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 11th, 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 4th 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.
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