first the body. then the mind. then the soul. well, no, i'll take any portion of any of the three or what ever part of what ever M & U i can find. today i had a short one for the mind. i was shopping for gloves here in very chilly dortmund, germany, and, in the el cheapo department store, where my gloves where, i spied, in the grocery half of the store, my old friend val stevens, stocking the shelves. she was about 10 years older than she is, and she looked good, and she looked at me twice. maybe i looked like me to her. anyway, she looked like someone she wasn't, but it didn't really matter, because, through the aisles, i still walked with val. my mind marched with her on my less chilly now gloved walk, around the curving streets and along the train tracks and under the heavy low grey skies. nothing like walking and talking, nothing like it for me, we were able to reflect on every passing tree and house as if they were touchstones in our life, full of shared meaning and everyday wonder. of course, there is nothing like the real thing of course. real val. real company. a real walk.

yesterday we were outside of dusseldorf, spending our one day off of this tour in fabulous willich, germany. but not really. we finally arrived at the place of the windshield replacement surgery at about 2pm, spent about two hours getting to a hotel, where we had a shower room, and there, in the lobby, dustin and i ponied up for our own room. and 40 euro never better spent. need i remind you that i love these fellows that i travel with, and that there is not always or even rarely a time i can choose to be away from them, and so, to be with my heterosexual life partner, alone, in a hotel room, even for just 20 hours, is heavenly. away from the bus, priceless. steve and jason also shared a room, and i think some of my opinions may be shared by them. in our room, napping first for me, for dustin, a shower and a bit of beard upkeep. we roam the streets of our little village, just a scant few mile from where the rest of the band and crew were hopefully not languishing, locked overnight in the busyard whilst the adhesives dried on the new windscreen.

we ventured out a bit later for a wonderful german dinner across the street, and that was followed by a bit of wine and an epic cribbage battle, wherein which i set a new record for crib points, averaging 10 free points per crib. mama mia. we had some num nums found in den bosch, some wine, stayed up as late as we could with the laugh track on 10. some curling on the t.v. sometimes that is all you need for a good night. and on this night, that'd have to do. the bathtub (oh please blessed relief for these bunk-weary hip bones) had no stopper and the hot water eased up and stopped for good as i tried to dial in the mislabeled and hardly sensible faucets, so no bath. no shower. who cares about a shower, really? i can't get worked up. o.k., i guess i did a few days ago. euro-shower of the gods! but i don't need that every day. and a bath! only when i really want one, do i really need one. so i wait for another two weeks, until i am home. unless... some sneaky way that i can sneak one in... some backstage door, the keys to the kingdom, some alleyway apartment that is left open... i can sneak in, take a dunk, water the flowers, and split, full of spa-treatment energy. yeah, keep those tiny dreams alive. who knows. who is to say. really? today i have body maintained, and so i don't care.

this morning, having slept in a strange but strangely comfortable sort of tiny hotel bed, not knowing if it was really morning as it was still dark out there behind the sash, i realized that i had gone to bed more than eight hours prior. the state of disorientation is so profound on this trip that i had to check my ipod, my only reliable and un-trickable clock, so as to know that, damn the light, it was still 7:30, that i had slept a lot, that i could read and relax and not worry whether i would sleep or not. it was dark for a while more. understand that the sun is still at an extreme angle (i asked today if we were close to the arctic circle, and though we are not, the sun does not ascend beyond 20 degrees in its azimuth), making the hour of the day difficult to ascertain. you know, little comforts, little certainties. well, anyhoo, a slow morning culminates in meeting dustin, jason, and steve curbside out the hotel at 10:45 am, awaiting our bus, manned by our new driver, gods be praised, name of bertie, whom i was so very glad to meet as we jumped on, blocking traffic, saying an overly profuse "hello, and glad to see you". this morning and this event specifically have put my soul to ease. i am complete.

for your well being, i bring you mine. after my belly aching of more than one fashion, i have emerged feeling as good as i have for weeks. which, mind you, is not awesome, but awesome indeed compared to how i was feeling four days ago. and three. i bailed on the meds, and kept with my usual at home therapy of osha and vitamins, and did i mention that i sweat a lot on my sick day, which seems to be key, and i've coughed and coughed and the (eew!) mucus comes out and i feel light on my toes and like i've slayed many dragons and i'm ready to puff out my chest and feel feelings and eat and laugh again, all under the low heavy sky, like it were springtime without the basketball in the park.

now, we have played some show in the time since my last post, but we'll have to get to that later. my sense are working again and i am happy for it. so, really, love ya's, dan.

well, after the show tonight i started developing a stomach ache. which became an epic stomach ache, coupled with a fever, by about 3 am. i hadn't slept up to that moment, and of course i wasn't sleeping through it. anyone who knows me well knows this one, with the cramping, puking, staying close to the bathroom for the better part of a night and an early morning, until the cramping subsides and i can crawl into bed. well, lets just say that there are a lot of differences when you are on the road. beginning with the bathroom. of which there is not one. i mean, a peepee room is not a bathroom. permanently stinky and in an acrid way, we hold our noses to have a place to take a leak in the middle of the night. can't stand up, can't sit down, can't kneel (appropriate for my condition currently). next comes the antibiotics and other meds i was prescribed... i am sure they each are on extra strength status. combined with a food intolerance, to work some significant mojo. and then, with the bus leaving at 5 am, and bouncing and bumping and the temperature ranging from breezy and cold to stifling and hot (i think at the bus drivers whims, as in, when he opens his window to smoke, it is the former, then afterwards, when he is jerking off or whatever he does while he drives us all over the road, the latter), i could feel my fever increasing, along with the swelling in my belly. i spent the rest of the night and all this day until 5 pm with my head on a pillow on the table in the front lounge. laying down caused too much pain. i had to be close to the trash can for my evacuations. after all that, i crawled into my bunk for a lovely 2 hour nap.

and now backstage at MUZIEKODROOM PLACE in hasselt, belgium, i had a few bites of chow, a little ice cream, and a soda. i'll be weak and wobbly until tomorrow anyways, and my sadness, beyond my physical condition, is that i will not be able to party down for days, both because of the antibiotics and the dry times i'll be living and that i won't have any strength for days as well. oh shite. our solitary day off comes in a few days as well. i guess i can concentrate on ME for this brief time, even though it is a day off on the bus. no, no hotels on this trip. just this god-dammed bus.

that is all i have in me tonight. see you tomorrow. love, weakly, dang.

klaus walked me to the doctor today. he heard my coughing hacking and sputtering during the amazing six flights up three floors load in today. and so he approached and convincingly suggested that we visit a doctor somewhere here in weinheim this afternoon. see, the heater was off on the bus again last night. our driver, who shall now be referred to as "dispepto" couldn't (as in, didn't try to) fix the heater, and in its stead put a dinky space heater in the front lounge of the bus. dustin slept head down on the table for a few hours, and i awoke freezing in by bunk just as he was crawling into his bunk. i wrapped myself in my bunk blanket and curled up by the heater, which, when placed about a foot from your face, would warm your face and no more than your face. i sat there shivering for about an hour and a half, until dispepto came from his under bus bunk, and fired up the bus for our 6 am departure. with the motor running, the thing heated up in about a half an hour, and at that point i crept back to my bunk, to lay there close to sleep but never quite getting it, laying there until 11 am, when the bus pulled off the freeway into a full service (McCafe, gas/restaurant/mini market, casino!, and porn store!!) service area, the bus with a flat tire and dispepto with a full bag of his own. i could feel the infection creeping ever further into my lungs, and the coughing that i had been enjoying all night long was now roughing up my throat. i now understand the l.s.d. feeling... i haven't really slept yet on this trip. so today i am on three or four hits. ha ha.

now, actually, i am on drugs. the way the health care system works here is that everyone must have insurance, and those that cannot afford it are automatically covered. since i lost my insurance from the high street five days ago, i was able to use the services of the doctor and apothecary for the same prices that our german crew is abled to. so, late in the day, we walked around our neighborhood, finding a few offices of differing doctors. the dentist? probably not. womans health? nah. a couple of other doors had just closed for the day. one nice lady in an office just ready to close sent us across the street to doctor rolf kochs office, and, though he was just ready to scoot out the door as well, he overheard klaus' explanation of my dilemma, and dragged me back into his office to listen to my lungs. and just like that, he wrote out some scrips for this and that, took 20 euro, and sent me on my way three doors down to the pharmacy. another 20 euro, for what would have cost $120 US, and i'm feeling better already. not really. just at ease. that kind of better. you know, every time i even enter a doctors office i feel like i needn't be there in the first place. this was smart, though. to avoid another aspen story. this one substitutes german health care for "i'm too broke to see a doctor", and switches the bus without heat for the floor of the junkies house we slept on, dirty and dusted with the hair of six cats, as my night-before lodgings. thanks, klaus, and thanks, doctor koch.

i was able to stroll around weinheim for an hour this afternoon. my very first out of bus in the daylight experience. what a cool little town. quaint as hell. 200 year old houses and shops, all what we call "gingerbread" style, decorated and bavarian. two castles lord over this town, one immense and empty, only exterior walls, hence its name "the wind-castle", with a giant tower for rapunzel to live and long in. twisting cobbled streets leading up the hill to where a christmas market was being assembled, to be populated this weekend with revelers. winding streets took me farther afield than i really wanted, but it was, like i said, pretty as hell. no, i said "quaint as hell". i meant, "pretty as fuck". sad that i am really in no state to wander, or to enjoy much of much today and tonight. the antibiotic i am on is a strongy, so strictly no drinking for a couple of days. no whoooweee. maybe that will get me to sleep. the wine, which was my plan, sure ain't doing it.

our show last night, at KOFMEHL in solothurn, switzerland, was truly odd. we played after a cute rockabilly band name of THE ROYAL FLUSH, cute because they were pretty obviously just starting out, and they had a bad night, with the second guitar player breaking a string just as they started out. so starting out on a bad note. we came on raging on another really small stage, and kept it up for almost an hour. the crowd was small and reserved, though they were "in", but it an hour, something happened to yours truly. maybe the sickness was just now setting in. the wind went out of my sails anyway, and i ended the show pretty flatly. always a little sad at this. i showered and went to sleep immediately. now it becomes clear where the infection comes from. don't go to bed still wet. ah hah.

kofmehl is a room that was purpose built to be a music showcase. and though all the staff were really casual and informal, to the point that none of us knew what extent of the facilities exist or were available. we played in what klaus said was the small room, capacity 200, and that there was another large room for shows up to 1500. maybe we'll play there on our next trip across the pond. we were served our dinner there. once again creative chefery came to our aid, this time with a brothey leak soup with lots of pepper, chicken with a fruit sauce, and string beans and a salad. we are warmer. we feel good. we a taken care of. we make good show. we go bye bye. we see you tomorrow. good night my babies.

this is shitty. this is dark and shitty. this place. is this a place? are we driving through the arctic circle? 9:00 am, and it is darkness all around. we are in a cloud, smothered by mists, compressed by snows, diluted by rain, partially revealed by light that is only half-light. the day advances. the light seems to recede, by its own logic. fucking wintery northlands.

i can make out some signs of life out the window. an incomplete structure, abandoned or becoming i cannot tell. and only so much can i deduce in the foggy darkness. so, yes, people live, or have lived here. some fool planted acres of wine grapes. good luck with that. ice wine, anyone?

we live our days on the bus. the daylight hours are swallowed up. the trip from bunk to couch. maybe to the other couch, or table. this, really, has become quite a drag. all of these cities, i can know them only from the reflection of shop lights on the wet nighttime sidewalks. i finished a little walkabout at 2 am last eve, and, a half block from our bus, noticed a giant church spire, maybe 150 feet tall, one that i could not make out in the dark, our perpetual night outside the bus. i'm not sure i've really visited anything but 1000 bars. we are forever on the bus. i huddle in one lounge or another with my friends. on the bus. we try to entertain one another. at times we hide out. or fool ourselves that, by crawling back into the bunk, some sleep might just happen. but the bus wobbles, slapping us around our tiny bunks. no stable place to lay, sit, or stand. the diesel engine strains. there is a sour piston, slapping and straining against its workload. the germans have done a poor job with these northern roadways. cracky, bumpy, lumpy. cripes. could i be longing for airplane travel? gods help me, no.

dustin wakes up and we each question the other about sleep. i've a bit less of it than i need. i feel on l.s.d. again. we save each other by brewing the coffee and digging into an epic game of gin. another. we are the only ones up, today, for hours, and that is as per usual. the bus has, in the past, provided a cocoon of sleep for me, but somehow not on this trip. i recall my last bus adventure here was much the same. so extra pains have to be taken to stave off sickness. i'm o.k. i wish i could pull off the miracle sleep of all my mates. joe, jason, steve, kevin, can spend all the day there in the bunk. i suppose they are sleeping. i suppose i am jealous. i really ought to take some time to rejuvenate, before i get back home, back to baby daddy and baby mamma and big sister. how is it that, at home, i have become an expert napper, but no such luck here? i maintain enough fresh legs to play the show. bah. how long has it been since i have seen some sunshine? next tour, how about the mediterranean?

the shows have been great though. even the ones that i assumed to be dogs were actually, according to the folk i've been meeting, totally awesome. last night in cologne, a 40-something rockabilly tough, and his equally rough looking gal, stood motionless in front of the stage for the entire night. no expression, no motion. and, much like the muscled rockabilly boy i accosted in kufstein, he claimed that he had a great night, that we were awesome, what a fun show, etc. i suppose that these are people not given to dancing. much. there are always a few jigglers in every crowd. MTC, club last night, was packed to the rafters, we sold a lot of merch, the show was real high energy, we played great. the mosh pit days are definitely over, aren't they? but since our crowd is so diverse, people really might take a little while to understand our band. after all, they know us as a swing band, and they probably use cues like trendy, hip, retro, etc, to understand what we do. that is before they see us. then they have to throw all that out the window. we are clowny, cartoony, over-intense, dramatic. we don't play too much of what "those other swing bands" play. which is more jump blues than anything else. we get sexy. we geek out. we can be ourselves. it isn't time to pretend we are something else. we are at least somewhat modern. we assemble. we steal and borrow and rewrite. isn't a part of doing what we do, which here i'll call art, the attempt to be understood? yeah, it takes a bit of wondering. come on in. it is refreshing as hell to leave the hipper-than-thou hipsters and taste makers of the u.s. behind.

the high point of our show the night before in bielefeld was a toast taught me by conny's girlfriend (he and klaus both call bielefeld home), which goes like this: "zur mitte, zur titte, zur sak sak sak". which translates to "from the middle, to the tits, to the balls". i am still saying to myself, "go figure". this another crowd that could not be moved to move. usually fruiting off on stage frees folk up to do what they like. and it seemed that, just at the end of the set, we had 30% of them dancing. a small victory. that's all we would get. because then...

the low point... the opening band taking literally all our beers. apparently this is just how things are done here. maybe we should leave a little plate out for donations, since we are buying the shit anyhow. today, we play hide the salami with all our catering. right on to the bus. already overcrowded. we gotta save our food for us. to save us.

no, not that kind of boner. clean up your act. what is another word... gaff, snafu, accident, incident. today there was a little trouble on the bus. not previously documented trouble. the heater is working. the lights are back on. it isn't that certain band members are jeapordizing our stay here by consistently leaving the bus's bay doors open, so that maybe some mad fool can have my baby, my bass guitar. or someones undies. no, i have no gripes like that to think on today.

today, in the very middle of our very short but very late in the day drive to cologne, just after the minor victory of the acquisition of a burger king double cheeseburger, dana was making his way to the jump seat up by the driver to enjoy the view, coffee, and a cigarette, and, with his hands full, he tripped, lunging forward and planting his head quite hard against the massive front glass of the bus. i was sitting at the table 10 feet behind, and i didn't see what happened, but i surely did hear it. a thump and a cracking sound mixed together... i looked up to hear dana moaning, holding paper towel to his head. klaus leapt to his aide, and it was then i spied the major crack in the full front windshield. holy shit!

dana was, fortunately, o.k. and in fact, by this much later hour, he doesn't even have a bump on his noggin. a human cannonball. this "boner" is only one because this piece of glass will cost 2500 euro to replace. there is no insurance to cover it. even though it was an accident. now, everyone had a good laugh about it after a bit, though i'm not sure dana will be able to work one up. everyone has accidents. it only becomes easier when you are sleep-deprived, hungry, permanently pickled, and generally disoriented. what can happen? well, this blog is a very brief trip through only a few of the many many "situations" that i have been involved in. i cannot speak for, nor recall, all of the boners that each of the 30 some past and present members of the band have been involved in.

lets start in cleveland. 1998. just about in the middle of our very first nationwide bus tour, and we had played at the crusty old AGORA THEATER to a fun crowd. i chatted with two gals, who wanted badly to take me to the docks to their favorite dance club. lynette, who drove us down there, was pretty worked up. partying with a rock star? (don't worry, i've never called myself that before, just getting in character here.) maybe a crush? too many drinks? o.k., we did make out. just a little bit of making out. and while the anarchy ensued, our tour manager, chris wrightsman, had been calling me repeatedly. when i finally had the sense to look at my electronic leash, i saw six calls from him... and i was already 30 minutes late for our bus call. i rallied these ladies, trying to express the gravity of the situation, that i was keeping 11 other guys waiting, and into the ford thunderbird we climbed, the ladies still all unreasonably distracted (drunk!) to focus on my needs. lynette was applying makeup as she swerved out of the parking lot. and we swerved and alternated between crawling along and then hairily speeding through lower downtown cleveland. swerving, laughing, me crying and worrying, also laughing, swerving as i was being swerved. we rounded a 30 degree corner, but speeding and swerving, she couldn't pull it off, and of course the curb that we hopped was unusually tall, maybe for a storm drain, tallest curb i ever did see, like a foot tall, and though my hands were in front of my face, my nose broke as i went into the back of lynettes drivers seat. we skidded to a stop about 30 feet from the GUND CENTER, where the cavs used to play. i didn't realize that i was hurt, of course, wearing a red shirt, but yes there was blood pouring down my front, reddening my black coat to match my shirt. lynettes friend, i'll call her wendy, was obviously in shock, screaming that her boyfriend was going to kill her, he was going to be so mad, he's gonna think this is the last straw, he's blah blah blah. lynette was calmly sorting through her cassette tapes, which were madly strewn about the front of the car. i persuaded wendy to let me out, and the damage to the car was severe and hilarious. like an obediant puppy that knows it'll be rewarded with a milk bone dog biscuit, the car was down on its haunches, the front wheels not only pointing different directions but also splayed horizontally to the ground. the pointy front of this circa '87 thunderbird was no longer pointy. all the fluids had drained out under the car, like someone so scarred they had to piss. on the cell phone now, chris amazed and disappointed, "don't you move, schmid, we are coming to get you." how could i leave these ladies? this was worse than a boner. lynette had sort of come to by now, and she couldn't stand up, when she tried to exit the car. her foot. i convinced her to call an ambulance, that hopefully one would arrive before the police. this was bad. she was wasted. a friday night, cars speeding by after all the bars had closed, maybe the fuzz were just too busy, but how long could it take? we traded phone numbers, and just then the bus pulled up. chris came and escorted me away... and i never saw those ladies again. don't think me too much the cad... i did call lynette the next day, finding her laid up in the hospital with a broken foot. the police were so kind as to give her a ticket for reckless driving while she was sleeping that night, her foot in a sling. me, i had a double shiner for the rest of the tour. i was young (36!) and recovered quickly, and i had a new bend in my nose, to make two, and to increase my already strange countenance.

should i go on? there were two hospitalizations. one in '92. an asthma attack in aspen colorado, my first serious one. we missed our shows at the double diamond, john denvers favorite hang. he'd been helped off the stage there many times. yeah, i thought that one was gonna kill me. i played the next show, three nights later, in boulder at the fox theater, played it from a chair, oxygen tank at my side. thanks, gods, i didn't need it. and we rolled on.

then, in '98, on the crappy old warp tour, i ingested some of the wonderful catering, and somehow something caught in my throat, which within hours was closed. five days later i was in an emergency room in florida, having not had a bite of solid food for these last days, and having nothing to drink save water. even juice hurt to ingest. the doctor there gave me some pepcid, which i couldn't take. slowly, after maybe another 10 days, i had lost 25 pounds, and was somehow barely able to survive the tour. i had throat widening surgery back home, and a week later i was off to england for the euro warp tour. the big british breakfast saved my life. beans for breakfast! still a favorite in my house. the warp tour catering, in my mind, is to blame for that turmoil. roast beef that glowed iridescent green, an indelible image from the catering tent. shit.

well, of course i could go on and on. for today, maybe i'll quit with the nostalgia. it is danas day to suffer. hopefully an insurance settlement will bring a smile to all of our faces. i'll have to wait until later on to relate our nights in bielefeld and tonights endeavor in cologne. until then... i remain, dang.

super wild at heart. super in every way. yeah, i called that wonderful club dinky, and in truth it is just the right size. we were wedged onstage in a way that we haven't been in 17 years, since the max's tavern gigs, and maybe only a few other times have we been so close to one another. this bar/club, and its associated restaurant next door, they know how to get the most night out of their spaces. wall to wall crowd, everyone living it up largely, they fed us, got us drunk, rocked our worlds. i hope we returned the favor.

klaus took a few of us on a short adventure after the gig, to a bar down the road called FRANKENBAR. not as scary as it sounds. every drink was a double. the bartender would do shots with us. and, like club wild at heart, this was an owner operated joint. too cool. and though it were only four short blocks to the bus, i got lost on my walk back maybe three times. nothing looked familiar. no duh. i had seen a wee bit of kreuzberg in february, when i met alistair and he gave me a bit of a walkabout. but nighttime, vodka, and delirium combine to make a woozy way. bumbling back into the club, two handsome gentlemen name of jesse and joe gave me the escort that i apparently required. thanks fellow fellas.

today i was able to sleep all day. just the medicine that i needed. up all night, sleep all day, i didn't know the bus had left berlin, and i woke in bielefeld, and find myself at FORUM, another wonderful example of the kind of hospitality that you just cannot expect but you lap it up when it is about. a shower. washer and dryer. a wonderful hot meal. all day catering and snacking. the num nums are nummier, because everything is made with care, because they do care. i guess that is the big difference, right there. a level of meticulousness, covering all the bases, helping those that are merely passengers. all i need now is a big old hug.

there were a few other stops i haven't touched on yet, and so here goes, in an abbreviated fashion...

our first day was sort of a tune up for the whole production. meeting the crew at the airport, a short bus drive to ingolstadt, a funny little show at a cafe/bar, a smaller crowd than we have been lucky enough to enjoy at any of the other shows. nothing really to recall, except that we had folks at the show who had seen us at the warp tour 10 years earlier. the crowd was just a little hesitant, but all smiles for sure. this club was also a tune up for my lungs... i am inadvertantly smoking a pack a day at these shows. in fact, tonight is the first non-smoking show of the trip. i could hope for a few more, but i'll be surprised if there are any more at all. funny, i used to miss the smoky bar. not so much any more.

next day we made a long drive into zagreb, croatia, to experience for the first time what a confusing mish mash these now-western countries are. subtle and sly, nothing makes the same sense. i used to think that a shopping mall is a good place to get grounded when traveling, but not so much here. the mall looked more like an airport shopping area, and there were absolutely zero kids in the mall, where IGOR and his wife BRANKA, our hosts and the promoters, escorted us to get our catering taken care of. i think the population must be way on the decline. igor spent an hour in the grocery store in the mall, but the grocers had no vegetables, so we ducked into a very small closet sized store that had some fresh produce. weird. our club this eve was KSET, a student cooperative for music and recording arts. when we wheeled in in the early afternoon, there were maybe 20 kids in the club, and surrounded by beer bottles and full ashtrays. i guess that is part of a musical education... gotta learn how to party. i think these folk all have a head start. we played after a swing cover band, all good soloists, and we played to a full room, maybe 200 tonight. once again, all smiles. dustin was particularly energized, more than his usual expressive self, and i have never scene such a cell phone video frenzy take place. more smiles. after the show, a frigid walk down the avenue to our shower room, already destroyed by the band, floor covered with sopping towels, and pretty gross. i was the last in. not tonight, please.

next was ljubljana, slovenia, already covered here, except for the sense i had all day of being on acid.

the only other day i haven't mentioned were kufstein, austria, and this partly because the show there was quite frustrating. i mean, we played great, the club was awesome and took great care of us, almost with luxury appointments, great catering, everything but the crowd was cool. i mean, they were cool, but they may have been too cool. you know? no one danced. it always feels that we are not coming across correctly if no one dances. about half way into our set, i jumped out into the crowd, carrying my bass, and approached a rather large rockabilly gent (who i later learned was named stephan), and in a lame attempt to get someone inspired enough to move about, told him to try to relax. hoping that if the biggest guy in the crowd could be comfortable getting down, other people might be inclined in the same direction. this was not to be. this is a small mountain town, full of wealthy mountain kids. sort of like aspen. no need to move, or try to have fun, or anything of that silly sort. fugedaboudit! i did get to cruise around a bit after the show with some new friends to a cool indoor/outdoor bar, looking eye to eye with one rather gothic rockabilly gal and her two also oversized friends. they make em' big in kufstein, and in berlin as well.

of course i travel on a bus with 9 other "boys". so there are those fellas. but compared to last nights post-show revelry, that ain't nothing. yeah, last night we got to party with norbitt and gabe, come from hungary to see us play, smoke with us, have the beers. and norbitt would talk really excitedly about how excited he was to see us and smoke with us and just generally be excited about us and for us and with us. super cool. really. these were funny guys who knew other funny guys when they were being funny. cheers-ing in their tongue (sounds like ah-ga-shez-ga-dreh), we cheersed and cheersed again and again.

though there were many more fellas than these. see, none of this would have been at all possible without the super-duper stellar show we played. not that it was all us, either. this sunday night crowd was on fire. really having a good time. i'd say we had all but the most jaded doing some kind of old or newly minted dance. and so, 200 out of 300. on a sunday night, no less. one fine fellow name of felix brought four of his friends, and had them all dress up (a necktie is all it takes, making them all look like they dropped out of a cheesy t.v. show where each of them played the office copy boy). they all ended up backstage, for better or worse. one, whose name i never got, propositioned each one of us, saying he wanted to have my (his, theirs) baby. and by this, i couldn't say exactly what he meant. it sorta became more and more clear. see, he was up in the front row boogeying down with these other fellas, and what set him apart was the necktie used as a headband, and, more significantly, the wookie fur fingerless glove he wore on his left hand. and backstage, he would have me pet it. and smell it. jokes on him, my nose hasn't worked for months. (one of my on-tour super powers... no toity nor unshowered dude can penetrate my system.) the glove rubbed my chest. i was playing ball, but not as hard as he was. prospectively. so i found wonderful reasons to move away from the glove. to be truly free. ahhh.

well, the backstage shenanigans went on for about three hours. some of the boys in the band were, by this point, long past being consternated. hiding infuriation. after all, these fellas were in our little haven, and this haven included our shower room, and this was a night that everybody really needed a shower. sure, even yours truly. we put that request to all the assembled, and with some degree of tender difficulty we spent 20 minutes using body language to get the glove and all the others out of our little space. the folks in the club had long since stopped checking in on us. and they were sweet and understanding enough to let us stay until about 3am. we were done at 10pm. so you can see what kind of a party we were dealing with. cheers to all at CLUB SZENE, so nice to host our best night of socializing.

today an over long bus drive, leaving us here at about 6pm. we are at WILD AT HEART, which is germanys' rock n' roll shrine. we little dinky thing, as big as our dear MAX'S TAVERN, maybe 30 people bigger, and all gussied up like you wouldn't believe, half old SATYRICON in its dusty redness and rock hall of fame-ness, and half tiki, half 50's/60's greaser decor, well worn and super duper cool. what to expect, on a night like this? the stage is smaller than the little bedrooms in my house. we've done it before. we used to do it all the time. we'll have it our way tonight. we all know each other purty well. definitely a "get to know me better" kinda night. each of us in each others arm pits. i bet the fellas from last nights vienna dressing room would have loved to see that.

all right. this dispatch will have to remain as brief as this. i had a lot to say about the toilets i've seen on this trip. which are architecturally and hydraulically odd, to say the least. nothing shocking, though, as magically, the folk that maintain and the folk that use are on the same page, and not a single bathroom (except for each of our club or hotel shower rooms) has been wrecked. like your butt doesn't need a rock n' roll lifestyle. mine don't. it gets rocked enough. by all of these fellas.

as i writ of earlier, i have been doing some good drinking whilst here and there and over here. being a known tippler, i had thought that good sense would apply to my habits on the road. i'd forgotten, handily, that unlimited access to tons of free booze could lead to trouble. well, i've not really found trouble, at least not out in the world. it all comes in the bunk (!) after i've been sleeping for a couple of hours. and that trouble could be spelled "h.a.n.g.o.v.e.r.". wine and whisky are the typical culprits. consumed one then the other and then the other. and so on. and on and on. now, understand, friends, that dustin kindly shaped the rider so that we would all be able to drink ourselves to this self-same stupor on any night in question. the extent of our gluttony: four bottles of wine, one bottle of nice vodka, and (ahem) 72 beers. somehow a bottle of jack daniels snuck in there. i'd only drink it in coffee. so, o.k., i will. i did. tonight, we'll see. i have to say probably just stick to the wine tonight.

why? well, something to do with walking in the snow, to a party with some folk i'd met on the way to the hotel after the show last night, walking so far in my pointy loafers and ankle deep in the powdery snow, just a light coat in the sub-freezing temperature, wobbling just enough to then sensibly think to myself that maybe i'd become hypothermic if i had a boo-boo or partied too hard or got lost (remember adelaiide, dan), and so i turned my loafers toward the venue and the bus. good boy. today, somehow, the head ache never came. maybe the abbreviated sleep, maybe i actually was a little easier on myself than i thought. probably too tired to actually stay up and keep it up...

good body, boy. as, on this night, i was too dissipated to really perform at my best. in fact, on a scale of 1 to 10, i was a feeble 2 or 3. songs were coming up in the set that we had not discussed playing. i had no set list in front of me. i broke a string on what is the most difficult song for me to play (one that i didn't know we were playing), "hi and lo", which i somehow fudged my way through in spectacularly unmusical fashion. i mean, i broke the damned E string. that just doesn't happen. then, playing my lunky backup bass, my fingers felt like fudge. fudge-fingered fop. failure. what a drag of a set. fortunately, being that buzzed, the show went by pretty quickly. ahh. and after the show, i got to relive one of my favorite onstage moments, reprised from the chicago WARP TOUR, where i was playing my first free bass, provided so graciously by epiphone, which was a royal turd, and the bridge fell apart during the show, and, mid-song, i pulled all the strings as hard as i could and ripped them and the bridge clean from the bass. hunk of junk. last night i achieved the same amazing feat of strength. the bridge stayed on. and this morning, knowing my disassembled and denuded bass was beneath the bus in the bay, and that i wouldn't see its sad condition until safely deposited here in kufstein, i almost cried, that bass is so dear to me. now let us all rest easy... the bass was just fine. without strings, it looked naked, strange. i gave it a bath. that is what you do to a naked baby. and now, with new strings, it is a growling rock monster. tonight, i'll let it do the growling.

ljubljana, slovenia, is one strange place. and the venue, MENZE PRI KORITU, was stranger still. understand that here this far east, the old and the new, the eastern and the western, the monied and the not, it is a strange fit of contrasts and does not translate easily. this venue was a co-op of sorts, with a hostel, voted best in europe, on the grounds, and various buildings of mysterious purpose and homespun construction (and destruction) scattered about the grounds within the 15 foot walls of this space that used to be a prison. anywhere you would choose to look were sculpture, art (touching little foot tall plaster buddha with ronald mcdonald stenciled on it's chest), graffiti, piles of materials, piles of crumbled this and tipped over that... and tons of kids crawling the grounds at all hours. as show time approached, more and more of them, all carrying bottles of booze of one kind or another, all on vacation from home or whatever. we were told that there were no laws there. the police stay away. and hence, lots and lots of kids came just to hang out in the parking lots and arcades and smoke joints and just generally have a great time. the show was sold out, 300 folk crammed into what may have been, in its day, a workshop for the prison, and there were easily 150 folk just milling and slipping and having snowball fights. tossing snowballs at our tour bus. hooting, laughing, a high school party that was attended by all ages. at a squat. freakin' cool, man. i was definitely inspired by the whole scene. to drink my head off. i wish i woulda kept my cool. as i remembered ljubljana from 10 years ago to have been the most grateful crowd i'd ever had the honor to play in front of, and last night was no different, save for the fact that i was too busy playing catch up that i never really was able to focus (hah!) on the crowd. silly fool.

as is tour typical, i was able to goof around for only two hours or so, and, as is also tour typical, i spend almost all of that time in the quest for food. so no amazing photos, no wild stories, other than the ones already recounted, no real experience except for the show, the bumbling afterwards, and some broken strings. oh, wait, in the early afternoon, in the middle of the town center, we idled the bus and waited for the promoter, iriana, to come on the bus and show us to the venue, and dana popped off the bus to smoke, astounding all that passed by at this lunch hour with his amazing fashion style, which would be described best as classic comfy bus wear, in his case featuring a knit skull cap, a blue down coat, his ankle tight sweat pants, no socks, and moccasin type slippers. i mean, you don't see men or boys wearing sneakers here. everyone is very well put together. presentation obviously is very important. not a single soul could take their eyes of of him. including steve and i, in the back of the bus, amazed. best thing was, though, that as they laughed at dana, he laughed right back at them. who is zooming who, here, anyway?

now, to ready myself for the evening. klaus took the band out for a dinner at the bands' dayroom hotel, which i recall being named GUSTHAUF. or something very much like that. i had a pork shnitzel with baked on blue cheese, and some garlic cream soup. i am nappier than i'd like to be before a show. i will brew the coffee, and sip the wine, and don my gay apparel, and rock the rock. the bus rolls at six a.m, and i know i'll have been snoozing for hours at that point. tonight, in kufstein, i can't wait. so to you all, good day, as i wish myself a good night.

but why? how? what am i doing? i am not a self-reflective sort. no. but when faced with such difficult circumstance, what else would a man do? now, you may ask, as i have, what would be so difficult being on tour in europe? i mean, kufstein is gorgeous. all bavarian and shit. a stupendous castle lords over the town. sort of dwarfs it. but that is not the problem. the problem, other than that i am away from my family, is the bus. which, today, was dubbed by dustin and myself "animal crackers", 'cause it is about as drafty as a box of said cookies would be. if it were traveling in an alpine way, and carrying 10 men-children. half of whom are just now getting sick. yes, the bus' air conditioning system is stuck on, blowing cold air in the back lounge, where no one will hang out, and chilling the hallway, wherein which our bunks are lined. yes, as if this were a summertime bus, and only meant for maybe mediterranean climes. and sunshine reggae music. and ice cold beer.

and so, the bunks themselves, a little tinier than any i've experienced, maybe 18 inches from pad to ceiling, are where we wrap ourselves like caterpillars against the cold. this morning our tour manager, klaus, wrapped every single vent with multiple layers of tape. to give us a chance to stave off the insinuating cold. we wake up and inch forward in the bus, where the only warm spot is the four person table installed right behind the driver, scottish steve. dustin and i had one of those sweet and classic tour bus mornings today, playing gin rummy and drinking tons of strongish black coffee as we rolled through this alpine wonderland, through epic tunnels and past snowy crags. we had the bus to ourselves this morning. steve arose just long enough to gobble down some cold medicine, and worry us all with a report of his creeping evil fever that is catching him and his throat. we can't have that. hows about instrumental versions of our swinging hits? hell no.

our bus driver seems to be 100% apathetic, having just today taken out the garbage for the first time. there is an amazing spill just outside of joe manis' bunk, maybe six tablespoons of sugar. a little lake. how? and there it sits. scottish steve seems to have no concept of the function of this bus. he couldn't control the climate, as i have previously complained of here. and can't care enough to do anything about it. i know, he has kind of a sucky job. but really, we do pay him well enough. and it is his choice. it is like he is holding us hostage. by our sore throats. why, there wasn't even any napkins, or paper towel, or soap on the bus until yesterday, and only now because we pulled some from the crazy club we played in yesterday. which i'll get to. but i must keep griping. i'm almost done.

i mean, it is cool to be here, and touring on a bus is a relative joy. and it is symbolic of the fact that we are lucky enough to be busy, lucky enough to be touring. i mean, it has really been 10 years almost exactly since we've been here, and 8 years since we've been on a tour bus tour, and although i have been on two bus tours and two other proper tours with the black francis band, all well documented here (oh shit, i never blogged about australia, cause the infronet was never free there) (what, so i'm a tightwad), the daddies left the touring behind in 2000, on our ill fated and eventually aborted "soul cadillac" tour. there are differing levels of excitement around all this. i think that trumpeter dana heitman would be overjoyed to stay on the bus for another year. not so with myself. i mean, dana practically giggled and got all squishy when he first plopped down on the couch in the coach. so i'd put myself at the exact other end of the tour appreciator spectrum. my god, this trip hopefully will defy my prediction and not be the longest month of my life. yes, you will here all about it.

well, this post is just to set the scene for you, dear and gentle reader. i should make mention of a few other tasty morsels, and give you a filled out roster of our cast and crew... we have a new, though temporary, drummer, having lost our man tim donahue after our virginia beach show of about two months ago. this tour that i write from was, i believe, the last straw for tim, who like all of us was probably not going to have many of his needs met. and, truth be told, he has many many of them. not to mention the payday. this is, as i have mentioned to many of my pals, our "poverty" tour. i'm trying to be thrifty. and i am doing well. oh yes, back to the task at hand. our new drummer... kevin congleton. wow. what hands. sort of like in basketball, where having good hands makes one silky and smooth. he is like a secret badass. not full of himself. not a bragger or boaster. quiet and unassuming. stays in his bunk all day. largely because i think he stays out all night. i wouldn't know, as i have been drinking myself stuporous and occasionally stupid each and every night, crawling into my bunk before each and every other, and dropping right in to the snore zone. i know that kevin caused the bus to leave a bit late this morning, where we were supposed to leave at 5am but missed our mark by quite a little bit, i am told.

our german crew consists of klaus, whom i have mentioned, who functions as our tour manager and has taken it upon himself to sell merchandise, and connie, who is our soundman and sort of a roadie as well. klaus is styled as a rockabilly hellion, and is very well informed and connected to the rockabilly scene here in europe. he booked this entire tour for us, and his focus was on clubs and towns with well developed swing and rockabilly scenes. connie is also a singer in a death metal band, though his quiet and sweet demeanor would not tell you that much about him. he came to live sound by accident, as many of us bump into our professions that way, having once been called on to mix one of his own bands shows. voila! he hired himself!

this sort of causes me to reflect (again! dammit!) on how i came to play music in the first place. which goes like this.... steve perry was taking off for the east coast to go visit his family in october of '84, one year into our friendship/discovery voyage, and just before he left he suggested that joe brooks, myself, and he form a band upon his return. i don't recall why joe had a lock on the drums, maybe a conga misplaced in his living room or something, but i got stuck with the bass because i have elongated fingers. not large hands mind you. it is all an illusion. and so, steve returned in december, and joe and i had been getting together to play along with records we liked, and figuring out what to do (i had never played a single note of music in my short 21 years at this point), and we were then a band. THE JAZZ GREATS. i think we wrote about 10 tunes, and did maybe 4 covers, in our six months together. played maybe 6 "shows". and the band split because of a girl. or at least that is what i recall. histories mists might have obscured what really happened. i remember poop on one of our beds. not mine. and not one i left behind. hey, that is almost a joke.

lets see... how long has it been? i feel like i put down a journal that i had been scribbling in feverishly for months, and then had a major life change, and, realizing that i couldn't manage a thread through that journal to my "new way", i put that half empty journal on the shelf and got a new one and christened it and started again. by that, i mean to say that it has been a helluva long time since i writ. i mean, i've made it to australia and back with nary an entry, and none since my summer tour with black francis. guess i'm getting back to my sneaky late night computating. for better or worse, the only time that i have time these days is when everyone is asleep. and so it is tonight. well, rachel is at red agave, dancing her dances with the dancers. a dance party. i'm having a blog party with myself. and you. sort of.

well, how about an update, then? as you may or may not know, i intend these posts to be roughly about how it is to be a rock and roller and family man (i know, a contradiction of terms, i know), to describe how these things unite, or if they do. and, since my return from the subcontinent, i've been more family and less rocker, back to a pretty benign one practice a week schedule. i'm just about to get busy with the daddies again, two shows coming up and then we are off to europe in two weeks!

i'm sort of crapping my pants about this tour. for lots of reasons. one, that i'll be paid a skimpy salary, significantly less than i make at the high st. and as we are crazy-strapped right now, i can't bear to think the shape we'll be in come late december, when i return. so there's that. then... being gone for a month... one that just happens to smother thanksgiving, rachels' birthday, our wedding anniversary, and the solstice... well, that is a big hit. and to think, after five days of our relatively brief 11 day trip to australia, i had a breakdown and called home to cry to my wife about how much i missed her and violet and mikah. not that i don't miss them whenever i'm away, and i do miss them bunches, but i had until then been proud of my "road-dog"-ness, my love of moving and my tirelessness. maybe one of those "life changes" that i've heard about. well, i really wouldn't know about that. but, if i couldn't handle all those nice hotels and the springtime climate and the exotic surroundings, for 11 freakin' days, then i don't know how i'll survive this'n, living on a too small tour bus and recycling my own excreta for meals (a snack, a metaphor, a mission statement). i'm glad for the opportunity, so don't read me like a hippocrit, just know that i'll be glad to see you when i'm home.

now, australia, as some of you may be curious to know, was grueling, exhausting in the extreme, sort of like a latter day daddies tour in that we flew everywhere we played, though, blessedly, our flights were not the early birds that the daddies always take, maybe just a bit later in the morning. still, stay up late, keep fighting that jet lag, which never really went away, then get up early and bag up all those hotel soaps and get on another plane and scoot to another lovely hotel and try but fail to get some nappy time on one of those big soft hotel beds in another big soft hotel. fun fact: i never enjoyed a single extra deluxe and super jumbo hotel bathtub on the entire trip. not like me. no, i don't wreck em. i read in em. that says something about my time management on this trip. i couldn't get in the zone. not that we didn't ROCK! of course we did. i had it in my mind that these were most likely the last BLACK FRANCIS shows that i would ever play. i was careful to plan my eves to be as energized as i could be at any point in the days/nights, to be all the way up for the shows. cracky freeze dried coffee everywhere you looked was a sure fire picker upper. and of course the music is like niacin, ephedrine, popping popcorn and percolating coffee. dark roast, please.

once i was lost, the really lost really no idea whatsoever of the what and the which of getting to where you are going. clomping around in my show shoes, pointy things that slip on and make a fine sound on the sidewalks, streets, and stages, slipping and clomping sort of as they do. i was way far farther than i needed to be on my walk back, this in adelaide, and, after a testy sort of encounter with a young local alcohol enthusiast, and after having decided to double back and go this way and that, that i had asked a helpful hostelier who gave me hope, and knowing that there was still 20 minutes or more of my walk, that i changed into the sneakers that i had been lugging on my back in my book bag (good fate? good grief! the thing weighing 20 pounds), and that i did make it back way quicker than i thought i could and i was even more the fool for it, that i had made this mini-epic.

this was a month ago. like i said, i am bracing. on all fronts. annie d. is in the process of moving her home on wheels into our backyard, and make for herself an attached kitchen room, and thereby providing fiscal relief, comradship, more complete utility of our massive yard, and fun as we all overwinter together. i am secretly jealous of her r.v., bartha, and i fully expect that i'll have found a suitable mate for her (the bartha) by next summer. then, cool little barthas' running everywhere else they can fit in our yard. maybe not so massive, now. then.

oh yeah. we are making ourselves strong, light, small, and smart, for obama, and the rest of you and everyone else and for everything. hopefully a non-partisan artisan, but i hope to see some certain significant "right wingers" eat a mile of crow, turd, their own right hands, whatever they are forced to gobble, for just a bit, and then because of all our hard works, the playing field will be leveled, and we will feel great doing what we do anyway, which is whatever we want to.

love is the rule.

dan.