Kíla U.S. Fall Tour 2024-Part 2

Continuing on from last post......

Day 6 Ex-pats

We cleaned up the beautiful beach-house and set off for 6 hours across the border to London Ontario, Canada. We found a Sushi place with some interesting things on the menus. Tom and Colm doing a great job driving, Rossa keeping us on track with the tour he designed, and James with the high quality Social Media posts. Good team work going on.

There was a workshop/session arranged in the London Irish Centre that night. That’s a curiously named mixed identity venue right there, a bit like a Chinese restaurant serving burgers. And sure enough we were welcomed at the gate by both British and Irish flags. It’s strange meeting ‘ex pats’ at times… there is a tinge of sadness around some of their eyes, as they sigh up their stories of escaping the Troubles, some family despot, or perhaps a person of authority abusing their trust.

It was a great session with local guest musicians who helped to fill the slow air of a long plain, rectangle function room with warmth and colour. Just an old fashioned acoustic session with tunes and songs and stories. Lovely. The hosts were incredibly kind and welcoming to us.

Day 7 Photo shoot and fall out

Hard to hear about the lack of sleep for my partner at home and the sudden hospital visit for my 10yr old stepdaughter who sustained a knee injury after a Kamakasi jump off a couch at a party. I felt a bit helpless and a bit guilty that things in contrast were going well for us on the road….until …

Drama!

It’s inevitable when 8 people travel together, eat together, work together, sleep together, go to the toilet together for a spell of many days that things will get tense eventually and someone will get their nose out of joint. There are all sorts of subtle triggers (that I mostly don’t understand) going way back. There is also gallons of alcoholic drinks taken over the many days and nights and the nervous system will hit its own emergency switch at times.

There was a flare up after the gig. A heated battle. But that’s not what matters . The interesting aspect is the aftermath. One band member , the most vexed shall we say, went for a walk to reset his compass, to go back through the life maps maybe. Check the coordinates, metaphorically speaking. He didn’t outwardly manage that and went in a 90 degree angle away from our hub, our beds for the night.

While we were looking for him, I decided, in a moment of claustrophobia (and selfishness), to get out of the van and walk across the bridge I thought was the bridge to the road we were staying in. In the dark, bridges can look alike.

I took the wrong bridge as it turned out , but weirdly he also took the wrong bridge out of the city on the long walk from the venue and there we were, both lost, with no signal, walking at a 90 degree angle from the rest of the band.

I can’t but help feel that my instinct was to get lost in order to find him. And maybe him me. In tuneness? Telepathyisation? E.T., phone van? Whatever. We got there.

But this country! There seems to be a real issue with 'navigation'. Something the Native Americans have tells them what’s happened and what’s about to happen when they are so tuned into their environment. “Their God is nature, their Church outdoors”. He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral! (Charles A Eastman).

Most people of the North American continent are now moving further and further away from that deep understanding of nature, and the ability to use intuition to guide themselves. Outside of the cities, no one walks. ‘Drive through’ coffees, strip malls, road stops, all catered for the motor vehicle. Gasping for some fresh aircon. Huge Jeeps like Army vehicles, one latest model sporting bullet proof windows, electrified door handles, and pepper spray built into the wing mirrors in case you get attacked in a Walgreen’s car park or in case one of those losers tries to wash your windscreens at the traffic lights. 'Nuke em! Hell yeah'! Acting like they are in a video game.

We met a great person in Ontario. Humble, bumbling, kind, talented, and was willing to bring his, as a contrast, beautiful old 1968 Buick Wildcat. Open top. Open person.

He is a music photographer and agreed to do a Kíla band photo shoot around the laneways near London Music Hall, Ontario. He also worked as a P.I. and a bodyguard in his time. Thank you Dave for being yet another generous person helping us to have a memorable trip.

Day 8/9 Border patrol .

We all like to patrol our borders. Control the migration of rebellious visitors. Some of us are porous and naive, allowing despots push through the papery entrance. Others have the high electronic fences , barbed wire and bullet proof vests and there’s no way of getting in.

After checking our papers, the famously obstructive US immigration let us back in the US (they miraculously mustn't have heard about the bass solo!). We travelled on to the Muskegon Irish Festivals , where we are promised that leprechauns are banished (as requested). It’s a 3 day festival on the lake, with a US navy ship beside us and mass on the Sunday morning onsite. How very American. The United Juxtapositions of America! Of course most Americans wouldn’t think that there is a contradiction there.

We played 2 well received shows at the festival and got some great ideas for future touring there .

-Do very short tours so you give your best energy and

-Be your own agent and avoid the many sharks out there or those who take 12.5% of your fee.

Not that the loved ones at home making huge sacrifice will be too pleased to hear that. For every swim we have in the hotel pool, for every free hot meal made for us, for every inspiring musician we meet and hear, for every fascinating conversation there is, for all the ‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim’ and craic had; someone is at home, making lunches, changing nappies, tempering tantrums, lifting toddlers and their woes in and out of cars, washing slippery children, and putting plasters on growing pains. Like my partner. Thoroughly selfless.

Going to bed after the first sweaty gig , I tried to call my 23 year old son back in Ireland to wish him a happy birthday … no luck … probably out with friends . Then I tried my youngest son , over in Melbourne, 20 years of age and creating a new life valiantly . No luck. Havent talked to him for months. No idea what’s going on in his life.

I’m feeling dislocated now, out of touch from family, despite being in this amazing crazy touring family. My first low feeling of the tour has arrived, ironically after a day of fantastic cheer and music celebration. But your subconscious needs go deeper and coldly tap you on the shoulder once in a while.

I dreamt I couldn’t find my phone in some lonely foreign land. Who gives a fuck about a lost phone you say? Yet it seemed to contain my ability to , indeed my only chance of being able to, contact any or all my loved ones. Something sinister was lurking in the shadows too. And something noisy rolled through my room at times like an old world war tank. The air vents in my room intermittently channeling the bad kitchen air while I tossed and turned. That’s it ..my room had been infiltrated and something toxic seeped into my dreams.

Day 10 ( I think) Sunny Side up ☀️

Feeling a lot brighter this morning. We went to IHOP for breakfast before the big drive to our Chicago gig. They even had a 55+ menu !

We arrived to the Irish Heritage Centre in Chicago, formerly a giant catholic school, baked in heat and creaking under the weight of its own history. I met my old friend, a manager of great artists and label owner in the States and we chatted about a mutual old friend and foe, who won’t commit to one side or the other, and who hurts and is hurting all the while. Generous and wasteful to equal degrees, this person we talked about detests money but craves acceptance, no, more than that, craves a God-like status. Flying back and forth across the oceans of his talent, he is always caught between worlds, and pathologically plasters the walls of his past.

The band were too fucked tired to do this afternoon gig but after crawling through soundcheck, we ate the exceptional home cooked food brought up to us. We pulled at the roast chicken like quiet savages in the different corners, pouring in the rich tomato sauce to comfort our digestive system because we’ve been mostly feeding off what seemed like buckets of heavy immovable stodgy gack this last week or so. When the 'number 2’s' do eventually arrive, they will be prize winners!

Like a good football team, we tweaked our game plan to outmanoeuvre the opponent, while retaining the integrity of our style. We played with restraint. As Ro perceptively said to the audience, it’s nice to be accepted back to a school, a place where we were all such rebels in our youth. A tour of schools, wouldn’t that be an ironic idea for a group of vagabonds and miscreants from the other side of trustworthiness?

Overall, we got a warm reception on a hot day celebrated with some cold Guinness from the taps of these proud ex pats. I played a C&C drum set and it was a most peculiar experience . My friend the music manager lent it to me and it had just been played by the avant garde and free spirited drummer Jim White. Inspiring, you’d think, but it’s a kit with strange tones and confusing textures I find. I craved my recently acquired ‘68 Ludwig kit, seeing as I was the only person on tour without their owned instrument.

But the funniest scene of the tour was Seanan getting a fake arrest scene with a visiting police chief in the car park after the gig, getting hand cuffed and pushed into the back of his squad car forcefully! Absolutely hilarious. ( better not show the video in case it goes viral!)

Day 11 Homeward Bound

Another hot day in Chicago and time to reflect on a really good tour. Many things to improve also. A few of us went to Ohio Street Beach at lunchtime and immersed ourselves into the warm lake under the shadows of the skyscrapers that occasionally interrupted the glare of the stinging sunshine. We floated around with an extra layer of fat and I felt a sort of re birth and a new calm inspired not by anything religious necessarily, but by a mysterious spiritual lift and a reminder that my church is also all outdoors.

Time to go home. Off we drove to the airport in good cheer. No Mexican revellers blocking up the roads this time. We were free on the highway. It was 6pm. I went into Frank Zappa philosophy mode ( time goes up and down as well as forward) and asked someone… how come when we get home to Ireland , my partner will have waited 12 hours to see me, whereas it’ll take me 18 hours to see her. I knew the answer and yet it mystified me.

*****

And to answer my stepdaughter’s question 11 nights ago … yes I am lucky to get to go to America. Extremely lucky. Despite misgivings about some of their food, their automobiles, their politics, their penchant for militaristic ways, it is a musically inspiring and endlessly fascinating place and its people's inherent kindness overall is the thing that represents them so well. I wondered whether I'd ever go back to America but I'm glad I gave it a second chance.

The End