Time sure seems to fly on by. Since starting my own band in 2008, a lot has happened. I left Seattle in 2011, lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for two years and in Cincinnati, Ohio for four. During that time I have somehow managed to make six albums, one live and five in the studio. 

Last month I finished my fifth studio album, Summer Rain. After writing 50+ songs in this “blues rock” genre, I feel like I am settled and comfortable in what I can come up with. Not that it is easy to do, quite the contrary; it is very difficult! Hahaha, but I feel like I can just trust my instincts and follow the muse of each song. 

I wrote about 25 or so songs, and settled on 11 for the CD. I didn’t have any particular cover song that I was excited about doing, so I didn’t record one. 

I used the same modus operandi as the last CD: I developed nascent song ideas I had recorded on my iPhone with my drummers and bassist in the studio and recorded a few takes of each, using the best. I spoke with my main studio drummer, Jason Patterson last night. He had just received the copy of Summer Rain that I sent him, and he said “Man, a lot of that stuff was just off the cuff.” That was the vibe I was going for. Somehow our joy of discovery translates through the finished mixes. 

I sure don’t record a record in a week or two, like a lot of artists do. I take a lot of time with my songs (it’s a luxury for me to have my own world-class studio in my house). I will get the basic tracks down, make a rough mix and listen to it in the car for weeks and try to come up with melodies and lyrics. Somehow “sleeping on” these tunes helps my brain figure out where I need to go with them. 

The title track, "Summer Rain" came from some chords I discovered on a family trip to Hawaii in 2015. I sat on that one for a while, and eventually pulled it out when I had my boys in the studio. Local drummer boy Mike Tapogna played on that one. I believe it was the second take that we kept. It felt natural and fun, especially transitioning to the epilogue section in the end. The riff from "Don't Let it Fade" came to me on another beach in the Bahamas. Must be something about being near the ocean that inspires me!

I was exercising, listening to some Rolling Stones on Pandora, and Mick sang the lyric “It’s sure been a cold, cold winter” and I thought yeah, but for some people it’s been a long hot summer. As I continued my workout I thought of the young military personnel that take tours of duty in hellish places like Iraq and Afghanistan. This thought kept coming back to me as I wrote the lyrics for the record. I didn’t want to write a literal account of military service, because I have never served. I did want to try to put myself in their boots and explore what their feelings would be when away from home for so long. That is the thread that links all the songs together. 

I asked Reese Wynans if he would record keys for me again, and he was enthusiastic about it. He played on Screaming in the Wind and Skin and Bones so he was familiar with my music. This album is less blues and more rock, so I was a bit worried, haha. But he really enjoyed playing on “Live or Die” and especially “Moonbeam.” While I was in Nashville recording his parts, I asked Rachel Williams to sing background vocals for me, and luckily she was in town. She works fast and figures out harmonies with me quickly. So the overdubs were easy! 

Check out this video Kasey made of the overdub sessions. 

I have a great arsenal of tube amplifiers to choose from for tracking guitars. In the past few years I have acquired a ’66 Fender Deluxe, a ’66 Fender Bassman, and the Tonehunter TNT head, which is based on a Marshall Plexi. I used these amps on most of the tracks. I always record the guitars with a combination of a Royer ribbon mic and a Heil PR30, which sounds like a Shure 57 on steroids. The tracks sound great when I run them through a Manley Variable MU.

I have been using my KLON Centaur quite a bit, and some other pedals that made appearances are the Tonehunter Fuzzmonics (which I helped name!), the Zen drive, Xotic EP boost, Fulltone OCD, a Dunlop Rotovibe pedal (the red one that looks like a wah) and the Strymon Lex. 

Oh pedals. I have so many and just love trying new ones. I geek out on “rig rundowns” and pedal shootouts on YouTube! They all react differently in different situations… 

The artwork on the CD I did myself (I wear almost ALL the hats). The photos were taken at my good friend Anko Lammers’ house in Vriezenveen, a small town in the Dutch countryside. An amazing photographer, Stefan Schipper, lives down the road a stretch and he took the shots in front of Anko’s work shed. The studio shot for the last CD, Skin and Bones were also done by him in his studio. Thanks Stefan!! 

Stefan takes the best photos!

I am so lucky to have such a killer studio in the basement – and feel a great deal of gratitude towards Peter Frampton because the price of this house did not reflect the amount of money he spent on the setup. The house was listed for over a year with no offers, and he was just taking it off the market when we made our offer. 

I ended up buying the SSL console from him, which made the most sense because it is a complicated project to move those beasts! He bought a studio in Nashville that had a nice board in it so he didn’t need it anymore. I also bought some microphones and outboard gear that he didn’t want for a great price. He left quite a bit of gear in the studio including a fantastic headphone monitoring system, saying simply that it just “came with the studio.” 

I keep in touch with him, and he is very happy that the studio is being used. I was in Nashville in late May and got to see his fantastic new studio where I played him “Live or Die” off the new CD. He said “very good” – so now I have the blessing of a British invasion superstar! Hahahaha… 

He played me his new song “I Saved a Bird Today” which is quite excellent.

Me and Peter Frampton

The album will be available September 15th from my website, CDBaby, Amazon and on just about every streaming service out there. Please give it a listen!

European Tour 2019 (August 28 – October 7) 

Przeczytaj blog po polsku

From Kasey: 

Hey, it's your best friend from America, Kasey Williams! 2019 saw my fifth tour with my good friend Dudley Taft. We played some new venues, and some old places, made some new friends, and saw some familiar faces. It feels like every tour keeps getting better and better! There were some fun adventures had on this trip. Between gigs we; released our latest album, crashed a wedding, rode in a car elevator, hung out in Dresden, Germany, got into shenanigans with our buddy Wojciech in Krakow, Poland, crashed a birthday party, released a new music video, broke a pair of prescription glasses, saw the Berlin Wall, played a live radio/video broadcast, went to the Rijksmuseum and swung on the "Sensational Swing" at A'DAM Lookout in Amsterdam, and broke down on the Autobahn only to make it in time for our last gig! There was plenty more, but my NDA prevents me from speaking any further... Until the next adventure! Kasey 

Kasey called this one the “Better Hotels Tour.” I suppose he is correct! But really until this tour we didn’t always have our own rooms. On the first tour, John Kessler and I shared a hotel room. Then on subsequent tours, we would get a couple of rooms but sometimes there were four of us. 

I called this tour the “Better Gigs Tour.” We played to bigger crowds, made more Euros and aside from a few nights at the Lammers residence where Kasey shared a room with our drummer, everyone had their own room. That made things much more comfortable during our five and a half weeks in Europe! 

It seems that every tour we have a different drummer. At least the last four have been that way. Carl Martin, then Darrin Watkins, then Marty McCloskey and now Darby Todd. We had planned to have Marty with us for this tour, but at the last minute he asked that we find a replacement. That was a bummer. With about seven weeks to go, I had to scramble. I contacted Walfredo Reyes Jr. who had recently moved to Cincinnati and played on most of the tracks for the newest album, Simple Life. He reached out to the drumming community at large and through a friend found Darby. Luckily Darby was in-between tours and only had a few gigs on the books for September. So he was our man. 

Darby did his homework and charted all the songs, so rehearsal was a cinch. Also, he has been drumming since he was six years old and it comes naturally to him. So now we were “cooking with butter” as I like to say. 

L to R: Darby Todd, Dudley Taft, Kasey Williams

Two days of rehearsal was enough to get us comfortable for our first show in Eschweiler, Germany. It was a Tuesday which can be hit-or-miss for attendance, but there was a nice crowd at Rio and we had a great first gig. Our French buddy Manu Lanvin was set to play there in December - we will see him later in Poland. Darby had played with Carl Verheyen, and it was funny to see a drum head with Walfredo Reyes Jr.'s signature on it, because he played on the new album Simple Life! Hahaha. It is a small world.

Rio in Eschweiller, Germany - With the promoters and Walfredo's signature and Manu Lanvin

Anko Lammers (my great Dutch friend) had made us a merchandise banner as a gift, so we looked very professional all around! The Germans tend to buy the most CDs and t-shirts, and this time we had two of our albums on vinyl. (Last year in the US vinyl outsold CDs for the first time since the late 1980’s.) We have quite the arsenal too – six CDs, three different t-shirt designs in men’s and women’s and two vinyl LPs. 

Professional Merch Banner!

I was looking forward to the next show in Cologne because Ralf and Kristin Reichen were coming, along with their daughter Tarika and her boyfriend Nico. If you have read these tour blogs, you will remember that Ralf and Kristin run Tonehunter Amplifiers and effects pedals. They lend me gear, sort out my pedalboard and have become our really great friends! Also my friend Vincent Abbate whom I had met at the Talking Blues show at the Urania Theater in Cologne on the last tour would attend. He writes for Rocks magazine and was slated to review the show. (Luckily, he likes my songs!) In addition, my publicist and booking agent Dirk Osterhaus was also there. We played well, with Darby going crazy on the kit with machine gun fills and double-kick action tastefully delivered. Tarika and Nico manned the merch booth, and it turned into a great show. 

We had the day off on Wednesday and stayed at a decent hotel in downtown Cologne for both nights. Kasey liked that. 

L to R: Darby Todd, Dudley Taft, Vincent Abbate, Kasey Williams

I did an interview with Vincent Abbate in Cologne, and he also has a blog called Who Is Blues? You can read part 1 of my interview HERE: 

https://www.whoisblues.com/2019/09/13/wib-interview-dudley-taft/

and Part 2 HERE:

https://www.whoisblues.com/2019/10/31/wib-interview-dudley-taft-pt-2/

That Friday we had a short drive to Wetter to play the Earth Music Hall again, which has a yearly concert series with a nice group of subscribers. The crowd at this show was much bigger than our last time there, and it was one of my favorite shows of the tour. Dirk was in attendance again, with his lady friend Christiane running the merch stand. We sold quite a bit of stock and made out very well! It really makes a big difference having someone selling for us; it’s difficult to finish our first set and run back there, take the money and sign all the items and make photos with everyone. One of these days we’ll have our own support for that! 

Rocking Earth Music Hall in Wetter, Germany

Next it was off to Wegberg to play Zur Alten Post again. This is a small bar with a nice little stage and usually a great crowd. This night was no exception. We stayed at Burg Wegburg, which is an event space and hotel. It is a five-minute walk to the gig, which is nice! After setup and sound check, we had some dinner and then I checked the venue to see how the crowd was shaping up. It looked pretty thin for a Saturday night, so I was a bit bummed as I went to van to do my pre-show routine of some vocal warm-ups. After about fifteen minutes, I headed back to the venue and was surprised to see that it was totally packed! It seemed like a magic trick, but there was a 50th birthday party for someone a few doors down the street, and the party had gotten a bit crazy and the local Police told everyone to leave. So naturally, they came down the street to the Post. But there were quite a few fans from last year, and one dude had a sweatshirt on with a bunch of our skull stickers! Hahaha, he was our most vocal fan that night. 

Our first set was cut a bit short because of a broken snare drum, but that was no problem – we played a seventy-minute second set, and all was good. Well, I thought it was at least! Apparently, some of the birthday party-goers got really drunk and a fight had broken out – with people smashing each other in the head with pint glasses. It was an ugly scene outside the bar, and the Police came again and arrested a bunch of angry dudes. We packed up a bit faster than usual, got our fee and beat it back to the hotel. At that point we thought a beer or two was in order, but the bar wasn’t open due to a wedding reception. The three of us timidly asked some of the wedding party if we could get some beer, and within about three minutes, the father of the groom had introduced us to his son and the bride, and the beers were flowing. We certainly stood out in our rocker clothing, but they seemed to like us, and even took our photo, printed it and added it to the wedding album. What a strange night indeed!

Me with the bride and groom in Wegburg

Yeah, they took our picture and put it in the wedding book!

The next day we made the drive to Rotterdam to play the Bluesclub L’Espirit. This was my third time playing there, the last time being the day my mother died. In a way it had taken on an emotional note for me, and I thought about her a lot during that show. It was packed of course; and I was happy to see my picture on their seasonal program cover. We killed it in there, and had a great time. We stayed at a Van der Valk hotel in nearby Ridderkerk, which is a nice, affordable hotel chain in the Netherlands that has a great restaurant. Kasey liked that. 

These nicer hotels, as Kasey will attest, have great breakfast spreads with an egg chef ready to make you an omelet or a scramble with whatever you want. Usually we appear fifteen minutes before they shut it down, and during the day we have a decent sandwich at a gas station, and sometimes a meal at or near the venue. But really we average about two meals a day. That and the exercise of singing 25 songs a night makes me lose some weight. This time I lost about 2 1/2 kilos, or about six pounds. For me that’s a lot! Normally I am 162, but got down to 156. I like this because I can see my abs! Hahahaha… But really people, this is a lot of work! 

The next morning I woke up early to take Darby to the train station so he could make his flight to London from Amsterdam’s Schipol airport. We had a few days off in a row, to give us enough time to travel to Poland, and he could go home to his newly wedded wife. 

Kasey and Helga with that night's whiskey selection

Kasey and I headed back to Castle Lammers to get some fresh clothes and refill the merch bins. We had a nice evening with our hosts and were off the next morning for a long drive to Dresden, which was a nice stopping point between Vriezenveen and Krakow. I like to drive no more than six or seven hours (how civilized), arrive at a hotel around 5 or 6PM, have a nice dinner and walk around the city a bit. The weather had been amazing so far this tour – 70 to 75 degrees and clear (about 21 - 23 celsius). It was just like this when we rolled into Dresden, and there were about twenty hot air balloons in the sky! Our hotel was just across the river from the city center, and we walked across the bridge to have some tasty schnitzel at a restaurant overlooking the river. (Well, Kasey is vegetarian, so I don’t know what the hell he ate.) 

Dresden, Germany at twilight

If you have read these blogs, you know that I love to play in Poland. I have been all over the country but had never been to one of its coolest cities, Krakow. We could have stayed with Anko and Helga another day, but I thought it would be cool to check it out for a couple of days. For some reason the hotel chains that I frequent were all booked up for the Wednesday, so I did a bunch of laptop-research and found a quirky little hotel in the Kazimirz (Jewish) section called Hotel Rubinstein. It was named after Helena Rubinstein who was a makeup mogul of sorts, and famous in Poland. The only two rooms left in the hotel included a large suite on the top floor which I quite enjoyed. Kasey liked this one too. 

On the road to Kraków

Our good friend Wojciech (pronounced voy-check) whom we had met on a previous tour lived there and was anxious to show us around the city. The drummer for Evening Standard, a band we shared the stage with in Bochnia, he had saved us on a previous tour when our drummer Carl had mistakenly put gasoline in our diesel van. He loves cars and has a sweet Camaro that he drives like a maniac, and instantly knew what was wrong with the van. He had us squared away in no time flat. Anyway, he was our guide, along with his girlfriend Maria. Wojtek (short for Wojciech) showed us around and took us out to an amazing gourmet dinner near our hotel.

Wojciech and Hotel Rubenstein in Kraków

He knows his Polish history very well, and was eager and quite proud to educate us!  After dinner we went to his apartment, which was quite stunning. It is the most dialed-in place I have ever seen. Every bit of wall space is covered in murals and pictures from his exploits around the world on motorcycles and cool cars. His bed is suspended by ropes (uh, I didn’t ask why...) and his music room where he practices drums was wall-to wall with framed pictures of him and musicians that have come through town, including one with Darby! 

Wojciech and Darby Todd (from a previous tour)

The next morning we met up with him again and got a tour of the Wawel castle, one of the oldest buildings in Krakow and a veritable treasure trove of Polish history. We hired a guide who gave us a three hour exhaustive (and a bit exhausting) tour of the church, castle and museum. We hung out with him and Maria the rest of the night and had a fantastic time. He has become a truly great friend! 

Our first gig was in Nowy Sacz (pronounced no-vee sanch), and we picked up Darby at the Krakow airport on the way. We had played Atelier Jazz Club before, and it’s a great venue in Tom Hejan’s plumbing supply store (really). We had a nice crowd and it turned out to be Darby’s favorite gig – the stage really sounded nice, and we were getting really comfortable playing with each other. Some people in the crowd were wearing Dudley Taft t-shirts and knew a few of the songs. We sold a lot of CDs and a few vinyl LPs. 

Atelier Jazz Club in Nowy Saçz, Poland

The owner of the Jazz club, Tom Hejan takes these photos and adds a butterfly to each one!

And there's Manu Lanvin again! Hahaha

The next day we drove to Tarnobrzeg for our third appearance at Victor Czura’s Satyr Blues Festival. This is the festival where I met Jay Jesse Johnson who lives near Cincinnati, and who plays with me in the Four Aces, and also Manu Lanvin, a French blues rocker who pretty much dominates the blues rock scene in France. We became great friends, and he was to play the following day. After an early load in and sound check, we headed to Hotel Evva for a press conference Victor had set up. At the table were most of the artists that were there to play the festival which now had become two days long. Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal of Guns ‘n’ Roses fame was there along with fellow American Anthony Gomes from St. Louis, Jacek Kieller, Doghouse Sam, etc… I realized I knew more than half of the people in the press conference attendees by name. After four tours in Poland I have amassed quite a few friends there! 

Victor Czura (with the microphone) and men in hats

Our gig was great – we played in the middle of the lineup (good timing for sales) and sold more merch than I ever have before at a single show. I was busy for at least 45 minutes after the set taking pictures and signing autographs. Marika Swat, whom I met on my first visit to Poland helped me and we sold a ton of LPs as well. You know, they were a real pain-in-the-ass to make and ship to Europe! But all that effort paid off. We also had a new t-shirt design made from a picture that Robert Wilk had taken of me a few years before at a Przeworsk blues festival that I headlined. Fellow Pole Andrzej (uh, Andrew) Swat added a cool effects pedal on the back that fit in with the Simple Life album concept. It was fun to have the new shirts there for Robert and Andrzej to see!

The lovely Marika Swat Showing off the new t-shirt

Signing autographs at the Satyr Blues Festival in Poland

The "Satyr" part of the festival! I hope I really look more like the guy on the left!

The festival is as much about artwork as it is the music. The great caricaturists of Poland draw wild pictures of the musicians and other celebrities. I have quite the collection of these at home.

We have some great audio and video from this show. You can see these videos (as of this posting there are two) HERE. Scroll down to the LIVE playlist.

We had fun watching the rest of the acts play. After the show there was a big banquet at the Hotel Evva. Unfortunately for this lactose-intolerant guitar player, there was almost nothing I could eat. Hahaha. 

That Sunday, we had an afternoon gig at an event hotel called Mansion on the Hill. That was a strange gig – we played outside under a tent attached to the main building and our most energetic fans were two five year old boys who danced around like Mexican jumping beans!

The stage here at Mansion on the Hill was a far cry from the Satyr Festival stage!

We finished around 6:30 and hightailed it out of there back to Tarnobrzeg to join Manu Lanvin for the finale. I joined him for “Blues, Booze and Rock ‘n’ Roll” which is one of his best songs, and a couple of cover tunes. It always fun to play with his band – they are so energetic, and he puts on a great show, jumping into the crowd every few songs. Again there was an after party at a different hotel – and we all had a great time catching up with each other, telling jokes and drinking frozen Polish vodka. 

At the Satyr Festival Manu Lanvin jumps into the crowd and hands me his guitar

Me with Manu Lanvin and the Devil Blues and Victor at the Satyr Festival in Poland

We have some great video from our set from this show, but this I have to share with you - I jumped up on stage at the end of Manu Lanvin and the Devil Blues' set (that's why I am in the picture above) and jammed a few songs with him, including "Blues, Booze and Rock 'n' Roll." This clip is the very end of that tune when the whole place is chanting the "de do do do doo" melody!

Having fun at Satyr with Manu Lanvin

The Satyr Blues Festival organizers Ewa and Victor Czura lend me their hair at the after party (and after some vodka)

We had a pretty long haul to Berlin, where we stayed at a Marriott. Kasey liked that. I am not sure what to make of Berlin; so many people have told me it’s amazing, but I guess I need someone to show me. Yeah, we saw checkpoint Charlie and what’s left standing of the Berlin Wall, and there certainly are some good restaurants but I really don’t get it. 

Kasey at the Berlin Wall

We saw a bit of rain – the first of the trip on our drive back to Castle Lammers. No big deal though, and we passed through the system. After doing some much needed laundry, we played an in-studio radio show nearby, where oddly, they set up mics like a normal recording studio, but there was a guy in the room with us shooting video with a small camera. He posted most of the videos from the show. So, uh, what was the point of the other setup? I guess it was streamed live, but I think about 12 people watched it. Oh boy. 

Darby answers questions at the iBeat Radio Show in the Netherlands

Bluescafé Apeldoorn was our next stop, and it wasn’t far from Anko’s. We had played there twice before, and it was an okay place to play on a weeknight. But somehow things were amiss with the owner. Did he not remember who we were? The first odd thing was that the sound man wanted me to put my Fender Vibroluxe on a chair. This is a bad idea, because that fucker is LOUD and I told him so. There’s no master volume, so really all the volume control does is add gain. I usually put it behind my other amp and baffle the hell out of it. So, I put it on the chair like he wanted, played about three notes and he was yelling at me to turn it down! Of course, it was too loud like that, you dummy! I did the usual baffling and it was ok. There weren’t many people there, but 80% of them had Dudley Taft t-shirts on. They were ready for our show and knew our songs. But the owner seemed really upset at how loud we were. He walked through the crowd, but no one was complaining. After our first set we noticed that the obnoxious white LED lamps were not turned off – odd because they have some nice lighting in there, and the LEDs ruined the effect. So, before we started our second set, we asked the sound guy, who was working the lights, to turn those off. He said he didn’t have control of those, so Kasey unplugged one, and I was about to do the same on my side when the old owner dude started yelling at us to plug it back in! Kasey did as instructed and the owner got a broom stick and angled the light towards the back wall, which was only slightly better. The audience felt uncomfortable with this confrontation, as did we. If there were fewer people there I might have said “fuck it” and left, but they were there to see us, so we soldiered on. After finishing our last song, the crowd was clapping and hollering for an encore (happens at every show) but Mr. Asshole owner dude turned the house music on immediately. What a dick. Our fans were disappointed. Bummer. I felt like I should give him a piece of my mind, but I really believe that these confrontations are to be avoided. Two reasons: one; it’s a bad use of energy and accomplishes nothing and two; I don’t want to be a band that is known for complaining and starting fights. As you could imagine we loaded out immediately and got the fuck out of there. I am never playing that place ever again! 

I was really looking forward to that Friday’s show at Metropool in Hengelo. It’s a nice big venue, and a bit of an achievement for us to play there. We had a 60 minute opening slot for King of the World, a very popular Dutch blues band. The whole place was run well, and totally professional. We played our best twelve songs and crushed it, in my humble opinion. Our enduring hosts Anko and Helga were there, as well as our good friend Nineke Lodeman from the Dutch Blues Magazine. I think the band gets better each tour and wanted to show them off! 

Rocking the blues at the Metropool in Hengelo, Netherlands

Saturday night’s show was in Melle – a small town in between Dusseldorf and Hannover. It was one of those juke joint looking places that could have been someone’s barn at some point. It had two floors and a small bar. Like our show in Wetter, it has a bit of a subscriber base and we had a great turnout which included our great friend Marco Zwillich who has seen us about six times. If you read this blog, you may recognize him! The sound man was recording us on multi-track and supposedly going to send us the tracks he recorded, and we always shoot video so we might get a couple high quality audio songs for YouTube. (Update: we have some videos and are working on getting the multi-track recording of the gig so I can mix it.)

After the show in Melle, Germany with Marco Zwillich

We had Sunday and Monday off so I thought it would be nice for the boys to spend those days in Amsterdam, especially since Darby had never been there. We stayed downtown at the Radisson BLU, and our van just barely fit in their garage! Hahahaha. We had a great time hanging out at the outdoor cafes, checking out the Rijksmuseum and having some great meals. Darby and Kasey decided to do the "Sensational Swing" atop a building that overlooks the Amsterdam train station.

The view from the Sensational Swing in Amsterdam

Preparing for Amsterdamage

Our next stop was Oberhausen, where there ia a club run by a Polish man called Gdanska. (Poland seems to follow us!) We played there 18 months ago, and were happy to be back - it's a decent place to play on a Tuesday. It has a strange decor, and we stay upstairs, which I don't like to normally do, but the rooms are nice.

Gdanska club in Oberhausen, Germany before the show

From Oberhausen we had a short drive to Frankfurt where we would stay for the next two nights. I sprung for a really nice hotel (Jumeirah) because my wife Michelle was to join us the next day. She flew into Frankfurt and after a short nap, we all had a fancy dinner nearby! Frankfurt looks very different than other German cities I have visited. There are much taller buildings there and tons of Americans! Hahaha... We had some great Indian food the night before, and there seems to be lots of excellent restaurants everywhere. Our hotel was so nice, we just hung out there most of the time! 

We only had two shows left, and the Friday night show wasn't far from Frankfurt, but the last show in Austria was about a six hour drive - really at the limit of what I am willing to do on a show day (well, because I do ALL the driving, by choice). We headed to a small town called Reichenbach an der Fils, where we had played three times before. It is a bit out of the way, and fans travel from all directions to get there. After all of these years of touring I recognized a few faces out there! The venue is called Die Halle (the hall) and sits on the top of a hill. The parking is terrible there, and I don’t know how they handle more than 100 people! 

Our good friends in Reichenbach!

Michelle was with us now, so that is a big help with the merch sales! Plus, she makes sure that whenever we hit a gas station that all of the trash is emptied out! Hahaha, Darby had quite the pile going in the back seat! 

The show was a lot of fun, and at this point in the tour the band was a well-oiled machine! This usually happens; we play our best right before it’s all over, hahaha. 

The next day was an interesting one, full of problems! But I will take a moment here and tell you that a lot of things broke on this tour. Much more than any of the previous ones. I almost called this blog the “Broken Tour” but that would be a misnomer – the tour was great! We do have what I call a “save the gig” kit with extra parts, tools and tape. The first thing to go was my delay pedal; it started making weird digital noise. Then Kasey’s strap holder came right off while we were playing! The screw just gave up and left the bass horn. We eventually fixed that with some glue. Note to self: add glue to the kit. Then Kasey’s bass wah-wah (very important for monster sounds during his bass solo) just died. My old Fender amp blew a tube before I got on stage with Manu (which is why he handed me his guitar in the clip above). But somehow (!) I thought it would be a good idea to get an extra tube and fuses just in case, so I was able to fix the amp and continue playing. Also, when we were in Cologne, I was doing some yoga and stupidly took my glasses of and put them on the floor, where I stepped on them and broke the frame. I suppose I was lucky that I found an optician that put those lenses in another frame that didn't look too bad. And it only took an hour!

Somehow I had it in my mind that our last show was on Sunday, and only when my good Austrian friend (thank you Peter Prammerdorfer) messaged me that Saturday morning did I realize that our show was THAT night, not Sunday. So I had to rally the troops to get the hell out of there and on the road so we could comfortably make the gig!

Well, the van had a different idea, and died on the autobahn  - and in the left lane. There was no shoulder either, and I had to merge very quickly to the right with no engine power, heading uphill. Somehow we got lucky, and one of those big orange vehicles with blinking lights they use over there to have cars merge was fortunately right behind us, and they stopped and diverted traffic! One of the occupants came up to the window and spoke to us in German, and he didn't speak any English, so Google Translate to the rescue! "Emergency Services?" the screen said! "Ya, gut!" was my reply.

Now this is where things happened much more quickly here than it ever would in the US: within 15 minutes there was a guy there with a flatbed. He hooked up the van and drove us all to a Ford dealership. 30 minutes in: the mechanics there started working on a diagnosis. We walked a few hundred yards to get some food. 1:10 in: the dealership called and said the fuel injector was toast (and on a new van!) and it could not be repaired quickly. I walked back to the repair shop. 1:25: The owners of the dealership were a husband and wife. The wife called the rental agency, explained our problem (including the inconvenient fact that we take most of the seats out, and they were back in the Netherlands) and called her son to come give me a ride to the Hertz agency at the nearby Stuttgart airport. 1:50: the son and I depart for the airport. 2:20: I am in the new rental van heading back to the dealership. 2:55: we are unloading the broken van, and loading the new one. 3:15 we are back on the road! I drove like a madman for 5 1/2 hours, AND, we made the gig! Well, we had to go DIRECTLY to the venue and set up in front of the crowd that was waiting. But we made it, and I am glad we did because some fans had driven up there from Venice, Italy and also from Slovenia!

Van breakdown and German efficiency!

The next day was great - we had the whole day off and the weather in Velden, Austria was perfect! It's a nice little upscale vacation town on the Worthersee lake. Very beautiful! I dropped Darby off at a nearby airport where he caught a flight back home and we started our journey back to drop off all the gear. Of course we say goodbye to everyone, and we had a great dinner in Cologne with the Reichens, and our writer friend Vincent Abbate.

L to R: Kristin, Tarika, Nico, Kasey, Vincent, Ralf, Michelle and yours truly

And then we said goodbye to the Lammers!

L to R: Helga, Michelle, Rens, Jenta, me and Anko

Until next time... (March 2020!) goodbye.

Dudley Taft Band Spring European Tour 2018

March 26 - May 6, 2018

Often enough, it all starts and ends with a bottle of whiskey. This being the tenth tour of Europe since 2012, I know this well. It was a Dun Bheagan Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky called the Glenallachie:

I remember it was pretty good. Because of Ralf and Anko I have been introduced to some great whiskeys!  Normally I like tequila, but it's tough to find over there. The Glenallachie did a good job of sending me off to slumber.

After a direct flight to Paris and a connector to Dusseldorf, I drove an hour to Cologne and met up with Ralf Reichen at his shop to gather some of the gear. I am now keeping most of what you see on this pedalboard at Ralf's.

I arrived with the Klon and the OCD. After a few minutes of wiring, it was ready to rock, thanks Ralf!

1967 Fender Vibrolux and Ralf's TNT head and cabinet

For this tour, I added another 'weapon' to my arsenal: a 1967 Fender Vibroluxe Reverb! I sent it from the states, and Ralf changed the output transformer (220v over there!) and installed 2 10" Celestion greenback speakers. It is the perfect mate for a Tonehunter TNT head and cabinet.

I had a nice dinner with Ralf and the family to end my long day of travel.

L to R: Kristin, Tarika, (boyfriend) Nico, Ralf, me.

It was time to get my schnitzel on, have another sip of whiskey and get a good night's sleep because the next day I was off to the Lammer's.

It was the usual schedule of events: I drive to Anko and Helga's house in Vriezenveen, and make trips to the nearby Almelo train station to pick up the boys. Kasey was the first to arrive and we headed straight back to get him settled in. Kasey knows the drill.  This was his third tour.

We welcomed a new member to the team for this tour, Irishman Marty McCloskey. I met Marty in 2017 when we did a gig with Simon McBride and Marty was their drummer. We hung out a bit after the show that night and I made a mental note to get hold of him for the next tour. Initially I thought he could recommend someone he knew to play with us - as we are starting to get some "fly away" festival offers and would benefit by only having to pay for two flights from the US for those.  However, Marty was able to free himself up and play for us. 

Marty arrived later that day and we set up and rehearsed for a couple of hours before heading into Almelo for dinner. Typically we would eat at the Shamrock, an Irish bar and restaurant. I realized that might be funny for Marty, being Irish. Hahaha . . .  , but they were closed so we ate somewhere else.  We were determined to have Marty give us his informed opinion of the place. 

We had Tuesday and Wednesday to rehearse before we left for our first gig in France. Wednesday nights are when Anko's band, The Beggars Clan, rehearses. They play Irish folk music so it was fun to watch Marty's reaction. He seemed to know all of the songs! Hahaha.. . .

Beggar's Clan Rehearsal

The Beggars Clan

When working a new drummer into the band there are challenges. Some guys play only from memory thus repetition is the only way to know the songs cold. That can work just fine IF the drummer in question has spent enough time with the songs. We had one guy who told us that he "listened to the songs a lot on the plane ride over here" and of course that raised red flags! But Marty took detailed notes and kept them in a book with plastic liners for each song. If we wanted him to do something different - different than what he was playing, he would carefully remove the note form the sleeve and make changes, carefully putting it back into place. So, no red flags! Hahaha, he was well prepared! 

With the van totally packed to the gills, we headed out toward our first gig -  our premier gig in France! 

Packed to the gills!

It was to be about a 12 hour drive to Samoëns. We didn't want to kill ourselves before our first show, so we drove about eight hours to Dijon. I wish we had more time to check out the town, but sadly we did not. We saw a sign on the freeway saying Dijon was the culinary capital of France, but only kebab was available at 10 pm when we arrived. (bummer)

The French freeway system is in great shape and not terribly crowded probably because the tolls are so expensive. I think we spent about €100 on tolls driving around there!  

When we arrived in Samoëns we found a quaint skiing village. It was overcast and raining, but apparently that didn't stop droves of skiers. 

Samoëns - French Alps

Our French hosts took great care of us by putting us up in a nice hotel for three nights! The festival lasted for three nights with French bluesman Fred Chapellier headlining the first night. He played mostly Peter Green (early Fleetwood Mac) songs, and I was asked to get up and jam with him. We were the headliner for the second night, and my friend Manu Lanvin was the big act on the third. I had met Manu in Poland the year before, and he thought I would be good for festivals like these (merci Manu). Manu arrived on the first night and we all jammed with Fred.

L to R: Manu Lanvin, Fred Chapellier, me and another guy

The venue was large, and we put our banner up by the bar.

We had a great first show in front of a packed house!

"Dark Blue Star" Live in Samoëns, France

It was great to have a few days in the Alps - we added this show to the tour after most of the dates had been booked, so it was our only show for that week. We hung out with Manu and his posse and had a great time.

Finally the sky cleared and we could see the mountains!

L to R: Jimmy Montout, Nicolas Bellanger, Manu Lanvin and me

A bit sad to leave France, but fully recovered from jet lag, we headed back to Anko's stopping for a night in Saarbrüken, which is a nice small town on the boarder of France and Germany. This is the home of our good friend Udo Löw, guitarist for Thorny Roses, and the emissary to Alex's House of Torture (for those who follows these BLOGs). One of my all time favorite steak restaurants is there - Gusto. 

L to R: Kasey Williams, me, Marty McCloskey, Udo Löw

We returned to Anko's house and had some rehearsal -- some for our set list songs, and some for the original tunes I had been working up. After the coming weekend of shows, we were headed to Nicolas Bellanger's studio outside of Paris to record a bunch of these new tunes, and I wanted to get a jump on the arrangements. Of course, days off at Anko and Helga's always includes the occasional night of Whiskey sampling, and we did just that - trying some rare blends made in Corsica!

Anko (L) and Corsican Whiskey

After a few days of practice and fun with the Lammers, we headed out to Belgium to play a show in Stekene, which was close to a town called Sint Niklaas, where we stayed. Pulling up to the venue, I had the feeling it was going to be grim; we were driving around a light industrial area with no street scene or walk-by traffic. Oh boy.

Stekene - Willy's Place SRBC - Belgium

But it turned out to be a great gig. It is one of those 'destination' venues where blues rock fans go to get their fix. Well, we were happy to give it to them! The organizers liked us so much he wants us to play a festival nearby in 2019.

The sun was out with a vengeance now and everyone was out in it! Our next two shows were a short drive to the north - Waalwijk (wall-why-ke) and Tilburg.

The Saturday night show in Waalwijk was better attended - the stage was closer to the front door where people were congregating outside. We played there last year, and the owner, Jeroen, was a cool guy and took great care of us.

The first two songs of the second set - "Dark Blue Star" and "Pistols at Ten Paces"

We had a few weekdays off, so we arranged to head to La Chapelle Montligeon, a small town west of Paris to record a few new song demos at the studio of Nicolas Bellanger, bassist for the Manu Lanvin Devil Blues Band. Nicolas has a nice old farmhouse outfitted with a fantastic recording studio, and we got right to work. Setup was easy - he had all the microphones ready and a drum kit set up. There were tons of guitar and bass amps around as well. 

Nicolas and Marty setting up

Laying down the new songs

Hanging out with Carl, the horse. L to R: Marty, Carl, Me, Kasey, Nicolas

Nicolas and Lawrence took great care of us in Montligeon!

We worked from late morning through dinnertime, and had some fantastic French food out there. A big thanks to Nicolas and Lawrence for their hospitality.

Studio boys, Montligeon

With the demo files loaded onto a hard drive, we left for our weekend of gigs, starting in Oberhausen, Germany. We rolled in the night before and had plenty of time to get ready. The club in Oberhausen was called Gdanska, after the Polish port city. It is owned and operated by a Polish couple who were surprised to hear me speak a few words to them in their language, hahaha. This gig was one of the more memorable ones from the tour for several reasons. First, the venue was interesting, with an eclectic hodgepodge of decor, including a painting of their dog:

Gdanska doggie

Another thing about the gig; it was one of the German shows where we were hoping for a good review to help us find a better German booking agency. My current agent did very little to get us gigs (incredible, huh?). We metv a guy named Sven who said he was a jazz critic. I wasn't sure if he was there to review the show or not. I think our brand of Blues Rock might be a bit lumbering and flashy to a jazz lover! Before we started, I was introduced to another reviewer, Frank Ipach who gave me a grave 'hello.' Oh boy.

Also, the promoter guy said he had only sold about 20 tickets in advance, so I was worried that there would be a poor turnout. I guess that's a natural feeling for any band! But somehow the Germans figure out where we are playing and show up in droves, as they did that night. The small venue quickly filled up, and after the first song I could tell we had an enthusiastic audience. About 10 days later my publicist (great German guy named Dirk Osterhaus) sent me two excellent reviews from the show! 

Our next stop was the town of Raalte in the Netherlands. This is the home of a big festival called Ribs and Blues, which I would like to play sometime soon... We played at Taverne Tivoli which is a fantastic place - great food, nice relaxed atmosphere and right next to the American Motorcycle Museum, home to hundreds of old Harleys. After sound check, we were allowed into the museum to take a look.

American Motorcycle Museum - Raalte, NL

I hurt my back loading gear and was really struggling on that gig not to do anything to make it worse. Wearing a guitar when your back is enflamed is tough. One bad move and you might have to get horizontal for a few days. But somehow the Dutch beer kicked in and I made it through. That night I discovered a great way to position my guitar amps. I use a Tonehunter TNT head and 2 x 12 cabinet and a 1967 Fender Vibroluxe Reverb. Placing them side-by-side works well if on a large, wide stage. When the stage is not so wide, what do you do? I put the Fender behind the Tonehunter cab this night and discovered absolutely freaking killer tone! The Fender is loud - and you can't really turn it down, as the volume knob works more like a gain knob. If you set the volume on 2 or 3, it sounds terrible. So I put it behind the 2 x 12 cabinet so it could blast away but not directly aim at anyone. The sound bounced all around and complemented the TNT head well! I was so happy to discover this. Check out the video below - we were having a great time, and I was in guitar heaven.

"Going Down" live in Raalte

I guess the third time is the charm. We headed back to Anko territory to the town of Eibergen to play outside of Café de Stier. They close the town for a long weekend twice a year, and we played the last two holidays. We had a better spot - headlining on Sunday (the festival runs through Monday) and had a decent crowd. I recognized a bunch of the crowd from the previous gigs there, like this crazy guy:

L - R: Crazy Eibergen dude, Kasey, me

The outdoor festivals are cool because younger people end up seeing the show. We made some new fans that day!

Bringing blues rock to the younger generation in Eibergen, NL

Our next show was one I had been really looking forward to as we had never played Austria before. I quite enjoy southern Germany so I was hoping that Austria would be just as interesting, and it was. We had a couple of days off, so Marty flew back to Ireland to see his girlfriend and Kasey and I drove to Munich. Munich was on the way, and I had never been there before. My back was still bothering me and walking was the ticket to relief (and beer helped too). Kasey and I walked all around Munich checking out the old buildings and an art Museum. 

Giant beers, New Town Hall, Pinakothek Modern Art Museum

Thursday morning after Marty arrived from the airport, we headed to Austria, first to be the guests on "Live with Friends," a video show like "Live at Dary'ls House" in a town called Veit an der Glan, near our Friday gig in Velden am Worthsee. The weather was fantastic, which made for a beautiful drive through the mountains and tunnels of Austria

Driving to Austria

The "Live with Friends" guys put us up in a nice hotel in Viet, which strangely featured lots of Kevin Costner pictures (I guess the hotel owner is proud of the association). Peter Prammerdorfer and his friends learned three of my songs, and I played on one of theirs. They shoot with multiple cameras and post the videos on their YouTube page. 

Somebody loves Kevin Costner

"Live With Friends" show 

Friday morning we only had a 30 minute drive to Velden for our show at Bluesiana. Velden is a nice little holiday town on a lake with some nice hotels and a casino. Mercedes, BMW's, Jaguars and Porsches were in great quantity as were high-end Harleys and leather motorcycle gear. The shops in the town had very upscale clothing and decor items. It was a perfect day to walk around - sunny and 75º. 

Velden am Wörthersee, Austria

Nightlife in Velden

Our stage setup in Velden at Bluesiana

"Lonesome Memphis Blues" live at Bluesiana Rock Café in Velden am Wörthersee, Austria

We were a bit sad to leave Austria after this fantastic, but short visit. The drive back north into Germany was just as spectacular. The sun was shining bright as we weaved our way through the mountains and tunnels. On Monday, we would start a seven day gig schedule, so we relaxed in Nuremburg for a couple of nights. None of us had ever been there and the weather was perfect for walking around the town. Around since the middle ages, Nuremburg sits on the river Pegnitz and has a population of about half a million people. 90% of it was destroyed by allied bombing in World War II, but later rebuilt, including the wall that surrounds it. It certainly is picturesque and was a great place to spend a couple of nights.

Relaxing in Nuremburg

Don't try to go shopping there on Sunday because EVERYTHING IS CLOSED except for restaurants. It was pretty warm and I didn't bring any shorts. We all bought a pair in Velden, but mine didn't fit well and I thought I could snag another pair and get some white socks. No dice. 

We drove less than an hour to our next gig in Bamberg, a small college town 60 kilometers to the north. Our gig that night was interesting; we played two sets, the first one attended by our regular demographic (40 and up) and the second one to an additional crowd of college students who were there for the half-price drinks and the DJ that started after we finished.  

Tuesday morning we rolled into Cologne for a show/interview at a small theater. "Talkin' Blues" is a show hosted by Vincent Abbate (who also writes for Rocks magazine) and Richard Bargel, a folk/blues guitarist. They had a backing band that played a few songs first, then I did a ten minute interview (speaking slowly for the German audience) followed by four songs by us. Then there was an intermission, then another short interview followed by some songs by Richard Bargel, a few more by us then both bands participated in playing Freddie King's "Going Down," which was cool - two drummers, two bassists, etc. That was fun.

Full interview/show at the Urania Theater in Köln, Germany

Urania Theater Crowd

Two shows down, five to go in our seven-day-in-a-row run. We headed north to Hamburg to play a bar called Cowboys und Indianer on the Reaperbahn, the area of town known for the Star club where the Beatles honed their act before recording their first album. I wasn't sure what to expect but found the Reaperbahn to be a sleazy part of town filled with brothels, sex toy shops and clubs. We were booked to play Wednesday and Thursday, and it's hard to tell what the crowd will be like on weeknights. We set up right in front of the bar.

Setting up right in front of the bar at Cowboy und Indianer in Hamburg on the Reaperbahn

The turnout was pretty good for a weeknight, but these gigs were very unpleasant because the owner allowed smoking in there. After the show that night I put my stage clothes in a closet in the hotel room and kept the door closed until I needed to change for Thursday night. It reminded me of the days before smoking bans - how did we all suffer through that?!?! 

I did have a good time in Hamburg though. A college mate of mine, David Zeller, had moved there about 15 years ago and was happy to show me the town. We started at the Elbphilharmonie building where the Hamburg Orchestra plays - on a small strip of land called the Strandkai. The area is still developing so it has some very modern apartment buildings. We checked out the town hall that has a beautiful rathaus, and walked around the surrounding area with its upscale shops. 

Hamburg, Germany and David Zeller

David Zeller and Me

After the big city of Hamburg we drove to what seemed the middle of Nowhere, Germany: Wetter. This small village sits between Dortmund and Düsseldorf and the venue was in a light industrial park like our gig in Belgium. Again, I wondered who the hell would come out to this place. It is more of a studio and pro audio showroom, but it does have a huge stage, PA and light system. Upon arriving, Günter Erdmann enthusiastically told us how great the room sounds, and that it was Carl Verheyen's favorite venue to play in Germany. Well, if it's good enough for Carl Verheyen, it's, uh, good enough for me? Hahahaha. Well, it turned out to be one of the best shows of the tour - nice big crowd, great big stage, and we were treated like kings. We shoot video of our sets every night, and were a bit bummed out when we got the audio from the front-of-house mixing console because it was very distorted. We do have some room mics, but the room was so big the sound is cloudy and muddy. We are trying to salvage some audio so we can post a video or two from this show. 

Another great thing about the show was that my good friend Dirk Osterhaus and his lady Christiane were there, and they took over selling the CDs and T-shirts. We had the best sales of any show this year! It makes a big difference to have someone help with that, and these guys kicked ass. We also had a visit from our good friend and superfan, Marco Zwillich:

Me and Marco Zwillich

With five shows down and two to go of our seven in-a-row schedule this week, we headed to Amsterdam for a very interesting gig! Every tour, someone asks if we played Amsterdam. I think it's like playing New York, Nashville or LA in the US: tough, indifferent crowds comprised of tourists and jaded locals. Also, the pay sucks and it is a logistical nightmare getting the gear into the thick of the town with the narrow streets and aggressive bicycle traffic! 

I was right:. It was quite tricky to get to the venue because it is within the canal that surrounds the city. A road was blocked off, and we had to back a couple of blocks down the street. When we finished loading in I asked Jur, the owner, where to park the van. I loved his reply: "This is a problem." I then asked him if he thought backing up and leaving it against the barrier would be a problem with the Police. He said, "No, but the people walking around and on bicycles are more of a problem."  

LOVELY. 

We took turns checking on the van every 20 minutes or so and between sets. Supposedly there is a noise maximum of 95bd, which is about the level of a loud-talker. We did our best to keep the levels low, watching the decibel meter which was mounted directly in front of us. But after the first song Jur told me to TURN UP THE GUITAR. Yeah, I don't hear that often enough! Hahahaha. There was a decent little crowd, with some crazy guy with an afro dancing like mad - even during the break. We had to get some of him on video (see below) All in all, it wasn't a bad night, ignoring the stress of parking the van and Jur was quite happy trying to give us all shots after the show (bad idea). 

"Dancing Afro Guy"

Tiny Stage at Maloe Melo in Amsterdam

I was a bit worried that I would be exhausted and not be able to sing and play seven nights in a row, but I was feeling good as we headed south to a small town south of Spijkenesse called Heenvliet. We played a place with the hard-to-pronounce name of Café De Gouden Leeuw. The stage was on the second floor (ugh) but there were lots of people there to help us load in. There was an opening band that night - friends of the owner Hugo, I think. They played 95% Stevie Ray Vaughan songs, which was interesting. We rocked our sets, and I kept the energy up through most of it, only getting fatigued on the last few songs. I do all I can to keep in good shape - three tough workouts per week and lots of vocal exercises. But when the tour starts, all bets are off and I ride my fitness wave through the tour (in other words, no workouts). Playing every night really does get one in shape, and is also fantastic for the band. We get to know the songs inside and out, and evolve our interpretation of them.  

That wrapped up our busiest week, which was a hell of a lot of fun. We only had a few shows left, and I felt we really had our material mastered at that point. I was really looking forward to that last week because my wife Michelle would be joining us for the last few shows.

For some reason, the subject of Anko's 1970's-looking clothing came up. Helga brought a couple of wild specimens downstairs for us to see and we got motivated! The next day, we had our own fancy shirts (very 2018-looking). Now we just needed somewhere fancy to go . . .

Top: Anko's fancy 1970's-looking shirts. Bottom: Dudley, Kasey and Marty rise to the occasion

So, with "fancy shirt" Monday behind us, we made the short drive across the boarder to Uelsen, Germany for a show at the UJC - a rec center of sorts. The weather was fantastic and they were grilling food in the courtyard. We played our sets and people wandered in to watch. Yeah, it was a Tuesday.

Wednesday was a day off and Kasey and I headed into Enschede to walk around the cafés and shops, enjoying the sunshine. Marty stayed back at Anko's and soaked up the rays, getting a brief break from the Americans, hahahaha. 

Thursday morning I got up early and took the train to Schipol Airport (the Dutch say 'skipple') to pick up Michelle. The first day in Europe is a bit tough when traveling form the US because you are essentially up all night, so we let her take a nap while milled about the Lammers compound. Our gig that night was at a place called Sally O'Briens in Zwolle, about a 45 minute drive to the west. After Michelle's nap, we headed out.

It is an Irish pub with a nice stage and decent food. I had the ribs, which were quite good compared to regular bar fare. Eating in the EU for me is a bit tough because of the lack of available fiber. We get a lot of meals that are included with our hotel stay and provided by venues, so we don't always get to choose what we get. Plus, I don't eat any milk, cheese, yogurt or mayonnaise which can be tough if the venue has prepared lasagna or some such. We do have a rider that asks for a lactose-free meal, but not everyone reads it. Also, Kasey was doing his best to not eat meat which was tricky as well. Every once in a while a French waiter will look at me like I have leprosy or something when I tell them that I don't eat cheese. "Sans fromage?!" Usually I lose a few pounds on tours, but somehow I must have eaten enough fries this trip (it seems that you get fries and mayonnaise with every meal whether you want it or not).

The show that night was good for a Thursday, and I especially enjoyed showing off our "skills" for Michelle while she struggled mightily to stay awake. She handles the merch sales for us, which is great because we sell at least 25% more stuff!

The next day was a holiday across Europe celebrating winning the war against the Nazis, and we participated by going to a service at a Canadian cemetery nearby. The service was delivered in Dutch, French and English which was interesting and certainly good for us so we knew what they were saying. The weather was perfect, and we were glad to have gone. We capped the day with a fancy dinner where we all wore our fancy shirts!

Canadian Cemetery

Friday we made the two plus hour drive to Rotterdam and checked into the Marriott. Every once in a while I spring for a higher-quality hotel and this seemed like a good night to do it. That day was a mixture of deep sadness and joy for me. I learned on the way to the venue that my mother had just passed away. I knew that she was close to death and expected that she would pass while I was on this tour. I visited mom for a few days before the tour started because she had just been admitted to the ICU. She had advanced alzheimer's and the disease was really taking it's toll on her. Even though I was expecting to get this news, receiving the call from my brother was heartbreaking.

I was in a bit of a fog as the boys loaded in, but I knew the best thing for me to do was carry on. So we played the show that night, dedicating the performance to my mom, Allison Eden. Somehow it was the best show of the tour. I imagined her watching us play, and being proud of all of us for doing a good job. Though the venue, l'Espirit, was small, it was packed and the crowd was the most enthusiastic one we had played to on the tour. We will be posting a lot of videos from that night on my YouTube page.

Me, Marty and Kasey playing l'Espirit in Rotterdam

The last show of the tour was in our "home town" of Almelo. We have played Almelo at least five times over the years and twice before at Café de Stam. Anko and some of the Beggar's Clan guys were there along with a nice Sunday afternoon crowd. It was a great way to end our six weeks of shows and traveling. 

While the boys headed back home, Michelle and I made the most of the excellent wether with a few nights in Prague before returning to Cincinnati.

Me and Michelle in Prague

After touring around northern Europe seven times, I felt quite comfortable starting the eighth tour. I was a bit intimidated driving around these foreign countries at first, but now I have the hang of it and even know what most of the road signs mean, heh. I know when to obey the speed limit signs, and when to get the hell over in the right lane on the Autobahn (ALWAYS keep an eye on the rear-view mirrors!) 

Every time I play there I win a few more fans, and the shows get bigger and bigger. I see a lot of the same smiling faces, and get introduced to new ones. I have gotten to know the people that work at the hotels and venues, and know the best places to sight see, eat and shop. Several times on this last tour I recognize people on the streets of Almelo, NL and catch up on the latest news. 

But the coolest thing is developing great friendships with the people I work with. I count my European friends among my best. These are the kinds of things that you just don’t get as easily as a tourist. With each subsequent visit, the pleasure of it all increases greatly! 

And the big bonus this time was having my lovely wife Michelle come out for the last four gigs, which was a first for her! Now that our kids are grown and out of the house, we don’t have to hold down the fort during the school year. 

For this tour, the lineup included John Kessler on bass and Carl Martin on drums. 

NOTE FROM JOHN:

This was my 6th trip to Europe with Dudley and we had such a busy performing schedule there was very little time for sightseeing. In the past we’ve had days off in Amsterdam and Berlin, but this time the few days off were reserved for driving, eating and driving. And laundry. 

Don’t take this simple thing for granted. 

It’s not customary in Europe to find coin laundromats like we have in the US. Luckily we have Anko and Helga, our Dutch friends in Almelo, who have been our saving grace on these trips. In addition to feeding us, and giving us a place to rehearse and stay, they have an actual washing machine. The labels are all in Dutch and I don’t think we’ve ever really figured out what all the buttons do but we somehow always manage to make it work. 

Of course, it’s also not customary in Europe to have a clothes dryer, so laundry day also means finding creative ways to hang things to dry. They have a large drying rack but not nearly enough space for a week’s laundry for 3 guys. So curtain rods, microphone stands, bicycles all become essential aids in getting things dry in time to pack up and head out for the next run of shows. - John Kessler

I arrived a day earlier than usual to get the time-change recovery started and work with Ralf Reichen at Tonehunter to set up a permanent pedalboard for me. After so many tours, I felt it would be good to have my own after borrowing Ralf’s stuff for so long! I brought a few pedals that I knew I would end up leaving there, along with ones that I couldn’t (hello Klon Centaur). 

The first night I stayed with the Reichens at their house in Cologne, Germany. We had a great dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the area, Restaurant im Bitzhof. Their schnitzel is fantastic, and they have a great selection of beers and whiskey. (Normally a tequila drinker, I switch to whiskey in the EU.) Joining me were Ralf and Kristin and their daughter Tarika and her BF Nico. After dinner Ralf and I jammed on acoustics and just about drained a nice bottle of Glenalba. (Note to self: a lot of whiskey + jet lag = not good!) 

The next day Ralf assembled the pedal board for me while I went to the giant (and generically named) Music Store to get some gaff tape and other supplies. 

Here’s Ralf with the finished board: 

"Tonehunter" Ralf Reichen

Then I drove up to Almelo to pick up John and Carl from the train station and head to Anko and Helga’s house in Vriezenveen. They were pretty tired, and faced a nine-hour time change vs my six, but had the energy to set up the gear and rehearse a bit. That night, we had a great time catching up with Anko and Helga, and of course had some great whiskey (note to self: read the previous note to self!). 

Whiskey Jam with Ralf

The following day we rehearsed for about six hours, going over a lot of songs off the new album Summer Rain to add to the set list. We took a break and had some lunch in nearby Almelo. Downtown Almelo feels like my Dutch ‘hometown’. I think I’ve eaten at every restaurant there, played three clubs, bought jewelry for my wife, dress shirts for me, luggage, plastic bins for t-shirts, etc.. There aren’t many tourists, or Americans there so we all stand out. We know many of the restaurant operators by their first names, and everyone is quite welcoming. 

After rehearsing the new songs and recovering from jet lag, we headed to Poland. Our first show was in Sandomierz, which was about a ten to eleven hour drive. That's not a good way to start a tour, so we opted to drive about eight hours to Łódź. (I dare you, try to pronounce that!) I like to check into the hotel before dinner time, freshen up then get a good meal. You have to take care of yourself so you don't arrive to the first gig totally burned out.

Sandomierz was about a 3 1/2 hour drive, so we checked out around noon (very civilized) and arrived in time for a quick tour of the old city. 

NOTE FROM JOHN:

We did get to do some sightseeing on the day of our very first show in Sandomierz Poland, Despite a pretty tall and wide language barrier, our guide Beata conveyed some facts like we were in a 1,000 year old walled city (“millenary” she told us) and the location of endless sieges and conquests for most of those thousand years. Knights in armor, feudal lords, the whole thing. She took us to the top of a castle tower where we re-enacted a scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We asked a couple of young Polish women to tell us something about their country they said “We eat a lot of meat”. And they do manage to get meat into some unexpected places, like pastries and the milky breakfast soup with tiny sausages- John Kessler

The old Polish City of Sandomierz dates back to the 1200's

Interestingly, we played in the town hall in the city center...

In Poland they always have excellent sound, staging and lights (technik), even in smaller venues. This place was intimate; when we arrived I thought we would have to set up on the floor and all the hard surfaces would have given us grief when we started blasting away. However, a box truck arrived and the tech guys set up a great stage in about an hour. For some reason, most of the venues we play in Poland have seats, and they set up a bunch of chairs.

The stage in Sandomierz

They packed 'em in that night, and we were off to a great start! The new songs seemed to go over well. We opened with Dark Blue Star into Pistols at Ten Paces off the new Summer Rain album. 

For some odd reason, in Poland there are a lot of doors between where you are and where you want to go. For example, in many restaurants the bathrooms are down stairs. You open a door to the stairs, a door to the bathrooms, a door to the men's room, then a door to the toilets and urinals. Someone is making a ton of money off of hinges I guess. The doors to our rooms in the Cultural Center that night proved to be a bit tricky!

The Doors of Sandomierz

The next day, we headed over to Tarnobrzeg to play the Satyr Blues Festival again and see our main man, Victor Czura! Victor was the guy who contacted me on Facebook back in early 2014, and opened the Poland market for us. He hosts this festival every year, and has caricature artists display their art, and most of them are on hand for the show and do quick sketches of people. He always seems to get on Polish television because his event is so different. He loves blues rock and lead guitar! Hw hosts a radio show in nearby Rzeszow called Blues Attack! I have so many pieces of memorabilia from the 2014 show - my caricature by multiple artists, and Victor himself. I have beer bottles with my face on them, stamps, candy, etc... it really is amazing!

This time we played with a French band called Manu Lanvin and the Devil Blues- a fantastic trio that delivers high energy blues rock. They also had a couple of guitar players join them onstage - Neal Black and Fred Chapillier. Joining our band onstage was a Polish guitar slinger named Jacek Kieller. Lots of LEAD GUITAR that night! Here are a few pics:

Right before the encore, Victor Czura is on the far right.

The have a great venue: big stage, great sound and lights

With Jacek Kieller

Of course there were lots of funny caricatures - like these:

And this guy drew one of me:

Wow! Look at my nose. Hahahaha

This festival is always fantastic. Victor and his lovely wife Ewa and their team always deliver a well-planned evening of music and art. And they are very sweet people that I count among my best friends!

Victor Czura

From Tarnobrzeg, we made the short drive on Sunday to our next gig in Kielce. This would be a the Culture Center- the theater where we played our first gig in Poland back in 2014. We also played that night with Manu Lanvin and Devil Blues. Below is a short video of the drive to Kielce. It gives you an idea of what most of the drives in Poland are like. Lots of country roads like this one. There are big expressways, but if you do any traveling in the country this is what it looks like.

Country road in Poland

We have played Kielce a few time now, and have made some great friends there- it is quite nice to have repeat customers!

Working the Merchandise after the show in Kilece

After a nice night's sleep, we set out for a day off in Berlin. We stayed at an amazing hotel (thanks to a bunch of Marriott rewards points I used) called the Hotel Am Steinplatz. If you visit there someday, this hotel is awesome. Like I said, killing yourself with 12+ hours of driving is not a good idea. We checked out at noon, hit a music store to pick up a drum head and headed back to Castle Lammers, our Dutch HQ.

The lovely outdoor lounge at Anko and Helga's house in Vriezenveen

NOTE FROM JOHN:

Eating while on tour is often amazing, but occasionally memorable for the wrong reasons. There was the amazing restaurant that had no menu. The waiter said “You tell us what you would like to eat and we fix it for you. For example you could say ‘fish’ or ‘beef’.” When we tried to get more details, he informed us that the dish would be a surprise. It was surprisingly good. - John Kessler

A nice day of rest and a bit of shopping in Almelo, and we were ready for a busy weekend of shows. We started with a Thursday night gig at a record store called Vinylparadijs (Vinyl Paradise) in nearby Geesteren. Irma and Bart Haselbekke took great care of us while we played a couple of acoustic sets. We had a blast pulling out some oldies for this gig. I saw a lot of Neil Young and Lou Reed and David Bowie records, so we played "Needle and the Damage Done," "Heart of Gold," "Space Oddity," "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sweet Jane" among some other fun acoustic stuff. It was a breath of fresh air among all of the electric blues rocking we do!

L-R: John Kessler, Irma Haselbekke-Veenstra, Dudley Taft, Bart Haselbekke and Carl Martin at Vinylparadijs

After the Vinylparadijs gig, we drove into Almelo and John and I played a few acoustic numbers for an enthusiastic crowd at the Café Belgie.I got us lost along the way, but we ran into a blues lover named Will. He escorted us to the bar!

Lost and unlost in Almelo with our new friend Will

The next night we took a short drive up to Essen and played a beer festival. I think our drummer Carl was in heaven. Lots of interesting local micro-brews from the Groningen area. We played a couple of short sets on a tiny stage.

Our next gig was with our good friend Udo Löw in southern Germany, right on the French boarder. We have played with his band, Thorny Roses a few times in and around Saarbrüken, which is one of my favorite German towns to hang out in. They organized a cool show in a school gymnasium with a huge stage and lights. We saw quite a few people that we have seen down there before, including our French friends Noah and Manu Drui. One guy drove his motorcycle all the way down there from the Cologne area- about a three hour trip. He asked me to let him know if we ever play near Cologne, and I said "Yeah, we play Leverkusen next Saturday!" His jaw dropped because Leverkusen is about 30 minutes from Cologne. Hahahaha! 

After a good night's sleep at Udo's farm house, we headed back up to Vriezenveen to play a mid-day Sunday gig at the Het Wapen. This is where we recorded some of our Live in Europe CD back in 2015. This time we played outside, enjoyed some barbecue and beers, and enjoyed the help of Anko & Helga who took care of the merch!

Playing outside at the Het Wapen in Vriezenveen

Helga and Anko Lammers (Our Dutch Family)

It is a bit unusual to have a Monday gig, but we were happy to return to Café de Stier in Eibergen, which is a short drive from Vriezenveen. We played there last spring, and they were having the same sort of shut-down-the-town festival that starts on a Friday and runs through Tuesday. (We could use more of this stuff in the US!) It was a bit funny- I asked the guy who runs the bar, Sander, if we could come back in the fall, and he told me that "No, we don't have the same bands play in the same year, or even next year. Every two years is about right." But there we were, six months after our last show there. And after our show, Sander told us that we definitely will come back next year, and headline on a Saturday night! Hahahaha... Like usual, we did see many of the same people as before, but we had a much better response this time, and were joined by our good friend Nineke Loedemann who, along with a couple other people, run the Dutch website BluesMagazine.nl. She was my first interview on my first tour in 2012 before we played our first show in Europe!

The stage at Café de Stier

Nineke Loedeman from Blues Magazine NL

The next day, we relaxed at "Castle Lammers" and did next to nothing, which was fantastic. Carl and I decided to get a fire going in their fire pit (Anko was at work), and we enjoyed the fire and tried to drink as much beer as possible.

Stoking the fire in Vriezenveen

Then finally, the moment I had been waiting five year for: my beautiful wife Michelle joined us on the tour! She arrived at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam early on Wednesday, and I got up early to take the train out to meet her. She recovered from the time change a lot quicker than John, Carl and I did! That night we were happy to take our hosts out to a nice dinner, but before that she opened a nice gift from Victor and Ewa Czura - a cool amber necklace!

Thanks for the Amber!

I scheduled a photo shoot the next morning with Stefan Schipper - a world-class photographer who is based in Vriezenveen. He has taken the cover photos for my last two studio albums, and I figured we could get some great shots for the next CD. (Stay tuned for that.) He asked Michelle to jump in there, and we got some great shots! Thank you Stefan!

Photo by Stefan Schipper

Our first "show" with Michelle was a live radio performance in Ridderkerk, near Rotterdam. We played for bluezy.nl and did a short interview. Anko and Helga came along, and we enjoyed some whiskey after the show in our hotel. We all slept well, and were able to hang out at the hotel until noon. The drive to Leverkusen was short, and we were able to check in early and walk around the city center and mall. We were ready to go when Topos opened up for load in.

This place has to be one of the strangest venues I have played in the EU. It is very small with a tiny stage, and the seating there is just plain weird. We did pretty well the last time we played there, which was in 2016. But I wasn't too excited to come back - it gets really hot in there, and the pay is underwhelming. Also, the sounds guy told me their new neighbor, whose bedroom shares a wall with the stage (?!) had been complaining about the volume, and if they got another visit from the Polizei the whole bar would be shut down. I thought to myself, "get ready for the LAST show here!" BUT, we did keep he volume down and it ended up being one of my favorite shows from the tour. First, check out the uh, seating arrangement:

Topos in Leverkusen

Looks like paper mache seating. That can't be comfortable! Somehow they packed about 40 to 50 people in there. In between sets, we sold a ton of CDs and T-Shirts. I barely had time to use the bathroom before we had to start the second set. Our good friend Marco Zwillich, who has seen us on just about every tour, requested we play "Left For Dead" so we did, although we had not played it in quite some time. That went over well, and I remember we played an especially good version of "Deep Deep Blue" that night. 

Hanging with Marco Zwillich after the show

The third show that Michelle joined us for was a short drive back the way we came (this happens a lot on tour) to a town called Waalwijk (wall-why-k). We played a small bar called Jay's Biercafé in the town center. There was a small crowd, including a guy that was at the radio show in Ridderkerk at the bar (Jan VanderEnt). The owner, Jeroen Lammers (no relation to Anko) seemed to like us a lot, and asked us if we could play a bigger room next time upstairs, and also at his new bar which will be opening in November in nearby Tilburg. 

Rocking Jay's Biercafé in Waalwijk. Picture by Jan VanderEnt

Set List from Waalwijk

For the last show of the tour, we drove back to Germany to a town called Mönchengladbach for an early Sunday show to benefit sick children. We played with Simon McBride, an Irish blues rocker. It was a fun last set of the tour on a big stage. Michelle helped us sell some merch, and afterwards the hosts invited us to a nice dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant, where the owners treated us all like nobility, and served up some killer pasta.

Michelle and John Kessler at the merch booth in Mönchengladbach

Our hosts at the restaurant in Mönchengladbach carve up some cheese

NOTE FROM JOHN:

There was the amazing midnight dinner at an Italian restaurant where the chef and his wife fussed over us while preparing a dish at the table that involved pouring hot pasta onto a giant wheel of cheese. Speaking of cheese, there was the restaurant where we repeatedly asked for no cheese and received extra cheese. - John Kessler

YES! Another great tour under our belts. As usual, we had a great time. We are quite lucky to have such good friends in the EU. That's more than half the fun - and something that average tourists do not get easily. Planning for the 9th tour is underway, so keep your eye on my shows page for details about the Spring 2018 tour!

So, I kept passing this sign in Almelo, and my brain is not really good at reading Dutch. It tries to make sense of long, weird words. So I kept thinking about the snoring battles that raged every night in John and Carl's room (they are roommates partly because of this specious talent). I thought of them as:

SNORE FIGHT-STERS

NOTE FROM JOHN:

We were occasionally saved by our own PB & J sandwiches, much to the horror of our Dutch hosts. For some unknown reason, in their culture combining peanut butter and jelly is like putting horseradish on ice cream, literally horrifying. They eat peanut butter and they eat jelly but never together. We find that it tastes best at 2 in the morning. With beer. - John Kessler

Peanut Butter and Jelly at 2 AM

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!

The Netherlands, Germany, and Poland. Three places I never knew I’d have the pleasure of visiting let alone where I would have the privilege of getting to play on some of the greatest stages for some of the best crowds for whom I’ve been able to perform. Dudley and I, and the other gentlemen in the band; Carl Martin (drums), Eric Robert (keys), were in Europe for approximately six weeks. In the middle of those six weeks Dudley planned on celebrating his birthday in Italy.

While he was gone it was up to the three of us to decide what to do with our time off. Our home base was in Vriezenveen just outside of Almelo, in the Netherlands. I’m sure our amazing hosts, Helga and Anko Lammers, would have been okay with us bumming around for a week but we decided to hit the road, or the train so to speak. 
I love Carl and Eric but I decided to strike out on my own. Hopefully they’ve written about their adventures in detail. They shared some stories when they returned but I’m sure they saved the best tales for you fine folk reading this blog.

DT4Life! Do Dudley supporters/fans have a name? Like “Parrotheads” or “Deadheads?” Why does the suffix always have to be “head?” Why can’t it “hand” or “feet?” While we’re at it why does it have to be any body part? “I’m a DT Football!” “DTFB!” But I digress. 
After a van ride to the station with Carl and Eric I went about the beginning of my week long solo adventure. First stop: Amsterdam. 
And a week later I returned, the end… 

: )

Wait, no, I was in Amsterdam for three days and two nights. 

Monday, July 4th:

I arrive at Amsterdam Central around 11:00am. Walking the cobblestone streets my first mission is to find my hotel. Whenever I’m on a trip I don’t really plan too far in advance. I had found a room online and booked it the night before. Aside from that I have no agenda. I’m immediately struck by the beauty of the architecture and the layout of the canals. 

Amsterdam Canals

Amsterdam Central

Might as well not beat around the bush (I’ll stop with the puns now) but I didn’t realize that the “Red Light District” is so large and is mixed in with everyday fair like clothing stores and food establishments. I’d always assumed, like any American who doesn’t do any research, that it was located in its own separate section. As I walk further I see “Coffeeshops”, a “Banana Bar”, and the “Red Light Secrets Museum.” 
After a couple of hours of walking I find my hotel. You have to ring a bell and be buzzed in to enter. I make my way up the steep staircase to find myself confronted with another steep staircase. A few things I noticed while I was in Europe:

1. Lots of stairs. Steep stairs that go on for days 
2. No air conditioning. If you go to a mall or some restaurants you’ll find it but good luck when you get to your room.
Open a window and hope for a breeze 
3. I have a theory that there are five garbage cans in Europe. Wait, I counted a sixth one on the day I left.
Yes, there are six trash receptacles in all of Europe. 
4. This list is in no way hyperbolic 

When I find the front desk I’m given a key to my room then I’m instructed that whenever I leave I need to return the key and then when I come back they will give the key back to me so that I may enter my room. I thank the man behind the counter and as I make my way up yet another flight of stairs I think to myself “I guess maybe people get too trashed when they leave and the hotel has put out too much money in replacing lost keys. That, or people are murdered and the murderer goes back to the hotel and robs the room.”  Either way I didn’t sweat it. 
That night I make my way around town. If you ask me in person I’ll tell you all about it. 

Tuesday, July 5th: 

I take a walk down to the Van Gogh museum. It’s so cool to get to see the progression of a man that worked diligently to become a master of his craft. I didn’t know that he began painting at the age of 27 and only painted for ten years. I also visit the Anne Frank House. It’s pretty humbling getting to be inside of such a historically significant place. Seeing the actual diaries was something I was not expecting. 

Wednesday, July 6th: 

I take the train to Brugge (Bruges) in Belgium. It’s such a nice city! I’m a big fan of the film “In Bruges” and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a big reason why I went there. The top of the Belfry has a great view. But save your money on the Dali exhibit, they’re all pretty much reprints. I go to bed kind of early but the late night EDM dance party around the corner continues on through the night. I fall asleep to the soothing sounds of Dubstep.

Belfry of Bruges

 

Thursday, July 7th: 

I arrive in Brussels. There is nothing in Brussels. 

Friday, July 8th: 

Paris, France! This is my last stop on my week long solo journey. The first thing I do when I arrive is find a taxi. I speak to a gentleman about a ride and he says “Follow me.” I start walking to the first vehicle in a long row of taxi’s but he says “No, this way.” I quickly realize that we’re walking to a motorcycle. He pulls out a helmet from the back storage compartment and says “Put this on.” I do, then we hop on the bike and he asks me where I’d like to go. I say “The Eiffel Tower.” We proceed to whip around Paris like we just robbed a bank. I feel like Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday” but we’re going faster than any Vespa. He drops me off right at the base of the Tower. It was pretty spectacular to see in person. I wait in line and the moon is out by the time I reach the top. The view is breathtaking.

The Eiffel Tower

View from the Eiffel Tower

I had earlier contacted my friend Taylor, who lives in Paris, about staying at her place. I make my way there and after a bit of catching up I crash.

Saturday, July 9th: 

After recording a podcast with Taylor she takes me to the subway and instructs me on how to navigate it and the city. This is the absolute best thing she could have done for me. I was able to make my way around the entire city. I see so many breath-taking sights, I can see why Taylor wants to live here. 

Sacré-Cœur, Paris

Sunday, July 10th: 

I say goodbye to Paris and head back to Almelo. It was a spectacular trip and I hope to see more of Europe very soon. 
  
I’d like to say thanks to Dudley for letting me be a part of his tour. Thanks to Carl for holding it down every show, and those times when he eventually stopped snoring when we shared a room. Thanks also goes out to Eric for rocking every performance and driving when no one else could/should. 
Until next time, 

Kasey “DTFB!” Williams
 

The view of Lake Como from our Villa

Sunset on Lake Como

Birthday Gifts from Anko and Helga Lammers!

Panoramic Photo from the Castle above Varenna

My Birthday Dinner
L to R: Anko and Helga Lammers, Ralf, Kristin and Tarika Reichen (seated)
Me and my wife Michelle, Dudley Taft Sr. and Tina Taft, Kaitlin Taft and Ashley Christensen

My daughters on the Ferry (L to R: Ashley, Kaitlin and Zoie)

The details of my week of are much too boring to read but were very pleasant! Lots of swimming, sightseeing, dining and dancing, eating and drinking! We added one extra night in Milan to the trip. Some call it the fashion capital of Europe, and we had fun walking around downtown and looking at all the fancy couture boutiques (and trying not to spend too much!)

Now, let's check in with the other guys and see what they were up to. This next bit is from Carl:

So this tour came with and added bonus.  As if playing night after night overseas wasn’t enough fun, we had a week off about midway through the tour.  We were able to cover a lot of miles and see a great deal of cool sites in a reasonably short time. Kasey was eager to set off on his own and explore so Eric and I travelled to Brugge, Belgium where we dived headfirst into the impressive beer culture there.

Carl Loves Beer

Eric Loves Waffles

The  first restaurant we stopped at offered 400 beers to choose from.  So, we stayed awhile!  A highlight came later at a bottle shop were we found what is often considered, “the world’s best beer”.  It is the Trappist Westvleteren 12.  We just had to take a bottle with us and we opened it at our next destination, Calais, on the Coast of France.  We stayed at a little AirB&B in town with a very entertaining host.  He even made us cake.  From there we thought we’d better make the 1 ½ hour ferry crossing to England and see the Cliffs of Dover, much to the dismay of nearly everyone we told!  The British border agent thought we were nuts. He informed us that if we were going just to see the cliffs that we were going to be underwhelmed!  He was wrong.  We loved it.

We returned after a fun afternoon of walking around Dover and spent one more night in Calais.  The next day we began our journey back to our European home, Vrizenveen, NL.  We had a few more nights to hang there with Anko and Helga before the rest of the band returned.  Definitely a time we will never forget!

After our first few Polish shows and a long drive, we made it back to our Dutch HQ: Castle Lammers.  Our hosts, Anko and Helga always take great care of us. We had one day off there to do a little laundry and get organized.

One thing that I really messed up on this trip was making sure I had an accurate accounting of what merchandise we had to sell at our shows. Luckily, we had enough CDs but I made the mistake of thinking we had a lot of t-shirts left, which we didn't. Oops. When we were in Poland we sold a lot of CDs, but I had no t-shirts whatsoever! So I called my buddy Heiko at Hamburg Records. They have done the shirts for all the tours, and had all the designs and silkscreen masters saved there. They made us 150 shirts in very short order and had them shipped to Anko's. They arrived on our day off, and we were able to get those organized for the rest of the tour.

A local newspaper guy named Tom van den Berg came out and interviewed Anko and me about our friendship over the years:

Our next gig was a short drive away at the famous Bluescafé Apeldoorn- they have some hardcore blues fans that frequent this place, and it has been hosting 200 shows a year for more than twenty years. We played on a Wednesday, and the turnout was just ok, but we had a lot of fun...

We had tried to fill that Thursday, but nothing came through so we spent another day at Castle Lammers. The weather was really nice and they have a great yard there, so we hung out outside a lot and watched the squirrels.

That weekend we drove out to the coast to Middelburg, Zeeland which is south of Rotterdam and The Hague. We played there last year at another bar, and had a good time, so we thought this would be a good gig. However, it turned out to be one of those crappy gigs that I would like to forget about. The bar was small, with almost no room to set up (so stage to speak of). We set up by the emergency exit, and loaded in through the back door brining our stuff through a very trashy alleyway and garbage filled back patio. 

Middelburg is one of those towns where it is challenging to park- it gets a lot of tourists because it is on the coast near the ocean. The bar owner told us we could just park in the alley "Don't worry about it," he said. Well, it only took about an hour before we got a €99 ticket. He told us not to pay it! The parking people are scoundrels he said. "Uh huh, great," was my reply. He also wanted us to play 3 sets which we never do. But we ran though a couple of extra songs that we knew, and planned on 3 sets (we aim to please). The gig was ok; the small crowd was happy. At least they had some interesting artwork:

And the bathroom in Middelburg was pretty interesting:

Nederlander 3 Show in Wateringen, NL

The Stage at Nederlander 3

Our Merch setup at Nederlander 3

It is important to mention that we had our new album, Live in Europe ready to go for this tour! We rely on merchandise sales to help pay the bills, and it was great to have four CDs and a couple of t-shirt designs. 

Our show that night was great with an enthusiastic crowd. The opening band was Never Trust from just north of Milan, Italy, and I excitedly told them I was going that way soon to celebrate my 50th birthday. They were doing a short string of dates, and its always good to compare notes with other bands that tour Europe. If you get a chance, google them.

The next day we drove up to a town called Bergen, on the peninsula north of Amsterdam to what would turn out to be one of my favorite gigs of the whole tour. This village was more 'upscale' than most Dutch villages, with high-end couture boutiques and fancy restaurants. The place we played was generically called De Taverne. It looks like we set up in grandma's living room... well, if grandma was into nude paintings.

It was one of those shows where everything went well- the band was very comfortable with the songs at this point, and I think we really killed it. There were about 110 people crammed in there and they were all engaged and enthusiastic. The weather was perfect! Kasey and I walked around for a little while in our black stage outfits and got some interesting looks... hahaha. We found a restaurant with a really unfortunate name:

We stayed at a hotel out by the coast in Bergen aan Zee (Bergen on the sea) and checked out the beach.

Bergen aan Zee

Beach Boys

When first booking the tour, I was not going to take the festival shows in Poland because of the soccer championship matches. There were no shows available there for a week afterwards, because no one wants to book a band when everyone is watching soccer. But I am glad that I did (at the band's urging) because those shows were fantastic. The problem was that after this show we played in Bergen, we had to drive all the way back across the continent to Poland for another festival we were headlining, and one club gig. Oh well. We're American and are used to driving long distances! Tell a Dutchman that you're going to drive for 10 hours and he will think you are fucking nuts! Well, I suppose that we are; just look at us! Hahaha...

So we drove 932 kilometers (about 580 miles) to Poznan that day. We could have driven all the way to Warsaw, but it's nice to check into a hotel and get some dinner and relax. No point in killing ourselves! We have stayed at the Hotel Ikar several times on these tours, and played Poznan at least three times, so we know our way around and are very comfortable there. The city center is really quite nice and they have some great restaurants, pubs and clubs there.

Killer dinner for 4 people for about $80!

Beatiful night in Poznan City Center

Warsaw is like any other big city; the hotels are expensive! I have had good luck at the Intercontinental hotels, and the one in Warsaw was very nice. We stayed there for 2 nights and had great views from our rooms:

View from our hotel

Eric always finds a piano!
 

The next day was a day off, and we hung out in the Old Town.

Our next show was on Friday, and we had another day off (darn it). We headed north to Gdansk, which was pretty close to our outdoor festival gig. Gdansk was a highlight of our tour: the city was not damaged that much in the wars, and is very pretty. We had a blast there, and even got a canal/waterfront tour the next morning.

Gdansk City Center

Watching the Soccer match on a huge projection screen

Rain slicked streets of Gsansk

Sunset on the canal in Gdansk

Time to get back to work! We headed west to a small town called Katurzy where we checked in to our hotel. Some of the staff from the Blues w Leśniczówce festival met us there and we followed them to a camp in the middle of the woods. Man, we were really OUT THERE. I wondered who the hell would come all the way out there to see a show. But people kept coming in, and we had a nice crowd by the time the sun was setting. Backstage everyone was wound up and doing shots of whiskey. (I had a one sip!) Joe Columbo, a fantastic slide guitarist from Switzerland played there the night before and asked to jam with us, so we played a couple of tunes with him. He also played Victor Czura's Satyr Blues Festival, and we had heard a lot about him.

We all had a blast and made some new friends!

European Tour Blog 2016 Part 1 
  
It was a great time of year to play my 6th European tour! We had the best weather of any of these tours by far. Most of northern Europe where we play (Netherlands, Germany and Poland) is much further north than the American/Canadian boarder. Rome is about parallel with New York City, and Gdansk Poland is parallel with… well, there are no major cities that far north, but let’s say a few hundred miles north of Edmonton, Alberta. The point being, the weather is usually much cooler than what we are used to here in the US. So playing in June and July was fantastic because the temperatures averaged about 75º - 80º, and the sun was out! 
  
The Europeans love music festivals, and the summer is full of them. Most of the blues society venues are closed for the summer, so we ended up playing a few fantastic outdoor festivals. 
  
Our lineup for this tour had Carl Martin returning for his fourth tour with us on drums, Eric Robert on keyboards for his third, and since John Kessler could not join us Kasey Williams from Cincinnati played bass on his first trip across the pond. (Kasey's unique first impressions to come.)
  
As usual, I arrived first in Cologne, Germany to pick up much of the equipment that I keep at Ralf Reichen’s Tonehunter shop. He makes the best amplifiers and overdrive pedals! He also let’s me use his 1977 Tokai Les Paul, which is an amazing guitar. (One of the best “Les Pauls” I have ever played.) He is nice enough to let me keep our merchandise, powered monitors, cables and accessories at his place (oh yeah, and one of my hats!). After removing the back seat from the Mercedes Vito and loading up the van with the gear, I picked up Kasey at the Cologne airport the next morning, June 15th. 
  
It was fun to see Kasey’s reaction to all things European since it was his first trip. After 5 tours, I was getting pretty comfortable with moving around over there. This blog will have many of his observations, so keep reading! 
  
We always stop at the big music store in Cologne (called Music Store, haha) to get equipment we need for the shows, and we were out of gaffer tape and I thought it would be cool to get a few of those small LED lights to light up our stage setup in the smaller venues. Music Store is a huge place with 5 floors of stuff. They do a lot of internet business, but really have their wares dialed in. We ended up getting 4 LED lights. They are small and sit on the floor or on top of a speaker, and can really help light up some of the smaller club stages.
  
We drove to Vriezenveen (pronounced Free-zen-vein, and roll your r’s…) in the Dutch countryside where we stay with Anko and Helga Lammers. Anko is a drummer and is nice enough to let us use his kit for these tours. He also has a small flat above his garage where we stay on days off. I call this place Castle Lammers, or our European HQ. Anko and Helga make us feel very welcome there, and always have tons of food, beer and whiskey ready to go. Every year we stop at the store and get them a couple bottles of rare whiskey to add to their formidable collection.
  
Later that day I drove into Almelo, a slightly bigger town a few klicks down the road to pick up Carl and Eric at the train station. 
  
If you have read these blogs before, you know that we have a tradition of eating our first dinner together at the Shamrock restaurant in Almelo after a quick run-through of the songs. Luckily, everyone did their homework and practice went well. I wanted to make sure we all were well fed and rested for the next day’s marathon drive into Poland. They remember us there and think it's funny that we like Almelo. Well, it's hard not to; it is a small town and you can get everything you need right in the town center. We have eaten at almost all of the restaurants there, and have gotten to know a few of the locals.
  
Not wanting to kill ourselves on our first day of driving, we drove about 480 miles (771 kilometers) to Legnica, Poland and stayed in a decent hotel. Talking with the staff, we realized that we in the TV commercials for a festival we were playing that weekend in Nowa Deba… pretty cool! 
  

Legnica, Poland from our hotels' rooftop bar

The world cup soccer championship games were happening at this time, and the hotel bar was full with people watching the game on a huge screen. We tasted (uh, drank) some vodka and went to bed early, but were woken up by loud singing at about 1 am after the game... the Europeans certainly take their soccer (football) very seriously.

The next morning we headed east to the small town of Bochnia where we were to play our first gig in a theatre we played the year before. We stopped to get gas mid-morning, and Carl topped off the tank. After driving about 50 kilometers, the van suddenly lost power and a red 'safety' light came on! Uh oh. When I rented the van, the lady at the Enterprise rental desk told me to let them know if I planned to leave Germany. Well, I completely forgot about that until this happened. I called the number she gave me and said that we planned to drive to Poland that day. The guy on the other end of the line said "Oh no, you cannot do that, this is a big problem. Come back in and we will give you a Ford van that you can drive there." Apparently they have had some issues with Mercedes getting stolen outside of Germany. "Oh, ok. We will just stay here in Germany" I lied. So we had better figure out what's wrong with the van and fix it on our own.

We managed to limp the van to the venue, and checked all the fluids. But nothing looked unusual. Also, it only had about 3,000 kilometers on it so one would think it wouldn't break down.

Luckily, the drummer for the opening band was a car nut. He drove a new Camaro, and liked to burn rubber everywhere. We described the problem to him and he immediately determined that Carl put gasoline in our diesel van. "But the pump handle was green!" Carl said. In the US, diesel pump handles are green, but in Europe they are black! Oops. So the drummer guy, Wojciech (voy-check), arranged for the van to be serviced while we did sound check, which was lucky because it was about 4:15 on a Friday! The service guys picked up the van, removed the fuel tank, drained it, flushed the fuel system, replaced the fuel filter, re-assembled it and put in a 1/4 tank of diesel. And (pun intended) drumroll please... it cost us 380 złoty, which is about $75 <whew>. We called Carl "Captain Diesel" for a few days...

It was great to see the Lekki family, who arranged our show in Bochnia.

At the Kino Regis in Bochnia

Dudley & Piotr Lekki: fellow Beardsmen

That night we all went back to the hotel and had a late night meal. As a punitive measure, we volunteered Captain Diesel to try the raw steak!

Yummy! Steak Tartar

The next morning we were off to a city we had trouble pronouncing: Przeworsk. Our good friend Victor Czura (who runs the fantastic Satyr Blues Festival) helped us get this gig headlining the Przeworsk Blues Festival. (He is responsible for just about ALL of our shows in Poland so far.) We had an enthusiastic crowd and a big stage to work. They all treated us very well there, including the usual after-gig meal and this time they brought out the frozen vodka!

On stage at the Przeworsk Blues Festival 

Kasey Stares Down A Bee Onstage

Post-Gig Polish Spread

Frozen Vodka!

This guy - Peter Bonzo Radványi - drank more vodka than I have ever seen anyone drink, and still played fantastic slide guitar!

By the way, here's a couple of videos from that show if you are interested:


"Mojo Woman"

"Meet Me In The Morning"
 

Sampling some of the vodka sure was fun; but I made sure to severely limit the quantity! We had a show the next day and had to be in good condition. This reminds me to emphasize this to you dear reader, that when we roll into town to do a gig, our friends and fans have been looking forward to the show as a night to really cut loose. They treat it like a special occasion and party down! Well, that's tough for a touring band because we treat the gigs more like athletes- we need to be in shape and stay in shape. We can't go crazy every night or we would be toast in just a few days. So it is tough to be tempted with massive amounts of food and beer and booze. Moderation is the key to success! Hahaha.

Sunday shows usually have an early start time, but this festival was an exception. We had a short drive- about 1:45, and were able to check into the hotel and rest a bit before we headed for the stage. The festival was called Militariada, and celebrated military efforts of the Polish army from World War II and earlier. There were tanks, helmets, swords and historical performances. The bands that played were doing cover songs, which isn't all that surprising except that the 'biggest' band in Poland is famous for playing....covers! They opened up with a Whitesnake song and it was all downhill from there, IMHO. Somehow that just seems weird to me. Anyway, the show was exciting because it was the biggest crowd that I have ever played to as the lead singer of a band. The stage was huge and the crowd was kept about 25 feet away, so it really felt like we were playing AT the audience. It was a bit more work, but gratifying nonetheless. 

We all had fun walking around the fairgrounds before our set. Take a look:

A few pullups before the show!

OK Kasey, you're scaring the kids!

OK, Kasey now you're scaring ME!

What could be in this box?

Meeting of the Council in the backstage tent

Big crowd at the Militariada Festival!

Nowa Deba Miliratiada Festival Crowd

So we had a blast at our first 3 shows. Unfortunately, our other shows in Poland were two weeks later so we filled in those dates with gigs in The Netherlands. We had a long drive ahead of us that Monday, about 1050 kilometers or about 650 miles. There was a lot of road construction, and we ended up driving for about 11 hours. Yuk. We did make it to Hotel Amadeus in time for some beers (tea for Eric) and dinner...

Dinner at Hotel Amadeus in Hannover Germany

NEXT UP:
The Hague and the North Coast of Holland

Keeping it fresh: 
  
I started playing guitar at age 12, and I will turn 50 this year, putting me at about 38 years of experience on that instrument. 
  
When I started playing, I started composing almost immediately. After having an acoustic for 6 months I wrote and recorded my first original song, “You Are What You Are.” I was so excited, pumped, jacked to be writing songs! The heroes that I was enamored with at the time (Bowie, Neil Young, Lou Reed) seemed so much closer. I could understand the writing process better, and in turn could imagine myself creating works like them. Well, not like them, but my version of what they were doing. 
  
This was a different sensation to being able to play the same riff or solos that my guitar heroes could. That was more like learning a language. 
  
This was a process where you made something happen that didn’t exist before. I made sure to try and keep my stuff fresh and not copy the same chords and motifs of my influences. I would purposefully avoid the common chord changes. I found my own set of harmonies that made me happy. 
  
Along the way my sensibilities have changed, and the sound of my originals have changed. To an outsider, maybe it seems radical. To my close friends and observant fans maybe not so much. It’s hard for me to really know how others perceive my music. I write songs that pass my own tests of originality and quality. (Not everything passes…) 
  
Sometimes the muse is strong. Sometimes I am on a roll, and everything I come up with gets made into songs and recorded. On my first solo CD, Left For Dead, I used every song I wrote for the album. There were no other tracks. My second effort, Deep Deep Blue was much the same. I self-edited early in the process and didn’t allow and sub-standard material to be recorded. Screaming In The Wind had one song that I recorded that didn’t cut the mustard at the end of the day. 
  
When I started working on my latest album, Skin and Bones, I was growing tired of working out all the songs beforehand. So I collected a bunch of raw ideas, all of which were recorded on my iPhone’s Voice Memo app, and brought in my bassist and drummer to work out the new songs on the fly. Things changed drastically: we recorded 20 songs and ended up using only 11. 
  
This change in the process was really quite refreshing. Not only did the songs feel more inspired and raw, but the tempos were faster and more of them have been added to my live set list as a result. I think that was the consequence of trying to not only satisfy my own criteria for good material, but also to keep my rhythm section interested and engaged. It gives the CD a different feel than the previous ones. Not necessarily better, but different. That makes me happy. I need to keep moving forward to keep things fresh. 
  
I just listened to David Bowie’s new album Blackstar. You can tell he wants to keep things fresh for himself, changing the way he writes and delivers his songs. One may criticize him for not writing more accessible material. “Hey man! Why don’t you write something like Ziggy Stardust again?” But for him that would be stale. I get it. I like the production on the new album; there are less overdubs and effects than the last few albums. The song Lazarus is excellent! 
  
(Note: I wrote this blog on Friday, January 15th the night before we all learned of David Bowie’s death)