Hold on Magnolia!

Ray on the train to Winterthur.

















Who is this little fellow? Anyone know?






















Micke from Solander the morning after the show.


















Audience at house whow in Leipzig.

















Never go to Leipzig without going to UT Connewitz and breathe!

















Poland.

















Poland.

















Gallery/venue in Zielona Gora.
.....................................................................................................................................

Hey hey hey.

It has been a while since I wrote. Been staying busy and happy throughout the last few german and polish dates. Stumbled across some car related trouble towards the end of our stay in Switzerland, but it was nothing big and we kept on rolling into Germany soon enough.

Here some stuff about the last week or so.

Day off in Aarau.

We had to cancel the show at my friend Marco´s place in Rorschach last Monday because the brakes of the car kind of got stuck and we didn´t dare to go on. Lovely Lisa and Oli at Kiff helped us out very kindly in organizing a workshop, cheap parts and ridiculously cheap labour to get it fixed. Thank you so much for that guys. So we stayed an extra night in Aarau after the short train ride from Winterthur. Had a nice dinner at a crepe place in town and went to bed nice and early. Up in the morning to drop Ray off at the station and send him off to Paris. Which coincidentally is where the train I am on right now is headed.

Fürth

Up to lovely old Fürth the day after Aarau. Long drive alone in the car, and I missed having Ray there besides me going crazy over some strange drumming signed Charlie Watts. By the way Ray, I have listened to that twelve bar song on the singles collection trying to make out what the fuck Mick is singing and so far I have come up with this: - Dadadadadadadadadadadadadadad, man you better behave.

Met up with Martti and Line in Fürth after having a short walk through a sunny and cute little town. Had a drink and wrote some post cards in a café and set about trying to cure my cold with some ginger and lemon tea. I am not kidding, but I think I easily drank two litres of that shit that day.

Show in Fürth was great, although my voice was starting to get real rough. Had a real nice time after the show and then walked back to Christian´s house for some well deserved sleep. Slept in Christian´s sons bed and didn´t pay attention to the lego scattered on the floor when I walked in. Quite a nostalgic kind of pain treading on pieces of lego barefotted. Haven´t done that in years.

Nürnberg

Touring should be like this everyday. Punched in the address for the venue in Nürnberg and my friend James in the GPS machine tells me it´s six kilometres. Barely time enough to smoke a cigarette before I have to pull up at the venue to park the car. Perfect!

Tonight I am playing with a couple of people from Sweden. Some of them I knew already so I was very much looking forward to the evening. Great venue, great people, but unfortunately kind of half empty. Big soccer game between Bayern München and Lyon and since Nürnberg is located in Bayern it is easy to understand why there weren´t shitloads of people. As if I ever play to shitloads of people!

Show turned out to be a great one anyhow. I don´t think I sold a single album after the show, so maybe I am the only one who liked it, but I really got that good feeling singing and playing. Really connected with the songs and with myself. Doesn´t happen very often and it´s a great feeling. Losing the sense of time and space for a few seconds.

Ulm

After Nürnberg it was time for me to make a completely new acquaintance. Ulm. Never been there before, and came in early to have some time to take it easy. Checked into the hotel, had a shower and a well needed two hour sleep before heading into town for a bit of a stroll. Ate so much Käsespätzle I was almost not able to stand up.

The venue is an old bordello/dance club and nothing has really been changed, so it´s a strange little place I´m playing. I am quite sure the people who used to be on that stage did not wear jeans and a t-shirt. Played a great little show to a great little crowd and made friends with a nice young medicine student named Micha. Had a few drinks with him and talked about Spain and children and about music. Off to bed. Long drive the next day.

Leipzig

Long drive to Leipzig, but I´m in a good mood. Leipzig is of course my favorite town and I am excited to get there and meet up with dear friend Tobi. Go by his new work and have a nice cup of coffee in the burning sun.

Off to good old Deli next to UT Connewitz for yet another amazing tofu burger with fries. I am so full I can hardly walk and take the car down to Hotel Seeblick for a coffee. Reading Carson McCullers and smoking cigarettes. Lovely day and I´m in an excellent vagabond type mood!

In the evening I play a show in a huge flat with so many people it´s hard to move. A great party and I met up with some friends and had a good time. Thanks for having me in your home guys! After show off to Hotel Seeblick again for a drink and about eight packet of cigarettes. Wake up the next morning feeling like an ashtray!

Breakfast at Zest and then off to Poland!

Poznan

I arrive in Poznan late. After a couple of weeks on the german autobahn I calculate to make the drive in four or five hours and end up spending a good eight in the car. Think of this if you go travelling by car in Poland. Average speed: 50km/hour. That´s it.

Anyhow. Meet up with the people at Meskal, play a short set in the loud and smoky bar and then hang our with lovely people. Thanks so much for taking such good care of me.

Wake up early in the hostel although I really needed some sleep. Americans out in the hallway making so much noise it is rediculous. Americans on holiday in Europe. Is there anything worse?

Go down town to the old city square and have a coffee, write some postcards and have a walk around. Beautiful city and I would have loved to stay longer, but I am not taking any chances this time, so I decide to leave early to make it on time to Zielona Gora.

Zielona Gora

Come in early. Park the car and ask some guys for the way to the venue. Turns out I am practically parked in front of it. Easy. Good start. Good feeling!

Go for a walk around town. The sun is beating down like a drum on my head and I drink lots of water. Sit down in different spots, smoke cigarettes, read, write, drink water.

Find a nice looking restaurant and order a salad. The waiter looks strangely at me. And so does all the other guests. I don´t feel welcome. They stare at my tattoos and look at me as if I was a rapist or something. I eat my salad, don´t tip and get out of there. Fucking assholes.

Over to the venue to meet up with Woitek and Caroline. The venue is an art gallery and the space is just amazing! High high ceiling and amazing acoustic. I run around the place playing my guitar and shouting out loud. I feel very good about playing. And the show turns out great. Probably one of the longest sets I played on the tour. I think I play 15 or 16 songs. Haha. But eveyone seemed happy and I was in such a great mood.

Go with some nice people to a bar around the corner for a drink before bed. Have a great evening with them. We talk about all kinds of stuff and I really really start to love Poland. Thanks for taking such good care of me!!!

Wroclaw

Do some boring computer work at the gallery office in the morning and then head off to Wroclaw. Meet up with promoter Pawel and spend a few really nice hours with him before the show. Early show and a great one. Talk with some nice people and then unfortunately I have to go. Need to go to Berlin to catch a train to Spain. And that´s where I´m at now. But more about that later. Now I really need to go buy some underpants!

Love! B

Aarau x2

We´ve had a few exciting days. Exciting in all kinds of meanings of the word.
After Luxembourg we went back to germany to play a show in Karlsruhe. I have been there quite a few times before, but that was years ago so I was very excited to get to Café Nun, a place everyone has spoken good of to me.

Café Nun is amazing. To me it was the highlight of the tour so far. Coming in, drinking coffe, soundchecking and eating a great meal. Everything was bursting with kindness and pleasure and I knew it was going to be a good evening. The show went excellent, I don´t know how many encores I played, but I enjoyed every single minute of being on stage. Then after the show we sat and talked for hours. Just me and Ray and the guys who set up the show. I am sorry if I miss out on any names. But. Wolfgang, Andi, Mark, Dennis and everyone else. Thank you for an amazing experience!

After a breakfast in high style we leave for the swiss adventure. Starts in Schaffhausen on Friday were we support a swedish band called Hellsongs. They´re basically a cover band who do old metal songs, and I think their crowd was not so into soft singer/songwriter-stuff on a Friday evening. It was very nice however to meet Daniela again although it is always way too short.

Off to Basel early on Saturday where we meet up with lovely Christine and have a walk around the city eating a falafel down by the Rhein, before meeting up with Jan and everyone else at the house where we´re playing the show. A nice crowd comes out and we play to neat little sets in the completely unfurnished livingroom. I met good friends Victor and Aline and we decided we´d spend some time together soon. Maybe do a trip or something in the fall. It is lovely meeting so many nice people on tour. Really one of the best things about it if not the most important. But always it is too short. I wish I had the money to play one show a week and hang out with friends inbetween!

So we quickly say goodbye and head to Aarau to play an evening show at Kiff, a lovely venue where I´ve played a couple of times before. But then of course it happens. The old Audi90 starts making weird sounds and we pull over on the side of the road. The right wheel seems to be the problem and we drive carefully the few kilometres we still have left to the venue. Two kind young men at the venue follow me out to troubleshoot the old vehicle and find out it is the right brake that is making the noises. So we park the car over night and head to Winterthur by train. But before that we play a really nice crowd in Aarau. Sami, Jan, Natalie, Christine and a couple of other guys come over from Basel and I play a really relaxed and fun set. Feels great to be into the game!

Winterthur yesterday was great. I get really frustrated going by train and I wonder how I´m gonna manage 8-9 hour rides in Spain. I feel I have no control of where I´m going. And I can´t get out and I can´t relax. I bet there´s a word for that.
Winterthur is a lovely little town and we go by foot to the venue guided by a very kind man we met in Schaffhausen. Thanks for the help! Off to the local radio station for a quick interview and live session and then down to the venue again. Meet up with Mr and Mrs Vargas and have a great evening talking about pink little elephants and minarets. Nice to meet you guys and have some time to sit and talk.

So today we slept in and took an afternoon train to Aarau to go to the garage where the car was being repaired. Thank you Oli and Lisa for all the trouble you went through for us. It really means the world to us.

Now bedtime. I have a bit of a cold and I´m going to try and sleep it away.
Talk to you soon. B

Luxembourg

Promoter Fred in Luxembourg. Double-bearded and ready!






















Ray in front of cherry blossoms!






















Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. A very serious man.

















Hanging out in Willi´s kitchen in Köln. Thanks for having us guys! Really a pleasure.

















Part of wall in Köln.






















Ray rocking the merch trolley!

















Kolumba Museum, Köln.






















Ray in the stairs up to Kolumba.






















Motoki. Best venue ever! Köln.

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Hey Hey Hey!
I am feeling great. The tour is going so well, Ray is such nice company, shows are great and everyone is treating us so well. Best days of my life.
Played a lovely little show in Luxembourg yesterday set up by Fred at D:Qliq. As usual he took excellent care of us and a nice little wednesday night crowd came out to what I think is probably one of the best shows we´ve both played so far. Ray sounded excellent and I had a real good experience on stage. Really getting into the songs and the singing.

Café Lübke in Trier was a great evening just as last year. Anja and Caroline cooked great food and Thomas was wizzing by now and then to make it a very pleasant evening. Big nice crowd and a nice hangout after the show. Slept on sofas in the bar and woke up to one of the nicest spring days so far this year. Had a nice little walk around Trier with Anja with some sightseeing and coffee. The cherry trees turned the city into a fairytale and it was a beautiful day!

Now it´s off to Karlsruhe. Look forward to that. Everyone is telling us Café Nun is a great place so we´re very excited to find out they´re right!

I add some pictures from Köln aswell so you don´t miss out on anything!

Take care. Bis bald! B

Köln

Good morning.

I just flew out of bed like a crazy person to kill the alarm and managed to not go back to sleep.

It´s a beautiful morning in Köln and were heading off to the Ludwig Museum before leaving for Trier.

We´ve had two really nice das in Köln. The show on sunday was one of the very best ones so far on the tour. Thanks for putting it together Markus and Willi. We really enjoyed that! What an amazing place that is. I don´t have my own computer here right now, but I´ll show you some pictures later. Just a great big room with five metres to the ceiling. Best place for singing.

Had a day off yesterday since the Bamberg show was cancelled on short notice. And since Willi and Basti are such nice people they let us stay for another day. Good long sleep, shower, breakfast, banjo-picking and off down town for some seightseeing. Went to this pace called Kolumba that I would recommend everyone to go to. It is a museum build on top of the ruins from an old church. Or several churches actually. And it´s an amazing structure. Also the stuff they keep inside is a real interesting mix of things. Contemporary art mixed with old religous pictures, sculptures and more. All set in these amazing huge halls that all have the acoustic that make you wanna go OHHHHHHHH!

I am tired. Gonna make some coffee and get the Ray-man out of bed. It´s so nice outside.

Talk to you soon.

B

Münster

Sitting in a café in Münster drinking my second cup of coffee trying to wake up after a really nice and long night sleep. We played our old favourite venue Amp yesterday, a place I have played probably four or five times before. And as usual it was great. Eavo and Tobi took great care of us, the pizza from the pool-place next door was just as bland as usual and the show was great. I tried some stuff I had never played live before and I think it came across kind of ok. At least I felt very good about it.

After the show me and Ray went into the backstage to hide away from the crazy disco that was slowly starting out there. We´re old men I guess, or just boring, or maybe a bit of both. But after six hours in a car and working hard on stage for a good hour there is really not a lot of energy left for dancing to tracks I´ve never heard. It was so different a few years ago when touring with the band, and quite honestly I cannot understand how I did it. Party every night for several weeks, getting up next day to get in the van, and then start partying again.

The show at Schokoladen on Thursday was a great one. A pretty good sized crowd came out and we both played short but good sets. Last on the bill was The Gentle Act Incident from Göteborg. A very nice little coincidence, a lovely show and real kind people in the band. Good luck with the last show tonight boys and girls, we´ll meet in Göteborg soon.

The day leading up to the schoki-show was a bit of a stressful one. Christian was leaving Berlin by bus already at 1 pm. So we left Saalfeld already in the early morning. Of course our good friend James(the voice helping us out in the GPS-machine) gave us fucked up directions and we ended up way out on the country side. Stressful since we really had to make it to Berlin, but also kind of nice since we saw a fox! I don´t think I have ever seen a fox like that in the wild before, and it was really nice. He was just strutting alongside the car for a good two minutes and didn´t seem one bit bothered about us being there. A beauty he was.

So we arrive in Berlin, drop off Christian and head to my dear friend Björn´s house downtown. Him and Saara just recently moved apartments and wanted to go to some Baumarkt to pick up a few things for the flat. So they borrowed my car and me and Ray took it upon us to look after their little boy Joas. I am his godfather so I really felt the pressure to be the perfect baby sitter. And I must say. Damn, that´s hard work. Even for just the two hours I looked after him. I was so tired at the end of it I could have fallen asleep right there and then. But what a cute little one he is.

Saalfeld

This place needs a headline of its own. If you´re looking for some real country-side-Wednesday-night-rock-action Saalfeld is the place to go. A small town about half an hour south of Jena, we arrived in the late afternoon and parked the car just outside of the venue. We´re not even out of the car before around 800 kg´s of tattooed punk is carrying our stuff inside. The place is amazing and we´re being so very well looked after, with good coffee, excellent food, the best sound so far on stage and just general kindness. The show was great and we had a real good time with a bunch of real nice people before going to bed in the little hotel room we had for the night. Thank you so much for having us Tommy! We´ll come back any time.

So, now the sun is breaking through outside, and I should be getting back to Eavo´s house pretty soon. We wanna sort out a few technical things with our gear at the local music store today. We´re so professional!

Talk to you later. B

Hannover, Hamburg and Bremen

Hey Ho!
First three days done and I am feeling great.
We´ve played five shows so far and they´ve all been great shows.
First night in Hannover we met up with our dear friend Andi outside Bei Chez Heinz.
A beautiful spring sun was shining down on us and we ate some swedish candy in the sun.
Went to Cristoffers place for an excellent dinner and played to sumbling first shows. Mine more than Ray´s. He´s always just great!
Hans from little label Jellyfant came by with the brand new 10" records we´re putting out and they look great! Thank you so much Hans, and I´ll see you in Münster hopefully!

In a big mob we then left Hannover for Hamburg pretty early in the morning to play the highly anticipated street show. Me and Erik from Cedarwell had decided we´d play a show at a certain street corner in st pauli at three. So we headed over, and it was probably the most perfect corner we could have found! I was not sure if anyone would show up, and then it started raining, so it looked bad. But everything ended up just perfect. About forty people showed up, me, erik and ray played a few songs each and it was a proper little circus out there. Thanks everyone for showing up! And a special thanks of course for the coffee Malte! I´ll see you in Karlsruhe I hope.

Hasenschaukel is like playing my back garden, I´ve been there so many times, and it´s always so nice. And nothing has changed. Tanyo and everyone is great. Jörg and Ulla are the nicest of hosts, and the people coming out are always pure beauties. I love playing that place. Thanks so much!

Over to Bremen today. Came in quite early and had time for a little stroll and a cup of coffee in the sun. It´s really quite crammed in the car, so it´s nice to be able to stretch your legs for just a bit before it´s sit down time again. Sun was shining and all was gut. Went over to Fundamt where we did two short but lovely acoustic sets and a bunch of people was there. And I got to play my old song 1.2.3 to the guy who´s the reason I keep it in the set! Mathi. Alter. Du bekommst ein tape for sure!

Off to André´s place for a lovely meal and some swedish pastry that was awesome. André has got a little Hamster and he was the cutest thing I´ve ever held in my hand. Great little guy that thing!

And now. Sitting on the bed in Becki´s flat in Bremen after playing a house show here. Was great. Nice and quiet and I really felt I found a connection to the songs. I hope people never mistake my quietness for disinterest or tiredness. It´s just me feeling really good about playing my songs.

Bed now. Berlin tomorrow and quite a bit of driving.
See you soon! B