Part Two: France and Belgium

So we’ve just completed the second leg of our Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue UK/EU Tour, with a series of shows in France and Belgium. It’s been a real adventure, as we’ve had to deal with a lot of unexpected challenges. It’s also been an exciting time of making new friends and playing some really good shows.

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On Monday morning after our show at Ambition’s Graveyard in Norwich, I returned to Butterfly Cafe to once again have an English breakfast and coffee from them. I’d been having breakfast there pretty often while we were practicing for the tour, because there was no kitchen where I was living, their breakfasts are delicious and affordable, and the staff is very friendly. The chef, who knew all about our tour, was standing outside when I arrived, and he came up to me and said, “so you came, you saw, you conquered!” And I said, “yes, but we still have at least 10 more shows to play on this tour!” I showed him a few photos from our show in Darwen a few nights prior, and he was excited to see how well we’d been doing so far.

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Later that day, Moon, Gem, and Chu came by to pick up me and our gear from Ambition’s Graveyard, to start the long trip to Paris for our show there the next night. To get to Paris on time for our show and still get a decent amount of sleep, we had to stay somewhere much closer to Dover, where the ferry left from, otherwise we would’ve had to leave around 3am to get there on time.

So we drove to Margate, a seaside town about an hour from Dover, to stay in a surprisingly affordable Airbnb there for the night. On the way, I got a message from our host saying there would be no towels present at the Airbnb, and that we’d have to bring our own. This, of course, is absurd, since if we brought our own towels, they’d be wet when we put them in the car, and then they’d get covered in mildew and essentially become useless. But such is the dystopian nature of Airbnb.

After checking into our Airbnb, which had some of the most uncomfortable beds I’d ever slept on, we walked to the beach, and then picked up some ingredients for the dinner Gem made for us, a linguine with a creamy sausage and leek sauce, with a vegetarian edit for our bassist. While cooking it, Gem put on Kaputt by Destroyer, an album I used to listen to all the time when it came out, when I was in my late teens. Often, I’d listen to it while my dad was cooking, so it was interesting to revisit it in such a similar environment.

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In the morning, we woke up, loaded the car, and drove down to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais. Even though it’s still legal for US and UK musicians to tour in mainland Europe without a visa, border guards are known for causing trouble for us anyway, often because they themselves don’t know the law. However, they’re known to be a lot less suspicious of people who look like musicians when we come in as foot passengers; so we took the adequate precaution of having Moon, an unsuspicious, retired middle class Englishman, drive onto the ferry on his own, and the 3 of us coming on as foot passengers with just our regular luggage, pretending we didn’t know him.

Despite this, we were still questioned kind of aggressively, twice, by a man who worked for the ferry. I overheard him telling one of his coworkers later that he could just tell there was something different about us. Luckily, we still made it through immigration and customs without a problem, and had a pleasant trip over the English Channel. In the cafe on the boat, I bought what was labeled as a “Ham & Cheese Toastie”, and then saw it was listed on my receipt as a “Croque Monsieur”. They are, in fact, the same thing.

We landed in Calais, reunited with Moon and his car, and began the journey down from Calais to Paris for our secret show that night at the home of a French music journalist. Moon had generously booked us an Airbnb in Paris for the 3 nights we were there on this tour, because it wasn’t possible to find anyone to stay with due to the shortage of space for spare beds in Paris. So our plan was to check into the Airbnb, in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis (named for the patron saint of Paris), and then drive to the show.

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Paris was one of the places I was most excited to visit on this tour. I wanted to make up for how I’d had a pretty awful experience there last time I’d visited, when all of my belongings (including my wallet, phone, and passport) had been stolen from me, and I had to sleep on the street for 3 weeks while waiting for someone to help me get in touch with the US Embassy to get an emergency passport and return home, as they were seeing people by phone appointment only due to the pandemic – and I didn’t have a phone!

Thankfully, people in Paris were very kind, and always gave me enough food and money to survive in that time. After 3 weeks of sleeping on the street, a wonderful French woman I met while looking for a tent put me up in a hotel and got me an appointment with the Embassy after finding out what had happened.

Still, it was a traumatizing experience – toward the beginning of it, I was also physically assaulted by the police, who took advantage of the fact that I was already injured after having been robbed – and towards the end of the 3 weeks, I even had a strange romantic relationship with a German man who was also homeless at the time – he was very difficult to be with, often lying about his situation, randomly screaming at me and other people, and trying to pressure me into sex – I broke up with him shortly after we met, but it was still not a pleasant time.

So my general feeling was that Paris is a place full of people who will go out of their way to help a stranger in need, but it also has some seriously cruel and predatory people wandering about. And I was looking forward to making up for some awful experiences with something better this time around.

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About 2 hours north of Paris, we stopped for some diesel and a bite to eat. When we stopped the car and took the keys out of the ignition, we noticed something very odd; the car engine kept running even though we’d just turned it off. It started to make a variety of concerning sounds, and there were a lot of different warning lights flashing on the dashboard all at once. The sounds coming from the engine got more and more concerning, and Moon made the executive decision to get the car checked out before we did anything else with it. He called the Royal Automobile Club, who sent a mechanic to tow the car to his garage nearby.

Thankfully, Moon’s travel insurance agreed to pay for a €300 taxi for us to get to our Airbnb in Paris, and the taxi fit all our equipment, so we didn’t need to leave anything in the car. The journalist whose home we were performing in decided to start the show an hour later than originally planned, so we could all get there on time after this whole ordeal made us a lot later than anticipated.

However, we wouldn’t be able to play as a band that night, because without our car, we wouldn’t have a way of bringing our drums to her house, and she didn’t have any drums we could borrow. So at the last minute, I put together an acoustic set, mostly of songs I hadn’t played in a long time and very new songs. I asked for input from my bandmates for revising the set list I was writing, but a lot of the songs were ones even they hadn’t heard.

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We checked in to our Airbnb, and then I immediately headed off for the show with Gem and Chu. Moon stayed behind, as he was exhausted. We took the Metro all the way from the northern tip of Paris to the southwestern edge of it, which took over an hour.

When we got to the journalist’s house, about 30 people were gathered in her front yard getting ready to see the show. They greeted us with excitement, and her partner brought me into the house for sound check, while Gem and Chu joined the crowd of people waiting to come in and see me play.

Once we finished the sound check and let everyone in, we still had to wait for her next door neighbor – as is the tradition there apparently, due to his habit of always being the last person to show up to every concert at her house, despite living next door.

The neighbor finally arrived, and Gem gave a little speech about me and my music to introduce my set. It was a nice speech, and one of the first times someone had introduced me using they/them pronouns instead of he/him – I use any and all pronouns and have no real preference, because my specific experiences of dysphoria and euphoria around gender are not related to what people say I am – but I find people normally stick to he/him when speaking about me, because I look like a dude.

My favorite was probably when Becca Florence Moon introduced me at a show in NYC and asked for my pronouns on the spot, since we hadn’t seen each other in awhile and they didn’t remember what my pronouns are – I said “any and all!” and they said “OK!” and began to refer to me using she/her pronouns for the introduction – there was something very sweet about it.

The house was so full of people when I played that I could barely move when I jumped off stage, which made it difficult for me to do my usual thing of running through the audience during songs. Thankfully, a Belgian woman named France, who was sitting on the floor up front, was very good at moving around when I did that, to give me a little bit of space to move.

9 May 2023, Paris, FR

Hoyt-Schermerhorn
Saturn Youth
Hard to Break
F Train Over Brooklyn
Snow Globe
Dog on the Corner
Tiger
Carlos is on Fire
Skyscraper
The Morgue
Poissonnière / Cadet
Cannonball Becomes the One Armed Man

After my set, I got to meet a few of the people who’d come to the show, and the journalist and her partner prepared a delicious rice dish for me and my bandmates and the people who stuck around after the show. They also gave us some croissants and brownies to have the next morning.

I met France, the Belgian woman who had been sitting up front, who invited us to see an art opening with her the next night, our night off. France is a very talented musician and multidisciplinary artist herself, and we got to listen to her album Orphéon later on, which I enjoyed so much that I spilled Coca-Cola all over the table we were sitting at.

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Public transit was not running at the time we got out of the show, so we had to take a cab back to the Airbnb, which was surprisingly affordable. We spent the whole ride talking with our driver about how much we all hated Macron, and how politicians never answer to the people, only their wealthy donors. He told us about how he grew up in Paris, and life there had gotten worse and worse since Macron became President and started trying to make France more and more like the US.

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The next day, Chu and I took a walk around Paris while Gem and Moon recuperated at the Airbnb. We walked in all of the first 9 arrondissements, all of which have their own feel to them, which I remembered from spending a considerable amount of time walking around when I was homeless after all my belongings had been stolen.

While walking in Place de la Concorde, near the US Embassy where I’d gotten my emergency passport, we bumped into my friend Gary from Southend, UK, and his partner Anne. They have a band together called Angry (Anne and Gary), and we’ll be playing at a festival together in the UK in July. Gary was the one who’d made a get well card for me when I was in the hospital a little over a year ago, and he’d gotten a lot of my friends in the UK music scene to sign it. Gary told me they’d been planning on surprising us by coming to our show in Paris the next night, but now it wouldn’t be a surprise, since now we knew he was in town.

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Chu and I then went to an old Parisian bistro near the Place de la République, where we met up for a late lunch with the woman who’d taken care of me and helped me get in touch with the Embassy when I was homeless. She had since given birth to her first child, and become the manager of 2 different stores, when she’d previously been childless and only working at one. She said she’d been so busy that this was the first time she’d had time to eat out in months! It was lovely to see her again, and she’s apparently become a big fan of my music since we met.

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After that, Chu and I walked down to the gallery in the 6th arrondissement where we linked up with France to see the opening she had invited us to. Gem linked up with us there, and we all had a great time looking at all the art. France told us about her experiences making music in the US compared to Europe, and how one thing she loved about the US is that we don’t have the European attitude that artistic and other talents are hereditary or predetermined; we have the attitude that anyone can learn to do anything really well if they work for it.

I agreed with this, and also pointed out that in the US, economic and other structural disadvantages people are born with often lead to that same hereditary/predetermined hierarchy being recreated, and people then being blamed for being poor, because we have this belief that anyone can “make it”, so, therefore, if you’re not “making it”, there must be something wrong with you, and not the society or the economic system you’re living in. We then all realized that we were in a room full of people who see through all of these collective delusions, and that we spend most of our lives surrounded by those kinds of people; so we’re very lucky in that way.

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France took us to a Thai street food restaurant nearby, and on the way, we got a text from Moon saying the garage still hadn’t even done a diagnostic on the car, and it would definitely not be in working order until at least the next week. As we had to go up to Belgium to perform 2 shows that weekend, and Moon had to stay in Paris to wait to pick up the car, we would need to find another driver and vehicle to take us to the Belgium shows.

France immediately started contacting any friends of hers she could think of to help us find a last-minute driver and vehicle, and I asked around as well. I quickly got a hold of an old Belgian rocker named Freddy Spaepen, who was recommended to me by Albert, a booking agent I work with in southern Europe. Freddy offered to drive down from Belgium to pick us up and drive us to the Belgium shows, in exchange for a percentage of what we were being paid at the shows, and I would cover fuel and tolls.

The next night, we had our “non-secret” Paris show, at a proper venue. This place had a full drum kit and a guitar amplifier, so we only needed to bring our instruments and a bass amp, which was very doable without a car, so we were able to do that show as a band. That day, Gem and Chu were both pretty exhausted, so I went out for a solo walk around Montmartre and picked up crêpes for the 3 of us. Moon slept all day.

We all took the Metro to the venue, and did our sound check, as Anne and Gary arrived; they came early to catch up a bit before we played. After sound check, we were all given a whole smorgasbord of meats, cheeses, breads, and spreads, and plenty to drink. It was nice to see Anne and Gary after such a long time. France came by later as well, and brought us some tea. She was very excited to see us play as a band after having seen me play solo a couple nights earlier.

The room got pretty full when we started to play, but as we were in France, people were constantly going out to the smoking area, so there was a more casual vibe to some of the audience than we’d become used to from playing to very attentive crowds in the UK. Two of the most attentive people there that night were an eccentric Greek rockstar and his manager. Neither of them had heard our music before they came, but were very excited when they heard a band from the US was playing in Paris, so they came to see us just for that; and they were both very impressed by our set.

All in all, we had a great time in Paris. I had been looking for new places to perform there after my favorite Paris venue (Le Pop In) closed and the owner died of covid, and I was worried I wouldn’t find anywhere good to perform in my favorite city; but both of our Paris shows on this trip went really well, people are really enjoying our music, and we even seem to have unexpectedly made some new friends.

The next morning, Freddy Spaepen picked us up in his van and drove us to Gent, where we would open for my friend Jeffrey Lewis and his band that night in a botanical garden near the university. We said our goodbyes to Moon, who would stay in Paris waiting for the car to be fixed.

As it turns out, Freddy, who we’d never met before, had set off on the road from Antwerpen to Paris the night before, slept in the van about an hour north of Paris, then drove the rest of the way down in the morning to pick us up. When we arrived at the botanical garden in Gent, the first thing we were told by Oscar, who was running the show, was that he heard our last-minute driver is a legendary figure in Belgium. And that’s an understatement.

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We loaded our gear into the big room at the botanical garden where the show was, and I got to catch up with Jeffrey and his bandmates for a bit. Jeffrey’s violinist and keyboardist, Mallory Feuer, is also the frontwoman of a band called the Grasping Straws that I used to tour with pretty frequently, and we often still play shows together in various places.

Jeffrey and his band sound checked, and Gem’s friend Lauren arrived. Lauren lives in Hasselt, Belgium, and she would be attending our show there the following night, but she decided to come see us in Gent that night as well. She’s a visual artist and animator who knows Gem through being a fan of their solo project, Gemini Eye.

We sound checked next, and then the dinner arrived, which was a delicious vegetarian lasagna prepared by the mother of someone involved in the show. While we were all eating, Freddy explained to us that Democrazy, the group who organized the show, is the most important group of its kind in Belgium, and they’ve been putting on shows for over 3 decades. Jeffrey had thought no one was going to come to the show, and planned to use it as an opportunity to practice a lot of new songs, but was then informed that this show was the best selling show of his whole tour, largely due to Democrazy having such a good reputation and doing so much promotion for it. So he changed his entire set list at the last minute to adjust for playing to a much bigger crowd than anticipated.

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After we all had dinner, we went back into the big room, where people were starting to gather for the show. By the time the show was about to start, there were over 200 people in the room. A man from Democrazy went on stage and read a poem he’d written to introduce the show, and he mentioned a lot of different things about my music that I didn’t even know anyone knew, such as that I’d been inspired to start writing songs when I was 8 after hearing The Beatles.

We played our set, and the crowd was really into it. It was interesting playing for a larger crowd than we’d been playing to at the other shows, because the dynamic was different; it had less of a community atmosphere and more of an atmosphere of people coming to see and enjoy the show and then leave.

After us, Jeffrey and his band played an incredible set, as always. It was lovely to see them again, as I hadn’t seen a full set of theirs in a very long time, since we’re both on tour so often. The people at the venue then called us a taxi to the hostel they were putting us up in, and gave us the room key in a Jackie Chan VHS tape box. Chu and I went out for some late night food, and got to take in some beautiful views of Gent. We even had some people who’d been at the show shouting praise at us while we were walking. Additionally, we received a series of sarcastic drunk texts from Freddy, saying we were the worst band he’d ever seen, except for Jeffrey’s band, who he initially said were better than us, but eventually agreed with me were even worse.

The next morning, Chu and I went out for Belgian waffles and coffee while Gem stayed in and slept. We had a nice time exploring Gent for a bit in the daytime, and then we checked out of the hostel and got a ride from Lauren to the botanical garden, where we picked up our equipment and linked up with Freddy, who drove us to Hasselt for our show there that night.

When we arrived in Hasselt, we stopped off at a thrift store, and we almost got arrested, because Freddy initially forgot to pay, and almost walked out with the jeans he wanted to buy. He claimed the people behind the counter at the thrift store had 3 machine guns they were ready to shoot him with if he’d taken one step further. Freddy was a real character.

After that, he drove us to Lauren’s family home in the suburbs of Hasselt, where we paid him for his work, and then he quickly headed off to a class reunion, which he described as “a room full of people I have nothing to do with”.

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That day, we had some downtime at Lauren’s house, which was the biggest house we’d been in all tour. We then headed over to the place we were performing that night. Lauren and her mom generously drove us and all our equipment to the venue.

It was a special show for us, because Gem and Chu opened for the band with sets of their own music. It was lovely to see Gem play solo again, on one of Lauren’s ukuleles; Gem and I had met about 10 years ago when we played a show together in NYC where they were playing their original songs on uke, so seeing them do it again is always nice.

And then, there was Chu, who performs as Chubaby, and played a set on my acoustic-electric guitar; I’d heard their debut solo album they recorded in Melbourne during the beginning of the pandemic, but I’d never seen them play their solo work live, and I was very impressed. It reminded me so much of the kinds of musicians I would see performing on the antifolk scene in NYC back in the 2010s; witty, funny, socially aware, interesting, exciting, fun when it wants to be, and serious when it needs to be. I’m excited to see them play a solo set again sometime!

After Chu, we played our full set as a band. The crowd was very small, because the venue hadn’t done any promotion for it, and a lot of our Hasselt friends and people who hang out at the venue normally were out of town for one reason or another.

But Lauren and her friend really enjoyed the show, as did this really cool person named Hoi-Yi who came early and stayed the whole night. Hoi-Yi even offered to drive us to our Portugal and Spain shows, but we realized it would be more practical to leave our equipment with Lauren in Hasselt, take public transportation to the shows, and borrow the equipment we need at each show.

Overall, we had a great time at that show, except that the venue paid us less than they had agreed to, because there weren’t many people there. This is pretty sketchy behavior, since they’d agreed to a certain fee for hiring us to perform, and we did our job. The venue also didn’t do any promo for the show, after hiring us, knowing we were an out-of-town band that didn’t have a strong following in Hasselt – so the responsibility to promote the show wasn’t on us. Gem put together a poster for the show, and we did our own promo anyway, but the venue didn’t do their job at all, and they were very unprofessional. Because of this, I would avoid this venue in the future.

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We spent the next day hanging out with Lauren and our new friend Hoi-Yi in Hasselt. We sat by the river, next to the abandoned gelatin factory where I performed my first ever Belgian gig, on an incredible triple bill with The Shovels and The Tonsils, in 2017 when it was still a squat (shortly after that show, police shut it down). Then, we walked around town, and had French “tacos” for dinner.

We’re now on the long trip from Hasselt to Lisbon, where we’ll be performing for the first time on Thursday. Stay tuned for my update next week, where I’ll tell you all about our adventures in Portugal and Don Benito!

Part Three: Portugal and Don Benito >>

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