Tour Notes by Britta Phillips - 7 July 2003

Arrived home from Portugal Thursday night. We played at the Festival of Oporto.

We went to see Cat Power the night we arrived (Friday). She was solo and sang beautifully until some guy yelled “where’s your band,” and set her off on a rant that never quite ended until the club turned on the music. She gave them the double finger and slowly swung her guitar over her head. We stopped by the dressing room to say goodnight. She was very friendly to us.

Anyway….a very interesting evening.

The next day, we had a couple of very nice baby-sitters feed us, drive us around and fill us in on the history and politics of their beautiful country. The show went well that evening even though we didn’t bring our own soundman and we didn’t go on until 2a.m. We drank a delectable bottle of Port wine after the show. No one offered us free drugs.

It rained the following day. It always rains on our days off. We went to the mall to see The Matrix: Reloaded instead of going to the Modern Art Museum. Something must be wrong with me because I kind of enjoyed it. I can’t remember what we had for dinner….but at some point I had a chocolate mousse floating atop quite a lot of whiskey.

Monday, we drove to Vigo, Spain for a show. Explosions In The Sky from Austin, TX opened. We had some sound problems. The show was in an old movie theater and so was seated. That always makes for a rather too laid-back atmosphere.

Tuesday, Dean and I flew to Madrid to do press for L’Avventura. I haven’t been so involved in the interview process before. Everyone asks the same questions. It was fun even though we hadn’t had much sleep. The president of Everlasting Records, Mr. Mark Kitkat, took us out for a yummy (and quite large) lunch and plied us with some sort of Spanish moonshine liqueur. After more interviews we checked into our hotel, the El Monaco, which used to be a Brothel. Mr. Kitkat described it as “funky.” Then we went to the large record store chain, FNAC, for an instore performance (our first with just the two of us). We had a nice little audience, including a woman in her 60s with green hair, but the store didn’t have any of our CDs yet. Oops…. That night, we met again, with both Mr. and Mrs. Kitkat as well as a couple of the wildmen from their staff, for a sumptuous dinner at 11 p.m. The Spanish often dine as late as midnight with small children in tow. We had Champagne and I had squid.

Wednesday, flew back to Vigo where we were met by the lovely Sophia and Augusto who were involved in creating the Festival of Oporto. We stopped in Valenca, Portugal, just across the Spanish border, for lunch on our way back to Oporto. It’s a beautiful old village. Sophia told me that all of the old city centers in the north of Portugal look like this: a square with a fountain and a church. We had dinner with them that evening along with several others, a few Spanish, involved in the Festival. Most of us ordered the chicken and rice with blood. It was delicious.

Today we resume Luna rehearsals to prepare for the next record…

That’s all for now

Britta