Moriarty on tour: Montluçon 16.12.2014
Right in the middle of France, the deep center, Auvergne, Allier. Another remote town, surrounded by suburban grands ensembles, blocks from the fifties. Anguish. L’Embarcadère: a vast, slightly rundown venue with backstage areas feeling like an abandoned schoolhouse. The stage is low-ceilinged, and there is an ominous buzz in the guitar pickups. We’re starting the third week of our Epitaph tour and the whole crew is already exhausted: an hour before the show, every available couch is occupied by a sleeping corpse, struggling to grab a few minutes of sleep under the harsh neon-lights. The Marshalls open the show with a swampy blues-rock gig. The venue is packed. A lady says she’s been waiting for us to play here for seven years. She tells us about a nearby place, called Noyant-sur-l’Allier, a former mining town, deserted in the fifties, which became a home to hundreds of vietnamese refugees from the Guerre d’Indochine. A Vietnamese-Auvergnat hybrid settlement…
