So Sylvie touched upon a bit more of Berlin so I’ll stay out of that. We didn’t do much really. I drank Bonanza coffee (my favorite) and ate haloumi (a fried cheese that’s delicious) and we kind of just did familiar things which was really comforting. Some nice meals, some wandering, some friends…. very nice…Saw this too:

I’ve heard of some place imitating Peterborough’s Night Kitchen in Berlin. Figured this was it… Ridiculous!

…some rehearsing and then a cab to the bus which is going to be our home for the next couple months, off and on, as we tour with Agnes Obel. It’s been a weird thrill to ride on the bus. Never though that little ol’ Evening Hymns would be touring with a full on bus but alas…. Instead of speculating on how it’s going to be rad I think I’ll let our blogging over the next week tell that tale. I can say one thing to it though which is that we travel during the night when we are asleep and arrive in the cities early in the morning giving us lots of time to see the sights. Reminds me of riding in my dad’s old transport truck back in the day. We’d get up early to be in Montreal by 11am, leaving before the sun comes up, and I’d climb back in the bunk and sleep while dad drove. Actually the bunk has the same colour of interior as his old Peterbilt 379. Here’s a photo of the bunk, which sometimes feels like we’re sleeping in a casket. Nice thought eh?

I’ve been battling my jetlag pretty bad… but it’s nice to always have my bedroom a hundred feet from the venue. It’s a strange life. I think I’ll get used to it. We’ll shoot some more photos from the bus at some point. Oh like this:

Okay, to the music now… We got to play Limoges for the first date of tour. A lot of nervous excitement between Sylvie and I. Playing to the biggest crowds we’ve ever played to and also the first show infront of our new friends and tourmates, Agnes Obel (Agnes, Anna, Gillian and Andy). It went really well. The techs, as always, were top notch. Felt really comfortable up there and people seemed really enthusiastic about the set. Such an amazing start to the tour… A lot of clapping and smiles. Here’s the crowd, shot from the side of the room, so to the right, out of the frame are a couple hundred more people! (scary! awesome!):

Agnes Obel and her most noble team put on an amazing show. The sound, performance, songs, etc. are top-notch. Such a peaceful thing to do, sitting in the audience, relaxing and listening to her songs, fully realized with piano, harp and cello. Not to mention they are so nice. I am already sad we’re going to be parting at some point… I’ll try not and think about it. Many more shows to go with them…

We had a pretty mellow night after. Most of us are adjusting to jetlag, buslag, lifelag, etc. Er, not lifelag I suppose…

Feeling lucky, like usual, to be out here doing this… After Limoges comes Poitiers, another French city. The venue we’re in is amazing. The bus drove us here before I even awoke so I awoke in my bunk and looked out my window into the loading bay at the venue. Amazing people, food, etc. Our dressing room is bigger than our apartment in Toronto. Ha… Here’s the stage from backstage perspective just before Agnes soundchecked this afternoon:

Okay, I’ll post some more later. I have to go watch some of their set in this beautiful concert hall. Sylvie and I did some wandering today and I took some photos so I’ll post those later.

Xo

jb

Hello everyone!
Sylvie here…This marks my very first “Blog of the Forsaken” post! I’m pretty excited to provide another (female) perspective on this E-Hymns tour. It’s all very well reading JB’s tour stories, but it should be known that there’s all sorts where he is only a supporting character. So, being in Berlin again was lovely, of course… we love that city and our friends there… (except when they try to play our guitars… upside down?):

She is obviously a Star.

Got to stay at the nicest apartment! Here’s JB doing some “admin” in the gorgeous sunny kitchen. (He’s probably just on twitter, as usual). Thanks to Lisa, Vince, and Marie for letting us crash.

This is the sticker they have under the toilet seat. I think I need to get one of these for home, because honestly, dudes need to get over their pride and just sit down to pee so they stop sprinkling everywhere. I love how it shows his little dangly bits… heehee! Just to be very clear about what goes where…

Christoph got us this sweet lightbox so now nobody will forget our name! No excuses, everyone, we know you saw the sign:

AND we got our hand-silkscreened posters! This was a bit tricky…. all sorts of trans-continental communication issues between non-professionals (me on the design end and Berliners on the production end). I’m amazed they even got printed! In the end the screens were somehow reproduced too small, and we ended up with a real design dilemma: How to balance the composition now that the elements don’t fill the white space? But I went over to the youth centre where a friend was printing the posters for us in her tiny DIY studio – a converted bathroom – and together we figured out a solution that we think looks pretty cool. Thanks so much, Anne, for helping us out with these. She worked so hard! The posters are really graphic… bold, simple, very sparse design that I think would actually look great framed. Hopefully our audiences will agree!

Today we slept in way late (JB especially is still getting over the jet lag) but we still got our shit together in time to meet up with our tourmates! We are very pleased to have met Agnes and Anne, who are super cool. I am really stoked to be touring with other women for once… usually it’s one big testosterone fest (as witnessed by previous blogs). This is going to be very refreshing. Right now we’re hanging out on the bus which will be our home for the next while. THAT’S RIGHT I SAID “BUS.” We’ve never been on a nightliner before – this thing is ritzy! There will likely be lots more photos but trust me, it’s pretty cool. There are two lounges (front & back) with DVD players and soundsystems built in. Not to mention the disco lights which can be set to any number of colours to instantly transform the bus into a club zone. After we’re done partying, though, we’ll be sleeping in these teensy pods stacked three one on top of the next (a bit coffin-like perhaps or maybe more like space pods). Pretty sure we will have trouble touring in a van again after this… we are soooo spoiled. Well, we’ve rehearsed as much as we can and we think we have everything ready. The adventure has begun, but until tomorrow night’s show in Limoges, it just feels less like a tour than a crazy vacation.

More from me soon!  Pressure is on to keep up with JB’s comprehensive blogging style, not to mention his photography skills.  Thank god for instagram I guess.

xo
SS

Well welcome back everyone. We’ve landed in Berlin and we’ll see how up to date I can keep this blog. Our transportation is much different on this tour, more about that later, so there should be less driving and more time to reflect on what we’re up to out here. More rambling thoughts and less road fever I hope. Hoping this will be the best blog yet. More countries, more time over here, bigger shows, 3 cameras, and again the excitement of being here will hopefully translate in our posts. When  I say “our” it’s because Sylvie claims she is also going to be blogging on eveninghymns.com this time around. We’ll just see if she is true to her word on that but it should add a nice perspective from her, what it’s like on the road with Evening Hymns in Europe. I’m quite excited to read her angle on things.

Also, I bring with me a new camera for this trip. A Canon S95 Powershot. It’s a real beauty and I’m hoping that it will raise the level of photography quality on here. That, coupled with our 2 iphone cameras, should be enough to capture what it’s like for us to travel and play music here.

So it begins….

Wouldn’t be like me to not include a shot of the wing on the blog:

The flight from Toronto was crazy busy and pretty hectic yet we managed to grab a few hours of sleep. This was followed up by a few more hours of sleep in the Amsterdam airport which is a huge mall basically. It’s pretty spectacular. We crashed out a couple of “comfort chairs”.

Caught our connecting flight to Berlin. No Probs. Sat beside a really nice guy named Christoph who was returning to Berlin from Mexico. He was attending a conference there for Optical Physics. Wished the flight was longer as it was interesting to hear him speak. I always like this relationship between strangers while we’re traveling. What we’re doing is exciting over here and so many people want to hear our stories and perspectives yet we want to hear everyone’s stories too. We couldn’t be happier to listen to Christoph speak about optics and how they relate to his new field of renewable energies. Nice guy and a nice way to make that short flight seem even shorter.

We arrived in Berlin, and we were greeted by our wonderful manager Christoph. He’s the reason we’re back again and we couldn’t be thankful enough. He’s worked his ass off on this tour for us.

He got us to the flat we’re staying in and dropped us off and then Sylvie and I went over to our friend’s apartment for dinner. It was a beautiful evening spent with friends over wine/beer and a delicious home cooked meal. (Thanks Giles!!!!)

After dinner we walked through the familiar neighbourhood to get back to our flat. Ran into a dude who had broken down on his motorcycle. His starter wasn’t working. I gave him a big push down the street and it bump started pretty decently and away he went, looping back to thank us and wish us the same type of help if we needed it when we were traveling. Made me feel like home. Pushing dirtbikes. Crawled into our bunk and passed out. Restless sleep but sleep nonetheless… happy to be back here traveling.

Thanks for following…

jb

Hey everyone. I’m sitting in my apartment at home watching the rainy gloom of Toronto out my window. A nice night to settle in with a movie and a cup of tea I would imagine. But also, a great night to head to YYZ to catch a plane to Berlin. Tonite that is what we do. We head off to Europe again, 3rd time in just over a year. We’re kind of overwhelmed about that actually. So lucky we get to spend so much time exploring over there. This tour will take us to 8 countries and a bunch of new ones that I’ve never been to, or thought I’d get to visit in my life, let alone to be there playing music. It’s pretty amazing and we’re so grateful. We’ll be touring with two amazing acts. Our first leg of the tour and last leg is with the incredible Agnes Obel. Haven’t got to meet her yet or see her play live but watching the videos and listening to her last record sure is making me excited. Nice to be out on the road with new music and hopefully we’ll make new friends from it. The second part of our tour is with my old pals Timber Timbre. I’ve got to play with Taylor, Simon and Mika many times over the year and have spent a lot of time on the road with them and I’m really excited to meet up with them in Amsterdam. Sylvie and I are huge fans of the band so each night will be a special treat for us.  We are packed. We are nervous with anticipation of what the next 2 months will bring in Europe. This tour is twice as long as any we’ve ever done and that’s daunting and exciting. I look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new friends and getting into the groove out on the road. I’ll be blogging as usual. Hopefully some beautiful sites and interesting stories will come together on here. I keep it like a journal sort of and will try hard to keep it updated often. Please spread the word and make sure to check in with us as we hit the road. I think I might even capitalize the first words in my sentences this time…. we’ll see.

Hope you’re well.

Here we go…..

jb