Piermino and Anna and the Red Devil

ce l’abbiamo fatto!

The Italian tour is done! Or almost. We’re in the car, headed to Barbara, near the eastern coast of Italy - my first time to be in the region of Le Marche. We’re having our usual difficulties with Italian road signs – Madonnina! Here road signs are amazingly optional and even more last-second. Yesterday in Perugia we were going solely on our sense of intuition – not a road sign or labeled-exit in sight.

I think I left off after our tour in the far north-east of Italy when we were up in Trieste and Udine. We did the long-ass drive home (the autostrada will be the death of me) and played some band shows that weekend close to home. Then began the heavy-duty touring. I took a train down to Rome to be on RAI 3, the national public radio of Italy. It was actually fun – if it hadn’t been so surreal I might have been intimidated, but everyone treated me so much like Vanessa-Peters-the-American-superstar that all I could do was laugh – it was impossible to be nervous with so much attention being lavished on you. We did an interview and I played 4 songs live and that was that. Even interviews in a foreign language become easy after awhile.

Two days later we took off for the Milano-Torino-Cuneo-Asti leg of the tour, up in Lombardia and Piemonte, near the French and Swiss borders of Italy. The drive was l-o-n-g, due in large part to Piermino, our VW van. Usually we take a different car but for varoius reasons we couldn’t this time, so we loaded up Piermino and hit the road – slowly. Piermino is nearly 40 years old and not as spry as he once was (it’s also possible he was never really spry). At least our friend Anna Mascorella (of the band Matson Jones) came along for the ride and made the whole thing a lot more enjoyable.

As I was saying, Piermino is a bit on the slow side, especially going up hills (of which there are plenty between Firenze and Bologna, which is the road we take to Milano). Our max speed on a good-sized hill is 80 km – about 50 mph. We were so excited to have reached the peak of the Apennine foothills – and then we hit a line of traffic, completely stopped. There had been a 5-car accident in one of the tunnels, effectively shutting down the autostrada for about an hour. We decided we might as well get out of the car and be idiots (see attached photos) for lack of something better to do. One of the things that drives me bonkers about the autostrada is the fact that you can’t exit but every 20 km or so. If there’s an accident, too darn bad. Bring a book (which thankfully I had - Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni, available in English and highly recommended).

In any case – a couple of massive hills, one blocked tunnel, and at least 4 Autogrill stops later, we rolled into Milano, again counting on the hands of God and common sense to guide us to the venue (since the road signs refused to help). We played that night at Casa139 with Terje Nordgarden, a Norwegian songwriter who is amazing live. I’ve seen him play twice now and he has a really incredible stage presence.

Day 2 – Torino. Oh, how I wish we’d had more time in Torino. I was so impressed by this city and everyone in it. We were staying at place called Maison Musique (House of Music in French) in Rivoli, just outside of the cit.y. It is (don’t be alarmed) an old slaughterhouse-complex that has been turned into this lovely music hall/hotel/restaurant. Basically the slaughterhouse itself is now a circular auditorium with an amazing stage and sound system; the old mess hall is now a restaurant; the living quarters for the transient workers is now a 4-room “hotel” for traveling musicians (and we're still transient workers); the casa di custodia (where the foreman lived) is now the office. It was amazing. This is one of the things I love most about Italy – generally (not always, but often) old things are made new again (instead of being razed to the ground).

We took a short walk up to the Castello di Rivoli, a former Savoy residence now transformed into an beautifully well-done modern art/sculpture museum, then we headed into the center of Torino to set up for our show at FolkClub, one of Italy’s most respected acoustic venues. Just looking at the photos on the wall made my knees knock a little – we were playing on a stage that had been graced by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, just for starters.

And FolkClub lived up to its reputation. The sound was remarkable (bravo Franco), everyone that worked there (all volunteers, from what I could tell) was kind beyond belief, and the audience was really one of the best to whom I’ve ever played. Franco, the sound-guy, brought me a rose on stage when the audience called for an encore. Ridiculously nice people.

From FolkClub to Condorito Club…we wanted to wake up early on Saturday and see Torino before leaving town, but (as happens often in Italy), we were at dinner until at least 2 am and didn’t get to sleep until 3 am, so it was pretty late by the time we dragged ourselves out of bed. Lateness coupled with an anti-fascism demonstration in the heart of Torino that shut down the metro line meant we had about two hours to see the city. We managed to hoof it over to the gallery of modern art and take in a few Picassos and a Renoir, some de Chiricos and a sprinkling of other amazing artists before running out the door and back to the metro stop. We heard a termite eating inside one of the frames of a painting. Is that normal?

To Cuneo. Our new friend Jacopo was our host – www.myspace.com/ezrapage - and he got us settled in at the hotel and at the venue. We played at Condorito Club and met tons of new people – thanks to Lorena, who wrote a really nice review of the concert.

To Asti! Our show was at the Diavolo Rosso, the former church of San Michele. It’s a sconsecrata church…I can’t remember the word in English..a church that is no longer a church. In any case, as you might imagine, the acoustics were amazing. The whole operation is run by about 20 volunteers and they do everything from live music to theatre to wine tastings. It was just one of the many pockets of culture that we found on this tour. It’s strange, because the live music scene in Italy is hard. Everyone wants cover bands – or at least that’s what the venues think everyone wants. But nearly everywhere we went, we found small venues run by volunteers or people who had two day jobs, just so they could afford to do their passion, and we found people who wanted to listen (to music in a foreign language, nonetheless) and we found people who were so glad to have us there that I was nearly speechless. This tour was just so much more positive that I was expecting it to be. From the radio shows and interviews to the concerts in intimate venues, it was really kind of a dream.

A long-winded one at that (sorry). I’ll wrap it up with our last few shows. Sintetika in Firenze – Loop Café in Perugia – and Insomnia in Barbara (which is where we were headed in the car when I started this blog entry a few days ago). At Sintetika we had people lined up outside the venue before the concert – definitely a first for me. Plus we had Anna with us again, this time singing harmonies and playing her cello! Loads of fun. I'm trying to talk her into joining us on an American tour next fall.

In Perugia we drove through the narrowest streets in Italy and Piermino only suffered one minor injury when the turn was just too tight for a VW van. And in Barbara we found one of the loveliest areas of Italy I’d never seen – Le Marche. Much like Tuscany, but with even more hills and more farms. We were housed at La Cantina del Bacco agriturismo - if you are looking for a vacation off the beaten path in Italy, I couldn't more highly recommend this place.

And that's about it. We got home late on Saturday because there is no short road between Le Marche and Tuscany...it's kind of a region cut off from the rest of the country, not well-serviced by trains or highways. The road is very mountainous and winding (not for the faint-of-stomach) but it's lovely. We stopped for lunch in a teeny town called Isola Fossara and chatted with the old man behind the bar....he said that a few years ago a longer (in mileage) but straighter road was built parallel to the one we were on, and since then, the town has dried up. There are only 120 people that live there now, and the number is falling. But he laughed about it. In fact, while we were eating, two people walked by and Manuel nudged me and gestured towards them. I started laughing and the old man chimed in, saying in Italian, "What? Did a real person walk by?" Italians know how to laugh at themselves.
I started this post in the car three days ago and now I'm at the Bologna airport, killing time before my 7 am flight this morning..it's 4:30 am...will our heroine survive? Perhaps with a cappuccino and a pastry, she'll be able to make it...

Love from the road and soon from the air,
vanessa