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Europe Tour: Istanbul

blogowitz — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:59:19 +0000

Istanbul was the final leg of my 5-week European tour with the Heathens in July 2009. We played several shows at clubs (Jazz Stop, DogzStar, Limon) in the Taksim neighborhood of Istanbul, which contained a dizzying maze of side streets, cafes, and bars. It was a neighborhood that never seemed to sleep. Here’s a few shots:

Europe Tour: Paris

blogowitz — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:41:43 +0000

During a European tour with Oakland’s Damon & the Heathens this past July, we played a few gigs in small, underground clubs in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris.

Crowds were small, but enthusiastic. Here’s a few images from our show at Le Zorba with the Paris noise band Casanova Frankenstein:

On Tour: The Joy of Clean Socks

blogowitz — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:29:44 +0000

I recently returned from a five-week tour with Damon & the Heathens, a six-piece punk-soul band from Oakland, California. It was a chaotic, disorganized, wonderful, amazing trip.

I didn’t find the time to write much of anything during the tour, except for pages of messy, scribbled notes in a notebook I carried around in my back pocket. Hopefully some of those notes will eventually lend themselves to something resembling coherent stories, either on this blog or in other outlets.

One thing that must not be underestimated, when six 30-something men travel Europe for five and a half weeks playing music: the power of clean socks. Never have I seen grumpy, grouchy, crochety men (including myself) transformed in mind and spirit so quickly than by taking off dirty, grimy, ripped socks, and grabbing a fresh pair.

Unfortunately, socks are incredibly easy to misplace or lose when traveling, so their transformative power is often trumped by the inability to actually hold onto things.