2015 Europe tour

We're on light posting for a few days here, clearly, while I'm focused on some other stuff. LIKE MY 2015 EUROPE TOUR; it looks like we'll be on the road from approximately December 2-21, 2015. We'll definitely be playing in Belgium, Luxembourg, and western Germany; we'll see about the Netherlands and France... once I get to listing countries in a graphic, it's hard to stop... the Dutch especially have been notoriously reticent to book my groups.

We'll be back to regular programming soon enough...

PUT! A! BIRD! ON! IT!

Speaking of the record: being from the Pacific Northwest, I've never felt we projected any kind of cultural identity to the rest of the world. Even within the region all we ever had to latch onto were Prefontaine, Henry Weinhard's beer, Nirvana, and Drugstore Cowboy. Usually when I'd go overseas if people knew where Oregon was, all they would know about it is that “it's rainy.”

So I was kind of happy to actually be able to live up to a stereotype when we were performing in Europe in November. A friend of one of our Brussels musicians, who was familiar with Portlandia, heard where I was from, and was getting a kick out of quoting this to me all evening:





It took me a little while to remember my own merch:

Tour gear rated

C'est indispensable

I want to take a moment to mention some pieces of gear that distinguished themselves one way or another on this trip:

20" Paiste Sound Formula Full Ride with six rivets
This cymbal subs for my 22" 602 Dark Ride, and it turned out really nice. Since their sound from cymbal to cymbal is pretty consistent, and you can get them cheaply on eBay, I would not have been crushed if it had gotten stolen or lost, as I would've been with the 602. I highly recommend using a 20" when flying— my cymbal bag fit into the overhead bins on every leg of our trip. When I was schlepping a 22" I would have to sweet-talk a flight attendant into putting it in with the garment bags, risking them forcing me to check it if they didn't feel like helping me with it. Read my earlier semi-full review of this cymbal.

20" Sabian Jack Dejohnette Ride (original line)
Using two medium-weight 20" rides was a pretty unusual choice for me, but it worked well. This very dry cymbal is a nice contrast to the long and lush Paiste, and it has been working really well for me on the left side, especially when playing softer. It responds much like a drum, and has a nicely finished, clean sound when used with drums that are also pretty dry. One instance where it failed utterly was at Café Belga in Brussels— a large room that tends to have listeners close to the band and a lot of talkers in the back. There this cymbal just died.

Sonor drums - 70's, 9 or 10 ply mahogany Phonic line, I think. 12", 14", 18"
Loaned to me by a great Brussels drummer, Teun Verbruggen. These are some of the best drums I've ever played. Sounded great tuned low in the studio and on our one rock gig, and on all of the jazz gigs as well. I would love to get a set of these if I could find one for less than $3000. Hardware is typical Sonor overkill, with the plate for the tom mount weighing ~5 pounds by itself, otherwise they're not ridiculously heavy.

Sabian cymbal bag
Their heaviest-duty bag. Or their most expensive, anyway. This is the same one I had to sew up on my own because it was falling apart after a couple of years. It (and my sewing job) survived the trip, despite being jammed on flying days with two medium 20's, 16 and 18" crash cymbals, hihats, my stick bag, and my snare drum stand.

Chop Busters by Ron Fink
This is the one book I took along for grabbing a few minutes of pad practice here and there, a purpose for which it is extremely well suited. Read my original review for it here.

Some essential non-musical items after the break:

An epic 48 hours of travel.

Among the last civilized moments of the trip,
despite the automatic weapons.

Got up early on our last morning in Paris to go see the Eiffel Tower at dawn and then hustle with our luggage from our hotel in the Bastille to St. Michel to meet Casey's friend and mentor Mario Sprouse, who arrived in town that morning for his own tour. Straight to Gare du Nord on faith that our train to Brussels will be running despite the raging austerity strikes happening there.

Made it to Brussels for mussels and champagne, and then white box wine at Olivier's house with Casey, Catherine, Bram, Teun, and Bruno until way late. Up at 6 for a typically hairy early rush hour ride to the airport, then our flight to New York (on the incredibly civilized Brussels Air). Three hour layover in which we had to collect our bags, go through customs and immigration transfer from JFK to the Newark airport— a 30+ mile manic, Cairo-style shuttle ride— for our domestic leg, on the incredibly uncivilized US Airways. Think Greyhound with wings.

Last minute itinerary change routes us through Phoenix (key moment: bleached blond sorority chicks at the gate complaining loudly in church-lady voices about all the weirdos in Portland, and the "quality" of people there in general); ~5 hour flight with no movie and no meal (OK, you could buy one, but the hell with that) and lots of not very restful sleep in 3-second increments. Brief 65 minute layover before equally miserable two hour flight to Portland itself (key moment: after weeks of listening acutely to how people speak, noticing the middle-American, slightly-country Oregon accent on the people in the airport, and how much quieter people are in general.) Adjusting nicely after first real sleep since Paris, which was the first real sleep since Portland before that. New content coming soon.

Riding into Paris

Operating on very little sleep here after driving back to Brussels after our Paris gigs, and organizing photos from that leg of the trip, many of which were taken with that jive Android "retro" camera app I swore I'd never use again.

A couple of more random road pics after the break:

Late gig add: Espacio ON in Etterbeek

That's a neighborhood in Brussels, which you know if you are in any position to come to the show. Espacio ON is located at Steenweg op Etterbeek 172, 1040 Etterbeek, Brussels, Belgium. Phone number is 0486278929. We will play at around 7 or 8pm (precise details coming this evening), and there is a cover of 5 euros.

See our other tour dates here.

Rehearsal @ Jazz Station - Brussels

A few shots from my quartet´s rehearsal at the Jazz Station (who were kind enough to let us play on the premises) in Brussels this afternoon. The band is myself with Jean-Paul Estiévenart (trumpet), Martin Méreau (vibes) & Olivier Stalon (bass):

 

More after the break:

It's tour time

UPDATE: Late add- another gig in Brussels on Friday, Nov. 9.

My partner Casey Scott and I are flying to Brussels tomorrow to make her a record (for the Topsy Turvy label), and to do my tour in support of my new record, Little Played Little Bird. We'll be rehearsing through the weekend, recording my drum tracks at Jet Studio on Tuesday and Wednesday, and gigging my stuff from November 1-10.

Playing with me will be:
Jean-Paul Estevenart — trumpet
Martin Mereau — vibes
Olivier Stalon — bass

Come on down, hear us play and say hello if you're in the vicinity. And check back here or at Todd Bishop Jazz for updates from the road. 


Thursday, Nov. 1
Bar Belge — Paris  
97, avenue du Général Leclerc
94700 Maisons-Alfort FRANCE
01.43.68.20.50

Friday, Nov. 2  
Le Bab-ilo — Paris
9 Rue Baigneur, 75018 Paris, FRANCE
01 42 23 99 19

Sunday, Nov. 4 
Café Belga — Brussels
Place Eugène Flagey Plein
B-1050 Bruxelles/Brussel BELGIUM
Tel:+32 2 640 35 08

Tuesday, Nov. 6
LiquID  — Luxembourg
15-17 Rue Munster
 L-2160 Luxembourg-Grund
(352) 22 44 55

Wednesday, Nov. 7
Buster  — Antwerp 
Kaasrui 1 2000
Antwerpen, BELGIUM
+32(0)497 71 81 33

Thursday, Nov. 8 
Sazz'n Jazz — Brussels
Rue Royale 241 /  241 Koningsstraat
1210-Bruxelles BELGIUM
32 (0) 475 78 23 78

Friday, Nov. 9  — 19:00 (or close to it!)
Espacio ON
Steenweg op Etterbeek 172
1040 Etterbeek, Brussels, Belgium

Friday, Nov. 9  — 22:00
Centre d’Ecologie Urbaine — Brussels 
789 Chaussée de Waterloo
 B-1180 Bruxelles BELGIUM
+32-2-34-32-281 ou +32-488-88-36-43
With songwriter Casey Scott.

Saturday, Nov. 10  
Jakobshof — Aachen
Stromgasse 31 52064 Aachen GERMANY
0241 36800

Anyone who wants to contact me can reach me most reliably through Olivier Stalon— I will be available for private lessons until November 10th.

My brother John Bishop, a great drummer, will also be in Belgium at the same time, incredibly, and you should go see him play if possible.

Tour poster

One of the things I've been working on instead of blogging:

Waterloo bullet

All right, people, we are going to be on really, truly, unconscionably light posting through most of the next week as I do my taxes, get it together for, and then go play the Ballard Jazz Festival, send Europe tour emails, assemble my Todd Bishop Quartet news blog, and God knows how many other things I'm forgetting. Right now I happen to be reposting stuff from the old MySpace blog, and found the following item I wrote after my 2009 tour:

OK, this has nothing to do with anything, but certain naysayers have questioned the authenticity of my Waterloo bullet [It was Willie and Dan- tb], which I bought at an antiques market in Brussels for one euro. There is of course no way to prove the thing is real, but consider:

1) Acquiring, weathering, and individually battle-damaging 5-cent lead slugs so you can sell them for a whopping single euro to the mostly-local people who come to the weekly antiques market would have to be one of the biggest waste-of-time scams ever. I'm not going to run the numbers, but I bet you could make more money for less effort by working one hour per week at Le Arby's, if such a thing exists.

2) Battlefield debris- like bullets- even from the most famous battles in the world, is not at all rare. Millions of rounds are fired during these things, and they have to go somewhere. Usually they end up lying on the ground, and barring an unheard-of spike in the value of scrap lead, there is no reason for anyone to go out and pick them up, until the passage of time makes them semi-collectible. They actually seem to be about as scarce as beer tabs at an abandoned drag-racing strip- Belgian farmers are always plowing up ordnance from past wars. The seller was blasé about them- "they find them all the time."

3) To an American who has never touched anything more than five years old, "a bullet from Waterloo" is as fanciful sounding as the skull of Henry VIII or a plume from Napoleon's codpiece, and must surely belong on a pedestal in a museum with armed security, but to someone living in Brussels it's more on the level of "oh, yah, drive out to the suburbs and you can find tons of crap like that." Considering that you can buy an honest-to-God Roman coin with a picture of the emperor on it and everything for $1 [OK, a crappy 4th-century emperor, but still. -tb], a euro for a mere 200 year old lead ball is not that big a deal.

That's just been bugging me slightly- tainting the coolness of my WATERLOO BULLET. 

Projects

Light posting for a couple of days while I proof a transcription/analysis I'm submitting to Drum! magazine- they've expressed interest in my Vinnie Colaiuta/Keep It Greasey piece (from the guitar solo in 19/16)- here's hoping it makes it to press! That has dogged me for years, ever since I showed my college professor my transcription of the body of the song (which is itself no picnic), only to have him ask "why didn't you do the guitar solo?"

"Well, it's an extremely dense recording in a very strange meter, and the tempo is ~QN=144, and all I have to work with is a cassette deck and some crappy headphones with no possibility of slowing it down, and it's one of the most insane drumming performances ever recorded" is what I might have said if I wasn't dumbfounded by the comment.

I'm also busy transcribing and arranging a bunch of Ornette Coleman tunes for my new record, which is due to be released on Origin in the fall, in time for my Europe tour.