At the tail end of my trails around Europe in October I spent a week in my old Norway. Pleasure first: a weekend of socializing and catching up in Bergen. Eventually, I got on a plane and flew the 45 minutes it takes to cross the mountains over to Oslo.

Sitting straight up in the seat, I fell asleep (a sleeping position I’ve had much training to develop), as usual. I was gone ten, maybe fifteen minutes and awoke abruptly as the plane touched down in Oslo. When I opened my eyes to find the cabin darkly lit only by the blinking lights of a modern airport, I could not for the life of me remember where I was. For a series of very long seconds, I tried my best to remember where I had been flying in from, to see if it might help me recall where I was going.

Blank.

Maybe I was yet again returning to London, where I had already arrived twice, earlier in the month? Or maybe my destination was somewhere I’d never been before? Perhaps I was going home, to New York? Or…home to Bergen? Bells started ringing and I realized I was just in Bergen, which further lead me to assume I has arrived in Oslo. This notion was confirmed as soon as I schlepped off the plane.

Such disorientations are prone to happen, I guess, when you travel as intensely as I do at times. For my North American tour in September I was lucky enough to travel in the company of my buddy Chris and our friend and opener Jesse (JBM). In Europe I didn’t have the luxury of their company. Here I went out alone and crashed other people’s tours and shows, making time for some small gigs of my own in-between (most notably The Slaughtered Lamb in London and Lille Vega in Copenhagen, both splendid nights in my memory).

Luckily, I did make some friends along the way, but I guess my point is that it’s easier to lose track of where you are or where you’re going when your only travel companion is a blue Gretsch guitar.

Once in Oslo I made some press rounds and showed my face on TV a couple of times. I ended up sharing a pretty weird story that happened to me earlier this year.

In April I was asked to come and audition for the part of Peter Parker in the Spider-man musical on Broadway. Now, anyone who knows me would be aware of how much I love the Spider-man movies (yes, even Spider-man 3!) and I may have stated one time too many how much I’ve come to identify with Peter Parker. So when this thing came up, I obviously had to give it a shot. As you may already know, I can’t act or dance. I do occasionally sing, however, so I figured maybe that’s why the Spider-folks had wanted to see me. Either way, my plan was to show up, show what I could do, so they could cross me off their list and continue their search.

In the interest of making a long story short and not indulging too much: as it turns out I got called back quite a few times for more auditions, and even had the pleasure of rehearsing and working on some of the songs (which are all written by U2’s Bono and The Edge) together with, eh…um, U2’s Bono and The Edge.

Make no mistake; this was all as absurd as it may sound. Both the U2 guys – if you ever were to refer to Bono and The Edge as “the U2 guys” – were really pleasant. Bono especially – as you can imagine – was a charismatic hoot. He spent quite some time trying to teach me the coolest, most effective way to stretch a word like “boy” way beyond its one syllable.

And wouldn’t you know it: I actually learned a thing or two about my own voice from these absurd auditions. By the end of it I was belting out notes I never even considered attempting (still struggling with “bbbbbooooooyyyyiiii”, however).

From Bono I also learned how wonderful and generous Norway is on all key social or political issues, except for those involving whales.

Last month in London I was lucky enough to spend some days with my dear friend Sean O’Hagan, who contributed string and horn arrangements for Rain, Goodnight and Lazenby on the Heartbeat Radio album.

Sean’s group The High Llamas has meant a great deal to me ever since I heard their album “Hawaii” in 1996. I first met him when I stayed at his house while I was in London to record his string arrangements for You Know So Well, Dead Passengers and No One’s Gonna Come for my first album back in 2000. I’m sure you can imagine what an insane experience it was for my 17-year-old-self to get to work with one of my favorite songwriters and arrangers and then crash on a couch in his home studio.

Finally I was back at Sean’s home studio where he played me a bunch of new Llamas songs in progress that bode extremely well for their next album. It was very inspiring. After my show with the Mountain Goats at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Sean and I watched highlights from the Andy Williams show on BBC and drank beer. Just a couple of guys watching the game.

The High Llamas are actually doing some rare UK gigs this month. Shows that every Brit should attend, if only on behalf of all of us out here who can’t be there.

This, in addition to killing myself over a song and then traveling around sharing it with sweet people all over the place – as if that weren’t enough – is the kind of stuff that I stumble across. So big thanks to all who’ve come out to see my shows this fall. I’m positively thrilled to find so many people are digging on my Heartbeat Radio.

There will be more. For now, JBM and I will make our debut trip out to Rock Island, IL for a show with my dedicated friends over at Daytrotter.com.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back soon with more absurdities from the day and life of yours truly.

More later,
SL

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.