Steve's Tour Diary

  • Schipol airport

    2001-11-20: And here we are again. Back at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam where this particular diary began three weeks and two days ago.That's it! 23 days. How can that be possible? It seems we have crammed a lifetime of experiences in that short period--19 shows in five countries, the rapid evolution of a fine five-piecemore
  • Goppingen

    2001-11-18: We meet a lot of nice people along the way but few are nicer than Frieder and Rosaria, our promoters in Goppingen. We first met them in 1998 when in the midst of a very long tour we arrived to the Odeon venue quite weary and in need of food, comfort and all of the little things thatmore
  • Dover to Calais ferry

    2001-11-16: London swings. They say it do. London swings. And I know it's true. There you go, my friends. A little poem and that's about the best I can do this Friday morning after three hours of sleep and a wild night in the West End. I hadn't been 100%more
  • Dover

    2001-11-15: Anarchy in the UK? Well, it's much too early to tell but we did have a junk food/culture trip on the 90 minute ferry from Calais today. On the food side there were various burgers, Cadbury chocolate bars, french fries and Boddington Bitter Ales along with the cultural buffet platter of British tabloids (the Sun, themore
  • Cologne

    2001-11-14: The band is all aflutter. We've been shopping. And indeed Cologne has become one of our favorite cities as so many of our good friends (Hammi, Ullrich, Chris, Christian, Thomas, Stefan and more) and have all turned us on to the best places to buy whatever excites each individual member (records, clothes, food, internet cafes, etc).more
  • Somewhere in France

    2001-11-12: Not much to say, really. We're in the midst of our mondo-drive to Cologne and Chris is making his debut behind the wheel. He reminded me that he once drove a truck to help me move some furniture (back in LA, circa 1988) and that was good enough for me. He just announcedmore
  • Driving To Portugal

    2001-11-09: Everyone in the van agrees that this has been one of the lost surreal drives of all time. It began at 9am in Bilbao as we fought heavy rains to get out of town and headed up into the hills as we approached Burgos and were met with blizzard-like conditions. the snow was coming down hardmore
  • Leaving Madrid

    2001-11-08: Man, you should have been there. What had been a fiery, tour-highlight monster of a show opening for the Jayhawks in Madrid got even better when we were joined for the encore by Stephen McCarthy for a rousing version of "Baby We All Gotta Go Down." It was all the more exciting since Stephen, Chrismore
  • The road to Madrid

    2001-11-07: As usual, Spanish tours mean wild shows, enthusiastic fans and strong coffee along with late nights, long drives and a relaxed pace of life. All of this adds up to little or no sleep which is bringing on some good stream-of-consciousness, giddy van chatter. Can't really give you a word-for-word transcript but some of themore
  • Entering Spain

    2001-11-06: Even though European touring offers the chance to eat a great deal of wonderful and exotic food it usually is consumed quickly as meals have to be sandwiched (some pun intended) between sound checks and the gig itself. And, since a painfully full belly isn't the best condition for a lean, mean rocking show, we often find ourselvesmore