Jess Klein - Backstage

Arrived in Stockholm with no voice, kind of sounding like someone who’d been smoking for 35 years, except worse and with a runny nose. My friend Eva sent me to the most famous Chinese doctor in Stockholm, Dr. Nie.

I had 3 days off here before my second show, which was actually teaching a workshop on songwriting at the Kulturama. I spent all three days lying in a little curtained booth with other assorted half-naked Swedes with needles stuck all over us - sond therapie (acupuncture). People I was meeting kept asking me if I was enjoying Stockholm, seeing much of the city. Only the inhabitants! I should have said.

But magically after sweating it out, and taking tiny metallic pills from a vial the size of a small nail twice a day, my voice came back. God bless Dr. Nie.

Hard to get the hang of Swedish, but I’m starting to feel out a word here and there. I found a nice gluten free bakery in Gamla Stan, the old city, so I’ve devoured a loaf of their bread every day.

Hamburg was brilliant - 80 people packed into the magical miniscule Music Star, silent. I loved it.

Does anyone understand what a ‘tag’ is or why I’d want to use one? My blog site keeps offering it to me as an option, saying I should separate multiple ones with commas - its example is ‘cats, pet food, dogs’. When I first got here, I picked up a can of something at the ‘Gourmet Food’ store at Copenhagen Airport thinking it would be sardines. Opened it and tasted like cat food! More so than you people who think sardines are gross think they might taste like cat food. Found out later it was cod liver. I now understand why this is most often consumed in pill form. Fiskoelie - see? I’m learning Swedish!

Thanks to the students at Kulturama, with whom I got to play ‘professor’ for an hour, for listening politely to my ramblings! I had a fantasy that I would be hopping up madly scrawling something on the blackboard, and underlining it, with exclamation points! And everyone would write it down, kind of like Dead Poets or maybe Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones, although he’s really bored with his job in that scene as I remember. But really I just told stories and then answered a few questions about writer’s block and life on the road, which was probably better for everyone.

Play Stockholm again tomorrow then off to Gotland, where I’m told my breath will be taken away by the 1,000 year old wall around the city.

Much love,

jk

Here are some pics from Visby, Gotland, an Island off the east coast of Sweden, where the Vikings used to stash their boo-tay!

A lovely gig at Roishn Dubh in Galway Saturday night, followed by some antics with my friends at Gourmet Burger where a drunk guy wanted to know what falafel was, and kept going on about how he can’t stand this ’smoothie’ business, prefers his fruits one at a time. I don’t think they talk about that stuff drunk at home, that I can remember.
Sunday we had THE MOST AMAZING meal ever at a restaurant - I think it was simple enough: green salad with grilled chicken and olive oil and lemon? But it tasted like I wanted every bite to last forever. I can’t remember the name of the place, which is why this a songwriter’s blog, not a travelogue. Painted on the walls were quotes from famous books. Then we drove out to Conne Mara - sunny and perfect weather, maybe 55-60 degrees. We walked out through the saltgrass onto the rocks by the Atlantic. Bits of seaweed to avoid slipping on. Took some shots I’ll post when I’m back, or when I catch up to this century’s technology, whichever is first.

Denise knew how to find the right seaweed for a bath so we picked up some big branches of it, and then picked blackberries growing wild along the fences leading to the water. Loads of them, purple stained hands, 1 in the bag, 2 in the mouth. Joking about showing up onstage stained purple all over my face. Denise scratched her poor car getting it down the lane so we could park out by the ocean and listen to the last song on Declan O’Rourke’s first album, an a cappella song about a man who asks the sea to marry him three times, on three nights. The first night she tells him he’s too young. The second he goes ‘merried up with wine’ and asks; she says men have asked before, and they always leave her for the land. The third night she finally gives in, saying ‘What have I to lose’… he takes off his shoes and wades in…

Whew…

What a gift.

Then we had another super rich meal and stumbled into the Nachtean where I played to a loud drunk crowd, until Moose from the Saw Doctors asked them to please move to the back room. It was a nice gig after that.

followed by a bath in the seaweed. I felt like a very happy mermaid.

today it was back to Dublin in the grey mist. I still can’t not stare when I pass a green stretch with horses on it. My friend Siobhan said she’d make me one of her gorgeous pictures with lots of green in it.

www.siobhanbegley.com

www.myspace.com/siobhanbegleyart

jk

As soon as I arrived in Dublin, people were telling me stories which made me smile, they were so visual.  I felt I could see them all played out, and I love that.  I can’t relay my friends’ stories here, but here is one of my own, from last night.

I played the show at Cobblestones and then we decided to go have a pint and a chat somewhere…

The first pub we headed to was called voodoo and had some serious punks outside, so we were heading for the Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Ireland - circa 1198!

But it was about 2 a.m. so the Head was sleeping, maybe because it’s so old.  Instead we headed into the Merchant across the street, which is where it gets visual

There was a cover band on singing things like ‘Build me up Buttercup’ for a packed house of women of a certain age in very little clothing, with their husbands, and then maybe some extra men…

One gent who was 9 feet tall - I don’t think I’m exaggerating! - tapped me on the shoulder to ask me to dance, so with my friends egging me on I went, and we sort of did an awkward grade school arms length swaying to a cover of  something by Tom Petty - I was singing along I guess because the gent leaned down (considerably far) and said, ‘Do you like the music?’ but also spit on my corner of my face a bit while he was at it.  I tried politely to clear it off when he moved his head and chest back up to his stratosphere.

I returned to a table of applauding friends.  We then noticed a guy checking out my friend’s sister through a mirror - he had his back to us, but really for about 15 minutes just looking straight ahead into this mirror, hand cupping his pint on the bar, perfectly still.

The band wrapped up, then the national anthem, and lights came on so after a few more laughs we went outside and saw another middle aged gent holding a rag to his head, leaning against the lamppost, when he pulled it away, there was a real welt there - things must have gotten ugly inside the Merchant!

Anyway, I’m off to Galway today, fearing I’ll fall in love further, not with the nine footer, just the scenery.

Seriously, considering moving here, although my psychic told me not to make any decisions like that until the spring!  But what a beautiful visit.  I know the sun doesn’t always shine here, but when it does…

Jess