i get up slow this morning. i can feel the tour has caught up with me.
late flight today, so i stay put in the room till late in the afternoon.
i meet up with matt and jelle and head for another plane. spanair. not bad. we land in bilbao and get fetched. go straight to soundcheck, which is ok. matt and i finally have some time to organize a song or two together. then we all head out to eat some tapas. matt is on a cava routine and so i’m trying it out. its kind of feminine, i suggest, but makes some sense here. its celebratory and light, but substantial as a subtle mood changer. it’s a funky old bar, and this is us. the weather is beyond beautiful. basque country is a stunning corner of the world.
we head back to the venue and i begin tonight again playing just a small batch of songs before trading over to matt and then back again.
my songs are a moody affair tonight. each night has been a different selection of them. tonight has a richness and a weight to them. then matt comes over and he has a cava buzz for sure. he’s playful and slightly confused. after some warm up he indulges in a lengthy instrumental guitar pluck that was its own kind of music. very good.
he then informs the venue a brief intermission will take place. and after that i just lean on the piano. play the furniture out of it. start off with a vic chesnutt chessnut. then amble on from there. the weather is changing in me and the piano is the barometer. a mood is moving in.
then matt takes over and i begin to sink off as i sit on stage left enjoying his set. but the bends have arrived.
the bends are a term i coined about 20 some years ago when you are overtaken with something akin to depression on the tour for no single good reason. it just comes over you. once i recognized this piece of science, it was much better to deal with it and others with it. we allow the 24 hour “license to kill” tag on anyone in our posse suffering from the bends. we don’t hold any of their actions against them and infact, kind of cheer it on. we know it will only last a day or so, but if you don’t realize that the fellow is only “bent” you could be stained with unintentional ripple effects that can last beyond the tour.
anyhow. now i got em.
for the encore, we deliver “yer ropes” with us both singing together. it’s a nice combination of voice, surprisingly so. then i do another new one with matt whaling on guitar leads, “forever and a day”. and finally for bob dylan’s 70th birthday today, we are about to fashion a bluesy/slightly flamenco chording of “all along the watchtower”, but at the last second matt leaps into chuck berry instead, “roll over beethoven.” it cracks me up, but i’m no good, the bends are knocking.
- –
after the show some old friends show up and we all head to the hotel.
check in. hit the bar. 5 star tonight. directly across from the guggenheim. the evening pours on. i know better then to try and escape the bends. i lean into them with a talisker instead. the night wanes, jelle and me are the only ones left, and there is that momentary, almost mandatory, talk about the past and what the hell happened with joe and john and everyone. jelle always gets nervous talking about it. no one knows really what happened. but with every mandatory momentary mumble on the subject, some clarity is offered.
then its time to put the bends to bed.