Notes from the Underground

So a couple of weeks ago, I went on a short tour of Switzerland, Finland and Germany with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet (link has streaming clips of the Sextet, click 2nd and 3rd clips.)

The band for this tour consisted of:

Taylor - cornet
me me me - guitar
Matt Bauder - tenor sax, clarinet, flute
Tomas Fujiwara - drums
Mary Halvorson - guitar
Nate McBride - bass


Although he does have a problem with knives, Taylor is nonetheless an old friend of mine and has been kind enough to include me semi-regularly in his music projects. Here's a synopsis of the tour:

Landed in Zurich, had some bar chow with Mary and Tomas, watched a guy dry hump a woman in a wheelchair on the street, and eventually went solo. Ended up at a great bar late night that was under a highway. A wonderfully weird psychedelic blues duo was playing:



I would have stayed longer, but Matt and Tomas came crashing into the bar, grabbing random crotches and saying I had the key to the hotel room. Those two have a tour ritual of drinking 1 bottle of the local cough medicine, 1 bottle of the local chardonnay and then trying to embarrass me. Hasn't worked yet fellas!

The next night we played at Rote Fabrik, an artist collective's venue with multiple performance spaces and a history of lefty political action and arts advocacy:


Met up with Christian Weber at the show, a bassist who Tomas and I had an amazing improv gig with in Chicago last fall at the Umbrella Music Festival.


Next day hopped on a plane to Finland, hit the hotel for 10 minutes, then right to the venue for setup:




That show was probably our best. Everyone was inside the music, the solos were concise and the tunes were executed very well.

That night a few of us went to a club that was inside the hotel. The Fins were quite friendly and eager to talk. I seem to remember having acquired a very large bodyguard at one point, who would not let the "riff raff" talk to me, including our bassist Nate.

Anyways, I ended up eating Pizza late night (yup, the sun's a little kooky over there) with some nice locals.



We went to a friend's apartment (one of whom was a Somalian refugee)



and argued over the merits of a 911 conspiracy and the apparently rigged Obama election. Then I found a snake wrapped around my neck. It's skin was given to me as a souvenir.


I think I slept for about an hour and a half before getting on yet another plane (thank-you Clonazepam and red wine), headed for Cologne, Germany.

I will now describe the German part of the tour using pics courtesy of Tomas and Nate, because I left my phone/camera in Finland.

This is a view from the hotel (shwaeeet)


Found a legit beer hall.


With legit sausage.

"(insert funny caption with penis reference)"


A band disagreement ensued at the end of our 27 beers, because the gregarious host (whose assignment was to keep the spirit jovial and the rounds in motion) charged us for 35 beers. Most in the band chalked it up to local custom/screw the Americans. Tomas and I felt a little American know-how was appropriate and insisted on making a stink. The host ended up shoving Tomas, which really pissed off Mary and she started screaming at the host in French. Taylor grabbed a sausage and gave the host a good ankle thrashing while Nate and I yucked it up over some Spaetzel. We ran out yelling the theme to "Different Strokes" and calmed ourselves down at the local arcade


The next day we rehearsed for our gig, which included some really great charts from other band members.


The gig went well. Personally, I liked Finland better, but this one was totally solid and it was nice to mix up the old repetoire with new compositions.

I really enjoyed this tour. Good tunes, Good peeps, weird shit. That's all I ask.