Back to the Parisian suburbs, after a long exhausting drive from Ardèche. Moriarty on tour with Christine Salem, Festival Africolor, MC93, Bobigny, 08.12.12.
Snowfall, theatre & casino in the mountains, the staff met years before in Montselgues & Joyeuse. The audience standing up from their seats to dance at the end of the show; Moriarty on tour with Christine Salem: Théâtre Quinconces, Vals-les-Bains (Ardèche) 07.12.12.
Back on the road with Christine Salem & her musicians Harry & David from the Reunion Island. First stop: Théâtre d’Annonay, Ardèche, 06.12.12. A long drive south in the tour-bus, with Tom and Arthur at the wheel. On the way we kidnap a deviant Santa-Claus advertising for an american soda at a gas station. Then we drive by the intimidating monstrous skeleton of Lyon Confluences built...
Moriarty performing a special show in the childrens hospital of Clocheville, walking through the corridors in music and singing songs to the children in the bedrooms.
(thanks to the hospital staff and the association Blouses Notes)
Tours (F), December 12th 2012.
A travel through the damp fog, cold moist stones welcome us at the abbey-cum-penitentiary. And a cat named Booboo is the master in the house. The performance takes place inside the former dormitory where hundreds of nuns used to sleep, fifty meters long and a barrel vault made of wood like the belly of a ship. Christine Salem joins us for a few songs, Sakalav’, Black Betty… We have to...
6 days, 6 musicians in 10 square meters: recording doing undoing structuring destructuring repeating forgetting remembering fixing rolling.
Driving back home after a show in Anjou; 125km/h on the A11 highway; suddenly a tire explosion shakes and rattles the tourbus, Morgan at the wheel keeps steady control over the vehicle but in a few seconds we find ourselves scraping the metal rim on the asphalt. Smell of hot burnt rubber. Cold winds over the hills as cars and trucks speed by… Moriarty on tour, with Wayne Standley: Tribute...
Somewhere in the french countryside, the border between Anjou and Poitou. Golden hills covered with vineyards, families gathered in farmhouses made of white stone, icy chilling cold arctic air and warm sunshine on a landscape that looks like another Big Sky Country, Montana maybe? Guitarist Seb Martel invited us to perform a tribute to Woodie Guthrie. We in turn invited Rosemary’s dad...
« Hope & Love for Japan », a concert raising funds for tsunami victims in the Tohoku region. Minutes after going off stage at the Theatre de la Bastille, we hop on a cab with a few instruments, and rush to the Parc de La Villette. As we arrive, Yoko picks us up, Gush have just finished their show, and without soundcheck we storm the stage, plug in the guitars, and start playing right away...
Théâtre d’Arras: the very last gig of the Missing Room tour in France. 09.10.12. Marie-Jo and her Café Georget, stories of vocal chords & charcoal mines. Rain, drizzle, empty squares. Rosemary & Dom La Nena open the show with Monteverdi’s « Lamento della Ninfa », « Bird on a Wire », « Homo Fugit Velut Umbra », a traditional spanish song called « Duerme Negrito », Tom...
« Memories From The Missing Room », Paris, october 2012.
Four weeks in a motel room, feeling a bit like Bill Murray in Punxsutawney, waking up to the same groundhog day again and again forever.
« Memories From The Missing Room », Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris. September 2012.
We’re back in room number 08. Memories From The Missing Room, Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris, september 2012.
Deep in the heart of Thüringen. The city basks in its own heat. The Theaterhaus has been partly torn down in the eighties to make way for a parking lot, for some reason they destroyed all the audience seating tiers, so that only the stage tower is left standing, open to the city like a gaping wound. It is a strange experience to be inside a theater and outside at the sale time. Underneath the...
A few hours in the Hauptstadt.
Night trains disappear like an extinct species. The Paris-Berlin Nachtzug still snakes its way through the border. Open windows swallow the dark air in great gusts. Silhouettes shine at the end of the corridors. A blunt ribbon of light splashes against the black unfathomable forests. Lone houses with closed shutters waiting in the great continental nothingness. Possibly disturbed in their sleep...
Hunawihr / Colmar: The Issenheim Altar: La Tentation de Saint-Antoine.
Bordeaux-Strasbourg in a small embraer jet, flying low over castles and Vosges mountains. Colmar: a big wine fair: Sylvaner, Riesling, Pinots, Gewürztraminer wines gathered around a venue shaped like a gigantic shell made of concrete and metal. Overhead we hear the roar of landing aircraft. We share the stage with the band Gossip – during their soundcheck the bass notes reverberate like...
Driving south towards the Landes, high towering mediterranean pines, their needles covering the sandy ground. We’re sleeping under the roof of a traditional house, wooden skeleton turned towards the east for freshness and rising sun. In the night, shooting stars streak the sky, bats fly into the house and flutter in circles across the beds. The next day we reach the festival, spread...
A veteran festival tucked deep in the centre of France, 25 years of existence surrounded by potato fields. We meet the director, he had a new concert venue built in the village in the shape of a metal box – the only modern
architecture around.
Moriarty on tour. Festival aux Champs, Chanteix (F) 12.08.2012