Current mood: adventurous

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog, but then again I usually only post blogs after tours and I haven’t really been on a full on tour since May. So here it is, a blog on my three week tour to Ireland and France that I just returned from last night:

October 28th- Cork City

I haven’t been to Cork since I was 12 and was visiting relatives with my elderly grandmother in the countryside outside the city. All I remember about the city was the one way streets and there were hippies who would braid that colored thread into your hair. I always wanted to get it done but my grandmother probably thought it was silly and just one more thing on the way to getting tattoos and piercings…Anyway, Cork has really developed into a nice pretty city since I last was there, actually the whole of Ireland has benefited a lot from the “Celtic Tiger” (their expression for the huge economic boom of the last ten years). When I arrived early in the morning after a red eye flight I was exhausted and immediately checked into the first place I stumbled across which turned out to be a played called the “Bru Hostel”. I slept off some jet lag and then went into the communal lounge and observed all the international travelors hanging out there (eastern European, French, Canadian,…you name it) then I went to my gig at the Whisky where I played as the feature of an open mic. The folks there were nice and afterwards we went out for a beer. I befriended two Swedish guys who had been at the show. There was also a really nice girl who had played at the open mic and she was from New Zealand but lived in Cork working at the healthfood store. She told me a story of how when she first came to the city she stayed in the same hostel I was staying at (the “Bru Hostel”) and how some people staying there got really really drunk and did something “disgusting”. I couldn’t help but ask her specifically what…then I wished I hadn’t asked…apparently one of the guys was so drunk that he went to the bathroom and puiked in the sink and shit the floor, I guess he couldn’t figure out where the toilet was, or rather what it was for…she said she felt really bad for the maid. And so did I….

After the bar I returned to my hostel and tried to enter the room quietly because I knew there were 3 other people in there that would probably be sleeping at 2am. When I opened there door I heard a rustling noise so tried even harder to quietly put my stuff in the corner and climb up to my bed on one of the top bunks. Within a few minutes of getting into my bed I continued to hear rustling of covers, and then whispering voices which I knew were people speaking in French. Then I heard a noise that I discerned as people exchanging fluids, as in kissing…and well…then I realized that two French people in my hostel were trying to quietly “do it” while being in a room with two other people that were sleeping. It turned out that they were in the top bunk which was right across from my feet so I could actually kind of seem in the dark. I couldn’t really believe they were doing what they were doing, and I tried to get to sleep and put the pillow over my head, and not laugh, or take a video and stick it on youtube…well..whatever…so that was my introduction to Ireland and this tour…two French people screwing in my room. When I told the story many times over the coming weeks people merely observed “oh, they were French…that figures” I guess French people are famous for having sex in places where other people, strangers nonetheless, are sleeping. The next day i saw the two culprits before i checked out but I honestly wasn’t even sure what to say, I wanted to scold them but I knew they wouldn’t give a shit. So i just shook my head in disgust and left “the Bru Hostel”…

The next day I met back up with the two Swedish guys and we had a fun day, we made some food, listened to some good music, taught each other how to juggle, and just talked about traveling and what it’s like to grow up in Sweden and all that kind of stuff…they were great guys and a lot of fun. Next I went to Limerick for a gig and met up with the promoter, Benoit, when I got there, he made me a nice dinner and we chatted about music and the fact that he is originally from Belgium. The gig was at a nice pub called Baker’s Place and afterwards we went to the most popular bar in town called Nancy something… it was a beautiful old old irish pub with sawdust on the floor and good guiness on tap. That night I stayed at Benoits on the couch and was still tired from the flight and slept in such that when I awoke I got dressed quick and called a cab to catch a bus to my next destination.

In Athlone I met up with Eddie who I met last year and would be touring with for most of the time I would be in Ireland. Eddie is a really nice guy, kind of a soulful depressing kind of indie folk singer-songwriter, last year he was playing with my friend Dave and I have very fond memories of hanging out with all those people in the midlands. We went to Mullingar that night and played at the Stables. It was a pretty fun show except that there was an extremely drunk guy who wouldn’t seem to leave me alone. He kept trying to buy my beers and harass me and when he asked Eddie if I was his girlfriend Eddie stupidly told him the truth that I wasn’t so he continued to bug me. On the ride home the promoter told us that in fact that dude is on to just about every female musician who comes through the place…good luck to them…

On Halloween we went up to Belturbet in Cavan and played at a pub called the Widows. Most of the patrons were dressed up. Memorable costumes were jesus by a girl who had strapped a cardboard cross to her back, Bob Dylan by a guy that had curly black hair, black pants/blazer/sweater, black sunglasses…well…he looked like Dylan…there was a naughty nurse whose boyfriend was a ninja…and…well that’s all I remember at the moment. It was a pretty fun gig. My memory of our long drive up in the country was seeing all these fireworks and bonfires on the side of the road, turns out Irish people like to set off fireworks on Halloween, but it was really pretty to watch from the car as the shy is really dark there.

In Athlone we played at the Passionfruit theatre, a cute little local place, it was a very attentive gig (as in people were very quiet) and I enjoyed it a lot. We had Indian food beforehand and after went back to Milky and Camilla’s apartment and hung out which was a lot of fun. Although I got all upset at two people at the party who had never seen “Star Wars”, I mean really, how could you be on this planet as an adult and not see Star Wars? right? Anyway, it seemed like a sign that I should go to bed so I did, but was awoken a few hours later by a Polish guy screaming (in Polish) and pounding on a nearby apartment door at around 4 or 5 in the morning. The next day my Polish friend Camilla told me that he was saying “open the door you fucking bitch”. But of course I had kind of figured that…

Dublin for about 5 or so days…

I then went to Dublin to do a bunch of gigs in and around the city. I was lucky to get a lift from Julia, a midwife originally from Germany who was friends with my friends in Athlone. She dropped me off in the middle of Dublin at Starbucks and I hung out there drinking coffee and writing in my journal. Then I went to play on “Balcony TV” (www.balconytv.com) which is basically where you play one song on a 5th floor balcony right in the middle of Dublin, I played “people” on accordion but had to wait until a garbage truck went by as it was pretty noisey. Then I played a gig out in Dun Laughoire which is on the water near Dublin. The next day was off and I just hung out and watched the news because it was the day before the election and I was just infatuated like many others with what would happen. On tuesday I had a gig at the Ruby Sessions which is a great singer-songwriter session I did last year as well. I played with Mark Geary who is a really great irish singer-songwriter and then raced home to my friend Matt’s house to watch the election. He is also an American and hence put together a part and there were about 8 or so of us watching the TV and checking the internet for the updates on the results. At around 4am we heard the McCain succession speach and (Thank god!) the Obama exceptance speach. We were all really in awe and maybe even in a bit of shock that it was finally over and the outcome was the one we had all been hoping for. It was a very proud moment. And for the rest of the tour it became clear that that night had essentially changed most European’s mind about America, basically they were from hating us to loving us all with the knowledge that we had finally gotten rid of Busy and elected someone really great and historical.

Anyway, back to the tour, I played in Dublin the next night at the Globe, a loud but fun pub. The highlight story of the night was when Eddie and I were in a “chipper” (a place where you by fries, burgers, kababs, ect…) having a bite to eat before the gig and a “knacker” (a term for travelors and “low class” people in Ireland who have bad social skills and live off social welfare and would be like the “pikey” in England memorable from the movie “Snatch” where Brad Pitt played one…). Anyway, the “knacker” was a young girl who walked into the chipper and demanded to use the bathroom. The management tried to kick her out because she hadn’t bought anything but she said “I’m pregnant” (even though she looked about 15 and really skinny) and pushed past them into the bathroom. They were all a bit confused but Eddie and I just sat there eating our chips keeping quiet until she came out of the bathroom and on her way out the door she stopped in front of our table and looked down at our food and said “oh can i have a chip” but she wasn’t really asking, she just grabbed a handful of Eddie’s fries and walked out the door. It was pretty disgusting but highly entertaining and I laughed while my Irlsh friends talked about how gross the knackers are…

The next day I had coffee with Chistophe and his girlfriend, I had met them at a show that weekend and they were nice folks to meet up with and have a chat. Then I did a radio show that night called “on the verge” although it was at a huge mall in New Dundrum, I mean huge, apparently it is one of the biggest malls in Europe…so for a minute I felt like I was in some suburban part of the US. They even had a Christmas show going on and everything and all I could think is man, it’s only the first week of November and these people are already celebrating xmas… That night I dropped by the King Kong club where my friend Keiron Black does a battle of the bands thing. He’s a really cool guy whose main thing is promoting shows in Dublin, we met last year and I stayed with him a bit and we had become good friends. The next day I went to his apartment which had a great view of the city and of the Guiness tower (where you have a beer in a tower that revolves and looks over the whole city), Kerion has a juicer and made amazing carrot, apple, ginger, spinach, and chili juice that rocked my world….

Friday I had my last show in the area up in Drogheda which is a town about 45 minutes north of Dublin. Eddie, Matt, and I took the train up there. The show was at a pretty cool pub and we played with a guy named Jimi Cullen from Gorey. He’s a really nice dude who plays funny songs and was nice enough to give us a lift back to Dublin after the show. The night ended with a Neil Young cover band which was kind of cool because the lead singer actually sounded EXACTLY like Neil Young and had even won a competition for being the best impersonator out there with that high pitched croone..

The next day it was back to Athlone where I did a house show at Yasmin’s place because the show at the Shack had been double booked. It turned out to be a lot of fun and some really nice people came out and listened to the me play in the living room. Later that nigh “Felix Sonnyboy” played as well. He’s a young American dude who is more or less trying to be Woodie Guthrie or some such rambling vagabond singer-songwriter. He played old 30’s depression era kind of tradition songs and then some original songs that sounded like the covers. He dressed the part and had a guitar and banjo and in general it was cool to see someone keeping that old timey kind of music in the loop as it is all feel good tradition tunes.

Then it was back to Limerick to play at the Belltable sessions. Eddie and I drove down and when we arrived went to “Chicken Hut” or some such chipper for a quick bite. We sat upstairs and witnessed yet another fight between some “knackers”, this time I laughed and said to Eddie “what’s up with us being in the middle of weird knacker fights?”. Eddie then gave me the look to shut up before they heard me say that and we got beat up ourselves so we quietly got the hell out of the chipper and I haven’t been back to one since…well, except one in galway…

The gig was completely acoustic with no PA and it was at a big beautiful space with candels and a backdrop, very ambient… That night we stayed with Beniot again who made us a great dinner. The next day I took a bus to Clonmel to play my last show before flying to Paris. It was a in a beautiful little town in a valley between some hills. The week before there had been a “traveler’s funeral” which basically had practically shut down the town because of potential fights that would take place in pubs, I didn’t quite understand the story, but it had something to do with the fact that a traveler had been killed and hence other travelers where at this big funeral looking to cause problems. I played to some folks at the pub after sleeping at the B&B upstairs that afternoon knowing I had a long day/night in front of me. There was a woman at the bar talking about the theraputic effects of Guiness and hash for menopause, the bar staff was mildly entertained by her strange tale…I overheard her declaring that guiness was some sort of “cure” of sorts…

That night i took a bus to the Dublin airport and arrived at 4am even though my flight wasn’t until 9pm or so. I went to the Starbucks in the airport and took a nap although after about an hour someone went around to all the chairs and couches and woke up all the people who were sleeping like me until their flight. So I read my book and half slept until my flight to Paris. Which turned out to be a flight from hell and actually scared me so much that I started to have a fear of turbulence…I was on Air France and it was a windy day and the plane was fairly small and kept hitting big bumps of turbulence and I thought I was going to throw up…our landiing was even rocky…

PARIS…

I got to Paris in one piece and went straight to my hotel and crashed out. My gig that night was at La Fleche D’or, my favorite club in Paris. The best thing about the French is that they take care of you. I had a hotel down the street, a nice dinner with wine and coffee after…I played my set and then chatted with people who wanted my cd and the other bands. It turned out that the headliner was “Andy Yorke” from Oxford, UK. Of course I didn’t get the connection at first but quickly learned that he is the brother of Thom Yorke from Radiohead. Hence there was a good crowd there anxious to see the younger brother of one of the best musicians of our time… He turned out to be pretty poppy and not too experimental like Radiohead…but it’s a hard act to live up to…The other band was from Tucson but had a French singer and the two guys in the band were Americans who had lived in Maine for a few summers and we chatted away, what a small world… All in all it was a good night and I managed to get back to my hotel and watch some tv, but all they had in English was CNN and then some hardcore porn…so I went to bed…

The next day I had a show at Viex Leon and hung out in central Paris near the Siene and had a nice day walked past Notre Damn, Pompedu, and going to my favorite bookstore “Shakespeare and Co.” to read some David Sedaris and write in my journal. The show that night was nice and intimate, I had played there last year and had nice memories, plus as usually they made me a great meal and took excellent care…gotta love french food…the next day I went to Montmarte and walked around my favorite parts of Paris that I remember from my last two visits. I stopped into my two favorite cafes, one is a bakery and one is the place where they filmed “Amelie”. Then I went to Truskel to play a show in the financial district. It’s a club that is open until 5am and their claim to fame is hosting after parties for bands like Franz Ferdinad, Bloc Party, Cold War Kids, Interpol…ect, basically they let these indie bands have their fans come and hang out with them after a show in Paris. They gave me 11 playing cards that were drink tickets, I had no idea what they wanted me to do with that many so I gave them to other people mostly…Right before the show I had walked around to by a jamon and fromage crepe (I had one every day I was in Paris, I love crepes…) and stumbled across an art opening and went in to gaze at the paintings like old times at my old art gallery. Truskel turned into a full on hipster dance party the moment I stopped playing so I had a few of my playing card beers and then bust out…

I had two days off in Paris at that point which was great because I love to just be there. I walked around Montmarte again and went down the Shakespeare and Co. again to read and write. There is a piano there and a guy sat down and started to play Autumn Leaves, Dave Bruebeck, and the Mario Brothers theme music for Ninetendo….The people that hang out there are your typical young literally types. I overheard a British guy saying that he “absolutely must finish his play in the next month”, everyone there was writing and book or reading one, or both, including me…I spent the rest of my night just walking around after eating my jamon and fromage crepe…

My last day in Paris I went to Montmarte, again, and had my last jamon and fromage crepe that turned out to be kind of bad…it also was slightly undercooked and the cheapest one I had had the whole time…I had planned on going to another cafe and hanging out all day but I had seen a paper at Shakespeare and Co. that there was a writing group on Saturdays from 3-5pm and on a whim I went to an internet cafe and typed out the first few pages of the writing project I’d been working on and then took the metro down to the bookstore. I went into the front upstairs room with about ten other people and we introduced ourselves and told everyone a book we read and didn’t like but learned something from. I was reading Ferinheight 451 and was having mixed feelings about it… In any case, people shared their writing, short stories and poems and we all commented. I was a bit nervous about sharing mine but at the very end of the workshop I read my piece and everyone laughed because, well…luckily they found it funny which was kind of the point. It’s sort of autobiographic self-depricating humor which I seem to specialize in. After the workshop we went to a nearby cafe and chatted over a beer, I met a bunch of ex-pats who live in Paris, American, British, Australian, they all had made lives there…And I hope one day to maybe live in Paris too, even if for a year or so, and if I do I will certainly go to the Shakespeare and Co. writing workshop every saturday and hang with fellow English speaking ex-pats…
That night I had dinner with my friend Fabien and his housemates. We had a typically French meal with baguette, cheese, meet, red wine, and it was a lot of fun. Fabien told me how the French were trying to reintroduce bears and wolves into the into the wildlife. I guess they wanted some more wild animals kicking around France, but he also commented on how the farmers “were not happy about this”…go figure…

Last day in Europe- I flew back to Ireland and Matt and Yup picked me up at the airport and we went straight to Galway for my last gig of the tour at Roisin Dubh. We arrived and went to the pub and hung out before show and went to a chipper (told you I’d go back) and got some curry fries. I played to some nice folks, and immediately after the place filled up with the late night drinkers. Downstairs there was a Rory Gallager cover band, all of which were well over 50. We shared the apartment the Roisin Dubh keeps for musicians, last year I had stayed there as well and love this whole concept of venues keeping apartments for touring musicians, I wish all venues did that… In any case, we had a great night and the next morning drove back to Dublin where I caught my plane back home. Where I am now….

It was a fun trip and thank you again to all the venues, and my friends: Eddie, Yasmin, Milky, Camilla, Julia, Matt (!!), Keirone, Joanne, Yup, Fabien, and all the very cool people I met along the way! You make Europe all the more fun to visit…til next time…lots of love…

And lastly check out these pictures from the night in Paris when I played at La Fleche D’or, these pics are pretty awesome:

http://www.lost-pixel.net/AudreyRyan/Paris11-11-08/index.html