Adam Gnade: The Loud And The Free (Berlin, Germany. Cambridge and Birmingham, England)-- Local Cut

Adam Gnade: The Loud And The Free (Berlin, Germany. Cambridge and Birmingham, England)

January 7th, 2009 [1:49PM] Posted by: ADAM GNADE | 0 COMMENTS

In Berlin as I type this. Two days ago Jamey and I took the train from Amsterdam across beautiful Dutch and German countryside. It was a long, warm, comfortable trip; seven hours of staring out the window at Shetland ponies in yards, tiny villas and farmhouses with snow-covered roofs, and miles of spindly black forest. (And here, as Americans, Jamey and I imagined slogging across bomb-scarred German farmland weighed down with packs and rifles while anti-aircraft guns coughed in the distance. Trench blues. Eternal Band of Brothers.

After hours of lounging around a booth in the diner car (vodka and orange juice, great dark chocolate, croissants with strawberry jam) we arrived in Berlin at sundown. A little later we were at the apartment of Valentina Giosa, an Italian journalist who’d interviewed me the week before for a German music magazine. Italian hospitality, you can’t beat it. No matter where you go the Italians treat you fine and insist on feeding you the greatest pasta meals and letting you sleep on their floors and making sure you stay drunk and happy and entertained. Valentina Giosa, a real sweetheart.

So, Berlin, wonderful Berlin. Tomorrow we fly to Paris, but I’m not so sure I want to leave.

Had some bad preconceptions about this city. So much dark history. The Nazis goose-stepping past the Reichstag. Books burning in the public square. The Wall set against the Brandenburg Gate.

I see it all as old news strips: Hitler’s rallies in black and white with confetti raining over the crowd; East German teenagers in ’80s ski jackets running past barbwire and gun-towers; Reagan’s plastic dinosaur-cowboy face on TV … “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

But Berlin knows all this and they’re trying to make a new city that stands on its own merits, a Berlin free of the past. And it shows. Berlin in 2008 is a good, safe, beautiful place that vibrates with forward-thinking, progressive culture, and positivity. There’s something going on in every corner. Seems like everybody’s got a project or a band or a new idea they’re looking to blow the world’s mind with. A town of believers and doin’-the-right-thing hustlers. (Another small bonus: My last name is actually a word here. Means “grace” and they pronounce it the same way I do, “guh nah dee.” A whole country of people I don’t have to explain my last name to. No more Nades or Guhnaydes or Nads or Nods.)

Last night, our second night in town, we meet up with Valentina who’s just back from shooting a concert video for Spin magazine, and her friend Davide, a famous DJ from Rome. The four of us sit around a bar table in what was once East Berlin and talk over vodka shots that are cheap and ice-cold and keep coming until the place closes. Davide and Valentina both love Italy but they are over the moon to be in Berlin. And everyone’s this way. It is, in a way, like Portland. City pride. Expatriates. Everyone ecstatic over the bounty and good energy.

When the bar closes we take a nice slow walk back to Valentina’s and I play some Deer Tick songs for everybody then Valentina sings and Davide plays guitar while Jamey and I eat dark German bread and toast Berlin with red wine and more vodka.

All that said, I still need to back-track a few weeks. Got to get my head in the past. Need to get the early shit out of the way so as to catch up with the present.

Some quick wrap-ups. A little two-show contrast and compare. One life-affirming, another soul-crushing.

Cambridge, England: When you play solo and have a lot of dead-quiet parts in your songs, shows like this are your bread and butter: nice clean sound mix; full capacity crowd that pays attention; snow falling outside but everyone inside, warm and drinking wine and rosy-faced and lighthearted.

Last tour we played the Cambridge Barfly and it was fucking shit. This time we’re a bit down the road at the Portland Arms. Great club. Best part: The front room. Fireplace, steamed windows, big stuffed armchairs. Nice place to chill before your set and eat hot potato curry served by the bar staff.

Both sets go smooth. Youthmovies and I finish off their set doing a song we recorded together last year, “Become an Island,” from the EP that came out on the Blast First label a few weeks ago. Big drones. Chanting and pedal noise. Trumpet looped and floating over us. Feels like a space-clearing after the hurt put on me earlier by my delayed reaction hangover (a little birthday present from the night before.) But we try ‘n’ exorcise and I rock back and forth on my knees on stage hoping to pull down some ghosts with the mic held over my head and pointed straight at the ceiling. Al’s kneeling over his pedals turning knobs and looks 12 years old. Andrew’s sitting on the floor of the stage next to me and he’s holding one long note into a ’70s headphone ear-piece as a mic, eyes closed. The trumpet is making bird calls. The rhythm section churns and pulses and barfs like amniotic fluid. We’re making music and it feels like we’re making music. Sometimes you play shows and it feels like you’re covering your own songs. Sometimes you make new music right there on stage. Tonight it’s all freedom.

We finish and I stumble off stage all weak-kneed and grinning and feeling lucky. Cambridge, you’ve got my heart.

Birmingham: It’s Remembrance Day today. City crazy and flooded with people. Rancid’s in the main room. Youthmovies, the Great Eskimo Hoax, and myself are in the small one, which is actually pretty big. Not that there’s anyone here. Crowd’s no more than 50 people and none of ‘em give a damn. A few of them step up front to watch but no one looks too impressed. (A review later states the contrary but don’t believe it.)

I sit down for my set and drink tequila between songs to ward off the dead stares around me. (Everyone’s pressed up to the front of the stage barrier, which just makes it worse). Do some covers (Johnny Cash “When the Man Comes Around,” new-old-generation talking-songs), stumble through some new ones, a little awkward stage banter, share the tequila with the 14-year-old kids in the front row, etc, finish the set feeling run the fuck over.

After Youthmovies’ set somebody steals their drummer Graeme’s phone from behind the merch table and texts his band-mate Al, saying, “Mate, I quit” (which causes a few minutes of misunderstandings and band drama.)

And it gets worse. After finding out a couple kids I was talking to earlier ducked out the side door with stolen armfuls of our stuff I take to the streets hoping they’re still in the area. Hunt through the square for ‘em; steeling myself for a good fight. Watch the faces pass looking for something familiar. Walk past Rancid’s big shit-yellow submarine bus and all the bootleg t-shirt vendors selling Rancid shirts for 40 pounds and all the guys with mohawks and leather. No luck. They’re gone and so is our shit.

I pull my parka up around me and walk back to the venue, pissed off and too sober and ready to get the fuck out of Birmingham.

Spirits low, we go to an Indian restaurant with a giant, gaudy plastic oak tree in the middle of the room. Even that doesn’t lighten our mood. Nothing works (not even the food which is damn good.)

In an odd turn of events, the restaurant staff notices the bummer we’re on and one of the waiters starts lovingly teasing us and cracks little razor-sharp jokes about our clothes and food choices and keeps bringing the booze until we’re all glow-faced and happy. Now we’re okay and we share each other’s food (peshwari naan!) and try all the crazy papadum sauces and mellow the fuck out.

“Excuse me, you are in band I think,” says the waiter as he and a shy, pretty Indian girl clear our plates.

“Yeah, they’re on tour,” says our driver, Pete, who we’ve nicknamed Peachy.

“We get lot of them… of band in here. What are you called?”

“We’re called Rancid,” says Andrew.

The waiter shrugs.

“No, no, just kidding,” says Andrew. “We’re Youthmovies and he’s Adam Gnade.”

The waiter shrugs again and we all laugh. Music … it really doesn’t mean much outside of our weird little cloistered orbits. Our biggest icons are just somebody’s else shrug-offs. We’re only so important as we pretend we are. It’s kind of beautiful that way. Time forgets everything and all goes to the void but goddamn it’s good while it lasts.

We pay up, walk outside, and Rancid’s bus is parked next door in front of posh hotel.

Next up, Bristol.