Prosperous-looking Dresdeners stood cheek-by-jowl in a city park, clinking glasses of Riesling and restlessly awaiting the appearance of local heroes Die Nierentische (translation: the kidney-shaped tables). Led by longtime friends of Mark’s, Die Nierentische recently played all over the Triangle, including a memorable set at Guglhupf when lead singer Martin climbed on the patio tables [...]

The magic kingdom of Bohemia never let up its aesthetic flood: literally every direction yielded a new vista that would send Imagineers running back to their drafting boards. A wall-to-wall carpet of tourists made streets hard to navigate without a battering ram. This preponderance of non-natives also gave the city an ersatz, vacationland feel.

People packed in to hear the show, including one chemically-saturated guitar player in a green hoodie who kept trying to grab my mic and scream about Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith. He seemed poised to join their ranks, and soon. Then he settled down onto the floor at the base of my mic stand and proceeded to pour a side-salad sized pile of weed onto my setlist to start sorting out the seeds.

Things were going well, we’d turned our penny drizzle into a 50-cent and 1-euro shower, when the police rolled up. The driver rolled down his window, shaking his ruddy head and running a finger across his throat. “Get out,” he said with characteristic Dutch directness.

We’re about to head out on the road again, even braving the wild and woolly Canadian border. Hopefully, this time our papers will be, as they say, in order. As we all try to get our fill of homemade meals and real beds before we leave, we’re also getting excited to see our friends in [...]

We had a great time weaving around through dancing girls and a guy who had some early hip-hop moves while looking like a cross between jed clampett and ziggy stardust

The Mercury Lounge show last night in NYC was ‘a good ole time,’ as our fearless organist likes to say. Chris Stamey (along with Anton Fier, Mr. Matt Brandau, and a short cameo from me (Django)) opened up and melted faces with his Ornette-Coleman-meets-Richard-Thompson guitar leads. Then TOC played and it was great having people [...]

On Friday, we played the gorgeous new Brooklyn venue, Bell House. Skippy, who runs it (and also runs union hall), always makes us feel at home, and Friday was no exception. We did an early show, together with my old friend chris moore (moore n sons - check em out!), and then there was a [...]

For the first five or six songs of our set, these two girls were reenacting the kama sutra on the edge of the stage right in front of me. It was, er, a bit distracting, but not the kind of thing I wanted to discourage per se.

Married people often say that, after all the planning and preparations, their actual wedding was a blur. There is so much going on around them that their processing abilities temporarily slow down. That’s how I felt at our cd release show last night at the Cat’s Cradle.