date: 11/09/99
Jazz-Bar at the Hotel Albana, Weggis Switzerland
November is not the greatest time to be traveling in Europe. Since we arrived in Frankfurt last week, it's been raining or heavily overcast with temps in the low 50s. This morning, Lake Lucerne is shrouded in mists and all the color is drained out of the scene. Too bad for Shane, my friend and percussionist, who is here for the first time. Still, as Shane says, the view from the Panorama Restaurant of the Albana Hotel in Weggis (Vek'-kiss) ain't bad. Mountains on the north-facing shores, some covered in snow even at this altitude, disappear into the grey. Wherever they can get a toehold, tiny villages cling to the steep headlands just before they plunge into the water.
Last night we played at the Jazz-Bar downstairs for a combination of hotel guests and locals who are used to coming for a couple of drinks, some billiards or pinball, and live music. Before the show, we were treated to a four course meal, from cheese soufle appetizer and cream of tomato soup (with real cream, slightly whipped, floating on top, of course), followed by - well, let's see - Shane had the veal and I had the shrimp. And dessert - crepes with nutmeats in some kind of fruit compote. After dinner, we retire to our rooms (plural) to rest for a couple of hours. We hope it's enough time to shake off that kind of meal and still play.
It's a Tuesday night, but the music doesn't start till 9:30. At home in New England, anyone brave enough to have a folk concert on a Tuesday would be wrapping things up about now while people checked their watches and began to fidget. Here, things get hopping by ten. About twenty-five people crowd the small room, which has just enough wall space to hang three huge prints of Mattisse cut-outs. Tomorrow, our host Daniel will leave for a three week stint in the army, something all Swiss men do every other year while they are of age. But tonight he's working the bar, serving mostly beer and pub grub. The perpetual fog of cigarettes establishes itself pretty early. And we shift gears and go into our bar set. It's always a question whether you'll spend the entire night playing background music to multi-lingual conversations or whether you will be able to grab the crowd's attention and actually play for them - and with them. Tonight we're lucky. Things turn around about the fourth song. A critical mass of listeners exerts the force of its collective attention and the rest of the room suddenly follows suit. From there on, things are fine.
In the end, it's not much different from playing bar gigs in the U.S. Except for the dinner. And the hotel rooms. And the view. And the fact that everyone seems to understand a language that is neither English nor German nor French, and is not just the music either. It's like when Shane does his Tuvan throat singing: above the indecipherable, gutteral foundation, a set of pure harmonic overtones emerges, and if you adjust your ear, the rest just falls away.
Tomorrow, we play a real concert at Mahogany Hall in Bern, the Swiss capitol. Since 1971, this listening room has hosted everything from jazz and blues to bluegrass and folk. Till then,
Hugh Blumenfeld, Editor
hugh@balladtree.com
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