Black Jake & The Carnies

AND WE’RE BACK!!!  This day (Saturday), our favorite housemate / soundguy / driver Stijn was taking us to our one gig in Germany. It was way in the middle of Germany in a little town near Frankfurt named Reichelsheim. The plan for us was to play, stay there overnight, and go straight to our next gig in Belgium the following day.  Sounds like a great plan for those with the foresight to bring extra contacts, or glasses, or contact solution, or perhaps some toiletries of any kind.  I was not one of those people.

Germany was great.  The land of maybe 1/4 of my forebears was beautiful — great swelling hills clothed in dark fur trees, with picturesque little villages nestled in their ample cleavage, rock-hard castles standing strong on the peaks, and huge golden fields of fragrant flowers making the whole country smell like RAPE!!! Rape is the name of the flower  — you make vegetable oil and stuff out of it.  I don’t know where your mind is, but I assure you it was quite lovely.

We got there after a long, hot drive (they don’t believe in AC in Europe), and were treated to the usual free beer by the bartenders.  We met Heinrich of Heinrich XIII and the Devilgrass Pickers, who was to be our host that night.  One of the bartenders spoke perfect American-accented English — turns out he lived in North Carolina for a while.  This was also the first place where I could get a proper cup of coffee — giant-sized.  They served us a tasty Schnitzel with fries, and while dining, in walked a couple of our neighbors to the north — Dan Hektic, and Lilly from Montreal, Canada (some of whose photos we stole for this blog entry).  We immediately made room for our fellow North Americans, and we all shot the fragrant Rapey breeze until it was show time.

Heinrich XIII and the Devilgrass Pickers went on first, again in front of the stars and bars.  They have a show every month called “Rebel meets Bembel” where they play with a touring alt/oulaw/whathaveyou country act from America.  Before we left for Europe, we babelfished “Bembel,” and it came out “Bembel,” so none of us knew what the hell a Bembel was.  Well, we asked, and a Bembel is an earthenware jug or pitcher of sorts that holds beer.  So it was their version of a moonshine jug, as I understand it.  They had one on stage with whiskey in it.   They’re also in a death metal band called Escalationunit Chaos Engine. They reminded me a lot of the small town death metal guys I grew up with, personality-wise.  I liked them — they’re great musicians, and Heinrich has a great voice, no doubt due to the tender ministrations of Dr. Pot, which I will get to later.  Then, it was our turn.

My voice was worse than ever, unfortunately.  The upside was that with the outlaw country crowd, that can be a plus (I kept thinking back to when we played with Joe Buck in Detroit, and how shot his voice was at the time, which I found encouraging).  We were also going to unleash some proper Carniedom by chucking streamers and plastic balls (that I bought in Brussels for the insane price of 6 Euros.  6 FREAKING EUROS?!?), and play the Jumpin’ Joe game.  First thing I did was get the Germans stomping because I noticed there wasn’t any of that going on for Heinrich XIII, and there should have been.  That broke the ice. Then, the streamers, then some Bembel drinking, then some Misfits covers, then the Jumpin’ Joe game.  They got into it, and the crowd really cut loose for us.  Best crowd of the tour, in my opinion.  The place was full and they were dancing from way in the back to up in the front.  By the end I was just chucking balls at them randomly because we didn’t have the Baba Yaga game with us — but really the Baba Yaga game is just an excuse to chuck balls, who’m I kidding.  Joe jumped off the stage, and a friendly pink-haired girl started putting balls down his shirt.  Heinrich and everybody joined us up on stage for Swing Low, and it was a great sweaty, happy mess.

We got down all sweaty and happy and sold a TON of merch… or at least we WOULD HAVE had we not depleted our store of mediums.  Everybody in Europe wanted mediums.  Nobody in the U.S. wears mediums.  Nobody.  We were also mostly out of larges, too, so that sucked.  Luckily, though, they wanted hoodies; in Belgium we were told that nobody wanted hoodies because only criminals wear them, so we hadn’t sold any yet.  Thank God for Germans!  So we still sold a lot of merch anyway.  They make it a point to support the touring bands by buying their wares.  Great people.

At one point, the friendly pink-haired girl named Becks leaned over the merch table and confided into my ear, cheek to cheek,  in conspiratorial tones the following conversation:

Becks — Are you staying at Heinrich’s tonight?  What time are you leave tomorrow?

Jake — I think about one-ish; we have to make it back by our next show in Belgium tomorrow.

Becks — It is too bad you are not staying longer, most bands stay longer, and they use me.  I am…. professional.

Jake — uh…?

Becks — My English… is not good right now… All the bands use me, and they pay me…

Jake — Well, that’s very sweet of you to offer, but, uh, we’ve got to go bright and early!

Becks — I am very good, I cost 600 Euros… [her husband comes up behind her and starts humping her at this point]

Jake — [600 FREAKING EUROS?!?] Uh, well, that’s very nice, but we won’t be needing any…

Becks — Let me show you my card… oh, my husband has it, let me show you picture… [she pulls out her Blackberry or whatever and starts showing me really good pictures of other bands and her kids and stuff.  All the picture looked really good, like they were done by a professional].

Jake — Oh, a professional PHOTOGRAPHER!!! [600 FREAKING EUROS?!?]

Becks Van Hammer -- professional photographer, and good sport.

I don’t know where your mind is, but I assure you it was quite lovely.  Still, we had to decline due to time restraints and economic concerns.  We hung out and talked and cleaned up for forever.  Heinrich got his guitar out in the bar area, and we all sang “Skulls” by the Misfits.  I think we have a video of it somewhere.

Eventually we drove back to Heinrich’s house in Wölfersheim.  He showed us our basement sleeping quarters in their practice room, and we hung out with them watching really freaking loud youtube videos while they made us sausages on a little electric grill.  They also offered us free beer and moonshine.  Heinrich, Sascha, I think Sebastian, Beam, Stijn, and our new Canadian friends were there (the latter would be staying the night in their European-touring van).  I realized that I didn’t have any contact solution or new contacts or anything for tomorrow, so I got two shot glasses and put bottled water in them for my contacts.  Close enough.

We had a really good time with those guys — they’re very cool people.  Very hospitable.  The videos started off with a bunch of inspiring old-timey guys playing banjo and clogging and whatnot, then they showed us some videos they made for their death metal band and for Bob Wayne (as an aside, we feel like we’re obligated to compete with Bob Wayne a little because he has the Outlaw Carnies, and we just have the regular Carnies.  But Heinrich says he’s a really great guy, so any friend of Heinrich’s is a friend of ours.  We look forward to meeting him at Muddy Roots and to have a Carnie tug-of-war or something to settle it once and for all.  I kid, I kid!  But our first show was in 2002, for the record, and I thought up the name in 1999.  On the other hand, he’s way more popular than us, so… I guess we lose); but by the time we got to the animated LEGO snuff/rape (not the flower this time!) film, things started to get a little German weird.  Next up was a video of them branding themselves and all their friends with a branding iron, screaming like mad for the sake of the video.  Then they did a 15 minute ultra-loud death metal summation of Star Wars, A New Hope, with Heinrich translating the death metal screaming line by line for Billy.  Gus was in the corner by the speakers with his fingers in his ears, and I was laughing so hard at this point that I was crying.  Those sausages really hit the spot, too.

Dr. Pot.

I think we stayed up till like 5 am watching videos, then hit the sack, only to awaken about 20 minutes prior to departure.  My contacts were really tight, and hurt when I put them in for some strange reason.  You know, one thing about Europe is that they have weird toilets.  The toilets in Heinrich’s house had a little platform towards the back, allowing the former-sausages/schnitzel to stay high and dry for your admiration before flushing.  I don’t want to know what’s up with that.  Instead of taking the shower I should have taken, I spent a little time with Heinrich’s world-famous Dr. Pot.  Dr. Pot is a boiling pot of Chamomile tea with three drops of mint oil in it on a hot plate.  Basically you hold your head over it, put a towel over your head, and breathe in the steam until your face turns gray and slides off your skull.  It’s supposed to help your voice, and he swears by it.  I admit that after I got back home in Ypsi, I was doing it for a while to heal my demolished vocal chords, and I think it helped, but you’re supposed to do it as a regular maintenance thing so it doesn’t get that bad in the first place. He has all the visiting musicians do it while he takes a picture.

Beam. Like Jim Beam.

We loaded our stuff in the van for the long journey home-ish, traded a bunch of merch (sorry, no mediums or larges), and took a nice group photo.  I really like those guys.  I hope we get to go back to Germany to do another Rebel meets Bembel, but in the meantime, Heinrich XIII and the Devilgrass pickers will be playing with us on August 31st at the Circus Bar in Ann Arbor, working their way down to Muddy Roots!  We can’t wait.  We’re already trying to figure out what kind of slices of America to show them; hopefully the Chelsea Fair or something will be going on, or Gus can give them one of his Detroit tours.  We wonder if the Confederate flag thing will bite them in the ass in Ann Arbor, which is about as politically-correct of a yankee town as you can get.  I hope they put it up anyway, though, to stimulate further passionate discussions of the root causes of the American Civil War, but that’s just me.  Or maybe no one will care.  Come to the Circus Bar on August 31st and find out!

So we squeezed into the hot B.O. sardine can van, left Germany, and headed down to our very last show of our first European tour — Ace Cafe in Rumst, Belgium.

I think it was a Friday at this point.  It’s hard to tell when your days consist of staying up till 5 or 6 am, sleeping till noon, trying to find something to do/eat for six hours (which may or may not include SHOWERING),  leaving for a gig, driving for a while, hanging out at the gig waiting for it to start, playing, eating, hanging out a while longer, driving back, and staying up till 5 or 6 am.  But, yes — Friday.

Secret Air Force base.

Luckily on this fine sunny Friday we had our noon-to-gig time block cut out for us.  My and Gus’s old highschool pal (and former drummer of Elmo & the Fiends for you lovers of obscure crappy bands) Karsten drove in from his top secret Airforce base in Germany to pay us a visit.  We hung out with him for a while, and he may or may not have divulged top secret military intel for us.  I have no such knowledge of any such leakery; furthermore, if I did know, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say what Karsten said or didn’t say, even if such a person actually existed.  (I’m just kidding, Airforce people, he didn’t say anything — please don’t shoot Karsten).

(That reminds me — during the break of our Cafe Merlo gig in Brussels we met a couple people from the U.S. military base that wanted to hook us up to do a U.S. base tour, which I think would be pretty sweet.  And they were from Saginaw!)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Zach (regretting nothing) made us more bacon; then Mark, Jesse, and Joe went with Karsten back to Cafe Tielemans in Boekel (Netherlands) to retrieve the stuff we’d left there the week before: Jesse’s gig bag (containing his D.I. box and cable), and my Jumpin’ Joe ball game velcro jacket.  We’d be playing at the Muziekcafe in Helmond (which is also in the Netherlands) that night which was pretty close to Boekel, so they’d just meet us there.

Gert was supposed to drive us that night, but he sent Robin in his stead.  One wonders how much stimulating Carnie conversation one Gert can take…  exactly one night’s worth, that’s how much!  Robin was a cool guy though, so no problemo.  We got there and a Dominoes Pizza delivery guy got his scooter backed into by a truck in front of him.  No one was hurt, so that was briefly amusing.  Muziekcafe was a pretty good venue as far as space and stage goes.  It was a proper rock club.  They had a fog machine, and a fan on stage.  There was a nice looking hippy bartendress, and they had a big mural on the wall featuring Ypsi/Ann Arbor’s own cultural (I don’t have a better word for it, so I’m just gonna bust this out) plenipotentiary — Iggy Pop.

The owner of the bar looked like Hulk Hogan, and he was solid as a rock.  He said Helmond had a drug and crime problem, so we breathed a sigh of relief that maybe we’d get a good rowdy American-type crowd there.  Unfortunately, people were coming in in a trickle, and the sidewalks were beginning to roll up, so they decided to start the gig about an hour later than scheduled.  I drew the Carnie logo in the greenroom, and we all went for a walk to the castle.  I knocked, no one was home.  We walked for a little while longer, but nothing was going on at all, so we walked back.  We ate some pizza outside.

We finally went on and played one big long set.  This was the first place in Europe that we busted out the Ping Pong Joe game (having finally recovered the velcro jacket), though if memory serves it was somewhat difficult to get volunteers.  I hear that they don’t really have the type of fairs/amusement parks in Europe that we have in America, with rides and games and all that.  This explains why not many people knew what the word “Carnie” means.  Regardless, it went pretty well, and we got people to dance. They were pretty shy about coming right up to the stage, so once again I had to take my mic stand and go down there to get them.  If you won’t come up here, I’m going down there!  It worked out and we all had some fun, and after we were done, the Top 40 music came on, so the Dutch people’s fears disappeared, and they danced twice as much.  *rolls eyes*

Billy got locked in the greenroom for a while and tried to kick down the door before someone let him out.  Some strange Dutch women played his washboard.

Iggy Pop has full authority to act in Ypsilanti's stead without first conferring with Ypsilanti (culturally speaking)

We sold a little merch, but not much, and gave away a bunch of stickers.  Nobody came up and talked to me after the show.  NOBODY EVER COMES UP AND TALKS TO ME AFTER THE SHOW!  Everybody comes up and talks to the Carnies, but not me.  Am I that unlikable???  What do I have to do to make you love me, humans!!!  One day I’ll make you all PAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!

They had bottles of Bavaria in the fridge for us in the greenroom, so we took a bunch with us and took off home.  It was Zach’s last gig with us in Europe because he had to catch an early flight back to the States.  He tried really hard to find a way to play the Germany show with us the next day and still make the flight, but it just wasn’t possible.  That kinda sucked because it sounds thinner and feels more vulnerable up on stage without Zach, plus we wouldn’t have any more amazing Zach breakfasts, and we wouldn’t get hip to Zach’s fancy word-of-the-day, like “plenipotentiary.” But I’ve reason to believe he regretted nothing.

No one was home.

We hit the hay early(-er than normal) because we were to take off for Germany at noon-to-one-ish the next day with Stijn the man (AKA “Leroy Slim”).  I was really looking forward to stepping foot in the land of my German forebear, and playing with Heinrich XIII; and all of us were looking forward to playing to a new crowd.

We would not be disappointed!

Thursday morning (AKA afternoon), Zach made us a huge awesome breakfast of bacon, hashbrowns, and scrambled eggs. It was great. We washed it down with Duvel and sang “I Think We’re Alone Now,” and possibly “Angel of the Morning.” Evening saw us at a cool little place called Bacchus Cafe in Geel (Belgium). I remembered that the Cadillac Bombers had come back from Bacchus Cafe pretty stoked about how it went, so I had been really looking forward to this gig.

Gert

The other thing worth looking forward to was that our driver tonight would be none other than his Gertness — Gert. He was basically the Charlie to our Angels. We hadn’t met him yet, but he kept in touch via facebook, and his “love letters” which contained our take of the loot.

We finally met him, and drove over to Geel, with Billy talking his ear off the whole way.

The Carnies are all standing on a ledge, and Jake is not. No, really.

We got there and it was a pretty cool looking place — long and narrow, with a huge cd collection and all sorts of American stuff all over the place. The stage was really deep, and really hot — it was like if someone had smuggled us over the border in the back of a semi trailer, backed it up into the back of the bar, and dropped the door. Poor Billy was really stuck in the back forty back there. It was a very stompable stage, though, which is important.

We were treated to a fine meal at your typical Italian place run by an Chinese family in Belgium, and had some pizza (note: in Belgium, salami = pepperoni. If you order pepperoni, you will get bell peppers, which they also call paprika for some reason), and lasagna (note: in Belgium, lasagna is made soupy with one or fewer noodles, and is served literally boiling hot, accompanied by a giant spoon). It was really good, though, as always. Joe’s fam and Amanda joined us for dinner.

We played, and I had to disconnect my lights shortly after firing them up due to a ground issue which distorted the banjo sound pretty badly. Too bad. I decided to lean up against the wall behind the PA when I wasn’t singing in order to leave room for the other guys to come up — otherwise the only people anyone would see would be me and Zach up front. So that led to some fun stage dynamics… at least I hope it looked interesting. When Billy’s whistle solo came up in “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” we all hugged the walls to give him the spotlight.

The crowd was somewhat thinner than I’d expected, but they seemed pretty into it. It was Joe’s mom’s birthday, so we did the Happy Birthday ending to No Diamond Ring, which seemed a pleasant surprise for everyone. Unfortunately, my voice was really shot at this point and increasingly so for every gig thereafter. Imagine Froggy from the little rascals trying to sing our songs, and you’re not far off. That bothered me cause I really had to push it for every gig, and I felt like I was sucking as a singer, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

As an aside, I was also getting fatter on Belgian waffles and beer. My suit vest was turning into a little pin-striped sausage casing! That didn’t affect my playing any, but if you look at the photos of the final few gigs, you’ll see my vest is left increasingly unbuttoned for some strange reason. I think at this point it was just the bottom button.

We had two specific encore requests after the show for songs we had already played — Streams of Whiskey by the Pogues, and My Angel Marie by us. That was pretty cool. I ended up down on the dance floor singing with some folks, with various Carnies coming down or being freed up to utilize more of the stage.

We hung out for a while afterwords, and Gus chatted up some nice-looking broads before we were rushed out.

Overall, it was another good show. The owner Peter (Juiceman) was very cool and gave us all free t-shirts, and had me sign the wall upstairs. I should have drawn the logo on the wall like everybody else, but instead I signed some sort of appliance on the wall. It will no doubt need replacing eventually, forever wiping out any trace of Black Jake & the Carnies at Bacchus Cafe. …but maybe some future archaeologist will find our sticker right next to Bob Wayne’s sticker or something, and assume we were all the same Carnies, who knows.

Anyway, we went home. We asked Gert if he was going to have a few beers with us down the local pub, or if he was heading home, and he said he was heading home. So we grabbed our instruments out of the back of the van, put them (and Gus) in the house, and headed off to pub #1 ( Den Eik) which was closed. So, of course, we headed off to pub #2 (Cafe De Valk), which was open, and who do we find sitting at the bar but old Gert himself! WELL, WELL, WELL!!! Billy, Zach, and I got a separate table, but Joe and Jesse sat next to Gert at the bar and talked his ears off.

A couple people tried to get us to go to their house for a party, but only if we played for them. I was for it, hoping that something memorable might happen, but the other guys were against it.

The bar closed and we headed out in the direction of our home base, which also happened to be in the direction of the house party.

Thankfully, absolutely nothing happened the rest of the night that would make any future archaeologists remember that Black Jake and the Carnies were there at all.

Future archaeologist analyzing contents of Belgian vase.

The Honky Tonk Cafe in Brielle, Netherlands. What can I say about the Honky Tonk Cafe in Brielle, Netherlands? Well, let me just stick to the facts:

To get there we drove through the huge port of Rotterdam, and Brielle itself seemed to be an old port as it was surrounded by water and had canals running through it.

It was a pretty small sports bar, which in this town meant a small, cozy, smokey, 300 year old stone bar with one flat screen, and Elvis posters on the wall. The stage was a 5″ unstompable (we always check for stage stompability first) tile rise in one corner of the bar that people had to walk on to get to the other side of the bar. Before we left with our new driver/soundguy Peter, Stijn told us not to order a bunch of Duvels this time, and just stick to Heineken because they don’t have a large supply of Belgian beer.

You know what the Belgians say about Dutch beer? You drink a Belgian beer, then urinate in a green bottle, and you get Dutch beer. We’ve made a lot of friends in Holland, so I will make no commentary as to the veracity of this statement.

This bar didn’t provide a meal for us, so the guys went to get eats somewhere else, while I went back to the Honky Tonk to sit next to an old drunk English guy that was kind of being an ass. (They had had four minutes of silence at 8pm to commemorate the Dutch WWII dead, and this English guy was dropping f-bombs pretty loudly at the tail end of it, and demanding we play an Irish song for his friend (who is Irish), even after we played him an Irish song for sound check.) Well, I decided that if he were going to be sitting near us right up on the edge of the stage, I better get to know this guy before the show started. He ended up clamming up after I sat right down next to him, and eventually a taxi took him away.

Anyway, we had to play three 45 minute sets. The first set was competing with a soccer match which was playing on the big screen TV. Lame. A bunch of meatheads were literally flexing their muscles for each other, and I got the distinct impression that they were mocking us. But, like I said, I am a little paranoid, especially of people who are bigger than me and who outnumber me. They make me mad. So I stared them all down repeatedly during the first set, which might have been a little hostile of me, but whatever. I was smiling and everything, so don’t get the impression that I was being a total jerk. They looked away, so I won. Tough guys. The Carnies didn’t think they were mocking us, but bless their hearts, they’re totally blind to the fact that the world is out to get me. There was very little applause, and a lot of people weren’t even watching.

Second set was actually worse. The match was over, and they were even less interested in us than before. There was close to zero applause, and most people had their backs to us. I got the distinct impression that in their minds, if you ain’t Top 40, you ain’t much.

Third set we basically just gave up and started to have some fun. I mocked the audience a little by saying that the songs were by famous people, to see if they’d like it better; Joe and I did a wide-leg rock-and-roll stance competition; Gus unleashed the big hairy beast (his shirtless torso); and I discovered that if it was familiarity they were after, I’d give it to them. I kept getting them to say “YEE HAW!” as loud as they could, which was something they could understand, and we got them to yell out “HEY!” in rhythm for the breakdown in Boneman. I used these two tricks a few times in later shows because they really worked. No disrespect to the audience, but I’m a showman, and if you aren’t responding I’m going to go with what works. YEE HAW!!! I tried doing the Flintstones song as an encore, but that went a little too far. Everybody laughed, though, and I think we did “Do You Wanna Dance” instead, which went over pretty well.  I don’t know about the other guys, but I ordered a couple Duvels.

The funny thing is that we totally won them over. Now, it might be because it just takes longer for people to get loose on Heinekens than it does on Belgian beer, but I’d like to think that it was because of the persistent tenacity of Black Jake & the Carnies to rock those wooden Dutch socks off. By the end, everybody loved us (except for the bartender who seemed to want us to get out ASAP), and we made a bunch of new friends. One of them gave me a big kiss on the cheek for a photo (her Portuguese boyfriend is in the background — the Portuguese guys were both really cool too), so I was pretty pleased. It’s actually pretty rewarding to totally defrost a frozen crowd. We were pleased, they were pleased, and after we were done the Top 40 music came back on. All’s well.

(boyfriend in background)

Peter drove us home, and we discovered that passengers can legally drink in the van, so Joe no longer had to have the bartenders fill his water bottle with beer after the shows.