EU/UK Post Tour Reflections
Hey everyone, you know it was a good tour when, at some point right near the end or just after, you find yourself saying to a bandmate or a friend “Well, that might have been the best one yet!”
The first night was at the legendary L’Olympia in Paris and we were understandably nervous: this room has hosted some of the greatest performers in history. This performance alone by Jaques Brel made playing there very, very important for us. To stand and sing my songs where this very footage was captured gave this busker the thrill of a lifetime.
We arrived in Paris a day early to meet and discuss the tour and basic set shape. A perfect spring evening in Paris at the 25 hour hotel by Garre Du Nord. I went for dinner with my friend James and we caught up with each other’s lives. After a quick drink with the band and crew it was time for an early night to gather strength for the tour.
The next day I headed to the St-Ouen flea market with Nadia to buy some more blue travais work jackets and on to sound-check, where everything was sounding incredible on stage. We’d had no rehearsal time and so we’d be largely winging it.
I’ve played music for so long with Joe, Rob, Graham and Ruth, and by now Gareth, too, that I felt completely at ease. Most of what we do on stage is listen and respond to each other. Though I’m out there singing and in many ways driving the night forward, I’m also listening to this band I’ve travelled countless miles with, and responding in kind.
The show went really well. A few mistakes, sure, but I never worry about mistakes: often times it’s right when everything falls apart that it comes into focus. We falter, we shrug it off and we dig deeper. Afterward we had time for a quick drink with our friends, then we all piled onto the bus to travel overnight to Utrecht. We always drive at night, sleeping while we move. It’s efficient and we’ve done it this way for a long time.
We had two wonderful nights in Utrecht at the Tivoli Vredenburg. There’s always such a warm welcome for our band in Holland. Danke je wel!
Groningen was a surprisingly emotional show. At De Oosterpoort I realised halfway through our set that the stage I stood on was the same one my best friend, Mic Christopher, who died in Groningen 20 years ago while on tour with The Waterboys, had played his last ever show on. We’d been supposed to play a different stage in the same venue, but it got changed just before the gig, and there we were: Simon Good, our guitar tech, who used to be in a band with Mic, and all of us who’d known and loved him, standing there together and feeling the moment land heavily. Something in the tour deepened right there as we spontaneously channeled into the songs he’d sang that night. Earlier in the day, I’d visited the spot on Peperstraat where Mic had slipped so suddenly and irredeemably away from this world. This is our heyday, baby. He was in the middle of a great tour when he went,
inhabiting that song, living it.
The tour was underway and we were shaping up: each night the set list and between song banter became more honed, as it does on tour. Each tour has its own set of tales that bubble to the surface. I don’t like to overthink it: a concert is its own organism, it involves more than just a band and an audience. There’s a thousand different experiences happening at the same time. On some nights – the good ones – there’s a moment or two of some kind of energetic unity or synergy that happens. It might last only a split second or for a whole minute or two, and these are the moments we live for: something transcendent. You can’t depend on it, ever. And you can’t create it through preparation and rehearsals. It either shows up or it doesn’t. On this tour, thank god, it showed up in abundance. Thank you, Mic! Yet again!
Koln, Berlin, Prague: all great nights went by in that blissful mid-tour blur. Apologies to the lady waving the Irish flag in Prague’s Lucerne Velky Sal. I’ve been thinking about flags recently, how much trouble a piece of coloured fabric on a stick can provoke. The exclusivity of identity. I’m sure she’s was simply saying “Hey, I’m Irish too!” or “I love Ireland!” And so do I, always will, but I’m putting down flags for now.
In Vienna, we had a day off and I got to sit down with Padraig McMahon, a huge talent and a great singer. His band The Belgian Blue would really be worth your time checking out. We got to meet for a few hours in the evening at Wunderbar before we left for Munich, and had such a good time – I even smoked two cigarettes! – and almost missed my 2 AM bus call.
In Munich, I went to see a doctor about my back, which I’d put out some months ago, resulting in debilitating nerve pain pretty much round the clock. No amount of prescribed medication seemed to be doing anything for it, and a neurosurgeon in Helsinki was casting a cold eye on me and mouthing ‘surgery’. The doctor advised stopping all painkillers and doing exercises. “Rest, rest, rest! Your battery is empty!” I still had 8 shows to do. So, we arranged I would return to Munich directly from the tour to spend a week attending his clinic.
The shows in Munich, Zurich and Antwerp were amazing. De Roma in Antwerp is probably my favourite venue in the world. I can’t exactly say why, it’s just got that thing. As the French would say “C’est dans son jus”, it’s in its juice. You can feel the history. AC/DC had played there in the 70’s! It had been destroyed and rebuilt by the community in Antwerp and is now run as a co-op venue. They lower the ticket and beer prices for people of a certain age and younger students. Everything about this model is one to be learned from. Dank U Wel, Antwerp! A highlight that night for me was my dear old friend Nina Hynes joining us on stage to play her song Raging Fire. Such a great song.
Each night we also played one of my favourite of Courtney Marie Andrews’ songs with her, Let The Good One Go. This song still buzzes round my head now, two weeks after the tour. Thank you, Courtney!
Hamburg was just so very special. We played an outdoor stage Stadtpark. It was a kind of magical evening with birdsong and sirens, and a heavy downpour of rain that almost derailed the show. But folks were determined to enjoy themselves. We invited about 60-80 people to take shelter on stage with us. The security that night was very understanding and allowed them up without panic or fuss. Gut für dich! There was one man whose smile I found so fascinating. I sang the whole show to him. I
got to meet him afterward for a brief, warm embrace. Danke, stranger!
In Bristol I got to see my dear friends the writer Martin Shaw and film-director Kirk Jones for some lunch. I was full of praise for Kirk’s latest film, I Swear, about John Davidson’s life with Tourette’s Syndrome. A profoundly beautiful film. We talked about the difficult making of the film, the potential financer’s insistence that he remove 50% of the bad language. It’s a film about Tourette’s! It ended up being self-financed, written and directed all by Kirk himself. Well worth checking out. Work like that will live on.
Martin Shaw joined us for some masterful storytelling mid-set at Bristol Beacon. A story about a hunter, a mysterious fox woman and her pelt.
Then overnight to Glasgow. Barrowlands, Glaswegians’ hallowed ground! I played a small record store in the afternoon and really enjoyed it. Met some wonderful folks there and headed off to sound check at Barrowlands. I’d seen The Pogues play here in the late 80’s. We had a brilliant night, which started with Limmy’s Wrong Way Down A One Way Street and graduated to an impromptu Shane McGowan tribute with A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day. Someone fainted and hit the ground hard, so there were 5 minutes mid set where we just waited for the paramedics to arrive. The audience took it in its stride. Oh, and we did a cover of Discharge’s Drunk on Power.
The Albert Hall in Manchester was incredible! The audience could not have been more present. Someone called for a moment’s silence, which I didn’t hear until Ruth stood up from the keyboard and reminded me it was the anniversary of the 2017 bombing at the Manchester arena. The show suddenly took on another tone, which somehow lent itself to create one of the shows of the tour. Manchester let us share in its grief and its rebuilding.
And, finally, London Roundhouse. I’ve wanted to play this room forever. Its iconic shape and history make it one of those rooms you hope is on the horizon, and when you see it on paper, confirmed, something in you has to rise to the occasion. This was also the last night of the tour – all bets were off. I didn’t need to preserve my voice or worry about the nerve-fucking-pain kicking me in the ass the next day. Tomorrow we would rest! And the day after. Again, it was just one of those nights where the stars align and the band weaves and spins, dips and swoons; guitars roar and songs teeter on the edge of collapse, falling into their own wild violent dance. It was a magic last night of tour.
Lying in bed that night with my throat hurting and ears ringing (still are!), I was filled with that immense sense of satisfaction, the kind of joy not felt often enough, infused with exhaustion and bloody triumph – job done! That may have been the best one yet.
But wait… there’s one more show. Dublin. We’ll cross the Liffey bridge when we come to it.
