well, not being in the best shape for our TV show. But we had a great conversation, traded stories and lived a lifetime of friendship in two short hours. I saw him briefly a few years later but, otherwise, that was our one meeting. He was a very cool guy, made some of the best albums ever and I was really sad when I heard that he had passed away long before his time back in 1996. I was on tour at the time and did a mournful version of his "Mother of Earth" that night.

11.08.05: Ljublana

I usually write these missives from the back seat of our big white van but I know that there are no AOL connections from Slovenia (or Serbia or Croatia, for that matter) so my only way of getting online in the next couple of days will be to keep an eye open for internet cafes and backstage computers. This installment is being written from the lobby of the GitHotel outside of Ljublana. Frank Sinatra is singing "Strangers In the Night" from across the lobby. Well, he's not exactly here. This isn't one of those "Jim Morrison is alive and living in Bolivia" kind of stories. We all know that Frank is alive and well and tending bar in Hoboken. But, for now, it's his voice that is kicking me into typing mode as I watch the clock run down on my 30 minutes. Tick tick tick indeed.

You've read Linda's account of the Geislingen show and evening and I can only add that it was one of my favorite shows of the tour and I'm glad it was captured by the Blue Rose camera crew for an upcoming DVD. I especially hope they captured the moment when somebody in the audience handed me a big beer bottle just before my solo on "That's What You Always Say" and zeal, enthusiasm and reckleckness (all close relatives of each other), I smashed the bottle against the body of my guitar and it exploded into millions of shards and hops and grains. It was.....SO ROCK. Ah, the joys of playing a cheap Strat these days.

Did you know that typewriter keyboards around here reverse the "Z" and "Y?" Now you do. Let me just saz (I mean say) that there is a whole lot of backspacing and deleting going on here today.

The show in Vienna last night was a blast. Monday nights are usually absolute dogs--the worst night of the week to play. People are wiped out from the previous weekend, feeling guilty for work/sleep/family time missed over the weekend and saving up for the following weekend. The dead day of the week but you can't tell that to Vienna, apparently. The show was crowded, lively and the DJ-infused hangout after the gig was hard to leave. We had indulged in some of the local Austrian pastry during the day, big doughy things swimming in yellow vats of vanilla cream. Absolutely decadent and deadly but the sugar rush carried us through the final moments.

Speaking of final moments, my lobby computer session is running out. And Billy Joel is singing "Uptown Girl," two things that tell me it's time to sign off.

11.06.05: Geislingen

Hi Everyone......it's Linda here, guest writing for Mr. Wynn. Steve has kindly allowed me to write today's entry in his tour diary....I just felt like telling a story.

Saturday night in Geislingen was a rowdy event presided over by our good friends (and promoters) Fride, Rosaria and Joe. This night was even more special due to the fact that the show was filmed by Edgar at Blue Rose, and his posse of talented friends....a 6 camera affair! whoa....professional, indeed. We'll keep all of you updated on any possible release of this really fantastic show.

But the most whacked out part of our night happened when we got back to the hotel. It's the kind of place with loads of kitschy local crafts - but no one behind the reception desk to give you your key. Once we located our room keys we were immediately struck by the revelry ensuing down the hallway, people clapping along to racous folk tunes. We were drawn to find the origin of the cheesey synth sounds and the woman who was belting out this old favorite, challenging the top volume of the drum machine.

It didn't take long to pin down Ground Zero of the polka party.....Salon II, next door to the Frustuck room. A nice guy on his way into the room with a fresh drink informed us that this was an 'end of the fishing season party' .

The party room was filled mostly with retirees dancing to the musical duo in the corner, a middle aged man playing keyboard and an older woman with a dyed-black beehive and heavy make-up, singing. We hung back in the doorway with our sweaty clothes and guitars on our backs just taking it all in. The older couples were very sweet, dancing together, and we joined them in singing "Que Sera Sera", leaving us all feeling very warm and sentimental....until a hotel employee informed is that "if we wanted a drink we could head over to the hotel bar", her way of saying "get lost, punks!!". This is a way of communicating that I understand VERY well, as my hometown of Minneapolis was settled by Germans and various Scandinavians. Don't let our nice exterior fool you!

So we reluctantly left the fishing club members and headed back to our rooms a floor above to get a good nights sleep before the long drive to Vienna today.

But....not so fast, Tex!

We discovered that the fiesta sounds were very audible from our room, and that the gentle sway of Que Sera Sera had been replaced by an insistent 'Techno-Polka' throb! And then the chanting and stomping started up. It was 2:30 am and the 80 year-old fishing club couples were keeping the rockers from their beauty sleep!

Then the musical duo went for gold and hit the crowd with The Village People's, "YMCA". Pure pandemonim broke out one floor beneath us.....shouting, clapping, singing, and I kid you not...SCREAMING shot up through the ducts, making it sound like a KISS concert circa 1975. The sound was best appreciated in the tiled confines of the bathroom where the reverb tripled the sound.

We were so startled by the sounds that we figured it could not be originating with that party of octegenarians, so we decided that we had to see it with our own eyes. We stumbled downstairs, barefoot, just in time to catch their party-closing song......"My Way". And I'm hear to tell you, they definitely did.

11.05.05: The road to Geislingen

"I've always relied on the kindness of strangers." You know that quote, of course. One of those fantastic movie lines like "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" or "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille" or "This one goes to 11." But I digress. Again. Anyway, we are currently in the van enjoying the fine things given to us by our good friends. Once again, Beate Heckmann (wife of Blue Rose kingpin Edgar) has come through with a GIGANTIC bag of candy and cookies and gummi products (Linda's favorite, by the way) and we all joke that we'll never get through the whole thing but after two days, it appears we are making a pretty good dent which means that we're going to start looking more and more like the (reunited) Pixies every day. Ouch. Did I say that? I must be feeling catty today. We're also digging the sunflower seeds given to us by Dietmar (personally roasted by his daughter Johanna) as well as the last bits of our chocolate letters from Erik's sister Astrid. See? You bring us snacks and you get your name in the tour diary. It's just like a corporate sponsorship.

It's a very chatty van today. The mention of Erik's sister has us now discussing the Astrid who was dating Stu Sutcliffe back in the Beatles' Hamburg days. And now we're discussing Klaus Voorman and wondering his connection to the first album by Trio ("Da Da Da") and now Carsten says that he was the producer of the band's first record. How about that? It's just like being in the van with us. Want a cookie?

Earlier I was listening to the Ramones' "Rocket To Russia." What an amazing album. One of the questions that I get asked most often in interviews is "Who is your favorite lyricist?" I love stuff like that. I'm never one to shy away from making a list (Top 5 moments in "High Fidelity?") And I always list the obvious: Dylan, Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen, Becker/Fagen, Paul Simon. Okay, maybe those weren't so obvious. But one that I always forget is Dee Dee Ramone. I'm not kidding. Stop laughing--yes, you in the back row. Stop laughing. It really doesn't get much better than "Sitting here in Queens/Eating refried beans/We're in all the magazines/Gulping down thorazines/ We ain't got no friends/ Our troubles never end/ No Christmas cards to send/ Daddy likes men." ("We're a Happy Family.") Amazing.

File last night's show in Ebensee under the "You never know" banner just like that one in Erfurt. None of us had ever been to the beautiful, remote Austrian town before and it was hard to predict what would happen. But the turnout was great--lots of people, very enthusiastic and kinetic, dancing throughout the show. The band is really beginning to hit its stride which is good since tonight's show in Geislingen is going to be videotaped for a possible DVD release. Let's see what happens. "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."

11.04.05: The road to Ebensee

I got a CD of the Green On Red reunion show from an undisclosed source last night before my show in Brackenheim. Hey, it's not quite Deep Throat (the source, not the movie) or Watergate but I've gotta protect my sources now and then. I mean, do you think this daily adventure is a gospel sheet? No kiss and tell, here. I don't reveal my sources and I'm not about to do prison time for keeping them under wraps. Not me (insert James Cagney accent here), nah you ain't gonna get me, copper.

Oh, wait. This isn't Cagney or Watergate. It's just a CD. But what a CD--hey, these guys are not only my friends, recording/touring mates or the first band that I released on my Down There label (other than my own band, of course). No, I was and still am a huge fan. And I was pretty excited to hear that they were reuniting with the not-quite-original lineup (Dan Stuart, Chuck Prophet, Chris Cacavas, Jack Waterson) a few months ago in Tucson. I have been hanging out with Dan lately in New York since he became a resident of Staten Island a few years back. He's doing great, has settled seamlessly into the wheres and whys of the secret and legendary pathways of downtown Manhattan, and has lost none of his firecracker wit. But he hadn't played a show or recorded a record since the mid 90s.

But MAN this recording is great. As most of you know, Chris and I have worked closely together in recent years and it's nice to hear his singing and playing in the context in which I first encountered him. What a band! I mean, it's not like this group has been hanging in mothballs. Chris and Chuck have been in the studio and on the road since the band broke up and I know that Jack has been playing all the time. This is one thing that concerns me when I think about reuniting the Dream Syndicate. My former bandmates (of early and later lineups) have been mostly inactive. Dennis Duck does shows now and then with Human Hands (and did some touring with me in the 90s) and Mark Walton toured with the Continental Drifters but the other members have stayed off the road. But you never know.

But here's a scoop, my friends. Dan Stuart and I have been writing songs together and are planning on doing a new Danny & Dusty record next year. You heard it here first. Gossip? Scandal? Hey, I'm not telling. Or revealing my sources.

11.03.05: The road to Brackenheim

Hey, you never know. Sometimes you get to a town and then check out the venue and think, "well, this one might be a slow night." And that's the feeling I had last night before the show at the Museumkeller in Erfurt. The town itself is a mid-sized city in the former East, grey and sleepy and seemingly with more sausage stands per block than anyplace I've ever seen. The club? Tiny, friendly and more akin to a private clubhouse than a rock venue. And when we started playing, the audience shyly stood to the right of the stage and seemed ready to watch us from this voyeuristic vantage point, beer in hand and distance maintained. But at some point during the first song ("Death Valley Rain" for those of you keeping score), the leaders of the flock made their way to the dancefloor and then it happened. I saw a guy in a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Now, this isn't strange. There are Deadheads everywhere but something about that shirt at that moment told me everything was gonna be okay. It turned out to be a great show to a great audience. And, even more important, last night was the night that THIS version of the Miracle 3 (with Erik Van Loo) became its own band. I can't describe it but something just clicked and the music turning into a THING, a SOUND, rather than just a collection of parts. It was so exciting to me because it meant that anything and everything was suddenly possible. The hardest thing about replacing band members is losing that ease of communication and unspoken chemistry and reaction but the exciting thing is that you get to find some new tricks and new ways of connecting. We hit that point last night and now things will start getting interesting.

11.02.05: The road to Erfurt

Today's diary entry is accompanied by the sixties sound of Cher's "You Better Sit Down Kids" on the headphones. I bought the CD yesterday in Dresden along with a collection of Dave Edmunds' recordings with Love Sculpture. I could have chosen the earthier guitar hero sounds of the latter but somehow I figured that the more flamboyant sound of the former might be more inspiring. Expect a costume change or two sometime around the third paragraph. I'm thinking something with feathers.

Lots of things to talk about. You know what I mean by "talk," right? It's that thing you do with your fingers. Oh, you call that typing? Semantics, semantics, semantics.

We played in Halle last night at the Objekt 5. A small club that was packed to the rafters, partially due to a local businessman who had bought 100 tickets for the employees of a company that was having it's meeting in the town. I'm glad to get in on that corporate entertainment thing I've been hearing about. It must have been a shock for the workers who, after a long day of meetings, were face-to-face, ear-to-ear, beer-to-beer with a loud, freaky rock show. But everyone had a great time and it was one of the best shows of the tour. We opened with the gentle sound of "The Blue Drifter" (I'm really glad to have that back in the set) and then ramped up from there. By the end, everything was a glorious mess, cables tangled and audience disrupted by a band breaking that fourth wall that usually stops at the front of the stage. Hold on to your beer, corporate Halle, here comes the Miracle 3.

We had played the Objekt 5 a few years ago and it's a great club. Really nice people who are very enthusiastic about the music that they bring to their town. And it turns out that they have an amazing collection of, shall we say, unauthorized CDs by Bob Dylan and others which they quite kindly allowed Jason and I to transfer to our computers. Have you wondered what happens backstage at one of our shows? Bacchanalia be damned on this particular night--we were hovered over our Macs and feeding byte after byte of Bob onto our hard drives.

And strangely enough, Cher is singing "Like A Rolling Stone" right now. How about that?

We're in a traffic jam right now. They call it a "stau" here in Germany and they're just a regular part of every driving day. Kinda rough for Thomas since he had to get up at 5am and drive the van back to Dresden (80 miles) to get the van fixed and then got back in time to pick us up at noon. The van had to be fixed as the turbo something-or-other (I was born into a family that dealt automotive parts but I haven't had a car in 12 years). I guess that lack of a properly functioning turbo something-or-other kept us from driving at top speed. Now it's fixed. And we're stopped in traffic.

We're on our fourth costume change by now, in case you've lost count.

11.01.05: The road to Halle

It turns out that last night was the third time that we have played a "Halloween" show in Dresden. And the kindly folks at the Star Club (where i have played many shows over the years) once again put a pumpkin in our backstage area. A few years ago I brought the big seasonal gourd onto the stage and used it an oversized slide during a solo, making a huge mess of the stage and my guitar. Hey, you learn from your mistakes. And then you make new ones. This time I gently placed the pumpkin on the PA column for everyone to enjoy--the candle glowing and adding to the light show. And then during the solo on "That's What You Always Say" I reached for a glass at the front of the stage and used THAT for a slide. A few years ago in Seattle, this stunt backfired when the glass broke in my hand and made for a glorious technicolor bloody special effects moment. This time I tried to show the wisdom of my years and experience and gently placed it on the drum riser at the end of the solo--well, gently from a three-foot drop. But my intentions were good. And the glass still shattered all over the stage. Sometimes you just can't win.

I've noticed that Dream Syndicate songs get less of an enthusiastic response in the former East Germany cities which makes sense since easy access to independent records didn't really begin until 1989, one year after the band broke up. The fans (and, actually, most of the fans on this tour) seemed happier to hear songs from the last three albums which is a good feeling. Still, it was October 31 and "Halloween" had to be played. It's a tradition, after all.

10.31.05: The road to Dresden

Strange routing in the last 48 hours. Okay, everyone, open your geography textbook to page 241. Now, look for Berlin. Good, very good. And draw a line from Berlin down to Frankfurt. Fantastic, students. And now, finally, I want you to draw a line from Frankfurt to Dresden. Now, see how close Dresden is to Berlin? And how long a trajectory Frankfurt reflects between those two cities. Okay, class dismissed....In other words, we're all spending a lot of time in the van these days but, like most of the bands I've had, we're all pretty good at entertaining ourselves during the drive. Jason vacillates between listening to music (it was Aerosmith yesterday), reading the new Uncut and studying music-recording programs like Reason and Logic on his computer. Erik at this very moment has headphones on (Bob Marley) and is nearing the end of the book (Nick Hornby's "A Long Way Down") that he is reading. Linda is deeply engrossed in a book ("Nickeled and Dimed") about the inability to survive on the low minimum wage in the US. I just finished Karen Schoemer's book and have been listening to Stephen Malkmus (his latest album is great) while writing an article for Magnet Magazine. Carsten updates the accounts and dreams about trains while Thomas amazingly sits behind for the wheel for every one of these miles. And somehow, all of those distractions pass the time until it's almost dark (at 5:30pm!) and Dresden is only 30 kilometers away. I've always said that among the many skills learned from years of touring, the ability to entertain yourself for hours and hours is near the top (right up there with being able to sleep in any location/position, choose the proper snack at any roadstop and finding ways to play a C# scale against a song in D-minor--which reminds me that it's Halloween and I know one song that will be in the set tonight).

Last night's show in Frankfurt was a subdued set, maybe a little drop from the celebration and excitement of the shows in Hamburg and Berlin. But I found some new ways to slide around guitar solos that had seemed like a dead end before, granted a request for "Like A Rolling Stone" (and surprised myself by remembering most of the words), led the band through a deconstruction of "Burning Love" and ate some really good Pad Thai. And we had our first visit from the man who has been helping to take the music from the inside of my skull to your CD players, the one and only Edgar Heckmann from Blue Rose Records along with his wife Beate. They had been up until 4am the night before, taking part in a Heilbronn activity that involves jukeboxes, Weissebiers and schnapps. In other words, the slightly subdued evening may have suited them as well. Oh, and I got a CD of a Dylan show that had happened two days before (thanks Andrea) and a DVD of various appearances by the Gun Club and the Clash (thanks, Helmut). See? There you go--you take your entertainment and your distractions and your highs and lows wherever they may appear. Hey, did I say that Dresden is 30km away? Check that--we're there!

10.30.05: The road to Frankfurt

Lots of great things out here. The Isley Brothers are on the headphones (not many grooves better than "Live It Up" or "I Turned You On" and their version of "Summer Breeze" is a revelation, insanely great and improbable at the same time). Or how about seeing the Reichstag on a sunny Sunday morning from the right window of the van. Or maybe the joy of a great book--I'm currently reading an advance copy of "Great Pretenders," my friend Karen Schoemer's book about the forgotten, unhip and long-forgotten 50s/60s pop idols like Connie Francis, Fabian and Pat Boone (and, at the same time, about her own life). Or even the exciting realization at some point at the Knaack club last night--maybe it was during a deep, wiggy, trippy version of "Halloween"--that I was playing music with my friends in Berlin, friggin' Berlin! You forget things like that sometimes. A club is a club, after all and on a good night, the music erases location and nation and all pragmatic issues. But every so often you come in for a momentary mental landing and it all becomes very clear and very amazing.

Yes, those are good things. But two things brought me great joy in the last 12 hours:

1) DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME. Man, there's nothing like getting that extra hour, especially during a long tour. And when Erik mentioned on the walk back from the club that it wasn't, in fact 3am but rather 2am I was so happy. More sleep. More time to scan the internet for articles and opinion pieces on the New York Times website that I can read on this long drive to Frankfurt. More time to get enough sleep to allow me to drag myself down to the breakfast table before the van was scheduled to leave at 10:30am. Which leads me to the next great thing:

2) GUACAMOLE. I love the stuff. Maybe more than almost anything in the world. I dig it with chips. I dig it below melted cheese on a warm tortilla. I dig it at all hours of the day and freak out when I see a perfectly ripe avocado at my neighborhood bodega when I'm home, plunking down the cash for a couple and rushing home to figure out how the treasured prizes will be best utilized. But I never see guacamole when I'm in Europe. It's just not that commonly found. But this morning--this VERY morning--it was right there among the offerings at the breakfast buffet at the Hotel Greifwald, where I have been staying for almost 15 years on my visits to Berlin. The hotel is in the former East (well, I guess it's still the east but with a small "e") and my first visit wasn't long after the wall came down. I remember helping them to figure out their new fax machine and a friendship was established for life. And now, Guacamole! Needless to say, it was tough to leave this morning. But now I'm listening to "Who's That Lady" and I know that more good things lie ahead (OCTOBER 30)

10.29.05: The road to Berlin

-I think that these diary entries have been a little longer on this tour than usual. Well, not today. It's not that I don't have stories to tell about my night in Hamburg. The problem is that there are too many stories. About too many people. And too much fun. And all of that means too little sleep and the thought of sleeping away most of this drive is just too enticing. So here are the ingredients--mix and season to taste: Chris Cacavas (he opened the show and was joined by his wife Rose and son Dylan), Yuko (surprise guest via train from Holland), Norbert (our friendly, faithful and hardworking local promoter), Nick West (the king of supermag Bucketful of Brains in from London to see the show), Juergen Peschel (the designer of the fabled Desert Trilogy CDS among others), Quintos (old friend and former drummer for Pat Thomas), Mookie (friend of Jason and Erik's, in from the north--she discovered our music when we opened for Ryan Adams), a jam-packed room of enthusiastic fans at the Knust, including Dirk who brought me to the old version of the club for the first time back in the early 90s. Now, mix all of these elements and you have my favorite Hamburg show in memory and a night that went oh-so-late late late. And something tells me that a Saturday night gig in Berlin might just be more of the same. Hey, somebody pass me that pillow. I gotta catch up on my dreaming

10.28.05: The road to Hamburg

It's another round of iPod roulette. Let's just put the little white box on shuffle and see what comes up.....Ah, "Forgot About Dre" from the good doctor's album "2001" with Eminem on guest vocals. Man, Eminem is amazing on this track and makes Dre seem pretty clumsy and tongue-tied. But that track! Man, that track! I hear that the new Burt Bachrach album has some collaborations between Mr "Raindrops Keep Falling" and the doc of the Chronic. Sounds like it could be either amazing or the biggest train wreck of all time......("Broadway" by the Clash). There are two kinds of people. Well, okay, I'm sure there are really at least five or six kinds of people but, for the sake of this moment, let's say there are two: the kinds like the Clash's "Sandinista" and those that think it is a boring, bloated, sloppy mess. I belong to the former group but, then, I always like when musicians or directors get ambitious, pretentious and come close to losing their direction. It's a thrillng mess and Lord knows I dig a good Thrilling Mess. Dig the marimbas! I've got to get around to using marimbas in a song. I was listening to the incredible "Get Behind Me Satan" by the White Stripes earlier today--lots of marimba there. Maybe at the music store near the hotel in Hamburg. I'm sure there's lots of room in the back of the van.

I've been asked to do a cover of "If Music Could Talk" for a track-by-track tribute CD for "Sandinista." This has been a busy year for tribute songs--I have done versions of "The Truth Drug" (Nick Lowe), "Sleeps With Angels" (Neil Young) and "Million Miles Away" (Peter Case) and I think that I should take a break from such things. But I've always seen the tribute album as somethink akin to the pyramid schemes of the 70s. You do a certain amount of the things and then you get one done for you. And I certainly had a really nice tribute album done for me so maybe I should just keep saying yes to everything. "Yes" is so easy. "No" is much more of a challenge

"Cole, Cooke and Redding" (Wilson Pickett). Man, I don't even remember this song. That's the great thing about the shuffle setting. And this is a great song. Kind of Wilson's take on the "Abraham, Martin and John" tune--all of the great ones are gone. That kind of thing. I'm glad that Wilson Pickett is still around. Everyone knows his sixties stuff ("Land Of A Thousand Dances" "Midnight Hour") but his early 70s stuff really smokes. Check out his version of "Hey Jude" or "Fire And Water" (two unlikely but incredible covers) and you'll see what I mean.

Either I'm typing faster or these songs are longer. Gives me time to talk about the breakfast buffet at the Mercure Hotel in Dortmund this morning. There were too many incredible choices but I settled into a smoked salmon and cream cheese combo that felt like a Sunday morning in New York City minus the sprawling weekend edition of the Times. "Make Up" (Lou Reed). Man, this is a silly song but I dig the tuba bass. Gotta try that out but I'd to have to load one of those beasts into the club every night. "Cowboy" (Randy Newman). You hear about people that put their iPods on random shuffle and are stunned that "my iPod knows exactly what it wants to hear--it's as though it's reading my mind." But, HEY, you're the one that programmed it, right? It only makes sense. But man this is a great song. Randy Newman amazes me. His lyrics are so simple, you feel as though anyone could come up with the stuff. But his lyrics are deceptive. They're perfect. They're amazing. I hate him.

"Congratulations" (Rolling Stones). Have you heard of these guys? They're gonna go far, that's my prediction. They're kind of like the Black Crowes with a bit of Primal Scream. I bet they're gonna go far.

And that, my frends, is the conclusion of this week's iPod shuffle. Hamburg lies just ahead and I'm bracing myself for a wild Friday night......closing theme: "The Jazz Fiddler" by the Mississippi Sheiks

10.27.05: The road to Dortmund

You do know the Dutch story of Sinter Klaus, right? Here's the deal: if you've been good all year, the kindly old gentleman brings you a chocolate letter of the first letter of your name. And if you're bad? His evil henchman Black Peter and his nasty little elves abduct you and bring you to Spain. No kidding! So, I figure that as much as I like chocolate, I'd much rather spend some time in Spain. Seems like the better deal, right? But I guess it's not meant to be in 2005 because a friend of Erik's (and his girlfriend Barry) brought us chocolate letters before we left Holland yesterday. Yep, dear readers. Your Steve has been good. Very good--at least until I got that dark chocolate "S" which I have nearly devoured in the first 24 hours. Gluttony! That's a sin--one of the seven best examples of bad behavior possible. C'mon Black Pete--take this van to Spain!

But, in the meantime, I've got no complaints about being here in Germany. Our first show in Wesel was good and it feels like the band is already up at full speed or at least pushing the transmission hard in fourth gear. We still gotta pop in the clutch and glide into full cruising mode in fifth gear. Are you digging this metaphor? Hey, I'm a California guy--"cars" is my middle name. Yes, it's true. Steve Cars Wynn. It's a hell of a name. Don't blame me--my parents had a strange sense of humor.

Anyway, the gig. We're always treated kindly at the Karo club and last night was no exception. The venue crew, promoters and audience were all enthusiastic, the buffet dinner will be officially known as Meat's Greatest Hits and features some of my all-time faves like schnitzel, sausage, hamburger and ham steak and that was enough protein to power us through a 25-song set in which I broke two strings. I hate breaking strings and thought that I was done with such behavior. A gentleman, a veritable veteran of the Touring Rock Wars does not break strings. It's unseemly, it's unruly, it's....well, it's a SIN!

Black Pete, take this van to Spain!

10.26.05: The road to Wesel

I guess you could say the tour has already begun. It tends to begin in stages, in small increments until you can fully say "Man, I am REALLY on tour." What constitutes the start of a tour? When you leave your apartment for the last time, make sure you have your passport and head off to the airport? (Did that last Thursday). When you get to your destination and open your cases to make sure nothing is broken? (last Friday) Well, how about when you get to your first club and play music in front of ACTUAL PEOPLE (Monday and Tuesday in Heythusen's Tom Tom Club).

Please, please. Don't all raise your hands at once.

I know what you're thinking. The true beginning of the tour must have been those two shows in Heythuysen. Six hours on the road, three sets of music with over 50 songs, a few sound checks, junk food at gas-station stops. It all sounds like being on tour, right?

But actually, for me, the tour doesn't begin until we are in the actual touring van with our full crew and that moment, my friends, is RIGHT NOW. The trip to Heythuysen was in Erik's station wagon (trailer of gear just behind us, thankfully, all the way there and back). And we were assisted by our buddy Jaap Bos who manned the merch table both nights. Great shows, lots of surprises (glad to be playing "When She Comes Around" and "Blind Willie McTell," for example) and visits with good friends like Hammi and Nicole and Ralf. Dancing and grooving and chatting and relaxing to the fine tunes played by super-DJ and club owner Fritz after the shows. I had a cheese sandwich in a half-sleep state at 4am last night, trolled the internet for news about the World Series. I am tired and wired. I'm on tour.

And now we're a team. Carsten and Thomas showed up in Deventer at 2pm with a big, roomy (four rows!) white van. I haven't been in one of these things in over two years which is very strange. I am just getting used to where things go, how to angle my body to catch quick naps, how to either hide from or indulge in crossfire van conversation, depending upon my mood. The equipment and CDs are jumbled in the back and inside the van like something out of "Sanford and Son" (for our American readers) and I figure we'll hit our road rhythm by the weekend. Are you ready? Are you packed? Do you have your itinerary? Are you hungry? Get in the van, baby. Let's go.

10.24.05: The road to Heythuysen

A traffic jam in Holland! We must be on tour! No, I'm not complaining. Well, okay, I am. Just a little bit. No, just kidding. I'm not complaining. At all. Really. Okay, maybe a little bit. Just kidding. Somewhat. But not really.

And strangely enough, as I just wrote those last dizzyingly rapid-fire contradictory pieces to a non-puzzle, the traffic just started moving. Just like that. Oh, man did I make that happen? Do I have a future in urban planning? Well, it will just have to wait because it's time to begin another tour and that means it's time to begin another tour diary.

I always think that I should dive in with some theme, some larger purpose to this eight-week saga of daily installments. But the truth is that the diving has already begun. Like a cannonball, baby. Big splash in a bigger pool. We got to Holland last Friday and were met at Schipol Airport by our new bass player Erik Van Loo who abducted us in his blue station wagon to bring us to Deventer. On the way, I announced the need for a bathroom stop but the truth is that I was just craving a can of Chocomel, the impossibly sweet and syrupy chocolate milk drink that is one of the best things made over here. Jet Lag+Sugar rush=good times. In my math book, anyway.

What followed was 60 hours of rehearsals, two Indonesian meals (peanuts on everything, please), abducting of the finer CDs in Erik's collection for my iPod, the perusal of the 8 Euro local edition of the New York Time (first and last time for that luxury move) and the gradual adjustment to local time. That in itself is a luxury. Usually, we dive right into the first show which is played in a delirious haze of sleeplessness and disorientation. That's a good thing, by the way. But now we're officially on the road and we're already done with that stuff. We're fully adjusted. Well, we're fully adjusted to the time zone. The rest is hard to say.

By the way, we're only a partial team at this point. We're doing the first gigs without our fearless crew of Carsten and Thomas. Right now it's Jason, Linda, Erik and yours truly with a special two-show appearance by Jaap Bos who is speaking in the front seat with Erik in their mutually native tongue.

Look! A McDonald's on the left! I never eat at McDonald's on the road--well, maybe once every three or four tours. They do have good gazpacho and beer in Spain. But a McDonald's in Holland makes me think of "Pulp Fiction" and I love that movie.

Disorientation and distraction? You want it, we got it. See you tomorrow.

9.18.05: The road to Madrid

I've got the iPod on "shuffle" this morning. It seems like a good day for surprises and also a way to kickstart the final chapter of the Spanish tour diary into top speed. I'll keep you posted in real time so you can imagine the soundtrack to this journey from Zaragoza to Madrid. Let's see--we started with Funk #48 by James Gang and now we're moving along to "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen.

Last night's show at the Casa De Loco (House Of Crazy!!!!) in Zaragoza was a perfect ending to a wonderful tour. There wasn't a bad show on the tour and really, my loyal readers, I'm being completely honest with you. I won't spare you the bad news and the heartbreaking disappointments. We're good friends, right? We can be honest. But this was a good three week adventure. ("Only Time Will Tell" by John Cale). And a very eclectic mix of venues, audiences, meals and scenery. Last night was loud, wild, chaotic and a good homecoming for our tour manager Christian, ("Street Life" by Roxy Music) who brought us to his favorite local restaurant for an incredible paella in the afternoon.

The gig was followed by a visit to a local hip nightclub called Bachrach, ("The Big Joke" by Chris Cacavas) which is run by a bandmate of my pal Fran from Australian Blonde. Cool place--sixties music and decor and it was JAM PACKED. It was almost impossible to bend your arm enough to bring the bottle of Mahou to your lips. But we were escorted to a padded bench in the corner from which we could watch the locals, sip our beers, sign a few CDs and recap the highlights of the past three weeks. After closing down that bar, we moved over to a flashier basement disco--it seemed as though we had moved from Carnaby Street 1966 to Studio 54 in 1978, a little bit of atmospheric whiplash. ("Little Babe" by RL Burnside--rest in peace, RL). The tunes were good and we were able to chat with people who had been at the gig but we were hitting the burnout point and the four of us headed back to the hotel where we watched a very disturbing infomercial that had Deion Sanders hawking some hot dog maker that didn't seem all that great but MAN OH MAN was Deion excited. ("Electricity" by Spiritualized). I mean, one minute you're a two-sport superstar, pulling down touchdown passes, deep fly balls and multimillion dollar contracts and the next thing you know, you're explaining the virtues of a properly plump ballpark frank. Let this be a lesson even if I'm not entirely sure what the lesson would be.

So now we're heading back for one more night in Madrid before heading in different directions tomorrow. Dave goes back home, Jason heads off to Barcelona and Linda and I will be in Cadiz recording with our friend and local legend Paco Loco. ("My Whole World Ended" by David Ruffin). And you, my friendly diary dissectors? What's up? What are you eating? What's playing on your stereo? Well, thanks for inviting me into your home(page) once again and remember that we have a date to resume these tales of travel sometime in late October when the Miracle3Mobile fires up once again. Until then, have fun, take care and watch out for the squid in the black ink.

9.16.05: Leaving Barcelona

Hanging out at dinner last night at the Plaza Real, my friend Ignacio told me that the beautiful Barcelona square had changed a lot in the last five years. "This used to be the place where everyone was told that they should never go unless you were looking for crack or prostitutes. Now it's been cleaned up and is a big tourist spot." Much like Times Square, I asked? "Exactly."

Well, it was a different story at 5am when we were walking home after a night of dancing and chatting at a local disco the followed a fiery show at the Sidecar. Just about ten feet away we witnessed two very large prostitutes sliding up against a somewhat bewildered and inebriated tourist who, with some difficulty, was able to shake off the brazen pickpocket attempt and make his way out of the square to a taxi along the Ramblas. Even as he was sliding into a waiting taxi, the two women were still in hot pursuit, grabbing him by the wrist and swatting at where his wallet might have been. All I'm saying is that it's not quite midtown Manhattan where the greatest danger these days is that you might have the bad sense to choose to dine at the new Red Lobster or Applebee's.

But enough for that bit of local color. Last night's show may have been my favorite of the tour so far. It was a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Ignacio's magazine Ruta 66. I've known Ignacio Julia since he first interviewed me for the mag back in 1987 and he's become a very good friend, always entertaining and always full of good stories and good cheer. And he put on a heckuva show last night--the underground cavern (I thought I was in Liverpool for a few seconds) was packed and the audience was frenetic and kinetic. I've been very excited to find that the Spanish audiences are getting younger, approaching a 50/50 break in gender and seems to especially want to hear songs off the last three albums. And those records did provide about 90% of the set last night but when we came out for the encore, we decided to commemorate the magazine's anniversary by playing "The Days of Wine and Roses" in its entirety. We had done that a couple of dozen times in the States but never before in Europe and the audience seemed pretty happy with the choice. For the second encore we did our first live performance of "The Blue Mask" by Ignacio's personal hero Lou Reed. Everyone was happy, fired up and ready to continue the night, dancing with friends (including our pal Marc Perlman from the Jayhawks) to such delights at Europe's "The Final Countdown." How can you dance to such soulless crap? Well, you gotta be in a really good mood.

Now we've been joined by Christian's friend Eddie who is driving the van right now and will do sound for us tonight. These guys are old pals from Zaragoza and are providing us with non-stop comedy, language barrier be damned. Good slapstick transcends all verbal incomprehension. Two shows left and many adventures ahead. Stick around

9.14.05: The road to Barcelona

The first time that I played in Barcelona was in 1986 and we had a gig in Madrid the next night. At that time there were no multilane highways linking the two cities and we had to drive overnight to make the gig on time, dodging and passing trucks and slow moving cars all along the way. Things have changed and now it's autovia (freeway/autobahn/motorway) all the way, baby. You can drive 70 miles an hour, stop for snacks, wave at other cars--whatever you'd like. But it's still a long drive and today has been a long journey. Highlights?

--We stopped off at a snack bar in Zaragoza, just a few blocks from where our tour manager/driver Christian lives. It was his "Cheers," the place where I suppose everybody not only knows his name but also the way he likes his coffee. Jason had a tortilla (which over here means a pie made of egg, potato and onions) sandwich. Linda had the tortilla without the sandwich (I mean do you really need to put potatoes between two pieces of bread?) Dave had something mysterious and fried. And I had a plate of sardines in some kind of tomato and oil based sauce. It was good and gave me the vague illusion that I was being healthy. Christian? He went home to his mother's place for a quick visit. That's a good boy.

--Dave picked up the new Paul McCartney album this morning at the FNAC in Madrid and we checked it out an hour ago in the van. It's actually a very good album and sounds like it could have been made in the early 70s. Very stripped down, great singing and very simple and charming. I can see why it's getting good reviews.

--I slept. For an hour. It was wonderful


In the midst of all that, I've been reading ("The Black Album" by Hanif Kureishi interspersed with today's Herald Tribune) and listening to music on the headphones (the soon-to-be released by Teenage Prayers, my favorite NYC band and also "American Beauty" by the Grateful Dead). And typing, of course. Gotta keep the fingers in shape for tomorrow's gig, after all

9.12.05: Mallorca

We were the headlining act at a record fair here yesterday and I'm somewhat convinced that the local promoters must have suspected that we were a good band to book because we would most likely spend our entire fee on CDs and DVDs. There was tons of good stuff, especially the huge quantities of bootleg releases. I picked up DVDs of Creedence Clearwater Revival (mostly from a live TV show in 1969) and also Bruce Springsteen (all 70s stuff including clips from a show at the LA Forum in 1978).

Ah, that Springsteen show. Let me digress for a few seconds here to say that this particular live show may be the most important of my life. It very well might be the reason that there was a Dream Syndicate and, hence, the reason why I'm even typing these words from Mallorca rather than placing an order for imports at a record store in Hollywood at this very moment. I went to the Forum for that gig on the "Darkness On the Edge of Town" tour and was blown away in a way I never had been before by a live music experience. Anyone who saw Springsteen back in the 70s knows exactly what I'm talking about. There had never been anything like it outside of gospel revival tents and political rallies. Anyway, I was so excited that I called my college pal Kendra Smith who was living in San Diego and told her that I was going to drive down the following day to catch the next show on the tour and that she needed to see the gig with me. Yes, you could actually buy Springsteen tickets the day of the show back in those days. Anyway, Kendra came along and she was equally excited and inspired and after the show, we decided that we needed to form a band when we went back to college at UC Davis in the Fall. That was the genesis of our new wave band Suspects which later dissolved and rose up again in LA as the Dream Syndicate. Thanks, Bruce. I owe you one.

Anyway, back to the record fair. Let's see--Dave got a Dylan bootleg, Linda picked up a DVD of the Small Faces and I can't remember what Jason got. It was almost too overwhelming and anyway, there was a gig to play and since we don't have wireless equipment and couldn't do the show while flipping through the bins, our shopping time was limited. And that's a good thing, believe me. The audience had a great time and didn't seem to be burned out after a day of consumer overload.

Hey, I haven't talked much about food on this tour. I don't know why I haven't shared tales of squid in Vigo, kangaroo (!) in Tulebras or tortilla in Madrid. But maybe I have been saving it all for the rapturous review of last night's dinner after the show. Our gig was at 8pm which meant there was plenty of time for a rare post-show meal which meant that we could really dive in an indulge in our favorite of the seven deadly sins (well, in the top 3 anyway). Our local host Vicky could sense that we were serious about taking in the local chow and took us to one of her favorite restaurants, specializing in Mallorquin cuisine. We tried out Arroz Brut (dirty rice, a soupy concoction with various meats and a heavy broth), some snails (I'm into anything that involves an overload of garlic), various fishes and something that involved liver. Jason (who is diving full steam into the modified, fish-embracing change from full vegetarianism) and I shared Arroz Marinara, a fishy take on the arroz brut. Lots of food, lots of wine, lots of chatting and now we are Lots of Tired. But it's a day off and, as it turns out, sloth is another deadly sin that we seriously enjoy from time to time. And I do believe it's time to put both me and this computer to sleep.

9.11.05: Leaving Valencia

I've been playing gigs in Mallorca since the early 90s and it's always an exciting event. What's not to love? 24 hours on a beautiful island, great food and multicultural adventures (sometimes it seems that the most common languages here are German and English. I often get a blank stare when I ask for a cafe con leche). It's a very good thing. But gigs in Mallorca also mean an early morning to get to the airport and arrive in time for sound check. And that means that I have always been here in some state of exhaustion, disorientation and near hallucination. And that, of course, is a good thing as well. It only makes the time over there that much more interesting.

Right now it's 9am and we're on our way from Valencia to the airport in Alicante and it looks like we'll be cutting things kinda close for our noon flight. The rest of the band is knocked out, sleeping while Christian drives on the beautiful roads that hug the coastline. I'm tapping away, giving all of you the play by play, and working out the proper soundtrack for the hazy morning. I started out with the Anthony and the Johnsons album--incredible and majestic and melancholy for a morning like this but now I've moved into the eccentric Beach Boys album "Wild Honey." It's loopy, a little messed up, wonderfully not-quite-there and still smacks of sunny days by the beach. Perfect, really, for a morning like this.

Last night's show at the Loco Club (there are really a lot of clubs in Spain that include the word "loco"--that might tell you something about touring over here) was a blast. We got back from dinner at 9:30 and the place was EMPTY. And the show was supposed to start at 10pm. Hey, nothing surprises me at this point but it's still unpleasant to see an empty club right before you play. I sat backstage with the band and told them about Spanish shows in the 80s when it was completely normal to see an empty club five minutes before your set and then walk onstage to a packed house. It had something to do with cheaper drinks being found outside of the club and a built-in instinct to know exactly when to return to the club. "It may not be like that tonight," I pointed out. Well, when we opened the door to the stage, sure enough the place was filled to the brim with enthusiastic fans. It was a relief and the show ended up being one of the best of the tour. Along with the locals, the audience included Chris and Ellen Cook who came down from Scotland to see the band AND enjoy a weekend getaway in Valencia (maybe we should include a travel agency service on the website!). Also, we were joined by Josh Rouse, a fine singer-songwriter who moved to Spain in the last year. Have you heard his album "1972?" You really should--it's incredible.

We've been playing more and more songs from the "...Tick...Tick...Tick" and tonight's included the first-ever live performance of "All The Squares Go Home," which has apparently become a pretty big radio hit here in the first week of release. That's gratifying and also a little strange since the song was a last-minute addition to both the session and also the actual record. But sometimes the throwaways are the best songs and people seemed very happy to hear that one. The new record is turning into one of the most Ready-For-The-Stage albums that I've ever had and I'm happy to see that the new songs are getting the best response, always a good sign.

And, well, aren't WE chatty this morning. Anyone who knows me knows that I get more wired when I'm tired and this diary entry is certainly proof. Bring on Mallorca!

9.10.05: The road to Valencia

It wasn't Woodstock and we weren't half a million strong but by the time we got to Murcia's Lemon Pop Festival, it was 1am and there were about 3000 frenetic people tossing beach balls, jumping around restlessly and shouting strange indecipherable bits of encouragement to our Dave. I love shows like these--just the right combination of enthusiastic fans and lots of other people who have never heard our music before. It's simultaneously a celebration and a challenge and I think that we handled both of those things quite well last night. We played a wild, loud, punk-tinged set and I managed to strike on of the beach balls directly into the (imaginary) goal. One-nil for SW + M3 United. After the show, Linda and Christian (our tour manager on this Spanish jaunt) and I went to a local disco and danced (Steppenwolf! Cornershop! The Who! Nirvana!), posed for pictures and chatted until 5am. I'm tired today but that seems to be status quo (not the band!) for daylight physical state here in Spain. Just like the lizard I saw backstage last night, you move slowly and save your energy for when it counts. And that time is usually sometime after midnight.

I met a guy after the show who said he had picked up a Richard Ford book on my recommendation and that he really enjoyed it. I'm glad I'm helping to spread the fatalistic, depressive, black humor-tinged tone of the State Of The Mid-life Crisis in the Northeast of the United States all the way to other countries. It's my duty. And when he asked for other authors that I could recommend, my mind went blank. That always happens. I told him that i was looking forward to the new book by Michel Houllebecq since I really dug "The Elementary Particles" and "Platform." But if you're reading this, my Murcia bookworm friend, may I also recommend the books of NIcholson Baker. He's a big favorite of mine (start with "Mezzanine.") His books contain almost no movement but incredible detail and lots of internal activity. Kind of....well, kind of like that lizard last night. Maybe he's working on a book as well

9.09.05: The road to Murcia

We've had a lot of surprise visitors recently. At the New York show last month we were joined by Jaap Bos and also the Steve/Laurie Price family from Holland and Los Angeles, respectively. And then it was our good buddy Hammi from Cologne at our show in Tulebras the other night. So, I shouldn't have been surprised when I turned around at sound check at El Sol in Madrid and saw Robert Fisher from the Willard Grant Conspiracy along with our soon-to-be new bass player Erik Van Loo. Ah, now it's YOU who might be surprised. Sadly, the legendary Dave DeCastro has said he won't be able to do the European tour this Fall (he tells me that he's touring with Foghat but I'm not sure weather to believe him--he is the REAL man of mystery, after all) and Jason recommended his WGC touring partner Erik to fill in for the gig. Now, I had never met Erik but I'd heard him on a few records, trusted Jason and Robert's enthusiasm and was finally convinced when I asked Erik (who lives in Holland) for a list of his favorite records. Any guy who puts Dr John, Neil Young, the Pixies, Joni Mitchell, Funkadelic and the Faces on the same list seems like a guy who can handle the mighty musical mood swings that are likely to happen in the course of an eight-week tour.

Anyway, Erik decided that it would be best to see the live experience close up and in person. And he saw a show that, despite some problems with Jason's amplifier, was a loose and furious Madrid love fest. Loose! Lovefest! Problems! Furious! See what I mean? Musical mood swings. We love 'em. It's my wife and it's my life (to quote Lou Reed) and they will keep us together (to paraphrase the Captain and Tennille). But it was a night of wits and resources and improvisation and logistical duct tape, fastening all of the fraying edges together as soon as they appeared. Ah, it's a good morning for metaphors. Somebody call the metaphor police! There may be some kind of flagrant violation happening here but (as Chuck Berry) once said, "you can't catch me." We're moving much too fast for that.

9.08.05: Madrid

We are in the midst of a mini-vacation here in Madrid. I´ve spent these four days doing interviews and also exploring this amazing city, maybe my second favorite in the world (the first? a clue: theBronx is up and the Battery's down). The major challenge I´ve taken upon myself this time around is to do almost all of my interviews in Spanish which, in turn, leads to more interviews since there are many journalists here who prefer not to do interviews in English. No problem, although I keep having the fear that I´m answering questions like "Are you happy with your new record" with answers like "I drive small camels into supermarkets filled with tractors." Hey, the surrealism thing worked over here for Dali so why not give it a shot?

Speaking of artists, I did find time for a field trip to the Prado with everyone's favorite drummer Linda Pitmon. After many minutes of gawking at Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" (little known fact: this painting was rejected an early Yes album cover), we wandered into the freaky darkness of Goya's Black Paintings. The guy gets old, depressed, despondent and starts painting on his walls and turns out some spooky, intense images. It's like the heart of darkness and somehow funny at the same time. Or maybe that´s just me.

Anyway, you get this much time off and it's natural that the band just scatters, even a band as close (really. it´s not just for the cameras, kids) as close as we are. Jason and Dave have both done some museum-hopping of their own and managed to track down some decent Mexican food--attaboys!--while Linda scored at the local H&M. I wander aimlessly, searching for the Herald Tribune and endless cafes conleche. And last night around midnight, Linda and I took over the DJ booth at the Vaca Austere and spun discs until 3am. We had to rely on the records that they had in the club but managed to run the gamut from Eddie Cochran to AC/DC to CCR to Tom Jones to the Ramones to "Philadelphia Freedom" by Elton John, while REM videos were playing on the wall.

So, that´s the report here from Madrid. But my calendar says it's Thursday and that means it's time to get back in the van (albeit across town) for our show tonight at El Sol. I'm sure we'll find a way to grind the four days of inspiration into the squonk and strumming

9.03.05: The Road to Navarra

They make really good sunflower seeds here in Spain. Really large shells, crisp and lightly salted, that crack just right between your teeth and then revealing seriously meaty seeds inside. Fantastic. And you just can't get sunflower seeds in most European countries. I've been hooked on the stuff since I was a kid and, in fact, just found the motherlode in Brighton Beach back home in New York. I was in one of those Russian markets where you can almost forget that you're in the US and I found some seeds that were almost mutant in their size. I was hooked and then found others of similar size in Manhattan. So, I've really raised the bar on sunflower seeds and thought I was spoiled but the ones I just bought at the gas station a few miles back were just as good.

Aren't you glad you're reading this? Do you want the last three minutes of your life back?

But that is the joy of an eight-hour drive like the one we have today. You read a few hours of your book, write some email, listen to some tunes, talk about various things with your bandmates and you STILL have time to contemplate your favorite sunflower seeds. And all of that with only three hours of sleep between last night's gig in Vigo and this morning's early wakeup for the drive to an outdoor festival show tonight. You NEED to think about these things. It's almost like a mental scratching post.

I listened to two very good versions of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" today. One was on the new Dylan bootleg series collection, "No Direction Home." And the other was the radical minor chord reworking by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings on their 2005 release "Naturally." I just love this record. You gotta get it. It's one of the most amazing R&B records of the last few years. It sounds like some great record from 1965 that you can't believe that you've never heard before. The sound is impeccably vintage but also feels so alive and current. And really, they're not paying me a thing for this hype piece.

But those sunflower seeds on the other hand--Man, I wonder if I can be their spokesman

9.02.05: The Road to Vigo

You take some time off and the fingers get soft. The callouses are gone. The smoke clears out of the lungs and the voice gets sweet. And, of course, the tour diary skills get rusty. I haven't done one of these things in almost two years. So, please my friends, allow me to get back into the swing of things. A few mental calisthenics, some jogging of the memory banks and....ah, there we go! Everything's back in shape, the fingers are gliding across the keyboard of my laptop, I'm remembering the last road stop meal (bocadillo de queso y lomo) in vivid detail and yes yes yes, I'm ready to take you all along for a trip. The road begins here and stretches out (with a short interruption) to Brussels at the end of December.

I mean, it's not as though I have been in my apartment and pulling down the shades, eating bon bons and watching "Ice Station Zebra," my fingernails growing out into claws. I'm not Howard Hughes. Or even Leonard DiCaprio. I have been out on the road a little bit here and there. I made a new album ("...tick...tick..tick") with the Miracle 3 and will be finishing another collaboration called Smack Dab later this month with Paco Loco in Andalucia. Songs? I've been writing them. Gigs? Been playing them. And exotic/weird foods? Get this: been eating them. But now it's time to tell the tale. Fasten your seat belts. Okay, now loosen them a few notches. Fasten again.

I came over to Europe last week and did a week of interviews in Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne and Berlin and then met up with the Miracle 3 in Madrid yesterday. They had tales of hanging out with the members of Television at the Newark airport on the way out. TV was just one gate away--they were flying to Lisbon for festivals this weekend. I think we're both in Spain tomorrow and this is all kind of funny in the Small World sweepstakes. After all, we've toured with Richard Lloyd (Dave was once in a band with him) and "Marquee Moon" is one of the key records that made me want to play music and make records and was a huge influence on the Dream Syndicate.

And now we're in the van on our way to the Iguana in Vigo, a club where sound checks usually happen at midnight and shows stretch out to 4 or 5Am. I think tonight is an earlier show than usual but I'm bracing myself. Spanish tours! The shows are late, the drives are long, the coffee strong and the audiences are wild. It all works out to a strong test of stamina. Two years off the road? No problem. Let's just dive right into the deep end.

7.19.05: New York City

Summertime and the living is easy. I can't really tell you if the fish are jumping or the cotton is high but I do know that I turned in the master and artwork for my new album last week and now I'm ready to kick back and enjoy the city with touring season just around the bend. Let me set the scene--it's so humid outside that I'm convinced you could take the air and roll it into a small ball, squeeze the ball and then dip a teabag inside for a midnight cup of tea. The Yankees are beating the Red Sox 4-1 in the fifth inning, a bowl of tortilla chips are on the coffee table and a couple of rented DVDs are close at hand, waiting to be watched.

There. Aren't you glad that you asked? Oh, you didn't ask. Okay, never mind.

But I'm really happy to say that the third part of the "desert trilogy," also known as "...tick...tick..tick" is finished and feels like a suitable and natural continuation of what we started out in Tucson with "Here Come the Miracles" and "Static Transmission." It's a very electric, kinetic, frenzied rock record and a very direct You-Are-There glimpse of 45 minutes of me with the Miracle 3. I've played more shows with Jason Victor, Dave DeCastro and Linda Pitmon than any other lineup in my 25 years of touring. How many shows? Dunno, lost count somewhere around 300 but the four of us have spent a LOT of time together on stage, in vans, in hotel lobbies--you name it. We've been hanging out. And I wanted this record to show the interplay that comes from all of that time together. It's mostly guitars, bass and drums. We all added a few keyboard bits and pieces until our usual King of the 88s (aka Chris Cacavas) told us that he would punch us in the arm once for every note of keyboard playing. That sent us back to our primary instruments in a big hurry.

Anyway, I'll be putting up the record cover and a song or two in a couple of weeks. And this lazy once-a-month diary moves back into daily mode sometime in September when the four of us climb back into a van and hunt down freaky roadside snacks somewhere in Spain. And now it's time to turn up the fan a few notches and see if the Yankees can hold onto this lead.

6.05.05: Somewhere in Andalucia

Welcome to Part One of a one-part series of tour diaries from this month's Tour Of The Good Food Places. I'm not sure if five shows in 16 days in three countries really makes a tour but we are in a van and making music and hanging out with old and new friends, eating indigenous foods and learning new ways to operate without sleep. That sounds like a tour to me even if the length doesn't give me much of a chance to build some Diary Momentum (hey, that would be a good name for a band. Make a mental note. Take a letter, Maria).
On the other hand, we are currently augmented by the presence of Dave's wife Carol K and she mentioned that her mom enjoys the tour diary so I'm NOT about to let her down. That would just be wrong.

We started our journey with a gig in Athens (check out the attached article and read all about it unless, of course, if it's all Greek to you) where we had the honor of being the last band to play the legendary Rodon club. I played a few shows there with the Dream Syndicate in 1988 when it was just starting out and have had many wonderful nights there over the years. Naturally, the night lent itself to nostalgia, celebration, melancholy and revelry and we were happy to be the soundtrack. The James Taylor Quartet from the UK opened the gig with some inspired organ-infused jazz/soul and some members of Slipknot were in the audience. And we ate lots of calamari (even Jason who--gasp!--is eating fish these days). What else do you need to know?

Another show followed in Thessaloniki and then we made our way to Madrid where we recovered from a series of late nights and early mornings in Greece with a more slovenly three days off in Madrid. The Siesta Haze (well, I'll be! ANOTHER band name!) ended when we hit the road yesterday for a couple of shows in Sevilla and Malaga with our good friends in Jet Lag. If you haven't heard their new album, you gotta find some way to track it down. Linda and I play on the record and it was recorded and mixed by our pals Paco Loco and John Agnello. A real family affair. Our first show was the last night of a three-day festival (Josh Rouse and Chuck Prophet played the other two nights) and the venue was a stately cultural center that hinted at a studious night but we managed to shake things up and, in the words of Grand Funk Railroad, we proceeded to tear that hotel down. Except that it wasn't a hotel. It was an auditorium. But you know what I mean.

Okay, here are some things that have been filling my head with ideas and distraction in recent months:

Now I Am A Bird--Antony And the Johnsons (CD)
Even Weirder Than Ziggy--Sylvie Simmons (book)
Naturally--Sharon Jones And the Dap Kings (CD)
Tarnation (movie)
Nestles' Cherry Cheesecake Ice Cream bar (desert at the last road stop)
Yellow Dog--Martin Amis (book)
Palindromes (movie)
Waiting For the Siren's Call--New Order (CD)
The Sexual Life Of Catherine M--Catherine Millet (book)
Fat Actress (US television show)
Farenheit 451--Ray Bradbury (book)
Mylos (great club AND restaurant in Thessaloniki)
Guero--Beck (CD)
End Of The Century (movie)
new and untitled--ME and the Miracle 3 (CD due in October)

and now? we're staring out at the vast, endless expansive terrain of Andalucia while our tour manager Juanjo plays some live Aerosmith. Life is good

3.30.05: New York City

It seems like only yesterday I was sitting at this very desk in my apartment, writing about the upcoming recording session, tour and shows at South By Southwest in Austin. But that was, in fact, 35 days and 12 gigs and 4000 miles and a newly recorded album ago. And trying to quantify time with music and travel can be tricky as those things have a wonderful tendency to make time irrelevant, allowing you to live in a moment that can stretch across months or explode in a frenzied flash of a snapshot moment.

So what does the bright light of the flashcube expose? FLASH! A great ten-day session in Tucson at Wavelab Studio where the Miracle 3 and I recorded 15 new songs. Frenzied, fun and freaky, these songs ended up sounding pretty much the way band sounds live on stage. And that's a good thing. I go back and mix the record in May. FLASH! Driving into Davis, California for my first show at my would-be Alma Mater (had I graduated) since 1982. We did a session at KDVS, where I was a DJ for three years, and even recorded a song by my old band Suspects which is up on the free download page. FLASH! Driving down the main drag in Las Vegas at 2am and giving Jason and Dave their first glimpse of the epilepsy-inducing overload that is "The Strip," having only an hour before been hanging out with Ian Hunter after our show together. FLASH! Standing on stage at Emo's in Austin at 1am and playing our third show of the day, this one a Guided By Voices tribute show that found Dave singing a fine version of "Salty Salute" to an ecstatic crowd. FLASH! Somewhere around Las Cruces, New Mexico, Jason and I grab a Taco Bell six-layer burrito (skip the sour cream, please) and push ourselves to the last few hours of the 1000 mile drive back to Tucson where we cram in one last 14-hour session of guitars and vocals at Wavelab before catching a flight back to New York.

And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface (check out Gurbir's review of our shows in the "review" section for a better look at what happened in Austin). But that's the thing about the touring life--you cram a year's worth of experience into each day and then eventually have the chance to slow down and say "What the Hell was THAT?" I came back to New York, knocked out by a cold that invaded my body merely because I finally slowed down enough to allow it to do so. It's nothing that vitamins, garlic, spicy food and plenty of liquids haven't been able to conquer and now please excuse me while I recharge that flash and get ready to start all over again.


recent faves:


JUST BELIEVE IT--Susan Cowsill (CD)
BEAUTIFUL LIES YOU COULD LIVE IN--Pearls Before Swine (CD)
FAT ACTRESS (tv show)
THE CUP CAFE at the HOTEL CONGRESS (Tucson eatery)
AHA SHAKE HEARTBREAK--Kings of Leon (CD)
NOLITA--Keren Ann (CD)
the TORRENTIAL RAINS that came down during my last show in Austin (weather)
THE EXECUTIONER'S LAST SONGS, Vol 2 &3--Pine Valley Cosmonauts (CD)
TOMMY (movie--1973)
IAN HUNTER and BAND at Live! Club, Las Vegas (live show)
interview with TOMMY RAMONE (latest issue of TapeOp)

2.23.05: New York City

My living room exploded. Or at least that's the way it seems. Guitar strings, CDs, effects pedals, lyrics, tapes, drum sticks, notebooks, cases, capos, harmonicas and my Sammy Cahn Rhyming Dictionary leave very little actual floor space to be seen. And all of those things will find their way onto a Continental Airlines jet to Tucson tomorrow night as the Miracle 3 and I make our way to Wavelab Studios to begin work on the third part of the Desert Trilogy that I began out there in September of 2000.

What's the forecast this time around? Well, if "Here Come the Miracles" was the Kid-In-The-Candy-Store (or more likely, kid-in-the-charmingly-broken-toy-store) record and "Static Transmission" was the dark, somber, melancholy hangover, then this one will likely be the sound of a freaky, fiery band that has played a ton of shows together in the last four years. It will be the sound of the Miracle 3. It will rock hard, rock weird, rock dark and rock light, sometimes at the same time. I have played more shows with Jason Victor, Dave DeCastro and Linda Pitmon than any lineup that I've ever had (Dream Syndicate included) and it seems to make sense this time to have the record show that chemistry.

I decided this time to road test the new material--the first time I had done that since my earliest records--and we did about a dozen shows over the last four weeks to get the tunes into the proper ragged and tough and weary and rough and swaggering state that will surely be reflected in the sessions. The last few Tucson sessions took place in September and the average temperature was about 110 degrees Fahrenheit. This time we'll have to make our own heat.

Do I sound excited? I am. I think we've all agreed to take what we did on the last two albums and push it harder and darker and deeper and that should make for a great ten-day adventure? And then? Back on the road for shows in California, Las Vegas (opening for Ian Hunter) and then onto a seven-gig marathon in Austin for the South By Southwest convention. Road reports to follow.

so what's been on the box as the session gets closer and closer? let's see:


THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES--STEVE HARLEY AND COCKNEY REBEL
LCD SOUNDSYSTEMS
1970--ALEX CHILTON
BEFORE THE POISON--MARIANNE FAITHFUL
NATURALLY--SHARON JONES AND THE DAP KINGS
GET LIFTED--JOHN LEGEND
HELP WANTED--TED QUINN
THE TRIP (compilation by Saint Etienne)
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE BEFORE--Roky Erikson


And what does that add up to? Hard to say but you'll find out in September. And I'll find out a little sooner than that.


February 23, 2005

1.10.05: New York City

My year of (nearly) no gigging came to an exciting end at the Cinema Bar in Los Angeles last week. I had just landed at LAX at 5pm and made it over to the club at 7:30 with the idea of maybe running over a few songs with my band-for-the-night. Now, I had played with Robert Lloyd, Kirk Swan, Kevin Jarvis and Duane Jarvis many times before but never at the same time and we had also never played many of the songs that I had chosen for the evening. Just the way I like to do things. Thrills and panic and uncertainty sometimes makes for the best music. Well, we never got around to that sound check but the show was a blast--the room was packed (I heard one person describe the packed bodies as intertwining vines--I like that. Can I steal it?)

So, I guess that makes about ten shows I played in 2004 and I’m going to surpass that in the next four weeks as the Miracle 3 and I hit the road with the Silos for a little bit of test-driving of new songs as we get ready to head back to Tucson to make a new record next month. And then we’ll be in Austin for South By Southwest in March--our time there in 2003 ranks as some of my favorite musical moments of recent years (and don’t get me started on the barbecue) so the temptation to return was far too great.

I could go on about other things but I seem to have waited until the final moments of the final deadline for liner notes I have promised to write for the reissue of "Jumping In the Night" by the Flaming Groovies. Speaking of which, you can check out our version of Shake Some Action recorded at the Lakeside Lounge last November--it’s up elsewhere on this fine website. The year of hibernation is over. See you all somewhere on the road in 2005.


favorite albums of 2004:

THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS/ABATTOIR BLUES--NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
FREE THE BEES--THE BEES
NOW HERE IS NOWHERE--SECRET MACHINES
TALKIE WALKIE--AIR
THE SOLUTION--COMMUNICATE
THE DELIVERY MAN--ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE IMPOSTERS
SONIC NURSE--SONIC YOUTH
A GHOST IS BORN--WILCO
SMILE--BRIAN WILSON
I--MAGNETIC FIELDS


current faves:

"Losing My Edge"-- LCD Soundsystem (single)
Guelaguetza (Los Angeles restaurant)
Tales From the Funk Dimension 1970-1973--Bo Diddley (compilation)
Middlesex--Jeffrey Eugenides (book)
DiG (documentary)
Sparkle In the Finish--Ike Reilly Assasination (CD)
Indie103fm (LA radio station)
the Pink and Blue EPs--Louis XIV (CDs)