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11/2011 -  New things
10/2011 – Pyrénées walking tour with my donkey
09/2011 – China
04/2011 – New Zealand / Australia
02/2011 – Europe

 

 

NEW THINGS

01/01/2012 – Tucson - Surprise, surprise! I picked up learning the guitar and writing my own music over my own lyrics over the holidays. Over twenty years in (too?) close quarters with über-talented guitar players, I had never dared picking one up and writing by myself. 

12/22/2011 – Tucson -  Has it been a month already?! Been writing, been listening, reading a lot. It’s nebulous. A lot of starts, nothing that will be finished until it’s finished, that is, in the studio, on tape. Ouch.

11/23/2011 – Tucson - Grateful for something Joey Burns told me a few years back about not using computer programs to write lyrics. Tendency is to write, overwrite, over-overwrite. No. Just print it. Or just use the good ol’ yellow pads. I still have stacks and stacks of those gathering dusts from my days of writing lyrics for Amor Belhom Duo. Ok. Set. Print. This one is called “Der Letze Morgen des Jahres” and I’m listening to Eurythmics’ “I Saved The World Today” while reading these production notes on the song : http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan00/articles/tracks.htm

11/20/2011 – Tucson - A good couple of writes this weekend. I write best when in hiding and there’s nothing like staying home on a Saturday night when no one is watching, when the phone is silent at home and the friends are painting the town  saturday night’s colors! Still looking for subject matters that are close to the bone. Shedding, shedding the skins and woodshedding it. On another note, I sent an Emily Dickinson poem to Christian for a composition and had a flash of an idea that I was going to pair up that track of ours with a Youtube video of the Occupy movement’s protests. The Dickinson poem is about a storm coming. I made progress on that poem/music/video combination when I stopped trying to figure it out. A good lesson to remember again and again.

11/15/2011 – Tucson - Spinning my wheels on lyrics. With what I’ve seen and felt over the past year – strike that… the past two years – since writing the last album, I don’t know where to start and where to head to. Getting used to home again and loving to have time to read and hear new music, having time to stroll the memory lanes of my town with one of our album track on loop in my head throughout the day. What is this voice I’m going for? It seems I’m letting myself now be freer to say less but to mean more when and only when it’s tied to the music, if that makes sense. I feel the same when I perform now. I try to do less and mean more, letting and trusting that music will carry its weight. That, alone, must be a good direction to follow. 

11/13/2011 – Tucson - BK’s tracks have titles. Very evocative titles. It’s the first time the music directs, influences the lyrics in that way.

11/11/2011 – Tucson – I listen to the “Life And Death” track and I write a song about junk with bits from two texts etched during my Transsiberian train ride to China. Trying for raw, simple, direct. Well, direct.. hmm. My kind of direct.

11/02/2011 – Tucson – Stop overnight in Minneapolis at Brendan’s house on my way back from Europe and 9 months of touring abroad. After homemade dinner and a lovely time with his daugher and wife, we retreat to the studio to listen to the tracks he’s been laying out since the spring and that have been waiting for me on our joint Dropbox. I’m loving the music. Ready to get home and start working on words. This is a new process, unlike the one I’ve had with Christian on L’Abandon, unlike my collaboration with Joey on L’Entredeux. I like that it’s again a different approach to making songs. I’m a bit lost and feeling like a blank slate.

10/2011  ***** PYRENEES TOUR DIARY *****

10/22/2011 – Osse En Aspe, France

Ah, the last date, this one in the Pyrénées, up high in the small village of Osse En Aspe where they sure know how to party on saturday nights. After three days hanging out with Brian Lopez, Gabriel Sullivan and the Cumbia Ambassadors in Siros at the family farm, eating and drinking merrily, it’s back to solo me. The sun is back over the mountains, snow-capped and settling in for winter. Soon, a few days, I’ll be back home in Tucson after 9 months of wandering the world.

10/19/2011 – Siros, France

Ah, time went by very… slowly on foot, very fast otherwise. Four days of walking already, with great sun and warm temperatures. I slept outside in the woods on my day ‘off’, setting up camp with a handful of chestnuts I was hoping to roast for dinner. Névé, the Etsaut donkey, is a great touring companion. Not unlike human touring companions, he would love to stop at every occasion to eat. Unlike human touring companions, he only pees when he has arrived at our final destination. Yet, at about 3kms an hour average moving speed, there is so much to see on the road. Bugs, plants, fishes hopping out of the streams, white birds in flocks above, the sounds of the countryside and at times, the pull of trucks brushing us off balance. I enjoy doing the show after such long hours of walking. The energy is clean, powerful, not borne out of nervous tension or frustration but simply coming from the happiness of reconnecting with the human side of the spectrum and wanting to partake of the human race. Oh, yes, there’s plenty of time to meditate and think on the walking road. Or not so much think, as I didn’t find myself thinking much in the usual thinking terms, i.e. the plotting and planning and worrying and anticipating things that can go wrong and things that should go right. No, I just strode along in pace with Névé the donkey, going for the same things, looking at the same things and slowing down at the same times at times, just doing a tour in a donkey way, with needs of water and food, shade and calm, green color and steady paths. Easy does it.

10/14/2011 – Sauveterre de Béarn, France

Le Bar de la Mairie. Beautiful little town overlooking a river swarming with fish, with a magnificent view of the Pyrénées. It’s the morning after the first show and I’m waiting for Névé, the donkey from Etsaut while the rugby game is playing itself out inside the bar where all traces of confettis have been cleaned out already.

10/13/2011 – Bassussary, Pays Basque, France

Partie en TGV ce matin, encore secouée du concert de la veille aux Trois Baudets à Montmartre, des amis présents, de la rencontre que je ne sais pas complêtement comprendre avec le public parisien. Je laisse derrière à toute vitesse la capitale pour le soleil du Sud-Ouest. Mon cousin Mikel me réceptionne à la gare. Il me montre des photos des affiches de la tournée qu’il a posé à Sauveterre, Mauléon et dans la région. Me tarde la route!

09/2011 ***** CHINA DIARY ******

I really need a vacation. That’s what I told myself last spring while I was touring Europe with my gang of beautiful boys. And I need that vacation in a place with no wifi.

Transsiberian?

Six months later, I am at the Moscow train station, waiting for the 21:35 departure of train #4, the classic Trans-Mongolian straight shooter through Russia and Mongolia to Beijing. https://www.realrussia.co.uk/main_train_screen.asp And here it comes, slowly rolling in, a weathered locomotive followed by a dozen dusty red and green sleeping wagons.

For 6 nights and 7 days, I wake up to three smiling roommates from Germany and Sweden, step out into the corridor to a band of hungry Finnish boys and stretch up to the restaurant cart to catch up on the Norway crew. On my bed with view of endless Siberian birch woods and the Eurasian steppes, I sip Russian black tea, do crosswords in English then in French, nibble on a dry Baikal lake trout and write songs. Unhurriedly, pleasurely and lulled to sleep every night by the rattle of the train. One day, wooden dachas are replaced with Mongolian yurts on dry and dusty plateaus patrolled by camels. Then, we cross over into China one night and for the next three weeks, I am alone in the midst of one of the world’s greatest city with 7 shows to perform and an album to record. Let’s get started!

September 12th – Beijing train station. Sad to leave the comfortable familiarity of the Transsiberian. Subway ticket : 2 yuans. In the corridors, huge posters of the Black Rabbit Festival. There, my name, just under 30 Seconds to Mars and Ludacris and next to Grandmaster Flash. This is surreal. My hostel is smack right in the center of the hutong south of Dongzhimmen Inner Street. I drag my overweight suitcases through the muddy alley, loud and jammed with bikes and street vendors. In the evening, I strike out for a short walk and decipher sweet yoghurt to eat at a ‘convenient store’ – my first introduction to the sometimes hilarious but always thought-provoking Chinglish translations found throughout the city. “Spread to fuck the fruit”, anyone? “Slip carefully” for ‘Watch your steps”? “This door has been bad”?

September 13th – Where to eat? What to eat? I don’t dare venture into a restaurant. I speak no Chinese. If there is such a thing as the first 24hrs traveler’s blues, I’ve got a case of it. Like a Konrad Lorenz water rat, I venture outside the hostel then retreat. Learn my way then venture further out, retreat again. I’m studying the map of Beijing, learning its east-west and north-south axis. I couldn’t fall asleep last night. My bed was not shaking, the windowless room was deadly silent.  Beijing, I have just spent 7 nights in Transsiberian’s bed, how can I fall in love with you on our first night together. Let my body forget what it feels like to be in warm embrace with Transsiberian and we’ll see how we get past the first one-night stand.  Tonight, I get lost on the way to doing an interview with James Tiscione, the music writer for Global Times, the main English-langugage daily paper in China. http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/675386/James-Tiscione-speaks-to-Tucson-raised-tornado-Marianne-Dissard.aspx James is from Tucson. He was playing in bands there, bands I remember seeing, before moving to China in 2007. I had no idea! Reminiscing about Tucson over a cup of green tea soothes my jitters. I miss Tucson. It’s been 7 months I’ve left home but I’ve really been on the road for the past 3 years now. China, however, is the farthest away I’ve ever been. This is not like touring New Zealand, nothing like not understanding the language in Italy. This is something else.

September 14th – My first gig tonight! I assemble my confettis, the soap bubbles, my red  petticoat dress, the Tucson shirt… Of course, I get lost walking to YugongYishan. http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/listings/nightlife/live_music/has/yugong-yishan/ JS Héry, a compatriot from Bordeaux, France opens the night with his solo loops & strings set. http://zhangsian.com He tacks traditional Chinese instruments to his very thoughtful and dreamy loops. A dozen of my Transsiberian friends come to the show. From the stage, I see Chinese girls getting really excited about the bubbles, the cowboys in my “Lonesome Cowgirls” video projected on stage.

September 15th – A chauffeur comes to pick me up at noon. I’m driven for a couple of hours north of Beijing toward the Great Wall and an exclusive resort called ‘Commune By The Great Wall’, designed as a private collection of modern architecture by some of Asia’s finest.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune_by_the_Great_Wall There, the organizers of the Black Rabbit festival are organizing a conference they called TransmitChina, sponsored by Blackberry with CEOs of all the Asian new media industries, busloads of Canadians and Europeans makers-and-shakers. http://www.transmitchina.com/?lang=en The topic of the day: monetization of digital content. I stick to my guns and play the pool party. My room at the Commune is enormous and very stylish. I grab all the free goodies. Surprised, I meet old acquaintances by the pool. Mark from Nettwerk, who came to see my first show outside of Tucson in 2006 from Vancouver, Montreal label folks I’ve been in touch with for years, French cultural attachés. We are playing the same circuits, it seems.

September 16th – Driven back to Beijing with Archie Hamilton, the big boss of Black Rabbit Festival and TransmitChina. Archie is a really likable 35 years old Scott with a wonderful Australian wife and a couple of blond babies. I ask him why he thought fit to include me in the festival. He uses the word ‘instinct’, his sense that what I do would add the right touch of color to his lineup and also says it was a question of timing. He received my email at a time when he could still actually listen to half a mp3. We drive straight to the festival site in Chaoygang Park outside the 3rd ring road. I soundcheck. Driven back to my hostel in Beijing, I sleep 14hrs.

September 17th – Black Rabbit Festival – Day one! http://hei-tu.com/2011/en/ The organizers are stressing out with demands from 30 Seconds to Mars. I meet bands from Iceland, Shanghai, the US, Beijing. I listen to Hanggai on the big stage and fall in love with their Mongolian folk-punk drinking songs antics. http://www.myspace.com/hanggaiband . We fly straight from the festival in Beijing to the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, a sterile block an hour outside of town, and check into a fancy hotel.

September 18th – Black Rabbit Festival – Day two, Shanghai edition! I promise myself I will catch the sets of Hanggai, Carsick Cars, PK14 and Grandmaster Flash. My tech guys, my band liaison are sweet. We make do with the weird configuration of the festival grounds, the strong winds and some missing pieces of equipment still flying over from Beijing and I start my set on the small stage, squeezed between those of Hebe, a Taiwanese pop star, and Ludacris who play the big stage opposite. More interviews and photographs then I retreat back to the Free Trade Zone hotel and fall asleep watching ‘Sex in The City’ dubbed in Chinese.

September 19th – We fly back to Beijing. The taxi drops me at my hostel. I am on my own again. I came to China with a mandate to record an album, “Beijing Three Takes”. I raised a bit of money from my friends, promising a collaboration with Chinese musicians on this third installement of the ‘City albums’ series that I’ve been recording while on tour. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mariannedissard/train-to-china-to-record-beijing-three-takes But, truth be told, I don’t know who I might be able to record with or even what. But I’ve been thinking and listening to and observing the Chinese bands I met at the Black Rabbit Festival. Today, I know. I make the decision that this album will be different from “Paris One Takes’, different from “Berlin Two Takes”. And this is how I will proceed for the next eleven days : I borrow a Sony Zoom handheld recorder and set out to record the sounds of Beijing. Then, when I have edited and shaped this audioscape, I will ask Hanggai – at this point, you’ve figured out I have a musical crush on them, no? – to create the soundtrack to this movie-without-images. I’ll incorporate some of the writings I’ve done in the Transsiberian, first sketches of future songs. In the evening, I go to my usual hang, YugongYishan, to hear Huun Huur Tu and my friend Song Yuzhe’s band, Dawanggang. The place is packed. http://www.beijinggigguide.com/blog/2011/09/20/gig-review-huun-huur-tu-yugong-yishan-2011-09-19/

September 20th – And so I set out, rising early, walking endlessly and recording hutong streets, bicycles bells, kids playing, Buddhist chants, traffic honks, coos at the birds shop, subway announcements, tourist guides and tourist traps, late-night hutong fights with broken glass, shy crickets, quiet walks through sleepy alleys at night, the loud jest of PK14 on stage, weekend gatherings in the park… Every night, I return and load the files onto my computer. The next day, I start walking again.

September 21st – I find myself unable to take photographs. I listen and barely see anymore. I hear the Chinese language and find myself mimicking it in my head. I am silent throughout the day, ordering food by pointing at things on menus or street stands, buying water with a nod. In the evening, I go to Yugong Yishan to hear MOPA, a French band from Toulouse touring through Russia and China. They do very civilized screamo cum piano hardcore in an intriguing trio formation of piano, drums and vocals.

September 22nd – More walking and recording. In the evening, I go to YugongYishan to hear PK14. This is one hell of a charismatic singer! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.K._14

September 23rd – Today, I take the bullet train to Jinan, two hours south of Beijing. I am to perform at the Banjo Bar. I look for a hotel for an hour. None near the venue will accept foreigners. Finally, I find a business hotel across the street from a Sofitel and its shopping mall. In the room, a fax, a printer, a tea set for the day’s transactions. Banjo Bar is run by the energetic and curious Guo Guo. He wants a copy of “Lonesome Cowgirls”. He says they need to be exposed to things like that. He has never been to Beijing but his bar reminds me of those in American small towns, with a resident live band every night and a bit of something for everyone, whether students or workers, young or old, a cross between a sports bar and a rock scene with a touch of the classy Chinese. Late that night, I watch Chinese opera on TV.

September 24th – Back to Beijing. I am exhausted. I promise myself I will scale down on trying out every single kind of street foods and play safe but this is an endless game. http://appetiteforchina.com/malatang/ Malatang and Mongolian hotpots, wriggling things on sticks, breakfast rice gruel, the many shapes of tofu, passion fruits, purple eggs, duck blood cakes, duck feet, scorpios, steamed white buns in the morning with hot soy milk, straw yoghurts and sweet potatoes and chestnuts from the street roasters…

September 25th – Sunday morning. I’ve been tipped by my festival lightning tech that I should go to the Jinghan Park at 9:00am to record the very amazing weekend musical gatherings. Jinghan is just north of the Forbidden City and used to be the Emperors’ private playground around an artificial hill erected with earth dug from the moats surrounding the palace. It is where Beijing folks come to watch and play music and dance, a fully participatory experience with teachers and students of traditional forms of music gathered with obvious glee, from opera singers to Ehrus violins, ocarinas, Dizi flutes players, bamboo clappers with rythmic tongues matches to melodic songs and marching bands choirs. It all seems easy-going and more fun than mass. I wander for hours in the park. http://www.chinapictorial.com.cn/en/lifestyle/txt/2009-04/08/content_190038.htm

September 26th – Museum day. I watch Chinese people look at art. I sit in the Museum cafe for a couple of hours writing more lyrics. I record. I look at calligraphy books.

September 27th – More recording.

September 28th – I walk two and a half hours from my little hutong home to the 798 Art Center, heading northeast, past the 2nd ring and the Lufthansa Mall, past the 3rd ring alongside busy avenues and into un-touristic neighborhoods. http://www.798space.com/index_en.asp That day, the pollution index hits 478 at 10:00pm. On a scale of o to 500, this is clearly in the hazardous range. The sun sets without having once broken the thick layers of smog. Dusk is reddish. This is red China. I record traffic jams and cars honking like mad. In the evening, I wander and find by chance the tiny Jianghu Jiuba, a venue I keep hearing about from my musician friends. Inside, a woman sings Edith Piaf! Her band is tight, jazz drumming and focused guitars. http://site.douban.com/jianghujiubar/ The woman is from Montreal. The French bass player lived in Tucson four years. Listening then talking to him, I feel homesick again, homesick for a guitar player, homesick for Tucson and homesick for what it feels like to be French in Tucson. And I miss my band. I walk further into the hutongs and find a small and very hip record store that’s blaring music into the street. I go inside and give the shop owner my CD. He immediately proceeds to blast it through the speakers onto the hutong! I stand outside for 45mn, making long takes recordings of “L’Abandon” fading into the next bar’s music, from Lady Gaga to bicycles and people back to my album. Not sure how I’ll end up using those takes in the Beijing album but this is a surreal moment out in the hutong for me.

September 29th – Showtime at D-22! http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/listings/nightlife/live_music/has/d-22/ I am sick as a dog. Hitting the toilet bowl before the show and hitting it right after I get off stage. The show is good, though. My friends are here. James from Tucson and his Chinese girlfriend, my band liaison from Black Rabbit, Reloads the fun opening band has seen my set at the festival and loved it, JS Héry also plays and shows support once again and then, yes, the lead singer from Hanggai and his fantastic wife are also there! Shy and star-struck, I still manage to get an autograph on my Hanggai CD and I promise to write to explain the collaboration I want on “Beijing Three Takes”.

September 30th – Showtime again! This time, at Tushuguan 98, aka La Bibliothèque, a bar run by a French guy as a multimedia community space. Films, music, food, stiff drinks, rooftop terrace and books to borrow. I do a first set at 9:00pm then more people show up at 10:00pm, begging for an encore. So I do the set again, this time energized by the louder and more playful audience. It’s probably the best of my Chinese sets. I rush off around midnight, drop off my gear at the hostel and run one last time through the hutong streets to YugongYishan to catch the last couple of songs of Helen Feng’s new electro-rock project.

October 1st – Last day. Shopping day. Hunting for kites, buying gifts for all my friends who have pledged money for “Beijing Three Takes”, choosing the right bootleg CDs for Brendan, Melissa and Gustavo, picking the best fans to calligraph, find an Ehru for Olivier… Silk blouses are out of the question. Too expensive and too bulky. Paper cut-outs are amazing and light. Beijing airport at 2:00am. Overnight to Moscow, then to Paris. I am exhausted.

October 2nd – Paris. I am in bed, sick, my throat is raw, my nose running. Glad this is coming down only now. This week, I must sing on France Inter. Next week, I play Paris and then head out to the Pyrénées to start on my donkey tour, a walking tour from the Basque country to Béarn, my ‘heimat’, my home region, with a donkey carrying my equipment. 

The End, CHINA DIARY ***

 

07/27/2011 – Paris

I spent a couple of hours in the basement today. That’s where our tour instruments are stored, along with CDs we collect on the road from other bands and fans, along with boxes of my CDs yet to sell – L’Entredeux, Dedicated, Paris One Takes and now L’Abandon – along with tour books and maps of Europe, a GPS that rendered these maps sadly obsolote, a quart of motor oil, a couple of  blown amp tubes, three lighters, one ‘Austria’ cotton wristband given to me in Vienna by our promoter, a bottle-opener, a book on Buddhism I kept from some hotel in Germany, a workbook called ‘Learn German in 10 Days’. There’s even the cardboard cutout of a man wearing a wig and what looks like an 18th century valet garb and holding a plate of cheese cubes. Clay, Andrew and I stole him on the first tour in Germany somewhere, we had a name for him, our tour mascot, which I used to prop up on stage with me. And the instruments : my saw and a couple of bows, one Fender guitar amp and a vintage reissue Sunburst Ephiphone that Naïm helped me buy in the fall 2008 and that I brought to Paris afterwards for Clay to use on our year of touring together and that Connor and now Brian have used, one bass amp and one head we picked up with Geoff on the fall 2009 ‘almost-all-of-Mostly-Bears-plays-with-me’ tour, a sparkling baby blue drum set Sergio unearthed in Fribourg on our last tour in January, the Ludwig Accent CS set – that I’ve been selling off one piece at a time to pay for Sergio’s baby blue find – from the very first tour in November 2008 when Andrew was my drummer. There’s also a whole suitcase I gave Sergio to store his pants and shoes and sweaters and I don’t want to know what else he left behind preferring to go back home with other more essential things he’d picked up on the road like bits of the baby blue set. Surprisingly, nothing that belongs  to or befell Olivier in the boxes and on the shelves considering his propensity for leaving bits and traces of himself – some tangible, some not so much – wherever he goes. Stage plots, nylon ties,  .50 cents German AutoGrill discount tickets, superglue, silver sharpies for autographs and my Beta 57 microphone… January, come soon!

06/06/2011 – Siros, France

home is quiet

5/16/2011 – Tucson, Arizona

home is quiet

05/15/2011 – Auckland, New Zealand

Last date of the tour. Got in at 6am from overnight flight from Perth. I leave tomorrow for Tucson. Home feels like the couch I sleep on. Writing Howe from the airport in Perth last night, as I recall having done over the years. Maybe he’s the best at understanding airports and being on the receiving end of my airport messages. I like to think so. Skype with my new found Adelaide family, sights with no smells of bacon mornings from up in the Belair hills of South Australia. I breathe easier now that I’m away from Perth, yet the welcome was more than generous and enormously enthusiastic. Auckland, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Melbourne, Castlemaine, Napier, Wellington, Paekakariki, Nelson, Murchison, Golden Bay, Lyttleton, Dunedin. 18 shows, 6 weeks.

05/05/2011 – Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

I meet people, they come and go. I go places, love them, then go. I don’t think I should think too much about what I do these days. It’s just being done, it’s what it is. So, now, for something completely different. How about some tales from the road? I met a woman who decided to go visit Turkey when she saw a turkey on the side of the road as she was wondering how her life could be more adventurous. I met a woman whose heart was broken in Mexico and describes herself as a ‘sensory glutton’, living what seemed to me the most brilliant example of an open relationship. I met people who reminded me of my friends back home. There are types. Each house, and there is a new house every couple of days, each house is inhabited by someone who is either this one or that one of my beloved. Funny how I feel I’m just getting to understand a bit more about people and places. Mostly people. Places are just people. What else? An Australian rock star signing autographs. The best coffee in Melbourne. Queen Victoria Market. Mount Wellington. Nah. I think I remember mostly the stories, the struggles that align with mine. Oh, and animals. I am mad crazy about David Attenborough’s nature films. And architecture of houses. The houses in Melbourne! I could walk by those all day and not get tired of looking at them, decrepit or not. One was called ‘Sans Souci’. They have names of countries and regions. Yes, animals, insects and awnings. Go figure.

04/29/2011 – Melbourne, Australia

Woooh whoooh that town! I’ve been walking around the neighborhoods, staying off downtown until today only when I made it to the wonderful Victoria Market. Fitzroy, Brunswick, Essendon, Northcote…! I’m loving the architecture of those Victorian houses, the metal awnings, size of streets, the look of the trams, the fact that it’s 22 degrees max and sunny and gentle. So many clubs out here, so many great looking restaurants and the records stores! Smart, educated record stores! Sweet friends already, a network of expats and locals, from the music end of my world to the couch surfing side. Tonight, we will watch the big wedding party and drink some wine.

2/2011 – Castlemaine, Australia

I got lost in the eucalyptus woods. I walked the dirt roads, looking for kangoroos and listening to the colorful birds, brushing off sails-sized spiderwebs. I am staying in a fantastic house made of adobe bricks by its owners, Rob and Michelle, and framed with recycled beams, bricks and metals. Last night, I stayed at the great little B&B of Castlemaine’s Theatre Royal, the longest-operating entertainment venue in mainland Australia! The history of those walls! Alone in the B&B of the Theatre, the bedroom wall shared with the venue screen, I heard the sounds of movies after movies all day, then silence, then my show. I could stay in this town for a long while. I’m liking Australia and Australians quite a bit. Blunt, direct, enthusiastic and so far, really caring and simple. Oh, that’s just 24hrs in the country but I’ve felt very lucky. So, after a couple of hours of walking the woods and feeling a bit distraught as the sun was coming down, I found a house and got myself on the ol’ internet and found the address and got a ride home. Now, I’m sitting by the fireplace and I made some soup. I saw some kangoroos today.

19/2011 – Auckland, New Zealand

Big city, small shows. That’s just how it’s gonna have to be for now. Napier was ‘French Club’ Night at the Cabana! Somehow, the folks who came to the show had read the amazing review I had gotten in the local press and wanted a bite of the ‘world-class’ artist. Most had never been to the Cabana, the longest-running music venue in the country! I always enjoy audiences like that! They show up early, eager and I always end up having a fun, easy and sweet time! Napier is a beautiful Art Déco town, rebuilt after a massive quake in the 20′s. Cute downtown with a waterfront to match! Déco sea! I spend time with Andrew and Andrew and wake up in a designer house within an apple orchard, a bit outside of town. Bus ride to Auckland is long and uneventful, save for my messing up the bus ticket and booking it for March 15th instead of April 15th. Somehow, that doesn’t phase out the bus driver too much. Long live New Zealand, the country where being a human being is made simple. Couch Surfing again in Auckland and loving the random pintpointedness of it. I stay with a musician and the hours after the show are spent driving wide around town with his friends, visiting odd ghostly half-built, laked and gated communities in the suburbs, on the site of the first settlers campgrounds of the country and slipping into narrow caves within lava flows in the middle of Auckland, while looking for an icecream parlor that’d be open at midnight on a saturday night. Good life. The show went well. Sophisticated audience in the City of Skies.

04/13/2011 – Wellington, New Zealand

From Golden Bay, paradise to Murchison, farming valley to Nelson, geographical center and ‘spiritual’ hub of New Zealand, hop over from Picton, ferry’ed to Wellington and chauffeured to Paekakariki. I spend two sun and sea days by the beach at the house of darling French expats who could almost convince to move in to be nanny to little Victor. Wellington next, a tucked and leafy street again that reminds me of Bisbee. So many stories but fragments of lives and cities crisscrossed. A swim in the Tasman Sea, glowworms unlike any I’ve grown up used to see, Cuba Street and the kindness of strangers, shows one after the other with more ease and grace, I hope. Striving to not force, to just be. Reading Sir Lawrence Olivier’s memoirs. The sea.

04/06/2011 – Lyttelton, New Zealand

Dropped off from the Dunedin to Lyttelton ride in front of Loons. Friends inside sipping from espresso machines rescued from the threatened building next door. A coffee shop by day, cabaret by night. The quake and aftermath have taken their toll on nerves and bodies. The main street, London Street, is condemned. Only store open a small general grocery scooping coneful after coneful of ice cream. Comfort food. Water trucks parked in front of houses. I go speak a bit on the radio. A DJ brings out tequila and wine. We do slammer shots. Comforting drinks. Will people come out tonight? They did and lingered, a first social night since the day that brought down Harbour Light, Empire Hotel, my past haunts. Moving moments, words that touch and gestures of support across the board. Al having brought the posters for my show from his Christchurch bar. I blow bubbles and throw confettis in the air. May they be comforting. Later on that night, at James’ house, I make crepes for the party. A French couple, buskers across the world. Musicians and a photographer I remember meeting last year in Christchurch. I am reminded of Arizona’s Bisbee, shaken from the proximity to the border if it is shaken at all. The next morning, I hitch a ride to the airport to pick up a miniature rental car and drive 9hrs to Golden Bay, to paradise.

04/05/2011 – Dunedin, New Zealand en route to Lyttelton, New Zealand

Kindness of strangers. I hitch a ride from Dunedin to Lyttelton today. The sun makes a welcome return after yesterday’s pour. Tonight, I play a benefit show for Radio Volcano, the Lyttelton community radio. Two planned shows had been cancelled back in February after the eartquake shook the venues = and the towns – to their turn-of-the-century core. But it never felt right not to play there. I just didn’t know how to go about it until it finally dawned on me that I just had to ask, that there must be people still playing in venues still running for people still living and needing music. What else is music for if not this? We will gather and recoup and reseed. I witnessed it in Tucson on the eve of the shooting tragedy that claimed the lives of several Tucsonans but didn’t stop Gabriel Giffords. I witnessed it that night at the Rialto Theater and it felt like the right thing to do, to play, to be there. So, onward to Lyttelton where I hear my old pal Delaney Davidson hangs these days.

4/2011 – Dunedin, New Zealand

Sunday it is at Tunnel beach. I stare at the ocean, sheltered from winds on the small enclaved beach that can only be reached through a steep man-made 72 steps corridor, narrow tunnel excavated by hand from withinside the cliff one hundred and thirty years ago by a founding father’s son for his doomed progeny. Legend has it, son lost daughter to the sea on the inaugural day of reaching the commandeered beach. Listen, the waves crash, touch, soft stones hammered by hands and winds, marvel, the pliable brown seaweeds brushed by the tide, strands thick as my arm, hairpiece of a bald giant. How did she look, floating there, daughter of the crown, stamped on the land?

04/03/2011 – Dunedin, New Zealand

I didn’t get the joke this year. No April’s Fool for me. I flew off from Los Angeles on March 31th and woke again on April 02nd in New Zealand. I toss and turn a whole morning inside the Auckland airport before my connecting flight to Dunedin, the city at the bottom of the South Island. I pick up free tourist guides to the land of Kiwi and a copy of Metro, a glossy magazine with a grandiose review of the album. Clear skies over the country as we go from north to south, straight down the spine and with every single city I will be playing in the coming three weeks visible from seat 6A. In 6B chairs a kind Dunedin professor, who makes it his very civil duty to point to me the landmarks below. Volcano, river, upcoming dam, Picton, fjords, plains and mountain range, Nelson, coast, mountain again and snow right, Christchurch, left fields, Dunedin and the mouth of the Port Chalmers. Fields and dots growing large as cows and sheeps, green everywhere, a landing strip in the countryside, oddly reminiscent of le pays Basque in its contrast of sea and mountain. Two friends pick me up at the airport. I met them, a Pole and a Californian, through CouchSurfing. There begins the kindness of strangers. That night at Chicks’ Hotel, their friends make up the core of the audience. The first show is a first show, rough and fragile in its execution but dead-on with its intent. As I wanted, as I had hoped, the screening of Lonesome Cowgirls after my singing set is not so much a screening as a kicking and screaming wallpaper for a living room of friends by the fire place. Occasionally, a glance toward the screen to ponder at a scene of cowboys rolling in the dust and onto themselves. A living installation of my temporary, with instant friends and permanent scars. As I leave, Hector, who runs Chicks, waves ‘to next year’. Here, here to the Hotel Congress of Dunedin!

3/31/2011 – Silverlake, California, USA

Last night, I made it to Low End Theory, the Gaslamp Killer regular wednesday night music rendez-vous on Broadway. I’ve been meaning to go there for months now. These shows,  to me, and many others, are the epicenter of music on the West Coast, in America, today. We came early and many, gathered in the small upstairs room of the unpretentious Airliner club. The DJs took to the stage and we moved close. Long since I’ve been at a concert where the audience listens with such concentration. It feels like a work in progress, a community, a concert of musicians for musicians. Heard tech talk, saw cogniescento nods, smelled good stuff in the air, breathed the outdoor patio lit by the glow of the ûber-mobiles. What to say of the music I heard? Gaslamp Killer’s set is above and beyond. It’s a cartoon, a bird, a plane. It’s colors in a frenzied dance. It’s wisdom and tooth. I like. I like. I admire. I learn. — Driving back home on Broadway, Spring, then Hill, downtown, a bit of the I-5 then SilverLake… the roar of the city followed by the quiet hum, the buzz of motorbikes on the highway speeding the death race, the stern river, the contrast of all that is Los Angeles, all that is sound and quiet, and fury and serenity of the secret spots, the contrasts of a town both calming and enervating, unlike any other, all that is Los Angeles, I heard tonight in Low End. It’s a theory, mine not mine. It’s music. I’m glad I started there the trip to the next two albums I’ll be making this year.

Check out  the podcasts here – > http://www.lowendtheoryclub.com/podcast/

03/30/2011 – Silverlake, California, USA

03/29/11 – Tucson, Arizona to Los Angeles, California

Amtrak overnight from downtown Tucson, across Hotel Congress to ‘the last of the great railway stations’, Union Station, LA, CA! ‘Texas Eagle’ greets like no other train, attentive as old-fashioned room service on tracks. I tossed and turned and slept a bit, waking up to a pinkish sunrise over a sea of Circle Ks and scruffy palm trees. Somewhere lost in there is somebody’s idea of a milk and honey paradise. I see tags and dry rivers, blue skies and hunched men waiting on the curb by the Pueblo de Los Angeles, a nod to Mexico City, the big sister to the South.

03/27/11 – Tucson, Arizona

I am home a sweet week. Bittersweet week of seeing friends and knowing I’ll be gone again for months. But if my heart aches for any place, this is it. (ps: that’s Salvador and me, puckering up. We traded hats for the picture! Barrio Festival last night! pix by jon)

03/07/11 – Paris, France

I couldn’t keep up with the blogging. It’s been a fantastic tour. I am very happy. Happy has no story, right?

2/22/11 – Freiburg, DE

And just like that, it’s a week and more later. We have three days in Freiburg, Germany at the big house of Rebekka, our gracious hostess and her sweet roommates. Humming along, catching up with life, catching a movie on the day off, staying in and resting, enjoying the new friends and the guys, enjoying the life on the road. The shows kept getting better and better after Prague, making people dance and smile and selling more CDs every night.

02/13/11 – Prague, CZ

The ghosts? Playing a show for folks who remember Rainer. In the shadow of a show Calexico never did do here. The long shadows of music previous and past, the centuries of players and the friends left back home. I don’t mean to be cryptic but here is what’s happening: we played in Prague and we’re on our way to Vienna. I am losing some and gaining some. Losing a grip on the singing and gaining some points on the performance aspect. How to move, where does it come from, inside, deep inside, which muscles, which heart, which part of the flesh or the blood, where does it make sense, this acting, these emotions? It’s all in French, right? You don’t understand what I’m saying, right? I’ll make you understand. I’ll make me understand. Reading Lee Strasberg, the method, in the van then I lost the book on day 2. We are stuck on a country road at night in Germany at a train crossing. It is dark and it snows. The rails moan. Ghosts. What is this country we step in, straight from the highway? Once a country that belonged here and there, and to itself. Then a country under rule. And one day, in 1990, the Rolling Stones played in Prague, as the tanks rolled out, the Stones rolled in. What does it mean to play? We play and people smile. Isn’t that all that matters? We don’t even use the cd player or the radio in the van. The band plays music nonstop, in the van and off the van. You should have seen the party after the show last night! Courtesy of Tucson, the Posse!

02/10/11 -Köln, Germany

Gloria! What a fun show! How happy to see my friends here… Uwe, Rolf, Oliver and his new crew at Le Pop Musik! Old friends, people who have seen me play one, two, four or five times. I listen to the news, I hear about Egypt. Small moments outside of the tour, a few headlines.

02/08/11 – Dudelange, Luxembourg

Why Not. That’s the name of the bar. Why not. That is also, for me, the name of this country, Luxembourg. Why not, yes. No one is that small. Happy, dancing, from the great review of the Paris show, and the music we pull out of each other. Walked around the town this morning, stretched and yawned and knew, this is it. We are on the tracks. Tour. Derail.

02/07/11 – Paris, France

Back home after the show and no sign of rest yet. Still so upped by the show. Tweaking things in my head. Was the projection worth it? Was it distracting? Do I know all the lyrics by heart now? Why am I still hesitating? Which songs does Olivier need to be playing viola on? Which songs mandolin? Is Luc having a decent time at the merch’ table? Did I thank everyone again and over again? Did I forget to say hello to this person? Is the show fun to watch? fun to hear? fun to do?  Did you have fun? Overwhelmed with gratitude on how smooth things are running. Paris! You’ve already dissappeared and left behind a sweet perfume. You will linger.

02/06/11 – Paris, France

I wake up at 4:30am, I need the quiet of the apartment to think, plot and plan. The city still hushed, all the way into daylight on this sunday morning. Brian, Gabe and Sergio arrive from the airport, dazzed, dragging suitcases and boxes heavy and the day unfolds at great speed from croissants to crescent. We rehearse most of the afternoon and into the evening. Details, logistic, details, missing things, unravelings. I rely on Luc to take care of us. We take care of each other. The music sounds wonderful at rehearsal, as we break in Olivier, who’s playing some of these songs for the first time. What a splendid team. Lucky me. Lucky sleepy me.

/05/11 – Paris, France

The day waves with fits of jetlags. Crushed at 7pm, I emerge glorious again at 10pm, forcing myself to walk outside, jacket-less, to meet friends in a boisterous cafe full of singing, skirted Scots. Then, to meet with K., who has escaped her life in Paris, Rome, NYC for a terrace in Palermo, cancelling her FB account. She hands me a DVD of “Merci De Rien Du Tout”, the music video she shot for that song when we were in Rome a year and a half ago, in what feels like another life already. Brian, Gabe and Sergio are onboard the plane to Paris at this minute. Their last FB updates read so. I have trekked Paris today to collect a bass drum for Sergio, a keyboard for Sergio and an upright bass for Gabe. There was cheese and soup, tea and Perrier. There were demonstrations in the streets. République congested. Batignolles exhuberant. Elsewhere, other people have taken to the streets, in other countries. I started the day earlier with gloomy reports and feeble predictions of what releasing my album in France could mean. In this country, you wait for your turn. In this country, you must have a trajectory. I suppose that means you had better be an identified flying object. I can’t wait to get started on the road. I can’t wait to be on the tracks again.

02/04/11 – Paris, France

Third night to wake up to the gentle grey of Paris. So far, jetlag has been a breeze. Normal Tucson hours, except now in Europe. Up by 7 or 8am, full night sleep. Last night, Olivier invited us to a party at a friend’s apartment. We walked in to warm greetings, bodies do move different here, you kiss cheeks left and right, sit tight next to a stranger, it feels human, connected and very French. It feels like we actually have bodies and not just … vehicules. Later on, Luc and I catch a bit of late night French TV, or rather, American programs dubbed into French. South Park, Nip and Tuck, every single cop show ever broadcast, although I didn’t see some of the most sensationalistic ones. // The streets here a theater stage. Yelling, swearing, dancing, saturday night effusions. It’s thrilling. I am reconciled, fell to the charm again. I’m very glad about the Paris show on Monday. Not nervous, just glad to be surrounded by so many friends, to be playing again and for a month straight, to play almost every single night. The loneliness won’t kick in for a while. Yesterday, I walked around Paris humming a song from my ex-’s new unreleased, bootlegged album. It is such a brilliant song. It was a blanket, as good songs can be.