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Dec 09.2009
I woke up in a bit of a fearful state around 5:20 this morning. I could hear Max meowing outside my door. Actually, he’d already awoken me with a paw to the face, so I’d put him outside, shut the door and was again awoken at 5:20 with a low-grade terror...This is a problem I have. I don’t like to sleep in an empty house. I always awake early and scared. So I reached up and turned on my light. It wouldn’t go on. Is the electricity out? But the sound machine is blowing it’s gentle white noise… I got up and tried another light. It wouldn’t go on either. When I tried to open the door to the hall there were boxes that I had to push out of the way. These weren’t there before I went to sleep. As I went downstairs I saw the house filled with moving men, and they were bringing in more boxes. Somehow I figured these boxes were filled with Christmas gifts and ornaments with my friends’ names on them...? The door was open but it wasn’t cold. I considered running away but sensed, perhaps in error, that it was safe in the house with these strange men. And indeed, when I was standing in a corner with three of them I didn’t feel threatened, but at the last minute I saw two of them glancing secretly to each other and noticed the doors had been locked up. I awoke in a panic. First thing I did was check the power - it worked fine.
Happy Birthday Graeme!!!Dec 02.2009
Happy birthday to Graeme! It was very nice that Graeme had a birthday on our second to the last gig because otherwise it was a tiny bit depressing - we were schedule to play at 5PM on a Saturday night in St. Lo. OK, this was a festival gig, but still… 5?
Still, the venue was wonderful and the audience warm. Even so, we were all starting to sense the coming end of the tour and I think everyone was feeling a bit melancholic.
The next day we traveled to Lille for the final gig. We were opening for Patrick Watson, who is a very friendly guy. The crowd was wonderful, and a new friend of mine, Marine, who introduced herself to me at the very first gig of the tour called out to me! I called out back and the show went quite well! Here’s a shot of this last lovely crowd:
Afterwards we met with Marine, who was joined by her friend Chloe, and went to a bar called, I think, Australian Pub! We were all sooooooooo tired at this point, especially Sylvain and me. But we were able to spend some quality time with Marine before Sylvain and I left to hit the hay.
It was such a wonderful tour. I really can’t thank my friends Sylvain, Ben, Graeme and Jasper enough. The bond of music is very strong, and since returning I really miss performing with them so much. To think of the time when I was happier sitting in my room alone singing along with a karaoke track in headphones is very strange to me indeed! Hopefully there will be more performing very soon, and indeed, there are some interesting projects very close on the horizon.
In the meantime, after the last show I did a little voice improvisation alone in the hall of the venue. I really liked what I was coming up with, so I turned on my camera to record it. 30 seconds later I was surprised by my friends entering the stairwell one floor above me, and they entered singing!! We made this odd impromptu improvisation which is a fitting end to this tour blog…
Lille - spontaneous group improvisation on the stairs! from Fredo Viola on Vimeo.
Le HavreDec 01.2009
During World War II the city of Le Havre was mostly destroyed. From 1945 to 1964 the architect Auguste Perret rebuilt the town. This was explained to me and the other musicians by Graeme, who teaches architectural design (not sure that’s the correct term) in Manchester. This was one of the most memorable stops we made on our trip, and the city is up there among my favorites. First of all, I love seaside towns. Period. But this one is just amazing to walk around. Here are a bunch of shots of the town, starting from the phenomenal Modern church that looks like something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis!
Doesn’t this look just like an M.C. Escher drawing? It was quite an amazing structure!
The venue where we were to play was absolutely nuts as well. Here’s the main venue (we were in the smaller venue to the side, also pictured below:)
At this gig we were kind of opening for Revolver. Well, I suppose we were co-headlining, but we had a shorter set and were going first so… yep, we opened for them. This made us all a bit bitter because at one of the shows where Revolver were opening for us somebody told me that their manager made the broad gesture holding his nose backstage that we stink! (I’ll never understand artists not being generous with eachother. That’s the very nature of music!!) So despite the group being 3 nice, talented dudes… well, it was never fun running into their manager.
However, the crowd was great. It was generally a bit younger than we were used to, although we usually have all age-groups represented. This was a lot more late teens. It’s amazing how different the music sounds depending on the audience, amazing to see which songs go over better than others…
These two girls came up to us after the show. They were really excited and very sweet. I think they were here for Revolver but really liked our music.
They asked us to sign their arms…
The next day and a half we had off!!! Hooray! We hadn’t had a single day without either a performance or grueling travel during the gig up until now, so we were all really grateful to wonder around the city and just relax. We took a walk to the beach, which was covered with very unusual rocks and shells. Sylvain obsessed over them and ended up bringing a bunch of the most beautiful ones back to his room.
Some of Le Havre reminded me oddly of Miami, just in terms of the odd mix of architectural styles:
Anyway, after this nice day of walking around we had two more gigs. I’ll save those last two days for later.
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