North By Northwest

After the Dandy’s tour wrapped up in Portland, I stayed behind for an extra week of running around the NW with Malia. We had gone to see My Bloody Valentine in LA which was pretty astounding in it’s sheer volume (especially during the 17 minute noise jam) and on the first day after tour we saw Sigur Ros from the front row in Portland. I normally don’t like to be quite THAT close for a show but it was fucking amazing. Malia got some good pics with my phone despite her being devastated that she didn’t bring her camera in.

MJ at breakfast in Portland…
Sigur Ros…

We spent a couple days in Portland before going to Seattle for a day. We spent the rainy day doing typical Seattle things…coffee & record shopping on capital hill, wandering the Experience Music Project & Space Needle… we had an amazing mexican dinner before getting on the road south.
Shooting the deserted amusement park in Seattle…

We stopped in Grant’s Pass, OR to sleep and had breakfast & looking around before spending the day meandering down to Arcata. We woke up there & after breakfast cruised south thru the redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants and on out to the coast, stopping in Ft. Bragg for dinner and rolling the rest of the way to San Francisco. We had a nice couple days in SF meandering around SF & Marin. We got to witness Angel Island (an undeveloped island in SF bay) on fire which was pretty crazy to see. All in all it was a super fun way to wrap up the tour. I flew home from SF and MJ headed home to LA.

The redwoods…
Orick, CA knows what America needs…

News reporter talks about the fire…

September Mourn

The fall US Dandy’s tour will have to get the glossing over treatment, both because the day to day happenings aren’t as interesting as in Europe, but because my memories are largely blurred together anyway. We were out for a month, starting in Minneapolis, heading east to the coast then down and back across the south to San Diego and up to Portland. We had 2 bands that supported us on virtually all of the shows. Darker My Love is from LA via SF and The Upsidedown are from Portland and on the Dandy’s label. Both bands were great musically but also especially good people to have around on a daily basis. There was much love going around on this tour, culminating in a big family dinner with everybody at a long table in Aspen. If you have the chance to check out either band, do. They bring the rock.
Now…pictures:

The Summer of Love Tour US 2008 Team Photo…

I did a sight-seeing day off with Nicole in DC. We went to a modern art museum and to the Mall and the monuments and even the White House…

Tildy in Nashville (by MJ)
Seriously??

Aspen…
This is Malia shooting the Dandy’s in Aspen. Between mustache guy looking over her shoulder and blurry hair-shaky lady this was quite possibly my favorite front row of the tour. Malia was doing some old-school psychedelic projection light show shit for Darker My Love. It rocked and so does she.
Tildy just got sick…
We had 2 days of between Aspen and San Diego so rather than go to Vegas or LA like most bands would, we went and stayed in Springdale, Utah at the entrance to Zion National Park. The place was as amazing as expected. It was a great place for time off. People (with healthier backs than I) rented bikes and rode into the park. My gimpy ass went with Zia & Tildy for a mellow walk in the canyons and some light exploring of the park. I didn’t do as much as I wanted but it was a great day and the landscape is unreal.

Iron, Lion, Zion…

The view from my hotel balcony…

Tildy took this of Zia…
And her self-portrait…

The Ace Hotel-Portland, OR…

Summer In The City

I was supposed to fly from Dublin to Newark, go home for 3 hrs, fly from JFK to LA, stay overnight there, then fly to Australia to start the Albert tour. However, the whole thing cancelled on a couple days notice so I went home and sat on my ass for about 3 weeks. I made the best of it and saw lots of movies and shows. I saw the Police play their “last show ever” at MSG, which was pretty great despite sound that seemed to indicate that there was no bass or drums in the band. Oh well, it’s not like the rhythm section is vital to that band’s sound or anything. I also saw Radiohead a couple of times, once at a festival in Liberty State Park and once down in Camden, NJ. Both were stellar as usual and strangely, both involved a ferry ride.

NYC from Liberty State Park…
Kerri on the ferry to Philly…

Then it was Wilco at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn which was also stellar. It had the added bonus of seeing Tim Robbins pass out (twice) and seeing Susan Sarandon try and balance her concern for him with her desire to watch the show. He’s a big man and went down hard.

I was getting antsy so I booked a little California vacation. I hit LA for a few days just visiting with friends and cruising up the 1 in a convertible then flew up to SF where I saw both Radiohead & Tom Petty in the park, did some camping and some visiting before heading back home in time to jump a train up to Boston for a couple Sox games and have a few days home before heading back out on Dandy’s tour. It was a fine way to close out the summer. Here’s some pictures I took at Baker Beach.

This girl was doing some ballet-like dance with the waves. She was quite graceful and while it was a bit corny, looked pretty sweet silhouetted against the sunset…

Finally back!…Another Euro Summer Part 3

Sorry for the extended absence people.  Yes, I’m ok, still alive, etc.

While the memories are getting fuzzy at this point, I’ll do my best to pick up where I left off…

We woke up in Cornwall, which is arguably the most beautiful part of England, way down in the southwest corner (and ironically the only place I’ve ever surfed despite 5 years living on the coast of California).  The festival was a fundraiser for the Lanhydrock house which is an old estate house that’s been preserved like a museum.  The festival was in the fields just below the house so we got to take a tour.  It was pretty amazing, mostly the ‘backstage’ elements like the multi-room kitchen.  They didn’t let us take pictures so I can’t show you but you can always google it if you care.  The grounds were impressive as well with all the manicured bushes and whatnot.  All in all a nice place to spend the day.

The festival itself was kind of a weird, family-day sort of thing with a bizarre range of acts you’ve never heard of (except maybe the Hollies who looked about 70).  There were some pretty impressive fireworks at the end of our set.  

We packed it all in and headed back up to London for another festival and a club show.  The festival (Lovebox Weekender) was in Victoria Park.  Because of the layout and concern for preservation of the park, we couldn’t bring the bus near the stage.  The geniuses that organized the production for this thing decided that we could move our 4 tons of gear the mile to the stage with a couple golf carts.  Then they couldn’t even get us the golf carts until 45 minutes after we were supposed to load-in.  And of course after being repeatedly told it was “physically impossible” to tow our trailer down there, someone with brains (and a tractor) came along and did just that.  After that it was another clusterfucky festival day.  After we finished I wandered to the main stage to watch some of the Flaming Lips set.  Always a good time.  It was Courtney’s birthday so there was much merriment.  

Behind the scene with the Lips…

We had a couple days off in London before our club show, one of which I spent running around picking up my Japanese visa and just wandering London.  The other I think I spent in bed.  While I was out wandering for food one day I came across this strange scene.  Just after crossing this street to check out a restaurant, I turned around to see this bike just laying in the middle of the street, not 30 seconds after I had been walking there, with no owner in sight, just a handful of confused looking English folks.  I took a picture and looked at another restaurant and when I looked again, it was gone without a trace.  It felt like I was in some English David Lynch movie.  

We did the show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and headed off to Ireland.  The fun part about taking a bus from England to Ireland is the inevitable early morning ferry ride across the always-placid Irish sea.  It’s hard to say what element of the ferry is most appealing…the many, many options for delicious, healthy food…the wonderful people to interact with…or just the peaceful journey itself, which is in no way nausea-inducing.  Nevertheless, we arrived in Galway in time to have most of a day off.  I stayed put in the hotel for most of it, but I wandered thru the touristy madness to try out the “must try” fish & chips place.  It was pretty good, but as expected, overrated.  We closed out the tour with another festival style show, though this one only had 2 bands, us and Ash.  Then it was off to Dublin to catch the 9am flight out.  Another European summer touring adventure had come to an end.  Overall it was one of the better ones…