iain harvie

Holyhead to Dublin

We set sail from that grim non-space, which I suppose now should be referred to as Holyhead International into a thick haar with the ship's fog horn blaring. As we crossed the Irish Sea the gloom lifted. A ham Hollywood screen-writer couldn't have scripted a better

Manchester Arena

This place makes the venue in Leeds seem almost intimate. Some of the people working on the show are clocking 15 000 steps just getting around the building. The eight trucks worth of stuff that seem to be required to make music happen in a place like this were once

Leaving Fortress Britian

The last time we traveled to Dublin we the people of this little minded land had yet to make the disastrous decision to harden our borders. A pathetic collective hissy fit that means that making a simple trip through Holyhead to Dublin now requires passing through an internal border. What

7.00am. Moto Birch Service station, M62 west bound.

Even a spring sun rising into a cloudless blue sky does little to dispel the nightmare ambience of Birch motorway services, a grey breeze block cube emblazoned with a crap Picasso pastiche logo surrounded by concrete parking lots and petrol pumps. A lone, malevolent looking carrion crow scavenging on the

How to survive the shark attack that is never going to happen to you.

A bit of a wonky start to a tour, all things considered. A very mild bout of the sniffles that was niggling me during the rehearsals but seemed innocuous enough started to feel a tiny bit more worrying on Thursday evening. By the time the bus departed at midnight from

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, early on a Sunday morning. I feel fully recovered and in denial that this is the end of the road. The final venue is another damn supper club, The Music Box. There is a decent looking Sunday brunch on offer there but distressingly this will be accompanied either by

Warrendale, PA

Warrendale, PA Jergel’s Rhythm Grille might as well be located on its own planet. It is 28 degrees and getting hotter, but according to the locals it was snowing two days previously which might explain why the car park surrounding the place is lined with trees bursting with luxurious

New York City

The famous skyline has been anonymized by the towers of glass that rise above Hudson Yards leaving only a glimpse of the needle on top of the Empire State building visible as we drive in from the west but the heart still beats faster as the city approaches. We have

The Egg

After a long overnight drive from Boston the bus reverses directly off of a highway into a loading bay under the Empire State Plaza in Albany NY. There is breakfast at the venue so after Gary has docked the bus and connected the shore power Kris and I venture out

Sommerville Theater, Boston

The Crystal Ballroom is a chic club above the Somerville Theater, a very chic repertory cinema. There are people living on the streets but otherwise pretty much everything in Sommerville, MA is chic. It is a beautiful day with cloudless skies and Davis Square fills up as the sun warms

Summersville, West Virginia.

A welcome day off before the last two shows, or at least a stop-over on the twelve hour drive from Atlanta to Warrendale. Summersville, West Virginia—this really is the back of beyond. According to Wikipedia Summersville has a population of 3,500. We are in a hotel just off

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia. I get through the night in one piece and as soon as we arrive I check into a hotel and crawl into bed in an attempt to shake off my indisposition. By soundcheck I have been sleeping pretty much constantly for the previous eighteen hours. I feel purged,

Philadelphia

The World Cafe is surrounded on two sides by elevated streets. The stage door is under an elevated rail track and mile long freight trains with graffiti covered containers stacked two high on the flat-beds clatter past at walking pace fifty feet overhead. On the other side fifty-feet below street

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Into the south, proper. North Carolina is lush and verdant. The skies are cloudless and the temperature is perfect. This feels like a different continent from Virginia, never mind New York. I set off from the strip mall where the Carrboro Arts Center languishes in the

Alexandria, Virginia

Alexandria, Virginia. After the overnight drive from Manhattan we have half a day to kill here before the business of the day starts. The presence of a golf cart in a glazed porch lined with famous arrest mug shots of musicians—Elvis Presley, Willy Nelson, Johnny Cash—is unsettling and

The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto.

Kris is very excited to be standing on the same square meter that was occupied for an hour or so by one Keith Richards on the evening of June 4, 1997 when the Rolling Stones decided to play an impromptu show at the Horseshoe Tavern during rehearsals for the Bridges

Chicago

Monday nights can be a challenge: expectations need to be lowered on Mondays and after the reception in Minneapolis the Vic Theater looms as a potentially daunting prospect. The sun in shining when we arrive and the city is alive. Belmont Boulevard is full of purposeful people with coffee in

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Another Sunday in a deserted city. The Fitzgerald Theater sits in the heart of downtown Saint Paul not far from the capitol building and everything around is closed. Even the venerable Mickey’s Diner open 24/7 since 1937 is shut. There are a lot of churches—God seems to

Goldy’s. Breakfast. Everyday.

The indicators are good: one block off the main drag, just across from the Capitol building. Inauspicious looking, no view in from the outside. I head in and take the last remaining seat at the counter. Two types of ketchup, four different hot sauces and Goldy’s house seasoning are

Western or English dressage.

The first mission of the day when Gary parks the bus in the morning, in fact the only mission of the day prior to sound check at 5 pm, is to find a good spot for brunch. Berkeley looks promising. I set off from the bus down Shattuck Avenue and

A Strip on its uppers.

Sunset Strip seems to be on it’s uppers these days. Chateau Marmont is boarded up. It is hard to imagine the beautiful people of Los Angeles and environs on the corner of Sunset and Larrabee clamouring to catch a glimpse of Johnny Depp and company outside The Viper Room.

LAX to Hollywood and Highland

The driver that picks us up at LAX to deliver us to the hotel at Hollywood and Highland—the centre of very deepest circle of  Los Angeles—is a gentle spoken bear of a man named, appropriately enough, Virgil. He swaps his cowboy hat for an ominously Trumpian red baseball

Chiriaco Summit, 5 am.

Gary pulls the bus off I-10 to fuel up and the combination of jet lag and the cessation of the comforting sound of our wheels on the asphalt rouses me from my bunk. The sun is rising over the desert and the sky looks like a set designer’s painting.

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

In that weird liminal space—11 hours, 9000 meters above an ocean moving at nearly 1000kmh kilometres an hour in an intercontinental ballistic people carrier, after hours of waiting and moving through the non-spaces of airport terminals, now travelling back through the day to arrive not long after leaving, there

Chandler no more, Bukowski no more.

The nearest place to the hotel to eat is Mel’s Diner. Buddy, Brian and I drift down there in an effort to stay awake and head off the looming jet-lag as much as by a desire for a Mel’s 3-Deck Club Sandwich. Hollywood has fully mutated into a