This city has class

So I have now had the experience of going ‘back home’ to a city that has never been my home (nor feels like it for that matter).  But London has its charms, and now that I have had some time to settle in, I dare say I am growing to like the place.  The best thing about the city by far is the incredible amount of talented musicians, and I have had the fortune of playing with some amazing people.  I’m of the mind that life is always good as long as there is good music around.
Of course, going anywhere new there is always the challenge of sifting through a heck of a lot of bad music to get to some pure audio gold.  Man, I have seen some bad shows here too (I actually saw a guy eat a hamburger on stage at the end of his set… chewing into a microphone is just gross).  But then there is this whole other breed of musicians that play in multiple bands with other great musos… the type of folks you can just call up and be on stage with them the next day.  I’ve been supper inspired and been experimenting with a bigger, more intricate sound… something big to ballance out the minimalism of ’23 Kilos’.

"You shared your music for me so I'll share this photo with you" - I couldn't resist a picture with this guy after playing in Amsterdam

By the end of the trip all  I was looking forward to were the little things- privacy and fresh vegetables!  I see less kebabs in my future… at least until the next tour.

JJ Symon And I Settle For The View In Paris

Paris had moments of amazing beauty, but I for one prefer raunch over romance!  I would have given anything for a dirty rock n’ roll band and my bare feet in the grass.

We walked clear across the city; with the intention of seeing some sights and then checking out some live music.  It’s a city of Wine Bars and DJs and we thought the venues would never appear.  To be honest, we got a bit distracted when a homeless fight busted out in front of us.  It was one of those scenes where you should look away… one homeless person peed on another guys tent and then the wife was out of the tent yelling in her knickers… anyway, by the time we found the venues the bands were all finishing.

So we climbed to the highest point we could find, sat down, drank with the locals and wrote a little love song to Amsterdam.

Kit & Con Sign The Guest Book Post Gig

I don’t know if it is possible to fall in love with a venue so immediately as I did with Das Blumen in Darmstad.  The building is run by a collective of architects that aim to develop venues in beautiful buildings.  Das Blumen was named after its former life as a flower store and featured a stunning stare case and cute features such as the Nintendo smoking room.  I loved it so much that we tried to do some video the next day, but the light just did not turn out- the shame of down-home productions.
The next day we played under a music school in a venue built like the bat cave.  While the drums students practiced above, we got home-cooked meals on a white table cloths, followed by the best sound check (the mixer actually came on stage for a while and had a jam with us), and topping off with a packed out show.  Kit & Con got a record 3 encores and we sold heaps of cds.   I admit, I had ‘performers high’ which came crashing down when we got to Paris…

After A Few Weeks On The Road We Still Get Along

Everyone in Berlin advised us not to, but we set off to spend two nights in Frankfurt.  The original plan was that we would drive to Munich with a stop for lunch in Dresden- but with the beer festival going on, accommodation was too dear.  Frankfurt was a practical choice between Berlin and Paris and was the true dark-horse of the trip.  For it was there we met our second little tour angel, a phd student with heart-warming ideals about breaking the artist/spectator barrier.
After wondering around Frankfurt and checking out venues I had looked-up prior, I decided to catch an opera while the boys set up to play outside a beer garden on the river.  By the time I met up with them they had made heaps of money busking, scored an invitation for us to stay in the country for a few days and sourced a potential gig.
Little did we know the gig would turn out to be two, and the country was actually a city packed full of 150,000 artists and students.  Our strange stop in Frankfurt turned into a launching point for Darmstad; a mere lead up to the best show of the trip.

Berlin Wall, Miss Van and Me

One very long traffic jam later and we arrived in Berlin before it got dark.  Berlin was a stange one.  I was so excited to see it and had all these dreams of living there.  But it is so big and hard to get a grasp on quickly.  We had some friends from Australia that we were catching up with there so it was harder still to get a grasp on the place when hanging out with ex-pats.

But we spent an awsome 4 days there and played one hell of a gig.  The best part was doing two throw-down performances in one of Berlin’s best parks.  Check out the youtube video of it- the bass is a bit quiet but we had hundreds of people partying along!

Even the Street Art Is Happy in Holland

How nice is it to say I had a ‘day trip to Amsterdam’.  But that is exactly what happened.

We checked in with the cops who sent us on a wild goose chase to town hall to get permits.  Unfortunately the permit office closes by noon and so we just missed it.  As we had already scoped out our spot for the day, we decided to chance it and pulled up in the park in front of the I Amsterdam sign.  We had a nice little place beside the skate park and over looking the cute basketball players.  Kit & Con played well and we had a nice little crowed (although slightly younger then ideal).

JJ Symon had been playing for maybe 30 min before the cops came to visit.  In true Holland fashion they were very polite when we explained our dilemma with the permit and managed to call in a special day permit for us to play- helped in part by the very large collection of kids that came to our defence and told the cop that we were good.  Not to push our luck, we finished up about half an hour later and leged it to our show at Skek in the red light district.

The venue was supper cool with this upstairs section with old shutter-style glass. I got some good video footage of JJ Symon in true art-school fashion.  The Holfner was just to much for the PA, so I had to bust out some guitar and we played all these songs we hadn’t played together yet.  Con was whistling and playing the piano and I think I even heard him sing along to Miranda.

All in all a very good night- and a late one as we were back in the car and back to Utrecht.

It was supper worth it. We ended up playing all day in a bunch of nearby locations.   The best one was in front of a girl’s school graduation and Con kept getting distracted by all the little girls hanging around his drum kit.  We made lots of friends with the locals who brought us a case of beer and all came out to support the show that night.  Hurray for Utrecht indeed.

I don’t know how people feel about me using their names in my blog, so for the moment we will call our host Andy (surely not the most Dutch name I can think of…). Andy is a bass guitar player who met our Australian friend in South America last year and agreed to let the three of us live on his floor for a few days.  Now it is already amazing that someone would take in 3 house guests in a modest flat, but to take in 3 house guests that you haven’t met and let them all sleep in your room with all their gear… you must be getting the picture of why we call him our ‘tour angel’.  We needed one too because when we went to unpack, our new car battery (the one we bought for busking) fell to the ground and broke… it hadn’t even been used yet.

We hit the ground running in Utrecht and promptly went into town to scope some gigs and talk to the cops about busking.  In true Dutch fashion, the cops were supper helpful and gave us the address to go and get our licences.  We scoped out location, talked to venues about gigs, got our licences and a new car battery and played an open jam night- a very productive day.  By the end of it we were all completely in love with Utrecht and every single thing about it.

My drummer had gone on this 10-day bus trip around Europe prior to the tour.  So by the time we picked him up in our estate car aka ‘the panther’ he was pretty worn out.  This ended up being a supper good thing because he had sworn off alcohol and we suddenly had a sober driver for after gigs!  We loaded up the car to an inch of its life (although it was still able to reach some pretty impressive speeds thanks to Germany’s no speed limits… more on that later).  Anyway, being the smallest of the three- I managed to get the back seat most of the time… next to the kick drum/bass and all our bags.  And off we went to the hook of Holland to catch the ferry from England to the Netherlands.

The ferry ride was pretty impressive- and I recommend it for anyone who takes a car from England to Europe.  We got the night ferry so we had a cabin which even had a shower (which is good because I learned the full extent of unpleasant smells traveling with 2 boys for 3 weeks!).  The food is expensive though- so I got the first of many tour dinners which consisted of
instant soup and a pack a chips.  For anyone who is a foodie- don’t go on tour! And especially don’t go on tour with boys!

8 hours and a very restful sleep later, we were driving off the ferry to meet up with a friend of a friend who thankfully agreed to let 3 musos camp out in his room- this stranger turned out to be a little tour angel but you will hear about that soon no doubt.