Smiling still makes the day go quicker

So last night was spent in the Melrose, a bar frequented by musicians, loners and other freaks who all shoot pool and moan about the crap that gets churned out of other jukeboxes but the one in here is tolerable so it's here they stay and nurse their beers and look at the waitresses and think of the road.
Soon though, when the Melrose closes and rats go back to the starting line the ones who love life at night dance across 8th avenue to the billiards hall and shout at the cars and the stars and the tzars behind bars.

In the billiards hall down the steps away from the balmy night in an old cinema, they don't show pictures there these days, but guys and girls drink and play pool while the battered Wurlitzer juke in the corner blasts sounds that a generation would die for and did die for.
While the band play doubles I get involved with a game of shuffleboard which involves pushing a puck with skill and finesse along a polished salt covered surface, getting as far to the end as possible without slipping off, as well as knocking off the other players pucks. A trio of hipster musicians named Logan, Stanton and Joshua introduced me to the rules and we played a while. I'd wandered over there as I had grown tired of watching the pool, even though girls, entranced with taking aim, make very good painting subjects, but my skills with a cue are mildly horrific and I'd sooner try and balance one on my chin with a tray heaped with hot oysters on top than actually attempt a serious game. However, after departing the shuffleboard contest, I did play one game of pool and got four balls in the holes but it didn't change my life so I ended up at the bar with Danny who was trying to blag a free haircut.

This morning I woke up and discovered I had left the lava lamp on and fallen asleep to it's crooked glow, and during the night it had overheated and the glass had cracked. There was red wax all down the wall, a pinky molten mess had sunk into the carpet and the water from the lamp was surrounding the electricity socket. Hearing a pack of dogs going spare outside, and surrounded by clothes, loose change and lava lamp I had to change my environment, and fast. I found my jeans in the corridor and crashed over sideways as a result of getting my left foot stuck in a hole halfway down the leg. As usual we made life difficult for ourselves by sleeping in two separate buildings with one key for each building. Therefore my morning ritual involves rubbing the sleep outa my eyes while I walk to the other building, and then hauling myself over the gate, missing the barbed wire on the top and jumping down the other side to grab the key off the table to let myself back out, then waking the dead, or so it seems, from their unconscious slumber within a darkened lair.

Aptly today we were recording a new version of Smiling Makes The Day Go Quicker. I was slightly apprehensive as the first version has been around for ages, you all know it and I must have played it close to a thousand times. We've recorded the basis of most of the new record and deliberately left Smiling 'till last as we thought we knew it so well. Took about an hour and several coffees, but we ended up with a version that you'll have to wait to hear as this record isn't coming out for a while. If you still haven't got your hands on the current one, go to http://www.tankusthehenge.bandcamp.com and check it out. It won't be around forever. Neither will we.
Keep smiling, people, it's not the end of the world!

In which we found ourselves on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence...

Let me just map out the area of our roamings for you. In case you wished to imagine more accurately our escapades.
If you turn right out of the studio you find yourself heading through a boneyard with pickups scattered around and truck trailers waiting to be dragged to the east or west coast with all manner of articles inside, like the trucks that arrive at the Goodwill store on the right daily. Another right and you get to the railroad with it's huge, grinding engines goading mile long trains of "Building your America" and "Union Pacific" trucks up to Canada or down to Mexico. Every twenty minutes or so another mammoth engine crawls past with blinding flashing lights and a horn that sounds like thirty brass players that believe they are playing notes from the same chord until they actually play it, and then just carry on anyway, even though the audience's ears have long since been damaged.

If you happened to go to the other way out of the studio, you end up in a railroad yard, which you can cross over, with Old Mrs Grissom's salads neon light on a water tower as a focal point. This takes you towards the Tennessee fairgrounds site, which is due to be torn down I believe, which is a terrible shame because as I mentioned in a previous letter, the Speedway is fantastic, and is currently having it's final race on the 4th of October. Anyway, the Fairgrounds Speedway was the site for the Tennessee State Fair, which finished yesterday and has eight foot barbed wire fences with locked gates.

After taking part in an argument about why you shouldn't put a half can of baked beans, tomatoes or anything else for that matter, in the fridge (still in the can), and also a separate, but related argument regarding who couldn't manage to eat a whole can of beans anyway; Michael and I set off into the dark on our 1950's bicycles, lent to us by our producer. The lack of suspension makes bumping over the railroad tracks in the yard a painful experience, unless you stand on the pedals. While I was doing this, though, the bike slipped out of gear and as all my weight was on the pedals, I lost my balance and fell off into the gravel. Fortunately I wasn't going at a breakneck speed like I would be in a while.
Having explored the nearby vicinity, and visited the fairground the previous night, we decided to pay Old Mrs Grissom a nighttime visit and we took the hill that runs past her salad joint. Slightly wary of my earlier mistake with the gears, I held on to the fragile gear changer as if my life depended on it as I forced the bike up the hill. The seat is also slightly too high, so if I slow down too much on corners and inclines, consequences may cause suffering.
At the top of the hill, we came across the Oasis nightclub looking vibrant and .... shut.



After this we reached a wide road heading downtown with practically no cars on it, and without warning, Michael took off down the hill towards the beckoning lights of Nashville, where there's a curious skyscraper that is shaped like Batman's head. Check it out if you're there.
So while Speedy freewheels towards Batman, I relish the moment (sitting slightly awkwardly on a bike in the middle of the freeway looking at nighttime Nashville) and then take off after him. I heard the unmistakable wail of a cop siren and almost panic. We have no lights on but even though the road is well lit, on a quiet night like this it would be easy pickings for police to shop some rogue englishmen. Just before we can cycle to safety the barriers come down on the railroad crossing and then a hulking, groaning metal monster lurches into view, it's creaking boxcars and cabooses blocking the road. These usually take about fifteen minutes to pass, so we veer off to the left and go down a side road, which ends up in the seedy looking site of Tennessee State Fair, now closed and half dismantled. The gate is open, and we saunter in, myself curious about the dinosaur bones structure of a semi-disassembled rollercoaster and other assorted fairground rides in all manner of completion. The remnants of a giant ferris wheel, devoid of neon lights and lovers wrapped up in eachother high above the fair, a ghost train with the ghouls long since lost when the electricity died, and a carousel covered in sheets, the whirling lights and blaring organ vanished along with the customers...
Suddenly lights appeared over the hill where we entered, and we scram on our bikes, towards the centre of the fair and behind a shed full of sleeping camels and llamas. A dromedary camel, far from home, winked at me as we passed in the dim electric light. The cover the shed provided let us get out nearer the opposite exit of the fair, being guarded by four huge bears.


At the gate, we found to our horror, that it was locked. Briefly covered by the bears, I scrambled around looking for some sort of pedestrian exit, the lights behind of a jeep getting closer and closer. Nothing. All the gates are secured with hefty padlocks even Popeye couldn't break unless he had Mrs Grissom's spinach.
Realising that the patrolling jeep had seen us, I started to roll my bike down the hill, jumped on and was heading for a gate which looked open. I could see Mike behind the car, heading down the hill in the opposite direction. No luck, the gate I was heading for had a dead end beyond, just the carnival workers wagons and caravans behind the fence. I've lived and worked on a fair, but I wasn't prepared to knock on the door and say "hello. I shouldn't be here right now as it's closed and locked, but somehow I managed to get in by accident, and now I'm being chased. Could I come in?"
Just as the jeep was passing Mr Bear, Mrs Bear, Boris and Bertie bears on their truck, I saw the lights of a car enter the site, with an automatic gate just starting to close. Forgetting about the gear problems, the saddle and the loose mudguard that threatened to throw itself into my wheel, I pedalled hell for leather towards the closing gate and saw that Mike was doing the same. With just enough room for both of us, we shot out into the road with the gate clanging shut behind.


On our way back to the studio, with the moon blazing it's cold glow onto the mid-west, we passed the junction with a pedestrian crossing that always says "DON'T WALK". It never changes. There's a man there, with a long beard. He'll never get to the other side until they fix that light.

Old English bicycles and the Petrojvic Blasting Company

So... after three days of recording and Jaz devouring cheese slices on rice crackers, we had a day off. Breakfast involved cereal slopping around a bowl held by hands covered in sun cream attached to a jauntily moving body propped up on legs that hadn't come around to the idea of being awake yet, as the previously mentioned meal was hastily consumed to the time of the songs we were listening to... recordings of what we'd achieved, or not, so far in Nashville.
As the long summer days turn to autumn (or fall!), the temperature is at a comfortable 30 degrees C, hotter than your average day back in Blighty. We thought that due to there being no cloud in the sky, and us being the avid cyclists we are, well, apart from Jake, Dan, Chris, George...and myself, we decided to go for a bike ride.
Kitted out with very vintage English bicycles (mine was from the early 1950's) we set off with water, no food, and less of a plan. Let's face it, cycling doesn't come naturally to everyone. Jake's trousers falling down and Chris having a stupendous crash into someone's front garden are all evidence of this. Pretty soon George and myself got fed up with the others crashing into things and taking ages to get anyway so we caned it out of sight. Me on 'Old Clanker' and George on a one-speed bike. Up hills. Quite a few.


It was fantastic to be cycling through Tennessee with the wind in our hair and the sun driving us along and burning all the sweat and bad stuff away. We cycled through intersections, faster and faster, down Granny White Pike, and slowed down to climb a hill with a sign "You are now entering Forest Hills City Limits". Looking behind me I couldn't see the rest of the band for miles, only George and his bike with a gear missing, pounding up the hill.
By this time I needed refuelling and we came across a remote gas station with children playing on the porch, and parents in wooden rocking chairs smiling at them and narrowing their eyes at these two perspiring visitors with battered bicycles in the middle of nowhere. George and I decided that one of the others had either had a heart attack going up one of the hills, or they'd turned at one of the intersections after losing us, and were now ambling through the mid-west, destined to grow old and sprout long beards that tangle in the spokes of their creaking bikes. Passers by would say "there go the wandering Englishmen on their pedals, they sure never did find the way home..."

We returned to the studio after our excursion to Forest Hills and, expecting the others to be back already, were faced with a locked studio, and barbed wire topped gate. That hadn't been part of the plan. Little did we know that Jake, Chris and Dan, with Mike the tour manager had cycled back to a huge guitar shop and were giving the guitars and the girls the eye.
Not to be outdone, I recalled Brad, our producer, giving us directions to his house nearby, and for once in my life, I had actually taken in something that someone said to me. Off we went, and sure enough I'd listened correctly and soon we were sitting in his kitchen eating freshly baked cinnamon rolls courtesy of his wife. We listened to her educating us about the lives of solitary bees in the wild west, and told her the reasons why South London is better than North London. Solitary bees don't make honey, and taxis, and tourists still don't go south of the river...

After being reunited with the gang, we headed to Tennessee State Fair, up on an old site overlooking the city and the legendary Fairgrounds Speedway, one of the oldest stock car racetracks in America. The TN state fair bore much resemblance to a large European funfair, as far as the rides were concerned. The strange thing was the lack of music, most of the atmosphere came purely from people screaming, laughing and kids crying because they let their balloon go or dropped their ice cream. The State Fair didn't stop at rides though, it had animals, (llamas, camels, cows, sheep, goats, hens, rabbits, ducks, alpacas) exhibition halls of green energy, a stage with the time-honoured country singer leading the crowd in a version of "Stand by your man", and a shed with hundreds of sheep and their owner, a woman who looked blind as a bat spinning wool into yarn, telling three entranced children that "my lawnmower makes all this wool, I bet your lawnmower can't make wool, it probably just makes noise! Mine makes wool and fertiliser..."
Come to think of it I've never seen a bat spinning yarn.

Freewheeling down the hill away from the neon lights of the fair, we got back to the studio and a car screeched up with half the band in, who appeared to have kidnapped a gorgeous country singer named Maggie and driven off with her. The car was definitely not big enough for all of us, and sitting with my head out of the window, willed the police not to pull up at the lights adjacent to us. The doors exploded open like a car in the ring at the circus and everyone piled out like bedraggled clowns who suddenly didn't know where they were but were intent on having a ball.

Have a ball we did, in a vibrant art gallery turned music venue Ovvio Arte (www.ovvioarte.com) we discovered a group of musicians who had just returned from playing in Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania and the rest of Europe by the sounds of it, this felt like their homecoming show and I couldn't resist adding my cossack dancing to the jumping crowd. They are called Petrojvic Blasting Company, four guys, sometimes five, playing accordion, trumpet, trombone, helicon and other assorted instruments. We offered them a show in London and invited them to our studio to have a party. Maybe we'll end up in Albania at the same time in the future. Check them out, and if they're playing near you go and watch! http://www.theblastingcompany.com

Not bad for a day off.
What's happening in England, cold yet?
Keep in touch,

Nashville part one

After a ten hour flight to Charlotte, North Carolina from London, I realised that we were in America. Strangers looked me in the eye and asked how I was. Strangely, even though it was a connecting flight to Nashville, we had to collect our hold luggage and re-do the whole malarky of checking it in AGAIN to put on another plane. Because I'm a pain, I brought four things onto the plane when most sane people only have two. Two of these were my trusty accordion, which wheezes with tired enthusiasm every time I put it back together after another spot of running maintenance, and my trombone which is too good lookin' to leave in the UK.
Unfortunately my trombone had to surface from being in the hold and then go back down into the murky depths of another plane, but it had to be taken to a special 'valet' for that to happen. So while the friendly US Border control grilled Mr Drums and Mr Bass until they're crusty, I decided it was a good idea to wander off on my own and check in the trombone.
We only had an hour and a half between flights, and with twenty minutes to go before take off, I was getting slightly worried that I was still the only member of Tankus the Henge at the gate, and no amount of friendly Americans was putting my mind at ease. In fact I think they were probably stressing me out just a bit. Charlotte airport to Nashville is still too far to walk. I thought it was best if I did get on the plane anyway, but at the last minute, hats and instruments came lolloping up the corridor, and after querying the flight hostess (a man, I think) about some liquid showering out of the fuel tank, a big man with a beard and brylcream came to cable-tie the plane back together and push the dripstick back into the fuel tank (yes... honestly!) and the leak stopped. After that, off we went, and here we are, in Nashville, Tennessee.
It's a lovely day!

Cafe du Boulevard

A couple of hours ago I broke my bed. It's annoying when it's your own bed but when it's someone elses it's just plain awkward. Still, they'll find out in the morning as I'm sleeping on the floor so the friendly spiders and snakes that roam around can get a good look at me. I think tonight I'll sleep with my hat on incase the abominations Olivia imaginatively named "matrix bugs" which are really just harmless house centipedes decide to nest in my unkempt mop of hair.
Today was mainly centered around soldering and food, having consumed far too much silver solder and carefully fixed the piano with jam and warm croissants. Our life in France has so far borne a few new songs which we're testing out at relatively small but wild shows to an enthusiastic largely ex-pat audience who either heard about our antics from previous years or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but failed to find the exit quick enough, and a growing number of french ladies and gentlemen whom we really don't have the skills to speak to. So after tonights show (Cafe du Boulevard, Melle) instead we make do with following wild-eyed Nico on his scooter, with an outstretched leg for left/right indications, and Alice and Jennifer in their car, to a house full of instruments which looks like it's still being converted from a wonderful old barn. The night proceeds to climb unsteadily up a higher and higher hill into some clouds, where we momentarily lose our way, but no matter, Titus and Tatine arrive and he with his eyes shut head back soul gripping drumming, and her with her dancing, cowbell playing and pointing at me to play that accordion and that bass (I can't play the bass!) and we quickly gain momentum down the other side of the hill, crashing through anything in the way, language barriers, broken pianos and a cupboard full of cheese into the valley of "chaos at 4:19am" (I'm sure you've been there recently...) There was something written on their car but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I think it was something to do with the revolution...