By Ellery Eskelin

November 23rd, Berikon, Switzerland
We arrive in ZÃƒÂ…Ã…ÅŞrich at 6 am and take a series of local trains towards Bremgarten, which has become our little home away from home on the road. This is my seventh time here (twice with Joey Baron, once with Han Bennink and now this, the fourth time with my band). It will be great to stay in one place for a few days. That doesn't happen too often on these tours. Bremgarten is a very old medieval town and no cars are allowed. It looks like a scene from a child's storybook with snow, ancient city walls and a beautiful river. Christmas lights and decorations abound. We're staying at the hotel Stadthof which is along the river and built right into the old city wall. The Stadthof has it's charm but the "Hotel Incommunicado" is mostly how I think of it. The staff (mostly non-English speaking) is very friendly but the phones have remained a complete mystery to me over these many years. I'm told that it's not possible to call from room to room so any time I have to give Jim or Andrea some information I have to run up and down the stairs knocking on their doors and leaving notes. Making or receiving an international call is a special challenge as well. And faxes? Forget about it. It's a modest sized establishment and the rooms range from tiny and dark with few amenities to big and bright, complete with a stove and refrigerator. Some of the rooms have a sort of early '70s decor with bold primary colors and quasi mod furnishings with one room even featuring vintage "Black is Beautiful" paintings. The locals like to hang out late in the restaurant drinking and singing. Once I even got to play some late night chess with a group of young guys. The food is good basic fare and the clientele seems mostly middle aged and maybe a little conservative. Somehow I really like this place.

I sleep another two or three hours then Jim and I train back to ZÃƒÂ…Ã…ÅŞrich where I finally get to exchange currency at the bank. We eat lunch then visit a percussion shop that offers drums from all over the world as well as harmoniums and sitars and such. Jim buys several birdcalls for use on the trains and during our sets. I'm still feeling fundamentally tired, still with a sore stomach so we head back. Our recording session begins this evening at 6 pm. Peter Pfister, his wife Fanny and "Big" Ernst (the head of KULAK and the man responsible for bringing us here) set up the room. We're recording in the music room of the school where Ernst teaches biology, in a large space with lots of wood and very high ceiling. It's a little reverberant but Peter does a great job with the recordings. As always Peter is fast and efficient. He lives just a couple blocks away and brings his remote 24 track digital set up in his van. We usually record during two consecutive afternoons (without an audience) and one evening concert (with audience) and this year is no different. We put a few pieces down on tape and things generally feel OK. "Often, then Not", one of the very first pieces I wrote for the band and have never been totally satisfied with, starts to get a little bogged down. I've arranged and rearranged this piece several times over the years and I'm determined to make it work for the recording. We try a variety of possibilities and I finally realize that it sounds better if I don't play on it. Besides, the idea of having a piece of music on my record that I don't play on is intriguing to me. So it becomes just Andrea and Jim and we do a number of versions before it's finally time to move on. I look over the remaining pieces to see what's next but I'm feeling drained and so I finally proclaim that "I'm just tired" and we call it a night at 11pm. Personally I'm at the point of diminishing returns and I see no need to drag Andrea and Jim down with me. Back to the Stadthof.

November 24th, Berikon, Switzerland
In the morning I stock up at the "Bio" (health food) store. I send gifts home; books for Rami in French, a necklace for Michelle and some soaps for Pearl, all of which I bought in France. The session resumes at 12 noon. I'm feeling fresher but still a little prone to tiredness and weakness. I notice my concentration lapsing and my perception getting a little weird. The music feels really good when we play but sounds not so good on tape. I'm dealing with some ideas that come out of my Mom's gigging years in the early '60s (she plays Hammond B3) and perhaps even some stylistic echoes of my father's song poem work, that kind of quasi jazzy, loungy pop style in the chord changes. It feels great, almost cathartic for me to play it. But hearing it on playback makes me cringe and want to crawl under the table. Is it embarrassment over the unabashed reading of such potentially trite material? Am I feeling a little vulnerable with the lack of irony? Or does it just sound kind of corny and bad? I've never had this feeling before and I'm not sure if is a good thing or a bad thing. My gut again tells me to rely on trust. Maybe a good mix will bring to the tape what I hear happening in the room. I sure hope so.

Werner Uehlinger (hatART impresario) arrives mid afternoon and listens to some playbacks with us. He likes it a lot and immediately says "It would be a shame not to record the band again next year. This seems to be opening a new chapter. The material is more open". This brings up the "how it feels versus how it sounds" issue. I've always been a firm believer in the fact that just because it might not feel great at the moment of performance doesn't mean it doesn't sound great to a listener or even on tape later. This time however I must wonder about the reverse. Can something that feels good wind up sounding less than good on tape? Werner's comments are encouraging to me and I like to think that we have enough consistency to at least make a decent sounding recording under any circumstances. The material this time around is a bit disorienting, even for me, but Andrea and Jim egg me on. We record until 5 pm then listen back to some of the takes. It's strange. I really can't tell if we have it or not. I've never done a session where that's been the case. I'll probably wait until after the new year to listen to the tapes just to get a fresh perspective on it. It's probably there but if not there's always the chance to record again later. We've got a quintet project in the can as well as some other project ideas so we really don't have to worry about releasing this for at least a year, maybe more.

Dinner at Ernst's house with the Kulakers (Kulak is the name of the presenting organization) and invited guests (including a young fellow visiting from Cuba out of his country for the very first time). Nina prepares a beautiful Indian meal. The Kulakers are a fun lot. The wine flows freely, the food is always wonderful and they are a very warm group of folks. Werner and I discuss how the tour has been going so far. He's interested in the fact that we're trying to open something up in Spain. He says Spain is kind of like Italy was twenty years ago. We're encouraged by the fact that my agent says that booking the band is getting easier. Werner's support has been instrumental.

Concert at 815 pm. For some reason this is the first time I don't feel like a greasy bug under a microscope in this room. It's so clean and brightly lit that I sometimes feel a little self conscious, especially after having played in a bunch of dark, funky, smoky caves, cellars and WW II bunkers. The kinds of places that look as if all they need to do is hose out the beer, urine and blood at the end of the evening and start fresh the next day. The turnout is good for Kulak and we play well. Werner says this is the best concert we've done there so far. Jim felt strange about that comment but I know what Werner means. Even though I don't usually like to think in these terms there is something happening to the band with the overall sound and intensity that I suspect only comes with time. We still have certain internal issues to work on, as all bands do, particularly since we each come from such different musical backgrounds. That's also a strength in that and I often push the issue, intentionally flirting with disaster in order to achieve a certain type of sound. Sometimes I wonder if I've gone too far but we've always gotten something out of whatever we try to do even if it's not what we expected.

November 25th, Berikon, Switzerland
Today Werner and I go to Peter's home studio to mix and master the quintet session that I did last September in New York (cellist Erik Friedlander and tubist Joe Daley joined Andrea, Jim and myself for that one). I've had no breakfast this morning. It's one of those days in which sleep is more valuable. We begin working at 1130 am and it's fairly intensive. We listen to each piece (there are seven) at least four times. I'm still feeling a little tired but it could also be the lack of food. By the end of the day we've completed the entire task and I'm feeling very proud of this project. It will be called "Ramifications" (for Rami Wade, my newborn son). And the mix sounds great.

By now I am I am really starving. We've been invited to our friend Christa's house for dinner and we arrive at around 630 or 7 pm. Tonight we are having cheese fondue. Christa asked us yesterday if this would be OK and I said yes so I can't say I wasn't warned. Normally this wouldn't be such a bad thing as I always adapt my road diet to whatever the local specialties may be since that's usually going to be the best prepared food. Had I eaten something today I would be in much better shape since fondue is all there is, no salad or other courses, just cheese and bread. I gave up on alcohol years ago and am still sensitive to it's presence in certain foods. This dish has a lot of wine in it which I can probably handle since it's certainly alcohol free with all the cooking time involved. But I'm shocked when I realize that the local custom here is to dip the bread into a very high potency cherry schnapps before dowsing it in the cheese. The cheese begins to taste pretty boozy so I simply eat the pieces of bread alone and hope no one notices. Dinner conversation gets energized, I feel like jumping in but I'm a little low on energy. I last until about 930 before we depart and immediately upon our return to Bremgarten I inform Andrea and Jim that I must run to a restaurant for a meal. They join me at a local restaurant in Bremgarten. It's kind of late and I think the best of our social amenities are behind us this evening. It's about midway through the tour and I sense that we may be getting a little bugged with each other. We have always gotten along well but any time you spend three meals a day together for three weeks straight I don't care how much you love each other, there's going to be a little tension from time to time. It's normal. On the flip side, I also notice that we are better able to tease each other a bit on our "issues" which seems to help blow off some steam and relieve some stress and tension. All in all, we have a unique road dynamic. One that I really enjoy as compared to the more typical road

After the meal I call home to Michelle, it's our second wedding anniversary today. It's always great to hear her voice, she always reorients me to reality. We share a common outlook and sense of humor and even in the briefest of conversations we can feel this bond. It's also Thanksgiving. I talk to Rami via the speaker phone and Michelle says he stops and listens.

November 26th, Hofheim, Germany
I have a nice conversation about families this morning over breakfast with Andrea before taking off to Hofheim. We're slated to stay in a private home in lieu of a hotel which is not something that I generally find acceptable since on the road hotel time is the only real downtime we have. The home in question belongs to Esther who has hired us to perform. It's a very nice home, three hundred years old in fact. There's lots of wood, pottery and books. I sleep in a loft bed in a room above Jim, Andrea has her own room. Esther says she saw me in Saalfelden at the festival a couple of years ago. It's great to run across folks like this in Europe who really care about the music and devote some part of their lives to making these tours and concerts happen. We enjoy her hospitality but it will be nice to get to the next hotel so I can do some laundry and spread out all over the room like a slug without having to worry about manners and such.

The club is sort of your classic garden variety stale beer and cigarettes affair, the aroma permanently embedded in the room. A very nice gig with very good energy. The audience is engaged and the staff was great. My reeds are still holding out but it may be close. I don't think I can find my brand and strength in any stores even if there were time to look. Had a soft reed tonight but it cut surprisingly well and filled the room so I kind of indulged that a bit. Sold only four CDs.

On to page 4 of Ellery Eskelin 1999 European Tour Diary