berlin.

one of the places that everyone talks about all the time…i’ve been really looking forward to these two shows for a long time and berlin certainly didn’t disappoint. we actually got to the city a few hours earlier then expected and had time to sit in the sun and relax for a bit. our first show was at magnet club which is in kreuzberg. here we are lying in the sun beside the wall, that famous one from the history books (let me forewarn you that my time in berlin was spent racing around the city on a bike taking pictures):

here’s the bridge that leads to magnet club where we played the first of two berlin shows. we were billed up with this band from texas called this will destroy you. super heavy post-rock. we listened to their soundcheck and it was amazing, but super super heavy and we’re super super quiet so we were pretty nervous about this show. we all hung out upstairs before the show and they were super nice dudes. when it came time to play we walked out into the club and it was super rammed. i thought we were going to get eaten alive out there. a few hundred people there to see heavy post-rock about to be subject to canadian folk music for 40 minutes but they actually were super quiet and seemed to really like it. europe is amazing for this. people just seem to be really open to hearing new things and also very respectful of others playing music. it’s something i’ve heard from everyone who plays here and it’s true. this will destroy you’s set was totally amazing. they are off to russia in a week or so… that’s rad. rad dudes, check out their radness:

on the ground outside the club. a sign.

after the show we drove to prinzlauerberg, a neighbourhood in berlin, to sleep on our friend dorota’s floor. thanks dorota, not only did she have to get up to teach the next morning but she ended up giving us an amazing tour of the city via bike. here are some interesting things:

the entrance to treptower park.

treptower parkdorota, our tour guide, looking crazy, but also very fact-filled.heavy-dutytrying to be helpful.

that’s where hitler made a bunch of famous speeches.this is the tribute to the burnt books. it’s in the famous square where the nazis burnt all of the books. a huge square with a window in the ground. very chilling, and one of the most interesting things i’ve seen on the whole trip.

this is the memorial to the murdered jews of europe. very powerful experience walking through here.

no big deal, just the window of the hotel that michael jackson dangled his baby out of of…

lot of heavy duty history in this city.

the weather was perfect and we had an amazing day being tourists.

our second show in berlin was at schokolade, a much smaller club that makes up for it’s size in character. a lot of canadian friends came out to this show and we played with a really cool american band called trouble books. check em’ out.. .it was their last night of tour and we stayed up a bit too late and had some beers and just a really nice time. really loved their set and bought their vinyl. can’t wait to go home and listen to it.

i was really looking forward to this show because daniel augschoell was coming to visit us. i first saw his photos online about a year ago and just fell in love with his work. one photo in particular really stood out to me and so i emailed him and after chatting he let me use his photo for my album cover. his photo is the cover photo of the mountains and the cloud on the canadian release of spirit guides. it was really cool to meet him at the show and to slam a tall beer in front of a pirate’s flag. hopefully we will work together again soon!

and look at all these canadians!!!!!:

we had a super early morning to get to hamburg in time to play a showcase at 12:30pm. yikes. how do you get from berlin to hamburg in time?

who knew my minivan could do 180km/h at 8:30am?

in hamburg we got to play in this amazing church with our friends timber timbre. hadn’t seen these rascals in a long time and they played an amazing set. perfect for the setting and a packed house. magical. our set was one of my favorites from the whole tour… so nice to sing out into that church. thanks to everyone at reeperbahn festival for having us and sorry we sold out of cds! yikes. that part of the city is crazy. i didn’t have my camera with me and it’s a shame. it’s totally nuts in this area of hamburg at night…

and now i write you from saarbrucken, germany, in the south near the french border. we are in our hotel downtown and just got back from the show. i can’t say enough about how amazing this whole tour has been and germany has been exceptional. our 4 shows here have been some of my favorite shows i’ve ever done. the sound engineers have been amazing and so keen to work with us, and the stage managers and promoters have been the sweetest people. really, everyone has been so welcoming to us that i can’t say thanks enough. we played at this amazing space called sparte 4 tonite and it was this amazing theatre and they lay bean bag chairs out on the floor for people. super cozy. it was a real treat to play and i wish i would’ve taken a picture but alas… i’ve been enjoying myself too much to drag my camera with me. sorry.

in the morning i get to have a sauna (yes!) and then we drive to paris for a nice night off and then take the train in the morning to london to play with timber timbre for their european cd release party! we’re there for a few days to play some more shows and then fly home to canada, where we leave the next day to play pop montreal! whoa!

okay, bedtime.

be well.

jb

greetings from germany.

we are in bielefield, germany, staying at the senator hotel. getting ready to make our journey to berlin.

i think i left off in nantes so i will pick it up from there. i hurt my neck/back carrying the heavy bass amp that we’ve borrowed for this tour. it’s small enough that you want to grab it with one hand but it’s deceivingly heavy and after a few days of yanking the amp around i started to get a pretty stiff neck. woke up in lille in quite a bit of pain and took advil for the first time in years. the pain eventually dissipated by the night time for our show in rennes but woke up the next day kind of stiff and then a light headache started… by the time we got to nantes it was getting worse and after soundcheck it was just bumpin’! ended up getting so bad that i threw up just before going on stage. it was brutal. played the show anyways and it went really well. the sound on stage at the club was really great and with the smoke machine and crazy light show it made for an interesting time on stage for me. we rallied and it turned out good. here’s a picture of the waterfront in nantes:

sonic the hedgehog.

here’s d-money hanging out with thom from rumtumtiddles. he was nice enough to let us crash at his flat this night. nice to have a quiet place to hang out after the show and we had a cozy bed to sleep and for me to recuperate. sylvie and i thought he kinda looked like our canadian bro matt cully:

after nantes we drove to dijon to play on a sunday night. i was really looking forward to this show after we met the promoter chantalle in paris at our show. we got to dijon at the right time i think. impressive.that’s a picture of interface, the gallery we played. super old, super rad.

hangin’ in the courtyard. we finished our night off with an encore of broken rifle out here with everyone. it was a super nice way to finish the french leg of our tour off.

we finished off the night by sippin’ beers and hangin’ with d-money and the rest of the sabotage crew who put on our show. thanks to boris, chantalle and jp for hosting us and stayin’ up late with us. here’s chan’s french brautigan collection:

we were given a really cute flat to stay in. felt like a little cottage. lots of friends in pictures on the inside of the flat. nice to see people we know on the walls. here’s a picture of us on the bench outside our flat with damien before we parted ways and sylvie and i headed out into the blue yonder on our lonesome:au revoir d-money. we’ll miss you. until next time…

left dijon late… arghh… and raced to brussels. super beautiful city. wish we had a week to explore. got there late and loaded our gear into our friend ellen’s flat. played a quiet set sitting on our amps. my loop pedals are still being totally wack so it’s been pretty frustrating to me. nice to just play songs and sing though. a band from argentina called trijaus opened the night. nice songs and dudes. after the show we went to the city center where the action is. here’s a blurry photo of us in the prettiest square in the world i reckon.then we head for beers. i sampled many. so good.this one especially interesting. an oudgueze. crazy. heavy, fuzzy, latenights.

stupid us stayed out so late and woke up late and left brussels late and so it mixed our whole day up… our only day off for awhile. we were given a tip that there was a great sauna place on the way to berlin so of course we had to investigate it.

the place was called carolus thermen. hotsprings, pools, and saunas. totally amazing place. as soon as we got to the saunas i bought some little trunks and we were ready to sweat. not knowing the german sauna rituals we were notified by the staff that it was a naked sauna. no probs! the guy then recommended that we start with a big group sauna and so we join in with about 20 germans in this big round sauna and a man enters and singles us out in english telling us that we need to have our feet on towels, very politely. haha… he was really nice but it was an interesting moment walking into a huge room of naked germans and then being singled out and having everyone staring at our naked canadian bodies, hahaha… a really nice ritual where the sauna dude uses a towel to waft the heat around the room and afterward we were treated to a tasty non-alcoholic pina colada. after this we walked around naked a bit and had a nice chat with the sauna guy who explained some more of the german way to sauna. i’m a real fanatic when it comes to saunas so it was nice to see a different approach to it. i really enjoyed the german sauna. i hit up a more traditonal sauna after this and was left alone for awhile to just sweat and clear my head. after this sylvie and went into another group sauna and got to participate in another ritual/performance. this one concluded with going outside and rubbing oneself down with crushed ice and then followed by an orange/salt rub? the ice cooled the body down and roughed up the skin and then the orange/salt was rubbed over the body and then we returned to the sauna for one last blast. felt incredible. and we smelled really good afterward.  one of the best moments on tour yet. highly recommend going to carolus thermen if you can. it’s in aachen germany. check it out. would’ve loved to stay for a few more hours floatin’ and soakin’ but had to make some km’s enroute to berlin. unfortunately we couldn’t take any pictures inside the place because it would be NSFW. but here we are in the parking garage post steam. i’m tossin’ my hip out all sassy, yet relaxed.

okay, we gotta hit the autobahn. these highways are crazy. i thought i was driving super fast last night and then other cars would just come blazing by me. i like it. okay, berlin. here we go.

hope you’re well.

jb

dearest readers. i spend my long days driving and thinking of how much i miss you and how i long to write to you. we really are truly busy and when we aren’t there isn’t a wee-fee connection. i write you now from nantes and will recap our crazy expedition.

after our late paris night we shot some photos with a wonderful photographer from paris named julien mignot. looking forward to seeing them. here he is with sylvie, and my poor lighting techniques, chewing strawberry gum and wondering why i am taking their picture:

at night we played in a real tiny flat in paris to a room rammed full of friendly, amazing people and a pineapple which was promptly chopped up and passed around. fresh pineapple is hard to beat. our friend marine sang some songs with her friend baptiste under the name texas in paris. it was real nice… reminded me of townes van zandt and then baptiste played waiting around to die. very nice.

after the show we headed back to marine’s flat to eat chocolate cake and play with her cat. her family has this spectacular apartment in the middle of absolute insanity (read: crazy famous landmarks!!!) out the window we could see the sacre couer, eiffel tower, st. sulpice, etc. pretty crazy. the nicest flat i’ve ever seen. we ate delicious cake that marine baked and had a great sleep.

in the morning we woke up early-ish, and went out sight-seeing… we saw the pantheon, the gardens of luxembourg, the cathedral notre-dame, pompidou, and a bunch of other crazy things…. just being in paris is so mind-blowing… every street is special. reminds me of the first time i went to nyc and every street had important landmarks (read: scenes from home alone)

looks big from here.

but bigger from here.

stunning architecture but hard to be moved by the inside when we were sandwiched in there with a million people.

we had lunch with our friends at magicrpm. they have a beautiful rooftop patio that we got to hang out on and eat pain au choclat. here’s a picture of us hanging in the office. we all look so stern. we’re very serious people.

we were late hitting the road, like always, and arrived in lille a little late, but arrived to the most gracious of hosts, nicholas. he is a wonderful promoter in town and put together this amazing house show in his flat… 50-60 people so quiet and involved. such a treat to play music to the french!

d-money crankin out the hits.

we had an amazing vegan meal cooked by our new friend fabrice (we want to take him with us as our cook!):

thanks to everyone in lille for the amazing time! we finished out set with an old song and had the whole crowd sing harmonies on a beach boy’s cover. it was so special. i think we put back about 15 litres of wine. here’s our awesome host nicholas and gang of wonderful lillians:

after another late departure because we just love chillin’ out we hit the road to rennes. the last couple of days as i drive i’ve been thinking alot about the war. i found war history so interesting in school but have forgotten all the facts and now driving close to dieppe, and in the normandy region, etc. it makes me want to take a history course, just to better understand the areas here and to maybe better wrap my head around what happened in the 40′s.

rennes is another picturesque city in france and again, very graceful hosts. thanks to hayley and jf for putting on our show and touring us through the city! we played a bar/cafe called la bascule that was amazing… another great veggie meal and a full house… it was amazing. so many people and so quiet… we’ve been spoiled so far in france…  amazing opening set by ugh!happy people listening to leopold skin

we got to eat gallettes, which are the things to eat in rennes… so good…

now we’re in nantes. about to soundcheck. dijon tomorrow and then we depart france and leave behind our little french buddy damien from leopold skin. it’s going to be tough to say goodbye. d-money has been our guide on this journey and we’ll miss his songs.

oh, and on our drive we saw a wedding party make an illegal right turn on the red light and get bamboozled by this beemer. they we’re both driving like idiots and it happened right in front of us. exciting. sad.

until the next entry, be well friends.

jb

okay, give me a break. i’m in france. i’m allowed to wait 3-4 days before posting. it’s actually been a crazy few days for us. really busy. lots of running around and filming things and recording things and soundchecks and travelling.

here’s where we are at:

this is enroute to bordeaux. it’s a lookout about our home here, clermont-fd. note the big black gothic church in the background. built from bricks made locally from volcanic rock. the whole city is practically surrounded by volcanoes, most notably the volvic volcano, made famous by it’s drinking water and michael jackson supposedly buying tons of it to bath in.

the lord’s hotel, in bordeaux. not sure exactly the name of this species. we’ve been in so many churches now. i just go in to look at the organs and then split. there was a tower directly across the street that i wanted to climb but we were all too lazy.

more from the same church. crazy right?

after some sightseeing we played an in-store at a really nice record store called total heaven. super nice people and fun to just strum an acoustic and not carry an amp around.

thanks total heaven for having us and selling our records!!!

we played a house show at night time. it was so much fun. drank some amazing wine and met some really nice people. at one point there was someone playing accordion outside our window which seemed pretty french. the view from our bedroom:

feelin’ pretty lucky. and young compared to this architecture.

after bordeaux we drove back to clermont-fd to film a video on a rooftop in the city. it was super windy on the roof and a little cool as you can see from our rosy cheeks. the video can be seen here.

after that shoot we were driven up near the volcanoes and hiked into the woods to film another video with alex from our label. us walking in the woods in the dark, with ghosts, and candles. excited to see that video when it’s done.

got some sleep and then woke up early to go record in an amazing old studio with our new friend christophe. here’s some dark blurry photos:

we recorded a new song here called “cabin in the burn” hard to sing first thing in the morning but i think it turned out pretty good. got to sing into a ribbon mic from the 40′s that weighed more than me.

took a picture of these in the studio for sylvie’s dad. christophe’s friend from instanbul made them as a gift for christophe and they are on the studio wall. very cool. the whole studio was so amazing and cozy, except for the huge spider we saw that also weighed more than me.

here i am. hard at work. as always.

pre-show dressing room shot. this is in clermont-fd. our show here was crazy. so many people came out and leopold skin played with a full band and it was totally rad. nice to hear the songs so big! our new friends from magicrpm magazine came and dj’d for us all night. it was really great. we drank a few beers too. not too many. but a few. unfortunately i don’t have many photos from this night as we were so busy running around. same with paris. going to try and take more.

in the morning we met back up with the magic crew and packed up and hit the road.

we got to paris and the weather was amazing. unfortunately i was super sick, not hungover, just feeling really horrible. we got to the venue and did soundcheck and went to our hotel, which is 1 minute away. so handy when you’re feeling like garbage. the venue was point ephemere. here’s a picture of it on the river:

oh and that’s our car. the closest one. i love it. and this is where is where i sit right now and blog from.

the show was super packed last night. we were so grateful, and surprised and the audience was so quiet. it was one of my favorite shows i’ve ever played. the sound on stage was perfect for us and although i thought i was going to faint from feeling ill and sweaty we fought through it. if only all of our shows were like this one. i felt really spoiled to be playing to everyone last night, and our friends from magicrpm again making things magical for us. please check out their magazine. it is beautiful!

also got to meet a new friend. his name is raphael and he is working on a documentary on my favorite poet Jaan Kaplinsky. he is an estonian poet and has been a major influence on my writing. here’s a teaser for his new documentary that he is working on. i can’t wait to see it. click here!

after the show we packed up and met up with our friends phosphorescent. they played at another venue in town. wouldn’ve been really nice to see them play but at least we got to connect and have some beers. miss those boys!

and now we do press all day and play again tonite. and then we head to lille which i cannot wait for.

until next time my friends….

jb

greetings from france.

spent the day after our lyon show wandering around the city. it’s my favorite city i’ve been in yet. it seems that every street is worth exploring and with our limited time we barely scraped the surface but we did get a chance to see some pretty amazing things. it’s nice on this tour having to spend less time in the car because of the shorter driving distances. i’m starting to get more comfortable behind the wheel of picasso (our citroen vessel) and i’m learning the rules to the road. sylvie doesn’t drive standard and damien doesn’t drive at all so it’s all on my shoulders to get us from point a to point b and at first i was stressin’ hard but now i’m cruisin’ like michael schumacher through the tiny streets. it’s actually fun. parking in lyon was crazy tough as it seems there are 500 parking spots in the whole city and about 5.5 million cars.

here are some pictures we have on our cameras somehow:

kind of okay right?

the pictures don’t really do it justice.

ancient roman ruins. kind of old.

king tut.

the sun sets on lyon.

they asked us to play here but i figured the reverb would be too small.

friends of the highest order

care for an apple?

colonel citroen surveys the french alps in a moment of “sleepyheadedness”

we’re back in clermont-fd and we’ve just finished a delicious dinner that sylvie cooked for alex, marie, damien and me. leek and potato soup. so good.

resting up now… we have to start 10 shows in a row tomorrow.

whoa.

okay.

bon soir.

jb