So these are Cannonball Statman’s tour diaries from the Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue tour that he did in the Spring of 2023, spanning much of England and Western Europe.

This was a tour in power trio form – the rhythm section being composed of not one, but two British people, for some unexplained reason – these British people who outnumbered the band’s token citizen of a certain wayward colony by a 2-to-1 ratio on this tour are none other than Gem (drums, the South of England in human form, yet somehow also a musician, known primarily for their solo project Gemini Eye) and Lethal Chu (bass and backing vocals, displaced Northerner, known primarily for their solo project Chubaby).

Cannonball seems to dedicate a fair bit of time to talking about how incredibly good these two British people are at making their own music, and he seems to be genuinely confused as to why they are on tour with him instead of touring for their solo projects.

To be fair, they are both quite talented – however, they are also British, and – as every British person will tell you – our self-hatred laws require us spend a certain number of days per calendar year in another artist’s backing band, no matter how much we would ideally prefer to be the front person – I believe the minimum was 100 days at the time, but more recent austerity measures have caused this number to double since the Spring of 2023.

It’s noteworthy both for being the first tour with that particular line-up and for being Cannonball’s first proper tour of the 2020s, after a long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And for, apparently, being the tour where Cannonball met a Belgian musician called France and her cat Arthuro – this is of course referring to France de Griessen, who coined the term “romantic punk” – and, not long after this tour, went on to collaborate with Cannonball on any number of amazing endeavours.

It was also not long before the release of Cannonball’s 31st album Hard to Break, and the multiple tours that followed – fans of this particular album will be pleased to see some bits and bobs regarding the production and post-production of that one popping up in various parts.

Reading these here in the summer of 2024 brings back fond memories of the post-lockdown rush of rock and roll gigs that went on around that time, and a general feeling that things were moving in a good direction.

It was before the intense escalation of the ongoing Nakba and any number of other horrible things that started happening later that year, though we weren’t unaware of these matters at the time either – various social issues occasionally do come up here, such as Cannonball’s recovery from psychiatric abuse and the systemic nature of that, and the bizarre saga of the neo-hippie eco-fascists who were trying to take over rural Portugal while this charming trio of weirdos was on tour there.

All in all though, it seems like a fun experience – I think a lot of people were just happy to be getting outside and spending time with other human beings for a bit.

Most of the writing is pretty “apolitical” and genuinely quite hilarious in my opinion. Nothing about this tour seems to have gone “as planned” – and truly, it seems to have been all the better for it.

Cannonball’s incessant humblebragging throughout this series about his world-class tour management chops seems frankly well-deserved when you look at everything that went on this time around – though as his former publicist, I vaguely recall that he prefers to be known as an artist, not a tour manager.

Regardless of any adventures and misadventures in logistics, it seems to me that the overarching theme of this whole series is simply that everyone involved had a really good time. And that, in itself, is just such a nice thing to read about these days, in my view.

And, the music was fucking brilliant. Be sure to check out the documentary they made about this tour as well. And the album itself.

See you soon!
Kléo

Cannonball’s diaries from the Spring 2023 Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue Tour
Part One (England)
Part Two (France and Belgium)
Part Three (Portugal and Don Benito)
Part Four (Catalonia)