coup de fil

The phone rang, a not too frequent occurrence around here. The time difference, something - even my own family can't seem to get the coordinates right to reach me except via email. But the same goes for bill collectors so that's a plus.

It was Annie, the pilates instructor.

"Saw you and Eric on bikes yesterday, riding into the village."

And I was off. As the words spilled out, the most boring mundanities tumbling into the receiver, I realized I hadn't spoken but a few sentences to anyone except Eric in weeks. The dam had burst, but the reservoir was full of recycled lines from an especially dull episode of The Archers. "Yes, we're trying to get fit. Bike riding, walking, weights and no bread or dessert. It's so hard!"

Too polite to interrupt, she let me ramble on. "They've been putting gravel down on the sidewalks out front - it's been a nightmare. When are they going to finish the roadworks around here?"

"And it's still so cold! But the other day there was a beautiful blue sky and some sunshine. All the flowers are starting to come in, so that's nice."

Silence.

"I mean, it's better than being sick - we've both had our fill of that this winter. And running out of fuel all the time."

Someone stop me, I thought. But I kept on. "Have you noticed the price of produce just keeps getting higher and higher? I spent four euros, that's right, four euros - on a barquette of strawberries yesterday."

She finally broke in to tell me she'd be starting up classes again. And that she had to go.

I hung up and opened the door to the studio. There was feedback, organs howling, tambourines shimmering, guitars and vocals careening around the room. Eric stood between the speakers, looking triumphant.

"Who was that?" he asked.

I just shuddered. Then climbed back into the time machine.

Stuck Inside Of Ma Ville

I'll admit I've been obsessed with the ash cloud. It doesn't help that we're now trapped in a small village in France with no working automobile - the car's in the shop for a new exhaust system and the ambulance's suspension is so shot it's undriveable.

Oh wait, we've got two ancient bicycles, so that's something.

At least we're not stuck in an airport in Europe or the UK, trying to get...anywhere. Or a train station in France, though they say that strike is ending, for now.

I feel in limbo - afraid to mail anything to the US, and figuring it's pointless to get my mail sent over to me right now even though I know there's a check in there that I could use. And then there's the matter of a package that should be winging its way to me right now - are you ready? my glasses, the ones I thought I'd lost forever back in America last summer. Found, resurrected! The tracking information says, ominously, that they left US soil on April 17. After that, it's blank.

Finishing the record is imperative now, so I guess it's for the best we don't have a car to go anywhere. And the files can be transmitted via the internet, to be turned into records to sell on tour. But is there a wire we could slip ourselves into to get to America next month, if it comes to it? I was even checking on the Queen Mary. It sails from Southampton on May 15, and takes six days to reach New York. We could be just like my grandma and grandpa when they left the old country. Funny, the website doesn't show a price.

Janette, our neighbor who drives the real ambulance, said there's another volcano set to blow that's going to flood Holland and Belgium.

Jacky, another neighbor, sipped his Pernod at 11 am in the local cafe and said why would anyone ever leave the Limousin? It's perfectly placed to be out of the way of everything.

Oh, good.

Today Piégut, Tomorrow The World

We're playing in a nearby tea shop tonight - the rise to glory follows shortly with a new album and tour dates (a few more to be added still):

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby

Sat May 8 Le Kennedy Angouleme FRANCE
Sun May 9 Marché aux disques Perigueux FRANCE

Wed June 2 Lovin' Cup Rochester, NY, USA
Fri June 4 Bowery Electric New York, NY, USA (w/McGinty & White)
Sun June 6 Sixth St House Concert Media, PA, USA
Tue June 8 The Saint Asbury Park, NJ, USA
Wed June 9 Black Cat Washington DC, USA
Thu June 10 Berkeley Cafe Raleigh, NC, USA
Fri June 11 Star Bar Atlanta, GA, USA
Tue June 15 Mohawk Austin, TX, USA
Wed June 16 Bryan St. Tavern Dallas, TX, USA (w/Salim Nourallah)
Fri June 18 Schuba's Chicago, IL, USA (early show)
Thu June 24 Majestic Cafe Detroit, MI, USA
Fri June 25 Thunderbird Cafe Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Sat June 26 Cafe Nine New Haven, CT, USA

Fri Aug 20 Rhythm Festival Bedford, UK
Fri Aug 27 Grub Cafe East Grinstead, UK

I'll get back to updating the blog soon, we're finishing up the album in between rocking with pastis and scones.

Side-Lying Series

I was laying on my side at Pilates class, trying to relax and concentrate at the same time. Only problem was the lady next to me. Well, not her, but her shirt. It was a black band t-shirt, and with her back to me I could read a list of UK tour dates: Corn Exchange, Cambridge; UEA, Norwich; Colston Hall, Bristol. Nice venues. What group, I wondered. I had to wait until she turned onto her other side.

Australian Pink Floyd

I quickly rotated so she wouldn't think I was staring at her chest. Now it was even harder to breathe. Knowing that such a thing as Australian Pink Floyd exists is hard enough. That this group had toured all the way across the world, being welcomed into big halls in Great Britain, really made me wonder. And on top of all that, that someone would actually buy a shirt to commemorate the occasion.

I thought of talking to her about it. Maybe she'd just grabbed the nearest clean shirt. Maybe it had come from a charity shop where, in the heat of the moment, she or her husband had thought they'd snagged a genuine Pink Floyd t-shirt? Maybe she was having a laugh, wearing it ironically, like someone might have worn an Osmonds t-shirt back in the days when everyone didn't proudly admit they secretly love everything awful.

Or maybe it had been the best night of her life, seeing Australian Pink Floyd.

Damn, now I kind of want to see them.

DJ

I was looking for a picture of Duane Jarvis, who died one year ago today. This is the only one I could find on my computer - I'm not sure who took it but I cropped it from a larger picture taken at the Bluebird in Nashville.

Please, please resist the urge to say something along the lines of "hmm - there's Townes Van Zandt looking over DJ's shoulder - I bet the two of them are having some laughs up there in heaven now, jamming together and making beautiful music." I can't stand that hokey idea of a great big music free for all in the sky.

But, thinking about Duane today, I can read something appropriate into the songwriter's songwriter gazing out as DJ bows his head and plays. Duane was a sweet and humble guy, and the same kind of musician - never wanting to get in the way, just underpinning, grooving along, being quietly supportive. I look at this picture and remember.

Hope Springs Eternal

I don't even know where to start to update this thing - all I know is I can't stand the sight of my last post at the top of the page any longer.

We're holed up with our friends Peter, Karen and Daisy in the Norfolk countryside. Like Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow - we're battered, bruised, wounded. Not quite able to face the long drive south.

Ireland was cold. So cold that Eric burned his leg on a space heater, and was then too cold to notice how bad the burn was. He got food poisoning and laryngitis, I had all other manner of complaints. The ambulance, filled with a host of medications, was feeling like its old self again.

Ireland was depressing. Stuck in winter mode. There were unfinished apartment complexes and shopping malls everywhere. All the people in the service jobs are now Polish. Before we left, I'd had some great conversations with Irish journalists - that was almost the only talking with actual Irish people I did. For all the publicity we had, you'd think me and Eric playing was some kind of event - but articles, radio interviews and a TV appearance are not enough. The shows were really badly attended, the promoter so maudlin we ended up consoling him.

The people who did come told us they loved the show. We had some laughs and stayed in a nice hotel in Cork, after rejecting the cold water fleabag they initially sent us to - "But Pete Doherty stayed here!" shouted the desk clerk. When we caught the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer, I found myself writing down the phone number of the entertainment company that booked the onboard entertainment - a woman in her 60s who sang Patsy Cline and a man that whipped the Mother's Day crowd into a frenzy with "Danny Boy". At least you've got a built-in audience on the ferry. As an alternative to playing in a mostly empty club in Cork on a Thursday night, how bad could it be?

Should I be telling you this? I could just as well say we triumphed, that the shows sold out, and the Irish crowds carried us around the towns on their shoulders. Who's going to check? Or I could talk about the food (pizza) or the wonderful friends of Eric's that we stayed with, who train horses and who really made the visit for me.

We stopped off to visit our pal Lindsay Hutton in Scotland. Always relaxing staying with Lindsay. We sat back and waited for him to cue up a nice film for us. Along with a great Cramps collection he had a Fleshtones documentary - I'd just had a great time seeing them in Bergerac before leaving on the tour. In the movie they talked about how hard it was to keep going, playing for small crowds. "Wait a minute," I thought. "In Bergerac, there were probably two hundred people in the audience. At the rate we're going, we'll be lucky to play for that many people on the whole tour." We begged Lindsay to put on a cheerier film, like "Atonement" or "City of God" or something.

Things picked up in England - we started slow in Bristol and Portsmouth but Brighton was full and fun. Birmingham in the Garden Centre was a little odd but there was a line of people waiting in the rain to get in. A Black Country pub gig on Saturday night made Basingstoke last year look like a tea dance - our host Chris and his band were so warm I hardly noticed the drunk people shouting abuse and throwing things at us. I enjoyed playing simply because it was so bizarre and because it mattered to Chris. In the film version, we would've brought the audience around, to where they became hushed and reverent during Don't Ever Change and started swaying and singing Whole Wide World, arms aloft. A few actually did. But mostly they carried on drinking and simulating sex on the pool table.

Ten years ago I'd probably be looking online for haircutting classes or law school applications. But it starts to sink in that I may be too old to start over doing stuff like that. There is that Stena Lines ferry number to try. They take over-50's.

But. We played the first four tracks of our new album for Karen and she loved it - I started getting that hopeful excitement again, that same feeling that keeps me going. Hope or foolishness, or both. We've got a US tour coming together pretty well for June. Some English dates in August. The Garden Centre said they can fit us in again for October. And if we got the Stena ferry job, well we'd end up in Belfast anyway, so...

Exposé

You remember I wrote about our useless experience at the Pole Emploi (French employment agency) the other day? And Eric described it in more detail than I had the stomach for.

It was all under the guise of trying to find out how we can work as musicians here. Now I can reveal, we were actually doing undercover work.

Everything came out in the newspaper yesterday when Le Populaire revealed that employees of the Pole Emploi are badly trained and unable to handle the number of confused people they have to deal with every day. They lack anything but the most basic ability to log people into the system. Some of them have even gone on strike to call attention to the situation.

Just call us the unemployed man's Monsieur Woodward and Madame Bernstein.