Well we rise to the sunniest day we’ve had yet on tour and it’s a perfect morning to climb La Rhune, which is the highest mountain in the Pyrenees range. We meet up with our new friend Joanes and Pantxika who will be our guides for the day. It’s an amazing hike to the top. Clear skies, wild horses, mountain streams, herds of sheep, etc. Pretty unbelievable. The best kind of cliche. From the summit we can see San Sebastian, Biarritz, Sare, the ocean and mountain after mountain. It’s unreal. The hike down was peaceful and sunny. I stopped at one point, straddling the Spain and French borders, and sat down in the grass and let the sun hit me. Another one of those profound moments of tour. When we arrived back in Sare after a few hours we took lunch poolside at Patxi’s house and then we went for a swim. All of this before a show too. We’ve been spoiled before but this maybe takes the cake. I sat out in the sun for an hour (which I would later regret), and snacked and sipped a glass of wine. Our hosts Patxi and Henri, and Sylvine were so kind to us. The food was delicious and the pool a perfect post-mountain activity. After lazing in the sun like cats we drove to the church where the show was to happen. It’s a very, very, very old church and so beautiful and the show was preceded by a picnic in the park adjacent with everyone invited to share food and wine and it was crazy how many people showed up. Families with kids running around and older folks. It was overwhelming to be so far away from home and see all these people show up for a concert not knowing who we are really. Just a wonderful sense of community. I didn’t realize how many people there was until they all piled into the church and filled the place up. We were the only band playing that night and so we cooked up a few special things to perform that night that we don’t usually do. The audience was perfect and I even spoke a little Basque (two words), making my languages spoken (barely) on this tour at a whopping 5 languages. English, French, German, Spanish and Basque. We finished out set with two songs we never do. Our encore was an old song that I played years ago called Sips of Sea and we finished the song by looping the chorus to God Only Knows by the Beach Boys and splitting the church in two and having both sections sing rounds of the chorus with us. So nice to hear so many voices singing in a beautiful sounding space. While all that was happening Tim snuck upstairs to where this ancient pump organ resides and when Sips of Sea finished he started into the organ part for Tumultuous Sea and Sylvie and I stayed down below on the floor and sang the song with the audience clapping along. It was amazing for us to have everyone right there with us. I didn’t want the night to end. After the show we said our goodbyes to all of our new friends and went back to Patxi’s to have a glass of wine in the dark by the pool and as a band we toasted each other on the completion of our favorite tour ever. Lucky to have been here. 4 hours of sleep and back in the van to Bordeaux so Timmy could catch his flight home. Au Revoir mon ami. Thanks Tim for coming along on the journey.

I have nothing more really to report. Christoph and I flipped back and forth from sleeping in the back of the van and driving shifts and spent 22 hours traveling that day, arriving in Berlin at 3am. But we did it and the van is empty and now Sylvie and I have a few days in Berlin to spend wandering around and reflecting on the last month. Thank you to everyone who put on shows, attended shows, supported us, fed us, gave us a place to sleep, filmed us, blogged us, talked us up, and tipped beers with us. We are forever grateful! I hope to see you all again in the fall. All the best from Evening Hymns. xo jb

We made the mellow drive to Bordeaux in the sun. Everyone feeling a little quiet from the night before, maybe humbled is the word. I was excited to get back to Bordeaux. It’s a beautiful city that feels tough but is charming in it’s roughness. The light seems to hit this city differently than the other cities we’ve been in. A very warm light. We played a show at El Chicho which is a Chilean restaurant with a venue in the basement. We had an amazing turnout. I couldn’t believe the people on a Sunday night. Wow! Thanks to Eugene for putting on our show. The space was so hot in the basement I thought I was going to faint but we managed. The space actually sounds really great and it was a treat to come back to Bordeaux and see so many people. I saw quite a few people from our last show too which is always a nice sign. We ate some delicious food from the restaurant and then went to bed at a decent hour as we wanted to get moving early to make the most of our two days off. Pain au chocolat for breakfast and then we embark on our journey to Spain!

I decided that I wanted to go to San Sebastian for one of our day’s off. My friend Neale had been there before and said it was beautiful and it’s so close to Bordeaux that it made sense to drive down there. We rented a hostel in the old town, which is breathtaking, and got in late in the afternoon. Unfortunately the weather for our two days off was rain, rain, rain, but it didn’t really slow us down. We went to the beach and watched surfers, drank wine on the patios, ate tapas, and just wandered the streets. It was actually perfect. I wanted to try surfing but the weather sucked so we just wandered. Day two we got up and ate, feeling a little foggy from the 4 bottles of spanish wine we drank. Sylvie and I decided to go to the aquariam to see the sharks. It was amazing!!!! Totally a great way to spend a rainy day in San Sebastian. Our host for our Sare show recommended we drive further west across the north coast to a town called Lekeitio via the oceanside road. I took about 200 photos. It was hands down the most beautiful drive I have ever made in my entire life. Every turn we came around was more beautiful than the last. I can’t really explain it. It was a really profound moment for me and it gave me this weird feeling I get when something exceptional happens to me. It’s like I get a little sad knowing that every moment can’t be as special as this. It’s a weird feeling but I think it makes me strive to push my life in directions that offer these moments. The sun finally broke through at the end of the drive and we pulled off to watch these guys surfing these huge waves and we cracked a strong beer and sat on the edge of this cliff and watched the sun shining through and the waves crashing and the world looked so beautiful. Perfect. I feel so grateful to be out here doing what I do and I can’t thank everyone enough for helping me do what I do. That moment of sitting by the ocean while the sun set was a top ten moment in my life. I get goosebumps thinking about it right now. Total peace.

Christoph’s tiny egg tapas

We drove the rest of the drive feeling nice. Listening to Little Wings as the sun put herself to sleep. We rolled into Sare, where we’re to play our last show in a church. We’re staying in a beautiful house near the mountains with the most gracious hosts. In the shadows of La Rhune which Tim and I will summit this morning. Pictures to follow. Tonite is the last show of our tour. I am really looking forward to playing this show tonite with Tim and Sylvie. I can’t say enough about how much I’ve enjoyed their company on stage each night. They’ve played flawlessly and I think we’ve all had some special moments together playing this tour. It’ll be bittersweet when we finish tonite as we send Timmy home first thing in the morning and then we start our two day trek back to Berlin. I might have one last blog post in me after this one. Thanks for reading everyone. xo jb

Well I’ll pick up from Rennes… I wish you all could’ve been with us for this night. I’d say it’s close to my favorite night of playing music ever. We were playing in the second slot of a 2 band bill and both bands we’re great. It was for a festival called Top of The Folk! The opening band was called Last Morning Soundtrack and they were from Rennes. Really beautiful music and I sat in the back of the theatre and watched their set and realized the whole room was full, almost 300 people, and the sound was perfect. It sounded like listening to a record. They put on a perfect show and it got me excited and nervous to play. We took the stage to a full house and it felt great. The stage was really huge, maybe the biggest stage I’ve played on and usually I struggle a bit with the space because our sound relies so much on us being close and creating some intimacy on stage but the sound from the monitors was so perfect that it felt great to have the room to move around. The lights and the smoke machine were a great touch too. I think we played our best set of tour, with help from the incredible sound and lighting techs. We ended up getting encored which was a huge surprise and then they tried to encore me again. ha ha! I couldn’t believe it. We walked off the stage feeling so welcomed and happy to have played this festival. The people, the food, the sound, the theatre and just hanging out after the show and talking to all the people in the audience was really special for us. It was the last night of their festival and so they threw a party to celebrate. That turned into some of us going to bed at 5am and some of us going to be bed when the sun was waking up. Things got a little loose back there and we couldn’t be happier about it.  We also got to party with our friend Fabien who used to be shy and hardly speak to me but after a little wine, beer and vodka we were like old friends. It was a great night. Thanks to everyone at Top of The Folk! We can’t wait to come back to Rennes! Your hospitality was unparalleled.

I’m lacking internet speed right now so the rest of our journey will wait until later.  Off to play our last show… sweet life… xo jb