Part Four: Catalonia

So we just finished the final leg of our Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue UK/EU Tour, with a series of shows in Catalonia. It was a nice way to end this month-long tour, performing in some relatively relaxed small towns in a part of Europe I hadn’t been to in a very long time, and catching up with my old friend Maurici (aka The Missing Leech), who opened for us at the final show of the tour.

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On our way to Catalonia, we spent a night in Madrid, where we weren’t able to find a show to play that would pay us enough to make playing it worthwhile. The agent who booked the Catalonia leg of our tour, Albert Portavella, told us how he’s booked shows for all kinds of artists in Madrid and Barcelona for decades, and only recently it’s gotten to a point where it’s just not worth it to book those cities for most artists, because they simply don’t pay well enough.

He tried to find us shows in both cities, and we had other friends working on this as well, but the only things we were offered either wouldn’t pay us anything or wanted us to pay to play.

So we ended up only performing in small towns in Catalonia on that leg of the tour, which ended up being a more rewarding experience anyway.

During our journey to Catalonia, we also got word from Michael, the German man who had interviewed us for his radio show when we were in rural Portugal earlier in our tour, that there had been rumors spread by “neo-hippies and eco-fascists” who live in the mountains there that our show had been canceled due to a severe car accident; in addition to this, these same people were spreading rumors that we (along with all the other bands and artists Boris and Michael were associated with) were Satanists, and that in fact, we had not been in an ordinary car accident, but a “Satanic car crash” – I’m not well-versed enough in conspiracy theory lore to even know what that means – but it sounds like a cool band name.

This combination of rumors apparently led to a lower attendance of our show than Michael and Boris had been hoping for – and they were very apologetic, because they really saw it as their responsibility to bring a crowd – despite that, we still had a good turnout, and the people who came that night were really into our music – so we really didn’t mind.

The whole thing reminded me of the sort of thing that happens in the US sometimes – and indeed, the cult of neo-hippie eco-fascist conspiracy theory junkies who started these rumors about Boris and Michael and our band are from the US and the UK, not Portugal.

Much like parts of Asia and Latin America, Portugal has a way of unfortunately attracting Americans and British hippie types with neo-colonial, fascist politics, who simply see it as another place to take advantage of.

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We spent the night in a cheap hostel in Madrid, where the beds turned out to be surprisingly comfortable.

Chu and I wandered around exploring various corners of the city while Gem spent the night (and most of the next morning) at various queer goth and BDSM clubs around the Chueca area. Apparently, they met someone that night who they fell madly in love with, and they’re not sure when they’ll ever see each other again. We were honestly kind of worried we’d never see Gem again, since they were out for almost 18 hours in total.

In the morning, Chu and I woke up, and Gem returned to the hostel just in time for check out. We had breakfast and coffee in the Chueca area, and Gem showed us around the exteriors of the various locations where they’d gone partying the night before. We then hurried off to the train station to catch our high speed train to Barcelona, where we would stay that night and the next night, to get a bit of rest and prepare for our shows in Catalonia.

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Nothing too eventful happened on our first night in Barcelona. We stayed in a cheap hostel in the Sarrià area, which is very residential and doesn’t have a ton of nightlife; public transit in Barcelona also shuts down after midnight on weeknights, which discouraged us from leaving the area.

This was a relief for me and Chu, who kind of just wanted to sleep – but it seemed our drummer wasn’t thrilled.

Around sunset, Chu and I took a walk up a big hill to see a view of the city, and unintentionally walked through a whole area that apparently only military personnel are allowed to be in. Shortly after that, we all went to bed. This meant we finally got a good night’s sleep, which would prove helpful in the days to come.

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The next morning, Gem headed off to the airport to pick up their partner, Honor, who had flown in from Norwich to spend a bit of time in Barcelona, and come to the final show of our tour that Friday, before heading back to Norwich with Gem.

Chu and I went out for a delicious and affordable breakfast at a bakery in Sarrià, and then took the Metro to the Plaça de Catalunya area to go shopping for some clothes for Chu to wear to their friend’s wedding they’d be attending in Italy that weekend. After much searching, we finally found something nice for Chu to wear, and went exploring various other neighborhoods around the center of Barcelona.

After awhile, we linked up with Gem and Honor at a horribly touristy cafe on another hill with a nice view of the city. It was nice to catch up with Honor, though they were pretty tired from having woken up around 2am to catch their flight, so they didn’t have much energy for human interaction.

We quickly left the cafe, and went to a bar some locals recommended that was completely devoid of substance; it seemed to exist solely to profit from the fact that underground and independent culture exists, while doing nothing to contribute to it in any meaningful way. It had drum sets and other musical instruments painted on the walls, but no sign of ever having musicians perform there. We quickly left that place as well, and had some decent tapes (the Catalan version of tapas) for dinner, before all going to bed relatively early again.

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The next morning, Honor stayed in Barcelona to enjoy the start of their vacation (and recover from their jet lag), while the rest of us checked out of our hostel and caught the train from Barcelona to Figueres, a small town further north in Catalonia, where we would link up with Albert, the agent who organized the Catalonia leg of this tour.

Albert would also act as our driver and road manager for these shows, which would prove to be incredibly helpful, as we didn’t have any other way of getting to the small villages where the shows were, due to our car having broken down on the way to Paris earlier in the tour.

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Albert picked us up from the train station in Figueres, and drove us to the small village where he lives. He explained to us how before the pandemic, he’d been living in Girona, but then had to move into his family home in that village once the pandemic started, because all of a sudden, he had no income.

Albert has made a living as a booking agent for almost 30 years; he told us about how things have started picking up again in the past year or so, but it’s still not at the point it was before the pandemic. This has been my experience as well.

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We stopped by a cafe in Albert’s village, where we met up with Ben and Adam of Ivan Campo, an English band who were staying with Albert that night; they were also currently on a tour in Catalonia booked by Albert, and this was their night off, so they were planning on coming to our show in the nearby village of Biure that night.

As it turns out, Ben and Adam also know my friend Jeffrey Lewis, who we’d opened for in Gent earlier on this tour, and they’d recently played a show with our friend Tamsin (aka VICE VERA), who we’d done 3 shows with and stayed with in the North of England at the beginning of this tour. We hung out with Ben and Adam for a bit, and then headed over to Cal Biure, the Italian restaurant where we’d be performing in Biure that night, for sound check.

When we arrived at Cal Biure, there were a bunch of local kids from the village playing football outside. Gem and Chu were eager to get some exercise after the long day of travel, and the parents were happy to have them join in, so they joined the game, on opposing teams, while I watched; I haven’t played football since I was 3 years old, so I would have no idea what I’m doing.

We set up and started our sound check, as people started to trickle in to see the show; though Biure is a village of only about 250 people, there was a crowd of about 35 people, ranging from kids to people our age to people in their 70s and 80s, mostly from the village, and they all really seemed to be enjoying themselves.

In addition to the locals, Ben and Adam from Ivan Campo showed up, and some Belgian bikers who were on a motorbike tour of Catalonia also came by, after calling around the area and discovering this was the only place open for dinner anywhere near where they were.

All in all, the show went really well, especially considering Albert had only booked us for that one less than a month before it happened. People kept coming up to us to tell us how much they enjoyed it, and we had a great time hanging out with everybody after the show.

Later that night, my bandmates and I went for a walk with Ben and Adam around the dam in the village where Albert lives, and saw the moon and the stars a lot clearer than we had in a long time. We all slept at Albert’s family home that night, where there was thankfully enough room for everybody; if he’d still lived in Girona, it wouldn’t have been so easy.

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The next day, we headed over to Sant Feliu de Guíxols on the Costa Brava, to perform at Sala Las Vegas, a venue that’s been around for over 60 years.

The local band, Cotton Guest, who we thought were opening for us, but were changed to the headliner at the last minute, had not been around as long; apparently, all their members were under the age of 20, and they’d only played one or two shows so far.

The drummer’s dad was a musician himself, and he told us about how a lot of the towns in Costa Brava are known around the area for being associated with one specific type of music; Sant Feliu de Guíxols, for example, was known as the hardcore town, while other towns were known as the indie town, rock town, punk town, and so on, each having their own local festivals, venues, and bands to do with that type of music. Cotton Guest, however, were breaking from the hardcore traditions of their hometown, by making pop punk music that sounded nearly identical to Green Day.

After we all sound checked and had the burgers we were given for dinner, people started to come in to see the show. It was a nice mix of friends and family of the local band, and people who came because of the reputation of the venue and the promoter, all of whom seemed to enjoy our set a lot.

The sound guy said I reminded him of Frank Zappa, and the people in Cotton Guest said I sounded like “a soft version of the Pixies”. They said they’d really enjoyed an album I released in 2016 with a photo of me in a forest on the cover, but none of us could figure out what that album was, and we came to the conclusion that it probably doesn’t exist; maybe they were dimension hopping.

Cotton Guest put on a good show; they were very technically proficient and had a lot of good energy on stage.

After they played, and we got paid and took down our gear, we had to immediately head over to l’Estartit, a nearby town on the Costa Brava where we would be staying that night and performing the next night, as Albert was worried his friend Marina, who we’d be staying with, would already be asleep, given that it was almost midnight.

Albert drove his car through a crowd of about 30 people who were congregating outside the venue between the road and where the car was parked; he almost ran over a few people in the process, but no one was harmed in the end.

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When we arrived at Marina’s apartment in l’Estartit, she was not asleep as Albert had predicted, but very awake, watching reality TV in her living room.

A Dutch woman who’s lived pretty much everywhere, done pretty much everything (including singing on stage with Lou Reed), and made a living for decades translating books about knitting, Marina was the perfect person for us to stay with at the end of our tour. Upon meeting us, she instantly got up and offered to take us out to Sala Mariscal, the venue near her apartment where we’d be performing the following night; there was no show going on at Mariscal that night, but there would be some campsite monitors celebrating the last night of their vacation, and we would get to see the space and meet some of the regulars.

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Sala Mariscal was founded in the 1970s, and was one of the most important music venues in Spain back in the day. Bands used to deliberately book their tours so that their only show in Spain would be at Mariscal, and people would drive from all over Spain to l’Estartit to see the show; which is pretty amazing, since such a drive would easily take over 7 hours for people coming from Madrid, and people often did that drive, some coming from even further.

This is one of the reasons why shows at Mariscal often start at midnight, if not later, as this gives time for people to come from far away after work and still make it in time for the show. These days, Mariscal doesn’t have the same reputation or scene around it that it used to, but it’s still a widely respected venue, and people still come from all over to see the shows.

That night, we all went to Mariscal, and Marina introduced us to a lot of the regulars, many of whom expressed interest in coming to our show. She knew everyone there except the holidaying campsite monitors, who seemed to exist in a parallel realm that was visible to, but detached from, this one.

After awhile, we all got kind of bored, and went to the beach to watch the stars and the waves for a bit, before heading back to Marina’s to get some sleep.

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The next morning, we all said our goodbyes to Chu, who would be heading to Bologna, Italy that day for their friend’s wedding. The wedding was planned before they found out about the tour, and it turned out they’d have to miss the last show of the tour to make it to the wedding on time.

Gem and I would perform as a duo that night, which we had no problems with, as we’d done this many times in the UK.

However, Chu would be missed, as they’d brought a great presence and sound to all the shows they played with us. It was lovely having them on the tour, and I hope we get to make some more music together again soon.

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After Chu’s departure, Marina took Gem and I on a walk around l’Estartit, showing us some great views of the Mediterranean. We had lunch by the beach, and then she took us out for some delicious ice cream, something we hadn’t had this entire tour!

Then, we hung out on her balcony listening to Placebo and Leonard Cohen. Honor arrived on a bus from Barcelona around then, to see us play the final show of our tour.

We went over to Mariscal for sound check, which the owner had insisted on having at 6pm, even though the show wouldn’t start till midnight.

When we arrived, however, the owner was nowhere to be found, and it took awhile to summon someone who could let us into the venue. Gem and I sound checked, and did a quick rehearsal of our song “Pennsylvania”, which we added to the set only for that show.

Then, we went out to pick up frozen pizza for dinner, and made it at Marina’s.

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One thing I’d noticed about Freddy Spaepen, Albert’s friend (and also a friend of Marina’s, as it turns out) who’d stepped in at the last minute to drive us to our Belgium shows earlier in the tour after our car broke down, is that he was constantly mentioning a California hardcore band from the late 1980s/early 1990s called Victims Family, almost as a refrain when talking about pretty much anything.

When talking about bands, regardless of what band he was talking about, he would always say “oh, that sounds kind of like Victims Family” or “that’s similar to what Victims Family would do.” When talking about venues and promoters, he would say “Victims Family played there” or “that promoter would book bands like Victims Family.” At some point, he also said “if Nirvana hadn’t become famous, they would just be another band, going around doing shows, like Victims Family.”

None of us had ever heard of this band, and we were convinced it was something Freddy just made up.

But when we mentioned this to Albert, he assured us that Victims Family did, in fact, exist. We finally got to listen to some of their songs while waiting for the frozen pizza to warm up, and they were pretty great.

Marina also told us about how, before he became a legendary tour driver for bands starting in the 90s, Freddy had been a politician in Belgium in the 80s; this was something none of us could imagine him doing, yet it simultaneously seemed exactly like something he would do. Gem came to describe Freddy as “a meme of a man.”

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After our dinner of frozen pizza, we all headed over to Mariscal for the show. My friend Maurici (aka The Missing Leech), who was opening for us that night, had just arrived from Barcelona.

Maurici and I had met many years ago, when we performed together at the New York Antifolk Festival, and the last time I saw him was when we performed together in Barcelona and Mataró in 2016, as part of my summer 2016 European tour with The Grasping Straws.

Maurici has been making his unique style of Catalan antifolk music for almost 3 decades now, and according to Albert, he’s toured in more countries than any other Catalan artist. It’s always an incredible experience to see him and watch him perform, and that night was no exception.

As is often the case, his guitar was completely out of tune the entire night, and none of us could figure out if this was intentional, but we could all agree his songs were heartfelt, witty, inspiring, and fun.

Gem later described Maurici as “the Catalan Nardwuar,” and I have absolutely no idea what they meant by that.

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As Maurici played, the room started to fill up, and Marina noted that most of the people coming in were regulars she knew who didn’t normally come at that time of night, meaning they specifically came because they’d heard about the show. This was a good sign, because everyone had been worried there wouldn’t be much of a turnout for our show, due to Mariscal not having the reputation or scene that it used to.

In addition to the regulars, there were a bunch of random English tourists, some friends of Maurici, and a Russian man, who lived in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, and had missed most of our set there the night before, so he decided to come to l’Estartit that night with his partner to see us again.

All in all, a good crowd, and people really enjoyed our show, despite how tired we were from this month-long tour. The last song we played was a new version of “Henry Hudson” that finishes with an extended doomy/noisy jam, which ended this time with Gem and I sharing a kiss.

We took some photos with fans, and quickly evacuated the premises to get back to Marina’s so we could have a few hours of sleep before making the early morning journey westward.

Despite all our setbacks, especially the car breaking down towards the beginning of the tour, and despite being completely exhausted from it now, I’d say we had a great tour overall.

I’m really glad I got back on the road again after such a long time away from it due to the pandemic, and I look forward to touring with a lot more frequency again in the years to come.

Touring with the band brought its own challenges and joys, and I’m really glad we did it this way, though I won’t be touring with a full band again until 2024, due to scheduling and budgeting constraints.

For now, I’m about to board my flight from Barcelona to London, where I’ll be staying with my boyfriend for a bit, before heading back to NYC for the music video release parties for “Hard to Break” and “F Train Over Brooklyn”.

Until next time,
Cannonball

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