After our strange stay at the Danish air bnb with no sheets or towels, we took a ferry from Denmark to Germany, and I slept in the van to make up for the lack of sleep the night before. When we got to Berlin, we got acquainted with our funky little dressing room at Cassiopeia. The bathroom was pretty gross backstage, but at least there was one. (After the show, I attempted to take a shower because I was completely drenched in sweat, but the water never got hot, as I stood there naked for ten minutes waiting and shivering. It was an aborted mission. So I risked getting plantar warts for no reason in that raunchy shower. Really should have brought flip-flops on this tour.)
We had our VIP meet and greets and they were so sweet. An older German man with a white beard, dressed from head to toe in black leather, and a male-female best friend duo who flew in from Estonia for the show.
All the shows have been great on this tour, but I’d say Berlin was my favorite yet (from the Europe leg). It was sold-out, and there was so much energy in that room. It’s so easy to put on an electrifying performance to a sold-out show. The energy in the room is palpable, and all you have to do is just tap into it and let loose. It was humid in that room. My body and my spirit felt lubricated from all the moisture. Some shows I just feel completely loose, and that’s the greatest feeling. Those are the best shows.
It was also an extra-special show for us because our old, dear friend, Rachel McCollum was there. Rachel and I became close friends many years ago, when we both worked together at Buffalo Exchange, a resale shop in Hollywod. I worked there when I was twenty, and that’s where I met the core base of all my best friends in L.A. Rachel is a super-talented artist. She innovated her own genre of art, which she named “Graffelti”: graffiti + felt. She makes intricate cut-outs of colorful felt shapes, which she then sticks to urban landscapes and walls. In tradition with asking our friends to do our cover art, we asked her to do the album art for our second LP. Rachel is the visionary behind our Femejism album cover—that technicolor, pyschadelic masterpiece.
Rachel has lived in Berlin for the better part of a decade now. When she showed up at Cassiopeia, her face and lips were moving in a strange way as she spoke. She informed us that she had just come straight from the dentist, where she had gotten six temporary crowns on her teeth, and that her strangely stiff face was a result of novacane, not “bad botox,” as she put it. Now that she’s on German healthcare, she can finally get caught up with years of dental work she’s been needing to do.
There was a dude who worked at the venue who was a real prick. When Rachel arrived, Julie gave her the wristband that had been reserved for her. This employee began to yell at Julie, telling her that she can’t just let anyone into the venue because it was a sold-out show. Julie informed him that Rachel had been advanced on our crew list in earlier emails, and that we had been given a set amount of wrist-bands—that one had been reserved for her. He was revved up and ready for a fight. He looked at Julie and said, “We’ll talk about this later!” She came backstage and we all talked about what a tool he was, and that— no thank you—she did not want to “have a talk” with him later. Dumb dumb dumb. Just the worst type of mansplaining. Not even knowing what he’s talking about. More like mis-plaining. Not only that, but Julie had asked to push doors by fifteen minutes, to which he made a big stink about. But then about twenty minutes later, he popped by our dressing room to inform us that he was going to push doors another fifteen minutes. Dumb.
After our show, we drove a couple hours, and then checked into our Ibis Budget hotel. Mariana, Martyna, and I went up to our room and there were three litte single beds all lined up, and I said to the girls that we were just like the three bears, straight out of the fairy tale.
Martyna and Mariana were only scheduled to be with us for the Europe portion of our tour. As the end of the Europe tour neared, I started to feel the pang of missing them already. I didn’t want them to leave the tour. Growing up, I went to sleepaway summer camp every year, and I often think that tour is like summer camp in certain ways. Mainly because close friendships blossom in a very quick period of time, due to the close proximity, extended hours spent with those people, and the unique adventures that are shared.
Our next stop was Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, at a venue named De Casino. It’s a beautiful, classy venue, with a big, lovely backstage. Great hospitality and catering. The show was really fun, and there was real colorful characters in the crowd, dancing around, reminiscent of the Grateful Dead festivals I went to as a kid.
The van was all packed-up and we were ready to depart, when suddenly the mood shifted. Pablo, our beloved, Welsh, sound guy, couldn’t locate the van keys. Incredibly out of character for him. Just a testament to how overworked and sleep-deprived we all are. We each turned on the flashlight function on our iphones, and began to search high and low for those van keys—laying down on the pavement to see if they were under the van, retracing Pablo’s steps up the staircase into the venue, and into the bathroom upstairs. We looked in flower pots and in the grass. Sollen and Pablo dug threw the trash cans to see if he had accidentally tossed them. The guys unloaded all the gear out of the back of the van to see if they were hiding in there somewhere, but no dice. So they loaded everything back in. After about an hour of searching, things were starting to look like it was going to be a very long night, and we had a show in Amsterdam the next night. Julie called the van rental company to tell them that we couldn’t locate the key fab, to which the person’s first reply was, “you’re going to have to pay for that.” We already knew that would be the case. We just needed a solution.
Martyna mentioned that maybe Hot Wax had accidentally taken the keys, thinking that they were there’s. So Julie called someone in Hot Wax’s camp, and their tour manager, Steve, said that he remembered seeing Pablo hand them to Martyna to hold while he was loading the van. Martyna reached into her fanny pack, and after digging around for a second, she found the keys. She was mortified, and so was Pablo. Neither of them had any recollection of this happening. Sleep. Deprivation. They were both a bit traumatized after this, embarrassed by the whole ordeal. I couldn’t help but crack a couple jokes at their expense. But really we were all just relieved to have found them.
The next show was in Amsterdam at Bitterzoet. The rest of the crew did some sight-seeing for a couple hours, but I took a nap in the van, as I hadn’t been sleeping during the nights at all. I told Julie some stories from my first visit to Amsterdam when I was eighteen. My best friend and I took a summer backpacking trip through Europe and one of our first stops was Amsterdam. We had our travel book that told us all the things we were supposed to see in each city, and of course, we were drawn to the most perverted things. We went to the red light district and saw a live sex show, and it turns out watching two strangers have sex on a stage is actually kind of weird. Not sure what we were expecting. Julie asked if it was hot, to which I replied, “no, not really.” It’s basically just sex theater. Or a sex circus. Weird and a little gross.
When I was in the dressing room at Bitterzoet, I spotted an old, tattered Deap Vally sticker on the wall. That’s when I realized that we had probably played this venue before. Then I spotted another weathered Deap Vally sticker on the wall. More evidence that we were here. There’s that Fight Club feeling again.
When I was on stage, I was recalling playing in that room before, ten years earlier, but really feeling like it was different now, somehow. I perceived it differently back then. I think the room felt bigger and darker last time. When I had walked into the venue at first, I didn’t realize we had played there before. It’s funny how you perceive a place differently when you think it’s your first time there and your previous memory isn’t coloring the new one. It’s like looking at it from a different angle or something. The venue didn’t let people on the balcony this time, and last time they did, so maybe that’s why it felt different. I’m also in a radically different era of my life that I was ten years ago, so I’m sure I just perceive things differently now. Memory is a funny thing like that. I often think about the sacred places where I spent the most time as a child—like my old schools, and the houses I grew up in. I visit these places often in my dreams. They’re larger than life now—almost mythical—these places that shaped me. I have a deep desire to visit them again after so many years, but also I’m a little afraid to, somehow. That they might seem so much smaller in real life, then how I remember them. That they will void of the magic and charm that they have in my memories and dreams, when I walked their halls.
The Amsterdam show was a lot of fun. I went into the crowd a couple times, and a cute fan came up while we were thanking the crowd at the end of our set, and she took a selfie with us on stage. After the show, we split up, and said some goodbyes. Sollen and Julie were going to fly to London the next day, so that they would be at customs to greet my mom with my kids. They said goodbye to the rest of us, and then me, Pablo, Martyna, and Mariana went and got some mediocre Turkish food. I shared a hotel room with Martyna and Mariana for a couple hours before they left at 4:30 am to catch their flights back to their native countries, Poland and Portugal. I hand-washed my stinky, tattered and torn, black stage dress while they slept. They woke up and I was still awake. We said some tearful goodbyes. I was really sad to see them go. My roommates. My pals. My girls.
The next day, Pablo and I made the epic journey from Amsterdam to London in the sprinter van. Pablo did all the driving, and I did all the sleeping. I was in a black hole of sleep, trying to get caught up on my “day off.” We went through customs and I was nodding off, while we sat and waited for them to look up our info. We took the Chunnel to the UK and made it to London around 9 pm. I ate some sub par tikka masala at the hotel, drank half a glass of wine, and then actually felt tired around midnight—so instead of working on my tour diary, as planned, decided to go to sleep, while the sensation was there. I didn’t want to be on a shitty sleeping schedule when my kids and mom arrived the next morning. I went to sleep, excited to see my family the next day, while also worrying profusely about them on their flight from Los Angeles to London.
I’ll catch you up on our UK tour in my next post!
photos 1 & 2 are by the incredibly talented Mariana Silva
photo 3 is of me and Rachel McCollum
It’s great that you’re doing these blogs because you’re showing that touring isn’t as glamorous as people may think. I hate cold showers and I dislike how several venue workers have been rude to Julie. I’m glad that you saw Rachel and that she was able to get dental care.
I love this tour diary
It's like being there