Wymeswold, UK - 3rd November 2011

Ha!  I am a blog-liar, clogging up the blogosphere with my sordid lies, because I never did update the blog from California as I said I would.  Wymeswold is not in California, as becomes quite obvious when you travel from one to the other.  Anyway, I wanted to close out the tour story while I'm still vaguely in tour mode, because otherwise I am just some fool writing a blog from his bedroom and nobody thinks that is cool.  I haven't been to sleep for a lot of hours and my body clock and my brain clock are having a full on fight, so forgive me if this is a little non-senscical.  I will do my best.

I felt pretty recharged after my stay in Half Moon Bay and was certainly in much better health than when I arrived.  Adam and I drove up to San Francisco where we met up with Rhys and his charming young son Daniel.  The four of us went out on the town, prompting one smart-arse to suggest Three Men and a Baby as a Halloween outfit (we later discussed this and abandoned the idea because NOBODY WANTS TO BE STEVE GUTTENBERG), and tried to have dinner in a crepe restaurant.  Well, I succeeded and Adam succeeded; I won't name names, but one of the Williams boys was over-tired and distracted by the ceiling-fans and this meant the other had to keep taking him outside to calm down and couldn't eat his tea.  Manners can be hard to learn.

I said a tender good-bye to Adam Lipman, which was a little easier to stomach given that he's coming to visit me in England in December, then Rhys and I dropped Daniel off with Jenny and did the only sensible thing two old friends can do in San Francisco on a Tuesday night: drank loads of beer and played game after game of Ms Pac Man.  It was super fun to hang out with Rhys and he and Jenny laid on a fine British breakfast the next morning, containing earl grey tea and marmite (in different vessels, obv) before Rhys battled through the awful SF traffic to drop me off at the bus station from whence I was transported to San Luis Obispo.

San Luis Obispo is famous for 'Bubblegun Alley'.  Yep.  It's otherwise a pretty pleasant little Californian town with a young hip-looking population.  I spent a couple of hours hanging out with Rodi who set up the show for me, and it was interesting to go and chat to some of the people at the Occupy SLO camp, where a faction of occupiers had apparently split off because there were 'too many homeless people' hanging out there!  We went over to Cafe Kreuzberg where Rodi and her friends organised a guitar I could borrow and I set up to play.  The cafe was big and fairly crowded, but most people weren't interested in watching an obscure British guy singing his obscure British songs, so I was mostly playing to a small group of Rodi's friends and a couple of drunks who kept requesting songs I didn't know how play.  It wasn't a spectacular show, but it was fun to be able to sing 'properly' again now that my throat was a bit less constricted and I made off with a haul of about $4 in donations and a handful of muffins that the cafe hadn't sold that day.  Not too bad!

I had a vague lead for a show in Los Angeles the next day, but this turned out to be a dead end so I spent the whole of the next day travelling down the coast to San Diego.  A lot of the road goes right along the beach, which was pretty fun.  I arrived in San Diego feeling kind of grotty and jaded, but it was awesome to be met by my friend Taryn, who took me to to a totally banging late night burrito place where I ate very well.  At least the food was good: I think I actually ate it pretty inexpertly and got guacamole down myself, but Taryn was polite enough not to point it out.  Next day, I had a fun morning strolling around Taryn's neighbourhood in the beautiful, summery sunshine, then when Taryn got back from work we went out shopping for a Halloween outfit I could wear.  We soon decided it would be more fun to drink lots of beer, which we were ably assisted in by the beautiful Michael K. Sherk.  Mike was my touring parnter for the 12 week US jaunt I made in 2004 and I hadn't seen him since, so it was cool to hang with him.  He knew about some kind of open-mic/pot-luck party going down outside of town, so we all set out to go there.  Unfortunately, when Mike tries to drive me out of San Diego it makes his car break down.  This is what happened in 2004 and this is what happened in 2011 when his car started billowing smoke.  At one point we thought it might be about to explode, but it didn't do anything so dramatic, and we got towed to a nearby garage where a friend of Mike's picked us up and took us to the party.

I played a couple of songs to a small crowd, but it was fun to sing for Mike and Taryn.  Then Mike played a cool set, featuring the future-hit "I'm Afraid Of The Dark" which he co-wrote with Adam Lipman.  Then karaoke happened.  I will award one motivational post-card to the first person who can correctly identify the song I am singing here:

We all stayed at the Sherk family home in Encinitas and it was great to see Mike's wonderful parents Annie and Jerry the next morning.  Jerry runs one of my favourite pages on the internet, where he posts photos from his days as a defensive tackle for the Cleveland Browns and his later career as a sports photographer.  There are some amazing shots, which you can check out here.

We spent a lot of the day dossing about watching bits of Halloween movies, then later Mike and I went out to another Halloween party/show that night where we busted out our intense cover version of the Misfits' classic 'We Bite'.  I got a pretty nice sing-along going to my only vaguely Halloweeen themed song, 'I'm a Ghost'.  Then a dance party happened and I threw down some of my patented dance moves when New Order came on the stereo.  Some of you might have seen this move (and the corresponding look of disdain on Anja's face) replicated on dancefloors across Great Britain:

We had another slow kind of day after this before heading back to San Diego where Mike dropped me off and where Taryn and I went out for yet more halloween fun.  Americans love haloween.  I honestly am not generally a karaoke person at all, but for some reason (the fact that I had become so accustomed to performing night after night?  Boooooze?) I ended up singing again.  This time, Taryn and I did a stirring version of 'Don't You Want Me, Baby' by the Human League which I am informed was captured for the ages on film.  Let's hope, for all our sakes (especially Phil Oakey's) that this video never ever hits the internet.  Here are Taryn and I celebrating our triumphant performance by playing a game of hat switcheroo and shooting 'blue steel' at the camera.  At least I guess that's what I'm going for...

Taryn and I went home to watch an episode of the X-files which we were assured would be terrifying but was just stupid and the day was done.  The next couple of days were spent very pleasantly in San Diego, hanging out with Taryn doing not too much.  I had my first, wonderful, Trader Joe's experience, made some vegetable moussaka (inspired by Slam Noble, the lyrical bazooka), drank some bad "bull's blood" flavoured wine, finally watched 'Evil Dead', ran through some lawn sprinklers and had several other life-changing experiences.  On my last night, Mike came in to town and we went out for a fun night of drinks, pizza and shuffle-board.  I said my farewells to Mike that evening and to Taryn EARLY the next morning when she kindly dropped me off at the train station where I began my near 7000 mile trip back to Wymeswold.  It was a really great way to end the trip and I am very grateful to Mike and to Taryn for showing me such a wonderful time in SoCal.

So that was 6 AM on Tuesday morning (Californian time) and here I am at the other end of those 7000 miles at a shade before midnight on Wednesday.  My brain is too befuddled to try to make any kind of grand conclusion from all the drivel that I have seen fit to blog over the past 6 weeks, but I can at least say that it has been a wonderful experience and one that I am very glad to have gone through.  I met up with some of my favourite people along the way, made a whole load of new friends, spent time in some beautiful and fascinating places and generally had a ball every where I went.  I am extremely grateful to all the people who have helped me out along the way and owe so many people drinks, meals and hospitality that I will be paying back the debts for years to come.  At least I hope so: come see me in London!

Oh, and thanks to you, dear reader, for bearing with me through all the waffling, the drivel, and the sentences that didn't make any sense.  I'm new to blogging.  I will be very cross with myself if it takes me another seven years until I take myself out on tour again, so hopefully I will have some more adventures to inelegantly relay to you in the not too distant future.  Until then, may peace bewitch you...

Yours,

Hugh John Noble

xx

Half Moon Bay, CA - 25th October 2011

The latest update comes from Half Moon Bay, California: a town that has long held sway over my imagination as a semi-mythical, wholly magical place, partly because of its beautiful, evocative name and partly because it's where Adam Lipman comes from.  It's been a strange few days which I will do my best to sum up without droning on too much and without attempting a confusing collaboration (Adam's asleep [wimp]).

The day that the blog was last updated went pretty rapidly downhill as soon as I hit the 'publish post' button with 8 seconds remaining on our computer session.  Well actually, to be entirely accurate, the day had a small upturn and then a massive downturn: we went into a record store next to the venue where I bought a whole stack of exciting looking Congolese and South African records for $1 or $2 each including Zouk Machine's critically lauded 'Back Ground Experience 7' LP:

Jealous much?

However, the show we played at "In Other Words" the feminist bookstore in Portland, was utterly demoralising.  Adam played to me, the store volunteer and one vaguely interested customer; I played to Adam.  We helped to put away the 25 unused seats that had been put out for the show and proceeded directly to the dive bar across the street to get a drink as quickly as we could.  Realising that we had no place to stay for the night we seriously comtemplated drinking pint after pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon (America's Scummiest Beer TM) until we reached the point where sleeping in the car didn't seem too undesirable.  This would have been cheaper than paying for a motel you see.  Luckily, we managed to come up with a preferable plan which involved sacking off Portland (a town which is famous for hip music but which has been the scene of probably the two most depressing shows I have played in my life) and driving to Corvallis, OR.

Corvallis, as Adam Lipman noted on driving into the place, is a "super duper college town".  There were bone-head frat boys as far as the eye could see, loudly calling each other "fag" as far as the ear could hear.  Forunately the students we were staying with were considerably more civilised than this and we were grateful to Brian for letting us stay with him.  The next day, we dossed around in Corvallis for a while, writing a couple of new songs for our hypothetical country record and taking what enjoyment we could out of the town's somewhat meager resources until show-time rolled around.  By this time, my creeping suspicion that I was starting to get ill had blossomed into a definite fluey kind of illness and I was feeling a bit sorry for myself.  We shared the line-up with a guy called Josh, who played 9-minute acoustic prog songs and finished with a 're-imagining' of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' which will live long in the memory.  Adam played a great set, but I was struggling to sing properly (ha!) and was feeling very un-energetic for my set.  Brian played a set of his Leonard Cohen inspired songs to finish, then we went back to his place where we sat up for a while having a very entertaining chat on a diverse range of topics inclusing Oscar Wilde's ideas on 'the perfect pleasure' and whether Woody Allen's latest is "great" or "an utter piece of shit", before turning in for the night.

We had a very long drive to Arcata, CA the next day, which Adam and I passed by cracking jokes for each other and listening to Tom Petty's greatest hits (the album of the tour by a wide margin: so many hits!), though we were both feeling pretty jaded by the time we arrived in Arcata.  The fact that we had stopped off to do yet more ill-advised record shopping in Eugene, OR also dragged out the journey.  Adam and I are bad for each other in this respect, because we egg each other on to spend money in the entirely non-sensical belief that if one of us over-spends, this justifies the other's doing so.  Anyway, the buzz of such reckless consumerism had long worn off by the time we got to the venue, Blondies, and I was able to add skull-splitting headaches to my list of symptoms by this point, making me a pretty miserable individual and no doubt very poor company for Adam.

The show had been booked without a local act on the bill, which meant we were reliant on Humboldt County's resident Hugh John Noble and Adam Lipman fans to constitute our audience.  Surprisingly, this meant a pretty poor showing.  I fumbled through a few songs, though I could barely croak out the words and I got close to blacking out from the pain in my head a couple of times (I know, diddums...), which didn't seem to matter seeing as everybody was talking anyway!  Adam faired a little better though he still felt pretty shitty about the show.  We hung out with some local friends of Adam's who had set up the show and I probably came across as extremely anti-social as all I could think about was getting to sleep and hoping I felt at least a little better in the morning.

Some of you who know me (particularly ex-girlfriends?) may have noticed previously that I'm not very good at being ill...

Luckily for me, and for readers growing tired of my constant whinging, I did feel a little better in the morning!  Not well by any stretch, but certainly better.  The show that I thought I had set up in Chico turned out to be a figment of my over-active imagination, inspired by a cafe owner who really needs to get better at keeping up with his e-mail correspondence, so we decided to drive back to Adam's home base in Half Moon Bay.  This was another long, long drive and both of our spirits were pretty low by this point after a rotten run of luck and a lack of sleep, decent food and opportunities to attend to our personal hygeine.  If I had had to get through this leg of the tour by myself (feeling sick and feeble, making no money, receving no encouragement, almost as far away from home as I could possibly be) I may well have had some kind of breakdown, but having Adam to keep me company made it not only tolerable but also a lot of fun at times.  We've had a lot of laughs and if you can afford to keep up with his record-buying habits, I can whole-heartedly endorse him as a touring partner.

We got in to Adam's place in Monterra late in the evening, after a couple of stops en route and it was one of the most pleasant experiences I can ever recall to take a shower and lie down on a freshly made bed for a little while.  Some good food, a shot of whiskey and a couple of episodes of 'Mr Show' had us in much higher spirits and I went to bed feeling glad to have a short break in which to relax and live something akin to normal life for a couple of days.

Yesterday was very low-key.  We dropped off the rental car, took a stroll along the coast-line and then went out for dinner with Adam's wonderful and hilarious mum.  Adam and I went out for a couple of drinks and scared away some locals by putting on Lou Reed's 'I Wanna Be Black' on the juke-box, before heading back to his mum's house to sit in the jacuzzi with a drink and engage in conversation which veered rapidly between the heavily philosophical and the hilariously juvenile.  Good times.

Today has involved a trip to Rasputin's Records in Berkeley, which I would strongly recommend anybody as poor and stupid as me should enter under no circumstances.  Any day now I'm expecting a personal phone call from Barry O to thank me for my contribution in rejuvenating the American economy.  This evening I'm heading over to San Francisco to hang out with my old friend and former footballing mentor, Mr Rhys Williams and his young family, which I am terrifically excited about.  And tomorrow morning I take the bus to San Luis Obispo and have to stop pretending to be a normal human being and start pretending to be a touring musician again.  The tour is reaching an end, but it should be fun heading back to SoCal where, among other treats, getting to hang out again with both Mike Sherk and Taryn Popplewell are particularly enticing.

I still haven't got my camera back and it looks like, despite the best efforts of Travis (thanks, man), I may not have it until I get back to the UK, which means a pretty text heavy blog entry, I'm afraid.  But here are some photos from earlier in the tour that friends of mine have posted on facebook:

Here are Dustin and I in Chicago, responding to the prompt "Pose for your album cover" from Ally:

Here's me pretending to be an American in Boise, ID, slobbing out drinking Miller Lite and watching the 'football' (go Broncos!), shot by April:

... I did pack more than one tee-shirt I promise.

And this is the extremely sloppy show that I played drunkenly and in a contrary mood later that day in Boise, also shot by April:

Alright.  That's all for now.  I will squeeze in at least one more update from California before I fly back to London.  Please do keep me up to date with what's going on with you guys.

Love,
Hugh
x

Portland, OR - 20th October 2011

So this post finds me in a public library in Portland, Oregon, sitting across a desk from Adam Lipman.  We're on the 3rd date of this leg of the tour and apart from the fact that we're having a totally wonderful time, it's been a disaster.  So, really it hasn't been a disaster at all!  Adam is going to be my collaborator on this post, which will hopefully make up for the fact that I left my camera behind in Boise, Idaho so have no photos to share.  Hopefully.

Immediately after my last post I went out to meet Tom who gave me a ride up to Utah.  He's a very friendly and generous guy and it was fascinating and fun to hang out with him for a few hours.  He is a Mormon guy who works in IT but has a side-line selling and acting as an ambassador for a salt-water based health product which he is very passionate about.  Though he failed to convince me of its miraculous powers, it was interesting and kind surreal to hear him talk at such great length on the subject.  Tom was kind enough to drive out of his way and drop me off at the venue in Salt Lake City and I am extremely grateful to him for his help getting me out of a tight spot.

The show in Salt Lake City take place within a few hunderd yards of the Mormon temple, inside the Utah Pride Centre, which is a community and resource centre for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.  This juxtaposition was pretty fun for me and given that Mormons are not world-reknowned for their liberal attitudes towards sexuality, and that the one Mormon I have ever known personally had a real hard time coming out as gay, I was pleased to see this centre apparently thriving.  The show I played was with a girl called Sally Yoo, who had some pretty great songs, and the kids who came to the show were really fun to hang out with.  They took me to a fast-food eaterty called Del Taco after the show where I was able to try some outrageously American food: deep fried macaroni cheese bites!  Not quite as disgusting as I'd hoped for, but still plenty disgusting enough.  It was a lot of fun chatting with the members of the local band Prince Polo until it was time for me to catch the overnight train to Boise, Idaho.

I got to Boise very early in the morning and sat in an empty cafe until the sun rose and the town woke up.  My friend Travis (another person I met back in 2004) came to pick me up and chauffeured me around town so that I could buy myself some new socks (having apparently left a few pairs scattered across the USA).  We then went back to Travis' house where I was reunited with his lovely wife April and got to meet their great daughter Emma.  I spent the afternoon trying to be as American as possible; drinking cans of Miller Lite in front of the 'football' on TV (go Broncos!), then we headed over to the show at a place called Grandma's House.  There were some pretty funny high-concept acts playing on the bill and a lot of people hanging out, but when I played most people decided to stay outside and chat rather than watch me play.  Given how much I'd had to drink, maybe this was just as well and I'm sure my set veered the wrong side of the shambolic/charming divide that I probably stray too close to at the best of times.  It was a fun night though!

The next show was in Kennewick, WA which is a pretty small town with not a great deal going on, but the show was a success on all fronts.  Richard who put on the gig was a cool guy and he and his wife were very welcoming; there were some cool, friendly people in the audience and the other people who played were pretty good.  I also made enough money to swell my diminishing coffers, which was very timely.  I had a good night's sleep, a shower and some breakfast in the morning and caught the bus up to Bellingham feeling in pretty fine fettle.

Bellingham is right up by the Canadian border and is a beautiful area, with mountain and sea views and a nice kind of vibe to it as far as I could tell.  The show took place in a basement venue called 'Little Wisconsin' and was one of the most fun on the tour so far.  Everyone was hanging out drinking and chatting and there was the kind of party atmosphere that only a bunch of unemployed people can summon on a Monday night.  My show went over pretty well and the punk band Girl Guts played a barnstorming set which I enjoyed very much.  The next morning, my gracious host Andrew failed to find the place where we'd been promised free brunch, so we wondered aimlessly around until I had to leave town for Seattle.

Enter Adam Lipman:  Adam and I are going to write this section collaboratively which should be confusing and arduous given our track record of collaborative song-writing, but we'll come to that later.  Adam picked me up in Seattle and I proceeded to fail my first job as navigator, getting us lost instantly, but we eventually made it over to the venue, a joint called Cafe Racer.  We had a few hours to kill so we asked the bar tender for directions to a good record store and set out to find that.  It was closed, so we asked some hip looking kids if there were any other good places to go record shopping.  They suggested a place where we could buy "a load of crap". Trying to recall the name of the place, one friend asked another where "Brad" used to work.  Hugh, being the keen chap that we all know him for, heard Brad and assumed that it must be our friend Brad Dunn, who we were playing with that night. Hugh asked, and it was! Magical! And Brad had even told them about the show. They did not come to the show.  But after we'd established our credibility they told us about the actual cool record store in Seattle. We bought Spankmaster by Kool Keith. 3 bucks each.
     After eating, we headed to the venue where we found Clownhead, a real life bona-fide sad clown. We had seen him earlier hamming it up for the passers-by, smiles and all. We dutifully ignored him. At the bar, though, we said hello and toasted to his miseries. Girl troubles. Even the clowns got it!
     Brad Dunn showed up and I hadn't seen him in years. He had been drinking all day and practicing. or maybe his drinking was the practicing. He was great fun to see again. And we had some great laughs. Free beers all around! Ricky showed up as well and the show began. Me going first with Hugh accompanying me on guitar. Hugh got heckled by a man we had first noticed talkinga bout how he didnt much like swedes, norwegians, sri lankans. and he was making fun of his billy corgan look alike friend for wanting a girl who could go hiking and not complain. This ted nugent look a like mocked our practicing then shouted to Hugh to "oh god please make it stop!" A note here from adam and ricky. neither of us heard this. All we saw was hugh, in the middle of a song shouting in furious vengeance at the attacker.  Brad played a curious and noisy set of guitar instrumentals, which were pretty rad and the show, such as it was, was over.  We went back to Ricky's to drink some bad white wine and pore over his collection of schlocky VHS tapes before hitting the sack.  The next day, Ricky treated us to brunch, complete with bloody marys.  Thanks Ricky!

We drove down to Olympia, WA, marvelling at some famous indie street-signs on the way (Sleater-Kinney!  Martin Way!).  On arriving, we proceeded to spend 45 ridiculous minutes of umming and ahhing in a pretty fine record store, before eventually egging each other on to spend way more money than was sensible.  But we got some great records out of the deal and helped to stimulate the US economy.  Don't mention it, Barrack.

We met up with Adam's friend Ruth in her weird residence which is a sort of headquarters for community activists and crusty hangers-on.  We kicked back and relaxed for a couple of hours before heading over to the venue, Le Voyeur.  This was suspiciously empty, but we decided to hang out and take advantage of the free drinks on offer for performers while we waited for the crowd and the other band to show up.  The hours ticked by and Adam and I were having a blast, drinking and jawing, until it became painfully apparent that there was to be no other band and there was to be no audience.  In fact, there was to be no show.  We felt pretty guilty drinking all that free booze, but luckily the bar-staff felt guiltier that we'd come all that way for nothing and kept the drinks coming.  It was win-win.  We made our way back to Ruth's and stayed up too late trying to write country songs together.  We didn't write country songs, but we came up with something weird and have two tracks for our forthcoming LP.  Look out for it.

We said our fond farewells to the delightful Ruth Allison and our less fond farewells to the weirdo who hangs out in her house with a knife attached to his belt (!), then drove over to Portland where you now find us.

More adventures to come.  Hopefully more audience members too.

More soon.
Hugh and Adam
xx

Grand Junction CO - 14th October 2011

Hey everyone.  Another rather lengthy gap between updates and I only have 11 minutes left on this computer in Grand Junction public library, so I'll try to make this quick.

Columbia MO is definitely a college town.  The kids who live there call it CoMo, but any suspicions that this might have something to do with Perry Como should be dispelled by this photographic evidence from the show:

Kids in CoMo like to drink and then they apparently like to play 'Spin the bottle' (no really!) and take off their clothes.  Luckily they also like to listen to music and generally have a fun time, so the show was a real highlight of the tour.  I felt a little bit old and out of place (and, no, I didn't join in with the spin the bottle), but everyone was really friendly and fun to talk to.  This dude Noah played a cool set and also gave me a ride in to Kansas City the next day, which was swell of him.

From Kansas City I took the Greyhound over to Topeka, KS.  I had a lot of fun strolling around Topeka, which has some lovely old houses and a church with some of the eeriest sounding chimes I've ever heard.  The weather is still beautiful and Summery here which is great, because I hear I missed Summer in England when it finally arrived.  Here's a photo from my stroll around Topeka:

The show I played in town was not a lot of fun, partly becasue I was feeling pretty fatigued from my late and rather boozy night in Columbia, and partly because the show was full of stoner kids who wanted to play long stodgy jams using 'ethnic' instruments and loads of expensive guitar pedals.  There was also a white kid with dreadlocks who did slam poetry about how awesome slam poetry is.  Not really my kind of scene.  BUT Sarah, who set up the show, was really nice and kind and the people that I actually spoke to were very friendly and welcoming.

The next day was a day of EXTREME highs and lows, making the preceding emotional landscape of the tour seem somewhat akin to Kansas' monotonous topography.  I realised that there is no bus service between Topeka and Omaha NE, which admittedly I should have noticed far earlier, so was left with no choice but to try my hand at hitch-hiking.  Hitch-hiking is not too common in America these days as the people here (just like in the UK) have cultivated the notion that anybody one doesn't know is likely to be a murdering paedophile psychopath.  Topeka to Omaha is a three hour drive.  It took me 8.  This is what it looks like when you're hitch-hiking in Kansas:

Still, I made it and the despair that I occasionally felt along the way has long since dissipated, leaving me with an experience that I'm glad I was able to have.  Thanks to Tom, the hill-billy couple whose names I didn't catch, propane-salesman Fred, and particularly Gary who drove 20 miles out of his way to drop me off in Omaha.  May karma see that you all get yours.  An interesting experience then, but one I will try my best to avoid repeating.

I had time to get some decent chana masala (my first food of the day) before the show so was feeling a lot better by the time I got on stage.  A band called Archaeology (from Portland) played who were pretty fun and then 'South of Lincoln' played, which is a guy called Max who sang some intriguing songs in a nicely controlled fashion.  Max and I met up the next day when he interviewed and photographed me for a Nebraska music web-zine and also bought me some good Mexican food.  Thanks, Max!

I spent the whole day in Omaha, which seems like a cool town, then caught the overnight train to Denver, CO.  Going down to Denver makes it hard for me not to get this song in my head, which is alright with me!

I saw the sun coming up over Colorado which is beautiful and spent the whole day wandering around the town in the sunshine.  I had a picnic lunch of decent bread, decent cheese and lots of salad on the grass in front of the capitol building and watched the 'Occupy Denver' protestors below me.  Edible bread and cheese are hard to come by here, so I was feeling pretty contented.

The show in Denver was at a place called Mouth House, a gargantuan complex of artists, musicians and comedians, with a great positive creative vibe to it.  I sat in the park opposite the house reading Kazantzakis while I waited for show-time to roll around, feeling very much like I was where I should be.  The show was a blast and there were some very cool and interesting people around.  The band Fiction is Fun played a rollicking, drunken set, which looked a bit like this:

I caught the bus to Grand Junction yesterday, through some of the most beautiful and dramatic countryside America has to offer.  During a stop-over I took a photo of my replica picnic lunch:

Grand Junction itself is a bit of a one-horse town and the show I had wasn't much of a show at all.  I played outside a cafe to 6 people who were trying to get on with the conversations I had interrupted when I started singing.  I made $2.01, but I got a pretty fine sandwich and a poem from one customer who has shared my misfortune in living in Taunton (Somerset) for a time!

Today I am catching a lift up to Salt Lake City, a town I enjoyed very much last time I was there.  The person driving is only going as far as Orem, a town about 35 miles south of SLC, so I may have to hitch-hike again if the public transport options are as limited as they have been elsewhere.  Maybe my luck will be better this time: Mormons are friendly, right?

Alright.  That's all for now.  Thanks for reading and keep in touch.

Hugh

x

PS - in case anyone was marvelling at my typing speed, my session at the computer got extended by abother 15 minutes...

Columbia, MO - 8 October

Man alive, Pittsburgh seems like a long time ago, but I'll do my best to remember what's been going on since then and to relay it to you without going on for too long.  Here goes...


Youngstown OH, despite having a Springsteen song about it, appears to be a town with little to recommend it.  Obviously, I don't get a chance to learn a great deal about any town I go to, so I'm almost certainly being unfair, but Yo-Town (as some locals apparently call it) is the one place so far which I have no interest in returning to.  Jenn Gooch and I (and her dog) drove in to town and had a walk around the desserted downtown area in the bitterly cold wind without seeing anything of interest, then had something to eat before heading over to the Lemon Grove.  The guy who booked the show (politically conscious hip hop artist MC Homeless) had left town and I arrived at around 8 to discover that the show was supposed to start at 7 as an 'R&B party night' was starting at 9.  There were a few people in the bar, but nobody interested in watching any music, so Jenn and I each did a short set, singing to each other, before taking our $50 and running away.  In our haste to leave Youngstown behind forever, we ended up getting repeatedly lost and at one point feared we were doomed to spend all eternity in Yo-Town as penance for some monumental sins we must have commited, but eventually we escaped back to Pittsburgh.  Although the show was pretty pointless it was a lot of fun to hang out with Jenn and hear stories from her fascinating life which involved using a violin scholarship to escape from a Texan trailer park and some extreme evangelical Christian parents!


The next morning began with a mad rush to fix my suitcase and get to the station in time for my bus to Toledo.  This is a race I won, but not comfortably.  My first ride on a Greyhound bus was unpleasant enough to make the prospect of all the coming hours I will be spending on them rather daunting.  It was rancid.  But it got me to Toledo.  I walked through another desserted downtown and made my way to The Revolution Collective, a house-venue run by some radical kids and one US military veteran.  They were all very friendly and welcoming.  Most excitingly of all, this is where the leg of the tour I was to spend with my friend Dustin Kcrcatovich began.  He is a friend whom I met on my first trip over here and I was excited to see him again.  He is currently playing under the name Mall Mutants and makes a kind of psychedelic noise music constructed out of looped guitar and vocal parts and tape samples put through an array of pedals.  It's great.  We each played our sets to a small-ish but fairly enthusiastic crowd, then hung out to watch the other bands.  Jerry Fels & The Jerry Fels was goofy and fun and slightly reminiscent of his fellow Massachusetian, the wonderful Don Lennon.  Here he is in action:

One of the kids from the next band ('Marky Strange') had told Dustin's lovely girlfriend Monika that she should get ready to watch "the best band in the world".  Apparently he had failed to notice that his band plays a particularly turgid and graceless variant of unconvincingly 'groovy' classic rock.  The band members that I spoke to were nice, but we felt it necessary to make our excuses and leave two songs into their set  and we drove back to Dustin's place in Ypsilanti MI.


The next show was in Ann Arbor, which is a cool little college town a little south of Detroit.  I spend the day walking around town and trying to set up some more shows for later in the tour while Dustin was at work, then we met up for some good Lebanese food before heading to the venue, Name Brand Tattoo.  This was my first trip to a tattoo parlour and was probably a lot more pleasant that I imagine they usually are.  Dustin introduced his stage outfit (a sharp but seedy suit and tie, worn with biker boots and gelled hair) which made his show a lot of fun.  Some hilariously hip looking dude called HLEP performed a fun noise set using cassettes and reverb heavy vocals, and my friend Robert Doherty played a fine set of his intriguing guitar songs.  I met Robert a few months back in Cardiff, before he moved to Michigan, and it was really great to see him again and to meet his wife, Courtney.  Here's Robert playing in front of some tattoo designs:

The next day we picked up a hire car and drove over to Kalamazoo.  Cruising down the highway listening to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers is a pretty big thrill to a kid from the Midlands!  The show in Kalamazoo was at a shop called "i heart ipanema" and was set up by my friends Ben and Nicole Angelo who I also met last time I was over here.  It was wonderful to see them and I was really touched by their kindness and generosity, just as I had been 7 years ago.  The show was a lot of fun and my set went pretty smoothly apart from one point where I was startled by a picture of Bill Cosby's face and forgot what I was doing.  I tried to get a 'Graduate' vibe in this photo of Mall Mutants doing his thing:

We didn't have a show the next day, but drove up to Chicago anyway based on a promise of some dinner and a place to stay from Ally, a girl I had met over the summer at a London music festival.  This turned out to be an excellent choice because we were looked after quite sensationally and it was great to hang out with Ally some more.  Our stay involved eating a lot of rich food, buying some great and very cheap records, playing 'Youtube DJ', getting lost in Chicago and generally having a great time.


We drove up to Lake Villa IL to play at a bizarre 'hookah lounge' called Swing State.  Our payment for the night was a free hookah of pumpkin flavoured tobacco and all the coffee we could drink.  Here's me 'enjoying' some hookah:

And here's Dustin performing in front of a 'psychedelic light show' which could have been tailored for his act:

The band we were supposed to be playing with (The Cryptics of Devon, New Hampshire) turned up, took one look at the venue and drove off in their van, which meant that Dustin and I were the only people playing.    The most notable event of the day was probably the creation of a new alter-ego for Dustin, 'Teddy Fabz'.  The product of two slightly cracked, sleep-deprived minds on a series of long, boring drives through uninspiring countryside, the Teddy Fabz concept developed over the following days into an unstoppable monster and a ridiculous private joke of limited external interest, but of massive hilarity to the two of us.  I couldn't begin to detail the finer points here, but look out for his forthcoming album on the FM dust label next year.  


We stayed with Liz, whom I had contacted through the couchsurfing web-site and she also looked after us very well and was fun to hang out with.  We sat around listening to Terry Riley's 'A Rainbow in Curved Air' and chatting until tour fatigue overcame us.  We were up early the next morning for the drive down to Urbana IL.  The weather had become beautifully summery by this point and the combination of the heat, lack of sleep, and the apparent lack of fun, free things to do in Urbana left us feeling pretty lethargic, so it was nice to be able to go the venue/house (Transporter Room 3) early and relax before the show.  Sitting on the porch with my feet up and drinking some sub-par American beer, it was good to spend some time reflecting on the last few days.  The show was kind of quiet, but everyone was really friendly.  I played a pretty crap set I thought, but nobody seemed to minded.  We went out for a quick drink in Urbana which was full of college girls who'd drunk too much, then headed back to the house where I slept in a skanky room on a bed which looked a little bit like it might give me scabies.  This is what being on tour is supposed to be like and I had really been spoiled by the previous few days!


And that brings me up to yesterday which was the last show I got to play with Dustin.  We drove over to St Louis MO, which seemed like a slightly more exciting town, where we had a blast talking to each other in bad southern accents ("Can you bejewel this gun for me, son?  It's for my wife...") and trying to see the funny side of some horrendously right-wing talk radio we stumbled across.  We ate mediocre curry then sat in the beautiful sunshine in a beautiful park for a little while before going over to Pancake Productions where we were to play.  Again, the people setting up and attending the show were wonderfully friendly and the show was a blast.  The evening began with a sublime performance from Dustin/Mall Mutants/Teddy Fabz, carried off in spite of the fact that his performance suit had reached the point where it may have been considered an environmental risk.  Rob, who set up the show performed an amusing and very high-energy set as Googleplexia.  This is what it looked like:

We stayed with Dustin's friends Cara and Travis, who were great fun to hang out with and treated us very kindly, offering a black bean burrito, a few more cans of that classy American beer and some fun conversation right through to 4:30 AM or so.  This morning's package included a wonderful breakfast sandwich and a guided tour of St Louis from Cara.  I said my emotional goodbyes to Dustin and boarded  the last megabus of the tour to Columbia MO, where I am currently sitting on the porch while my host Andrew makes me some dinner.  Not bad.


It's been a great past few days and I've had so much fun hanging out with Dustin.  Going from being chauffeured around and having somebody to be silly with back to my solitary bus-rides seems like kind of a shame, but this way also has it's charms and I'm still totally excited just to be out here doing the thing that I like to do best.


I will try to update this sooner in order that the next entry does not go on so long!  And in the mean-time I'd love to hear more news from the people I know.  Keep in touch.


Hugh
x

Pittsburgh, PA - 30th September

More ups and downs in these United States, but I'm enjoying even the downs, so there's nothing to complain about!  I'm staying with Julia and Alyssa in Pittsburgh.  These are people I found through the 'couchsurfing' web-site and they're super cool and friendly and gave me some pretty great lunch yesterday, despite my turning up 2 hours late after deciding to walk all the way to their place from downtown Pittsburgh.

Alright, picking up where I left off last time, the show in Brooklyn was awesome fun.  Not many peole came out, but it was great to hang out with Steve Shiffman and Mike & Dina from Prewar Yardsale, none of whom I have seen in ages.  It was also cool to meet Nan Turner and 'Major' Matt, who I've heard about a lot down the years and Dashan whose web-site I once drew a really crap comic for (http://www.abstractextract.com/luvalotrecords/wavepictures.jpg).

Prewar Yardsale is one of the greatest bands currently in existence.  It's not easy to describe how they sound, but this is what they look like:

I went back to Ridgewood after the show to take advantage of Brendon & Linda's good natured hospitality again, then set off for Philadelphia in the morning, feeling a little sad to be leaving New York, but excited to see what happened next.

Philadelphia found me in a foul mood, because the broken wheel on my crappy suitcase went one further than being broken and actually fell off.  I dragged and carried the thing for about 15 minutes in the wrong direction in some pretty intense heat and was feeling pretty frustrated, cursing under my breath and occasionally stopping to give the suitcase a kick.  Fortune smiled upon me though and I soon followed suit, spotting a Salvation Army shop and picking up a new suitcase for $15.  From there things picked up.  I had an enormous plate of food for lunch in a cafe which bizarrely had Elastica and the Futureheads playing on the stereo.  Then I headed over to meet Nadav Carmel, who is a friend I met last time I was in the US.  It was awesome to see him and I was pleased to hear I'm taller than he remembered!  Nadav, even more than the Salvation Army, was the real salvation of my trip to Philadelphia because it had become apparent by the early evening that my show in Philadelphia, which I'd confirmed several months ago, had either been cancelled or never existed at all.  Which was a massive disappointment obviously, but hanging out with Nadav and his lovely girlfriend, Laura, made it a fun night anyway.

Here's Nadav and me trying to recreate a moment from 7 years ago without the aid of a gilt-framed poster of Freddie Mercury in his pomp...

Next to Harrisburg!  Most of you probably haven't heard of Harrisburg and I certainly hadn't before I booked this tour, but I liked the town a lot.  It has some beautiful architecture in it, including the Pennsylvania state capital building, and sits on the banks of a wide river.  I walked around in the pouring rain while the sun shone simultaneously, creating some pretty dramatic light.  I took a lot of moody photographs, but here's just one:

And here's a, possibly even moodier, photo of the show I played in town:

As you can see, the show was in a church, which I always find a little weird, but all the kids hanging out were really friendly and the other people who played (The Spinning Game [pictured] and Ship Wrecks) were good.  I ended up staying in a weird kind of Christian commune house which the residents sort of throw open to anyone in town in need of a place to stay, which is really nice of them.  Being massively prejudiced and narrow-minded I harbour weird suspicions about American Christian kids and felt kind of uncomfortable sleeping in the same room as a creepy looking home made shrine, but everyone I met was so kind and friendly and I was made to feel very welcome.

One last photo from Harrisburg, just in case any of you are thinking that this 'America' I'm writing about doesn't seem like America at all:

I thought it would be highly amusing to kill the time I had at Harrisburg Mall before my bus arrived, walking around in this shop looking at the guns and the crossbows and the hunting 'trophies', but actually it just made me feel like I might lose the cinnamon bagel I'd had for breakfast...

Next I took the now familiar megabus across to Pittsburgh through some beautiful countryside.  I had a long walk through the town which seems kind of cool, but definitely not a patch on Harrisburg aesthetically.  The show was in a place called Garfield Artworks, which is a cool space but was, again, pretty empty.  A pair of twins called Rose & Sara played, who were a lot of fun, and Jenn Gooch played some good songs on a weird looking tenor guitar.  She offered to drive me up to Youngstown today in her truck so hopefully we can play together tonight as well.  She's a Texan which maybe explains both the 'southern chivalry' and the truck-ownership.

So, Youngstown, Ohio next.  Everything I know about Youngstown I learned from the below so, obviously, I am expecting to have an amazing time!

Let me know how you're all doing some time please.

Hugh

x

Ridgewood, NYC - 26 September

So I'm four shows in to my tour and I'm having a lot of fun.  The shows have been very mixed but I've been having a great time, I've met some lovely people and I've been very well looked after.  I'm currently staying at 'Caponegro Urological Associates', which is where Brendon & Linda live.  I was introduced to these guys through my friend Dustin (Mall Mutants, who I'm touring with later) and I definitely owe him a drink or two for hooking me up, because these are good people to know!  The apartment is a former urologist's office and the show I played was in their living room (AKA the waiting room) which is a great space, complete with the original furniture and a few vintage urological catheters for decoration.  There was a decent crowd of friendly people and one boisterous dog.  And there were bloody marys!

Also on the bill was Drunken Barn Dance who sounded really cool, though unfortunately I had to run off to Jackson Heights to play another show.  This one was set up by NYC singer/activist/bicycle-accident-survivor Gio Safari and took place in a 'pop-up' community book shop in an abandoned storefront on Broadway.  It was another cool space to play in, though there weren't many people at the show.  There were some very earnest young men and women, including Human Hands dueting protest songs in the Pete Seeger mold.  I guess it's kind of heartening to think that this still happens in NYC.  Gio himself is currently occupying Wall Street!  Rage against the machine...


Here's Half Rational Animal playing a song at that show:

Before coming down to New York I played a show in Pawtucket, RI which was in a kind of dive bar with some,  uh, 'characterful' locals.  Everybody was really friendly and funny, but they were there to watch 'Wheel of Fortune', talk about baseball and to drink, rather than to watch music.  So the show was just the musicians playing to each other.  Luckily they were all lovely people and I enlisted Mike and Alex to play in my 'band' for the night.  Alex played violin beautifully and Mike played drums like a cross between Keith Moon and Animal from the Muppets.  It wasn't the most nuanced set I've ever played but it was fun to rock out a bit.  I made $2 from the show, which covered half of my bus fare up from Providence, but I also made a couple of friends so I guess I'll call that a profit!


Here's The Honey Brown playing:

And the first show of the tour!  This was in Allston which is kind of a run down part of Boston.  Some kid at the show explained to me that "Allston is Anarchy".  I'm not sure about that, but the Secret House of Pancakes, where the show took place, is definitely dealing in a kind of chaotic exuberance that is probably a lot more fun than actual anarchy would be.  I played a short set because I felt like the young punk kids in attendance were probably waiting for something a bit more high-energy than I, still a bit jet-lagged and blurry feeling (not to mention being maybe the oldest person in the room!) was capable of giving them.  Still, people seemed appreciative chatting after the show.  After I played things heated up a bit both figuratively and literally.  Here's a photo of 'Fort! The Band' playing.  It was sweaty...

In between sets I went outside to cool down a bit and was surprised to find myself being assailed by a police officer.  For the heinous and dastardly 'crime' of drinking a small can of lager in public sight I was told (by an impolite man with a GUN) that I could accept a ticket for $200 or accompany him to the police station.  What a country!  Luckily, he also implied that if I don't pay the fine, as a non-resident of Massachusetts, there's not really anything they can do about it.  The kids standing next to me at the time are not so luckily.  God bless America.




Well, strikes and gutters as is ever the case, but definitely a whole lot of fun so far.  Tonight I'm playing in Brooklyn with the wonderful Prewar Yardsale, who I haven't seen since The Wave Pictures did a 3 date tour with them around 11 years ago!  I'm looking forward to the show a lot and I'm delighted to be in New York City, which might just be the best place on earth in my book.  The area (Ridgewood) that I'm staying in reminds me of Peckham in some ways and I don't have much higher praise for a place than that!  Tomorrow I take the megabus down to Philadelphia and who knows what further adventure.


Alright.  I hope everyone reading is well.  Keep in touch and stay tuned for another update the next time I get a chance to use a computer.


Hugh
x

Cambridge, MA - 22 September

Good news!  I managed to get from Peckham to Cambridge, MA all by myself.  I am currently in the house of my friends Chris Howard and Jenny Brooks who are very kindly and very expertly hosting me.  Thanks Chris and Jenny!  Apart from the great company I am being very well looked after: food, booze, a bed, a shower.  It's not a lifestyle I should get used to...

Here are the dates for the tour, which starts in earnest tomorrow evening.  If anyone can help or offer advice about the dates that need filling, please let me know:

23 September
Boston, MA - Secret House of Pancakes

24 September
Pawtucket, RI – The News Café
w/ The Honey Brown

25 September
New York, NY (Two shows!)
- ‘Brunch show’ at Caponegro Urological Associates, Queens, w/ Drunken Barn Dance (From 1pm)
- Word Up Books in Manhattan w/ GioSafari, Half Rational Animal, Human Hands (From 5pm)

26 September
Brooklyn, NY - Goodbye Blue Monday
w/ Prewar Yardsale, IamEssVee, AudioScar

27 September
Philadelphia, PA – Maggot House

28 September
Harrisburg, PA – The Underground
w/ Ship Wrecks, Easy Speakers, Spinning Game

29 September
Pittsburgh, PA - Garfield Artworks
w/ Spencer Kingman, Jenn Gooch, Rose & Sara

30 September
Youngstown, OH – The Lemon Grove

1 October
Toledo, OH – The Revolution Collective
w/ Mall Mutants, Marky Strange, The Biffs, Jerry Fels and The Jerry Fels

2 October
Ypsilanti, MI - TBC
w/ Mall Mutants

3 October
Kalamazoo, MI – i heart ipanema
w/ Mall Mutants

4 October
Chicago, IL? – TBC (HELP!)

5 October
Normal, IL? – TBC (HELP!)

6 October
Urbana, IL – Transporter Room 3
w/ Mall Mutants, Ryan McCoy

7 October
St Louis, MO - Pancake Productions
w/ Mall Mutants, Googolplexia

8 October
Columbia, MO – Candyland

9 October
Topeka, KS – James and Sarah’s House

10 October
Omaha, NE - The Sandbox w/ Archaeology

11 October
SOMEWHERE IN KANSAS OR OMAHA – HELP!

12 October
Denver, CO – Mouth House

13 October
Grand Junction, CO - Roasted Coffee (Starts at 6pm)

14 October
Salt lake City, UT (somewhere w/Prine Polo)

15 October
Boise, ID – House show (TBC)

16 October
Kennewick, WA – The Stove Top

17 October
Bellingham, WA - House Show

18 October
Seattle, WA – Cafe Racer
w/Adam Lipman and Brad Dunn

19 October
Olympia, WA - Le Voyeur
w/Adam Lipman,

20 October
Portland, OR – In Other Words (Show = 5-7pm)
Later evening show TBC - HELP

21 October
Corvallis, OR – something through Brian at Corvallis DIY

22 October
Arcata, CA – Blondies
w/ Adam Lipman

23 October
Chico, CA – Cafe Flo (TBC)
w/Adam Lipman

24 October
Davis, CA – Robot Rocket Residence
w/Adam Lipman

25 October
San Francisco, CA /Bay Area – TBC (HELP!)
w/Adam Lipman

26 October
San Luis Obispo, CA –Cafe Kreuzberg

27 October
Los Angeles, CA – HELP!

28 October
SoCal somewhere – HELP!

29 October
Chula Vista, CA – Chula Vista Library (TBC)

30 October
San Diego or SoCal somewhere – HELP!

31 October
Los Angeles or SoCal somewhere – HELP!

1 November
LA or have a day off

2 November
TOUR ENDS

Alright.  I'll try and post some more news and maybe photos and things up here as I go along.  I hope everyone reading is well.  Keep in touch.

Hugh

x

PS -The first thing I did when I got to Boston was take the subway to Government Center, which inevitably led to this being stuck in my head for the rest of the day and through to this morning:

Welcome

This is the blog I'm planning to use to keep people up to date about how my trip to the USA is going.  I'm not sure how often I'll get to update, I'm not sure how many interesting things I will be able to think to write and I'm not sure if anyone will read it, but I thought I might set it up now in case it comes in handy later.

Thanks for stopping by.

Yours,

Hugh John Noble