no, that's not what we want

ciao ragazzi,
you know, apart from the heat, i have to say this - lately, i have been having an awful lot of fun.

this past week, we had two shows, one here in castiglion fiorentino, and one in brescia, which is in the north of italy, between verona and milan. we had the best sound at those two shows... it is absolutely remarkable what good sound will do for band morale. when you are on stage belting into a microphone and you can't hear a sound coming out of your own mouth, something is wrong...seems impossible that you'd not be able to hear yourself, but it happens when you have a bad sound guy, or bad acoustics. but when i can hear myself in the monitors, i swear i feel unstoppable. and in fact, all night long after the show, people came up to us asking what was different...they said there was just an energy that was palpable that had been missing from shows lately... so grazie mille to paolo brasini and jean-luc for restoring my faith in sound engineers...

the show in brescia was part of a month-long festival sponsored by italy's communist party. oh yes. you know, politics in italy are too complicated to delve into here....it would take me an hour at the least, and even then probably half of what i would tell you would be wrong, just an ill-informed foreigner's take on the situation...but in any case, here, as in most of europe, there are TONS of political parties...not 2 (or 3 or 4)...but more like 20, or 30, or 40. i am not sure what the exact number is, but the fact is, there are lots, and they all end up together in coalitions anyway, because otherwise no one would have a majority. in any case, the italian communist party isn't the scary thing that perhaps the word invokes (as i heard someone say this weekend, it isn't true that they eat children. :) anyhow, i'll go into that later...for a brief summary on italy's current political situation, check out "the dark heart of italy," by tobias jones....many folks much prefer the communist party to berlusconi's incompetent blend of corruption and cluelessness.

in any case, another long drive north and we were there... i had done a radio interview (in italian, egads) on friday, and a lot of the folks who came out to the show told me that they had come out because they heard the interview. it was terrifying for me - i am almost fluent in italian by now, but this was over the phone, with someone from the north (way different accent)...and it turns out he was french, so his accent was even stranger than that for which I was prepared. Still and all, it went well (at least I think it did) and I imagine so many folks came on account of the interview because they were curious to see this texas girl who speaks italian relatively well but with a twang. :) i am always amazed at how a bit of good publicity can get people out to a show.

there were those, however, not so glad to see us. an elderly couple came up to us just after sound-check and asked when the liscio would start. Liscio is kind of like Italian country...sounds like polka and 50's music and old-school country all rolled together. It's a traditional kind of music, beloved by those who come to dance...and these folks were decked out for dancing. They were pretty darn old (makeup soldifying in the creases of her well-worn face), but they were dressed to the nines and wanted liscio, dammit. So when we told them they were mistaken, they were not happy. They were sure it was Saturday night (turns out it would take place on Sunday), and then when, in desperation, they asked what kind of music we did, Gumo said, "country americana, un po' di rock, un po' di country," and a look of horror crept over her painted face. She shook her head vigorously and said, "no, no, non lo vogliamo, non lo vogliamo." Which means, sadly for us, "no, no, we don't want that, we don't want that." We all tried very hard not to laugh, but she was so dramatic, and so crushed, that we started to smirk....so then she thought we were teasing her. She asked if we were pulling her leg, and what time the liscio really started, and we had to try to convince her all over again that there really would be no liscio tonight. She didn't believe us until I opened my mouth and she heard my American accent...and we tried to tell her that you could dance to our stuff, but they were having none of it. No, that was not what they wanted at all.

Fortunately for us, the rest of Brescia was happy to have us there. We had a big crowd, full of kind listeners who stayed for the duration, which always amazes me. Music lover that I am, I rarely go to concerts if I don't know the band...so when we get a crowd of listeners who stay for an hour plus and listen to music they don't know, and that is not even in their native tongue...it always gives me a nice fuzzy feeling inside. :)

Anyhow, the concert went smashingly, and a few million Autogrill stops later, we were home again. I could dedicate an entire entry to my love of the Autogrill. In any case, we are getting ready to start laying down tracks for new album, and I am going to the Czech Republic in a few weeks to tour, so we should be staying busy during August... keep checking the site for new songs (there is one there now, in fact) and video, if I can ever figure out how to get the videos off the tape and onto the computer....

pasta kisses,
vanessa

the time i almost died camping

faithful readers,
if you have read my blog for any length of time, you know by now that i am a bit of an exaggerater. that word is spelled wrong. maybe it isn't actually a word. exaggerator? anyhow, it isn't true that i almost died. however, all numbers and temperatures quoted below are the honest truth, however shocking they may seem.

okay, i'll be honest. in hindsight, it really wasn't that bad. the bus ride from Trento to Canazei was long (and a bit nauseating) but incredibly beautiful. trento is in the foothills of the Dolomites, and the ride only got more spectacular the closer we got to Canazei. Miles upon miles of rolling apple orchards became little mountain towns, peopled with smiling, rosy-cheeked citizens and fluffy sheep-herding dogs. the architecture became markedly-more german/austrian, and the street signs began to be listed in both languages. we had arrived in SudTirol.

unfortunately a cold front arrived with us. and a rainy front. for two days, we lived for glimpses of the sun and brief parting of the clouds, even if in parting they revealed only gray sky. the first night that we pitched tent, we were wet before dinner, due to a slow, steady drizzle. by the time we were ready to tuck into our tent, i was shivering uncontrollably. the temperature that night was 5 degrees celsius - about 40 degrees fahrenheit - which i suppose might not be that cold to you...but personally, i am only happy in 60 degree weather if i have a sweater. so 40 was really darn cold to me. the next day we went out and bought gloves, hats, fleeces, and wool socks, and i slept in all of it...and still, the third morning i woke shivering.

we took a cable car to Belvedere, one of the peaks in this area of the Dolomites, and walked among the clouds. it was a nasty, rainy day (still), and incredibly cold at that altitude. however, in one of those brief slivers of sunshine, we were rewarded with an amazing view down into the valley where we had been camping below. 100 million years ago, when the surface of the earth looked nothing like it does now (see "A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson), the Dolomites were actually a coral reef, and it is easy to imagine them as such. The mountains still look a lot like pictures of the sea floor, full of strange, craggy peaks and jagged drop-offs, and the valley, so incredibly green from the rainy climate, actually looks like seaweed covering the mountainside at times. Alexandria found a perfectly intact and lovely shell on one of our hikes, and Neotha and I found some marine fossils as well, which is apparently a perfectly normal occurrence.

i have to say, the bratwurst and sauerkruat and strudel made up for the cold weather, especially now that i am home safely in tuscany, where the warm summer sun has made me forget the fear of losing all my fingers and toes.

pictures of the dolomitian adventure will follow shortly - neotha was the group photographer, so i have to wait on her. there are new songs on the website, and in a few days there will be another called "if i stay," which is an outtake from the thin thread recording sessions.

lots of love and good wishes all around,
vanessa

in search of strudel once more

guten sera,
which would be german and italian together, meaning good evening, although of course that isn't actually a phrase, just a late night invention from my sleepy, fog-smeared brain. i am off to bed because i have to rise with the sun and board a train headed to trento, italy, where i will disembark 8 hours later and promptly board a bus headed to canazei, a tiny town in the middle of the Dolomites, otherwise known as the Italian alps, where me and two of my girlfriends are headed off to go camping for a few days. i was using german and italian together because that area of italy, known as the Tirol, was a part of Austria until not so long ago, and in some parts of the Tirol, you are actually hard-pressed to find Italian speakers. i have never been much of a camper, even though i love the outdoors, so it will be interesting to see how we three fare. Alex speaks German and Neotha is a outdoorsy Colorado girl, so surely between the three of us we will keep our heads above water. we'll see. really I am just looking forward to the change in cuisine and the ever-present hope that a strudel awaits me somewhere.

my thoughts and prayers are with my friends in the UK right now. my congratulations are with my little sister, who will be Midlothian High's new high school history teacher next year.

aufwiederschen,
vanessa