Jont Blog – The Troubadour

Standing at the bar in Parma station drinking a large cold Moretti, the afternoon is grey and wet and misty, they might have avoided the floods here, but the atmosphere is that of a day that has taken the day off, not botherered to wake, kept the curtains closed.

Here, alone, on the road more than I have ever been and 10 years on, it is hard not to think back on my first tour of Italy in 2001, with singer-songwriter Peter Byrne and ex-Miro cellist and vocalist Julia Palmer:

How pissed off they must have been that I was “headlining” most of the gigs, or at least going on last, this young, know-nothing, full of enthusiasm and unwarranted confidence;

The clown-like clothes I wore, made by my adoring girlfriend – first efforts I loyally wore even though I felt paranoid that I looked ridiculous the night of the first gig at the Banale in Padua;

Julia’s tantrums, real full-on rock star moody tantrums on this tiny little tour of small acoustic venues to promote an almost non-existent release of an acoustic compilation album put together by Terry O’Brien (who has since gone on to become a highly successful manager of top UK folk artists). As it turns out, the tantrums were somewhat warranted – Julia turned out to be pregnant with her first child and had found out just then, on tour;

Peter on the phone constantly to his girlfriend. And then getting lost running, and being dropped back on a student’s moped at the hotel just before the tour bus left without him;

Me not on the phone at all to my girlfriend, for which I received a huge bollocking from her outside the promoter’s house in Rimini, that bizarrely is still etched on my memory – that delight in the adventure that all tours elicit somehow tainted now that I knew someone was upset that I was having such a good time. Tours I would realize as the years went on, were much easier to go on when not in a relationship;

Then another seminal relationship moment – going out with the bar staff after the gig, the pretty small blonde one I had flirted with all night, taking me on her own in her car, and that awful moment where we were parked and she was expecting me to lunge and I – should have done actually, but that same youthful enthusiasm had also attached itself to the relationship I was in. I would think about this moment of loyalty for years, not realizing how much resentment I built up with my so-called “fidelity”;

Then hanging out foolish and embarrassed at the club afterwards, giving her an album to make up for not being able to go through with the escapade my flirtation had warranted.

And of course, lovely Lorenzo Bedini – the young, just starting out promoter, now one of Italy’s biggest, putting up with our (or maybe just my) indulgent, artist behavior.

And now? The convivial atmosphere of the tour bus – which I’ve always found seems to lull musicians in to a mood somewhere between the excitement of an away school sports match and the arrogance of the businessman being ferried to some ultra important appointment by his chauffeur – has been replaced by the cheap and reliable Italian train network. As I criss-cross the country, I practice my infant Italian on my neighbours or work on lyrics to new songs that have started coming through this tour.

The group mentality and the formality of a laminated itinerary, per diems and a tour manager has been replaced by a network of 5 different “families” of friends who have organized this latest tour. We are yet to creep south of Rome and enter more wild territory, but at the moment we control the North in an under-stated and lenient manner, putting on small acoustic gigs in bars, restaurants and venues to spread the word of spiritual emancipation and sky-filling love with – oh! My songs? FANTASTIC! Yes, seriously, I have been lucky enough to find some lovers of my music here in Italy who have in turn become good friends.

Simona ("mama") and Cristiano

There is Cristiano and Simona in Rapallo who have known my music since 2002 when Simona bought Cristiano – a songwriter himself with a gorgeous, melancholic voice – a copy of my first album “28” as a birthday present. They came over for the Set It Free album launch at Borderline last year, introduced themselves  and our friendship began.

post-gig advice from Gessica

Along with my friend Gessica, who is a PHD student at Genoa University and who brought me in there last week to do a talk to her students about UNLIT and CD sharing, and the amazing Giulia Spinelli – a 12 year old music photographer who takes pictures as good or better than much, much more experienced photographers and is also a bubbly and charming character – these are my North West Italian family!

The team at Blu Radio Veneto.....a had me on for a two hour interview the other day, organised by my padua family...

In the North East there is the Padua Mob, who I met when I went out last year to Sicilia to sing at the wedding of Dario and Daniela. They were big lovers of the album “Supernatural” and so Adele and Niki, their best woman and best man respectively had got in touch with me through the website and asked me to come and sing for them at their wedding a a surprise. Last week I saw them all again for the first time since the wedding – Niki and Sylvia, Dario and Daniela, Lucia and Juliano, and Adele and most of the others who had been at the wedding…..I stayed with Lucia and Juliano, we did an impromptu UNLIT at Nikis’s flat, and they organized a couple of great gigs near Padua and even a couple of interviews, one of which, on local radio, lasted a couple of hours and included many live songs and a couple of bottles of red wine…

The Padua Family...from left Lara, Daniela, Dario, Vannucio, me, Niki, Sylvia, Juliano e Lucia

Giulia Spinelli....amazing 12 year old music photographer from Lavagna, comes to gigs with her mum, and does better photos than most professionals...

Further south and on the east side (where I’m headed right now, as I am no longer at the bar, but computer out and typing  as the intercity is speeding from Parma to Pesaro) is the retreat owned by my friends, the author and I guess “self-help guru” John C. Parkin and his wife Gaia. He is the one behind those books you might have heard of “Fuck It! The Ultimate Spiritual Way” and the like. As soon as I heard about his “Fuck It!” philosophy, and his Italian retreat, The Hill That Breathes, I had got in touch – I guess this was early 2007. Anyway, he responded very positively to my music and just in the middle of recording “Supernatural” he invited me over to do a songwriting workshop and to come and stay at his place….in the event, the first morning’s Tai Chi screwed my back up so badly I was in bed for four days! Ha. I felt so guilty that I couldn’t do the things I said I was going to do…all I could do was just lie still and recover. And ever since, we have been great friends, john and Gaia being big advocates of my music and using it in their workshops and promoting it to their community. I am very grateful to them. Anyway, Alice, who works there, has organized tonights gig in a restaurant in Urbino, just down the road from the retreat and I am really looking forward to seeing them all again for the first time in a while.

On Sunday it will be down to Roma, where the Xtra Music Magazine crew take care of business. They came across my music when I was putting out One Long Song on Adam Tudhope’s Everybody’s Records…the charming Francesca came to London to review a gig for their music site and soon after Dave Depares and I were out in Rome doing gigs and Unlits. Since then I’ve stayed in touch and it’s them who are behind this Sunday’s gig at Fonclea and who I’ll be staying with.

with juliet stavely....along with husband Peter, our Tuscan end of tour party host....

After that, the last and definitely not least of the families are the brit ex-pats! Mair and her daughters Cerys and Agnes – who were the guiding force behind this summer’s tour to Italia, and Juliet and Peter Stavely who literally have one of those sorts of houses you see in books or magazines, or possibly films where they need somewhere that looks absolutely incredible…..we did the last gig of the summer tour at their mansion in the summer and are set to return their next Sunday for the end of tour party / gig, where for the first time all the different families are going to meet!

Peter Stavely, in an unusual pose

I can’t wait…..yes, yes, there is a little jealousy from Simona who has taken to calling herself my “mama”, because um, well Lucia has also taken on this role – but what’s a troubadour to do? I figured Simona would be happy knowing that Lucia was happy to be “Mama No.2” but no such luck….ah well, I will have let them sort it out.

Mair Howard-Jones holding forth in her kitchen...

All I know is that I have some very good friends here in Italy and I love singing my songs here and I hope I return for many years to come.  Now, is there are bar on this train? If so, I would love a glass of Prosecco….that’s something we definitely never did on the tour bus.

XX Troubs

Its raining as I walk the half mile or so from Bent’s flat to Gare Du Nord, a short distance but long enough to be soaked through by the time I get there. I have my enormous back-pack, guitar and another shoulder bag which has my computer, the camera, tapes and stuff. All I need is on my back, or rather, now, spread around me at this rather disheveled and unsatisfying last bar of the tour, up the escalator by the entrance to Eurostar, witness as it is to so many brief stays from a disparate clientele all heading to further climes or waiting for loved ones to return.

The last few days since Lille have been enervating in true troubadour tradition and have given me reason to think this might become more than a temporary way of life…

SATURDAY’S UNLIT CHEZ ANTOINE

Saturday’s Unlit chez Antoine was a classic, starting slow and nervously quiet –

Alice, Bent, Antoine and I all sat around the kitchen table an hour after it was meant to start saying “Oh, I thought you were going to invite people? If I’d have known…” – until slowly they began making their way in to what was an amazing apartment (a converted factory out in Montreuil, split and converted in to 4 flats and inhabited by a film director, a D.O.P., with a recording studio downstairs, you know the sort of thing)….

There was no keyboard for Bent so we relocated everyone – the paltry 15 or so who had turned up by two hours after official start time – upstairs to Manu’s flat where there was an upright piano and heard some of Bent’s charming tunes. We even did a version of Supernatural together….It was all lovely but still there was an aching sense that there wasn’t really very many people….We made our way back down to Antoine’s place.

And then – BANG! I turned around, came down the stairs or something, and there were 40 people in the room, the place was buzzing, everyone wanted more music and Leander Lyons, whose charisma and enigmatic rock star-in-waiting vibe was not in doubt, took to the stage alongside poet Harry Paris (who I’d met at Firouz’s Folk Riders’ night last week – French guy, lovely spirit, red hair, glasses, tweed jacket and scarf, happy to get his sheaf out at any opportunity) and started to get the party going. I even played a few songs too…..felt really in the vibe, my Normandy days standing me in good stead, and was lucky enough to be joined by Leander who is a genuinely talented guitarist.

The party went on, a tall beautiful woman called Georgia suggested she could organize an UNLIT in Roma when I was there, a lovely man called Arthur who used to play guitar in The Lovegods showed me the huge crystal he kept in his pocket (really) while admiring my piece of neck rock, our graceful and gamine harpist Emily, who had come without her harp, chatted with our charming host, who by now had just about woken up from a big night the night before and the room literally began to glisten with joy – from the performances, the mix of people, the thing we were all creating, there and then.

More music more music, ok – and then wow, two absolutely lovely, charming and dare I say it effusive and sexy sisters, from England, living outside Paris and friends of a double bass player I had met once in a field this summer, arrived and knocked everyone out. They were actually, perfectly, called Miranda and Bryony Perkins, and either sensibly or not were currently trading as “Sparky In The Clouds”. But nothing could prepare you for the sound sensation that was just about to happen.

It went like this.

One of them sang, Leander played the guitar. It was nice.

The other joined in and in the same way she looked the same but different (being a sister of course) her voice joined in and the tangible feeling of “FUCK !” as the combination hit you, the resonance hit you of their voices and the way they matched, it was just fucking breathtaking.

It was a real moment.

Jaws dropped all round the room.

They did another song and another.

We cheered.

Then put some banging tunes on, and celebrated with more general elation, and I started to make cocktails with the contents of Antoine’s drinks cabinet – Antoine who was now having a brilliant time, not quite sure what was going on in his apartment but loving it none the less.

And on we went in to the early morning. Leander and I playing a good few songs together, he very generously augmenting my enthusiastic but basic guitar playing with exactly the lift that they needed.

Bent sat with his friend and drank and laughed and looked jolly. He was jolly. Shame we had no keyboard and that it was upstairs, but next time we said, next time. And Emily the harpist continued to look serene, and the English sisters glistened and smiled and sang more beautiful harmonies and Harry Paris offered us up more poetry and eventually taxis were caught and there was just me and Antoine and his cat and he said “it’s fine man, go to bed, I woke up at 5pm, I’m happy to clear up there’s not much” and well, I did, happy to have been there again, at that place, where it all goes off.

*

SUNDAY’S UNLIT CHEZ PATRICK & COLOMBE

Next day was a blast too although this time the party only really got going after the majority of the guests and, more to the point, the children, had gone.

My dynamic-firefly-poet-singer-friend  Orlando Seale had put me in touch with his great friends Patrick  and Colombe a few weeks ago and so next up some of yesterdays heroes and a bunch of new ones were doing a Sunday afternoon Unlit at their cool third-floor flat in Couronnes.

Grabbing a bit of lunch before, at Cannibale café, I sat next to a couple of 50 year old ladies who asked whether I was a tourist. I pointed out the purple velvet jacket and the guitar, and began to explain what Unlit was. Feeling a bit chatty, with an enormous hangover and a glass of wine or two inside me, as they ate their lunch, I explained all the ins and outs and history of Unlit and how they were very welcome to come, in fact that the event was all about people who I’d just met in the street coming along. They said “oh yes how interesting, I think we’ll do that”. They never turned up.

Not to worry, 6 very small children did, along with their parents who all thought I must be joking when I said things like “oh dear” and “there’s not much hope now”. Ha, well I wasn’t that bad, but basically small children generally terrorize us poor, sensitive, acoustic musicians, and of course generally get left to sit there and continue to make renditions of any song pointless. Unless of course you have a legend like Perry Leopard in your midgst, someone much more man than me in this department, who quickly joined forces with Tomas the sax player and our newly arrived cellist Automne (vraiment! Her name was autumn and she was  a cellist…..yes, of course, I was excited) and blew them away with a sheer force of chaos and decibels.

The children danced and made various screaming noises, all unheard below the inventive mélange of improvised-acoustic-chamber-art-rock and in the background everyone chatted and drank and generally wondered what these bizarre people they’d never met before were doing in their friends’ kitchen.

Evening wore on, the children got worn out and most of the audience needed to go home, it being a Sunday and all, which left about 6 of us – and the benevolent legends, our hosts Patrick and Colombe.

Their nipper safely in bed, Patrick smiled beatifically, liberally topping us up with top quality claret, and asking for all my troubadour stories and songs.

“Really? Are you sure? You want another?” It was like heaven. Harry Paris was even in the house so he did a few poems here and there. Then he even wrote a poem for me, entitled something like “Scatterbrained Troubadour” (yeah, I know, right?) and having had much hilarity and hugging and general exultant passing of time bang on the cusp of that damn moment, I fearlessly took to the piano to improvise some music to Harry’s last poem and then sing a version of Fade Away.

“This is where it all began, this is where you hold my hand”…and hold hands we did, all the way home….or at least down to Cannibale again, where I arrived with my huge back pack, my guitar and my shoulder bag, and several amis and dammit if those glorious folks didn’t ask me to get my guitar out and give them a song . In fact maybe I just got the guitar out and started singing….that wouldn’t be the first time, but I’m sure I apologized about it, and then someone had the genius idea (who could that have been?) to order irish coffees and desserts and what can I say….the night continued from there. We were troubadouring. It’s time to get on my train……Join us in Italy next week….ten gigs coming up there…..below a couple of flyers….we are ONE!!! XXX Jont

sante tout le monde!

Lille lille lille!! Qu’est ce que j’aurais fait sans toi! Ce matin clair et bleu et froid j’ai couru dans tes rues comme un poete qui avait bu trop et avait besoin de se reveiller et j’ai pense a cette semaine des concerts ici et a ton hospitalite, a ton enthousiasme pour ma musique….c’est necessaire occasionellement sur ce chemin, si tu as une guitare sur ton dos et tu chantes aussi beaucoup que tu parle, c’est necessaire a rencontrer les amis sur la route qui apprecient ce qu’en tu chantes, qui chantent les mots avec toi, qui savent toutes les chansons, et ont toute les CDs et plus profondement, comprennent ce que tu essaies de faire avec ta vie, ici, sur la route, un troubadour, un poete qui erre dans les rues, “not thinking for a minute what I should do”.

Lille, avant toi j’ai erre dans les rue, pas un poete, plus comme un poisson qui n’a pas vu la mer depuis longtemps, comme un Mallarme sans un stylo, comme un pastis avec trop d’eau, un Picon sans oranges, un croissant sans buerre, (un concert a Arras sans un ampli…hahaha, je pourrais continuer ce metaphor toute la journee!!!)…..alors, vous m’avez montre ton affection et grace a ca, grace a ma famille ici a Lille, a Herlies, a Arras, a Marcq en Baroeul, a Bar a K, a L’Art De Vivre…je me sens FANTASTIQUE, j’ai chante chaque fois mieux grace a toi et je peux prendre cette sensation avec moi, sur la route, et chaque fois je chante mes chansons il y aura un peu de vous la…..

Merci. C’est mon premier blog en Francais!!! Pardonne mes erreurs avec le grammaire et…a la prochaine fois….au aeronef! Au zenith! Ou, le jardin de LoLo pour celebrer la recuperation de son pied! Je vous embrasse…

We are one,

Jont

Turned up at La Liberte, a Paris dive bar – much more elegant than the American kind, in fact I wouldn’t have known it was unless I’d been told – and immediately recognized Perry Leopard, a 40 something American wiry and intense guy, easier to do as he was behind the mike, surrounded by his band for the evening, double bass, drums and a violinist who was totally off on one, soloing through a distortion pedal and sounding fucking brilliant. They were kind of playing in the doorway of the joint, and so the (as I could make out now, slightly more disheveled and bohemian looking) clientele mostly hung outside leaning on their pipes and cigarettes or elbows, looking pretty impressed and serious at the tight sounds emanating from inside.

My mate Charlie Winston, who over here is somewhat of a legend now having essentially become a huge French rock star with his last album, had put me in touch with Perry when I said I was looking for gigs in paris and Perry had kindly said I could come down and play a couple of songs at his gig here at this legendary old anarchist rock bar just on the borders of the 11^th and 12^th.

It was a cool vibe, average age about 40, and no real particular style or scene, just very French, if anything a bit more thoughtful and serious about this art from (essentially punk / rock with a dash of gallic insouciance in the form of double bass and rock violin courtesy of Aussie band member Melissa).

They finished their first set and Perry immediately was keen and friendly and saying I should play a couple of songs next. We chatted a bit and I found out he’d been here over 20 years….funny to think of the other American in Paris I’d met earlier in the week, Leander….and to see the different stages of man….Perry didn’t give a stuff about what he “looked like” however, the more I saw him play over the night the more it was clear he really knew what he was doing, was really connected to the music, was a master of this particular form.

Perry is on the right here...

He was also generous, including others to sing with his band at different stages of the night and generally enthusiastic and humble…..going round himself with the “chapeau” after sets, and helping me set up and getting me going. I played Let’s Roll, with Melissa on violin, and this guy Buford who was in town on tour on Trombone…..we turned the amps up loud, it was rockin, half-way through perry’s drummer joined in and got a pretty vibe going…..the bar was rocking, people were dancing, nobody had heard the song before but it worked. Did one more (Wild Beast) and then handed back over to the man himself to play his main set for the night….which he rocked, basically tearing the roof off the place.

Thankyou Perry! A lovely intro to the Parisian “dive” scene….(Perry and Melissa should be coming to the UNLIT on Sunday at Patrick and Colombe’s, email me for details…from 5pm)

So the New Song has been coming along, and darn it if I can’t quite find the right words – it’s been a while since I wrote anything decent and this feels like it could be and it’s not an easy birth. Whatever, it’ll come. In between playing various versions of it to total strangers other things have been happening.

It was lovely meeting up with Bent Van Looy again. He is the man who played all the keyboards on the album “Supernatural”…..helped produce it, did the “bib-i-dibbi-dibbi-dip” moog sounds on “Candlelit”, the Wurlitzer on The Way Home, all the piano…..he is an absolute gentleman and not only that – if he wasn’t before, he is now even more of a superstar both as front-man of the fantastic indie-retro-sass-meisters  “Das Pop” as they go from strength to strength across Europe, and also as the designer of a new range of clothes!!! Jeepers, he is so elegant and dapper and frigging cool, I almost felt intimidated.

Anyway, we talked about old times – of lugging his wurli up and down narrow stairwells when we did the first Paris Unlits way back in 2007….(There is another UNLIT coming up this Saturday Oct  in an amazing Paris apartment overlooking Bastille, featuring monsieur Bent, a harpist called Emily, some tabla players, a burlesque performance….yes I know, cool right? Wanna come? Hop on Eurostar….you know the score, email me for the address, bring a bottle and a good vibe and you’re in…..seriously!! ) before he had to rush off to write another hit, design a new clothing line, I don’t know….I just wandered down the street, hearing the angels and seeing the rainbows. Find their music here: www.daspop.com. They really do sound as cool as they look!

For the weekend it was up to Lille for the first real gigs of this troubadour episode…..Friday night was  in a small bar on the outskirts of town and played to a loving and enthusiastic audience….golly, don’t know what it is about the water in Lille, but they seem to like my vibe more than anywhere  I’ve been! Very flattering, although I’m aware with their shouts of “Allez Dr. House!!!” that perhaps it is a case of mistaken identity! I played the requisite sets, and then some, and soon after, as the bar took on the vibe of a fairly messy and affectionate discoteque, regretted I had to get an early night, so that I could be up at 8am to play a set of instrumental music at a pilates and yoga workshop!

Yes, that’s right. No, rest for the wicked with this troubadour life. Christ, 2 and a half hours straight, with a fairly decent hangover was enough to make my fingers almost fall off….but very satisfying none the less……improvising music to go with the vibe of the yoga that was going on…..

From there it was to Arras, maybe 30 miles away, where I was supposed to be playing  the Saturday night headline slot at The Couleur Café. My “manager”, that is my old friend Lolo – who had organized my Bastille day gig this summer (which had lasted 4 days….and not included very much sleep) – had not realized we were supposed to bring the sound equipment. Not to worry, I suggested to the patron that I play some “petit concerts individus”, at each table, completely acoustic…..and it worked a treat!!! After about three tables the whole bar was listening and like un vrai troubadour, there I was, no PA, in what should have bene a loud bar on a Saturday night, with them all singing along to 36 oysters!

So there you go…..when I have a version of this new song, that’s anywhere near decent, fear not, I will post it, however til then…..please content yourself with the music of das pop – or apparently I’ve heard there’s this guy, Dr.House, who has an album out as well….it’s supposed to be pretty good….

Bisous, JONT

Alice says it’s raining, two weeks of sun and now real autumn is here and while she’s in the bathroom I see there’s no milk, slip on my black shirt and white cord jacket, take the lift and hurry out the door in to the supposed rain which is actually just a white sky the temperature tepid and the cafes just opening – a girl in headphones folding napkins in the brasserie window sees my look and smiles.

At the corner is a baker and inside the young Arabic woman, really filmstar beautiful at the till says –

“Oui, tout vat res bien toute les journees” to my question et je dis “Ah oui?! Pas pour moi!” and laugh , buy 2 pain au chocolat, 2 croissants, aiming to give one to the guy who had been sleeping rough in the alley next door. When I get there he is otherwise occupied in the corner with morning necessities and a rather well-dressed middle-aged woman approaches me with a question – and I see, oh, actually she’s homeless too or at least in enough of a situation to be asking me for something so I offer her a croissant and she takes it, turn around to offer it to the guy but he waves me away.

I am feeling exultant, it feels so good to feel good again after the self-imposed stress a big weekend can bring and to magically re-appear, to be back on the bright side again. Why is it always so amazing? How do we forget so fast? How are our memories so faulty not to at least hold some trace of past joy when we find ourselves subsumed in the darkness of feelings we know aren’t what we really feel?

A few more giddy paces brings me opposite the art deco splendor of LE PURE CAFÉ, a beautiful-looking place and as I turn on my heels thinking “not for me this morning back home I go tra la la” I see another well-dressed and rosy-faced poete-clochard-draggeur-dans la rue, his teeth give him away otherwise he might just be another hopeless romantic like me, spending his nights in doorways for the fun of it.

“Bonjour monsieur! Tu veux le petit dejeuner?” He answers with a set-piece about how he just wants some coins to buy something to eat, I apologise, say does he want a croissant, he relents, takes one and I say

“Je suis touriste, mais j’adore Paris!”

“Ah oui,” Il dit, “Ca c’est parce que you’re in Belleville, the rest of Paris is shit…”

I love it! You wouldn’t find a homeless guy in Covent Garden defending his patch of turf with pride…even if we’re not that close to Belleville!!….ha ha…his humour and dignity send me skipping home into  the embrace of – oh thank fuck for that, finally… A New Song.

Next up: day 4 and 5 : first gigs in Lille and Arras….

The Troubadour En France Oct 4 – 18

Day one

After a frenetic last hour or so posting event invites on Facebook for my upcoming French gigs, packing my rucksack to bursting with CDs and my favourite jackets (blue flowery, phoenix leather, and just in case – the blue and gold kaftan) and striking a deal with my mother that I would clear at least some stuff out of the “Unlit Records Warehouse”, namely my sister’s old room, on my return to the UK (fair enough, it being about 20 years since I left home) – I hauled my bags and my self, sweating, to St.Pancras, to catch the train to Paris  on the first day of my French tour.

Almost a year in to my ongoing Troubadour Odyssey and after several years of making various forays to France either for romantic or musical reasons (a lot of “Supernatural” was recorded in Paris), I’ve now organized – thanks to some loyal supporters of my music – a loose collection of intimate gigs in bars, apartments and venues in Paris and Normandy over the next couple of weeks.

I’m getting paid (which other troubadours will tell you, isn’t always the case) and more than that, I will be where every troubadour is happiest! On the road – playing my songs, meeting friends old and new and creating mischief and magic along the way.

Day two

Walked out the door and kept walking. Bought a sandwich for lunch and ate it in very non-french style just there in the street. People either assumed I was a tourist having a nervous breakdown. I walked on thinking I would try to meditate as I went….concentrating on the ball of my right foot and just the ball of my right foot, and then on the moment each foot left the ground…..was really pretty good, and when I next find myself staying in a small quiet flat and can’t chant it’s an option. A good one obviously when the backdrop is Paris – a fruity, dirty Belleville, Chinese hookers dressed up smart like secretaries and not making eye-contact, Arabic men in their suits and grey hair and ancient faces smoking and looking incredibly serious, young Arabic boys hanging off mopeds in cheap leather jackets, homeless everywhere in doorways and on benches, up by Stalingrad passing by a long encampment of tents full of people taking refuge from somewhere, some young and not long on the street, heating up a drink, tearing a piece of bread, the full grandiosity of the rest of Paris suddenly achingly apparent.

I’d arranged to meet a young American musician living in Paris, Leander Lyons, at a bar in the early evening. He had one big black feather earring in his left ear, cheap yellow plastic shades, an asymmetrical new wave mop of hair, 80s high-waisted trousers and bright sparkling eyes. He was teaching the guitar and bass to get by, playing in two bands with management and with whom “you know, there’s a chance things might happen” and another band which was his own where he did his songs.

leander lyons

I liked him immediately, his confidence and youth refreshing in a way that maybe mine had been 15 years ago when I first got a band together.  I didn’t care whether Leander Lyons was ever going to be famous, whether he made any money, in fact I didn’t even really care whether he was any good or played the sort of music I liked. I just liked that he had a grubby notebook within which was quite an organized diary, that he was dressed in an outlandish outfit, that he was enjoying his cigarettes, telling me about the cabaret band he was really excited to have a bass gig with where  and his girlfriend who was moving to London to be a model and whose birthday it was tonight. I found his slightly magisterial air comforting – it made me smile, and I was happy that he would be around next Saturday for the first Paris Unlit.

I headed further up the road, gave in gracefully to my urge to have a drink. I was meant to be staying off the booze for a while and interested to see how it would be not drinking on tour, just meditating and glowing and singing – but realistically this was not going to happen, especially in France, so I accepted my fate and ordered a pastis. The waitress in the brasserie where I had dinner was full of passion for her job. I wrote poems about both events.

Playing outside The Vagabond Van, Secret Garden Party.

Here in London the season is changing to autumn, some might say imperceptibly given the apparent lack of summer. I am staying at my friend Oli’s house in Turnpike Lane (while the riots went off down the street I was fortunately playing gigs in Tuscany!), in his cabin in the garden.

Different violins and stringed instruments hang on the walls, there’s a piano, a huge bean bag and when I’m not here it’s very tidy, the perfect place for Oli to compose and practice.

As well as being one of the most delightful and charming creatures (because as Tom Baxter pointed out the other day, introducing him at Love In The Woods festival – Oli IS a “creature”), he is also one of London’s premier violinists be it for the coolest thing in town (Florence and The Machine, Bat For Lashes), Soundtracks, Classical or for “Sundog”, the piano and violin project he is composing right now alongside Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s Arthur for performances at the Purcell Room in a couple of months.

Oli and me in his cabin

After a bustling, bristling few months of travelling and gigs and festivals I am working out where to go and what to do next. I have also been thinking back over a few of the gigs I’ve had these past few months since I’ve got back….

1) Lotan’s Soiree

Jet-lagged and tanned, slightly bewildered by being in England again, sat in the corner of a roomful of 30 bright-eyed, well-dressed and clean london alternative living eco-hippies, plates of vegetarian food in their crossed legs, chatting excitedly to each other in the rather lovely atmosphere created by my firefly friend, the angelic Lotan.

Lotan

It’s my first day back, arrived in the morning at Heathrow and stumbled my way from there, blinking and sniffing like a hostage whose had the bag just taken off his head. Lotan has organised a little soiree which coincides with my first night back, 4 of us singing some songs or telling stories, each sat in a different corner of the room.

My friend Richard has just arrived and is holding his motorcycle helmet in one hand and waving and smiling with the other. Leila my old flat-mate is here too. I have just got off the plane from LA after being away in Australia for 7 months where I started my life as a genuine troubadour, lived in a house found for me by the universe, discovered meditation, gave up drinking and decided to start a charity to raise money for people who’ve lost their homes in natural disasters. The guy tells his story in a Scottish accent, sat high up above us; the blonde girl in the white summer dress plays a song from the next door corner in a very high voice; the next guy plays a very folky number; then I play a song, feeling as if I haven’t arrived in the country yet. Later Lotan and I go down to the huge all-night Tesco to buy ice-cream and I wander the aisles marvelling at the Englishness of it all.

2) Homecoming Meltdown

Massively hungover after completely falling off the wagon just a week after returning home, I stare out in to the audience of welcoming, loving eyes at my “home-coming” gig, utterly regretting my huge night out that week with my friend Tom, feeling totally out of kilter and shy and just plain rubbish.

I’ve been so excited about this night – the last six months have been an intense journey and I feel I have made a lot of progress as a performer.  Just a month before I have done one of my best gigs ever to a packed Sydney venue, feeling grounded and comfortable and flowing onstage.

And now, with 100 people in the house, at this great little venue in LImehouse (The Jamboree), my close friends Jules and Ben from Little Fish and Polly Paulusma having played lovely sets before me and the scene set for a great gig…..I just am totally below par, unable to barely make eye-contact with the audience, feeling a total mess.

Oli trying to help, and me melting down at Jamboree...

Fuck! Can’t do anything about it. Ben plays great on the piano, Oli even comes up and joins in on the violin, and during the songs I just about hold it together but basically just can’t wait to get off stage. I even have got someone to come along and record the gig…..thinking it was gonna be really good.

Ah well, London Pride comes before a fall.

3) Lee’s Unlit

A week later sat on Lee’s bed in his Islington house at 1am or so at the first UNLIT since coming back, 15 or so people crammed in to the room or on the bed with me, on the floor and feeling completely on it, in it, feeling it, totally back in the groove and back to where I had been in LA.

The live set had been great, in the garden, packed with people, Lisa Lore, Strangefruit, LA Salami and Maria Slovakova providing the music and poetry, familiar faces, good to be back, first UNLIT in Lee’s house…and now an hour or two after the main sets, downstairs Kevin Richards dj’ing, upstairs me doing a set in one room and strangefruit and LA Salami jamming in the other bedroom….

Beautiful to feel UNLIT still thriving, effortlessly and to feel all the good vibes from everyone that always seem to be there.

A photo by Didier Chevalier of Christina's great Studio City UNLIT in LA in June

4) Kyran & Lisa’s House Concert

“Sooooo…..do you want another story?”

“YEEEESSSS!” shout back the cross-legged audience of little boys and girls, all probably under ten, who make up half of the demographic at Kyran and Lisa’s house concert.

Skirting the boundaries of decency and double-entendre, I try to make the stories both comprehensible for the kids but also funny for the adults. Coming up with a set of songs which might be interesting to a 6 year old (heavy on the singalong, light on the heavy stuff) seems to go OK. Having held their attention avidly for 20 or 30 minutes, I figure we shouldn’t push things too far and we have a break.

I hang out with Kyran and Lisa and catch up a bit. I had come and played at their house before, during The Delivery Tour (when I hand-delivered copies of Set It Free to the first 50 people who had ordered it), and had been more than happy to come back when he saw I was now doing paid house-gigs and booked me to play a show again. They have a lovely house in Wimbledon, two really amazing kids   called Finton and Oscar and what can I say? Kyran has all of my albums and has been to my gigs for years…So I felt privileged to be there.

Time for the second set. Oh god. The kids all troop in again! They want MORE! The children’s entertainer will be needed again. This time round it just gets surreal. “So kids, do you know what a psychic is?” and various even more random discussions. We make it through to a third set, by which time its pretty much all just grown-ups, apart from Kyran and Lisa’s kids….who seem to have a strange affinity with my music….better watch out! I’ll be playing their houses next!

After I’d finished playing I was gobsmacked to receive a beautiful thankyou card from them all. Every strange gig I’d ever done, every difficult moment I’d been through with my music over the years – well, it all pales into insignificance when you receive something like this from a young kid, written in newly-learnt joined-up writing -

Dear Jont

Thankyou for singing all

your fabulous songs I loved

it I think it is more than enough

it was more than a great big

birthday present I think it made

a highlight of my summer holidays

it was a pleasure having you here

I would not mind a bit if

you come again I think

your songs are the best

From your friend Finton x x x

Well, that’s enough for now…..next week, a few more sketches of this summer’s gigs – Bastille Days in Lille, guerilla gigs around The Secret Garden Party – and I shall reveal my touring plans for the autumn….

We are one

X  JONT

vagabond van gig, secret garden party

Church On Sunday (Demo) by jontmusic

So much has happened in the few days since I last wrote I don’t know where to start! But suffice to say, all is going well, and sitting here in the downstairs spare room in Montefiore in Tuscany at my friend Mair’s house, I can hear her daughters Cerys and Agnes excitedly getting the house ready in preparation for tonight’s Unlit to which apparently the whole village is coming, including an Opera singer, a classical poet and a guitarist.

Wind back a few days and it was Saturday and after hanging out in the afternoon with my new friends Cristiano and Simona – the ones who had organised my three weekend gigs in lavagna – wandering around the town, sampling the gelato and coffee, and dropping in to Oasi bar for lunch (the venue for Sundays gig), it was time to head to the park by the swimming pook to soundcheck for my “biggest” gig of the tour, The Zero Festival – a small local festival that had been going for 8 years, centred around good traditional food and music. I was billed as the “special guest from the UK” and went on first and played to 500 or so folks, loving being up on a big stage with great sound, bright lights in my eyes, imagining I was playing to thousands, and as happy as a troubadour with an audience and a bellyful of red wine and lasagne could be.

The sound guy Nicolas was a gem, and even managed to get me a recording of the whole gig, which came out pretty well, so I’ll post some excerpts here soon. In fact he has a recording studio somewhere near Lavagna, where he has an old tape machine…..made me start thinking about recording my album out here!

Anyway, most of the people didn’t have a clue who I was, which actually generally tends to work in my favour – most of the people there thinking I was more famous than I am! Ha ha.  Except that is for the two lovely doctors from Firenze who have followed my progress assiduously over the last ten years and drove 4 hours to see me play but only got there in time for the last song… I of course couldn’t let them leave without playing them at least a couple of tunes in the corner of the park.

When I did so they said something along the lines of:

“Do you remember when we first met? It was at the gig in Castiglio Fiorentina at the -”

“At the Velvet Underground, yes I remember well” I said, which was true – I did – but more because of some unforgettable and unmentionable here shenanigans that had happened after the gig.

“Well” said Doctor Florence, “that time I asked you to play A ZIMMERFRAME FOR MR ZIMMERMAN and you forgot, but after the gig you saw us and realised and took us outside for a private gig that time too..”

Despite them being used to my private gig fetish, they were incredibly appreciative of the two songs I played them and apparently will be joining us for the final gig in Casola this Friday….turn up on time boys! No more private gigs for latecomers!!

Next day, Sunday, with all this pasta and wine and bread inside me I thought it was time to go for a gentle run, but my penchant for running for miles in the hot sun got the better of me and before I knew it i was staggering back from an 8km hillside run, having scared the owners of one particular bar as I stumbled in desperate for a glass of water and probably looking like I was about to pass out.

Damn. forgot again. Always forget that going for long enormous runs during the day makes me feel great at the time, but if I do it before a gig then normally during the gig I inexplicably have some sort of emotional meltdown.

So it was on Sunday, where after watching Cristiano and Guido ie CRISTIERUBIN play a brilliant set – so much more at ease and connected and confident than he had been the first night – and having chatted with and met most of the lovely people in the bar before I played and basically feeling absolutely totally cool, best ever, utterly happy to be there and to play for them and thinking that I should be at my best -

I got up there and basically felt really vulnerable and emotional and under the microscope, not helped by the fact that Nicolas from the previous night who had come down to do the sound, had gone away again and there was no-one to sort the inevitable tweaks to the monitors and stuff that you need during a gig.

I guess it had all been going so well and so many people had been really connecting to the music that then it builds up a certain pressure – to be in that zone the whole time.

And going for a big run in the sunshine, add a few glasses of wine, and suddenly – oh dear, I’m not having a good time up here…..

But we got through it. I was wearing my silver trousers which helped I think. And when I looked out there were a lot of friendly dare i say, beautiful faces. I did one set, which just about hung together, then took a break, most people left, and then I got pretty deep in to it in the second set, still wrestling with feeling almost too emotional when I was singing, but hopefully making something worthwhile for the 30 or so people who stayed.

By the end of the night, the grappa was flowing and the patron Andrea was telling me I could do anything and that this was my home and I could come back any time and soon enough it was time to say goodbye to Cristiano. His lady Simona would be coming to friday’s gig, but he couldn’t make it. It had been a pleasure meeting him and talking to him about his creative process, hearing his music….I can honestly say it was a privilege to be on the bill with him….and I’m looking forward to hearing all the new songs he’s written on a record.

this is him and me chatting about stuff before the gig:

So….tonight UNLIT in Montefiore, and tomorrow local Tuscan TV reporter Guido is going to be shooting a video for Wild Beast which if last night’s earnest discussions on the porch are anything to go by will feature me, barefoot, guitar on back, walking in to small italian village, going to the bar, ordering a Negroni (!), and getting the guitar out and everybody erupting in to some sort of party….and then me walking out the other side of the village and them going back to normal life……which let’s face it, isn’t a MILLION miles away from the truth….

With love,

Troubs

Teardrops & Pennies (Demo) by jontmusic