Dear Everybody

Here I am, writing to you on the train with DD and Wayne on the way out of Switzerland, in the middle of our big 5-week, 6-country European Victory Part 2 Tour.    In addition to Switzerland, we’ve played in the UK, Austria, and Germany so far.  We still have yet more German shows to come, and soon I’ll be bringing my Victory Party to Denmark and Sweden for the very first time.

I’m going to share my usual pointless observations with you, but first, a couple of practical requests:

–On Saturday, November 19, we play in Odense.   I’ve just remembered that the gig there is pretty much the only one where we don’t have a place to sleep.  Does anybody know anybody in Odense who would like to host 3 very polite Canadian musicians?  Scandinavian hotels tend to cost more than my monthly rent at home.  Anyone?

–‘Tis the season when festival bookers book their summer festivals.  Believe it or not, they do really listen to requests from local folks who wish to see particular musicians.  So if you felt like dropping my name to your local fest, well, I would certainly owe you a drink.

There.

Did you know? I’m on another compilation, coming out this week, November 15.  This one’s called “Have Not Been the Same”.   Canadian author Michael Barclay is re-issuing an updated version of the book he wrote with Ian A.D. Jack and Jason Schneider.  It’s an entertaining account of how Canadian “alternative” music invented itself in the 1980s and 90s.

In honour of the re-issue, Barclay asked Canadian Stars of Today to do covers of their favourite Canadian Alternative Non-Hits of Yesteryear.  Among the firmament of Stars,  Corb Lund’s on it, doing a Jr. Gone Wild cover, Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene does a Bob Wiseman tune, and the Hidden Cameras do Mecca Normal.  The proceeds go to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

I cover “Bound for Vegas”,  a number by my first Vancouver Punk Idol,  the legendary Art Bergmann.  Bergmann was the Lord Byron of the Vancouver punk scene—handsome, clever, and notoriously Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know.   I love the song—it’s so viciously, sarcastically self-deprecating that it somehow speaks of a deeper, almost frightening self-confidence.   If you don’t know about Art Bergmann, they’ve got some videos up on youtube.  I recommend “Empty House”, “Contract” and the immortal “Hawaii” by his first punk band, the K-Tels.

Find out more about it HERE.

And now, my Mid-Tour Report:

A news item came on the radio while we were in England, announcing that a Canadian dentist had bought John Lennon’s tooth at auction for 30,000 pounds.  He said that he was going to “take it on tour”.    As my 40th birthday approaches, and thoughts of mortality loom, I hope that one day, long after I’ve passed away, some part of me will be taken on tour in a similar manner.  Perhaps  as a support act for a Beatle tooth.  Who knows?   Anyway, I really do enjoy the touring, meeting old pals, new odd, bookish people like myself, seeing strange things…

On the autobahn in Germany these days, there are still bits with no speed limits, in total defiance of the general  no-one-ever-jaywalks, home-schooling-of-children-is-illegal, German vibe.   But they try to discourage people from unsafe driving, however, by posting giant billboards with huge blown-up crayon drawings by small children, depicting horrific car crashes.  I saw one in which a crayon “Oma” (Gramma) is drawn being hurled out of a car while “Opa” lies still in a crushed crayola wreck.  I’m sure a lot of people resent this weird guilt-driven approach enough that they stand on the accelerator just to escape the sight of it.

I don’t know if you remember that a few years ago, I was inordinately preoccupied by Burger King’s Angry Whopper sandwich.  To me, the Angry Whopper seemed like the 2nd most emblematic consumer product of the Bush Presidency, after the Humvee.  Well, now Burger King has a new slogan in continental Europe:  “Feel the Burn.”  DD mentioned that this was a super-appropriate slogan for Burger King’s food in light of her own long night of “feeling the burn” at both ends after a drunken encounter with a late-night Burger King meal in Belfast in 2003.  I distinctly remember the sounds of DD’s pipes processing that meal

We had a very nice substitute drummer for several  shows in Germany, Wouter Roggemans, who plays with Klezmic Zirkus, out of Liege.  He played wonderfully, and let me drive his car, although he later mentioned to DD that I shifted gears “like a farmer on a 1970s tractor”.  Wouter explained some of the finer points of Belgian politics, and and their experience of several hundred days of not having a government.    Turns out, they just let the old government run stuff .   That will be disappointing to my anarchist friends.

The funniest bit of Belgian politics he mentioned was that when Belgium made abortion legal a while ago, the King of Belgium abdicated the throne, but only for one day.  He was like, “I’m pro-life, so I can’t sign the abortion law.  But I’ll be away for a day, so whatever you guys do when I’m off, it’s none of my business.  Cause I won’t be King that day.  See you tomorrow!”  Not King For a Day.  That’s funny to me.  I know that my sense of humour is not universal.

DD put a magical pink bubble around me to get me through the UK border.

You’ll be happy to know that the Green Dragon in Croydon survived the summer riots.   The place is only 2 blocks away from the big furniture store that went up in a giant blaze.  Melted glass still peppers the sidewalk.  Rioters made an attempt to break in to the Dragon, but the lovely proprietress Esther and her loyal customers fought them off.   One of my favourite paintings hangs in the stairway there.  It has text painted on it that accompanies the image:  “The lonely bloke in the pub: what’s he doing?  What’s he thinking?  Face facts: He’s getting hammered and thinking about boobs.”

We finally found our true home-away-from home in London—it’s called Jamboree.   First place where all my friends and I felt completely comfortable.  Great sound, comfortable, pleasantly dilapidated decor, including knackered accordions and trumpets on the wall.  Canadian musicians: I recommend you put this one on your European Trap Line.  It’s in Cable Street, the place where in the 1930s, the Jews fought 10,000 cops to a standstill to prevent the English Nazis from marching through.  With the continuing rise of the nationalist groups in many parts of Europe, I hope everybody’s got their brick-throwing arms limbered up and ready to do it again. Yup, I did visit Occupy London while I was there.   All those motley tents just made St. Paul’s Cathedral even lovelier.

While in England, we met up with my pal Justin from Oslo, who is originally from Wales.   Rather than take the insanely expensive English train, we had to rent a car, and Justin drove.  He was enthusiastic about Diona’s suggestion that we follow her and Carolyn Mark’s “tradition” of screaming at the top of your lungs every time the car enters a roundabout.  This was a mistake for me, as I was a bit hoarse by the time we got to Heathrow.

In between sets at the Klezmore Festival, I was taken aside and interviewed by a woman from Austrian National Television, and asked questions about my perspective on the Shoah.   I have no idea what I said, but I’m sure it was awkward, inarticulate, and possibly even horrific.  Then it was time for the 2nd set.  Showbizz!

I know I was mentioning in my last letter that Berlin is ugly in a beautiful way.  Well, Fribourg Switzerland is beautiful in a beautiful way.   Wayne and I took the opportunity to walk around and take in the dreamy strangeness of its many bridges, spanning the almost crevasse-like valley that holds the medieval  city.  DD was feeling a bit tired, so she opted to go have her star tattoos filled in with a “north star” pattern, by a tattoo artist she’d met at the bar.  She returned bright-eyed, with her arms bandaged.  “I love pain!” she chirped.  “Let’s play!” We played 3 sets in the most gloriously kitsch-decorated bar in the history of humanity.  “Elvis et Moi”.  It’s like Carolyn Mark’s kitchen, squared!   The show ended around 3 am.

I met a man there who had just returned from Vegas, where he’d worked for 5 years at a cake factory that made 100 wedding cakes a day.  It was owned by the wife of Frank Sinatra’s guitarist.  He said that early on, he made a New York Cheesecake for a party from Chicago, and they loved it so much, they phoned again and again to say that it was the best cheesecake they’d ever had.   This gave his co-workers the opportunity to stop trying to pronounce his Swiss name, and just call him “Cheesecake”, which he said they did with such persistence, that eventually no one in Vegas knew his real name.   After he told me his story, he proceeded to get utterly “ham-boned” (as DD says), tried to grope the nice young dancing lesbians, demanded to join the band as pianist, broke a bunch of glass and pissed himself before being thrown out into the street by the lovely Valentine, the owner of the bar.   Be careful with your name, people.

Alright, well, that’s all from me for now.  I hope to see you at one of these northern European shows, especially my Birthday Show on November 26 in Copenhagen, where I plan to enjoy the last seconds of my 30s as thoroughly as humanly possible.   Tour on!

Victory Party Europe Tour, Part II (with trio)

Wed Nov 16, 2011 Erfurt, Germany Stadtgarten
Thu Nov 17, 2011 Hamburg, Germany Astrastube
Fri Nov 18, 2011 Flensburg, Germany Volksbad
Sat. Nov 19, 2011 Odense, Denmark, Studenterhuset
Tues Nov 22 Goteborg, Sweden, Mitt Andra Hem, with Blue Eyed Blondes
Wed. Nov 23, 2011 Stockholm, Sweden, Mosebacke with Peter Murphy
Fri Nov 25, 2011  Frankfurt on Oder (not the big Frankfurt.  Near Berlin),Trans Vocale Festival
Sat Nov 26, 2011 Birthday Show! Copenhagen, Denmark. Huset Magstraede
Sun Nov 27, 2011 Aalborg, Denmark 1000fryd

Dear Everybody,

Below is my American Report, as I promised you.  But first I have to tell you some stuff:

Did you know I’m about to do a big tour of Europe?  Germany! UK! Austria! Switzerland! Sweden!  Denmark!  All dates listed below. The show in Copenhagen will be my 40th birthday.  So come celebrate with me, won’t you?  All the shows are listed below. Go look and see if I’m coming to your town.  I probably am.  Unless you live in Norway, in which case I will be visiting in May.

Did you know my London Show has changed?  It was going to be at Darbucka, but Darbucka closed down.  So now it’s at this place called Jamboree, an authentically bohemian underground bar located on Cable Street, a historic street for the Jewish people.  So that worked out well, I’d say. 566 Cable Street.

Victory Party has been nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award.  It’s in the “Pushing the Boundaries” category.   A lot of awards are very subjective, so it’s nice to be nominated in a category that is a straightforward contest, where an atomically precise metric ruler is flown in from Paris, and the distance by which Boundaries have been Pushed by any given album is measured and recorded.  Cross your fingers that mine will have Pushed them further than Ruth Moody.  The ruler does not lie.

Andrew Pearson has made a lovely video to go along with my version of “Mayn Rue Platz”.  You could watch it here if you like.

Will you please keep in mind my standing offer to put you plus a friend on the guest list, if you’re interested in postering your town for a show, or helping to sell merch?  Thank you for keeping that in mind.

Here’s my American Report:

If you go to the U.S. less than once a year, you can find yourself inadvertently “Looking For America”–that is, trying to find an emblematic idea of the True State of America, this nation-among-nations, the One that has more stuff and more guns than anybody else and tries to run everybody’s business.

I, for one, find it hard to resist Looking For America, even though I know it’s impossible and silly.  I know in my brain that there are over 300 million Americas, really.  It’s a weird temptation to stereotype America.  Americans do it too.  But you and I know better.

So let’s attempt not to generalize.  Let’s just agree together that I went down the U.S. West Coast, driving down to L.A. and working my way back North.  And I saw some interesting stuff:

As I drove away from the border (always a tense process for me), the billboards told me that I was in a different country. In particular, the ads for $99 mammograms.  ”Oh, right.  America.” I thought.

As I drove, I scanned the radio stations.  There seemed to be fewer rightwing cranky talkshows than last time, but more Jesus.  Christian Rock Radio used to be recognizably different from regular Rock Radio, because it sounded about 5 years behind the trends. This is no longer the case.  Either the Christians are getting hipper, or hipsters forgot to make up new stylistic tricks that Christians don’t know about.  Anyway, the only thing that distinguishes it now is the lyrics.  Ye shall know the Christian stations by their words: their pseudo-emo autotuned power ballads are submissive bondage love songs to a guy named Jesus.  But I heard later in Portland that there’s a new strain of bearded hipster that are all Jesus freaks.  So deal with that, brain.

Some times places did live up to their stereotypes.  My old pal Jesse is a TV producer in L.A. now.  He lives in lovely Santa Monica where he can walk a few blocks down the hill to surf.  He picked me a fresh lemon from his deck for lemonade in the morning.  He is not missing grey Toronto.  Of course, although it feels warm to us Canadians, that didn’t prevent the cafe around the corner from having a Permanent Outdoor Gas Fireplace embedded into the wall of the building, to keep patrons warm while they sit outside in the California sun drinking their cappuccinos.   They are literally “trying to heat all outdoors”, as my grandmother used to say.  And it’s working, of course.

Jesse tells me that when he went to his first checkup with his new family doctor in Santa Monica, she asked what he did for a living–he told her, and she immediately started pitching him TV and film ideas.  He thought, “Oh right! I’m in L.A.”  I probably shouldn’t reveal the following confidential patient-doctor information to you, but I feel that I have an obligation, as a public servant: one of the ideas was for a show about an entire law firm of midget lawyers.  ”Little Lawyers.  Big Cases.” was the catchphrase for the pitch.  Coming soon to a screen near you.

I hope I don’t get sued for telling you that.  Ever since Jesse started doing well in Californ i.a., he’s been getting sued from every direction.  It’s practically a status symbol of success downthere, he tells me.

Suing, getting sued, settlements, legal battles. That was a major theme of peoples’ conversations as well.  I noted a number of discussions of lawsuits that were in a second incarnation, so to speak.  That is, the claimant had lost their case, but instead of giving up, had instead, with classic American gumption, turned around and sued their own lawyer for malpractice for having lost the initial case.  I see no reason why, if they lost that case, they couldn’t proceed to sue their 2nd lawyer for malpractice as well.  Ad infinitum. Fun!

I met a lady in the Bay Area (who I will not name) who works at Google.  They pay her as a contractor, so they don’t have to give her healthcare.  I observed that Google maybe wasn’t as clearly un-evil as they claim to be.  ”You don’t know the half of it, buddy.” she said.  I pried for more, but she was not sharing.  Why?  Because if your lips loosen when you work for Google, they don’t just fire you.  Nope.  They sue you and they fire your entire department.  You and all your friends will be out of work.  They want to keep their secrets secret. They mean it.  I hope I don’t get sued for telling you that.

In Seattle, you may not have an alcoholic beverage on stage with you while you are performing.  I’m not sure why, but I’m sure that it has something to do with health care and legal suits by or against insurance companies and the state of Washington, or something.  So when I needed a sip of whiskey during the show, I had to hop off the stage into the crowd, where my friend Richard was holding a drink for me.  I think that was legal, but I’m not certain.  Don’t tell anyone.

On the way out of Seattle, I checked out the Occupy Seattle scene downtown.  As  a long-time Lefty, I guess I was a little ambivalent about the whole thing at first, because, like the Evil Mainstream Media, I couldn’t quite find a clear ideological deal in it.  My visit didn’t make me feel any different about the focus (or lack thereof) of the Occupy movement, but I still wound up liking it anyway.

I mean, sure, there were Lyndon Larouche people down there, advocating the expansion of nuclear energy and mining on the Moon, and there was a man with a sign that said “We Have to Free Ourselves From the British Empire Again”.  I couldn’t resist pointing out to him that if his country had lost the Revolutionary War the first time, he’d probably have health care right now.  He didn’t take that well.  There was a guy on the speaker stage saying “You, know, we are actually a Communist Country, because China owns us!” I suddenly found myself trapped between that guy and a (shudder) drum circle further up the square.  But I’ve certainly felt more embarrassed at other protests.   It’s a Big Tent.

It was also inspiring to see a bunch of people down there who looked like they were at their very first protest ever.  They held signs up telling their stories of unemployment, eviction, foreclosure, bankruptcy.  In a way, they were irritating, because they had a look of surprise on their face, like they’d just discovered, this year, that America’s economic system is unfair, that it’s not just a matter of “work hard and your dream will come true” as they had believed all through the 90s while they stepped over the exploding homeless populations in their cities and watched 1 out every 100 fellow citizens shoved into prison.

But better late than never, I figure, and all in all, what the Occupy Wall Street folks down there seem to be saying is, “This country is in trouble, and we’ve figured out the geographical source of the problem.” and that puts them ahead of the Tea Party, anyway, so after thinking about it, I have to say I’m on board with it all.  Sue me.

Yreka Bakery in Yreka, California is no longer there.  Sorry.  Another sign of Empirical Decline: the best palindromic-named business in America is gone.  Some artists tried to make a go of a Yrella Gallery in the same buidling, but that didn’t last, either.  That is tragic and senseless, like the end of Easy Rider.

When I was out strolling down Fairfax in L.A., some young Chasidic Jews ran up to me and asked me if I was Jewish.  Then they asked if I had heard the Shofar yet this year, and blew the ram’s horn for me for a while.  It was very pleasant, in an awkward, Jewier-than-thou sort of way.  Despite our differences, I wanted to connect with them on a human level, so I wracked my brain to find something we had in common to chat about.  I asked, in a complimentary, friendly tone, “Hey, where did you find that nice, white shirt?”  He replied, “Where’d I find it?  I found it in my closet.”  Oh, right.  I’d forgotten that if you are a Chasid, the insult “Your mother dresses you funny” bears no sting.

In America, you have to keep an eye out for the fake-authentic.  They are still pioneers at that.  Trader Joe’s sells wine that comes in a bottle that’s been sprayed with some kind of white powdery glue-particle-coagulant, meant to give you the impression that it is dusty from decades in a cellar.  It feels funny.  Starbucks has started opening “neighbourhood” coffee shops that don’t say “Starbucks” on or in them anywhere, with names like “Capitol Hill Coffee”.  Beware.

It was nice to see my friend Boris in Olympia.  He’s good at seeing through fake authenticity and lazy thinking.  I first met him when he and his reprobate friends showed up at our showcase at Canada House in London because he knew somebody low on the totem pole at the embassy and had heard a rumour of free Moosehead Beer.  He’s originally from Bosnia, from a family of serious cultural people who survived the siege of Sarajevo.  Perhaps as a result, he’s careful about his words, so they come slowly.  But if you wait for them, they’re always well-chosen.  And he will take issue with the not-quite-right words.

Me: “Berlin is beautiful in an ugly way.”
Boris: “No, Berlin is ugly in a beautiful way.”
Me, later: “Prague is like the pretty, popular girl in high school.”
Boris: “No, Prague is like an amazingly beautiful woman in her mid-30s who is married to a very rich older husband and has no interest in you.”
Me somewhat later: “Winnipeg is ugly in a beautiful way.”
Boris: “See–you’re learning.”

My final show was in Portland, opening for Celso Machado, the legendary Brazilian guitarist and composer.  I’ve never seen a solo performer blow people’s minds so thoroughly.  With just his guitar and the sounds he made with his body, and no digital effects, he recreated the Amazon jungle to the point where I was moved to duck a couple of times.  He’s a very nice, unassuming guy.  He taught me to play a tarantella during soundcheck.  After the show, we discussed the possibilities of Canada’s national soccer team one day doing respectably at the World Cup.  Machado is pessimistic.  His opinion is that Canada will never succeed, because “they play football with a hockey mentality”.  Who was I to argue?  The man is a genius, and he’s from Brazil.

On the way back towards the Canadian border, I continued to resist the impulse to stereotype America, insisting on seeing the millions of individual Americas, battling cliched thinking.

I pulled off the highway, into the first gas station off the exit near Bellingham.  It was an orange “Spirit of 76″ station.

You know how sometimes, in North America, there’s a kind of “espresso shack” in the parking lot of gas stations and shopping centers?   It’s usually painted in bright red-and-white, or red-white-and-green, and it says “Espresso!” on it.  There’s a lot of them, and you learn to go to them when you’re travelling, because the coffee is usually better than a gas station “cup o’ joe”, which always tastes oddly like petroleum.

So I pulled in to the station, gassed up, and walked over to this red-and-white striped espresso shack, called “Candy-Stripe Espresso!”

A few guys in ballcaps were sitting at the counter, sipping coffee, and behind the counter was a young lady in her underwear.  Not regular underwear.  This was the kind of underwear a Canadian stripper has on as the Final Layer before the Big Reveal.  ”What can I getcha, hon?” she asked me, without the slightest self-consciousness.  ”Umm, medium coffee.” I mumbled, somewhat nonplussed.  With graceful ease, she clicked over to the espresso machine in her 6-inch red sequined stiletto heels and made my coffee.  It was pretty good.

I don’t know if this is a chain of coffee shops, or a one-off concept.  Is the stripper girl also the owner?   How long are her shifts in those heels?  If walking on those heels all day messes up her back, is she covered for health care?   Everyone there just behaved as if it were perfectly normal to be in a tiny espresso shack with an almost-naked lady, on the side of the highway.  I played it cool, walked out with my coffee, wondering if I had made a faux pas by not putting the tip in her brassiere.  I said a silent goodbye to America, having finally found it, by accident, despite having tried not to try to find it.  It was Columbus Day.

Ok.  I hope I haven’t inadvertently offended too many people.  Here, below, are the tour dates:

Victory Party Europe Tour, Part II (with trio)

566 Cable Street London E1W 3HB.
Fri Nov 4, 2011 Bridlington, UK MusicPort Festival