Your tour has dysentery

I think it was in the middle of the second week when I realized how much our tour felt like Oregon Trail. Loaded up on limited supplies and traversing rocky terrain, we had no idea if we'd make it to our destination or nearly die of pneumonia. Of course Oregon Trail didn't reveal what was going on inside the wagon. Luckily, we had cameras.


Beware of backseat bat-shit crazy

It's been almost three weeks since I got back from tour, and like Christina said, it sort of feels like a year. You'd never be able to tell from the above picture, but we've actually become pretty close friends. After the tour started and we got into "the fight" in Bolton I swore up and down on a stack of English bibles that I'd never speak to her again. But then we got over it. Magically. Actually I don't feel like telling that story right now, but you'll probably hear about it at some point.

I've been uploading and looking through all of the tour pictures and mentally preparing myself to see all the footage. I'm anxious to see the footage and also mystified to revisit the trip and re-meet myself from way back when. I don't think she's all that much different from LA me though.

I'm going to get to the bottom of this tour deciphering eventually.

The whole gnome thing

Those of you who have crossed my path virtually or in real time since the tour have probably heard me speak of gnomes. I know, wtf right? Gnomes? As I now have time to properly recap everything, come snuggle up to your LCD and let me tell you a tale.

We were in Bolton, U.K. for our third show, our first of three festivals. We had just come from Glasgow, where a motley gang of Scots from this outskirts town called Dundee invited us to crash on their floor and then let us do anything but crash (though we did get to see the matching pair of "W" tattoos on Ricky's ass cheeks. What does that spell, we wondered . . . "WIW?"). I was the first to crawl out of the van and check out the venue while everyone tried to curl up in their sleeping bags and catch up on rest. It was an all-day event with bands at a big brick warehouse worthy of anything in LA's fashion district. As the first one with any actual energy (overnight work has prepped me to run on very little sleep) I was elected as the body at the merch table that day. So I sat huddled in green scarf and bright orange hat, bracing the breeze coming in from the door carrying the end of England's winter, and broke away to get changed in the van. I repeat, big shows with lots of bands = less to give to each band in terms of changing room, food, anything. But no biggie.

I went to the van to throw on my clothes, where Caroline was setting up her gear to film. I started prattling on about I don't know what -- probably how I was tired and not up to playing that day and how bad the weather was -- and once my outfit was assembled I threw my orange hat back on and said something along the lines of, "Look at me, I look like some sort of dominatrix gnome." And thus it all began. And then Caroline and I ended up running back to the venue taking gleeful pictures.






I don't remember how the gnoming spread, but somehow it just kind of stuck (probably didn't help that I started prancing around and running through fields). But the thing that really became odd was from that point on, we started seeing these gnomes everywhere -- in store window displays, as the sole item of graffiti on a wooden plank near a cafe we liked in The Hague, in rural gas stations in Croatia, sticking their middle finger up at us in bars . . .



It got really absurd.

The idea of being followed by magical little creatures was comforting though -- the gnome spirit came in really handy when times were rough and we had to weather fighting. It always felt good to see them around and know that they had our backs. So when the subject of tattoos inevitably came up (evidently it's a tour thing) it didn't take me long to figure out who I wanted to bring home with me. So whenever I need a gnome, I never have to look too far . . .

And so begins the Stockholm syndrome

Everything I left home in Los Angeles is mostly still right where I left it. Mostly. But after five weeks with the same five people in hundreds of different places in a foreign continent I'm the one who's a little displaced. I spent yesterday wandering around Echo Park, figuring out how bad my finances were (a bit shitty, but not too bad) and recapping. I laid down on the grass at the park and just went through the photos in my camera. I woke up that morning thinking, "Did that all really just happen?"

Part of me is really sad that the experience is over, but a bigger part of me is really happy because I can remember everything that happened and I got a lot out of it -- especially some really great friends. And we got the whole thing on tape. Once we start going through the footage for the documentary we're going to have the ultimate recap. That on top of scoring the film and planning a West Coast tour with my band and I think I'll be able to keep my head above water. But I'll still think about it and still miss things, and still want to tour again. I guess some people can't just do one.

Meantime, I want to try to fill in the holes I left on this blog and try to bring in more details about each day, including pictures and what was going on internally. There are more omissions that admissions, and I'm on a mission to do some blog fission. I should finish this post before it gets worse, I can feel myself slipping . . .

Mishmash

We're killing time at Nick's apartment in London before the van driver gets here to take me, Christina and Caroline to our hostel. So I threw up some photos from the last five weeks. Not all of them because there are 2,300, but enough to get a cool glimpse of what went down. Check em out.

Pretty much the end

There have been times on this tour where I've woken up on the floor in my blue sleeping bag in a tiny room with four other girls and asked myself, "Am I still doing this?" It's amazing how many times your brain regenerates and thinks new thoughts, and when it does so around a scenario that's always changing but still the same . . . being with the same people and the same karma against an ever-changing backdrop is freaky. But I mean it this time, our time's just about up. We're staying in a beautiful apartment in London and playing our last show tonight at Bar Monsta. I need coffee in the worst way and this instant shit is . . . well, shit. But before I go find my caffeine savior, a rundown.

After Germany we spent a really surreal night at an A & O hostel in Calais in the south of France. In the morning we headed over to the ferry to get back to England, and then made it to Ipswich to play a show at a bar called the Swan, which we had set up before we left for mainland Europe the first time . . . and our van broke down 2 kilometers from the venue. We were all pretty happy it decided to poop out so close to the venue in a country where everyone speaks English (can you imagine if we had broken down in CROATIA?!). One of the guys at the bar grabbed most of us and our stuff and Rosie and I waited with the driver by the van for the tow. We waited for three hours, because it was a bank holiday, which is English for "nothing's getting done." It was also the 30-year anniversary of Ipswich winning some big football tournament. I know, that's important. So we drank Jack Daniels and sang songs about how the tow truck wasn't coming, and a guy from the venue picked us and the rest of our crap up because the tow wasn't coming and we needed to play the show.

Show went really well, and we spent the next day in Ipswich at the flat above the bar because the van wasn't going to be ready on time for our next show. We had to cancel our best net-promoted show in Brighton, but since it wasn't our fault the van company paid our guarentee and we had a free day off. We hung out with Dave from Cradle of Filth, who helped us set up the show when he saw our first (lousy terrible) show in Ipswich at this venue that shouldn't even support rock bands because they kept telling us to turn down. We ate some fantastic on the cheap food and saw a very lovely little English town, and hung out at his apartment talking about whatever our type of bands talk about (I actually have a newfound appreciation for Cradle of Filth and many things metal since this trip began thanks to Caroline). Then we got the van back and we stayed at what Caroline and I believe was a haunted Holiday Inn because we both had nightmares. Then we got back on the road.

Nottingham was a trip -- lots of Robin Hood-y stuff, a good venue, some really cool fucking people (I think actually some of my favorite on this trip) and I got a tattoo. WHA?! Yeah, the nice little Jewish girl who was programmed to steer clear of those permanent devil scars because you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetary and you risk possibly looking tacky when you're 80 got a tat (I'm getting cremated anyway). And you know I wasn't going to get one just to get one -- I thought about it for awhile while everyone talked about what they wanted, and since this trip was significant to me I wanted to do it, provided I could find the right thing.




Rosie, Caroline and Christina (got cut off) with me at the tattoo parlor.




Justin tatting me




It's a sexy gnome. The why will be another post, because everyone's ready and I have to go, but just know that I absolutely love it. See you later or when I get back.

P.S. Don't tell my dad.

mk

Last day in Germany

We're stealing net cafe time in a little town in south Germany called Frieburg. The last two days we've been treated better than any other day on tour -- I will have dreams about the meal I had last night for the rest of my life. Schnitzel and homemade noodles? And that dessert was illegal. We performed in an 520-year-old torture chamber that Black Sabbath played in in 1969. HAHA! I love my life so much right now! But seriously it creeped me the fuck out when I first got there. Our contact slash tour guide walked us through the hallway and one of the first things he said was, "Smell the blood?" Thanks guy. We also stayed in a fantastic hotel, ate a beautiful breakfast this morning, had our shortest drive in a long time (the van and Germany's traffic have been our utter downfall, stealing both our lives and our livelihood), and tonight they fed us stroganoff and we got lost looking for this cafe, but found one of the cutest towns yet. Caroline is determined to live here and I don't blame her.

So believe it or not, we're now in the home stretch of this tour. Tomorrow we have a day off and decided we'd head to Brussels, and then it's back to the ferry and over to the UK. I don't have enough time to begin to process everything that's happened on this trip -- it might honestly take a year to even tell half the stories of this tour. But I got lots of pictures and learned so much and saw so much that thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach. I'm almost grateful I got to do this trip with no money, because it forced me to look at everything going on (by the way, if you're a band and you want to tour Europe, skip the UK and France. The UK doesn't feed you and French tolls are worse than the Jersey Turnpike. Germany and Holland will treat you gooooooood).

(By the way, I may be the only one who's noticed this but my English has gotten increasingly worse since traveling through the non-English countries. Listening to so many non-native speakers will fuck with your lexicon and vocab, also I don't have any time to edit. So forgive my lack of perfect grammar and communication, I'll probably be better once we re-hit England.)

I better go, this thing is costing me 1 euro every 15 minutes. Tonight the place we're staying is a flat upstairs from the venue, so all we have to do is climb stairs. Drinks!!! While it's true that I've been drinking pratically every day since we left the UK I've gotten pretty used to it. But one thing I haven't gotten used to is the fact that the whole getting laid on tour thing has been an utter fucking myth. No worries -- there's more to life than happy, fulfilling sex. It'd sure be nice though, especially out here...

Berlin

'Cause I have so much time to post a blog right now.

1. The show last night was great. Finally some decent pictures of me, 'cause you know that's important. The venue is reputable apparently.

2. I saw Brett from Marketplace last night and he bought me Whiskey. Yay!

3. We have a per diem now and we're no longer starving! Plus we made like a lot of money last night. Yeehaw.

4. We're on our way to Dortmund now, wh ich is the direction we just came from. So I guess it's like the St. Louis of Germany.

5. Leaving now. Bing!

P.S. 6. It's morning and I think I'm still drunk.

mk