These long drives are starting to get the better of me. While traversing the long (and sometimes back tracking) distances we did in the USA, in Europe we can normally look forward to some semblance of normality and reasonable travel times. Since you can drive for eight hours across Canada and still be in the same province, in Europe you’ll have gone through two countries by that point. Except this time, when we thought it’d be fun to do a show in Helsinki and then one in Rome. I think it is safe to say that Jens, our manager in Europe, has a funny sense of humor and was playing a few tricks on us with these long drives. But still, we lived and he delivered us to our flight on time and only a little blood was spilled.

So you will appreciate that by this point of our tour we are not as happy to be in a bus again, but at least in the Murderbus, we can stand, stretch, walk around, etc. But even with the amenities of said Murderbus, we do get a little stir crazy… J-Brand will be looking for something John has misplaced, food or trouble. James will either be driving with his eclectic musical selections leaking from his headphones or working on his laptop, and Kate and I will either be reading, script writing or sneaking wine when we think John isn’t looking. If he’s noticed the empty bottles, he wisely hasn’t said anything. Self medication has gone a long way on this tour.

Actually, we all sleep a lot. Everyone else sleeps because they were likely out clubbing after the show til all hours or sightseeing by night. So they are legitimately tired. I’ll be sleeping because I will have gotten up to go running a half hour before everyone gets in so then I’m tired. I have tried to do the after party thing but it gets me every time. I admire Kate and Brandy’s enormous energy reserves. If I had done what they do, I’d likely be dead. I’m a bit of a stick in the mud after so long on the road, and after the show I like to shower, have a cup of tea and a dirty magazine, though I’m willing to compromise on the shower and tea part most nights.

So as I was bemoaning how it is to be cooped up in the Murderbus for these Canadian dates, I had a look at the other touring vehicles that our other bands are rolling in. I am grateful now we have room enough to stretch in when I see how the other guys are all packed in tight as lettuce jammed into a Subway sandwich. But I’m impressed too, considering the long drives how tolerant they must be of each other. Mind you, this is day four of the tour so tempers have yet to flair… let’s wait and see how the WCO boys do when we get to BC… If anyone is interested in taking bets on who cracks in WCO and asks to ride with us, message me privately and I can give you the odds…

Look out Thunder Bay!

LMR

Chief among these distractions I like best is watching movies. I rarely find time to watch movies at home, and as the skies get dark so soon at this time of year movies keep our faces illuminated at the back of the bus, with anywhere up to four laptops going at any one time. It pretty impressive for five people so close to be able to ignore each other so totally. But it’s an indulgence for me, along with catching up on my reading. But another is having a filmmaker as a dance partner who has movies she’s made that I’ve not yet seen…

That’s right: I’m from Vancouver, and I hadn’t seen No Fun City.

For someone such as myself who held the 2010 Winter Games in such distaste for all it inflicted on the Great Unwashed in my town, missing out on this was disgraceful. The premise of this documentary follows four groups operating music venues in Vancouver and their struggle with the city to champion a home for live music. It made me smile and a little teary since I have watched the Cobalt be shut down (which is a legendary home for hardcore) and reopen under new (universally questioned) management. Seen the rise and fall of the Sweatshop and happily seen the rise of the Rickshaw.

When I saw the footage of Richards On Richards being torn down I actually felt sick, having had performed there myself many times. Now I know as well as anyone that very few things are static. But after visiting Europe and spending so much time recently in so much history it feels like a very flimsy excuse for not attempting to preserve live entertainment as you would an old church. But where Vancouver Politian’s and homeowners groups want to usher in a new quiet and suburban era to the city, we have seen a number of other venues grow stronger: Funky Winkerbeans, Pat’s Pub, The Chapel, and Brandiz. If the Granville entertainment district is where you go to hear top 40 played over and over at length, East Hastings street is now where you go to see bands. A new Renaissance is at hand.

But throughout our travels, we have heard the same story told worldwide: noise curfews, television and red tape have become assassins in the increasing deaths of live music venues. It is no longer confined just to Vancouver, but that’s only one city’s story told. From Cologne to Porto to Helsinki there is a scary echo. Live music is struggling to keep it’s foothold as cities wear down the venue owners and operators with rules and bylaws. The grace of why any of these people stay open at all is that people do keep coming out to support the live shows. Every time I walk into the room before any show and I see bodies in it I breathe a sigh of relief and thank my lucky stars that people still believe in live entertainment.

This is partly why I need to drive as many people to see No Fun City as possible. Tell your friends, siblings, lovers that conservation isn’t just about being green and recycling to help our natural resources. Creativity is still one of our greatest global elements and we should strive to protect it as we would the polar ice caps, an endangered species, or a dwindling fossil fuel supply. I think it would be just as sad to sit and tell our children about when we used to go see live shows in the same breath as when we used to have rainforests but both died out because no one thought to save such precious ecosystems.

No Fun City the movie: www.nofuncity.org

Little Miss Risk

The Danube has a unique bit of folklore to it as well. It has been said that went you are there you write a message in a bottle to someone departed and drop it in the river and it will be carried to them where they can read it. Whether there is any mystic quality or the water or it just adds to a backlog of pollution I think the sentiment is nice and it gives people something to look forward to in Ulm.

As Kate and I walked through the town in the early morning after our sumptuous breakfast at the hotel. It must be noted that we each had our own rooms which at this point on the tour was a welcome change. While most accommodations are acceptable little things like that make a huge difference to your mental well being. In my own case I like having the television on, not having one at home, and letting the mindless babble fill the space while I do something akin to Hotel Room Olympics (shit, am I REALLY going to mention the “O” word in every blog? Christ.) The event include the wastepaper basket shot-put, desk/chair triceps dip and the bathroom door swing and jump. I don’t think I will be bringing home gold for Canada any time soon in these events but I am practicing. Whereas lone travellers will do these things to alleviate boredom, when you are finally alone after weeks of other people company, you look forward to little indulgences such as these.

After Ulm we moved on to Zurich where we found a shark on the roof of the club (which I was unable to load into the bus), a Swiss Toki Wartooth lookalike, and some trouble. After the show, which ended early due to sound restrictions (what is with all these cities and their stupid noise laws?) we spent the evening drinking the bar’s booze, making friends, and causing trouble. Part of the trouble (now I have to o by second hand information on this one) was when Kate and Brandy made friends with a fellow who took them clubbing. Apparently shouting down the club door man to get is a good way to avoid paying cover. Brandy punched a drunk guy in the face who tried numerous times to kiss her (“Your face is so strange – but beautiful”) and Kate pulled a LMR and danced on a pole. It didn’t help that our hotel was nestled in an area of ill repute, with strip bars and 5E hookers on either side. My highlight was watching some poor soul be lavishly sick on the doorstep of one of the strip bars. I was able to watch the action from my hotel room window where, oddly enough, no one looked up to notice a topless girl pointing and laughing at Zurich’s late night antics.

The moral of the story? Don’t get the girls hopped up on absinthe, don’t give us an open bar tab, and for goodness sakes, when your walking around downtown at night look up and wave at the topless chicks in the window.

FIN

LMR

Because life is chock full of disappointments I feel I should skip ahead from Oct.30^th to Nov.4^th. I will gloss over the very inadequate Halloween (let’s just say they Europeans don’t go as crazy as we North Americans do) and a sickly 30^th birthday for myself two days later complete with cake from my awesome band mates and a horrible case of sniffles and pink eye to the 4^th of November. This brings us to Thun in Switzerland. Honestly, one of my favourite European cities nestled in a valley of the Alps with a lovely lake running along it’s floor and enchanting canals throughout the town proper. It even has gorgeous (if nasty tempered) swans that paddle through it’s waterways. Be wary in your approach though: despite their charming appearance they are nasty piece of work and I have had my share of them hiss at me when offering them parts of my foodstuffs. So as far as avians go, I say fuck ‘em.

Thun is between the Swiss and German parts so many folks speak both., So if you find yourself stumbling over your words in your tourist German gibberish as I do, you can have someone like Calamity Kate step in and explain in flawless Parisian French what you are looking for. You can then watch the shopkeeper’s features melt from a polite incomprehension to a relieved expression that of the two strangely painted creatures presented before them, one of them can communicate to them about something other than sending for the hall porter because of the frog in the bidet. They will then jocularly retrieve the item you asked for and say something conspirator to Kate in regards to it’s lucky she was there, or else he would have given me all the laxatives in the store or something equally nonsensical.

Disappointed that after our show at Café Mokka, that we wouldn’t be staying in our usual lux accommodations that overlooked the lake, we were instead put up each with our rooms in a lovely hotel in town. The hotel room I had for a single night on my own was larger than my bedroom and living room in Vancouver. It was because of this that I felt the need to run through my yoga moves and practice my backbends and one very clumsy walk over. If anyone had seen me do it, it may have brought to mind a crab being tossed backwards into a pot of boiling water with it’s legs akimbo. Needless to say, it was not the most graceful move I have performed – but I did it.

I went for my run that morning and ran over 8K. Not bad and pretty impressive considering I had to keep stopping to expel mucus from my nose and throat and occasionally pet a cow, but with two and a half hours I ran a few towns over along the floor of the valley. I recall thinking how pretty it was – it looked like the town on the Wutherers wrapper if you care to look closely with all the small nestled rooftops in between domed green mountains. As pretty as it was it made me eager to return to town, shower and walk around and enjoy this rather well laid out town that put me in mind of the Whistler mountain of the late eighties and early nineties before it because such an exclusive resort and people routinely escaped there to ski and snowboard and not quaff ridiculous sums of cash drinking wine and playing golf and doing other soft pursuits that befit rich complacent assholes and the town had some character. So, um yeah. Visit Thun.

But don’t tell the Olympics commitee about it, okay?

LMR

This falls into one of those ‘this will horribly embarrass me when other people find out about it’ files. So in the interests of good storytelling, I figured that I would circumvent any problems and tell the story myself. This is pretty much up there with maggots in my closet and mistaking spoiled milk consumption for morning sickness. We need to rewind a few days back to Oct.30^th in Dresden, when we rolled into Groove Station to begin. Actually the story began the night before that, with a series of poorly delivered communications from BJB that bled into the next morning.

So with a grumpy foundation laid from the morning to our arrival in Dresden there was a bit of a gargoyle cloud hanging over the bus. After our show, and drinks were consumed and another series of poorly delivered communications reared it’s ugly head I was getting pretty annoyed. It culminated into myself yelling at the band, and them yelling back at me.

I should step back at this point I should mention to anyone considering joining a band to think about taking a communications course well before they even pick up an instrument. Trust me, that will go a long way. I’ll spare you the details of the drama, but I was stomping around, getting ready for bed, which included a shower.

Another good thing to remember is to not ever shave with cheap razors, especially when your drunk and angry. As we have been on the road for some time now, I don’t have access to all my usual skin care regimen, which neglects a lot of body exfoliation. So I had some pretty nasty ingrown hairs, that I hauled that cheap-o pink two-blade razor over with all the angry drunk strength I had at that moment, and in doing so managed to remove a impressive chunk of skin on the upper layer of my thighs and bikini area. You wouldn’t think that those little areas would bleed as good as they do, but I was making quite a mess, all over the place.

So imagine your in the band, you’ve just had to deal with a screaming banshee who stormed off to the bathroom and when she comes out she has blood on her, a pissed off look on her face and the bathroom has blood in it. What conclusion might you draw from that? Probably the same one the band did when they had to wipe up the mess. Unbeknownst to me in my drunk haze I took my sleeping pills and passed out, woke up the next morning and went for my run. It wasn’t until the band had a ‘talk’ with me and brought up the bathroom that I remembered my slash job on my legs the night before, which explained the chafing on my run and the phenomenal razor burn. I realized much too late that not only is using soap or shaving cream as an aid a good idea but also that the band thought I was a cutter. While I’ll be the first to agree with them on their other points, the cutting thing was also a good reminder to reign in the drinking, lest one gets a bad rep for being one of those uber-drama queens. I know it’s a bit of the Goth in me, but I’m more likely to take a knife to someone else rather than myself…

I’m pleased to report that since that night, and our ballistic Halloween make up the following night in Berlin things have improved, at least for myself. The only blood I get covered in is fake and the majority of arguing and fighting is confined to J-Brand bitching back and forth. It doesn’t do a lot for them, but it’s nice not to be involved and to sit back with popcorn and watch the action.

Cheers,

LMR

Big John Bates on the Gretsch

As well as part of our Canadian tour with White Cowbell Oklahoma, Exclaim! and Gretsch are giving away a free guitar. So don’t ever say that we never did you any favors…. to enter go to the contest page here: http://exclaim.ca/Contests/big_john_bates_vs_white_cowbell_oklahoma/

Good luck!

Little Miss Risk

To give you some perspective, in the past our Italian accommodations have been varied and usually kind of frightening. When one goes to a hotel you think 24 concierge, a private shower or bath, a bed to sleep on, heating, and maybe if your in a civilized part of the world a minibar with an assortment of overpriced snacks and thimble-sized amounts of alcohol that you couldn’t clean a knee scrape with. Generally it is the Italian promoter’s sense of humour to attempt to house us in spaces that are as far from this description as possible. In the past some of these little jokes have included a farmhouse in a vineyard with no glass in the windows, no beds and a proliferation of ants on the walls (though Jens our ever-vigiliant agent was happy to forcefully correct the problem and let the promoter know that this would NOT do for accommodations), villas with roosters crowing at 6AM under our windows after going to bed at 4AM, and ‘hotels’ with hallways that are as hot as St.Tropez and with ices hanging from the rafters inside the rooms. In short, the hospitality is usually scary. With this crapshoot of hotels constantly threatening  us and hanging over our heads the grand dame of these came a few days ago in Torino.

Directed to the place, we arrived to an already open gate, gaping open, the fenced property looking for all the world that something that was supposed to be kept in had gotten loose. We democratically elected J-Brand to go and explore and suss out the situation. Calamity Kate, JT and I were enjoying the spoils of the catering in the back and quietly munching away, when the sight of this place had us all stop in mid-mastication. While food sat in between our molars, we pulled up into the driveway of this place. We had noticed that there were bars on the some of the windows. I do not like bars on the windows of the places I stay unless I am in Detroit at a low-end motel with new drywall and stains on the mattress. J-Brand go out to investigate and the rest of us had a lively debate as to whether or not we should get the keys from John before he went inside. The three of us had seen enough horror films to know this plot well enough. By letting John leave with the keys, something horrible would happen to him, forcing the remaining three from the safety of the van to seek the keys, only to meet our own untimely and unnecessary gory demises. We weren’t slouches, and knew how these things went down.

But we were saved from this fate and our squabbling by a grim faced J-Brand returning from their scouting mission. The place was unlocked, with hospital beds and strange Catholic icons all in one room like a small chapel. The layout was very much like that of a old folks home or a mental institution. With areas in the entrance for group and play therapy, ‘television rooms’ and so on it didn’t look like any hotel I saw advertised for Italian holidays. We were unsure that this dark, eerie unlocked place was much of an area of rest.

We reconvened in the van and about a block away (before the gate could slam shut on us, trapping us in – saw that in a few movies too). Upon a call to the promoter, who assured us that this was the place, we met with the care taker. He too assured us that this was the place and was a hotel and was new. Scenes from Hostel flashed through my mind as he led us upstairs to our rooms. I had the mean satisfaction if we were going to get harvested for our organs while we slept at least there wouldn’t be a decent, usable liver in the lot.

Calamity Kate and I opted to share a room (we all had our own – another horror movie technique). The rooms were spartan, neat and clean. Despite a comfortable bed, I had restless dreams of waking up strapped down, with a rubber bit in my mouth and electrodes attached to my temples. It was not a pleasant experience.

Upon waking from my third dream regarding unnecessary surgery, I decided to sluice off the bad thoughts with a skin-scorching shower. I had gotten the water going and pulled a cord to start what I guessed was the fan, since there was no vent in the room. The thing about miserable luck is once i get started, it tend to snowball. I had pulled a cord, thinking I was turning on a fan, when in fact I had activated some kind of alarm system which had a light and buzzer going off outside our room, and incidentally inside of JT’s room. He had not had a good night, given the fact that his bed was broken and had slept on the floor, only to be woken by an alarm going off in his room.

So after the three of us were up, grumpy and so on, we figured that this must be a feature of the hotel’s by-gone era of being a institute of some kinds since the Ritz doesn’t have alarm features for if you fall in the shower… But the important thing is that we left the hotel with all the organs we came in with, and we all agreed if any promoters tried to make us stay in such a place again, we would hold them hostage until they found us suitable accommodations. Or we’d kill them.

xoxox

LMR

In our first trip to Linköping we came upon a Indian-restaurant-turned-music club. I am now convinced that the smell of rock and roll should accompany the smell of curry. I’m sad to report that Calamity Kate and I neither enjoyed a Swedish massage or sauna while we were there, but we did enjoy the people’s company though we noticed that the menfolk were somewhat more reserved that we expected. We chalked this up to the price of alcohol being so expensive and the usual reserves of liquid courage were noticeably absent. The city was beautiful and so were it’s inhabitants and I figured unattractive people are deported elsewhere and forced to take all the litter with them.

Our next stop and first ferry ride later found us in Alandt playing an old bathhouse that forty years ago was changed into a music club and had played host to all kinds of acts in that time period. It sat up high on hill, overlooking what I took to be water, but in the dark and snowy space it could have been an open field for all we could tell. Again the depressing combination of overpriced liquor and shy men was starting to get a little tired. The Voodoo Dollz in an attempt to flirt with potential customers at the merch booth left us feeling both like sexual predators. We were able to hide our shame by fleeing immediately after the show and driving to another ferry on the other side of the island in order to catch four hours sleep to head to Helsinki.

We arrived bleary-eyed and a little on the scruffy side in Helsinki. A coffee later and a bite to eat later our good spirits were restored and we all parted ways to wander around the city before we checked into our hotel. The harbour is a handsome one and had a variety of great ships in port. I saw one tug boat which had me thinking if I should come into a windfall I would like very much to buy a a tug boat and park it in Amsterdam. I’d run a Swedish massage parlour out of it and call it the Rub And Tug. I think as a tourist gimmick it would make me a few dollars if this whole burlesque thing fails to pan out…

Fast forward to four days later, and a drive across Europe we were in Rome. Driving from Helsinki to Rome is like driving from Vancouver to Saskatoon with two ferries thrown in. So for some perspective, it was a damn long haul.

It was worth it though, and and Micca Club (home to the next Rome burlesque festival, BTW) was amazing. I can’t recommend it enough as a fun, cool venue to play. As well as being totally burlesque friendly, the change in the people was apparent. Where the Scandinavians were shy to the point of misanthropy, the Italians were boisterous and wasted no time trying to get Calamity Kate to bend over so they could take pictures of her backside. They balked when she told them there was a charge of twenty Euros for the privilege. It’s interesting to note the vim and vigour that they address everything in the way they talk. JT and I noticed this when we went for lunch the following day, prior to idiot me walking into the Basilica with a Playboy magazine in my bag (whoops). The owner of the restaurant told us it wouldn’t open for another 2o minutes. When we got up to leave, feeling appropriately embarrassed, as Canadians will do, he insisted we sit, brought us espresso and the best pasta one could hope for. Definitely a attitude shift, and one I was quite comfortable with.

So tonight three days later we play our last show in Italy for this tour and we shall miss it. But hitting the social speed bumps we have in the past week have been a good learning experience: if you want to make friends with Scandinavians, get them drunk and if you want to make friends with Italians bend over and let them take photos of your posterior.

Ciao, bellas.

Little Miss Risk

As well the new songs off of Rookie Records 7″ “Bad Pussy” can be found online at our MySpace here: http://www.myspace.com/bigjohnbatesandthevoodoodollz

And be sure to check out the Dollz menacing message to the Europeans here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLbrJqSZEZI

CAN – Nov 26 to Dec 11

Jagermeister presents…
White Cowbell Oklahoma VS Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dollz with Stroumberg Fair X Canada Tour

Nov 24: Toronto, ON @ The Garrison

Nov 25: Montreal, QC @ The Katacombes
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120163444707035

Nov 26: Ottawa, ON @ Maverick’s
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=149962561712079

Nov 27: Sudbury, ON @ The Townehouse
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160559373962046

Nov 28: Sault Ste. Marie, ON @ The Grand Theatre
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=159672124057239

Nov 30: Thunder Bay, ON @ Black Pirates Pub
Event invite :http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166544126693547

Dec 01: Winnipeg, MB @ The Pyramid
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101853316546651

Dec 02: Regina, SK @ The Gaslight
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163904583634974

Dec 03: Calgary, AB @ The Distillery
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=157020327661654

Dec 04: Edmonton, AB @ The Pawn Shop
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158302250857111

Dec 05: Jasper, AB @ Downstream
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153365628035069

Dec 06: Banff, AB @ Wild Bill’s Saloon
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165754513436314

Dec 07: Golden, BC @ Rockwater’s
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=159858204038625

Dec 08: Revelstoke, BC @ Outabounds
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160636057298917

Dec 09: Whistler, BC @ Dusty’s
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102036216530113

Dec 10: Victoria, BC @ Lucky Bar
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158677264153018

Dec 11: Vancouver, BC @ The Penthouse
Event invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161202530575331

For more info check out http://www.bigjohnbates.com/tourdate.html

Be sure to keep up with all the online hijinx and our upcoming US tour at http://www.bigjohnbates.com/, and our tour blog (featured on Exclaim! and www.bbad.com)

MySpace: (http://www.myspace.com/bigjohnbatesandthevoodoodollz)

Facebook: (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24437548352)

Twitter: (http://twitter.com/bigjohnbates)
(http://twitter.com/littlemissrisk)

Hugs and hisses,
Little Miss Risk

Keep checking our website for new items at http://www.bigjohnbates.com/