Slovenia

so here we are in ljubljana, slovenia. we stopped into this country on our last tour for a quick breakfast after a show we played the night before. slovenia is a small country but a beautiful and friendly one. we've been here for 6 hours and have already been interviewed on their national music television network and their big alternative music radio station.

some recent pics: the room in our hostel in correggio, italy. the building was constructed in the late 14th century and conveniently our gig was in a club attached to this place. it was more of a jazz club so we had to play some more of our mellow stuff. a fun challenge for us and a welcome change of pace from rocking the same set for almost 3 weeks:



and a view of our hostel (note the van out front):
eric outside an italian villa:
and here we are in lugano, switzerland... a beautiful city nestled in the mountains just north of italy. this was easily one of the highlights of the tour thus far. lugano is spread across both sides of a large mountain lake... hopefully you can get a sense from this:
and here's a view of the city from our hotel:
so 19 shows and we finally have a night off...! ciao for now!

our first week in italy

composed march 24-


finally i'm able to update this here blog. we drove down the coast of italy along the Mediterranean sea today (the area of the coastline that would be the arch of italy's foot, if you will) beautiful views of the sea. our gig tonight was canceled as we were supposed to play outdoors and it's been raining on and off all day. i've got a bunch of photos to up load here... unfortunately no performance shots yet but those will be coming soon.
the view out our room in verbier, switzerland:

freddy and his friend, igor. igor grew up with freddy in kasterlee, belgium. apparently he came to verbier a few years ago and fell in love with the town. sitting up in the alps as it is, it's easy to see why he chose to move there. the wonderbar is in the background:

view outside of zogra, the club we played in alessandria, italy. this was the second time we played this town and the crowd ate it up:

carolyn took this shot of a building across the street from our hostel in alessandria:
touring like this is interesting since we play to a totally different kind of crowd night to night. the venues range from small pubs to full fledged punk rock clubs that attract international touring bands. another fun aspect of the touring life is the different sleeping accomadations we get. sometimes our promoter has an apartment set up for us for to crash in, sometimes we get a proper hotel. in this case, alessandria gave us the same accomadations we got last year: a room in a monastery turned hostel. this is a view up at the chuch from inside the courtyard:

eric getting a bonafide italian haircut:

after alessandria we drove north to trento. we also played this small but beautiful town last year. very enthusiastic fans in this town... many who came back to see us again:

the back door of the van doesn't open from the outside so we constantly have to dive over freddy's sleeping bags and our gear to open it from the inside. here's eric going for the gold. note the graceful form of his feet... judges? 8.5 out of 10

the next stop had us in the incredibly beautiful castiglion. this town has been around for a couple thousand years according to our pilot, freddy spapean. the town is located in the middle of a wide valley and is built up on a hill. ruins of an ancient castle are at the top of the town which has a popular graduate school of agriculture. if you've seen lord of the rings, imagine a real world minis tirith and you get this town: small, cobblestone streets that wind and climb up the hill... narrow alleyways and spectacular views across the valley. some pics:



view from our room:

i make friends everywhere i go:

eric setting up his kit at the velvet underground with our soundguy, paolo. the velvet underground is one of those cavern club kinda joints... brick walls and vaulted archways with four or five different rooms to hang out in:

on to roma! we had a couple hours to walk around the city after freddy gave us a brief tour in the van. he dropped us at the coliseum.

carolyn and i hopped a cab to vatican city to check out the sistine chappel. it takes about a half hour just to walk through the various other hallways and chappels leading to the sistine chappel. no pictures are allowed in the chappel itself so i have nothing to show for it but wow... what can you say to describe such a famous work of art when you see it in person?

the micca club in rome is a tendy discotheque. a cool place if you're a dude who wears as much hair product as your girl but probably not the most apprpriate place for Boss Tweed. to sum it up, here's a photo of the urinal in the men's room. it took eric and me a few minutes to realize what this thing was. i mean look at it... you expect me to pee in... or on this?! needless to say we used the stalls.

a side note... the next day eric and i were laughing about the men's room in the van and freddy chimes in. apparently he used the pink-floyd-laser-light-urinal twice before he decided that he was actually peeing in a urinal. what can i say... he's a classy guy.

the next day we played a kinda rough looking club in avellino. no heat, eric had to jimmy rig the PA and every italian in the house smoked like a chimney. nonetheless, we played a killer show to a packed house. added coolness points: the show was show down by the local cops. i wasn't too happy about getting shut down at first but hey... what can ya do? here's a photo of us after the show hanging with the promoter (to my right) and our opening band, Gentleman's Agreement:

here' the view from our hostel room in rende. a beautiful and very old town in southern italy. we played a great gig for the folks in this town who came out to party with us on easter sunday. god bless the southern italians.
ciao for now!

Verbier

we just got back to our hotel room in verbier, switzerland. verbier is a beautiful ski resort filled with rich ('cause you have to be) young euro-hipsters. richard branson just opened a hotel here. he has a drink on the bar menu for a paltry 10,000 swiss francs. these aren't the folks that come to see a band like us on a whim. they're here to party and meet like-minded euro-hipsters. nonetheless... we rocked the house. here's some photos from the last few days of the tour:

freddy, carolyn and the mighty clemens (owener and senator of the bullwinkle) dressed up in his Los Straitjackets gear in oberstdorf, germany:

a rainbow en route to germany:



our friend, ray ray, who met up with us in oberstdorf and traveled with us to geneva:

eric and me hanging before the show in geneva:



freddy's van in switzerland after getting tagged by graffiti vandals in geneva:

carolyn and eric eating dinner before the show tonight in vebier:

us in the van:

the poor dog that sits beneath freddy's belgium butt:

carolyn, who loves eggs more than life itself, is unhappy in this photo as she has just discovered this smushed hard boiled egg in her pocket... oh the humanity:

Boss Tweed in Europe... round 2

well friends, as you can see i haven't updated this thing much but i'll do my best to keep you updated on my adventures...

i'm currently on tour with my band, Boss Tweed. we have 5 weeks of shows throughout germany, the netherlands, slovenia, switzerland, belgium and italy. i think during that time we have 2 days off... the first of which is 17 days from now. our tour manager freddy spapean is long haired belgian who spends a large portion of his time driving bands like our throughout europe. you haven't lived until riding shotgun in his mercedes tour van while he pilots you through the alps; simultaneously driving, text messaging, reading obscure french philosophy and eating peanut butter straight from the jar with his finger. here he is with the host of our show at the haifisch bar in augsburg, germany:



our first show was at the haifisch bar. it's a smallish tiki bar with a cute but cramped stage. nonetheless, we rocked the place. we played this town last year and had a bunch of folks back to see us. it's a great feeling when folks are screaming along to your songs and all the more amusing when you realize later that they don't really speak english...


our sleeping quarters at the haifisch bar breakfast of champions

loading up the van