May 19 - Centro Cultural de Matadero, Huesca Spain

Greg and I greeted the day with a morning dip in the Mediterranean Sea. She was cold like a refreshing coat of bee stings. After an inexplicable jog (I hate jogging!), I took the wheel for the long drive to Spain. The dreary, rainy curves of Nice morphed into the gustiest roads in western Europe. "VENT VIOLENT," the signs howled. The winds teased the van like God’s rich, spoiled stepsons tormenting innocent squirrels. The gas gauge beeped, indicating we only had 77km of travel left. Forty miles passed without a service station in sight. At one of the countless French tollbooths, I asked the attendant if any services were ahead. She spoke as fast as she could in her native tongue and pointed further. We didn’t have time to teach her American, as there was a line of cars behind us now. Further up we finally saw a sign for gas. In 71 km. The gauge said we had a little less than 40km of gas…so we turned around and kept the van steady in lower fifth gear through the bullying breezes of fraught France.

It was not looking good. We were not rocking out to awesome tunes on the radio, cracking new hilarious jokings, noshing on authentic unpasteurized brie, or high fiving our mind blowing triumphs as a band. We sat in stressed silence pondering the length of the roadside footrace that awaited us.

The van sputtered to yet another tollbooth. The gauge read 4km.

“Gasoline?”

The tollbooth attendant, yet another comparatively attractive woman with a musical cadence and a chipper disposition, shrugged. In the immediate distance sat a goddamn gas station and we fucking pulled up to a pump as the gauge declared 0km.

That little adventure added two hours to what was already a nine hour driving day. It went from nine hours to eleven hours. 9 to 11. 9-11. Do you know what I mean? Here is what I mean. Running out of gas near the French Riveria is equivalent to the tragic and horrifying and still unbelievable events of September 11^th, 2001. Thank you, look for my upcoming column in The National Review.

I drove a second leg through the turbulent rerun of southern France. Mike took the second five hour shift, and Reid put the icing on our big, ugly unhappy cake.

Crossing into Spain, our bonehead GPS lost her marbles. In her mind we were driving through the brushes and fields of rural Aragon.

“…recalculating…recalculating…recalcutlating…recalculating…”

Her screen looked like we were playing Paperboy with a racecar. Meanwhile our original keyboardist John Leonard had made some music mixes for us to listen to in the van. His selections included “Zippity Doo Dah”, random Motown #1’s, soundtrack music for slow space movies, an unlistenable nine minute 4^th generation C- audience bootleg of a Neil Young concert, and other random cruelty.

We enjoyed them.

A little after 9pm we rolled up to El Centro Cultural de Matadero in the modest metropolis of Huesca. The building loomed large with gargoyled cow heads protecting the big room with rows of theater seats. It came equipped with an efficient and professional sound crew. It was the biggest sound on the tour so far. Dani from Anteojos Booking greeted us with a backstage spread of salchicas, jamon serano, tomato bread, a variety of Spanish omelettes, and thin slices of goat fat. Spain takes care of their friends and The Bitter Tears are friends of Spain. It’s great to be back.

The crowd showed reserved Aragonian enthusiasm during our inconsistent set. A false start of “Spark” opened the show, and my prom dress got caught up in my snare drum and kick pedal. But “Moline” cooked, “Companion” was lovely and hateful, and “The Passion of St. Matthew’s Boxcar” converted a few Spanish poblecitos.

We bookended the set with a prickly and skeletal showing of “Murdered At The Bar”. We should stop playing that song in a different room over the telephone. In retrospect a three song encore was plenty. Undeterred, the gracious Huescaians showed their appreciation in oddly high merch sales. After the show Dani accompanied us for an hour long trek to a wonderful flat in the skies of Zaragoza.

May 18 - Driving Day, Switzerland & France

We woke up late. Our dodo bird GPS got us lost in the Alps. We had arranged to meet up with our friends from Stella Peel in Nice for dinner. They were going to leave work early to accommodate this. We were not going to make it in time. Drag.

Reid and Mike drove through big chocolate Switzerland and warm oily Italy. Somewhere near Livorno or Bologna or Spagettios we found the one Italian rest stop that had nothing decent to offer. It was called On The Run. Hungry and existing, we settled for greasy slices of pizza served with a hint of condescending impatience. When we reconvened in the van Greg was wearing an On The Run uniform, complete with a faux-corduroy cap! His most impressive dumpster find yet.

It was 10 to 10 when we met Sylvain in Nice. We had 10 minutes to catch a French dinner in the neighborhood before all the restaurants closed. We rushed into a spot that specialized in regional southwestern French cuisine. Sylvain’s wife Stephanie and their tiny, energetic pup joined us for confit, foi gras, carpaccio, and assorted hardcore sausages. My duck was dark hedonistic decadence, with enough buttery bites to constitute a walk along the beach and contemplate a dip in the sea.

“I wish I had an illness,” Reid pontificated. “This would be a good place to die.”

“Maybe in the morning it would be better,” Sylvain advised. After all, he had to get up in six hours.

I would like to be sincere for one moment without any snark or smart ass garbage. The people we have encountered on this tour and the last tour of Europe have been some of the kindest possible humans to such an oafish lot of stained American clowns. They have fed us, they have put us up in their homes, they have trusted alone in their homes while they slept elsewhere, they have rearranged their schedules and their lives to ensure that we are taken care of, and then they have payed us. My sincerest gratitude for this is hard to describe in words, but let me try: It’s like Santa Claus asked you to marry him, and he acts like the Fonz, but instead his jukebox plays delicious food and funny looking money.

In Nice, most people leave their cars in neutral. This is so they can be moved in order to accommodate a potential spot for someone else. We inched back a compact Peugeot so our Ford Transit could nestle for the night.

After we arrived three hours late and almost missed dinner, Sylvain and Stephanie still offered their apartment in downtown Nice for us to stay the night, while they crashed elsewhere nearby but not so nearby really.

We relaxed with port wine, a massage chair that soothed you with Miami bass, and France’s strangely arranged computer keypads. Like fairytale gnomes, fell asleep one by one until only the littlest insomniac was left to sawing sounds of group snoring.

May 17 - Boschbar, Zurich Switzerland

Since Switzerland has the highest quality of life on earth, I thought I would eat the highest quality breakfast possible: a pretzel with salami slices.

Greg was in dumpster diving heaven. He fished a complete double-bacon wrapped cheesy bread from a discarded tray, plus yogurt, mayo and a picnic’s worth of fruits and veggies. Not only that, but he scored a duffel bag, a child’s knapsack, plus Lyon-Barcelona September 12, 2001 soccer scarves for the whole band. Sometimes he encountered snafus. Greg took a sip of a found container of chocolate milk.

“Ooo- don’t drink that. I think it’s salad dressing.”

Our GPS is a British woman who seems a bit daffy at times. Today she took us on a jogging trail that led to a photogenic forest. I would have gotten some better pictures, too, if it weren’t for all those glaring joggers. For having such a high quality of life, most people in Zurich seemed glum. Maybe it’s that detached Ferris Bueller ennui that comes from never experiencing anything of low quality.

On our own we found the Fluntern Cemetary, atop a peak overlooking greater Zurich. Inside laid the remains of James Joyce and an author named Canetti, who I believe wrote novels about pizza.

The kooky GPS then navigated through the cobblestone pedestrian walkways of the old town. We locked her in the van with the windows rolled up and took a walk along Lake Zurich. At the Cabaret Voltaire Alan and Greg spotted a poster for our show. Mike, Reid and I grabbed a beer and watched the rain continue to follow us. At an English pub I chatted with a couple from Tulsa in their 50’s. While I ate a sausage buttie, a cowboy in a yellow slicker barged in and hijacked the room with what thought was good cheer.

“You guys don’t play that black crap do ya?”

He was a salesman from Colorado who sold racist horse trail rides to Europeans. He talked big and sat large and rattled off names, places, and slurs. The Oklahomans weren’t into his schtick so much, which manifested into a cordial quarrel over the meaning and value of the word “couple”. He kept apologizing about not being able to make the show, though we never told him when or where it would be.

The show was at Boschbar, newly relocated to Section 4, a strip of Zurich where prostitution is tolerated. Last night we were enticed with random flashes of Swiss cleavage while we searched for a hostel.

Doomentels, a Swiss gent by the name of Dominick, opened the night with a solo set of nylon string guitar in reed organ musings in English. He covered Tom Waits with what looked like a Speak’n’Spell football.

I couldn’t believe the turnout for a rainy Monday night. The place was packed, insulated our set, our loud set, but not louder than the foosball fanatics who contributed fooscussion to “Grieving”.

After the set Mike took a head-clearing walk down Section 4 in full make-up, threatening the street competition, and amusing a passing squad car. Alan asked a local woman what her hobbies were, and she pulled out a sheet of paper that listed them beside easy-to-understand illustrations.

The DJ spun Chicago jump blues and unironic classic rock. Occasionally he plays “Worthless Sleaze” off of our Jam Tarts LP, and was completely unaware that we were that band. The DJ saved everyone’s life tonight, including a wobbly young man who proudly paraded down Section 4 with his pants and underpants around his knees.

May 16 - Day Off, France, Germany, Switzerland

Our first sunny day of the tour. I ate some choco-pain, drank a café ole, and used the café’s toilet paper, as Flore’s flat was flat out of that. At the café, men retained style in their twilight, playing tarot card gambling games in casual suits, coiffed baldness and flashy rings. While the others slept in and the adult teenagers played videogames and music from 1994, I took a walk while trying to look European.

Eventually everyone woke up and Flore returned home. We serenaded her with bad George Thorogood blues improvs and “Unchained Melody” en Espanol. We said farewell in a parking lot and our hearts bled tiny French tears.

The Black Forest of Germany has provided a wealth of inspiration, from Hansel & Gretel to Rick Steves. The Bitter Tears decided to see what all the spooky fuss was about. Since it was still constantly cold and no one brought a tent, camping was ruled out. Perhaps a hotel or a motel along the way would give us a nice night’s rest. We encountered a few buildings that said “hotel” but turned out to be residential condos or hillbilly hideouts. I peeked through a dust-crusted lobby door only to see a scattered assortment of tools.

“Maybe ‘hotel’ means ‘tool shed,” Alan speculated.

Mike drove us up the breath-taking spine of the forest, reaching elevations of over a gazillion kiloliters. Ready for a break, Reid and I walked into a giant Shining-esque lodge and inquired about rooms. An annoyed woman trudged out, greeting us with a frown. We used words like “euros” and “how many” and numbers like “for” and “four”, but she would not understand us. I used the noun word “room” and she seemed very surprised to learn that we had come to the hotel looking for a room.

“Ohhhhh! Rooooom.”

She frowned some more and shook her head “no”, then waved us away. As we retreated, I overheard her screaming at her husband, a poor wood cutter, and then locking away her two step children overnight with only bread and water.

Every enormous hotel we came across seemed deserted. Greg pointed out how easily these abandoned barns could be squatted for the night. It became apparent that the Black Forest is just one huge ski resort. Of course! Why would anyone ever want to come here in the warm months when you can hike through its gloriously green trails? That would be fucken stoopid, right?

Thankfully, a wonderful lodge on a crest overlooking the endless hues of the forest was open and had vacancies. But! The rooms were only 86 Euros per person, and we would never stay at a hotel that seemed so cheap and desperate. The walls probably crawled with roaches made of rubies, and I’ll bet you couldn’t drink the water because the faucets only gushed caviar. No thanks, fleabags.

It got dark as Mike navigated us frustratingly through the tiny farm roads and Sunday ghost towns of rural Germany. We arrived in Zurich around midnight and found a hostel. In its lobby some English blokes debated music, trying to educate a bird in the process.

“Oh, I thought The Clash was a type of music.”

Two Arian kids were poring over their recently purchased KISS merchandise, marveling as they unrolled posters and smoothed T-shirts. I paid five Swiss Franks for instant ramen in a bucket. For lunch I had eaten something called a doner box, which is a doner kebob sans pita served in a box. I was going to sleep in a splintered wooden crate, but decided to bunk it up Boy Scout style with the boys in the hostel. Greg spent the night in the van, pretending it was a spacious Black Forest squathaus.

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!