May 15 - Brussels Cancelation

Tonight we were to play a show in Brussels, but the venue got shut down. Black Flag must have played there once. Pigs ruin everything.

With an unexpected day off, our possibilities were endless. We could go to Rebours, a robot war in Holland, we could show up to a squat in Karlsruhe, Germany and play a show, we could go to Brussels anyway, we could go to The Black Forest and camp without camping gear. With so many options, like orphaned pups at our feet, we decided to just stay in Metz for another day.

Luckily, our hostess, the lovely Flores, said we could stay at her flat for another day. She didn’t mind, she would just stay somewhere other than her home for one more night. Flores rules by the way. Her flat came equipped with a guitar, a pump organ, harmonica, melodica, a bamboo xylophone, and didgeridoos.

We grabbed some pain au chocolat and visited a giant church with Chagall designed windows. I was actually impressed. Usually churches have a Pavlovian affect on me where I become immediately sleepy and uninterested. This church left me conscious and uninterested.

Mike and I found interest in an afternoon snack of heavenly carpaccio.

Flores met us in the afternoon for crepes and Belgian beer. Over forty drinks in two bars, she tickled our day with girlish giggles and language barrier silliness. It felt like we were all collectively on a wonderfully drunken first date. In a legless moment of improv, Flores and I switched jackets before she vanished for work in the rain.

I woke up in a film of drinking sweat on a futon wearing a small leather Michael Jackson jacket. It was dark. Some teenaged men were listening to G-funk and figuring out the chords to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” while playing with a four foot long pipe that had a clock built into it. The rest of the band had already gone out to see Aphex Twin play a free concert at the art museum. Except Reid, who unbeknownst to me was still in the flat passed out from the afternoon gluttony. But at the time it was 11pm. And I was simultaneously groggy and in France.

I went to the bar, hoping to get my jacket back from Flores. The bar was empty except for Alan, Mike and Greg. Apparently they had had their fill of Aphex Twin. A curiosity by the name of Stephan entertained from behind the bar, sliding beers to Alan and Mike like in the westerns, cracking jokes about his suicide attempts and his son’s mysterious name, and making faces that Jim Carrey could only dream about making.

At a doner kebob stand Mike and I were offered hash from some funny French knuckleheads. The short one, “Joe Pesci”, pulled out a lead-looking pellet from a box of Marlboros. “So which are easier to fuck? French girls or American girls?”

We got our doner kebobs to go.

May 14 - L'Emile Vache, Metz France

A victorious return to Metz!

On our last visit we had conquered this town!

Flashback: Getting drunk on beer laced with pico (sp?), trashing rental drum kit, being ignored at a tapas restaurant while wearing horrendous make up, prancing in a pink nightie through a fortress, climbing over guardrails protecting decent people from a 50-foot drop into a shallow river, dropping camera, losing all pictures from Metz, getting a pretty girl's name, losing her name, aggressive offers of homosexual oral sex, stagediving onto the windshield of the van, and doner kebab.

This time we were just as conquerous, and every bit as victorious!

We parked the van next to the fortress and just left it there. Who cares, right, man? When you're The Bitter Tears, you live like there's no tomorrow, or if there is tomorrow, you might pay 30 Euros. Check out these awesome pictures I fucken took, man:

Yeah, we laid waste to this town!

The rest of the bands in all of Europe were too intimidated to play with us, so we played alone.

During soundcheck all these adult women were checking us out. We made sure to play our best soundcheck ever. We were the hottest shit. Afterward, we couldn't even eat any dinner without being hounded by Metz'z adultest women. They wanted to know everything about us: our band name, our city of origin, our city of origin, our band name. Everything.

Our set made grown men dance and adult women cry from their vaginas. It was almost too good. But in France, nothing is too good, so we were averagely amazing. We left a permanent stain called "awesome" on that stage. Metz, we rule!

Speaking of stains, every adult woman in France or Metz could not keep their hands off of us. They deserted their dates, many of whom had taken drunken spills on the sidewalk and were left to tend to their own bleeding noses. At the bar, a completely adult woman put me in a seven minute headlock until I cried "Edith Piaf." A drooling derelict got behind my drum kit and played some confused jazz, until Reid and I rescued him with mind blowing keyboard accompaniment. Everyone I know described it as "genius" in French. Some kooks, clearly inspired by our brilliant impromptu, pounded out broken Lennon and Dylan ballads on an upright piano. They got a record deal right then and there. We kissed every French woman ever, marking them eternally with our stage-white-caked brilliant faces.

Metz, you love us so much that we love you!

See you in the morning, man.

May 13 - L'Aquilone, Liege Belgium

So far Europe in May is rainy and cold. Beautifully dreary. Romantically ugly. Sexily horrid.

At a Dutch rest stop Mike, a professional chef, described the process by which his sandwich had been made. “They took pesto made from pickles and then they pissed on it.”

On the day sheet for today’s show:

Will food be provided?	YES
Will drinks be provided?	YES (+/- 5 drinks/musician)
Will accommodation be provided?	YES
Any other useful information:	Can wait to see you

They could wait to see us…

Thankfully, when we arrived in Liege a few hours early (!), Julian from Honest House happened to be walking by. Not only was he able to wait for us, but he also provided a wonderful walking tour of the city while we munched on Belgium’s famous frites. Belgium frites are to french fries what Tesla was to Marconi. Tesla the band that is.

After some café ole, Belgian beer, and a hearty dinner at L’aquilone (which means “Aqualung” in French), The Friendly Dogs took the stage. The overly talented trio took control of some truly unwieldy Beefheartian punk. The singer was a British ex-pat with an absurdist streak that kept the crowd in chuckles between spurts of rubber chords. The bassist switched between electric, upright, and several wooden stringed oddities. The drummer was the most impressive drummer I’ve seen in the flesh. A presence of tall French calm, he had a wingspan the length of Liege. His tiny jazz kit was augmented with a Vistalite bass drum, a jungle gym of cymbals, small gongs, and bell trees, a xylophone of cowbells, Hanna Barbera electronic triggers, various sheet metals or foils, and an endless magician’s kerchief of shakers, shlingers, schlangons, and zeezles.

He played with precision randomness and hummingbird quickness. I don’t think he’s played a quarter note in twenty years. It was almost like his talent was a sickness.

My favorite song was about a sad dwarf called "Super Dwarf", a thrice-shifting number that boomeranged flourishes of press rolls and slide guitar with auxiliary bass drum thuds and electronic drip drops under the tortured perspective of a lionized dwarf. I was humbled to say the least.

The L’Aquilone bi-monthly playbill described The Bitter Tears as “flexible”. I was hoping the crowd would be flexible, too, now that we had to follow The Friendly Dogs. And they were. We were our normal selves, caked in grime, singing, provoking, sometimes screaming. I got many compliments on my prom dress, even though it kept falling down around my elbows, revealing my developing man-boobs. It made sense that after seeing The Friendly Dogs' drummer, their favorite part of my performance was the dress.

We hung out afterward forever. It seemed like the night would never end. In the outdoor plaza we talked shop with Andrew from The Friendly Dogs while Julian kept our hands continuously filled with Jupilers. Each time I visited the bathroom, I saw my own breath.

Eventually, we found our way to La Zone, an underground hostel and café. Reid’s curiosity was piqued by the half-closed door to the café, brimming inside with the sounds of B. Bumble & The Stingers. We poked our heads in to see several girls dancing slumber party-style. Mike followed.

“Where are we?”

We were told that it was after hours and the employees were celebrating the end of the day, and that we were welcomed to join. And so we did. The walls were themed in basketball, with photo collages affixed to silhouettes of slam-dunkians. An LA Lakers jacket and a Dennis Rodman jersey hung with pride (?). It’s always hard to tell what is or isn’t ironic in Europe.

I sat down with the group until they asked where I was from. I pointed to the Rodman jersey.

"What do people from Chicago call themselves?"

Chicagoans.

"Chicago wins!"

I talked at length with a Belgian man who had spent two years working in a power plant in the hairy border town of Matamoros, Mexico, and with another Belgian man who had a bit of a learning disability, and knew more English than I did French, Flemish or German combined. We talked about the environment, Obama, and eating dandelions, clovers and poison ivy lasagna.

I don’t know when we went to bed. No one knows what time it is ever. All I know is that I left Reid, the lone single Bitter Tear, to his own devices with the friendly group of spirited Belgians. And in the middle of the night I was awoken by the sound of small, nearby Flemish kisses. Dreamily terrible!

May 12 - Havenkwartier, Deventer Holland

Close all the windows and turn on the gas, because The Bitter Tears return to Europe! This tour’s lineup includes: Alan (guitar), Mike (bass), Reid (keyboard), and me (drum).

The four of us met this afternoon in Amsterdam. Mike discovered a 56 Euro parking ticket on the windshield of the van, signaling the official beginning of the tour and of our financial woes. Alan reunited with an old friend, Greg, who has been living off the grid for the last decade having adventures that most people don’t have the courage to attempt. We invited Greg to join us for more courageous endeavors like loading gear, unloading gear, and eating pasta. He was game.

Greg was staying in a squat downtown, where Alan and Reid had spent the previous night. Greg’s friend Corry joined us, too, and soon the garbage strike’ened streets of Amsterdam gave way to the traffic clogged highways of rural Holland.

At least it was pretty with all those cows and sheeps and shit all over the place. With six of us, it was quite cozy in the van. Especially considering that more than half of us had squatted in a defunct building and hadn’t showered. The van took on a kind of ripe, homelessy scent with an essence of stale, chimney flue.

After just seven months, The Bitter Tears returned to Deventer, a smaller Dutch town sort of near Germany. Our host, Laurens, was in great spirits and welcomed us back with smiles and beer.

Hots For Helga opened the night with genuine 80’s art rock. The singer sang with his eyes, adding humor to covers of Joy Division and Velvet Underground. During our soundcheck, he took notice of Reid playing around with a “No Quarter” patch on the Nord.

“Sounds like your keyboard has too much water in it.”

It became our turn to play music to Deventer. I must say, it was a great first show. Alan jumped around with yards of energy. Mike’s improv instincts were strong. Reid made his keyboard debut with The Bitter Tears in garb reminiscent of an extra on The Munsters. I got dangerously close to blackface. But hey, we were sort of near Germany.

Bitter Tears Behind The Scenes!

For years, Alan and Mike have taken a cue from vaudeville performers of yore, applying a lit match to the end of a wine cork and rubbing its ashes onto their sad or happy faces. It achieves an authentic coal miner’s ragamuffin look. Recently we were told that it also achieves toxic levels of carcinogens into the human body. So now The Bitter Tears have switched to a new, healthier liquid called Face Rot. But we will continue to endorse the use of asbestos for kleenex.

During the encore, someone handed Alan and Mike large plants and the Dutch took pictures like 80’s Asian stereotypes. This devolved into a loud angry rant by Alan translated simultaneously by Mike in Spanish, creating a cacophony that never quite crescendoed. It just sort of ended. Mike calls these shows “crumblers”.

We crumbled back to Laurens’ home, where the festivities were just beginning. Alan played trumpet while I pumped out Beach Boys and Arm Soup songs on an antique pump organ. Meanwhile, downstairs a huge air guitar party had ensued. It was Zeppelin. I came in just in time to add air drums to the first snare crack of “Achilles Last Stand.”

We played air instruments until dawn, man. We were awesome and always ferocious. Between bursts of Russian kick-dancing, Mike and I assisted Reid in breakdancing to Metallica’s Master of Puppets LP.

Pumped and frenzied, I put on a Heino record, which was answered almost immediately with Maiden. Reid responded with US Maple and everyone went home. James Brown’s Hell segued into Deventer’s morning birds. Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music waited on an ottoman, frozen in eternal potential energy.

April 10 - Peoria Theater, Peoria IL

The Peoria Theater sits inside a mall that has been on life support since 1982. Attached to the theater is a bowling center, a sauna, and a neglected arcade.

Two security guards dressed as California Highway Patrolmen oversee the property.

When we arrived Derrick Hart & The Fantastic Possibilities Of Life On This Planet were assembling their massive stage show. While Mike and Alan bowled, I made a beer run that involved a Schnuck's cashier who had never heard of Jim Beam or bourbon. He used a telephone. I was told the guy who runs the liquor department had gone home early.

Returning to the megaplex, I found John and his wife Christine hanging out in the parking lot. John drank coffee from a thermos and smoked a cigarette. Soon one of the mall ChiPs approached. We were told to move, proving that coffee and cigarettes doesn't play in Peoria movie theaters.

Derrick Hart and his crew had decorated the stage with plush toys, homemade Radio Shack lights, and a life-size robot that seemed in a decent mood.

They kept their music slow and easy on the ears. Derrick gently referenced boxing legends in a Grandaddy timber, using "smurf" as a verb, while his right hand man Eddie launched flatulent balloons upward and onto the songs. Then he added Fisher Price feedback with a Toys 'R Us guitar. Sometimes he narrated through a megaphone, and let his horsey-on-a-stick whinny for emphasis. During one song, Eddie slowly unravelled his body from a mummified cacoon, revealing a butterfly costume in the song's crescendo.

The sextet was dressed for success, a motley melding of gnomewear, Nehru, sombreros, baseball caps, tape moustaches, and robes. Several kids sitting on a couch wore gorilla masks or those novelty springy alien antennae things that were popular in 80's malls. All the while a film played behind them. For the final song, a barrage of streamers bounced off of the band, and supermarket fireworks popped, like a family version of Great White's live show.

Derrick Hart put on something special for Peoria.

Too bad Peoria doesn't know what special is.

We played next. We weren't very good. We closed with "Vanilla Bean."

Three times.

During the fourth "Vanilla Bean," someone shouted out "Laura Clark."

Laura Clark is a 17-piece band that takes a long time to set up. While they were still setting up, I retrieved some keys I had accidentally left near the stage. I apologized for walking through their set up, and said it would be the last and only time.

"Good," said the lead mandolinist flatly.

Laura Clark is also the name of the band's lead singer. She is an "attractive" girlwoman who plays original guitars and musics. I think it's really cute that such a beautiful girl can be a woman with a band of men to make her songs sound so professional and good-sounding. Her father played keyboards and favored major sevenths, the kind that contemporary adults go mad for.

"That's my Dad. It's past his bedtime."

The rest of the family laughed. It was a good family time atmosphere.

"Thank you for staying. I know it's late. We're going to play some nice songs."

Laura Clark the band did play nice songs. All 23 of the band members knew exactly how to play their instruments the right way. Every song sounded like it could have been on the shiny radio. They played so properly, it sounded like 47 people were playing. And there were only 34 of them on the stage! They were that good.

And gracious, too!

"Thanks to The Bitter Tears. That was an experience."

That's the thing about being an artist. You have to have life experience. And Laura Clark was born with it.

"Can someone get me a beer-JUST KIDDING!! I don't drink beer.

It tastes like pee."

Now even though Laura Clark has never had a beer in her life, she knows that it tastes like pee because it smells like pee. That makes sense to me! Besides, her husband would kill her if he caught her talented face drinking a beer.

The only reason I immediately left after that was because I had to go drink some pee, I mean, use the restroom. On the way there a gentlemen compared The Bitter Tears to Phish. He insisted that he meant no harm for several minutes.

At the concession stand they sold liquor and pee, I mean beer. The guy behind the counter switched to speaking in Ebonics when talking to black men. I ate a soft, warm pretzel and watched other conversations, until someone asked me how Jay Bennett had been portrayed in the Wilco movie. Meanwhile Alan sold a bunch of CD's and pee, I mean LP's.

Our records just sound like pee.

The original plan was to spend the night in Peoria and drive back the next day. But if we hit the road right away we would get home by as early as tomorrow. Mike took the wheel for the necessary trip directly back home right now.

As the morning birds chirped in Chicago we passed an establishment called Family Bar.

"The family that drinks together, stinks together."

A big thanks to Derrick Hart & The Fantastic Possibilities Of Life On This Planet for putting together a wonderfully odd bill in reverse order. Since The Bitter Tears didn't "play in Peoria" I wonder if we should remove it from our past shows list.

March 28 - Circle A, Milwaukee WI

Though we've seen it over 700 times in our lifetimes, none of us had never been to Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha, Wisconsin. So Alan, Mike, my girlfriend Lauren (making her Bitter Tears road debut) and I used it as a pit stop.

It had a lot more to offer than I thought.

In addition to the obligatory cheeses, jerkies, and obnoxiously scatalogical, sexist hot sauces ("Ass In Space," "Fiery Fart," and "The Big Hot One" featuring a cartoon bikini girl with fake tits and collagen lips sucking off a porn-sized pepper), there's a deli, a bar, a long knight's table, maces, and suits of armor. And best of all, a gift shop!

The Circle A is a tiny bar owned by a pair of quirky adults who live upstairs. It's what a childless couple's child could look like if they had a good jukebox. And they do! 45's of James Brown, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and Kitty Wells played while friends (including Yale Delay and Mr. Alarm from ifihadahifi) filled the one-room bar to capacity.

Wereworm began the night with truly enjoyable instrumental rock of the Thinking Fellers variety. Tom Stack (painter, illustrator and creator of many gig posters) bashed many a flam on an early 60's jazz kit that resembled a delicious honeycomb. One of the guitarists had a Stu Sutcliffe stage presence, his back to the crowd the whole time. We were in for a good night.

This was a rare Bitter Tears show as a trio, just Alan on guitar, Mike on bass, on me on drums. The room was packed and tight. The neck of Mike's bass crashed into my ride, and the body of Alan's guitar rode my crash. We kept the tempo mostly up with "Fire Messiah," "Moline" and "Rough & Ready." The guys from hifi added a round of whiskey into the show and things got kooky. One of those fruit shakers (apple) found its way onto my floor tom, so I beat a hole into it. All of its beads leaked onto the drum, and when I pounded the drum they flew into the happy mass like confetti bullets. They returned the favor with flying beer cans, which pissed off the living ghost of Rollins. Too bad, Hank.

Yale Delay tried to tackle me during "The Companion," which ended with nasty cymbal washes, ringing everyone's ears into tomorrow. Reluctantly the 10pm DJ allowed us an encore, and we dusted off "Murdered" for the messy mass.

Afterward Yale thrust another 16oz Bitburger into my hand and bear hugged me into the ceiling and onto a blue collar regular. The guy told me to watch out, but he liked the show. It took a long time for me to get out of make up and figure this one out: You have to work in the morning and Lauren's driving your drunk ass home.

Circle A is tops!

March 20 - The Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival, Hot Springs, AR

At 6am I felt the urge to vomit. The bathroom upstairs was occupied. I didn’t know the location of the bathroom downstairs, but I went down there in my underwear anyway. I hovered above the kitchen sink and drank a glass of water in Alan’s parents' house. I drank another and lied down on the cool floor of the kitchen in my underwear. I woke up at 7:30 in my underwear and found a bathroom. TOURING!!!

In Blytheville, Arkansas we found The Dixie Pig, a barbeque spot in the middle of yet another dying small town in Main Street America. The service was nice (the waitress gave us each two glasses of water to drink from), and the meat spoke for itself without too much input from the sauce. In the Memphis area, meat is to man as sauce is to Stepford wife.

We returned to The Valley Of The Vapors Festival in Hot Springs, this time in the rain. A steady stream leaked from the hills down to the valley, muddying the dirt parking lot where a car echoed “Sympathy For The Devil” against the rocks.

A speedy bluegrass outfit named Cletus Got Shot growled Jim Crow songs with an upright bass made out of an industrial plastic tank.

Next was Projexorcism, a visual “Revolution #9” made up of old instructional film reels, their projectors manipulated by an entertaining man in bunny ears. It lasted forty minutes?

The kids in Hot Springs wanted loud and fast, some of them wanted it hateful. They yelled, they danced, they questioned, they hugged, they tossed out “we love you”s, they tattooed the word HATE on their inner lips. We played a loud set. We played a good set, too. The HATE-tattooed went bananas for "The Companion." It took three shows to get tight, just in time for the end of the tour. A-one, a-two, a-thrreee! Crunch! A-thrreee!

Closing the evening was Frown Pow’r, a quintet form the Little Rock area. They borrowed Alan’s guitar amp. They should have borrowed his tuner, too. They were a sloppy fun mess. The bass player looked like Brian Wilson with a Jonas Brothers haircut: a dumber angel. The singer looked like Rod Blagojevich, the perfect front man. The mandolin player had 5 pedals, adding a high-pitched drone to the clumsy party rock. After several false starts, they inexplicably closed with “Shout,” the Isley Brothers song, the one heard at weddings. They even left a gap for the crowd to sing “shout,” but no one did. “You know you make me wanna (silence)…” It sounded like the song was being edited for television. People danced and had fun, myself included. Except for the dancing part.

Zac and Cheryl from Itinerant Locals put us up once again. This summer they are going on tour by train, performing in spots like Tucson, Minneapolis, Klamath Falls, Minot, San Francisco, and more. It sounds pretty amazing. Look for an Itinerant Locals show with these Bitter Tears in Chicago this July.