Best...

Best venue: Eddie's Attic in Decatur (Georgia)... www.eddiesattic.com. That's the place where John Mayer 'grew up' and where Sarah Bettens is going to perform this month.

Best host: pipe smoking Eddie from Eddie's Attic... he actually answered my mails, made us feel welcome, he gave us food & drinks and promoted our show really well.

Best audience: (it gets boring...) Eddie's Attic... 150 people, really listening.

Best show: Difficult...you probably expect me to say 'Eddie's Attic'. But maybe it was the last show of the tour, at the VoxPop in Brooklyn. They announced us on their website as 'Band from Germany' (not 'Markowski', no link, nothing), they did not use the posters I sent weeks before our show, we didn't get free food (had to fight for a free drink), there was nobody, the owner left without saying goodbye...we were so pissed (see worst venue) that we played with lots of aggression...worked really well :-)

Best hotel: Maybe the 'Place d'Armes' in New Orleans...huge room, in a courtyard with swimming pool, in the middle of French Quarter

Best highway: Highways in Arizona (for example the one between Grand Canyon & Flagstaff...mountains, canyons, very high temperatures and then all of a sudden: temperature drops 20 degrees & lots of rain...great views!)

Best food: Magnolia Café in Austin... their Mexican food is amazing and love the atmosphere

Best coffee: El Diablo Coffee in Seattle...honestly the best Latte I ever had (strong flavor but still 'round' and not too roasted)...and Jan loved his 'Cuban' (double espresso with brown sugar)

Nicest people: It was so nice meeting bass player Susan Holmes, her husband James and one of Susan's bands, the Santa Fe All Stars ... they gave us such a warm welcome, we loved their music, Susan let us stay at her house. One of the band members is mandolin player Sharon Gilchrist who grew up with the Dixie Chicks sisters. An amazing amazing musician. An honor to meet her.
And of course... the Stringers, my brother's former host family in Flagstaff, Arizona. Sweet, loving people.

Weirdest moment: The Santa Fe All Stars concert in an old 1930's football arena at Madrid, New Mexico. Hippies dancing with hula hoops while the music is playing...a thunderstorm was coming closer and closer, the sky got darker and darker, lightning everywhere. But not one drop of rain in the arena...

Greatest moment: Watching my brother Matti running 10.000m at the European Junior Championships in Hengelo from behind my laptop computer, live on the Internet, in a coffeehouse in Olympia (Washington). I went crazy (and the people around me, too...). He won the silver medal :-)

Coolest town: Difficult. Loved Portland (nice neighborhoods, hills, green), loved San Francisco (hey, it's San Francisco!), loved Flagstaff (nice, little town, great landscape), loved Santa Fe (good music!), loved Austin (great neighborhoods, looooots of music)

Best concert we've been to: Bob Dylan in Costa Mesa, California! No thrills, just music. So wonderful.

Home sweet home

The best thing about about the Netherlands is the weather. At least for us, it is...after weeks of more than 100 degrees (= around 40 Celsius) it's a relief to walk outside without feeling the sweat run down your back. The downside: we're no longer in the country of Starbucks' Java Choc frap (no whip). No more yellow cabs (are all the drivers suicidal?!). No more 'tall, large, grande' (instead of 'small, medium, large'). No more 'Hiiiii...how are you?'. No more young women, wearing flip flops, with high pitched, very loud, nasal voices, talking from behind their Mojito. No more 'What's your opinion about our country?'. No more excellent Mexican food. No more endless highways, surrounded by desert.
More than 11.000 kilometers of driving...we must be crazy. I immediately unpacked my (overweight) suitcase when I got home. Another relief. Some hotel rooms (NY!) were so small we were almost unable to walk around, having the suitcases on the ground and the guitars stowed in a corner.
Real life is waiting. Everything I forget to tell you about our trip might appear on this website...or let's just talk again :-)

Bye bye Atlanta

Atlanta is great. Maybe it's because we're in such a nice neighborhood, our hotel is fabulous and there are enough coffeehouses and nice restaurants for at least a year...or maybe it's because we had a great evening at Eddie's Attic yesterday. What a difference! Eddie and his people took good care of us, there were two other amazing bands playing that night: Brilliant Inventions and Band of Heathens ...wow...that was some great music. Or maybe we love this city because the audience (lots of people!) listened really well and said nice things to us after our concert so our egos are satisfied as well.

The first song we played was 'Hey Girl'... wanna see???



Tomorrow we'll drive to Chapel Hill and play at The Cave. Come and say hi!

Oh Atlanta

What a relief! During our various trips through the USA we developed a black list...a 'never go there again - list'. Yesterday we spent a nigh in Montgomery, Alabama. Driving from New Orleans to Atlanta in one day didn't feel like a good option and this city was kind of in the middle of the trip. And has a Hank Williams museum. Which closed at 4:30 (instead of 6, as the Lonely Planet said) and did NOT open at 9am (like the sign on the door said). Montgomery almost depressed us. How can you fry every kind of food? There was not one healthy restaurant to find and the 'cozy family style hotel' with the great reviews on the internet was just okay. Anyway...today e arrived in Atlanta...and we love it! We have a nice hotel, there are nice café's and restaurants in the neighborhood aaaaandddd we'll play at Eddie's Attic tomorrow! 'Markowski' is listed in every concert agenda and everybody actually knows that place (compared to other venues we've played...). So we're happy now :-)

Forgot to tell you about New Orleans...we didn't perform there, but I insisted of staying there at least one night. I'm sure there are several ways to help the city, we decided to be a tourist for one day. We've been there once, before Katrina. It's weird to see the big Superdome where thousands of people fled to, hiding from the hurricane that was so strong it even destroyed parts of the roof. We drove through a couple of areas where you could still feel the disaster: houses that are no homes anymore, wood instead of windows, dirt everywhere. And here and there a house or business with new, bright paint, where people start a new life. The guy from the Visitors Center told us there used to live more than 500.000 people in N.O.. Now its approximately 250.000. The other half moved to other parts of the USA. It's sad and there is a lot of anger going on. The people think the government could have done more to prevent this catastrophe from growing even bigger. We left the town feeling sad.

'It's a Texas thang, you wouldn't understand'

Bye bye Austin....thank you for 5 days. You could have taken better care of the weather (are we supposed to be outside when it's over 100 degrees???)...but we forgive you :-) You're beautiful and there's so much music that it's impossible to go to every good concert.

Jan and I are on our way to the New Orleans area. I practically spent my whole birthday on the highway, but at least I could make a real (!) hot chocolate for myself (thanks to the microwave in the hotel room and an expensive 70% dark chocolate and milk from Walmart...).
We played two shows in the last days, one in Austin ('Hole in the Wall'), one in San Antonio ('Lion & Rose'). The one in Austin was okay (location was only so so...), the one in San Antonio was nice, mostly cause of two nice guys...they really listened and overloaded us with compliments.
We do enjoy playing our songs here, but it's just not very different from playing shows elsewhere. Sometimes people are interested in what you do, sometimes they're not. One downside is the 'payment'... one food item, one drink, that's it most of the times. We wouldn't survive if it was like that in the Netherlands all the time. But hey...getting rich wasn't the motivation for this trip!

Some things are interesting:

- there are a LOT of churches everywhere
- there are a LOT of homeless / poor people
- some cities just don't provide any cultural activities, so shopping at the Walmart is the only thing you can do on a saturday night
- you CAN get an overload of Starbucks' Java Chip Frappuchino
- some people are really, really nice and interested in us, others really scare us (check THIS out)
- USA = very big country, lots of different people = not everybody has the same ideas about everything. Really.

Our next show will be on saturday, august 18 at Eddie's Attic in Decatur (close to Atlanta). We are so looking forward to that!

PS: 'It's a Texas thang, you wouldn't understand' = line on a t-shirt Jan bought.....

Cowgirls rule

Time is going fast. Too fast. Our car, a 'Chevy Malibu' is doing a great job...including his air conditioning and the cruise control. I just realized my last post is written in San Diego...that's a week ago. We performed at the Hot Java Café and met the most incredible harmonica player . He had hands like shovels but he knew how to use this tiny instrument. Wow. Next stop was Flagstaff, Arizona. I guess I said it before, but I love to say it again: the most exciting thing (besides playing our songs :-) ) is the friendliness of the people we meet. My brother Matti (who ran so fast that he won the silver medal at the European Junior Championships 10.000m...yes, that one) stayed in the most wonderful host family you can ever imagine, from 2005-2006. He spent a high school year in Flagstaff, a nice college town with railroad tracks that cut it in half. Even though Matti is back in Berlin now, the family let us stay at their house for a couple of days. We relaxed, enjoyed the nice landscape and the animals and felt so welcome.

'That's the day when we were dreaming
of the day we're gonna take a ride
to place we can build a home
with two sheep and apple trees
and a front porch with two rocking chairs
so that everybody sees
that your hand fits in mine...'
(Photographs)



Now I'm sitting in café in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a wonderful small town (in spite of all the tourists, like we are :-) ). And again...it's incredible how nice people are. Nico is the administrator of the dutch americana.pagina.nl and he knows that great bass player, Susan Holmes. She offered us a place to sleep, just like that, without knowing us personally. I mean...we could be serial killers.
When I was taking a shower this morning I definitely had the most stunning view I ever had while I was cleaning my hair. Hills, mountains, sunshine, blue sky, cactus, plants we don't have in Europe... and I was thinking about yesterday, when we went to see Susan play with the Santa Fe All stars, a bluegrass band with a guitarist/lead singer, another guitar player, Susan on double bass and the best mandolin player ever. That girl is amazing. Sharon Gilchrist grew up with two of the Dixie Chicks and has been touring with Tony Rice and Peter Rowan, THE bluegrass guys. Sooo...can you imagine how glad Jan was when they asked him to play a couple of songs with them?? I figured out how to import the movies I made with my camcorder (simply with a fire wire cable....), so I'll post a short impression of this performance later.
They even gave us space to perform two Markowski songs which the audience apparently liked :-) So even though we won't play a real show in Santa Fe...we are so glad we came here!

By the way...that doesn't mean that ev-e-ry-thing is only great and wonderful. But I guess that's part of the deal :-) Brainwash Café in San Francisco 'lost' (?!) their microphones and one speaker (they couldn't care less) and we couldn't have played without the other band's sound system. Red&Black in Portland...nice place, but crappy sound system as well and nobody who helps setting it up. One food item and one drink, no money. Flipnotics (Austin) where we're supposed to play on august 9 still doesn't have 'Markowski' on the event calendar and the guy who confirmed the booking in February doesn't work there anymore...we're waiting for an email or phone call right now...I hope they understand that they cannot cancel our show (rescheduling is impossible due to hotel reservations and tour schedule). So yes, there is a downside, too...no 'American Dream' so far...but hey...the audience seems to love what we're doing, we meet new people, enjoy the good Mexican food and we're really looking forward to our show in Eddie's Attic (august 18) in Decatur, Georgia!

Hot Java

We're enjoying ourselves at the Hot Java Café in San Diego! Three artists, everybody's playing 2x30 minutes... Actually we still have to play our second set while I'm writing this :-)
San Diego is such a nice town...lots of Mexican influences, great landscape.

I smell patchouli.

Glamour, fake and never ending sunshine

Los Angeles. Not our first time, but our...fifth? Usually we stay in a hotel in West-Hollywood (sounds more glamorous than it is), but cause we wanted to see a different part of this ridiculously large city we booked a room in Marina del Ray, south of Venice (yeah...where the 'muscle beach' is), a 5-10min drive from Santa Monica.
I tried to book us a show in the LA area, but it turned out to be almost impossible. 'Local bands only', '...has to guarantee 30 people' etc... even bluffing ('we know lots of people here') didn't help. So instead of playing we went to see other musicians. Well...musicians...let's say 'entertainers'. Or how would you call an old Asian guy with a tape recorder, mumbling words I could not understand and looking as if he despreately needs a bathroom? Or a man in his forties, dressed up like a kid in the 1980's, including knee protection in neon colours, 'rapping'?? Interesting. On Santa Monica Third Street Promenade there are performers every 50 meters or so and I bet they have to pay a lot of money for a permit. It made me sad to see all those people who craved for attention. The people passing by couldn't care less. Even a really good musician who played on a Chapman Stick (10 strings, just a wide neck, no body) couldn't bathe in applause. It's the most superficial area we've been to in the US so far, so maybe it's good we didn' play here :-)

The people who went to the Rotterdam Conservatory -like Jan and me- might remember Bjorn Fleuren, the blond, tall bassplayer. He lives and works (!) in LA for a couple of years now and it's always fun to talk about old times. Actually, he was the first bassplayer of 'Markowski', when we played together in that band caching class, 315 years ago. I'm gonna ask if he still remembers any songs...if he does, I should make a remix...

Artichokes and Belize by bike

Lots of people ask how I managed to get us the ten shows... for this tour 'myspace' was the best source. I don't even know how many sites I visited, how many singer/songwriters I heard singing on their profile. Somehow the website of Artichoke Music, where you can not only buy musical instruments...they got a sweet little stage, too. When I contacted them in january they told me to call back later cause they don't book that far in advance. The planning of the tour went on and we got another show in Portland, only a few blocks from the Artichoke away, at the Red and Black...so the Artichoke disappeared in my file 'USA locations'.
But because Jan hasn't got enough guitars we had to chek out the Artichoke as well. What a nice surprise! Great instruments, very friendly people and Richard -who's in charge of the bookings - spontaneously offered us a 10 minute-slot that night, right before our show at the Red&Black. It turned out to be a high quality open mike with local folks who really listened...we enjoyed it so much that we dind't even want to leave and plug in to the almost dead sound system of the Red&Black.
Like the two shows before (Tacoma and Seattle)...not exactly a big crowd of people, but a few listeners and a nice atmosphere. A few times the thought popped up in my mind that everybody actually really understands what I'm singing. I mean, dutch or german people understand English as well...but it's different. But nobody laughed or left the room, shaking his head in disbelief :-)

One thing we like about the US is that people start talking to you very easily. And lots of times it's about politics. They want to know how European people think about America. They want to express their fears and their anger about certain things in the country...just to make sure we understand that 'not everybody in the US is closing his eyes'.
So after our show at the Red & Black I started talking to two guys: one who quit his job a couple of years ago cause he didn't believe in capitalism anymore. He didn't want to live for his work anymore. Now he's restyling and renovating his house so he can sell it and then give most of the money away.

The other guy was a buddhist that owns one important thing: his bike. He hasn't got an ID, no job and even though I didn't ask...probably no home either. But he looked so happy and peaceful. In fact, he wanted to give me 1$ as a tip for the show. A guy with no money, but he really wanted to give me this Dollar. He had parked his bike around the corner. When he showed it to me I noticed a blanket, rolled up on the rear rack. 'What if somebody steals it?', I wanted to know. 'Well...then it's THEIR bad karma', he answered. 'But you won't have a blanket anymore and it might get cold.' 'But it will still be their bad karma...and I wear different layers of wool, so...'. He's planning a trip to Belize cause he feels like he has to do that. Freedom.

Tomorrow we'll play at the Brainwash café&laundromat in San Francisco again. We'll get a free burger (veggie or meat) and then play in front of people and dancing washing machines. Sounds like fun, he? Come and listen (and take your dirty laundry...)

video files I wanted to share but can't...suggestions?

Hey, just got to Portland, Oregon yesterday....what a nice, cool city! lots of bikes (compared to other cities in the US), many young people, good coffeehouses with great caffe latte (I will never drink 'koffie verkeerd' in the Netherlands again), nice, unexpensive (!) hotel in a good neighbourhood ('Washington Park Inn')...
I would love to share some videofiles with you, but I got a problem...so if anybody is really into video...help is appreciated. I have a digital camcorder with harddisk which should be compatible with my macbook (imovie)..at least, that's what the guy at 'It's' in Rotterdam said...unfortunately my macbook doesn't like the .mod / .moi -files and I cannot import anything.
Checked lots of forums on the internet but everything sounds pretty complicated or costs money...

So...what's the secret???

My brother rules!!!

Sorry...this has nothing to do with our trip to the US but I really need to tell everybody that my brother Matti just won the silver medal at the European Junior Championships, 10.000m ...I AM SO PROUD!!!!!

Check This out!

Seattle

Wat een leuke stad. Een beetje heuvelachtig, veel groen, water, lage huizen, vriendelijke mensen, knusse wijken, niet té veel touristen (zoals wij)... en op 45 minuten rijden het Mandolin Café in het plaastje Tacoma. Ons eerste optreden vond plaats tussen een verzameling oude mandolines, schilderijen van mandolines en foto's van eh...mandolines. Twee sets met (en klein) luisterpubliek en een paar mensen achterin die -zoals zeer gebruikelijk in de Seattle area - met hun laptop op tafel aan de koffie (of een speciale versie van deze) zitten.
Gisteren dan Mr. Spots Chai House in de wijk Ballard (Seattle)... een alternatieverige, in Chai gespecialiseerde zaak met een gezellig klein podium in de hoek vanuit waar we de menigtes (...) met onze liedjes hebben verblijd.

Nu snel inpakken en naar portland vanuit waar ik eerst op internet de livestream van het EK Athletiek (junioren) zal bekijken (www.hengelo2007.nl) ... mijn ongeloooofelijke stoer broetje Matti (18) is een van de wee hardlopers die bij de 10.000m loop voor Duitsland aan de start gaat...

Later meer!

Finally

Jaaaaaa...das Land von Starbucks, überirdischen Stromleitungen und oversized cars hat uns mit offenen Armen empfangen. Oder mit anderen Worten: wir sind gut angekommen...was ja gar nicht so selbstverständlich ist, angesichts der Tatsache, dass die Gebrüder Wright erst in 1903 ihren ersten erfolgreichen motorisierten Flug vollbrachten.
Morgen spielen wir im Mandolin Café in Tacoma, südlich von Seattle...wenn Ihr in der Nähe seid...


Jaaaaaa...het land van Starbucks, bovenaardse stroomleidingen en oversized cars heeft ons met open armen ontvangen. Of met andere woorden: we zijn goed aangekomen...wt helemaal niet zo vanzelfsprekend is, gezien het feit dat de gebroeders Wright pas in 1903 hun eerste succesvolle gemotoriseerde vluchten hebben volbracht.
Morgen spelen we in het Mandolin Café in Tacoma, ten zuiden van Seattle...mocht je in de buurt zijn...

Nur noch 11 Tage / 11 days to go!

In elf Tagen um diese Zeit sind Jan und ich gerade auf Schiphol eingetrudelt, haben wir wahrscheinlich gerade unser Gepäck abgegeben und stehen wir in der ellenlangen Reihe vor der Passkontrolle. Vorfreude ist die schönste Freude, sagen manche schlauen Leute. So'n Quatsch, sage ich. Keinen Moment leugne ich, dass ich seit Monaten Reiseführer wälze, mich in Gedanken bereits auf einsamen Highways befinde, weit entfernt vom alltäglichen Trubel, selbst auferlegten Pflichten und bislang nur teilweise erfüllten Träumen.
Auf dieser Seite werdet Ihr in den nächsten Wochen ein wenig mitgeniessen können...denn geniessen werden wir. I promise.

We're excited!