The tickets are booked, the merch is shipped, and the set is coming together.  We’ve got incredible surprises lined up for folks on this tour,  including a number of guest appearances and once in a lifetime collaborations along the way.  Dan Le Sac & Buddy Peace are two producers I’ve been working intensely with in the past year, and the new material I’ve produced with both of them is about to be rolled out for the first time in a major way.  Couldn’t be more excited, and couldn’t pick a better audience than the UK to kick things off.

Let’s get bloody.

First, a pair of opening sets:

SEP 3 – ICELAND - w/ SAGE FRANCIS at at Sodoma www.midi.is

Pre-sale tix at http://midi.is/tonleikar/1/6560/

SEP 6 – MANCHESTER, UK w/ DAN LE SAC VS. SCROOBIUS PIP

Pre-sale tix at https://www.hmvtickets.co/performances/8290/book?REFID=MAMA_RITZWEB

http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/event/1F0046BA94965A7C?camefrom=CFC_UK_MAMA_RITZ

Then, tour begins with @Bestival, where I’ll be performing two sets alongside such acts as Public Enemy, Bjork, The Cure, Diplo, Odd Future, Crystal Castles, PJ Harvey, Pendulum, Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, and about a trillion others.  Details for the festival are at www.Bestival.net, and the specifics for my performances during the weekend are as follows:

SEP 8 – ISLE OF WIGHT, UK – BESTIVAL

4:30-5pm SPOKEN WORD SET @ SATIN LIZARD LOUNGE

Later that evening, TBA: PREMIER OF FULL MUSICAL SET w/ DAN LE SAC & BUDDY PEACE @ POLKA TENT.  GUESTS TBA.

After Bestival, we’ll continue to roll across the UK.  With Dan and Buddy both providing solo sets before joining me as a ‘backing band’ for a full length, brand new headlining set.

CLICK THE DATE FOR TICKET BUY LINKS, WHERE AVALIABLE:

SEP 12 – LONDON, UK – CAMP

SEP 14 – GLASGOW, SCOTLAND – THE ARCHES

SEP 15 – BRISTOL, UK – THE FLEECE

SEP 16 – BRIGHTON, UK – THE HAUNT

SEP 17 – DUBLIN, IRELAND – WHELANS

SEP 18 – GALWAY, IRELAND - ROISIN DUBH

SEP 19 – BIRMINGHAM, UK – HARES & HOUNDS

SEP 20 – LINCOLN, UK – DUKE OF WELLINGTON

EUROPEAN SOLO DATES (B. DOLAN ONLY):

SEP 22 – HAMBURG, GERMANY – HAFENKLANG

SEP 24 – LEIPZIG, GERMANY – ZORO FEST

SEP 27 – BERLIN, GERMANY – CASSIOPEIA

SEP 29 – PRAGUE, CZ – 007

SEP 30 – LJUBJANA, SLOVAKIA – GALAHALA

OCT 1 – BERN, SWITZERLAND – DACHSTOCK REITSHULE

OCT 5 – LITHUANIA – SPOKEN WORD @ TARP FESTIVAL, DETAILS TBA

As always, BDOLAN.NET will stay current with shows as they are added, and I look forward to seeing you all out in the bush.  Here we go again.

<3,

b

WARNING: There’s a strong chance this blog will be of no interest to 90% of you, as it involves a scene you likely aren’t a part of and have minimal interest in. I’m posting this here, however, because I feel a responsibility to call out a dude that’s been quietly allowed to harass people for years under the pretense of ‘art.’ My involvement with him has also becoming something of an urban myth in some circles, so I’ll use this blog to tell my side of the story one last time.

***

My first encounter with Matthew Rucker was in 2005, when the tour I was on passed through Minneapolis. The sequence of events that night becomes a little complicated and involves some detail, which I’ve laid out here “Deposition Style” if you’re SUPER interested.

The ultra short version of the story is this: After booking me for a show later in the year, Matthew followed myself and a group of friends to Pizza Luce for a post-show dinner. While there, we encountered a young girl in a crisis situation, who was 16 years old, bi-polar, and prostituting herself for drugs. She appealed to me for help, and I in turn tried to enlist Matthew as a resource from the city.

Instead, he made a comment about how nice her tits were, and dismissed her in a way that made me absolutely see red.

My solution? To take Matthew’s money, fly back to his city to perform in front of his audience, and hijack his show for a kind of ‘Asshole Intervention’. I appeared on his stage (The Artist’s Quarter in St. Paul, MN) that night as Bombzo Way, performed a 35 minute set of country music covers, and then told the crowd in dramatic fashion the entire story. It all ended with Matthew stopping payment on a check, threatening to sue me, attempting to blackball me from the Slam community, and spreading lots of myth about your boy.

Unfortunately, the members of his audience that night chose to go on the attack against me, even though Matthew was well known for this kind of behavior within their scene. I left feeling like I’d tried and failed, and kept it moving.

Matthew’s name had been all but forgotten to me until a week ago, when I was contacted by a number of people and informed that Matthew has received disciplinary action from the Executive Council of Poetry Slam Incorporated preventing him from participating in their events.

I had already given up Slam for a number of years in 2005 when the incident took place, and have only sporadically popped my head in since then to check in with friends; my knowledge of what’s transpired in the past 6 years is heresay at this point.

What I hear is that at least one female member of Matthew’s team has filed an official complaint, because of a multitude of incidents that may have included sexual harassment, and included wildly inappropriate behavior that took place while he was the Host City Chair for the 2010 National Poetry Slam. This team member claims to have been kept in her situation silently for years by Matthew’s perceived authority as the head of her team and local scene.

These things are heresay at the moment because Poetry Slam International has not made public the sexual harassment claim made to them against Matthew Rucker, and chose instead to discipline him privately and quietly. Matthew then posted a statement retiring himself from slam, stating that the decision was due to a surge in demand for his freelance work, and a desire to “go out on top.”

He still hosts an open mic, and still ‘privately tutors’ a number of people in performance poetry.

For whatever it’s worth, I’d like to lend my support to those asking that Matthew’s disciplinary action be made public. I believe it’s important that open mics and the slam community live up to the ideals put forward by so many of the artists within it, and it’s always rubbed me as a particularly gross hypocrisy when that fails to happen.

That night at the Artists’ Quarter, the same poets who were onstage rattling off bumper stickers about freedom and equality seemed content to know a callous at best and abusive at worst figure was representing them. They apparently continued to be content for 6 more years, and enjoyed the ride while Matthew Rucker gained influence and did more damage.

Here’s hoping that the Slam community takes the right steps to correct and prevent situations like this from arising in the future, and that we all continue the struggle to create welcoming and accepting environments for people with something to express; the kind of environment that the girl we met that night needed, and we all failed to provide.

When I’m not on tour or trying to promote something,  I make it a practice to never leave my house.  There’s people out there, y’know.

Which is why it’s a testament to my good friend Madge of Honor (a performer you should know in her own right) that she somehow got me out of the house and into a venue of any kind a few years ago, just to watch a show.  I don’t remember the exact circumstance, but I know she must have worked hard at it.

The event she brought me to was Perestroika, a monthly alternative drag show at Boston’s historic Jacque’s Cabaret.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The mark of a great stage performance, to me, is when performers show that they

1.) have mastered the form they’re attempting and

2.) are pushing it’s boundaries and using it to challenge the audience.

The normal drag format is something familiar enough to make it a Bachelorette Party destination; that’s a MAN up there!  Dressed like a WOMAN!  He’s lip-synching a song and dancing up on people!  Laughs!

In the hands of a great performer, though… what happens is something like Miss. Nicholle Pride.  Thomas-Andre Bardwell created Nicholle, and is an actor-playwrite who fuses spoken-word, song, and traditional African dance into his performances in a way that is smart, subversive, and jaw-droppingly sexy and energetic.

As a heterosexual man, I’d read/been told about/understood in an intellectual way what it meant to be “genderqueer” and sort of… taken people’s word for it.  ”Oh, that’s how you feel?  Ok.  Well, I don’t feel that way… but I can appreciate that that might exist.  Do you!”

But it’s entirely another thing to watch someone like Miss Nicholle Pride, and for the first time really understand that a wider spectrum of gender exists.  As you’re sat there in the audience watching one of the most intensely feminine things imaginable, and one half of your brain is reacting to that while the other half goes “wait! that’s a man doing that to you!”  It was an honest-to-god moment of epiphany for me,  giving me a window into a trickier, less polarized idea of gender than the one I’d lived my whole life with.   I felt challenged as an audience member in a way that I’ve been striving to challenge audiences for my entire career.

She knows what she’s doing to say the least.  Watch the way she turns her back to the crowd and presents a feminine side in the first video, then whips the hood off and turns around to reveal a wigless ‘male’ rapper impression.  Or her incredible performance of “This is a Man’s World” below,  portraying a glitter bearded, corset wearing, swagger on a hundred thousand, MONSTROUS reincarnation of James Brown.

Needless to say, I left Jacque’s Cabaret in awe of Thomas Bardwell’s craft and determined to work with him.

The videos and photo available online come nowhere close to doing this lady justice, but the Church of Love & Ruin audiences are about to get leveled by the realness.  Vockah Redu, The Cru, and DJ BeesKnees are already in the van heading north.  Jamie & Sissy arrive in 3 days, and I’m headed to my last practice with the What Cheer? Brigade.  Here we come, muhfuckas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

THUR 2/10 – NYC, NY – Studio @ Webster Hall w/ The Metermaids – Doors 8pm – 19+

$10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

FRI  2/11 – BOSTON, MA  – The Western Front – Doors 9pm – 21+

$10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

SAT 2/12 – PAWTUCKET, RI – The Met – Doors 8:30pm

GENERAL ADMISSION $10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

SUN 2/13 – PORTLAND, ME – Space Gallery – Doors 7pm – GENERAL ADMISSION

$10 advance, $12 door.  $18 for Couples!
BUY TICKETS

For my part, I’d been enjoying Bounce music as a fan and studying it as an emcee for years, and jumped at the opportunity to include it in a show.  If you’re not familiar with Bounce as a genre, use the internet or something.  Emcees like Juvenile, Birdman, and Lil Wayne have all been described as Bounce or kept a foot in Bounce through the years, but I’d also recommend you check out artists like Cheeky Blakk and Magnolia Shorty and get familiar, ehhhh?

“Sissy Bounce,” is a sort of subgrene or scene-within-a-scene, characterized by openly gay emcees on the mic.  For more on that aspect of the story, check this Vanity Fair piece featuring Vockah.

As for Vockah Redu, he couldn’t be a more perfect fit for the Church of Love & Ruin.  The Times-Picayune put it nicely when they said “Vockah Redu & The Cru combine street-level ass-shaking, combining spiritual and sexual energy with straight-up New Orleans Bounce roots, like if Prince and Erykah Badu had a baby and raised it in the Magnolia Projects.”

I might add Afrika Bambaataa to that list, as well as a few others.  Whoever you compare them to, Vockah & The Cru get it.  I couldn’t be more excited to bring them to the Northeast and my audience for the first time.  Don’t start no stuff won’t be no stuff!

Video for your face:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

11 DAYS LEFT TO GET YOUR TICKETS AT DISCOUNTED PRICE!

THUR 2/10 – NYC, NY – Studio @ Webster Hall w/ The Metermaids – Doors 8pm – 19+

$10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

FRI  2/11 – BOSTON, MA  – The Western Front – Doors 9pm – 21+

$10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

SAT 2/12 – PAWTUCKET, RI – The Met – Doors 8:30pm

GENERAL ADMISSION $10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

SUN 2/13 – PORTLAND, ME – Space Gallery – Doors 7pm – GENERAL ADMISSION

$10 advance, $12 door.  $18 for Couples!
BUY TICKETS

Jamie had made a name for himself with The Suicide Kings, a performance poetry trio he was involved in along with Geoff Trenchard and Rupert Estanislao.  After watching the Kings perform the following night, I quickly came around to a kind of begrudging respect for the dude.  In a scene full of crowd pleasing hacks and wannabe self-help gurus, he was one of a handful of poets with the balls to say things that were honest, ugly, and uncomfortable.  Click here to watch “Ricochet In Reverse” by the Suicide Kings, directed by Jamie Dewolfe.

In the years that followed I kept talking and thinking about Jamie Dewolf , and everything I learned interested me more.   His manic charisma came into focus a bit when I learned he’s the great-grandson of L. Ron Hubbard, and an outspoken activist against the Church of Scientology:  VIDEO: L. Ron Hubbard’s Great Grandson Mocks Scientology

But the real clincher, and the thing that led to our eventual friendship and partnership on this tour, was the event Jamie had created in Oakland: a vaudeville battle rap / poetry / burlesque / anything goes event called Tourettes Without Regrets.  As my own career drifted further into antagonistic performance art, people would continually bring up Jamie and Tourettes as a place I needed to visit.  Finally, in 2006, I did.

Jamie hosts Tourettes on a monthly basis, often in warehouses or hijacked performance spaces because all the respectable clubs in town have thrown this event out.  Both times I’ve arrived in Oakland to do this show, I’ve found Jamie scrambling to find a space after the city / venue informs him days in advance that they will not allow the show to take place.  I’ve learned not to worry though; Jamie somehow finds a spot, sends out an email blast, and the sold out crowds show up in droves.

They show up for something that’s more than the sum of it’s parts.   Open mics, rap battles, and burlesque revues are the kind of shows that very easily fall into cliche territory, but Jamie & his co-hosts are somehow able to play each genre’s weaknesses off the other.   By creating a truly chaotic and irreverent atmosphere, Tourettes always seem to arrive at something that is captivating to everyone in the room.

My favorite sidekick of Jamie’s is his sister “Sissy,” who serves as a kind of magicians assistant/sexual idol throughout the show .  The sexual tension between the two of them onstage is as palpable as it is awful, and definitely leads to some magic moments.

Even as I write this out I know I am failing to convey what Jamie & Sissy are about to bring to the Church of Love & Ruin shows, and am sitting here with glee, picturing the shock on people’s faces when these two take the stage and start doing their thing.  Jamie & Sissy will be hosting the entire show, so you’d be a fool to treat this like a hip-hop concert and get there a minute before the headliner goes on.

When we last spoke on the phone, Jamie was saying he planned to lay down the groundrules right away.  “You don’t get to be a detached hipster at this show.  You don’t get to sit in the back and lean against a wall making comments about what’s happening onstage… I wanna create an atmosphere like anything can happen, anyone can be in the show, and we’re all in it together…”

I’ll leave you with that, and a a clip of Jamie inciting the crowd to give his grandparents lapdances.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next time we’ll talk about Vockah Redu, eh?

See you at the altar,

B

THUR 2/10 – NYC, NY – Studio @ Webster Hall w/ The Metermaids – Doors 8pm – 19+

$10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

FRI  2/11 – BOSTON, MA  – The Western Front – Doors 9pm – 21+

$10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

SAT 2/12 – PAWTUCKET, RI – The Met – Doors 8:30pm

GENERAL ADMISSION $10 advance, $12 door.
BUY TICKETS

SUN 2/13 – PORTLAND, ME – Space Gallery – Doors 7pm – GENERAL ADMISSION

$10 advance, $12 door.  $18 for Couples!
BUY TICKETS

I was working with this promoter for the first time, and immediately realized that he was some kind of high school drama teacher. But he was also a priest.

For religious reasons, but also to fill the void left by his presumably failed or abandoned acting career, he was insisting that I add a number of last minute local openers to the bill.

The opening acts included, but were not limited to:

* A physically violent autistic boy who was already onstage rehearsing some kind of Thanksgiving play with a little girl dressed as Pocahontas. I watched in slow motion as the boy had a wild seizure, grabbed the girl by her shoulders and began shaking her and gnashing his teeth in a kind of trance state.

I then watched several club staff tackle the boy and painstakingly pry him off the girl for a number of minutes. When it was finally over the boy was ushered past me in restraints, still rolling his eyes and chomping at the air.

The promoter said: “He does that from time to time, but he’ll be ready again by the time doors open.”

* A nun masturbating with a crucifix on a trapeze. I shit you not.

“Will she just hang there all night?”

“um yeah! we thought it would be nice if she could.”

At this point I start to feel out of control in the dream, and start complaining to the promoter. I start rambling angrily at him, trying to formulate the many reasons and ways I’m uncomfortable with these additions… Just then I notice, appearing from the backstage area:

* A slam poetry team

Here’s the funny part: the slam poetry team is the thing that makes me bolt for the door.  I see like 10 of them stumbling onto the stage in matching cardigan sweaters, looking all lost and stupid like a family that can’t organize itself to take a Sears christmas picture.

I fly into a rage so suddenly that I almost fall down. I physically recoil from the stage as if a bomb had just gone off on it and pushed me backwards. I run/stumble out of the venue screaming:

“You’ve got to be kidding! This is too fucking much! No fucking way are we–”

And nearly run into a monkey in a costume riding on the back of a baby elephant. It was baby sized but it’s face looked like an old elephant. Maybe it was just a midget elephant.

“–OH GOOD OF COURSE A FUCKING ELEPHANT!” I push open the door and flood the venue with sunlight.

/Wake up.

Happy Holidays to yuh.
I will have a big big announcement about some big big shows in the New Year.

<3,
b

I’ll be unable to join Sage Francis on the remainder of his tour dates this fall, and will be flying home tomorrow to be with my family.

In March of this year, right before I embarked on the most continuous touring schedule I’ve ever attempted, my father was diagnosed with a rare form of germ cell cancer in his lungs. For the past 6 months, he and my family have been undergoing a torturous regiment of chemotherapy, radiation, and various procedures. Nothing’s worked, and the cancer has since spread to his lymph nodes and brain. I received a phone call today from my mother and sister, who informed me that it’s time to come home and say goodbye.

My apologies to the Australian and Switzerland shows. Hopefully you’ll understand and take a rain check.

My thanks to Sage Francis, who’s been a constant friend and my fiercest support in all things. He’s made the opportunity to open for him available to me all year on both of these tours, understanding the risk that I might have to leave to deal with the home situation at any time. It’s meant the world to me to be part of Sage’s final touring year. I wish I could be there to see it through to the end with him… but all the journeys seem to be ending at once these days.

Thanks for understanding. See you on the next go around,

b

I am writing in regard to an air conditioner produced by your company, the Goldstar M8003R.

Sometime last summer the people across the street gave us this air conditioner, which had previously been sitting in their garage.  We were talking in their driveway and I mentioned the heat, and that we didn’t have an AC.  Then I said I’d probably head out to buy one tonight.  Then Rick, who’s from Georgia, started telling me about the one in his garage and insisting I take it.

So Rick takes me into his garage and unveils this AC for me.  “Works fine, should cool down your whole house.  Only thing is it’s noisy, but if you don’t mind that it’ll do just fine.”

Grateful to be spared the $300 expense, I dismissed his warning.  “We shouldn’t mind the noise.  Thanks!”

And that’s how your Air Conditioner came to be sitting in my window.

And I am writing to you now, one year later, from within the icy sonic oblivion this object has created in my home.  This machine is literally the loudest and most persistent noise I have ever encountered.  It is all encompassing.  It is a womb of rattling plastic racket.

It cancels all thought and conversation within 20 feet of it.

It causes us to listen to our TV at maximum volume, and then–when it suddenly clicks off–to be assaulted by the loudness of the TV and have to scramble to find the remote and lower it, just so we can enjoy 10 minutes of normal environment before the jet thruster in the window roars to life again, swallowing important bits of dialogue and critical plot points.

We have been forced to basically give up on the TV.  Conversation is also useless because the machine has reduced us to agitated gesturing cave people.  After you’ve said “WHAT?” to someone 4 times in a row, whatever they were trying to say becomes “FUCK YOU.”  So now we’re pretty much left to stare at each other blankly inside the blast chamber that is our 12 x 12 living room, knowing that we are trapped inside this box with your H-Bomb for the next 3 months because outside the temperature is 102, due no doubt in part to global warming and the massive amounts of freon your howling nightmarefuck murder engines have pumped into the atmosphere over the past 30 years.  They say if you can’t hear your own pulse you’re deaf.  I’m happy to report that at this moment I can hear neither my own pulse nor the sound of myself screaming inside my own mind.

Imagine for a moment the kind of sleep one gets in a house that contains an air conditioner like this.  I can only assume it’s identical to what prisoners experience while undergoing sleep deprivation torture.  What I’m saying is that your machine is a human rights violation, which you are currently charging $299 for on Amazon.com.

The cat is terrified of it.  The dog stands in front of it and barks every time it kicks on.  That is, I assume the dog is barking because I see its mouth opening and closing.

Your machine is the Nothing that strives to swallow all things.  Your machine is a constant reminder that death is waiting for me and everyone I love.  Your machine is absolutely watering secret tumors in my body every single day.  Your machine is a retarded orphan that you sent into the world to die slowly and mutilate all beauty in the meantime.  Don’t bother sending me a coupon, because I believe you are the source of all suffering on earth.  May your children die before you.  May a superior model AC drop out of a window and crush your body on the way to your office tomorrow, and may it fall soundlessly through the air on the way to do it’s work.

Sincerely,
Benjamin Dolan
Dissatisfied Customer

Checking my email before bed, I found this waiting in my inbox:

“Hello B,

This email address was the only one I could find for you, I hope you don’t mind. But I thought this would be something that would touch you…help you realize your affect in the world, if only on what would be considered a small scale.

About six months ago my four year old son and I were driving cross country. It was the middle of the night and I thought he was sleeping, my iPod was on shuffle and your track Still Electric played. When it was over I was surprised to hear a little voice from the back seat asking to hear it again. I obliged….three more times. I asked him what he thought about it, and he replied, “The robot is sad because he is breaking.”

So I decided to play The Failure for him, a very edited version of it. And he was completely enthralled. When we got home I made him his own playlist of your work that had, for the most part, age appropriate language. (I might be a terrible mom) But as a result when it’s dinner time and his turn to pick the music we listen to you, when he cleans his room, when he plays and colors, when he gets ready in the morning for sure you are playing somewhere in our little apartment.  He loves the tracks where you, whom he calls “The Good Cowboy”, and “The Sad Robot” sort of duet and interact.

I wanted to thank you for inspiring Ben the way you have, what you have created has become his first love and inspired countless games and imaginary adeventures for The Good Cowboy and The Sad Robot. I’m not sure what you’re hoping for or expecting out of you career as a poet or hip hop artist but I think you’re a complete success.

I attached a photo of a painting Ben did in class…”

Click to Enlarge:

The years only halfway over and already it’s been an incredibly long haul that’s required a number of difficult personal sacrifices.  I can’t really describe what this message meant to me, and the many like it I’ve received from you all in the course of the year.

Just this morning I was thinking about a similar story a friend told me about her son’s connection with ‘The Failure,’ and trying to wrap my brain around the idea.  I remember being that age and having a wooden spoon for a microphone, with a sequined glove my grandmother made me, pretending to be Michael Jackson.  The idea that the deeply personal things I’ve made could be occupying that place in someone else’s life is totally unexpected and overwhelming…

Anyhow.  Just wanted to take a moment to appreciate all of your appreciation and show you this.

See you soon,

The Good Cowboy

B. Dolan will be joining Sage Francis on the following upcoming Tour Dates:

US:
Orlando, FL – Club at Firestone – 6/18/10
Atlanta, GA – The Loft – 6/19/10
Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle – 6/21/10
Washington, DC – Rock and Roll Hotel – 6/22/10
Baltimore, MD – The Ottobar – 6/23/10
Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero – 6/24/10
New York, NY – Webster Hall – 6/25/10

Europe:

Sage Francis with B. Dolan:
Sept 15th – Bristol, UK – The Fleece
Sept 16th – London, UK – Scala
Sept 17th – Brighton, UK – The Freebutt
Sept 18th – Manchester, UK – Roadhouse
Sept 19th – Glasgow, UK – Stereo
Sept 21st – Lyon, France – Ground Zero www.grrrndzero.org
Sept 22nd – Poitiers, France – Confort Modern
Sept 23rd – Nantes, France – Pole Etudiant (FREE SHOW!!!)
Sept 24th – Marseille, France – Marsatac Festival http://www.marsatac.com
Sept 25th – Metz, France – ZIKAMETZ FESTIVAL METZ
Sept 26th – Paris, France – La Machine http://tinyurl.com/2flzkm2
Sept 28th – Copenhagen, Scandinavia – Lille Vega http://www.billetlugen.dk/
Sept 29th – Lund, Scandinavia – Mejeriet http://www.kulturmejeriet.se
Sept 30th – Oslo, Scandinavia – Living Room http://www.billettservice.no/
Oct 1st – Upsalla, Scandinavia – Ordsprak Festival (POETRY SHOW)
Oct 2nd – Stockholm, Scandinavia – Södra Teatern http://www.sodrateatern.com/
Oct 5th – Brussells, Belgium – Botanique www.botanique.be
Oct 6th – Hamburg, Germany – Uebel & Gefaehrlich http://tinyurl.com/35doa58
Oct 7th – Berlin, Germany – Cassiopeia http://tinyurl.com/3a83m7f
Oct 8th – Amsterdam, NL – Sugarfactory http://www.ticketmaster.nl/
Oct 9th – St Gallen, Switzerland – Palace http://www.palace.sg/programm/tickets
Oct 10th – Lasaunne, Switzerland – Le Romandie http://tinyurl.com/265oxq5

Australia:
Dates will be posted soon.

I’m writing this letter home from underneath a cloud of poison ash.  The kids here at camp seem friendly enough though, and the second leg of my European tour has come to an end.  Please send cheeseburgers and milkshakes, as it seems I’ll be living here from now on.

Read on for some highlights from this second leg of the tour.

1. Middelburg, Netherlands

One of the highlights of this tour came early on, at the last show added to the schedule.  Shout out to Tonnie in Middelburg for setting up a surprisingly rowdy performance @ The Underground.  On a Tuesday night, in a small city I’d never played before, we managed to pack an intimate spot and have a truly great time.

Also, apparently there is some bizarre local custom of making what I can only describe as a pterodactyl noise when excited by an emcee.  I’m talking, the place where another crowd might go “BO! BO! BO!” these folks were going “GAHHHH! GAHHHHH!” This went from being mildly disconcerting to a whole lot of fun.  Cheers, Middelburg.  One of the best shows of the tour, hands down.

Maybe this was due to the awesome local news coverage?

2. Prahahaaaa!

After a 19 hour, overnight train journey from Amsterdam, I arrived in Prague.  Surprisingly, Barack Obama was there too.  I don’t think he was on the same train as me though.  I would’ve noticed that.

I had heard a lot about the city, but didn’t expect to be as struck by it as I was.  Maybe it was a heightened sense of awareness brought on by the journey, but I was really overwhelmed by the very visible history in Prague.  Specifically, the Soviet history.

As it happens, I’ve been writing a pretty ambitious song on this tour about Laika, the first animal ever to be launched into–and die in–space.  She was a stray dog, launched on the Sputnik 2 satellite, to test what would happen to a living organism on the trip.

Also fresh in my mind was the fact that I’d grown up in the 80s, and had spent a lot of my childhood thinking of people from this part of the world as intrinsically evil and bent on the destruction of all we held dear.  The significance of being among the remnants of that empire, and meeting and befriending folks who’d grown up on the other side of that conflict, wasn’t lost on me.

The show that night was another high-energy, intimate affair with a group of excited kids who went nuts for the entirety of it, and called me back for multiple encores, to the point where I’d run out of instrumentals and was doing spoken word stuff.  Even before that though, Prague had made it’s impact on me.  I won’t soon forget that trip.

Also, the slightly dodgy hamburger I ate there won’t soon be forgotten either, as it led to tour highlight #3.

The show in Prague happened right next to The Great Strahov Stdium, which is the largest in the world.  It was originally used for synchronized gymnastic displays, and Communist displays of power a la North Korea.  These days it’s covered in graffiti and looks to be falling into disrepair everywhere.  Staggering.

3. St. Gallen, Switzerland

Alright, so this one isn’t so much a highlight as it is one of the most fucked up things ever to happen to me on tour.  I therefore feel it’s newsworthy.  Remember that hamburger in Prague?

I arrived in St. Gallen the night before my show there, after a long day of travel from Prague.  No worries, got some sleep at the hotel.  Woke up with a whole day to kick around in the city and wait for the show.  I met Damian, the promoter for that night, around noontime.  He let me into the backstage area, where I proceeded to argue with people on the internet about nerd rap.   So far so good.

Now it’s time for soundcheck.  I notice that I feel a little dizzy and tired while doing the soundcheck.  I ask the sound engineer:

“Are we in the swiss alps here?”

“Huh?”

“Are we in the mountains?”

“A little bit…”

“Cause I feel kind of like… the elevation maybe.”

<laughing> “no no… we’re not that high.”

Ok.  We’re not in the mountains.  Go upstairs, drink some water.  Maybe I just didn’t sleep enough.  Lay down take a nap.

I awake an hour later with sharp pains in my stomach, and the fun begins.  Just as the show is getting underway, I start getting violently ill backstage.  While both openers are on, I am in the backstage bathroom wishing for my death.  I quickly realize that I am in the midst of a fairly serious health situation.

I says to myself.  What would Evel Knievel do?

I managed to get onstage and perform for about 35 minutes, while standing stock still and just rapping the songs how they appear on the record.  Very little extra movement, as I felt there was a good chance I’d start throwing up or faint onstage otherwise.  Not one of my finer sets, I admit.

I finished rapping, explained to the crowd that I was extremely sick and that I was headed to check out one of their local hospitals, walked offstage, into the cab, straight to the St. Gallen ER.

200 Euro, 11 hours, 3 vials of blood, 1 x-ray, 1 ultrasound and 2 ENEMAS LATER, I left the ER, having been diagnosed with food poisoning.  The Swiss sure are thorough.  This caused me to miss my train for the next day’s show, and anyway I hadn’t slept and was asked by the doctors to stay in St. Gallen for the day and return to the hospital if my condition didn’t improve.

I’m hoping to return to Europe in the fall of this year, and when I do, I owe both St. Gallen and Innsbruck the shows they missed out on due to this.  Consider this your apology and raincheck.

4. Polar Bear Digital.

Due to our sharing a booking agent, 3 of the shows on this tour had me opening for the recently reunited Anti-Pop Consortium across France.  Not only are these guys legends in the game, but they were also extremely personable and we hit it off immediately.  Their sets were bonkers (including a surprise appearance by Mike Ladd in Paris!), their audiences were extremely receptive, and I consider all of them friends at this point.  Keep an eye out for more cooperation between us in the future, and check out their new material. Shit is off the chain.

Thanks to all the audiences that came out, Anti-Pop, Cyril at Zoobook, and of course Sage Francis for facilitating this leg of the tour specifically.  I made all my motherfuckin trains on time, except when I was poisoned.  And that’s still sumthn.

Next up, the Rocky Road to Dublin.

4 / 20 / 10 – “Barfly Club” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Wales, UK
4 / 21 / 10 – “The Pavilion” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Cork, Ireland
4 / 22 / 10 – “Rosin Dubh” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Galway, Ireland
4 / 23 / 10 – “Trinity Rooms” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Limerick, Ireland
4 / 24 / 10 – “Whelans” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Dublin, Ireland
4 / 26 / 10 – “Nerve Centre” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Derry, N. Ireland
4 / 27 / 10 – “Mandela Hall” w/ Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Belfast, Ireland