SCARLET'S WELL TOUR DIARY: SPAIN 2006

I am back from a largely indiscretion-free tour of Spain with Scarlet's Well! As is traditional, here is my day-by-day, riff-by-riff account.


September 14th, 2006 - BARCELONA

9.00am

Kate, Deb and I convene at Gatwick to check in. The rest of the band have been in Barcelona since yesterday to do a civilised spot of sightseeing before the ROCKING is due to commence in earnest. For various reasons the three of us have been unable to join them, but in theory we should still make it to Barcelona in time for soundcheck.

1.30pm

The Easyjet flight is delayed by an hour owing to an accumulation of tiny faults on the plane. The pilot makes an announcement: "The auxiliary power which drives the air conditioning has failed. We shall be leaving the door open to let fresh air in" - they close it before take-off, thankfully. Bored, we order extortionate food.

My thoughts turn to my accordion. Normally it travels with me in the cabin but today, because of the new baggage size restrictions, it is somewhere down in the hold, bubble-wrapped and gaffer-taped into its big hard case, rather than up here in the cabin inside the custom accordion-rucksack in which it usually gets from A to B. Yesterday, changing at Clapham junction on my way to the Out Of Mind gig at the Tate I saw the front page of the Evening Standard inform me that in two days' time the restrictions will be relaxed to allow musical instruments on as hand baggage. Bum timing!

5.00pm

Finally arrive at the venue and eventually pluck up the courage to open up the accordion box. I unbutton the accordion and to my horror it falls limply open with a deafening cacophony. I panic. Easyjet have killed my accordion! There's nothing for it but to roll up my sleeves and attempt to effect a temporary repair myself. Bid and I move to a stone corridor and place the accordion under a lightbulb where we prise the casing open with an assortment of borrowed tools. One by one we eliminate the issues that have arisen, most of which just involve wiggling a screwdriver around the instrument's innards to make the bass buttons spring back into their sockets. Once we've done that, all that remains is one serious and baffling problem: it has become impossible to open or close the bellows without a B-flat note sounding constantly. I call Allodi in Lewisham who patiently talks me through the troubleshooting procedure, but while successful in identifying the nature of the problem we are unable to unjam whatever it is holding the relevant pad open, and so, one bleeding finger later, I resort, under Allodi's telephone guidance, to removing the reed blocks and gaffer-taping over the B-flat holes, preventing any air from getting to the B-flat bass note whatsoever. Fortunately it's a button I hardly use in Scarlet's Well sets, so it could be a lot worse. Phew!

5.00am

Twelve hours later I am still wide awake and rather tipsy. The concert in the small venue Sidecar (which the locals pronounce See-day-car) has been a lot of fun. Bid and I improvise ridiculous on-stage banter, claiming wildly that some of the songs have been written that day in response to Barcelona landmarks, the initial inspiration coming from Gaudi's salamander in Park Guell.

Salamander!

As I have observed in these tour diaries before, gigging in Europe is great, mainly because the venues make you feel welcome and wanted and they give you free booze. Alice and I have a tradition of downing a shot of whiskey before each gig, which goes back to the pre-gig nerves we had back at the first ever Scarlet's Well gig at the Spitz. I went to the bar to get the customary couple of free whiskeys and the barman obligingly held the bottle above a couple of glasses and glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug more than half-filled each one with undiluted Jack Daniels.

The above picture was taking backstage at Sidecar, just before drinking commenced. For some reason Alice and I look like newlyweds. Note the terrifyingly enormous portions of JD.

After the gig there is dancing, merriment, excess and general bacchanalia. I overindulge in all of the above and finally, at five in the morning, concede defeat at the hands of the merciless party gods (why do you test me so!), a solitary besuited figure drifting across the Plaza Reial to the conveniently-situated hotel. Alice is nowhere to be seen...


September 15th, 2006 - MADRID

9.00am

A few hours later we all have to be awake again to get to the airport in time for our flight to the next stop on this most rambunctious of adventures. Weirdly I feel quite chipper. Which is more than can be said for Alice, who was still painting Barcelona red way past everyone else's bedtime. But for whatever reason I feel OK. Good old adrenalin doing its stuff, I suppose. I decide to stay off the sauce today though. We get to the airport, a sombre, stooped procession of haggard care-worn faces, unrecognisable as the jaunty pirate-pop band that had rocked and partied all night. We sleep on the flight and wait in silence for our instruments and luggage at Madrid baggage reclaim.

The price of ROCK. Sleeping Scarlet's Wellsians at Madrid airport.

In an attempt to cut the accumulating cost of getting us to and from airports, we split up. A taxi is hailed in which to transport the larger, heavier items of luggage (and the most badly-suffering band members) while the rest of us experiment with public transport. On a bus into town from the airport I sit next to a foreign young gentleman in a suit who is keen to strike up conversation in his limited English. It is the first time in Madrid for both of us. He is in town for a conference. He guesses correctly that I am from London. "I went to London for first time this year," he says. "I found it... sad place. How you say... depressing. Grey." I ask him where he is from. "Baghdad," he replies. A man from Baghdad who finds London a depressing place to visit. That's something. He turns out to be the legal adviser to the Iraq Ministry of the Interior.

3.00pm

Hotel Medioda turns out to be far from mediocre - in fact it's rather fancy and a step up in the world from the backpacker hostels and hippy communes of our German tour a few years ago. No-one has perked up yet and valuable extra sleep is claimed in the couple of hours we have before heading to the venue for soundcheck. My appetite is returning and I brave some food around the corner but it tastes kind of funny and my appetite is gone again. Peter and I go to get the key to our room and we're both already getting hotel room numbers confused. Was 314 last night's Barcelona room number and 626 today's in Madrid or was it the other way around? Again, too early in the tour for our minds to already be so addled!

We dress for the gig and haul our instruments onto the Metro. Peter is designated carer for the nauseous Alice and unlucky Kate who has had her purse snatched. Talking to Bid I have to laugh at the contrast between yesterday's Scarlet's Well and today's. We all look and feel like we've been on tour for a fortnight when in fact we've only been in Spain for a day!

The Moby Dick Club is as perfect a venue for Scarlet's Well as one could imagine, the decor modelled as it is on the deck of a ship. Wooden beams, portholes and oars dominate the room and a huge logo of a whale skeleton adorns the wall behind the stage. A crate of complimentary bottled water arrives which we guzzle as though we have trekked to the venue via a desert, rather than a short journey on the underground. We soundcheck and crawl along the road to a cramped little restaurant where I sip Coca Cola and pick at a plate of asparagus, which is about all I can stomach. I'm lucky not to have a headache but I'm still in no mood for big plates of greasy fried Spanish food. Bid, meanwhile, demands the finest Madeira in Spain which after some fuss is brought to the table for him to try. Bid is impressed and orders a couple of glasses of the stuff. I sip - it is indeed tasty but I'm a bit frightened of alcohol and so I have to give it a miss. The restaurant has other premises around the corner and we head there for a bigger table. The table-mats have huge horrible photos of greasy food of them and Alice, still nowhere near recovered, looks ready to throw up at the mere sight of them and so at her groggy insistence we turn them all over. Bid has walked down the street from one restaurant to the other carrying his sample glass of Madeira and the image of Bid strolling the streets of Madrid, Madeira in one hand, fag in the other, pursued by a scurrying team of eager-to-please waiters, is one of the most enduring of the tour. That and, for some reason, the notion of Bid hijacking an aeroplane using merely "the power of suggestion."

Seasoned professionals that we are, energy is summoned from somewhere and we keep the audience entertained and dancing throughout our set. The Scarlet's Well songs themselves are a big help in this - they're difficult to play without having fun, and, for the duration of our time on stage at least, we are a chipper lot, beaming from ear to ear and dropping daft ad libs into the tunes. We manage to sell a few CDs and Scarlet's Well bookmarks after the gig. Afterwards, hustling albums in the crowd, I chat to a couple of fans called Andy and Carlos. Andy asks me if I have heard of someone called Dickon Edwards. "Why yes", I reply, "I know him well, in fact we have collaborated on one of the new Scarlet's Well songs." The man gazes at me in awe for a moment before stammering: "You... know... Dickon Edwards?" He asserts that he is Spain's biggest Dickon Edwards fan. When I tell him that Scarlet's Well and Fosca share keyboard player and vocalist Kate Dornan he double takes at Kate and puts two and two together. He is a happy man and buys a couple of albums off me.

2.00am

We are all in tucked up in bed. I have drunk only water today.


September 16th, 2006 - MURCIA

8.00am

Another early start but we are all visibly refreshed after an actual night's sleep and make the mercifully short walk across the road to the spectacularly jungle-like railway station where, after a wild goose chase from one set of platforms to another, we settle into comfy seats and are soon speeding through the grand Wild-West-esque landscape towards our next port of call, Murcia, where we are to play the 'Lemon Pop' festival. It's a four-hour journey and there's not much to do.

We improvise an English-language dialogue track to the film which is playing silently on the television set above our heads for a bit. Excitingly, Julio Ruíz, Spain's avuncular, energetic answer to John Peel, is also on the train and recognises Peter en route to the loo. He is also on his way from Madrid to Murcia to cover the festival we will be playing at, and to host a special edition of his weekly show on RNE3, which seems to be the Spanish equivalent of Radio 2. We are invited to be interviewed on the show that afternoon, which is a very exciting prospect.

1.00pm

It's 30 degrees C in Murcia when we arrive. We reconfirm the plans for the interview later with Julio. His show goes out from 4pm to 6pm so we've a few hours to get a bite to eat - our appetites now universally back and here to stay.

Bid, Julio Ruíz and Peter at Murcia railway station

We go to the cab rank. After at least one minute of waiting, Bid impatiently lights a fag and loudly declares: "This whole town needs a slap!" The hotel is cosy but the room smells inexplicably of cabbage. We head out in search of food. In an odd moment of deja vu, the restaurant we go to doesn't have quite enough room for us and so we are sent around the corner to their other premises, again conjuring up images of a devil-may-care Bid sashaying around the streets of Spanish cities, fag and booze in hand, with waiters in hot pursuit. It's actually a fairly classy restaurant but we're all fed up with the junk we've been eating so far and it's still dirt cheap compared to London prices and so we eat properly for the first time. I have the entrecote of beef, cooked to rare perfection.

4.15pm

Bid, Peter, Alice and I arrive at the spookily-deserted Murcia studio of RNE where Julio's anglophile indie show is already on the air. An animated Julio is interviewing Traceyanne from Camera Obscura - they will be on the same bill as us at the festival later on. A charming translator is on hand to bridge the language gap. Julio's passion for small independent bands is enormous, which is great news for bands like us as he has a prime time slot on one of Spain's most listened-to radio stations. Unkindly, we do silly things through the glass to unnerve the poor defenseless twee-pop star while Julio isn't looking. She looks increasingly unnerved. Sorry, Traceyanne. The station don't have our new album to hand but I remember that I have mp3s of Salamander and To One In Paradise hidden away in a corner of my web space and so I repair to an adjacent studio with a beleaguered sound engineer to begin the process of downloading them and transferring them to the station playlist. We are ready to go and lurk in the corridor waiting for a record to be played so we can scuttle into the studio. Traceyanne brushes past us hastily, with a curt, visibly terrified nod.

The interview is a lot of fun and Julio is a genial host. Bid is on suspiciously good behaviour by Bid standards. What's he up to, I wonder. I get to mention my, ahem, "collaboration" with Bjork and my solo and comedy work, Peter talks about Would-Be-Goods and Speed Of Sound, "which is secret" and Alice talks about her acting. As we leave, The Frank And Walters, also on the bill tonight, are waiting in the corridor for their interview. We brush past them hastily with curt, visibly terrified nods.

6.30pm

We arrive at the outdoor auditorium for soundcheck. We will be playing under the stars. The place is all concrete. I wonder what it used for the rest of the time. I think it's a regular gigging venue. The sound on stage, as it has been at the previous two gigs, is very very good indeed - I have been able to hear Helena's violin playing clearly for the first time ever and have finally been in a position to respond a little, musically, to what she is doing during songs. We have a dressing room with our name on the door - another first, seen here being modelled by the lovely Peter Momtchiloff:

We're the second band on and we have a splendid time on stage, the crowd growing exponentially as we play. Tentative free boozing has commenced thanks to a water, beer and whiskey rider in the dressing room. By the time we get to our set closer Jacob's Ladder, we're playing pretty much to a full arena, a good five or six hundred punters. It is an exhilarating end to our short series of gigs and we leave the stage feeling like we have made a strong impression on the crowd. The remaining acts have a much higher profile in Spain and we are glad to have our moment behind us so we can let our hair down and enjoy the rest of the music. By far the highlight of these is a Madrid musician who goes by the name of La Casa Azul. Normally he has a decoy "band" made up of models but tonight he is on stage alone, bashing out his highly infectious and deceptively complex Pop-with-a-capital-P. The crowd love him and sing along word for word. We are gobsmacked and become instant fans, though we don't understand a word he's singing.

After the concert there seems to be a plan to head to Murcia's leading discotheque for dancing. This plan is greeted with general approval and so we head off. I quickly and cheekily take what I think is my last chance to touch the man from Spanish pop band Tachenko's magic moustache and, having noisily dumped the instruments back at the hotel (and woken up Bid, who retired early) we go in search of the disco.

When we arrive the party is in full swing. At the decks is none other than Julio Ruiz. Tachenko and La Casa Azul are there, too, and we all boogie down together to Dexy's, Morrissey and, amusingly, La Casa Azul, who I'm standing right next to. I congratulate him on his "happy music" and he is fun company.

Alice and I are the last to leave. Alice is hungry and so we go to a petrol station where she picks a ham sandwich. "Pay the man, Martin," she says impatiently. "Yes, dear," I reply groggily, taking my wallet from my pocket. The honeymoon is over.


SEPTEMBER 17th, 2006 - LONDON

We are lucky to get a lie-in until noon and then it's off to Murcia airport for the flight home. Time and space have been distorted so much we can't remember what happened when or where but we've all had a blast. we have some time to kill at the airport and so we treat ourselves to some restorative grub in the airport caff. Thankfully I can take my accordion with me in the cabin this time round so there's no risk of its sustaining further damage. I must see if I can sting Easyjet for the cost of the repair work that it's going to need. I'll see. Peter notices that his jacket now smells of cabbage...

Next Scarlet's Well gig is in London at the 100 Club on November 22nd. Date for your diaries! It's a co-headliner with Spearmint and it should be a great night.