The BellRays

Here we are in Schaffhausen (i think i spelled it right) after the show and it’s the best one yet! The crowd was awesome! It’s a beautiful city in the north of Switzerland by the German border. It’s raining so it’s not quite as cold as I thought it would be. I figured it’d be covered in snow by now and freezing. It’s our 3rd show in Europe now and we seem to building up to something really cool. The first show in Zug had literally 15 people there. But one of them was a 10 year old kid who rocked and danced ALL night! We went back to France  and played to a hungry crowd that made up for  the night before. And then tonight was a great step up from there. It’s weird how much Christmas stuff was up in Brazil but it’s not until it gets cold and we get to europe that they seem to make it feel like Christmas. It’s hard to get the feeling when it’s 80 degrees and 40 percent humidity I guess.

But here everything is lit up and it’s feeling very seasonal so we busted out the christmas tunes in the set last night and now we’re rocking those too.

Bob

Two plane rides later and we’re back in Europe. It’s pretty cold but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. No snow either, go figure. Anyway, Brazil was a great time. We got to do the meat attack dinner the night before our show in Sao Paolo. Meat attack, for those of you who haven’t experienced it, is when you sit down to dinner, flip a little dial from red to green and then you’re besieged by waiters carrying skewers of meat to your table, non-stop, until you flip the dial back to red . It’s all really great cuts and it’s all delicious. There’s beef, pork, lamb, chicken and a huge bar with sea food, sushi, etc. The waiters come to each person and ask you if you want what’s on the skewer. You say yes, they cut you off a piece or two or three, again until you tell them to stop, and then the next guy hits you up. It’s incredible. It’s Fogo de Chau on crack and we had the best time. Our show in Sao Paolo was great. A big crowd and we hung out in the dressing room til 4 or something talking and stuff. Good times!

It’s nice to be back in Europe though, probably because it’s just so much more familiar to us. But there’s definitely a weird vibe around here since they’re having such a bad time economically. It’s rough all over but in a region where they recently switched to a unified currency and they’re already talking about scrapping it, it carries a little bit darker tone than just hard times. We met up with Antoine which is always a pleasure and I’m looking forward to having him tour manage us again. Still can’t get the desire to be home though because I know Twylla is going to be there when we get back and I’m really anxious to see her and spend some quality family time.

Bob

We played the festival last night here and it was a really great show! We went on an hour or so late so it was 3:30 am when we hit the stage but there were probably around 2000 people there and they were a lot of fun. The band that went on before us was Raimundos and they were pretty good. We’re going back to the festival tonight to hang out and see what’s there from the other side of the velvet rope. It should be a good time.

Bob

Wednesday we left home at 4:30 to drive out to LAX to catch our 8am flight, first to Toronto and from there, down to Sao Paolo. It was a long flight but Air Canada was really great. The planes were comfortable (Airbus, not that  Boeing shit) and the Maple Leaf Lounge in the Toronto airport was a great place to spend a six hour layover. I had ravioli with pesto sauce, a couple of beers and all the soda I could handle. It helped make the 9 hour flight from there to Sao Paolo not matter so much. I watched two shitty movies (one and a half really), “Green Lantern” (weak story) and “Transformers Dark of the Moon” (awful acting, directing, cinematography, script). I turned this off after 20 minutes cause it was wretched and fell asleep until breakfast.

After we arrived at Sao Paolo we met up with our tour manager Marcelo and waited another 5 hours for our plane to Goiania where our first gig, a big festival, is happening. The plane was nearly empty so we had a lot of room to stretch out and sleep for a couple of hours. TAM airlines rocks too.  Goiania reminds me a lot of Hawaii. It’s really tropical and a lot of the buildings are open to the environment (as much as they can be  with  electric fences. There’s a lot of crime in Brazil I guess. The hotel reminded me of what a russian gulag might be like and we had ourselves moved after one night cause it was just fucked up. So they moved us to another one in the same chain, Serras de Goyas, and it was a lot nicer.

Dinner our first night here was at a place called Aero Caldo and it was a sort of  a soup buffet. There were about 16 different pots of soup, some with meat, some vegetable, heart of palm, beans, with lots of stuff to add. we did what most people did and mixed three or four different kinds ( I had shrimp, vegetable and heart of palm mixed together with some pork cracklings, onions, little bread balls and something that nobody could actually tell me what it was) along with some fried cheese balls, fried bacalao appetizers and a caparihno. It was delicious!

At the time of this writing we are just back in the hotel after our show at the festival but it’s 6am and I’m too burnt to relate it all right now. So good night!

bob

Taking the longest way to the sun we are layover in Toronto en route to Sao Paulo. Somebody get a map!

the Lembic Mob

the Gueuze

Grand Square Dance at the Grand Place

So, it’s been a while since my last post and if anyone reading this has been hanging on the edge wondering what’s happening with us, I apologize. Everything’s great! We’re still here at Bravo Base relaxing and enjoying the whole idea of waking up and having nothing to do but whatever we want to. Every day we’ve been walking, exploring the city and getting to know our way around and every day we find out something else that’s cool about Brussels. I’d have to say so far, the highlight has been our two trips to the fantastic 3 Founteinen brewery. They do Lambic, gueuze and kriek beer and it’s the best I’ve ever had. They’re the only ones who use open air fermentation, using the yeast that’s native to this region that’s in the air. And as good as the beer is Armand and Lydie are even better people. We sat, Lisa, me, Justin, Stef, Dorie, Phil, James, Armand and Lydie and talked and tasted the beer for a few hours. Phil did a photo shoot with Lisa for the brewery and then we went to dinner where the food was great. They even had 3 founteinen gueuze and their zweit beer too. Can’t say enough how good a time we had and I really want to thank Dorie and Phil and Armand and Lydie for letting us into this fabulous circle.

The day before our friends in Grand Square Dance, Dimitri, Stef and Elena drove up from France and hung out. They hadn’t been to Brussels before so we showed them what we thought were the hot points and had beers at the two Delirium bars downtown. In between we ate a place that the waitress suggested and we got lucky again. The food was great. I had a bucket of Mussels in garlic sauce and a glass of white wine. mmmmmm mmmmmm!

The sun actually broke through for a while yesterday and the day before, which was great because the weather has been pretty lame otherwise. It’s been cloudy and raining off and on just about the whole time. Not cold but even when it’s not raining we’re hesitant to go for a walk because the rain can hit at any time. Yesterday was sunny just about all day and then around 5 (just as we were getting ready to go to the brewery) the sky went black and it POURED!

We discovered another great restaurant, Au Bon Bol. It’s a noodle house that makes it’s own noodles. You can watch them do it in the front window and it’s pretty interesting to watch the process because you think he’s going to put the dough through some kind of strainer or something to get them the right shape, but he doesn’t. He just keeps folding them and spinning them until at some point he’s standing there with a handful of soup noodles. It’s cool and it ends up tasting great too. Lisa and I both had soup, hers was beef, mine was seafood and it was very tasty.

So we’re still having a wonderful time even though I think I’m about ready to go home. We’ve been away for a long time and it’s starting to sink in a little bit.

cheers.

Last night we walked downtown to the Grand Place. It was Friday night so things were happening quite a bit more than during the week. This has been a sleepy sort of place since we got here. I don’t know if it’s Ramadan, vacation time or what but there’s been a definite lack of activity here, which has been great for the most part. Last night though we got to see where everybody has been. Just before we got to the Place we found a delicious italian food place called Pasta Divina. The owner was chatty and gave us the lowdown on what was good, basically everything. His wife was the cook and I don’t think I’ve had a better prepared pasta than this place. Lisa and I got the spaghetti arrabiat and it was al dente and delicious! Justin got the ravioli in a cream sauce that was perfect. We had Kriek beers and Lisa had a sparkling rose.

After that we walked around the corner to the Grand Place which is always amazing to stand in the center of and just slowly turn around. It was all lit up and pretty awesome. We walked through the Place, down a couple of blocks and across the street to where there’s a three or four block section of bars and restaurants where all the hip people were hanging out so we found a seat and had a beer and watched for a while. I got a big Kriek, Lisa got a Lindeman’s peach beer. Both of them were tasty and cheap too!  It was  great night all around.

the garden

the kitchen

We made it to Brussels on Sunday. Thanks Antoine for driving stupid distances on our behalf! 8 hours here and then he had to drive another 6 hours back to Orleans! Our place here is FABULOUS! Our hosts, Jerome and Thilde own this place and they bought into with two other friends that bought the huge ex-factory house behind and the house next door respectively. It’s really nice. There’s three floors and our room is on the first one (the ground floor, where Stef’s room and a common bathroom is the zero floor). Up on the next floor there’s a common kitchen, den and living room. It’s really cozy and relaxing and it’s gonna be a gas being here for 3 weeks with nothing to do. Right now Stef’s in Germany and Justin’s in France so Lisa and I are here with one other boarder and the owners, who are going on a vacation for the weekend, so lisa and i will have the place pretty much to ourselves. They both work with Doctors Without Borders which is how we found this place. Our friends Dorie and Philip hooked it up because they know Jerome and Thilde through Philip’s work with Greenpeace. The neighborhood is heavily ethnically muslim. I’ve heard about 10 different languages and the goods in the stores are written in Polish, Russian, a bunch of Balkanish stuff, etc. Right now it’s Ramadan so the place is a ghost town at night. Anyway, the sun was out and it was summer the day we got here, but since then it’s been overcast and raining off and on. Today we walked down to the Jardin Botanique which is where we usually play when we play Brussels. It’s about a 20 minute walk each way and tonight we discovered it goes right through the red light district! Blocks and blocks of nearly naked women standing in windows facing the street. It’s awesome.

Lisa's birthday cake!!

7/31/11

Guitar en Scene festival is over and it’s been about the best time yet!! The festival organizers had a HUGE chocolate cake made (by the same pastry chef in Paris who bakes for Sarkozy!) and they brought it out on stage at the end of our set which forced everyone in the audience and on stage to sing happy birthday to her. The cake literally fed about 100 people after the show. Everybody here has been great, helpful, happy and they made us feel so welcome!

Our set was awesome, maybe the best of the tour. But I only bring it up because Iggy and Stooges put on THE best rock show I’ve EVER seen! I’ve seen Iggy 4-5 times and, while it’s always been good, they were nothing like they were tonight! No band I’ve ever seen was like the Stooges were tonight! I’m truly inspired. This show was like hearing “the Who Live at Leeds” or Robert Johnson for the first time. This band was HOT!! They are what I’ve been aspiring to do every time I get on stage. Man they were good!

Tomorrow we start 19 days of off time where we’ll be in Brussels and exploring outward from there. We have plans to go to Paris and Bruge and maybe London and Birmingham. I’m looking forward to our first real European vacation!

the champagne never had a chance!

7/31/11

We’re on the way back from the UK. Today we drove from Newcastle, in the very north of England, down to kent on the channel, took the cattle car again under the channel and right now Antoine is driving like a bat out of hell trying to get us to our Campanile hotel in Reims before the restaurant closes at 9:30. This is something worth driving fast for as the Campaniles usually have a very good restaurant, bathtubs in the rooms and free internet. We left Newcastle at 9 am and the traffic was completely awful most of the way. Along the way we witnessed the worst british driving has to offer. People stopped for no reason. They switched lanes for no reason. They drove slow for no reason. It was entirely frustrating, and I was in the BACK seat.

A word about this van too, it’s small and cramped. We trade off daily for the front passenger seat because that’s the only seat with any leg room (besides the driver’s seat). Every 3 hour or longer drive sets my knees on fire for hours afterwards and causes Lisa’s feet to swell. I’m thankful that there’s really only two more days of it until the end of August when we do our final few shows.

All the shows in the UK were awesome. Everyone in London was friendly and seemed genuinely glad to see us there again. The last time was 2009 and that was definitely too long ago! The Borderline is a great club right next to Soho, (which was incredibly busy) with great hospitality and staff. I want to give my special thanks to James for making everything so great while we were there. We got to see Vula and a couple of the Jaxx horn section who had a show of their own around the corner at a small theater. I heard they too had a great show.

Our next show in Edinburgh was another long drive (8 hours) but we got to drive through small country roads and old (some very old) villages and farmland. Once we were there our host and promoter Brian made us feel welcome. The Cabaret Voltaire is a club built inside an 800 year old catacomb that sounded great! Again, we had a great crowd of barely understandable people and we had a great time. Edinburgh, by the way, is one of the most beautiful cities I think I’ve ever been to. The downtown, with the castle on the overlooking hill, the monument that nobody seems to know what it’s for, and the many other old buildings,  is really picturesque and very historic both looking and feeling. It’s pretty expensive to visit though, if you stay downtown. The next day as we left we even got to see the sun in Edinburgh for the first time ever.

Last night’s gig in Newcastle was at a great little bar/club called the Cluny. The bar/restaurant serves great British food (not a contradiction in terms it seems) and GREAT beer. Our dressing room was stocked with Budweiser Budwar, the REAL Czechoslovakian stuff, not the stuff Americans are forced to choke down. I also had a pint of Timmerman’s peach beer that was delicious with my Meat and mushroom pie. Mmmmmmmm!

But now we’re in France again, speeding towards our hotel. Tomorrow we’re in St. Julien en Genevois to play a festival with the DKT/MC5, Iggy and the Stooges and the Jim Jones Review. It’s gonna be a blast I think.

9pm

Made it to the Campanile and had dinner. Lisa and I got steaks that were awesome!! We had champagne (since we’re in the region) Taittinger and it was really good. We’re going to bed now.