Tour Diary: Fulton Lights

After a rare radio silence, we began to worry about the health and well-being of one Mr. Andrew Spencer Goldman. Spending the amount of time he has in Europe, he very well may have slipped into the abyss where travel ends and Sprockets begins. Perhaps he traded in his musical chops for a beret, wine, and cheese?

Thankfully we received word early in the morning from our Euro operative. Things seem well....too well...

See the pictures and hear the field recordings of Mr. Goldman's Euro excursion at Sound Travels.

Head to Catbird Records to nab the latest Fulton Lights album, The Way We Ride as a pay-what-you-want mp3 download (the CD is sold out--if you're a bigger label and would like to re-release the album, talk to Andrew).

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November 28 2008 -- Istanbul, Turkey

Field Commander Goldman reporting for duty. This will be my final transmission from Europe in 2008. So much has transpired in the few weeks since my last communique that it's hard to know where to begin. A lot of music, a lot of living.


Paris, France

On the 27th of October I boarded the high-speed train to Paris. You might think that high-speed would automatically equal comfort; certainly the high-speed trains in Germany were very roomy and quiet, so it would stand to reason that France's trains would be similar. Not so. The train was cramped, and I sat next to some twerp in a suit too large for him who smelled like he'd taken a bath in beer. Midway through the trip he got up, and I thought that perhaps I'd lost him. About fifteen minutes later he returned, smelling like Pine-Sol. I tried my best to ignore it and buried my nose in the great book I'd just started, The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I would finish the book a few days later.

I stayed at my friend Sarah's place in the ritzy St. Germain des Pres neighborhood. The people there wear fancier pants than I do (not that my pants aren't fancy), but it still has character, and the location made it easy for me to mount my assault on Paris by bike. It's less bike-friendly than Berlin, but by my second or third outing I felt bold enough to use the Velib loaner bikes that are all over the city without much worry. If you were in Paris and saw an American with huge hair biking around with a big ole smile on his face, occasionally cackling hysterically, that would have been me. Particularly on Halloween eve, when Sarah and I rode around to show Paris how Americans do Halloween, she as Pippi Longstocking, me as Egon Spengler (Ghostbusters).

I played a show on the 1st of November at a small club in the 19th arrondissement called Abracadabar. For some reason they didn't have it up on the website and didn't have any poster on the door or anything, so I walked in with a bad feeling in my stomach. But Jaz, the enthusiastic gal who arranged the show, was kind, and the small but attentive crowd was into it, and all's well that ends well. As soon as the show was over the DJ came in and the club flipped from music venue into Eurotrash dance club. Very strange. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I was too beat to stick around to see what might come out of it. My friend Sarah and I headed back to her place, but the electricity was mysteriously out by the portico, and since we were unable to then enter the code into the electronic keypad we were stranded outside at 1:45 in the morning, cold and exhausted. About twenty minutes later, three students from the Sorbonne came bounding down the street, one with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder, all singing Flight of the Conchords' "Part-Time Model". They stopped when they saw us and asked if I could play the guitar part for that song. (No.) We explained what was happening, and since there was nothing to do about it until morning we ended up following these three students first to visit their friend who was the nightwatchman at a hotel near the Sorbonne, and then eventually back to one of their flats, where a party had been going on even though they had left. All the whiskey was gone by then, it was probably 4am, so we found couches and crashed there for the night. We woke in the morning before anyone else, left a note and a CD as thanks, and went back to Sarah's place where the electricity was *still* not working. Miraculously, just as I was about to bang my head through the front gate in frustration, one of her neighbors showed up with a key. For some reason Sarah's landlord had been under the incorrect assumption that the front gate had no physical key, just the electronic pad. I tell you, madam: not so.

On the 4th, Obama won. I stayed up all night with some new friends from the American University who had invited me to an election party, all of us so eager to find out the results that we didn't care about the 6 hour time difference from the U.S. We were all overcome with joy, and I staggered home at 7am as the sun was coming up, a little drunk, a lot excited, and totally lost. On the 5th, I, along with many an Obama supporter around the world, had a day lost to fatigue and hangover. By 6pm I was up, barely, but the cold I'd been fighting over the previous days robbed me of my voice just in time for me to do an interview and live session on Planet Claire radio (Aligre 91.3fm). The session started at 8pm or so, and my voice came back enough to croak out a few songs, but I sounded more like Lee Hazelwood than Fulton Lights. These things happen.

On the 7th I did a little acoustic show at my friend Sarah's flat. I played as long as my voice could hold out, and we ate grapes and tapenade and drank wine and met new friends, and at some point later in the evening I tried to teach one of the students that I'd hung out with on election night the dance that Kid 'n Play do in House Party. Sarah stepped in so we could properly school the youngins, but about thirty seconds into it we were interrupted by a vicious pounding at the door. Apparently the downstairs neighbor hadn't seen House Party, either.


Athens, Greece

I made a pitstop in Orniac, France, a tiny town in the midi-Pyrenees region of maybe 100 people TOPS, during which I spent a few days hanging with the Royalchord girls and pitched in some parts for the new record they've been holed up working on. And I do mean holed up; there is absolutely nothing to do in Orniac. And I mean that in the best way. Anyway, we bonded and they liked what I brought to the table, so it looks like if things go according to plan I'm going to produce their album when I get to Melbourne in January. After Orniac, I hopped a plane over to Athens where I was to play a show with dälek at An Club on the 15th of November. Earlier that day I headed over to Vinyl Microstore, where I was supposed to do a live session for their internet radio, and where I had my first lesson in Greek punctuality. The guitar that they had arranged for me to borrow was about two hours late in arriving. So I killed some time dj'ing on their internet radio, which was fun and reminded me why I used to enjoy DJ'ing on WPRB back in my college days, but which also made me feel very out of the loop, as far as new music goes! I played some Earth, Nick Cave, Portishead, and a bunch of stuff from the very cool Victrola Favorites book/cd that Dust-to-Digital put out. Eventually the guitar showed up and I played three songs and then had to split, since I had to get my stuff together to head over to the An Club for soundcheck.

Of course, I should have realized that there was no need to rush. Nothing runs on time, remember? I got there and soundchecked when I was supposed to, but dälek didn't even show up for another hour and a half, so it was just me and the soundman left to bond with each other. (Nice guy.) The show started late, at about 10:30pm, but really it was on time. See what I mean? I decided to dust off the Fulton Lights karaoke for the evening, though I hadn't done it since Hamburg, the night the drunk became posessed upon hearing my dubbed out howling. It seemed like the right thing to do, a)because it's fun; and b)because otherwise I'd just get blown off the stage by dälek's overpowering volume. It went well, the crowd of about 100 was into it as much as they were the quieter stuff--an open-mindedness that I was suprised to see but that Alap (a.k.a Oktopus) says is pretty common for Europe audiences. dälek kicked ass, no less than any show they've done in the last ten years. They played a lot off of their new album (out in January, I'm told), which is another winner. Louder and harder than 'Abandoned Language' but maybe not quite as metal-dark as 'Absence.'


Istanbul, Turkey

Before the show started at the An Club in Athens, my friend Moira and I found ourselves talking to a young guy who was there by himself. His name was Selim, and he was in all the way from Istanbul. Apparently he's a big enough dälek fan to justify the long trip from Turkey. I told him that I was headed to Istanbul after I finished up in Greece, and after I played he came up to me at the merch table and as he bought a CD he told me that I should write to him as soon as I could because he'd like to help me set up a show there. I thanked him but didn't have high hopes; a lot of time good intentions don't automatically translate into good shows. But he managed to pull it off, much to his credit. He found a good venue, a placed called Peyote in the Taksim district, and somehow got a popular local band (Replikas) to write to their email list about me, and one thing leads to another and somehow, in spite of the fact that I've never been here before and have no reason to expect anyone to come to a show, thirty people show up. Props to Selim for all that. I did more of the Fulton Lights karaoke, and it's interesting how some people will come up to me afterward to say that they prefer the noisy stuff, and then some people prefer the quieter, folkier stuff. The language barrier and maybe my own lack of interest in having a long conversation about my own aesthetics keep me from explaining that I like them both equally.

An old friend from DC showed up, amazingly. After the show, she and her husband and I stuck around to have another beer, and at about 1am a group of international students showed up looking for a party. In their state I think they would have found one anywhere. I don't even think there was DJ, just the soundman playing some music off his computer, nothing great, but the kids love to dance, and dance they did. Badly, mostly. I joined them for a little bit before taking off, because why not?

So that's it for Europe this time around. Too much awesome. Huge thanks to everyone who put me up, set up a show, or just came out to support! I'm thoroughly exhausted, but I suppose that's to be expected after two and a half months, but I'm excited to shove off to explore Egypt and Southeast Asia. No shows for the next month and a half while I suit up Panama Jack style. I'm looking forward to the two shows in Melbourne in January, and to whatever comes next.

Until then, I remain on mission.

Field Commander Andrew Spencer Goldman
Code Name: Fulton Lights