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- Alvik Fall US Tour 2004 -
A sneaky peek at Anya's tour diary!
The Alvik US tour is just starting and we have initial pages from
Anya's tour diary. Now you can be there with them!
Week One: So we made it! So far our travels have taken us
from Prague, to Copenhagen to New York to Washington, D.C. We left
Prague last Wednesday and made it to Copenhagen airport around noon.
We were in Copenhagen all afternoon so we joined my friend at his
place for lunch before running back to the airport for our 19h flight
to New York City. We arrived in New York after 22h completely dead.
We slipped through customs with our HUGE luggage cart of bags and
guitars, basses, hard disc recorder, mixers CDs, Alvik t-shirts
and blah blah blah and to the curb to get two taxis to our place
in Brooklyn. My taxi arrived safely. Mishan's taxis arrived about
an hour later after getting completely lost on some other street
in some other part of New York. Sleep.
Day 2: Tourism! Wahoo! So we walked around Time's Square.
I ran into a friend from high school. We did the Empire State Building,
and walked all over midtown. Tons of people and cars and noise and
people on the street meditating, selling peanuts, inviting you for
shows, music playing lights flashing, horns honking, noise noise
noise!
Day 3: Goal for the day: Photo shoot. An old flatmate of
mine who is now a photographer in New York took us around the city
and shot lots of pictures for us for promo use on the tour. Lots
a great stuff. Walked around Greenwich Village a lot, walked past
the buildings I used to live in and went past my school. Honza got
stopped by the police for holding the doors in the metro for us.
The policeman asked him for some identification so he stuck his
hand down his pants (where he keeps his documents) and after searching
for a minute or so, the police let us go. I guess he got uncomfortable
questioning a Czech man who had his hand down his pants…Then we
went down to the lower east side for a yummy dinner at Mama's restaurant.
Food like we eat down south! Mnam :-)
Day 4: First concert on the tour: We showed up at 11h for
sound check for the 6th annual Czech Street Festival near the Czech
Centre New York uptown on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. We went on
at 16h with a street full of people, Czechs and more, eating goulash
and Tatranky while dancing to our music. It was really cool because
the stage was really in the street and people would just be walking
past and dance as they went down the street. I would look over at
Radim and just behind his head was the street sign for 83rd Street.
Day 5: We drove down from New York to Washington to move
in with my family. We made it home just after noon and had to dump
everything out of the car very quickly because we had tickets to
the last baseball game of the season for my favourite team. The
Baltimore Orioles. We made it to the game a bit late, met my mom
there and watched the Orioles win in the HOT HOT sun. Then we met
my brother at home and he laid out the latest news for the tour.
New show dates and the tour plan. We picked up a few different kinds
of American beers and I think the boys are getting used to the difference…
Day 6: Practice? Where's the drum kit. Today we had to take
care of some basic things like putting together all the equipment
and making all the local contacts for good prices on new equipment
at the local music store. We went to the old music shop where I
went when I was still a bass playing punk rock singer and got some
good new equipment for the guys. They left with BIG smiles on their
faces.
Day 7: Tomorrow we have our first show in Washington D.C.
It’s in a café called Nema. We’ve been practicing all day (outside
from a small trip to get Honza some shoes…) We've advertised a lot
for the show (we were passing out flyers to people in the shoe store).
Thursday we go south to Virginia for more concerts on the weekend.
Then Tuesday back up to New York to play my favourite club on the
East Coast, the Knitting Factory. I’m excited!
Day 8: We are doing our second gig at Nema Café. Aside from
technical conditions people seem to be enthusiastic buying our CDs
and T-shirts.
Day 9: Day off. Honza and Radim embark on a journey
around the city and get entranced at the Air and Space Museum. The
rest of the crew chill out except of Anya phoning again.
Day 10: Leaving for Charlottesville - a smaller university
town about 160 km far from Washington. Nick - Anya's brother - has
managed two gigs there. First of them happens at Millers Club just
after our arrival - we have been on the road for half a day due to
traffic jam so that we are late... The performance is fine again,
we enter into conversation with a lot of different people, everyone
is praising us to the skies so much that we feel like they must be
joking. Later on we sleep in a friend's residence - quite derelict,
yet imposing building.
Day 11: After sleeping off the hangover we drive for a brunch to
the waffle house. It's a kind of unforgettable experience however
we realize we will not return to the waffle house again. Tonight
we perform at the Business school of Charlottesville party. There
is also non-professional theatre performance by a teachers and students
company on the program and we find ourselves amazed by its highly professional
level.
Day 12: Coming back across the Shenandoah National Park to our
Silver Spring base camp we stop at the park for a while... as soon
as we realize that even HERE outdoor beer drinking is prohibited and so we
leave the area immediately.
Days 13 & 14: Leisure time - finally!!! There is enough time
to embark on a journey to Washington. Radim and Mike sportsmen and
Mike and Honza drunkards make a resolution to do some sports. Frisbee
is perhaps too much of a demanding event so both teams give up soon.
Anya phones again and Mishan is buying an iPod.
Day 15: Playing New York again. Knitting Factory this time,
where, completely by chance, a Czech singer Lenka Dusilova is performing, too.
She is currently on her US tour together with Martin Ledvina. Knitting
factory is a three floor club, where Chris Novoselic or PJ Harvey
often can be seen and heard. Later on we are getting back to Silver
Spring. Mike had been driving for about 4 hrs while the others fell asleep.
Day 16: The gig in Baltimore. Just before our departure to
the club, Paul - our double bass support from Sweden is reaching the
city. Nevertheless he is too tired to join us. Before going onstage
at the Royal club we walk about a bit looking around the city by twilight
- especially the harbour and the centre.
Day 17-22: Several days off, spent doing sports, going for
visits, city tour, rehearsing with Paul and actually only pleasant
activities as a matter of fact...
18.10 / Day 22: A few phone calls and some old friends lead
us to playing a concert at my high school in Maryland. I was good
friends with a lot of my teachers there, and some of my friends are
teachers there now so that's we decided to play. It was our biggest
concert in the U.S.! The capacity of the hall was 700 people and it
was quite full for both of the two shows we played there for the students
during the day. They really liked the music, and asked lots of interesting
questions about us and the Czech Republic.
19-20.10 / Day 23-24: Off to Philadelphia. After a short stop
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the place where the Amish people live
(the Amish people whose culture originates from old Europe in Holland
and Germany who moved to the U.S. about 200 years ago and live in
small communities in Pennsylvania where most of them live with no
electricity and travel by horses. They also dress in a very old fashioned
way) we got to Philadelphia, late. We played 2 sets of over 90 minutes
for two nights in a very nice jazz supper club. The club was full
and people loved the music! We stayed with another old flatmate of
mine from Prague who lived just outside the city. My brother joined
us after for some silly late-night games.
21.10 / Day 25: Travel to NYC and check in to our hotel in New Jersey.
Not much time to do anything except order some bad Chinese food and
watch some movies in the hotel room because Anya read the schedule
wrong for the bus to Manhattan…
22.10 / Day 26: Free day in New York City. We decide to take
the Staten Island Ferry, a free boat that leaves from the south of
Manhattan and travels past the Statue of Liberty to a small island
before returning to Manhattan. Then we meet for lunch, and Anya, Honza
and Michal head back to the hotel to get the equipment for the concert.
It takes 2 and a 1/2 hours to drive from the hotel to the club (it
should have taken us 30 minutes...), so we got there at 19.00. Exactly
when we are supposed to start playing. So! My friends help us quickly
unload the things and the guys set up while Anya parks the car… somewhere!
It's New York so there's NO parking ANYWHERE. After driving around
for 25 minutes, Anya finally finds a space and RUNS from the parking
space to the club where she enters the door, runs down the steps,
on to the stage, takes off her coat, grabs the microphone and starts
singing… Since we are scheduled for another show in a few hours in
the same neighbourhood, we decide to get some drinks and go out in
the street to give flyers to people about the show. We meet a few
nice young strange people. Anya meets some young people making a movie.
They ask if she wants to be in their movie. She says only if they
come to the concert. They make a deal. Anya plays in the film, but
they don't come to the concert… škoda (shame on them)! We find a few
more nice bars with some cool djs for a last drink before the later
show. We get to the club around midnight for our second show of the
night in another club. We take the stage, a bit tired at about 1.30am
in the morning after something like 4 rock bands. We get out of there
by 2.30am and we're ready to fall down tired!
23.10 / Day 27: Last show in the New York area. We played Hoboken, New
Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan. Great club and great
crowd. Really nice atmosphere. At this point we were so tired from
a crazy week that we played and went straight home. Not
before a last drink with all our New York friends, of course...
WORST CONCERT
24.10 / Day 28: Boston. Bloody baseball. We arrive at Grafton Street
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this restaurant/bar to play and everyone
is staring at the television screens at the bar watching the baseball
game of the Boston Red Sox versus the St. Louis Cardinals in the U.S.
Baseball championship. So we had a small group of about 8 people really
enjoying our music, a lot of people on the bar yelling every time
they scored a point and a mixing desk with 6 channels. Bad night. The
hotel where we stayed in had 2 rooms that connected in the middle.
It was a bit more than a hotel because both rooms had kitchens, there
was laundry and an exercise room downstairs and most important, you
could borrow movies from them for free. After a short dinner competition
for the strongest garlic sauce, the started debating over which movies
to watch. Kino Sal 1: Gladiator (Radim, Michal, Paul, Honza). Kino
Sal 2: The Fifth Element (Anya + Mishan).
25.10 / Day 29: Free day in Boston. We got a city tour from an Irish
singer we met the night before at the place we played. She took us
all over. We made a short trip to Berkeley College of music a kind
of conservatory where Anya's cousin studies jazz guitar. We took him
out for a drink and walked around a really fancy part of town. We
went to the top of a really tall building called the Prudential. It
has a bar at the top, about 100 floors up and you can have a look
out over the city, but there was about a 45 minute wait and the drinks
were about $15 each, so we decided not to stay…
26.10 / Day 30: North to New Hampshire. The promoter called to cancel
the show, again because of baseball, but we decided to go and play
anyway since it was a small town and it could be a nice rest in the
countryside. We got to The Stone Church and unloaded our things. We
drove just a few minutes and then walked through some fields and trees
and found ourselves out in a beautiful bay with bright orange yellow
and red fall coloured trees everywhere. The clear water stretched to
the horizon. We sat in silence a few hours skipping rocks, climbing
the stone walls and trees, and playing our own baseball game with
sticks and stones. It was a great meditative rest. That night we heard
about a bar run by a Czech woman. In this tiny New England town of
less than 5,000 people, we found Ivana at her bar Chugger's Palace
with a big screen TV tuned to the baseball championships, of course.
She was so happy to meet some Czech people. We invited us for a whole
evening of drinks and she told so many stories. She has lived in the
U.S. for 20 years. The boys ended the night about 6am.
27.10 / Day 31: The night of the concert that wasn't supposed to happen.
We went to the Stone Church for dinner and enjoyed the concert of
an American-Irish folk singer. We came after and set up and did sound
check. Of course by 21h, everyone had left to find a good place to
watch the game. So we played about 22h and Ivana and her barman
came for our show. I think there was someone's dog there too. That
was it. Baseball had everyone else in the town. Afterwards we were
treated to a Lunar Eclipse and some nice sleep.
28.10 / Day 32: Back to Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts - We
got into Boston in the evening just in time to check into the hotel,
make some dinner, shower and head to the Western Front. This was our
last concert with Paul. We got to the club and set everything up.
We had plenty of time to sound check and relax before the show. My
cousin came with a few friends. They were in the very front and very
excited. This was definitely one of our best shows. The club wasn't
full, but people were dancing a lot and singing along. It was our
only show where ALMOST EVERYONE was black! After the show people came
up and were talking to us all about the music and what they thought
about it. It was really great to have so much contact with the crowd.
29.10. / Day 33: We drove Paul from Boston to Newark airport,
not far from NYC, and afterwards to my parents in Silver Spring again.
30.10. / Day 34: Although Halloween officially runs not until
tomorrow, there are plenty weird masked figures tottering around Washington
today already. We are playing at Café Nema - the same venue where
we appeared at the start of our tour. Unfortunately the gig is interrupted
in the middle of the show as someone has plugged the WC up. So we
pack our equipment and move to a near-by Halloween party at a friend.
That turns into a sort of crazy jag. we have talked to Elvis, Superman,
Ronald McDonald and a number of other worse identifiable characters.
In the morning we get back home after certain fiasco.
31.10. / Day 35: It is Sunday Halloween and we stay at home
at Silver Spring. In the evening we hand out candies to kids from
the neighbourhood who are going about house to house 'trick or treating'
- begging according to strange customs.
1.11. / Day 36: The last gig. During the day some of us yield
to a buying/shopping craze and at the last moment seek cheap consumer
electronics and similar crap. Honza and Radim pretend to be jobbing
musicians and record some breaks and harmonies for a friend at his
studio. In the evening we move to an-hour-by-drive distant Baltimore
and play our last gig at the Royal club - the same place where we
have once already played a show. Everything proceeds in a perfect
way.
2.11. / Day 37 (the last day): We pack in the morning, realize
that we almost can't fit into the car, and yet finally successfully
leave Silver Spring, our asylum and head for the airport. Regie and
Daryl thank you sooo much!!!
US Top 3:
Food: garlic soup, beer, chips and salsa
CDs: PSH, dZihan & Kamien, Koop
Animals: fat squirrel-rats, deeries, birdies
USA in general:
3 best: Air and Space museum, audience reaction, cheap electronics
3 ugh: traffic jams, Bush and Cheney
weird laws: immigration law (visa obligation), prohibition
on drinking uncovered alcohol inside of a car or in public, election
law, the law disallowing the connecting of a trailer behind a rented
car (is anybody able to explain this to us ???)
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