Pondhopping

A Diary From The Modern Skirts’ First UK Tour

originally published November 28, 2007

Last month the Modern Skirts hopped on a plane for their first tour outside of the country. Time in the United Kingdom treated ’em right, and the pop foursome - Jay Gulley (guitar, vocals), JoJo Glidewell (guitar, piano, vocals), Phillip Brantley (bass, guitar, vocals) and John Swint (drums) - returned home tired by the ordeal but energized by its possibilities.

Flagpole asked the band to give Athens an eye into its first skip across the Atlantic; Glidewell kept track of the Skirts’ day-to-day goings-on, both the ups and downs. The band’s currently hard at work on a follow-up to the 2004 debut full-length Catalogue of Generous Men. That album should surface sometime next year, and the Skirts head out on another two-week tour this week. Catch up with ’em at the 40 Watt Club on Friday, Nov. 30, with John Ralston and Parachute Musical opening.

Friday, Oct. 19

So they finally got us on a plane!

After rushing endlessly all day and back and forth on the concourse trains and taking our shoes off over and over again and getting bumped from airline to airline, we are actually concretely on the way to Manchester. Our flight was slated to leave at 3 p.m., and right when we were supposed to board, our flight was canceled. We were switched to another airline and flight, which was running two hours late when we had to switch again, this time to a direct flight to Manchester that left miraculously on time. We are all restless and a little crazy but thankfully miles above all the chaos at the airport.

All week has been nothing less than completely frantic, trying to work and pack and wash clothes and organize all at once and hoping desperately not to forget anything. Then right in the middle we had a Georgia Theatre show, and everything screeched to a halt for that, and afterwards I was up all night getting everything completely ready for leaving early in the morning. We had to buy a temporary keyboard for me because the fully weighted one was too heavy to check with the baggage, so Jason (our tour manager) and I were out at the van at 4 a.m. trying to secure the tiny thing in the clunky old case. Odds and ends have been exploding everywhere around us for days on end, barely any sleep each night, multiple panic attacks… this has been my life this week.

Oh, and I haven’t mentioned yet the case of the misplaced luggage. Our checked baggage, which includes all of our instruments, had gone off the airline’s radar by the time we were waiting on the second flight, and there is some disconnect in this narrative that won’t let me wholly believe that our stuff is magically somewhere below our seats right now. We were told that the situation had been resolved; some lady (that I am certain had no way of knowing one way or the other) told us so. I think she said this so that we’d leave her alone, and thus I remain skeptical. I will try to stay hopeful, though, and maybe we’ll have a little miracle on our hands when we touch down in the morning.

It’s been an unusually hard day. My body is screaming for sleep and my brains are sand.

Saturday, Oct. 20

So we are in our flat tonight in what seems to be a shady Muslim neighborhood in Rusholme, Manchester. Roger Humphries, our driver and soundman for the week, is snoring steadily on the sofa across from me, having fallen asleep between jokes on what appears to be a British version of The Daily Show. Roger is a gruff old British country rocker with a scruffy devil’s halo of gray hair and massive lambchops on his cheeks. There’s a naked chick on his t-shirt. He leaks a steady stream of obscenities and dirty jokes as he goes along, like an old car spilling oil smoke.

Last night on the plane, after taking a few Tylenol PMs and a glass of red wine, I got drowsy, but it was impossible to get comfortable and I wiggled and writhed all night in my seat without having much success at losing consciousness. I closed my eyes for a while, but there were screaming kids and two tattooed girls that got drunk and ran amok in the aisles all night with two British guys. I think they may have had sex in the bathroom at some point in the night. At 7 a.m. England time, the lights popped on and soon we were on the ground. Dead on my feet, I stumbled through customs and took a tiny nap while we waited for our luggage, which did not make it to Manchester and, by my calculation of how things probably transpired, was probably circling on some conveyor belt in Chicago.

As we came out of the terminal, Roger was waiting on us. We had our delirious introductions and headed straight for the apartment. When we got into the flat I collapsed and enjoyed complete nonexistence for a bit. There was nothing to unpack, no soap to shower with, no clothes to change into. I slept like death for two hours while Troy (our manager) and Jason went to a local studio to get some instruments to play our first show with.

And then there we were, playing our first show in Europe smelling of two unwashed days, still sporting the wrinkled, sloppy clothes we wore across the Atlantic, playing instruments we had never laid eyes on before uncasing them. It was not anything close to wonderful, or well-played, or enjoyable for probably anyone involved, but the fact that we got to the U.K. and made our first gig after such a disastrous 24 hours was an accomplishment in itself.

I have to admit that it was pretty overwhelming, probably mostly owing to exhaustion and this being my first time overseas. This show we fought so hard to get to was part of a festival in Manchester called “In the City” (which is similar to South By Southwest, but on a smaller scale), and everyone there, as dumb as it sounds to say, was British, which I found completely exciting. Everyone had a beautiful accent, and it was sometimes hard to understand what people were saying to me, not just because of the accents, but even the phrasing and intonation is completely different. In the fog I was in, I felt kind of thrown and tossed around in an ocean of colors and unfamiliar voices and smells. It smells completely different here. It was dizzying.

After the show we spent a little money on soap and toothpaste, etc., and we got some French bread and cheese and beer and I bought a bottle of wine all for myself. We’ve been relaxing for hours now, showered, clean, fed, watching odd TV and coaxing a nice buzz from our bottles.

Sunday, Oct. 21

Phillip and I are sitting in the living room listening to Roger play some skiffle music, songs that he played back in the ’50s when he was a kid, around the same time young Lennon and McCartney were getting together in their first skiffle bands. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it before. It shares a lot with American folk music, actually.

So I slept for a full 12 hours last night and woke up to a Delta van dropping our luggage off for us. I immediately put on clean clothes and had a shave. There is no feeling quite like the joy of emerging from this kind of deprivation.

Our show today was a Sunday afternoon performance in a shopping mall. Apparently there’s not so much of a stigma over here about that as there is in the states; rock shows are more common in malls here. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Some people stopped and listened; most took a vaguely interested 30 seconds and moved on.

I should take a minute and mention the guys who are following us for a few days. They are with UK1, which is a television production company formed by a few guys who once worked for a radio program called “The Tube,” which, as I understand it, is connected with the In the City Festival. Steven Chapman, who is one of the founders of UK1, contacted us over a year ago when he was producing “The Tube.” Back in the ’80s, “The Tube” was a TV program that helped break a lot of bands in England, including R.E.M. When the show came back as a radio broadcast, they interviewed a lot of those same artists, and Mike Mills did an interview. Mike mentioned Modern Skirts in the interview, which piqued Steven’s interest and prompted him to get in touch with us to find out more about our music. We put some exclusive music on the show, and the interest this attracted for us in England made this trip possible.

Steven and his crew met us at the first show and filmed it, and they shot us at the mall today and will do some interviews and a studio session later this week, ultimately documenting our first trip to the U.K. They are making the footage into a half-hour TV show to pitch to BBC and other television stations, which is exciting for us. It’s actually more exciting for me that we will have this remarkable experience professionally documented.

And to tie it all in, there is a UK1 intern named Kelly who was at the mall with us today, and since we have the night off, she and a friend are taking us out in Manchester to some clubs to see some music. We’ll see how Manchester does a Sunday night, won’t we?

Monday, Oct. 22

Jay and Roger are having a screaming match about the Beatles right now in the living room. I gather that Roger is more of a Rolling Stones guy. It’s getting heated.

Last night was brilliant… we went to some bar called… I can’t remember…. but we saw a really great band called Rosalita. It reminded me of high school, how much I loved British music, how I devoured any of it, good or bad, that I could get into my ears. It struck me as I watched them how exciting it was to be seeing a young British band, the kind of band I would have never discovered in high school unless my German girlfriend had made me a mixtape, and here I was, seeing it with my own eyes. The high-school me would have disintegrated with excitement to have this opportunity. I was giddy.

Kelly and her friend Kathy were a lot of fun. I’ve noticed that I really like the flow and jostle of the way everyone seems to converse here. It’s lively and witty…. that sounds decidedly cliché, I know, but I absolutely see it. There is a lot of double meaning and subtle humor saturating the conversations and I find myself slipping into the pattern easily.

During the day today we met with an entertainment lawyer who helped us out getting gigs, a really pleasant guy named John. We had lunch together at the Night & Day Cafe. No business really, we just basically hung out and enjoyed each other’s company. We walked around a while, saw some more of Manchester before going home for a bit and rested before the show.

The UK1 crew took us to this really posh hotel to film an interview before the show, which was really my favorite part of the night. We interviewed and hung out up until it was time to get to the club. The show was better. Attendance was still pretty soft, and the sound wasn’t spectacular, but it was a little better than the night before. Really not much to relate.

We went out again after the show, this time with a really cool girl we met last night named Francesca, to the In the City final bash. Paid way too much for way too many pints. I met some burly Scottish boy who kept screaming about how much he loved Americans, right in my ear, rattling my teeth. At some point near the end of the night, John got himself kicked out of the bar by two enormous bouncers. We got cabs home; our friends Andrew and Adrian, who came to the show, rode back with us and stayed at the flat. Roger was asleep, so we snuck quietly back to our rooms. By the way, Roger sleeps in nothing but his skivvies in the living room on the couch. I haven’t gotten myself an eyeful yet, but I have heard about it. I make sure to bring a glass of water to be with me so I don’t have a need to cross the living room.

Tuesday, Oct. 23

So I woke up this morning completely hung over/jetlagged and went across the street for breakfast. There is this place called a patty-and-dumpling shop right across the street from our flat and they have these dumplings, which are stuffed pastries with meat and spices and stuff inside. I bought two for £1.50, which is about $3 and is crazy cheap. However, despite being delicious initially, the ghost of pungent spices kept returning in my throat for the rest of the day.

Today our trip was to a small village north of Manchester called Bacup (pronounced bake-up) to play at a sports bar. The bar was the clubhouse for the Bacup Borough Football Team, and the field beside the bar was a nice little soccer field in the midst of beautiful mountains and countryside. It was absolutely picturesque. The street sign said Cowtoot Lane.

On the way to Bacup, Roger completely freaked out on Jay. It was a misunderstanding; I think that Jay misread some of Roger's irritation as humor, and Roger read some of Jay’s humor as rudeness. Jay said something to Roger, and Roger said something to the effect of, “Okay, we’re having a personality conflict,” and went on to say things like “if you’re gonna take the piss, you can get the fuck out of the van,” and concluded with “I’ve seen your type come and go, and I shit people like you.”

It was pretty terrifying. He was bellowing. Jay didn’t say a word the rest of the day today. He and Roger did chat a little by the end of the night, I don’t think there’s any sort of grudge. Roger was just letting off steam. It was still immensely awkward, though. The rest of the hour drive to Bacup was pretty tense.

We got to town early and stopped in on a friend of Roger’s. Everyone went in for coffee, and I stayed out in the van to nap for a few hours. We then loaded in and checked the sound (Roger was doing sound tonight for us) and then met up with Mick, the former Parliament member who helped bring us to Bacup. He and his wife had cooked a homemade curry and we had a succulent dinner with the couple and a good handful of their nine kids. It was cozy and comforting.

Everyone was talking and laughing and the younger kids were staring wide-eyed at us foreign strangers. After dinner, the kids filtered out a few at a time, and Roger and Phillip retired to the living room for a nap, and the rest of us talked in the kitchen with Mick and his wife and the youngest boy and polished off a few bottles of wine.

The show tonight was the best yet. There were a few more people there than at our previous shows, and they were all really into it. And it actually sounded good. I was really getting sick of having shitty shows. Tonight wasn’t huge or anything, but it definitely lifted our spirits considerably. We spent a lot of money to come over here and leave our footprint, even knowing that it would probably be kind of like this. Like starting over, really. But tonight was great. It’s made our trip so far completely worth it.

Wednesday, Oct. 24

After staying so late in Bacup last night, we had to get up early this morning to get ready to go in the studio to finish up the documentary thing with the UK1 folks. The place was called Blueprint Studios, and seems to be a pretty popular studio in England right now. Between our interviews and performances, we could hear the sound of a band recording upstairs. It turns out that it was Elbow recording their new record.

The whole session, the studio, the engineers, everything was amazing. The studio has several levels; it was easy to get lost, which I enjoy, and the decor was interesting. The engineer, Tim, was terribly friendly and really good at what he did. Really good. The rough mixes of the material sounded incredible. We ended up doing “My Bully”(yawn) and “17 Dirty Magazines” (yawn) because UK1 wanted album tracks and we wanted songs that we could play as tight as possible. The performances were snappy and sharp, but not exciting personally for me in any way. Do you have any idea how many times we have heard and played these songs?

It was a long, long day, and we ran late. Roger hit traffic coming to pick us up, too, so we got to the gig that night later than we wanted. Jason cooked spaghetti for us at the flat, so we had a quick familystyle dinner and rushed out to get to Stockport.

I really don’t have much to say about the show tonight. There was a heckler, but the owner ran him off, and some random girl played before us with a great voice, but very slow and vaginal songs. There was really only a few people there, so it was another dull night, like the first few. Downer. And now, back home, trying to get some sleep for tomorrow. We have to be packed and out of the flat by 11 a.m. in the morning, so I’m all ready to go. I hate we have to get up so early, but I’ll survive.

I will miss this city, though. I’ve gotten fond of it. We won’t be back in Manchester until the morning we leave the country.

Thursday, Oct. 25

Tonight was great. We are in a really odd hotel room in Coventry tonight, I don’t know if this is a European thing or if it’s just a bizarre hotel…. not bad, just weird. Lots of colorful plastic and curved corners. You can make a bed fall out of the wall by the window.

We met up with a fellow today has a college radio show in Coventry, and he had us on for an interview and acoustic performance. He also put us up in our rooms for free. He also developed a very drippy brand of pink eye during the course of our day together (which made us all squeamish and nervous) and can drink more beer than any human I have ever encountered. There was a club he owned in the area, a proper music club, but it was closed for renovation, so we were put in a pub called the… Asbury? And we played with a young band called Half of Nothing who we had a lot of fun with after the show. Roger set up and ran the sound again, and yet again it sounded really good. There were people out this time, not a lot, but substantial, and they were raptly attentive. They bought merchandise and had pints with us after the set. I especially enjoyed the other band, we talked for a long time and they absolutely loved us. They were actually really good too… young, but talented.

I do have to take a second to tell you about our biggest fan in Coventry, Angus. Angus was a frail little man with a shaved head and was as flaming as anyone I have ever met. He sat right up front and after every song would say “maahhhhhvelous, dahhhling” over and over, rolling his eyes in feigned ecstasy and shuddering with joy. He called me “fingers” and kept asking where the “hot one” (i.e. John) had run off to. He did his best to remain the center of attention at all times. Everyone knew him; he was kind of the neighborhood poof from what I gathered. he reminded me of Mr. Humphries (the one from “Are You Being Served?”, not our burly, ultra-hetero Roger). So yeah. Fun night. And tomorrow is exciting. We are going to some tiny little village outside of Ilminster to play in a barn with an R.E.M. cover band called S.T.I.P.E. Can’t wait for the weirdness.

Friday, Oct. 26

We are just getting in from the show in the village. We had a pretty big show tonight. There were a good 200 people there, I guess, and they passed around a tip jar and we got £150, which helps a lot. Some of these shows we have just been playing for merchandise money. They seemed to really like us, those villagers.

This community is a very rural hamlet called Windmill Hill. The pub is called the Square & Compass and out back is this huge barn with a stage and sound system and bar in it. We ate at the pub, and I tried liver for the first time. I couldn’t bring myself to ingest the kidney. But the tomatoes and steak and pork chops and sausage and ham were good to me.

You know, I’m really glad we got to do these rural shows. Tonight and in Bacup have felt the most genuinely English experiences we’ve had. Manchester was full of Burger Kings and hip hop, which is fine, but not distinctly English. The Square & Compass and the Bacup Borough Football Clubhouse were much more quintessentially British to me.

I have to say that seeing a English R.E.M. tribute in a barn in a tiny English village was somewhat surreal. By the end of the set, the whole barn was up dancing and losing their minds. The place smelled like beef organs and dirty socks by the end of the night.

Saturday, Oct. 27

Tonight we were in what seemed to be a biker bar in Kent. There were some tough bastards in that place when we rolled in. Roger got miffed at them for complaining about the feedback during soundcheck, and Roger started cussing at them, and after that some scraggly little rat-tailed teen-ager was giving me the stink eye and calling me “faggot” whenever I walked by him. I think he wanted to fight, or maybe he was hitting on me; he was so drunk I don’t know if he knew which either.

We did another radio interview before the show, and by the time we played most of the scary characters had filtered out. Rat-tail was throwing up outside, last I heard from him, so I felt safe. Again, not a great crowd, just the few regulars that seemed as at home in the pub as the furniture, but they listened and whistled and clapped, so, you know, what more can you ask for?

Roger took us around and we saw a castle and a cathedral in Rochester, then we dropped everyone off at the hotel, and John and I have come home to stay with Roger and his girlfriend Carol, a sweet sweet lady we met this morning.

Oh, and I we drove quickly by Stonehenge today.

Sunday, Oct. 28

So last night John and I went and stayed at Roger’s house in Kent with him and Carol. We must have sat up till 6 a.m. drinking Jack Daniels and listening to Roger play and sing country songs on his guitar. Even John grabbed the guitar and played and sang a Gram Parsons song. I ended up falling asleep halfway through the session, but I think John and Roger went on for a while after my collapse.

I got up with a green stomach and ate as much baked beans and eggs as I could, and we were immediately off to London after that. The weather has gradually turned gray throughout our trip, and by today we were having the most perfect London weather imaginable. We crossed the prime Meridian; we saw Blackheath, where the plague victims were interred; we saw Big Ben and the London Eye and the Thames all hanging out together. We rode past Trafalgar Square where they were having a massive Diwali celebration and peeked through the gates at Buckingham palace. Roger impressed us along the way with his encyclopedia of dirty limericks.

The club is called the Rock Garden, and is in an area of London called Covent Garden. It reminds me a little of the market in Charleston, SC, just on a much grander, more expensive, more European scale. There was a little man in a top hat walking a tightrope strung between two enormous columns and juggling blades. There were people everywhere, pouring in and out of restaurants, shops, alleys, taxicabs… there were all kinds of languages swimming around my head, cobblestone streets, pigeons bursting from the street up into the dour sky… this was my first moment in a truly European city. I was away from everyone else, we had split off for an hour to explore, and I just stood in a doorway by myself out of the rain and watched everyone around me.

The Rock Garden is a hip little club dressed like like an opium den, dark and warm and all covered in cloth. Like the inside of a genie bottle. We played with about five other bands, give or take, and most were heavily influenced by American music. There was a Russian girl doing some sort of schizophrenic blues-cabaret, there were folk duos and jug bands. The club had food and half-price bottles of wine, so we settled in and ate and drank and watched the music. A lot of the acts were really great. There was some Halloween party going on and everyone was dressed up and they had a mask-making contest. Troy got the most audience applause for his mask, and won a Grolsch.

Our show was finally the show we have been wanting to have the whole time. The club was packed and everyone was really attentive and the applause was enthusiastic and loud. We made a lot of new friends and sold a lot of CDs and T-shirts. We spent the rest of the day hanging out with our dear friend Matt Ballou, who moved from Athens to London not too long ago. After that was a long drive to Manchester to get ready to hop on a plane early in the morning. We got to our rooms in the middle of the night.

Monday, Oct. 29

There was (thankfully) not much worth mentioning about our journey back to the States. We woke up after having barely gotten to sleep, and Roger got us to Manchester International by eight or so in the morning. We said our good-byes and got easily onto the plane. We connected in Chicago, where we were almost tossed through customs, and made it back into Atlanta and to our van without a snag. Our luggage was even there with us the whole time. Home is good. I think I’ll sleep until it’s time to leave for the road again on Wednesday.

JoJo Glidewell

WHO: Modern Skirts, John Ralston, Parachute Musical WHERE: 40 Watt Club WHEN: Friday, November 30 HOW MUCH: $8 (advance), $10 (door)