The BellRays

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.

7/26/11

It’s Tuesday and the Delfonics are jamming on Lisa’s computer upstairs, the sun is out (for the most part) and tonight we’ll be hanging out with Jean Louis, Michelle and Penelope.  It’s a good day. We spent lunch listening  to Barrence Whitfield and the Savages, (boogie woogie the way it’s supposed to be played) and eating spaghetti Bolognese that Lisa made the right way!! We got laundry done and I put strings on my guitar. Tomorrow we head out early, first to Paris to pick up Antoine, then to London to play our show at the Borderline. It’ll be good to get back to the UK and play. I’ve always thought the UK would be a really good market for us. History hasn’t really supported that idea but we’ve always had a good bit of misfortune trying to build that market (9/11, etc). every time we’ve been there the crowds have been great and we’ve sold a lot of merch, so it seems to work out.

7/24/11

We are on our way out of Switzerland after having played the Paleo Festival. This festival is supposed to be the one that taught Vieilles Charrues how to do it right, but I think the student has become the teacher these days. It’s a nice festival and big, I think they sold 240,000 tickets in about five days, and this was back in April. We saw Robert Plant and heard a few others but nothing really grabbed my attention. I was actually surprised at how good Robert Plants voice is these days. I think he did one zeppelin tune “Ramble On” and it sounded great. The catering and the dressing rooms were not as good as the VC festival and really weren’t all that better than a lot of other (lesser known and populated) festivals we’ve done. But we saw our good friend Antone from Besancon (le Cylindre and the bar Passengers du Zinc) and his new girlfriend Natalie and had a great time hanging out. The show and the audience was awesome, which shocked me because it was the last show of the night (we started at 1:15 am) but the tent was packed and everybody was dancing and moving all night long. We even had a rare mosh pit going on in front of us most of the night. I threw a pick into the crowd up front and saw two kids wrestling in the mud to get it!

Found out yesterday that Amy Whinehouse died. I’m one of the masses who isn’t surprised. I hope she’s at peace and glad she’s not making any more music. I’m tired of people getting handed opportunities and pissing them away.

The night before last we played a club show at a bar in Dusseldorf that pretty fun. It was a Friday night in a swinging little area next to the river and people were ready to have a good time. We ate at a German restaurant and my pork medallions and fried potatoes were excellent.

Before that it was the Power Festival in La Louviere, Belgium. We got to see Bob Log III and we weren’t let down. He’s one crazy dude! A one man band, he plays guitar, and his feet play a kick drum and cymbal/tambourine thing. He’s also got some drum machine triggers that he controls with his feet. It’s a crazy sound! He wore a black, sparkly uni-tard and his standard motorcycle helmet with the embedded microphone so nobody can see his face. Did I mention it’s crazy?!

It’s been raining and cloudy and cold almost the whole time we’ve been over here now and it’s getting a little old. I watch the news and see the heat wave in the mid west in the states and it’s pretty apparent something’s going on with the weather. It’s just kind of weird.

7/16/2011

We’re in the van again, on the way, eventually, to Versailles. But first we’re going to Chartes for lunch and a look around. Antoine has family and friends there and there’s probably the most beautiful cathedral in Europe there, so hopefully we’ll get to check it out a bit too. After that we’ll drop him off at Versailles so he can take a train back to Paris. We’ll probably get to Versailles too late to see it today but we’re going to spend the whole day tomorrow checking it all out. I’ll make sure my camera’s charged.

I just got to see a copy of the DVD from our show yesterday and it’s really cool. It was a great show and the production of dvd is really professional. They had boom cameras and cranes, the whole shmeer! And the sound is great! Maybe we’ll be able to do something with it in the future.

7/17/2011

Today we spent the whole day at the Chateau in Versailles where we did a LOT of walking! We parked at the Saint Anthony gate and walked the half mile or so, through the sheep and horse pastures up to the chateau. It was raining on and off all day so we got a little wet while we walked around the MASSIVE gardens (plural). This place is really insanely large but at least now I know what I want to do for my backyard when I get home. Every garden had its own fountain and some of them are just gigantic. We wandered around for about an hour and then we waited in line to get our tickets to go into the palace (Crazy, Disneyland-like lines). The first line was for tickets (about and hour). The second line was to get inside (another hour). It was worth it though. We had a great time. This place is the definition of opulence. Some of the rooms are 4 stories high and they’re all covered in frescos or gilded trim or tapestries. It really never ends and you’d have to spend days to really see everything. It’s really dumbfounding that someone would want to build something like this and that they COULD get something like this built!

7 15 2011

Sitting here in our dressing room at the vieilles charrues festival after the AWESOME DINNER and our AWESOME SHOW!!! (and a couple of bottles of really good red wine)

Dinner was a seafood platter (see photo), which was awesome,  and probably one of the two best steaks I’ve ever had in my LIFE!! Really, really good! Served rare (saignant) with fried potatoes and some over cooked broccoli and it was delicious! Now, if someone would just kick Jack Johnson off the fucking stage. I’m happy enough. I can’t ‘don’t worry, be happy” anymore!

I really can’t explain what it’s like to play in front of 30,000 people who are dancing and having a good time…all the way to the back! When I was a kid I envisioned every gig was that way, no matter who was playing on stage! That was the magic of music. It just did that to whoever listened to it. It was raining but people just ignored it and were jumping up and down, and then when lisa went out on the catwalk out near the crowd, I wish I could’ve stopped playing to take a picture of how cool it looked! Just having a good time here.  Did a couple of radio interviews and some internet radio shows (an acoustic version of ‘black lightning’)

Our set was pretty cool too. People seemed to dig it when we went out into the crowd while it was raining. I went a little further than my cord would accommodate a couple of times so I got extra points from the crowd for that.