In 2014 I was booked to play a few shows throughout North America, finishing in Mexico. Our first destination was Quebec. This was my first time in Canada, and it still holds a strong position in my heart due to the wealth of hospitality among its residents.
We arrived in Montreal and were spending the night in a hotel just down from the Village. One thing I noticed about this giant hotel, being part of a chain, was the sheer callousness of its room sizes. We had two king-size beds for our party of four, and the air system would only pump out arctic cold.
We had been gifted tickets for an event that evening, courtesy of our agent, and set about getting ready for the night ahead. The soirée was a showcase of a DJ, which I wasn’t too fond of, so I departed soon after, telling the guys I would return shortly. I turned right and came across a busker who had gathered a small audience on the side of the road. Among them was a tall bearded bloke with a young lady sitting on the back of his BMW R80. I opened the conversation with, “Nice bike,” explained why I was in town, and asked him for recommendations of where we could end up.
I knew Montreal was hip to blues, as I’d acquired a number of MP3s from my mate Tony, from a local blues musician playing live at Café Jojo. This was already on my hit list, as the record was a live recording and the energy captured was that of a bootleg Stooges album. After my quick exchange with Chris, I mapped the city a little more and returned to the DJ event.
At the time we were living on a very tight budget, which seemed to be the theme throughout my career with Heymoonshaker—sharing coffee while living out of luxury hotels, quite the juxtaposition. As all heads of our party grew tired of the music, we decided to leave, having had our fill of complimentary kombucha, which the event had been sponsored by.
On exit, we heard a voice shout to us, “You’re going the wrong way.” Crowe spun on his heel and broadened his shoulders, responding, “Which way are we supposed to go?”—broadening his shoulders with intent of intimidation to the commenter.
It was Chris who stepped forward into the confrontational response of Crowe’s quick tongue. Chris stands six foot five unheeled in his Red Wing engineer boots and cast a long shadow over Crowe’s six-one frame. With a smile, Chris offered to take us to Le Chien Fumant on the other side of town. He said he would meet us there, so we hailed a taxi and arrived at a beautiful late-night watering hole, which usually hosted the hospitality industry of Montreal after hours.
As I remember, there was hung meat in the windows, which had been smoked earlier that week. We all sat at the bar, including Crowe’s dad, Steve, who had come along for the ride on this particular leg of the tour. Drinks were served still bottled in brown paper bags, and at the height of the microbrewery scene, it offered a perfect insight into Montreal’s hip hospitality industry. Beers were drunk, drunk, and Chris shouted the bill, much to Steve’s uncertainty of character and intention.
The next day we set out to Quebec City and arrived at Le Petit Impérial, a beautiful venue with long windows running down one side and a well-trodden wooden floor. The concert was fantastic to my memory, and the show was sold out. Perhaps our reputation in France had travelled across the water. That evening we stayed in a very chic, modern-decor hotel within walking distance from the venue, and stood by the entrance smoking joints before returning to our rooms.
The schedule was tight this run of shows, and we left the next day to perform in Montreal. The memory of this show has left me, though I recall we finished the evening in the basement of our new friend Chris. John, whose house it was, had dug into the basement and built a bed chamber of salvaged wood from an old church to create a gypsy-caravan-like cocoon on a bed and fitted a urinal in a sleek Japanese back-street décor of a second room, still unfinished, with washing machines and rusted tools. We drank and smoked till early the next day, when we would be leaving for Boston by Greyhound.
The Montreal bus station was cold and felt very alien, though the excitement of getting to America overshadowed any sense of anxiety. The road was long, and border control was aggressive, but finally we arrived in good time and were greeted by America’s prolific skyline as we entered the city. Our manager, Andy, had arranged an Airbnb for us, so we traversed the city with local buses until my phone rang. It was Chris. To recall the phone call, it went like this:
“Hey Andy, it’s Chris.
Crowe’s left his bag.”
“What’s inside his bag?”
“A toothbrush and a black T-shirt.”
This was not surprising, as throughout my career with Heymoonshaker, I donated almost all my clean, dry T-shirts to Crowe, who took no care of his own and peppered all in his own possession on the road from here to Japan.
Our Airbnb host was a stocky Boston fella who lectured at Harvard and also lectured me on running water while I cleaned my plates, in his strong Boston accent. That day we set about exploring the area and looked around Harvard. We passed the statue with its well-polished shoe and entered the university, clocking a lecture that students were entering. Crowe and I made eyes at each other and entered the lecture theatre. I became nervous and finally exited before the doors were shut, while Crowe stayed and received a talk about something I can’t recall. I waited in the halls for an hour until he appeared again.
That evening we played an Irish bar in the northern part of town to a relatively small crowd. The show hadn’t been properly advertised, or maybe this was a taste of what was to come, though we didn’t mind. We were in America, making our way—that was all that mattered.
The next day we returned to the bus station and headed to New York. This would be my first time in the Big Apple, and it excited me a lot. We were to meet Andy there, who had skipped Boston after Montreal and arranged digs close to Chinatown. Our first show was at a showcase hall in downtown Manhattan. We were the second act, and my parents had come over to see the show, lining it up with a Paul Simon concert the night before. My dad was quick to comment that there were more people at Simon’s show, obviously.
As the evening unwound, I caught up with Bianca and Jenny, whom I had lived with in Kaikoura. They were now living in Brooklyn, and I ended the night at their place. The next morning was a walk of shame back to Manhattan before returning to Brooklyn that evening, as we were playing another show that night. This show was of substantial size, in a larger hall with a more well-known lineup to the locals, and the place was packed. We pulled out all our stops, and after the show, Crowe caught my dad leaving on his own looking for a kebab, meanwhile Crowe had been flirting with a girl—this story is Crowe’s to tell.
The next day we flew out to Austin for SXSW. We were still dressed in our long black coats and winter scarves, which were promptly left in our hotel before discovering the city. Austin was magical—to be a part of. Every fashion clique of its musical époque was there on the main drag. We had only booked one show for our four-day stay and had planned to do some busking while in town to draw more meat to our show. While setting up, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Ozzie, who had filmed our busking session in London on Brick Lane, which had given us our start for booking shows together. He was out to film a Bacardi commercial, as there are bats that live under a bridge in Austin, and they were to be filmed.
We spent the day exploring the city and seeing as many shows as possible. Memorable shows were Little Dragon and Conan Mockasin, though I fell asleep during his show and woke to him naked on top of his guitarist in front of me.
The evening of our show, we were walking through the market when Crowe was drawn toward a pipe maker, who explained he had been voted number one pipe maker by High Times. Crowe stuck around to chat, and I left to sound check my guitar. Baby In Vain were before us—they were fantastic and super heavy. They later went on to support The Kills, who I had seen in London on their Ash & Ice tour.
As my guitar was set up, Crowe arrived white as a sheet and went on to explain that the guy had offered him a pipe of his own supply. The story went like this:
“…yeah, he offered me some of his fruit salad.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a mixture of the top 20 growers in the US. I just grind it up and put it into one big fruit salad.”
He loaded the pipe, handed it to Crowe, and asked when our showcase was. Crowe took the hit and told him ten minutes, and the man apologized.
Anyway, our show was great, at least we thought it was. It wasn’t the biggest crowd, but we brought all our force together to deliver something truly special, even though Crowe later explained he had the driest mouth, which for a beatboxer is like a broken wing.
We played a few more shows while in Austin—one for Bureau Export of France, another in a gay bar, and another near the weed store bar. That night we celebrated and got into some mischief, which I’ll leave out of this—you’ll have to ask me in person.
The next day we drove to LA for our showcase at the Viper Room. The drive to LA was a real highlight of the tour, as we had been given a 4x4, and the lonesome desert road north was everything I had imagined from my numerous readings of American literature. Our budget was so tight that we booked into a two-bed motel for the four of us—Crowe, myself, Andy, and our booker Ben. Crowe and I hid while Ben and Andy checked into the room, then snuck in when the receptionist wasn’t looking. In the morning, I met him while smoking in the carpark out front, gazing off into the distance. He explained to me his car had broken down while driving north, and he was working to save money to get it fixed. His words had the romantic mystery of all the books I’d read.
Further up the road we stopped for gas, and during another cigarette I met a homeless man with a shopping cart who told me he had part of a comet round his neck, which he’d found in the desert. It was a giant piece of rock with a screw eye drilled into the top on a piece of rope. He told me he finds all kinds of things out there, and at that moment he yelled, “Hey, that’s mine!” and ran off after the station clerk, who was pushing away his trolley of belongings.
Arriving in LA was very exciting. We stayed on Hollywood Boulevard and headed down to the Rainbow Room to try to spot Lemmy. He wasn’t there, but his slot machine stood surrounded by pictures of all the faces who had graced the bar.
We headed back down for sound check and met the support band, Queen Frank, a rock ’n’ roll duo from LA who were expected to draw a bigger crowd. The shows of this time were very unhinged and with little structure, and we bounced through all the riffs we kept up our sleeve to a very stark Viper Room. Johnny never turned up, though I think that was to be expected.
After LA we were booked to play San Diego, so got back in the car and dialed in Elvis radio again and took off south. I believe we played the Pink Elephant, and the bar staff were less hospitable. I too was beginning to grow tired and more irritable after these days on the road. I’m unsure how the show went this night, but do recall which side of the road the bar was on.
Our final show was in Mexico at Cumbre Tajín Festival. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros were headlining, though our stage was more of a bandstand to the side of the festival near the native camp. The native camp was fenced off and free from police and security, and it was the only place on site you could smoke pot without getting in trouble. We got friendly with our liaisons and were offered a temazcal with the elders. This was to take place in a tent of twigs and branches, with hot rocks thrown in the center and herbs and medicines burned on top. There were to be four stages for north, south, east, and west. I think I only made it through two, finding the climate outside hard to keep up with.
That evening, driving back to the hotel, I had a girl sitting on my lap in the overcrowded van. We were stopped by police with big guns. I was nervous, as I had pot in a cigarette packet in my pocket. I slid it into my seat and got out of the van. The other musicians seemed less concerned than I, and they all spoke in Spanish between each other. The police came into the conversation with perilous voices, all gripping their guns with intimidation. Torches were shone in the car, and I watched the beam for where it landed. Everything was okay, and we continued back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel bar, Andy and I met an old man who was very skinny, with leathery skin and a small white ponytail. He told me he used to drink like we were doing and explained how yoga had changed his ways after a love he had had told him to change his ways or she would leave him.
The next day we met him by the hammocks at the festival, and he went on to give us a session, me wearing very tight jeans, being completely limited in my output, much to his disapproval. The shows at the festival were met with great appreciation, and finally we left back to Mexico City, where we had organised a last-minute show in a bar on a balcony looking down at the shelves of mezcal and tequila.