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February 12.
A
mere 15 years after I last toured Europe with Steve Wynn I fly
off to do it again. I have a new suitcase a new camera and a rented
Euroready cell phone so Sarah can call me up. I am otherwise
20th
century in the mobile communication device
department. I leave with two
pieces to finish for the Times,
a review of the latest “Raisin in the Sun” picturization and a
thing
about the '68 Elvis comeback special they're
screening at the Paley
Festival, and I have two books to read, “Police at the
Funeral” by
Margery Allingham and “The Vicar of Wakefield” by Oliver Goldsmith. LAX
to Newark the first of many early-morning flights, nothing interesting
to say about that, I arrive alive in NJ. Steve
finds me, trailing
flight bag (Linda's) full of merch, with irreparable broken handle,
waffles off to find a replacement (a red
hard shelled thing), then has
nearly disastrous business with airline person who claims his passport
is too close to expiration to use (later there will be complaints
about its tatteredness) but this is sorted out and we go away to Amsterdam.
Met at the airport by Erik Van Loo who will play the double bass and drive the van and whom I don't know though I am promised by Steve and by Robert Fisher
as well
who uses him in the Willard Grant Conspiracy that he is a prince among
men and this
turns out to be true. (Some venues will bill me as "of the Willard
Grant Conspiracy" as well which is kind of true, Robert Fisher would
say so, but strikes me as a practical overstatement.) I vaguely
recognize my surroundings
from those 15 years prior though with Paula and Robert and
Kevin in
them then. I have the video to remember by.
Erik's new van is blue, the
back seat I ride in to his house, which will become Steve's seat
mostly, sits high you have to bend down a
little to get the view. Take
pictures look for windmills. Holland
is flat which is why they call it
the Pays Bas, the Low- the Netherlands. Steve and Erik
catch up I have
nothing to catch up with. Erik lives in Deventer which is where we're
going, staying, rehearsing, there is a bridge there that starred in the movie "A
Bridge Too Far," though it is a different
bridge than the actual bridge
that was too far, that is somewhere else. He takes the scenic route
coming in, which I think means driving down the street where the prostitutes live in windows but there is
nothing to notice there or I
didn't notice it. On a later trip back into town by night they are more
noticeable with the red lights on and the
windows lit up and all of
them seeming to wave cheerfully but looks can be deceiving. Erik
lives
with Berry, Maxim and Doris in a three story row house from
the 1930s;
there was a gas factory there before that. It is narrow and tall with
steep shallow stairs you have to take at an angle and a bunny rabbit in
the back. We stay on the top floor and
rehearse there too. I think briefly of Anne Frank in her Dutch attic
but this 
is of course not
that. Steve has a long list of songs, we
go
over some we won't perform and later perform
some we never go over; we
will repeat more songs from night to night than originally
planned but
you want to play the ones that work over again, that's just fun. I fall
asleep while rehearsing. Steve and I go to the old town which is just a
hop and a skip from Erik's, I don't know how old it is but it's
old.
Steve buys notebooks in a notions store. We get something
from a fastish food stop. (Me: Curry fries.) Later we eat a nice meal
with the Van Loo family, homemade
tzatziki, fish, mozarella-basil-tomato salad, snap peas,
pasta. Then we rehearse again.
February 13. Perhaps we rehearse some more probably we did. Erik has made a merch storage unit out of a flight case he bought at a swap meet. We decide to take his Telecaster
instead of an acoustic guitar for me to play
(direct, through a bass pod), I am also playing his Kurzweil I have
brought only
my mandolin. Somehow this
all gets downstairs not much thanks to me. We drive to Hilversum the
Dutch Media City; 17 years ago we played postpirate Radio Veronica here
with Big Al and Francesca and Big Al's little dog but I think that is
perhaps gone (and Big Al as well, and his little dog too), these are
newer buildings. Today we
play 3 songs on Radio 6, our first public performance, albeit to a mostly invisible audience, and Steve answers questions
from a deejay who appears not to have noticed his solo career. Jaap
Boots who will open for us in Ottersum pops his head in. We go to
Utrecht where I played w/ Steve in 1990 at Tivoli, this is Ekko
(northward on the
the same canal), a collectively run volunteer affair. They give us
dinner, there is a so-called pumpkin "fritatta" and there are
potatoes. And a roll. "Are your potatoes cold?" asks the manager I'd guess you'd
call her. (Her day job is at the big TV and Radio Museum next to where
we were on the radio, cataloging or archiving or some such, she 
didn't
like it much though it sounded kind of interesting to me. She also
tells me that the radio station we were on is for "middle-aged men."
Which seems about right.) "Yes."
(Back to the potatoes now.) "They're not supposed to be." (Cold.) But
no one offers to warm them up. Steve asks if I want to split a beer and
pours me hardly any; I spill it in any case (spilt it, if you want to
be anagrammatic), and then spill some water right after as a chaser.
Take a
walk along the canal, lots of student types on bicycles making me wish
I
was a student or even a student type on a bicycle. Back in the
club I meet Yuko, I meet Hammi again whom I haven't seen since Seattle
and Hattie's Hat. "Do you remember me?" I ask, he was wondering the
same thing. I remember nothing of the show, I suppose we must have made
some mistakes it being the shakedown cruise. There was a folky Dutch
support act, singing in English, American-style. (Jaap Boots doesn't
make that cultural error.) Then: Hotel: More steep shallow stairs, room
the width of a corridor but I don't stay in it long. Then: Walking far
to find an open bar, with
Seve and Yuko and
Hammi's friend Joanne (followed by vanparking Erik and Hammi)
down a long cold empty dark
street and finding one finally in what I remember as a leafy miniplaza on the
banks of another canal. Yuko has a phone you can call the states for
free on, though no one can figure out why this should be so; I use it.
There is too much smoke and I will pay for that but happily there is
less smoke in Europe than there used to be, at least inside most of the
places we will play, eat and stay.
February 14. The breakfast room of the hotel has art with American themes, corny stuff. We drive to Liege, in Belgium. Erik likes Belgium he says, it's not as tidy as Holland, and it isn't. And there are hills in it. I am looking forward to using some French, sad we're not going to more
Francophonic places; of course I'm also nervous about using some French
because of the who-are-you look you get when you
pronounce things wrong or misconjugate your verbs or get your gender
wrong. (Not your own personal gender.) Liege looks good coming in, all
kind of jumbly and twisty, and a
river runs through it, worth an automatic 25 points. We are guided
by Jane, the voice of Erik's new mostly trusty GPS system. Hotel
parking
is many levels up a low-clearance garage and I walk alongside the van
to make sure Erik does
not scrape his roof off. (He does bend an antenna.) I takes a walk into
nearby pedestrian district which goes on and on and naturally leads to
a cathedral and then goes on some more. In a comic book
bande dessiné store I look at expensive Tintin clobber. In a music
store (small, respectable) 
I whip out a little basic French to buy some guitar picks;
the French for picks sensibly enough is plecs (sp?) I learn. I buy a Belgian waffle not
quite like an American Belgian waffle in a bakery.
Hotel rendezvous. Move the van back down through the low bridge garage,
the club -- called L'Escalier for its escalier three or four flights of
which separate stage from backstage -- is a block and half as the crow
walks but on wheels must be approached circuitously and there's half a
block to lug the stuff even then. They feed us on the second floor, a
restauranty space, I remember it being fairly good, civilized anyway;
there may have been tablecloths. We take a walk where I walked before
but now everything is closed and the sun is down and the lights are on.
Crisp. The opening act sing Simon and Garfunkel harmonies are much
better rehearsed than we are (it would be hard not to be), younger than we are (ditto) and are who most of the people we play to
when we play are really there to see but they and their crowd stick around at least and
are very nice about it.
department. I leave with two
pieces to finish for the Times,
a review of the latest “Raisin in the Sun” picturization and a
thing
about the '68 Elvis comeback special they're
screening at the Paley
Festival, and I have two books to read, “Police at the
Funeral” by
Margery Allingham and “The Vicar of Wakefield” by Oliver Goldsmith. LAX
to Newark the first of many early-morning flights, nothing interesting
to say about that, I arrive alive in NJ. Steve
finds me, trailing
flight bag (Linda's) full of merch, with irreparable broken handle,
waffles off to find a replacement (a red
hard shelled thing), then has
nearly disastrous business with airline person who claims his passport
is too close to expiration to use (later there will be complaints
about its tatteredness) but this is sorted out and we go away to Amsterdam.Met at the airport by Erik Van Loo who will play the double bass and drive the van and whom I don't know though I am promised by Steve and by Robert Fisher
as well
who uses him in the Willard Grant Conspiracy that he is a prince among
men and this
turns out to be true. (Some venues will bill me as "of the Willard
Grant Conspiracy" as well which is kind of true, Robert Fisher would
say so, but strikes me as a practical overstatement.) I vaguely
recognize my surroundings
from those 15 years prior though with Paula and Robert and
Kevin in
them then. I have the video to remember by.
Erik's new van is blue, the
back seat I ride in to his house, which will become Steve's seat
mostly, sits high you have to bend down a
little to get the view. Take
pictures look for windmills. Holland
is flat which is why they call it
the Pays Bas, the Low- the Netherlands. Steve and Erik
catch up I have
nothing to catch up with. Erik lives in Deventer which is where we're
going, staying, rehearsing, there is a bridge there that starred in the movie "A
Bridge Too Far," though it is a different
bridge than the actual bridge
that was too far, that is somewhere else. He takes the scenic route
coming in, which I think means driving down the street where the prostitutes live in windows but there is
nothing to notice there or I
didn't notice it. On a later trip back into town by night they are more
noticeable with the red lights on and the
windows lit up and all of
them seeming to wave cheerfully but looks can be deceiving. Erik
lives
with Berry, Maxim and Doris in a three story row house from
the 1930s;
there was a gas factory there before that. It is narrow and tall with
steep shallow stairs you have to take at an angle and a bunny rabbit in
the back. We stay on the top floor and
rehearse there too. I think briefly of Anne Frank in her Dutch attic
but this is of course not
that. Steve has a long list of songs, we
go
over some we won't perform and later perform
some we never go over; we
will repeat more songs from night to night than originally
planned but
you want to play the ones that work over again, that's just fun. I fall
asleep while rehearsing. Steve and I go to the old town which is just a
hop and a skip from Erik's, I don't know how old it is but it's
old.
Steve buys notebooks in a notions store. We get something
from a fastish food stop. (Me: Curry fries.) Later we eat a nice meal
with the Van Loo family, homemade
tzatziki, fish, mozarella-basil-tomato salad, snap peas,
pasta. Then we rehearse again.February 13. Perhaps we rehearse some more probably we did. Erik has made a merch storage unit out of a flight case he bought at a swap meet. We decide to take his Telecaster
instead of an acoustic guitar for me to play
(direct, through a bass pod), I am also playing his Kurzweil I have
brought only
my mandolin. Somehow this
all gets downstairs not much thanks to me. We drive to Hilversum the
Dutch Media City; 17 years ago we played postpirate Radio Veronica here
with Big Al and Francesca and Big Al's little dog but I think that is
perhaps gone (and Big Al as well, and his little dog too), these are
newer buildings. Today we
play 3 songs on Radio 6, our first public performance, albeit to a mostly invisible audience, and Steve answers questions
from a deejay who appears not to have noticed his solo career. Jaap
Boots who will open for us in Ottersum pops his head in. We go to
Utrecht where I played w/ Steve in 1990 at Tivoli, this is Ekko
(northward on the
the same canal), a collectively run volunteer affair. They give us
dinner, there is a so-called pumpkin "fritatta" and there are
potatoes. And a roll. "Are your potatoes cold?" asks the manager I'd guess you'd
call her. (Her day job is at the big TV and Radio Museum next to where
we were on the radio, cataloging or archiving or some such, she didn't
like it much though it sounded kind of interesting to me. She also
tells me that the radio station we were on is for "middle-aged men."
Which seems about right.) "Yes."
(Back to the potatoes now.) "They're not supposed to be." (Cold.) But
no one offers to warm them up. Steve asks if I want to split a beer and
pours me hardly any; I spill it in any case (spilt it, if you want to
be anagrammatic), and then spill some water right after as a chaser.
Take a
walk along the canal, lots of student types on bicycles making me wish
I
was a student or even a student type on a bicycle. Back in the
club I meet Yuko, I meet Hammi again whom I haven't seen since Seattle
and Hattie's Hat. "Do you remember me?" I ask, he was wondering the
same thing. I remember nothing of the show, I suppose we must have made
some mistakes it being the shakedown cruise. There was a folky Dutch
support act, singing in English, American-style. (Jaap Boots doesn't
make that cultural error.) Then: Hotel: More steep shallow stairs, room
the width of a corridor but I don't stay in it long. Then: Walking far
to find an open bar, with
Seve and Yuko and
Hammi's friend Joanne (followed by vanparking Erik and Hammi) down a long cold empty dark
street and finding one finally in what I remember as a leafy miniplaza on the
banks of another canal. Yuko has a phone you can call the states for
free on, though no one can figure out why this should be so; I use it.
There is too much smoke and I will pay for that but happily there is
less smoke in Europe than there used to be, at least inside most of the
places we will play, eat and stay.February 14. The breakfast room of the hotel has art with American themes, corny stuff. We drive to Liege, in Belgium. Erik likes Belgium he says, it's not as tidy as Holland, and it isn't. And there are hills in it. I am looking forward to using some French, sad we're not going to more
Francophonic places; of course I'm also nervous about using some French
because of the who-are-you look you get when you
pronounce things wrong or misconjugate your verbs or get your gender
wrong. (Not your own personal gender.) Liege looks good coming in, all
kind of jumbly and twisty, and a
river runs through it, worth an automatic 25 points. We are guided
by Jane, the voice of Erik's new mostly trusty GPS system. Hotel
parking
is many levels up a low-clearance garage and I walk alongside the van
to make sure Erik does
not scrape his roof off. (He does bend an antenna.) I takes a walk into
nearby pedestrian district which goes on and on and naturally leads to
a cathedral and then goes on some more. In a comic book
bande dessiné store I look at expensive Tintin clobber. In a music
store (small, respectable) I whip out a little basic French to buy some guitar picks;
the French for picks sensibly enough is plecs (sp?) I learn. I buy a Belgian waffle not
quite like an American Belgian waffle in a bakery.
Hotel rendezvous. Move the van back down through the low bridge garage,
the club -- called L'Escalier for its escalier three or four flights of
which separate stage from backstage -- is a block and half as the crow
walks but on wheels must be approached circuitously and there's half a
block to lug the stuff even then. They feed us on the second floor, a
restauranty space, I remember it being fairly good, civilized anyway;
there may have been tablecloths. We take a walk where I walked before
but now everything is closed and the sun is down and the lights are on.
Crisp. The opening act sing Simon and Garfunkel harmonies are much
better rehearsed than we are (it would be hard not to be), younger than we are (ditto) and are who most of the people we play to
when we play are really there to see but they and their crowd stick around at least and
are very nice about it.On to February 15
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Steve diary
Homey