The Weekly... Volume LONDON, HELSINKI, TOKYO

(Yes, yes, the last installment has been a while coming, but here it is…. )

LONDON

Well folks I don’t know what it is exactly about London, but it certainly doesn’t ever seem to make too much of an effort to welcome me back. Without fail, every time I fly in there I am greeted by an impenetrable black cloud hovering overhead, usually spitting out something colder than rain but not quite as cold as snow. The type of weather which might normally lend itself to extended periods on the couch in front of the TV. (Or as the case may be in London, extended periods in the pub getting royally wasted – that seems to be a popular choice too). It’s not that I mind particularly, but it’s just an observation. Moving on….

I can’t really say there was a lot to be achieved second time round in London. It was more of a transit point for a few days. I did however play one show at a place called the Regal Room in Hammersmith (www.theregalroom.com). Great little venue, and a really nice crowd for a rainy Friday night – an unexpected surprise, and somewhere I’d like to stop at again in future. The show was actually webcast live, not that I knew that until I got there of course. Otherwise I might have made an effort to tell a few people. I wonder how many people were actually watching? My guess is you could probably count them all on 1 hand, but I did remember to say hello anyway. So “hello again” if you have found your way over to the blog post which is 2 months later….

Quite a lot of Aussies in the venue for the show, which was pretty cool – at least some of them seemed to understand my strange sense of humour, which was by this stage of the trip making very little sense whatsoever. I should mention another girl I played with, who was fantastic – Azadeh… Worth checking her out if you get a chance - http://www.myspace.com/azadehmusic . She was selling badges. I’m sure that was an extremely relevant piece of information for you.

I had one more day in London after the show, which included two unsuccessful attempts at busking. The first of these was at Kings Cross station on the underground, where I managed to play one song and make 2p before I was asked to leave. It turns out you need a licence and a booking to play on the underground, which seems to go against the whole concept of “busking” in the first place, but there you go.

My second effort to court the funds of the unsuspecting London public was at Covent Garden – a bit of a tourist hotspot and presumably a place I might have been able to make at least enough cash for a dodgy burger and a coke. Alas, I was halfway through my second song (having made a grand total of Zero/Zilch/Nada) when it began to rain, at which point I also noticed that the pickup in my guitar was buggered. So not only had I potentially made the worst return in history from two separate street performances, but I had also managed to damage the only thing that could generate me any income for the rest of the trip. Ah well, at least I still had time to get the thing repaired before departing for Helsinki…

London is a big town, and there is plenty going on, but it’s not my favourite city in the world. Millions are drawn to it year after year but if I was being honest, I have never really been able to find my peace there. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy catching up with a lot of good friends whenever I return, but I struggle to find any real connection to the place. It’s not because of the weather, and it’s not because of the shitty exchange rate. One day I’ll be able to explain it better with a song or two.

HELSINKI:

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Helsinki, but I was excited to be making my first foray into Scandinavia. I think I mentioned before that the cheapest ticket I could find from Australia was with Finnair, which meant I was allowed a free stopover in Helsinki. A “FREE” stopover. Mention the word “Free” anywhere near an independent musician, and you can bet your life that they’ll be pretty damn interested in what you’ve got to say. (Excepting of course if it involves giving their songs away to Britney Spears. Or worse – Paris Hilton. That would be hard to take….).

I had tentatively arranged a show on Sunday 7/9 at a place called “The Aussie Bar”. (I shit you not – Helsinki has an Aussie Bar). Why on earth there would be an Aussie bar in Helsinki I have no idea, but come to think of it they probably do a pretty well out of the backpacker market alone. There is certainly no shortage of displaced Australians who seem to be in Europe for no real purpose other that to complete the biggest multi-national pub crawl they can afford. I am happy enough to say I have grown out of this particular phase of my life. Whether this is a good thing, or a sign that I am becoming old and boring – well that’s a matter for another time. (Working in my favour is the fact that I was willing to travel to Finland to play my own music, despite the very real possibility that no-one would be able to understand a word I was saying).

Anyway – the Aussie Bar – at the very least, I figured there would be a few people in the room who I would be able to talk to, so that was a good starting point. Unfortunately my email communication leading up to the show had been fleeting at best, and when I called the Bar Manager from the airport, he had somehow forgotten that I was coming to play. What a bugger. I had been in Europe for 2 months, and this was the first time that a gig had fallen through. A disappointing development in the “Tour de Renoir”, not so much because the gig was cancelled, but mainly because I was looking forward to be able to tell everyone back home that I played at the Aussie Bar in Helsinki! And that certainly doesn’t sound too boring. I’ll just have to figure it out next time round.

So I contented myself with a fairly decent curry and late-night stroll round Helsinki, which as it turns out is a fairly sleepy sort of place when compared to other major cities in Europe. Still, it was nice for that reason. And they do boat tours. (Yes I went on a boat tour. It was cold. I had some time to kill).

My disappointment about the Aussie Bar was fortunately short-lived, because the following night’s show at Club Liberte, my last gig in Europe, was one of the best shows of my entire trip. A Monday night, and I was performing to a room full of people who barely made a sound for my entire set (and appeared to understand what I was singing about) – another example of the fairly significant cultural difference that exists between Europe and Australia when it comes to live music. We have a great little music scene here, and there are some pretty nice rooms around for independent artists like myself, but a show like this on a Monday night would never really happen. (Woo Jam – you are the only exception to that observation…). To be able to perform a full set as a complete stranger on the other side of the world, and be shown that level of respect, is something I will never forget. It was a perfect way to finish off a pretty amazing trip, and only served to strengthen my resolve to tour again in Europe next year. And if I could bring the night back to a basic business level, I also managed to sell 5 or 6 CD’s, which gave me enough Cash to get to buy lunch and get to the airport the next day! Gold.

I should mention that the headline act that night was perhaps the best band I came across in Europe – the Sara Sayed band. If you search myspace she will pop up – great songs, and some pretty amazing musicians. Better still, a few of them offered to play with me next time I am in Helsinki! A full band show in Helsinki – I reckon I could handle that.

TOKYO

Another “Free” Stopover courtesy of the kind people at Finnair, and the final destination before my return to Sydney. Tokyo was every bit as crazy as I had expected, and well worth a look for a few days, even if I was barely able to scratch the surface.

I had been in touch a few weeks earlier with a guy called Mac from the Mac Blues Band, who had offered me a short set supporting him at a place called “The Dogs Bollox”. If you’d asked me what I would be doing a year ago, I can assure you playing at the Dogs Bollox in Tokyo would not have been on the list of possibilities. But there I was, in front of about 10 people, guitar in hand, belting out some tunes at 10pm on a Thursday night in the basement level of some old building, and loving every minute of it!

The Dogs Bollox wasn’t the best venue, it didn’t have the biggest crowd, it was nearly impossible to find, and it certainly wasn’t going to make me the next foreign superstar in Japan. But if this trip had taught me anything, it was to appreciate the journey, and be thankful for the opportunities I would have along the way, whatever form they might present themselves in. This was a great chance to add another chapter to the story, and was well worth it for that reason alone. As it turns out, I got to meet a few other local songwriters – a nice added bonus.

With the final gig all done, I managed a 20min spot of busking at the Ikebukuro train station on the way home – a performance that didn’t exactly stop the masses in their tracks, but then again that wasn’t really the point. How often do you get to busk at the Ikebukuro train station?! Let’s just say that the locals were slightly bemused by the random Australian singing songs by himself at 1am in the morning. Nonetheless, it was working for me at the time.

It’s always a bit difficult writing these things retrospectively, because the moment has passed, and all the emotions that were with you have often been replaced by the different energy that exists when you are back at “home”. So I won’t say too much more, but this is just a little paragraph I wrote when I got back to the hotel on my last night in Tokyo. I think does a pretty good job of summing up how I felt at the time:

What to say when you’ve just done something you’ve always wanted to do? Something which seemed so difficult, but that now you feel like you will do again and again whilst ever the circumstances allow it. What an amazing trip. I’ve been places I never thought I’d go, met people I never thought I’d meet, done things I never thought I would do. I couldn’t really sum in it up in a sentence. I couldn’t really sum it up in a paragraph. So instead I’ll just say thanks. Thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way. The artists, the venues, the friends, the audiences, and even those of you who stopped to give me directions to the bus stop from time to time. Three months ago I said I wanted to do thirty shows, and now sitting here in Tokyo with the tour complete, it turns out I did exactly 30. Hard to believe, but you know what they say about putting your mind to something. It’s a good lesson I think – I’ll have to aim for double that next time. The hardest part will be where to start….

Who would have thought a guitar could help you do all that?

Till next time.

Renny