Amster Dammit (Never Bet the Devil Your Head)
Received an email from James Riedel, author of the recent biography of Weldon Kees (please refer 2 blogs back; you might also trawl through some of them again as my Keeper of the Website Tanya Strano occasionally updates old entries with new visuals)-- some of his friends forwarded my recent commentary on the Kees/Dylan connection to him, and he wrote me directly acknowledging my sleuthing...nice to know I am being read in academic circles ... he's going to send his new bio in exchange for some of my albums...very cool!
in Amsterdam now after an intense, sweaty concert in Brussels with lute meister Jozef Van Wissem Saturday night at the ancien Theatre Marni. We got treated royally by the distaff theatre staff (thank you Joelle and Isobel!) and artistic director Jules, who drove back to Brussels from France on the very day of our concert with a bottle of fine champagne specially for me and Jos, which he broke out at the after-party (also a box of succulent Leonidas chocolates--a confirmed chocoholic, I must say that Belgian chocolates are right up there with their Swiss counterparts). It was thunder and lightning and rain hammering down outside as Jos and I coaxed an admixture of the sacred and profane from our respective instruments (guess who was contributing what here) and the crowd attended on us, rapt and hushed, as if at the unfolding of an arcane ritual...
The night before, my last night in London for a bit, I went with mad Scotsman John Stewart to see my pal Warren Haynes and his band Gov't Mule at the Mean Fiddler, the same joint where The Magic Band held forth in June. John was an hour late meeting me at Gaby's in Leicester Square (excellent salt-beef there) due to flooding on the tube, but we managed to catch a good hour and a half of the Mule's kicking set. Warren is an excellent guitarist and singer (and songwriter--check out "World of Confusion", which we wrote together, and which appears on the Mule's "The Deep End Vol. Two" album-- these days, more relevant a song than ever) and if you're a fan of Southern rockers he is definitely one of the best, observing the eternal verities of the form while pushing the band into prog and jamband territory.
Now I am in Amsterdam on a day off visiting my friend the director Flip Nagler at his NGN studio (Flip made an early documentary on my work, "Guitar Unbound", for the Dutch Kunst Kanaal tv network, it was shown 6 times in one day upon its premiere in 1995, and it's available from my website), the studio is on a beautiful leafy sidestreet off the Singel, and it is utterly delightful outside, a shimmering "Sunny Afternoon"-ish kind of day, and I am about to take a stroll where ever ...staying tonight at the good old Winston, a real rock 'n roll hotel on Warmoestraat in the Red Lights, the Winston is where I used to give concerts in exchange for room and board, nice to see that it hasnt changed much (yes, there is still a Durex Room)...
this must be my 40th or so visit to Amsterdam, a major base of operations for me in Europa, I've been coming here since 1978 and have logged literally hundreds of concerts playing up and down the lowlands or should I say the highlands, "in the Dutch mountains"...:-); I have spent many actual months of residency in Amsterdam, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and "thrilling cities" in the world (remember Ian Fleming's book)-- and have written some of my best known songs here as well (including "Dream of a Russian Princess", composed in a fever-dream shortly after Christmas 1991 in the atelier of my friend, the great Dutch painter Joep Ver)...
in short I adore it here, Holland was the first country in Europe to embrace my work in a big way, and everytime I pass through Amsterdam it feels like a homecoming...
xxGary
in Amsterdam now after an intense, sweaty concert in Brussels with lute meister Jozef Van Wissem Saturday night at the ancien Theatre Marni. We got treated royally by the distaff theatre staff (thank you Joelle and Isobel!) and artistic director Jules, who drove back to Brussels from France on the very day of our concert with a bottle of fine champagne specially for me and Jos, which he broke out at the after-party (also a box of succulent Leonidas chocolates--a confirmed chocoholic, I must say that Belgian chocolates are right up there with their Swiss counterparts). It was thunder and lightning and rain hammering down outside as Jos and I coaxed an admixture of the sacred and profane from our respective instruments (guess who was contributing what here) and the crowd attended on us, rapt and hushed, as if at the unfolding of an arcane ritual...
The night before, my last night in London for a bit, I went with mad Scotsman John Stewart to see my pal Warren Haynes and his band Gov't Mule at the Mean Fiddler, the same joint where The Magic Band held forth in June. John was an hour late meeting me at Gaby's in Leicester Square (excellent salt-beef there) due to flooding on the tube, but we managed to catch a good hour and a half of the Mule's kicking set. Warren is an excellent guitarist and singer (and songwriter--check out "World of Confusion", which we wrote together, and which appears on the Mule's "The Deep End Vol. Two" album-- these days, more relevant a song than ever) and if you're a fan of Southern rockers he is definitely one of the best, observing the eternal verities of the form while pushing the band into prog and jamband territory.
Now I am in Amsterdam on a day off visiting my friend the director Flip Nagler at his NGN studio (Flip made an early documentary on my work, "Guitar Unbound", for the Dutch Kunst Kanaal tv network, it was shown 6 times in one day upon its premiere in 1995, and it's available from my website), the studio is on a beautiful leafy sidestreet off the Singel, and it is utterly delightful outside, a shimmering "Sunny Afternoon"-ish kind of day, and I am about to take a stroll where ever ...staying tonight at the good old Winston, a real rock 'n roll hotel on Warmoestraat in the Red Lights, the Winston is where I used to give concerts in exchange for room and board, nice to see that it hasnt changed much (yes, there is still a Durex Room)...
this must be my 40th or so visit to Amsterdam, a major base of operations for me in Europa, I've been coming here since 1978 and have logged literally hundreds of concerts playing up and down the lowlands or should I say the highlands, "in the Dutch mountains"...:-); I have spent many actual months of residency in Amsterdam, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and "thrilling cities" in the world (remember Ian Fleming's book)-- and have written some of my best known songs here as well (including "Dream of a Russian Princess", composed in a fever-dream shortly after Christmas 1991 in the atelier of my friend, the great Dutch painter Joep Ver)...
in short I adore it here, Holland was the first country in Europe to embrace my work in a big way, and everytime I pass through Amsterdam it feels like a homecoming...
xxGary
posted by Gary Lucas at 7:00 AM
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