Part Three: Portugal and Don Benito

So we’ve just completed the third leg of our Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue UK/EU Tour, with a series of shows in Portugal and Spain. It’s been a nice shift from the first half of the tour, because it’s such a different part of Europe from where we’d been before, and everywhere we’ve been playing shows here is somewhere I’d never performed before, whereas all the cities and towns we’d performed in during the first two legs of the tour are places I’d performed in before.

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While staying in Hasselt, Belgium the night of our show there with our drummer Gem’s friend Lauren, I mentioned we’d really been looking forward to having some Belgian chocolate on this tour, but none had been offered to us in Gent. Thankfully, Lauren had plenty of Belgian chocolate in her house, which she happily shared with us. It was delicious, as always.

We had a night off in Hasselt the night after our show there, so Gem stayed with Lauren again, while Chu and I stayed with my friend Tom, a Belgian musician who fronts a band called the Tonsils, and his wife Veronique, who is also a Belgian musician and also plays in the Tonsils. The two of them also play in a band called the Shovels, which is fronted by their friend Eric, a legendary Belgian artist who is sometimes referred to as “the Belgian Daniel Johnston” – I’d also say Eric is original enough that he can’t really be pinned down in that way.

Tom organized the shows I played in Hasselt the first time I was there, in 2017, at the squat in the abandoned gelatin factory that was shut down by the police shortly after our show, and at a coffee shop nearby. The Shovels and The Tonsils joined me for those shows, which included a rare solo set of Eric’s at the coffee shop.

Tom no longer organizes shows, but he continues to make excellent music and remains a lovely guy. This time, he explained to us the story of how witloof, a Belgian vegetable we’d eaten in deep fried form at a snack bar in Gent, was cultivated by putting chicory roots in dark cellars with a small light they would grow towards.

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The next morning, Chu and I went out for coffee at a nearby cafe, and a couple older men sitting at the bar asked us lots of questions about where we were from and what we were doing in Hasselt, before getting into a different conversation with each other in Flemish. Afterwards, Chu told me about how even though they don’t understand Flemish, they figured out exactly what the men were talking with each other about, because there are so many men just like them at the bar they work at in Norwich; they come in at the same time every day, sit in the same places, order the same drinks, and have the same conversations, sometimes word for word, for hours.

We talked about how odd it must be to do the same exact thing every day – before remembering we’re doing exactly that on this tour, as we play almost the same exact set list every night, with a few variations depending on time constraints, and of course a lot of improvised parts that change with each show.

Miracle On Neon Clown Avenue Spring 2023 UK/EU Tour Set List

Winter in Brooklyn
Ghosts!
I’m Gonna Explode!
My Violent Brush
Sparks!
Hard to Break
F Train Over Brooklyn
Grow

(sometimes I play a solo song or two at this point)

This Neolithic Hole
Pit Of Worms
Henry Hudson

(sometimes I play another solo song as an encore)

We then had lunch from a local bakery and met up with Gem at the train station to catch our train from Hasselt to Paris. Gem had brought hi-hats and a crash cymbal to stuff into our guitar and bass cases, and a kick drum pedal to put in our luggage. All our other drums and our amplifiers, we left at Lauren’s house, where Gem and Moon will pick them up after the tour. For the rest of the shows on our tour, we’d be doing a combination of taking public transit and getting lifts from local drivers, and borrowing drums and amplifiers from the venues and local bands, as we couldn’t bring our own now that we didn’t have a driver to get us out of Belgium.

We would stay in Paris that night on our way to Lisbon, with our new friend France, at her lovely apartment near the Tour Montparnasse. Gem and I talked about how the Tour Montparnasse has a kind of dark energy to it, even darker than similar massive buildings in NYC. When I arrived in Paris at the Gare Montparnasse shortly before I was robbed in 2021, I already had a sense something awful was about to happen, and I attributed a lot of that to the energy of that building. However, France’s apartment was far enough from it that it didn’t really bother us during our stay.

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When we got out of the Metro station on the way to France’s apartment, the first thing we saw was a couple friends casually sitting on a little stone piece on the edge of their building next to their window, smoking and hanging out; one of the most French things that can possibly be done.

When we arrived at her apartment, she was listening to a psychedelic symphony called “Penetration-an-Aquarian”, by a band made up of members of a religious cult from 1970s LA called Ya Ho Wha 13, and hanging out with her cat Arthuro. Interestingly, and maybe even symbolically, Arturo is also the name of the brand of jacket I was wearing, which I’d bought at a flea market in Paris for €5 shortly after getting my emergency passport from the US Embassy, after having been homeless for 3 weeks due to being robbed. The name Arturo is on the front and back of the jacket in big letters, so people sometimes think that’s my name when I’m wearing it.

We all went out for a walk near France’s apartment, which is one of my favorite areas to walk around in Paris. France and I exchanged tour stories and talked about Belgium and the difficulties of the music business. I took France, Gem, and Chu to a church nearby and told them the story of a surreal experience I’d had outside of it when I was homeless after being robbed, which I also wrote a song about called “The Demon Weaver’s Favorite Little Archangels”, which will be released on an album in the future. We went back to France’s apartment, where she made us a delicious vegan curry and had a lovely night’s sleep, despite Gem and I having horrible allergic reactions to Arthuro.

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The next morning, we all had a nice walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg, had a little breakfast at a cafe near the Église Saint-Sulpice, and hurried over to Charles de Gaulle airport to catch our flight to Lisbon. It was a difficult journey, as we almost didn’t make our flight due to the part of the terminal we’d have to walk through to get to our gate being closed off by the army because someone had left an unattended bag there. We had to race through the very confusing airport to find a bus that would take us to our gate instead.

The flight was uneventful, other than an absolutely horrible “instant” fusilli carbonara they sold me as “lunch”. It was basically cheese soup with barely edible noodles in it. Thankfully, our flight was very short, and we were immediately greeted by João, the promoter who organized our Lisbon show, upon landing. João drove us to his apartment in the southwest corner of Lisbon, where we were staying for the next three nights. Apparently, over 1,000 people have stayed in his apartment since he moved there about 15 years ago.

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João is a Lisbon native, and plays in a band called dUASsEMIcOLCHEIASiNVERTIDAS that’s been making some pretty great noise for awhile now. His apartment, where he lives with two Russian artists he met on his band’s recent Russian tour, is full of books, posters, art, and music. I’d come into contact with him and his bandmate Boris after the grindcore violinist Joey Molinaro recommended I write them for booking shows in Portugal. I was very excited about this, as I’d never performed in Portugal before. In addition to João booking the show in Lisbon, his bandmate Boris booked us a show in the rural center of Portugal, where he lives, for the night after our Lisbon show. The show in Don Benito, Spain, which we were to play the night after that, was also organized by someone Joey recommended, who is also a good friend of João and Boris.

Gem quickly bonded with one of João’s roommates over the fact that they’d both been involved with different projects with the same name: John Cage Against The Machine. However, we quickly had to leave to get food, as we were pretty hungry from not having had a proper meal on the plane. João recommended a Cape Verde restaurant nearby, which was delicious and affordable. Next door, there was a thrift store where a band was playing a free show, and we watched for a bit before going out to explore the city.

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The first thing I noticed about Lisbon was there were British people everywhere; it seemed like there were more British people than Portuguese! But it seems this way, of course, because the British are often out and about on holiday, while the Portuguese are often inside, at work. There’s a similar dynamic in Oaxaca, Mexico, where my parents live; there, it seems like every other person you see around town is a tourist or expat from the US.

Oaxaca and Lisbon also have a similar problem in that their economies both depend mostly on tourism, which often conflicts with what local people want to do and how they want to organize their society.

We stopped in a bar where we met a techno fan from Nyack, NY, who now lives on Seneca Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, near a bar where I performed earlier this year. The first thing he did upon meeting us was ask “how are the Portuguese women treating you?”

None of us were sure how to respond – but this felt like exactly the kind of textbook neo-colonial behavior we’d be worried about in a place that’s become overrun with these insufferable tourists and “digital nomads” from wealthier countries who see travel as a means to “conquer” land and bodies, especially the bodies of young women and queer people. We often hear stories about the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young people by wealthy gringos in Mexico, and it honestly makes my stomach turn.

Travel can be a great way to connect with people, to learn, to grow, to make art, to do any number of things that benefit others and oneself – however, many people waste it on repeating centuries old cycles of colonial violence and exploitation, and most of the tourism and long-term travel industries are much more oriented towards these violent fantasies than they are towards anything good.

We found a little shop where we bought travel sized toiletries and a guarana drink from Brazil that none of us had seen before, but is apparently everywhere in Portugal – again, for colonial reasons. We then found another bar, a nightmarish place for gentrifier types that was on the rooftop of a parking lot, and was almost impossible to find the right elevator to get to. We spent a few minutes there before leaving.

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We had a nice night’s sleep at João’s apartment, then woke up and headed to a cafe in the neighborhood where we had coffee and pastéis de nata outside next to a giant barking dog. We then took a very long walk through the outskirts of Lisbon to the suburb of Belém (Bethlehem), where we visited a museum, had lunch, and visited some local tourist attractions.

Gem was wearing their pink Adidas dress that day, which attracted some interesting attention; a small child on a school field trip at the museum pointed at them and shouted “LGBT!”, and, later on, some people on a truck were laughing at them while going by.

We noted how odd it is that people are so suspicious of anyone who seems like they might be queer, trans, or nonbinary these days that they often pick up on any potential signs of that right away. There’s this militant defense of restrictive ideas about gender and sexuality now that wasn’t present when we were younger, which is concerning.

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On the other hand, I have reason to be optimistic – I remember in the early 2010s, when people in the NYC music scene were disseminating all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories about trans people in hopes that up-and-coming musicians would become spokespeople for anti-trans beliefs – and I’m impressed with how many of us never really fell for these beliefs in the first place, and how many of us believed these things for a split second before realizing how absurd and harmful these things would be to our trans siblings and ourselves.

And I’m of the latter group! I did actually believe some of these bizarre, hateful theories in my early 20s, despite being non-binary myself.

In fact, a lot of us on the scene later realized we’re trans ourselves, which in hindsight explains why we were drawn to the underground performance scene in the first place – we had to express all these aspects of ourselves that weren’t welcome in any other part of society, and we especially found solace in the live music scenes of that era, which were seen by society-at-large as these shameful relics of the distant past that would soon be fully replaced by a high-tech, hyper-capitalist dystopia of largely computer generated music that would have us “degenerate artists” blotted out of existence once and for all.

The fact that we were able to create so much art and community during that horribly restrictive, proto-fascist era of NYC gives me so much hope for the fights against transphobia, against neo-colonialism, and against AI-generated art in the 2020s.

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Looking back, I’d say my “favorite” of these transphobic narratives might’ve been the conspiracy theory about trans identity being a Sino-Iranian plot to covertly infiltrate the USA.

This seems to have morphed into these more vague, unfortunately very widespread conspiracy theories about essentially anyone who takes a firm stance against racism, capitalism, or bigotry of any sort being a secret Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Palestinian, and/or Jewish infiltrator – which, in itself, is a recycled trope from the Third Reich, where the original German Nazis believed there was a secret “Jewish Bolshevik” plot to overthrow the “Aryan Race” by mobilizing a Slavic army against them.

This sort of racist conspiracy theory seems to be especially popular in France (where it has resurfaced as the “Islamogauchisme” and “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories) and the USA (where it takes the form of a seemingly endless supply of bizarre theories about any number of topics, including “the Russians” and/or George Soros secretly supporting left-leaning activists, Palestinians and/or other people of West Asian descent secretly conspiring to harm Jews and queer people, or covid-19 being some sort of Chinese bio-weapon).

Despite the popularity of these harmful beliefs in some parts of the world at present, I’m optimistic that we can find a way out of this mess, and that the arts can be incredibly empowering in creating communities and networks that act as a viable alternative to the status quo.

We stopped by a grocery store on the way home to pick up ingredients for dinner. Gem and Chu made pasta with a delicious tomato and pepper sauce, while I took a long walk around Lisbon and caught up with my boyfriend and my mom on the phone, neither of whom I’d had time to talk with in awhile, since we’d been so busy on this tour. It was great to finally have some time off.

After dinner, we went to an experimental electronic music open jam organized by a friend of João’s. At first, we couldn’t find the venue, because the outside of it was completely unmarked. Shortly after we arrived, however, someone let us into the building and explained to us that the space was a non-profit association, meaning we needed to become members of the association in order to come in.

He explained to us that after Portugal’s leftist revolution overthrew their military dictatorship in 1974, one thing enshrined in the new constitution was freedom of association, which led to a lot of people forming non-profit associations like this one. Because of their legal status, only members can come in; even police can’t enter without a warrant, which is also a lot more difficult to get in Portugal than in the US. If the members are ok with it, people can smoke indoors in a place like that, or do other things that wouldn’t be legal in a public venue. As it turns out, the venue we were going to perform at in rural Portugal later that week was also a non-profit association like this, and the venue we were performing at in Lisbon was considering becoming one as well.

Since the membership fee was only €3, and the place seemed really cool, we joined, got our membership cards, and went in. We had a great time, met some interesting people, and got to listen to some interesting improvised electronic music.

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The next day, Gem and I finally got to have a listen to the rough mixes for our upcoming album Hard to Break, thanks to João’s wonderful sound system. We made some notes on what needs to be edited, which is very little at this point. After our tour, Gem will do some work on the melodica, saxophone, and accordion parts that were recorded separately from the rest of the album, in Oaxaca and Buenos Aires by Duo Toque de Azafrán and Negrita Yani – and then, Ben Turner will finish mixing the album, and send it off for mastering. It’ll be released to the public on my 30th birthday, the 22nd of October. Before that, there will be 3 singles released from the album, 2 of which will also be accompanied by music videos.

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Later that day, João drove us to Little Chelsea, the space where we performed that night in Lisbon. Upon our arrival, Céline, one of the owners of the space, took a video of us coming out of the car and introduced herself to us. She showed us around the space, where there was currently an exhibition of photos from various shows in NYC. The whole space was inspired by the punk scene in NYC, which made it an interesting first place for me, a lifelong New Yorker, to perform in Portugal. Apparently, about a third of the songs they play on their Spotify shuffle at Little Chelsea are Cannonball Statman songs, because, besides the fact that they apparently really like my music, they only opened recently, so they’ve only added a few artists to their shuffle so far.

We met the local band, Marlon Ruivo, who formed very recently but are all veterans of the Portuguese music scene from other bands. Apparently, the band is named after a man who was in the band for their first show and immediately quit. The drummer, bassist, and guitarist of the band were kind enough to lend us their drums and amplifiers at the last minute after we found out we wouldn’t have a driver to bring ours down to Lisbon. This was especially cool since the original plan had been for them to borrow our drums and amplifiers, not the other way around.

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We all set up and sound checked, and were then treated to a nice dinner from a nearby restaurant. People started to arrive to see the show, and the room was full by the time the show started – everyone stuck around the whole night.

Marlon Ruivo played a great, noisy set of what they describe as “post-pre-punk”, which included some interesting use of autotuned vocals. After that, we played a high-energy, relatively chaotic set, which people danced a lot to and all seemed to enjoy. It was such an interesting shift from playing in timid, reserved Belgium to open, easygoing Portugal, and we were having a great time.

We finished the night with a small afterparty at the apartment of the French couple who own Little Chelsea. I talked with a local musician who told me about the time he visited NYC and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge up to Central Park and back, on a brief layover after recording in LA.

It was great to talk with him about that walk, because I used to walk the Brooklyn Bridge every day, and sometimes even walked all the way up to Washington Heights from there and all the way back to my apartment in Brooklyn, which is an incredible walk.

The next morning, João drove us to the bus station, where we had surprisingly good, affordable food in the cafe, and a man pointed at me and shouted “Bob Dylan!”

We took the bus to Oliveira do Hospital, in the rural center of Portugal, where we were to meet up with Boris, João’s bandmate who organized the concert we’d be playing that night in Coja, a small town nearby.

An elderly woman sitting next to me on the bus who spoke no English spoke to me in Portuguese for a lot of the trip, and I could only vaguely make out most of what she was saying, but I tried to keep up the conversation. She showed no signs of frustration or difficulty communicating with me; she seemed a lot more confident in my Portuguese than I am. It’s one of the languages I’m almost completely incompetent at, though I’m slowly improving.

And it was seriously nice to have a conversation with this incredibly friendly woman who had the patience of a saint. Though I can’t for the life of me remember anything we talked about.

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Boris picked us up from the bus station, and drove us to a co-operatively run grocery store, where we got a very good and affordable lunch; I had 2 chorizo sandwiches and an iced tea for €2. Boris then drove us to a back road somewhere where we linked up with Billy, a Scottish man who lent us his sound system for the show. I wasn’t sure why we were meeting him in this specific place, as it seemed like there was nothing around for miles.

Chu in particular seemed to think this was hilarious, because it was like something out of a crime thriller – indeed, there is something about driving to an undisclosed, remote location to pick up a bunch of technology from a mysterious Scotsman. And in this case, it turned out to be something really good!

We then headed over to the venue, RiJu, which is a non-profit association much like the place where we saw the electronic open jam in Lisbon. It was apparently built as a youth center for folk dancing. We loaded in our gear and ran a quick sound check. The stage there was very tall, which was going to make it interesting to jump off of during our set.

We then met up with Michael, a veteran of the German punk scene who moved to Coja with his wife recently, and performs as a cassette DJ and hosts a local radio show.

He interviewed us for his radio show, asking some interesting questions about my music and where it comes from, especially hammering on the aspect of “great American storytelling” that he sees me as part of the tradition of.

He also wanted to know what antifolk was, because people had been telling him they didn’t want to come to the show, because they like folk music, and they don’t like the idea of something that’s against folk music.

It seemed he’d really done his homework on me; he referenced some of the home recorded songs I’d done as a teenager such as “Console” that very few people know about. Michael seemed to know a lot about just about everything, in fact.

The only thing he didn’t seem to know much about was antifolk – a topic I’d argue no one in this universe (least of all myself) actually knows anything about – we’re really all just making it up as we go along, and I probably wouldn’t have even heard of antifolk if not for my chance encounter with a drunken antifolk poet at a bar in Brooklyn in 2012.

(Cannonball Statman trio interviewed on Radio Javali in Coja, Portugal)

We were then treated to an elaborate dinner with pasta, cabbage soup, and delicious meat, in addition to a vegetarian substitute, for our bassist. We met Billy’s partner, a Mancunian woman who took us on a walk around the beautiful town of Coja with her dogs. We exchanged stories about the times our dogs went missing, and the friends you end up making when you’re in a crisis.

We went back to the venue and the show began. Boris performed as his solo project Catapulta, which I would describe as very moving, emotive music, made with a mini-bouzouki, a drum machine, and a lot of effects pedals.

Then we played our set, to another Portuguese crowd that got really into what we were doing, and danced to it with a fierce and joyous energy to actually match ours – this was an interesting contrast with the northern European audiences, who equally enjoyed our music but were incredibly restrained in their movement.

Boris drove us to his house in a village 30 minutes away, and a bunch of people from the show tagged along for an afterparty.

As Boris explained to us, because it’s so rare to have concerts in that part of Portugal, when something like this happens, “people don’t know what to do”, so they just keep partying all night and often most of the next day.

I responded to Boris that on the contrary, “it sounds like they know exactly what to do” – they keep partying all night and often most of the next day.

And indeed – while my bandmates and I were sleeping, Boris and his friends were up all night partying downstairs.

The next morning, Boris and I went around town to pick up ingredients for a lunch we’d be making for ourselves and Parreira, a Portuguese musician and friend of a friend of a friend of Albert (the man who organized our upcoming Catalonia shows on this tour, and also put us in touch with legendary Belgian driver Freddy Spaepen who really saved the day on the Belgian leg of our tour). Parreira had stepped in at the last minute to drive my bandmates and I to Don Benito, Spain that day so we could make it to our show there in time.

While out buying ingredients, Boris got into a bit of an argument with the butcher, who apparently plays in a band with him, but always refuses to rehearse. We bought chorizo from the butcher, and went to a bar up the road from Boris, where we had some great espresso.

Parreira arrived at Boris’s house, and I introduced myself and my bandmates to him. Boris and Parreira quickly recognized each other, as Parreira had apparently done sound for João and Boris’s band dUASsEMIcOLCHEIASiNVERTIDAS at a festival recently. Parreira said seeing their band at that festival changed his entire idea of what music is. And indeed, it would, because they’re a fucking incredible band.

We had a delicious lunch of pasta with chorizo (with a substitute of carrots for our bassist), and set off for Don Benito. We drove through the beautiful Portuguese and Spanish countryside, and some small towns in the southwestern part of Spain, while listening to Parreira’s band the Lemon Lovers and various albums by Chu, Gem, and myself. Parreira was a really cool guy, and eager for adventure, as he’d just gone on his first tour earlier this year. He seemed really happy about driving us.

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We arrived in Don Benito at the Rincón Pío Sound, where we were performing that night. We all hugged Parreira and I paid him for his work, and he headed home to take care of his cats as we loaded our gear into the venue.

We met Yiye, the owner, who was very happy to have us there. Everyone we’d met in Portugal had told us this was one of the best venues to play on Earth, so we were very happy to be able to play there.

The place reminded me a lot of Goodbye Blue Monday, a legendary Brooklyn venue I used to perform at all the time that closed in 2014; it had a real community vibe to it, laid-back, grungy, fun, and not taking itself too seriously, but still really caring about and taking good care of the musicians. We did a quick sound check and were treated to some delicious pizza as people started to trickle in to see the show.

We went on stage, and the place was pretty full of people to see us, even though none of us had played in or anywhere near Don Benito before, and we were the only people performing that night. Again, there was a lot of dancing, and moshing in some parts, including with me when I jumped off stage while playing; everyone was having a good time. I got to practice my Spanish in between songs, which is the only time I’ll get to do that on this tour.

I played an encore, a solo rendition of my song “Pennsylvania”, which I realized was the only time I’d played that song on the tour so far. Chu convinced Gem and I to do a group bow at the end of the show, then pretty much everyone in the audience came on stage to take photos with me, before we quickly fled the venue in Yiye’s car, as Gem was exhausted and needed to sleep immediately.

Yiye drove us to the apartment in Don Benito where he was putting us up that night. It was nice to have a private space to sleep, and the beds were very comfortable.

Chu and I went out for a walk around Don Benito that night, and stopped into an Irish pub where someone who’d been at the show was hanging out with her friends. She was excited to see us again, and she told us again how much she loved the show.

We then went to another bar, where they had a foosball table and some pool tables. Some guys invited us to play foosball with them, but they were much better at it than we were, so it was a bit boring. One of them thought Chu was my dad, which is hilarious, because Chu is only about 4 years older than me and looks completely different from me.

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We had a great night’s sleep at the apartment, and Gem and I spent most of the morning trying to find a place to have coffee, as everything was closed due to it being a Sunday. Some locals recommended a bar that also serves coffee, near the big church and the town square.

We had coffee and some delicious orange juice, and when we asked the bartender if they had a food menu, he said “the kitchen doesn’t open for another hour.” So I said “ok, we’ll just have the coffee and orange juice then,” to which he replied, “yes, and you’d probably like a tostado de jamón (open faced ham and tomato sandwich)?” which of course I did, and of course it was delicious.

While eating outside, an elderly man started chatting with us, who turned out to be a good friend of Yiye; he’d wanted to come to our show the night before, but couldn’t make it because he was working that night.

We gathered all our belongings from the apartment, and walked for 20 minutes to get to the train station to begin our journey eastward. We’re currently in Madrid, about to make the journey to Catalonia, where we’ll finish our tour. Stay tuned for my post about that, which I’m sure will contain plenty of interesting tales.

Part Four: Catalonia >>

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