For You! & You! & Maybe, Possibly You!

I'm not altogether positive of the demographic that is readers of this, particular account of my life and doings, but I have big news for surely some of you. Maybe not for "you" you, but very possibly for you!

The weather is bordering on swelter, with a few hours of simmer thrown in each day, for most of the northern hemisphere these days and you might not want to think about things to come in December but I have to and as a reader, you will too.

City of Craft - my home within my other home back in Toronto has now opened the call for vendors and installations. The city has annexed (in a very good way), and installations are now a major focus of the show. Local and international proposals are certainly welcome. If you know someone who this should reach, please spread the word! To apply, go here!

Early Morning Amusement

I can make excuses for not updating this here blog for some weeks - weeks that had me in Italy, France, and parts east, but it has come down to time and hundreds of photos to sort through. I will get it done, but I've also had company this last week and although the decidedly uncomfortable heat allows for little less than finding shade and drink, Jill and I got up really early this morning and trekked over to Spreepark for a little break and entry exploration.



Although the park is officially off-limits to the public, it's not difficult to break in and with a little bit of searching we found a well beaten path with a few inches of fence that could be squeezed through. It should also be noted that there has been reports of a security detail within the park on weekends.



It's a complicated and bizarre tale of how the park came to be, and if you click on the link above you should read it to the very end -- that's where the story gets especially strange. Knowing the story and walking the grounds early this morning felt eerie and not just a little creepy. However, as confirmed by the couple we stumbled upon making out in the overgrown grass, it's a kinda peaceful and lovely spot in the city.

It was a rainy day in Paris...

But, first it was a stormy night in Lyon. We found ourselves back at Sonic and playing with our friends Troum. This is also a favorite venue of mine. The obvious reasons are that it's a boat in a really beautiful city with portholes that one could look out at the city through.



The other reasons probably have something to do with us playing with good friends here and Pierre, who's books our shows, is one mega-amazing cook. Inevitably, though, a night in Lyon means a night in Pierre's crazy apartment on the top floor of building that is older than Canada.



Next up, Paris!



We arrived a day early to our really great accommodations care of Ziad, who essentially gave us his apartment while we were in town. Also, just a few blocks from the venue, Les Instants Chavirés, where that night Peter Brötzmann and his pals were free-jazzing it. Lucky, as we sometimes get.



It was pouring rain as we attempted to whip around the city, but whip around we did to the basics, as it was a sad Monday and the museums were closed. Eric took some great pictures and you should look HERE for his account of how things went down.



The show itself was pretty great and the super soundguy even taught me a neato trick to keep my crappy bass grounded - I, of course, then worried about potential electric shocks; but then, I tend to create terrifying scenarios in my head that aren't likely to occur.

Riviera Riviera Pomodoro Tomate

We left Genova and took the scenic coastal route along the Mediterranean - we had a bit of a rough start as the Italian Riviera is seriously congested with both people and cars and pedestrians think that just because traffic is moving slowly it doesn't mean that they will not walk into cars and freak everybody the hell out.

I was pretty excited to wade into the Mediterranean, but as we pulled over in Menton, FR and wandered over to the shore, I'll admit it was pretty icky. However, I was kind of determined so we found a rocky little chunk of shoreline that didn't have any visible garbage floating in the immediate surf and in I went, only to emerge with itchy legs...

I guess it's all pretty resorty along this coast, that is, unless you're 'that' kind of rich and we were not, so we moved along to stay with friends we've never met who live in the lovely country side of Provence.



I just have to say here that a day off with Jerome, Alex, Jules, Charlotte, and one crazy kitten was exactly what we all needed. We were met with good food and the sweetest, nicest family in all of France.

La tres jolie Charlotte was my stand-in as I took a couple shots of really beautiful and old Pertuis.

Bella Italia

After a really dizzying drive over, through and around and around the Italian Alps, we arrived in Brescia (IT) to play a really weird show in a restaurant. We felt oddly unwelcome, but this is only because of the way things are done here and we were probably just as welcome as any band that comes here - I'm not exactly sure on specifics of how things are actually done, but it was strange and we slept in the restaurant owner's apartment, in the room next to his grandmother's. (Actually, our suspicions lead us to believe there was no grandmother on the premises and he just didn't want us to use his couch pillows to cushion the floor a couple of us slept on; but, I digress...)

We were fed really well and drank some great Campari cocktails. Also, we played pingpong.



I really sadly didn't get to see either Venice or Milan as we drove through Northern Italy, but we stopped for lunch in tiny town near a fountain and a church.




Our next stop in Genova was both a treat and possibly the scariest driving exercise I've ever had to endure. It's a really big, old city built on a cliff at what seems like an 85 degree angle. If you miss your turnoff, you have to drive up the mountain and then back down, all on really curvy and very narrow alleys - with really tight u-turns, all with a couple dozen death-wishing scooters buzzing madly around at all times. We finally found our way to Burrida, a huge old villa turned arts complex perched on a hill - but also down into a valley.





On a short walk:




Today, we set out along the Italian Riviera and into the French version making a pit stop in Menton, FR to wade into the surprising dirty Mediterranean before our day off in Provence.



Ciao.

Germany's Ottawa Equivalent & A Garden Show in the Southwest

Left Berlin Monday morning after a power breakfast, but Eric is still a little jetlagged.

Our first stop is Frankfurt (DE) and I have to admit that I don't really care for this city. It reminds me of Ottawa in it's dull, concrete-ness with touch of self-awareness so they plant a few gardens and trees. We've also never had a good time in Frankfurt, whether we're playing a show or waiting for a train. However, this time seemed a little more promising as we were set to play in squat on University grounds - probably the only interesting thing to happen in Frankfurt was the formation of the Frankfurt School based within the University and probably the only reason a squat was allowed to exist on it's turf. This buoyed my expectations, but the show itself remained in the 'just alright' realm. You could look here for pictures of the show that an attendee took. The following is small sampling of the graffiti and a poster found at IVI - I could wax on and on about the politically contradictory holes one finds oneself in when not thoroughly thinking through a strong viewpoint, but I won't.





The morning aftermath was a pleasant and delicious breakfast under a tree and near a wall, this helped me feel the tour will only get better.



We arrived in Esslingen (DE) to find out we would be playing an outdoor show in a really amazing garden-house-thing. Villa Merkel is a gallery that co-produces shows in it's yard with a local youth centre. After last night's show, we thought sound problems would plague us for the rest of the tour, but these dudes knew what they were doing and it was all super.



This is thisquietarmy's set in the still sunlight.



It was dark by the time we played and Eric took this picture.

Drive, Play, Repeat.

Poster by Hlg

There's a long, winding road ahead of us that'll take us to parts south, then west, then north, then east. It's all starts at IVI in Frankfurt tomorrow and continues on along these lines:

02 Jun @ Villa Merkel - Esslingen, DE
03 Jun @ Enosteria - Brescia, IT
04 Jun @ Burrida - Genova, IT
06 Jun @ Sonic - Lyon, FR
08 Jun @ Les Instants Chavirés - Paris, FR
09 Jun @ KAW - Leverkusen, DE
10 Jun @ DBs - Utrecht, NL
11 Jun @ TAC - Eindhoven, NL
12 Jun @ Markthalle - Hamburg, DE
13 Jun @ Schokoladen - Berlin, DE
16 Jun @ XT3 - Prague, CZ
17 Jun @ Klub Re - Krakow, PL
18 Jun @ Pod Minoga - Poznan, PL
19 Jun @ UHF - Warsaw, PL
20 Jun @ Club Ucho - Gdynia, PL
21 Jun @ Alter Ego - Szczecin, PL

If I don't pass you on this road, perhaps our paths will cross one day soon. (Did I just mix metaphors?)

Some Days w/ A Few Bakers

So we had some visitors visiting with us this weekend - I guess that's what they do. It was a very relaxed few days filled with Aidan's parents - Tom and Anne, good food, drink, a few long walks, and a couple sites.



Having visitors gave us an excuse to approach some places we've procrastinated on seeing like the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag.



Our long walk through Treptow Park brought us to this monumental shrine to Berlin's Soviet past.



Thanks for visiting! It was a swell, über-long weekend.

Basteln, in a Brigade

So I've inadvertently helped start a craft collective here in Berlin. Long story short, I was looking for someone(s) to maybe, possibly help put together a screening for 'Handmade Nation' because it's screening everywhere I'm not - including in Toronto by my dear City of Crafters. I found an amazing little sewing studio called Linkle just a few blocks from my apartment (my serious lack of German skillz kept me from going in for months), but now I had something to talk about so I mustered the up the courage and sent an email. -yep.

Anyway, so Linda of Linkle was totally into screening H.N. and she even thought she could others on board and it could be this great craft party! I was stoked, she was stoked, but anyone willing to help with funds (craft star docs come at a price) or, even enthusiasm was shortcoming.

The idea of the event was still kinda great and there were other craft groups and shops kinda willing to be involved and a 'craft community' is kind of non-existent here so we thought we'd go ahead and do it and maybe this would be a dawn of a new co-operative crafty era. Also, we gave this fledgling collective a name: Bastel Brigade.

The craft party will go on and instead of H.N., we'll be screening a Ein Traum in Erdbeerfolie - a documentary about the avant-garde, handmade, and improvised fashion scene in the former East Berlin. The craft party will be clothing themed with the opportunity to remake a piece of clothing you already own, or learn to make something new.

The collective mind for this event included Linkle, City of Craft, Stitchalicious, La Bastellerie, Eiszeit Kino, and Modular. I hope it doesn't rain.

Ahoy!

In keeping with the theme of boats this week, Aidan and I got the chance to play on a very special one last night. Based in Rostock, Germany, the M.S. Stubnitz spends most of the year docked in various European harbours. Currently stationed in its home port, we drove up with our new Aussie friends, Grey Daturas to play to a few locals, but mostly the boat's crew. Attendance aside - we did know what to expect - the time spent on board was great and I've never slept in a ship's cabin before, so that was fun.






ARRRRR!

I Kinda Wanna Live on a Houseboat

I get to see a lot of cities, but mostly it's the immediate surrounding of a club and only for a couple hours. Since first visiting Amsterdam a couple years ago, I've been yearning to spend a little more time in town. There HAD to be more to the city than hot-boxed coffee shops and a million tourists.

After 2.5 days there, I can verify that there really is no short supply of either, but it's also a really beautiful city full of good food, great shows - and great friends that could get us into shows. We planned our trip around the Woven Hand and Andrew Bird shows at Paradiso - one of the lovelier concert halls I've entered on the continent. Roger swung it for us to get on Woven Hand's guestlist, but Andrew Bird was sold solid and it didn't look hopeful. That is(!), until we got a call a few hours before the show and by the most amazing fluke 2 tickets were available. Roger, you made my week! (The last time A.B. swung through Toronto I had a terrible flu...)


By further fluke (or, earlier fluke if you're able to follow my chronology), once the Woven Hand show let out, the Paradiso's smaller venue was hosting MEN - remember JD Samson? - and I had some pent up dance energy that needed release.



I was pretty curious to check out the cat refuge on the water, but it was closed to the public the day we went to investigate. I gotta say, I was a little relieved -- it seemed a little bit small and lacking in outdoor space (or even just windows). I have a small dream of having a cat sanctuary some day when I can afford a nice tract of land (or, rooftop) made ideal for feline frolic. I've developed this idea pretty far in my head, but I'll spare you of it for now.

We were a little concerned with blowing too much dough so we did as much free, on foot, exploration as possible in the windy and cold drizzle.



And yes, the idea of dropping anchor on a canal was very enticing.



& here's a pretty great statue of Spinoza -- the sometimes poster child for Dutch tolerance.

Burnt Roads and Woven Jacquard in the Netherlands

This weekend we got invited to play the Neurosis-curated Beyond the Pale mini-festival within the annual Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland. Phew. We played this festival last year and the whole experience was pretty overwhelming then. It might be the full year of touring since and all the people we've met and then ran into this weekend, but this year's festival seemed somehow much more manageable. Of course, having our friends Robert and Helge around certainly helped keep my mind occupied and anxiety at bay. Robert's putting out a 12" of ours very soon and we thought it would be a-okay for him to sell some records at the show along side our stuff - sadly, not so. I hope listening to the Big Lebowski in it's entirety on the drive home made the weekend worthwhile! I also opened myself up to very possible ridicule when I placed a small stack of patches on our merch table - demographically, the Swedes seemed most keen on them.

These guys asked us to play. They are legends and they are awesome. (Sorry for the crappy shot, but I am short and the room was packed...)



My new Berlin craft friend Linda told me about the Audax Textielmuseum in Tilburg so in the few hours I had before things really got underway at the festival, I snuck out of my music duties to check it out.





This place is both a museum and running Textilelab, so almost no machinery is standing stationary. In one room, raw fibre is transformed into heavy and beautiful wool blankets.




In another, some of them most amazing jacquard art is woven up on massive machines.





Photography was forbidden in Knitted Worlds exhibition, but check out their blog to see what some of the artists were up to. Some of it was pretty darn incredible. A couple of my favorites were Kelly Jenkins' massive and naughty knit magazines and Greetje Van Tiem's newspaper yarn.

Sneers & Kisses To You On Earth Day!

Go hug a tree! Go ahead and fall in love with it! How can you not? They're just so very pretty.



The earth, or what I could see of it, looked darn good today. The thought of having a tree tattooed on my arm so that I could remember what one looks like 50 years from now makes me so so sad. So I did my conservation best today and I didn't wash any dishes, do any laundry, or bathe! Keeping that pace is very unrealistic, but water is where I think I am most wasteful so that is where my Earth Day resolution lies.

I'm not sure how to segue into hyperbolic crochet, but the environment is of concern here so that will just have to be enough keep you reading for lack of my writing skills. That [awkwardly] said, if you're in Toronto you should make your way to the Knit Cafe (1050 Queen St. West) where some of my pals have built a window full of hyperbolically crocheted sea life from plarn.

photo by Becky Johnson

photo by Angelune Des Lauriers

photo by Becky Johnson

This installation comes down tomorrow so make your way there, immediately! If you're wondering what the hell this mathy-sounding crochet is and what the hell is has to do with the environment, watch this:

Springtime Wilderness

It's been very many years since I last entered a zoo. I have mixed feelings about the whole concept - animals locked up and caged in while children scream at them. On the other hand, here are animals that I can see and interact with (to a degree) without running for my life as I do so. The Berlin Zoo is also a famous zoo for a few different reasons. It's the oldest zoo in Germany; it's located in downtown Berlin; and, it's home to Knut - the world-famous polar bear born at the zoo a couple years ago.



I'm not actually sure if this is, in fact, Knut. But, he is a pretty young bear and he was the only one in site on this very warm afternoon. Knut's not much of a cub these days, but it's spring and there were baby animals everywhere!



Then we hit what instantly turned me into my six year old self - Hippohaus. Inside, you can catch glimpses of them in the water. Here's some baby fat for your viewing pleasure.



Outside, the fam went for a bit of stroll.



Other signs that it was Spring? Males were assaulting females everywhere we looked.



The ornithological sections of the zoo were especially distressing to walk through. Massive birds were caged in. This guy isn't much of flyer, but I still detected a little bit of pleading in his gaze. Others were simply taunted by herons hanging out in the nearby freedom of the canal and once in a while swooping overhead.



The other thing that dawned on me as we approached the hedge that separated us from the massive lion resting in the shade is that they probably sedate the animals here.



The monkeys (and their relatives) were a little bit more spazzy. This guy, however, was so chill and awesome, you'd never know who his neighbours are.



These guys lived next door.



This guy was also pretty amazing.

A Few Hours In Leipzig

Last night we drove to Leipzig - one of my favorite cities - to open for what is probably the biggest, or, at least most legendary, bands we've yet been able to finagle our way onto the bill with: Earth. What made this especially sweet is that it all happened in what is probably my favorite venue, ever: UT Connewitz. It's a kinda beautiful, kinda delapidated old theatre with the backstage located on the balcony - incidentally, the best spot in the house to watch and listen.



I was pretty stressed out about this show. My feelings of inadequacy as a musician are sharply amplified when I share the stage with bands like this. It didn't help that I broke a string during sound check - without a spare, on Easter Sunday. UT solidified its favour in my books when they made a few calls and somehow delivered a string to me. My stiffened and stressed out body also disabled me from pulling my camera out as we ate dinner in a really lovely garden.

I found this in the basement. It looks to be 'former bloc' built.



--We played here 2 years ago and I took a million pictures of the place and surrounding neighbourhood. I assumed that these pictures were on my computer somewhere and I could post a few here - but they're on a disc, in a box, somewhere at home.