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Tour Update #2

"And then there were two..." - Alex Munro

"Gigging isn't a job, it's an adventure"- quote on Bill Mitchell's facebook wall

So, the tour has been, if nothing else so far- eventful. We played Guernsey and Jersey- both amazing nights on the islands (check Alex's tour photos to get a little taste of how it went) The crowds were massive and really up for it, and the Live Lounge in Jersey was bumping with killer sets from Benny The Moth, Smooth Hounds, and Asylum Seekas. Everyone on the bill was on their A game- especially our homeboy DJ Oneofakind aka Andre DeCarteret. Big up to Guernsey and Jersey for a little over a week full of alot of music and a lot of laughter.

I was really hoping the Channel Island shows went well, as Hollywood and DJ Afar had come so far for just a couple of gigs. Luckily, that weekend everybody was on form- the crowds were moving and the boys were really playing with heart. Jersey was bittersweet tho; it was a killer show yet we knew it was Hollywood's last show on the tour. Well, we played and partied all that night thru til the morning. We woke up late the next day- went out and enjoyed some lobster and shrimp from the local waters, then bid Hollywood a fond farewell. He was on his flight back to Cuse, while Alex, Afar, and I boarded a boat from Jersey to Saint Malo- northern France.

We were heading to Marseilles, my second home since June of last year. I first came to Marseilles to play a festival there in June 2010, where I hooked up with Guinean kora virtuoso Sekou Kouyate. Sekou and I met at the festival and began jamming. Within a day or two of playing with him, I was rearranging my calendar to figure out a way to stay and work with this guy. He is quite literally the most talented musician I have ever met in my life, and I am honored to be working with him. He and I have formed a project and we've been recording- and I cant wait to play our collaborative album for everyone in the fall. Hopefully you will be hearing more and more about my collaborations with Sekou Kouyate in the coming months.

While living in Marseille, I had bought a used station wagon to sport us around during the UK Mixtape Champs tour. We were heading back there to pick it up, but more importantly I couldn't wait to introduce Afar and Alex to the city I had come to love so much. Marseilles is such a magical city, with so many beautiful friends I have made over the last year- I was hype to get back to the city that had stolen my heart.

We pulled in to Saint Malo, a port city at the northern most tip of France, just as the sun was setting. It took us a long time to find a way to locate the hotel we were staying in- there were no taxis anywhere- and all three of us had massive bags on our backs. Our movements were limited, and we got exhausted quick. After stumbling around my minimal french awkwardly with a few passing strangers, we eventually found the hotel and got our bags sorted. Now it was 11 in the evening and we were all very hungry. The concierge gave us a map and pointed out a restaurant in the city center that stayed open til 1.

We left the hotel and began the walk into town. The whole tourist city of St. Malo, was like a ghost town- with us as its lone population. Walking down this long vacant stip a few minutes into our trek, a car speeds down the road and aggressively pulls up next to us. Two large men jump out quickly and run towards us. I thought we were being robbed. Turns out they were plain clothes police men, rolling up to search us. None of us were doing anything wrong, or had anything on us we shouldn't have- yet the experience was seriously stressful. The confusion of not speaking the language, added to the fact that these cops seemed the type who enjoyed their authority just a little too much, made it all a frightening way to spend out first 10 minutes of social time in France.

I was super bummed, because I had been telling Afar how much cooler the cops and authority figures were over in Europe. I told him in all my time in both the U.K. and France I had never been approached aggressively by police. I then experienced my first aggressive police harrassment in 7 years of living in Europe while Afar experienced his within his first five minutes in France. Afar was wondering if it had more to do with his skin tone and hair style than any other factors, and it was honestly hard for me to refute his logic. In any case, we ate a big meal, went back to the hotel, and fell asleep anxious to blow Saint Malo and get to Marseilles.

An 8 hour train journey through France, and we finally arrived in Marseilles. Afar was wondering if the police in France were all like the ones in St. Malo, and we laughed that if the cops tried to stop and harass every black man in Marseilles- they would have time for little else. Marseilles is the second largest city in France, located on its southern most tip. The south coast of France is right across from the northern tip of Africa, so it is the port city where Africans make their way into Europe. The city of Marseilles is jokingly referred to as the largest African nation in Europe. It is one of the craziest cities of fusion in the world, full of different cultures- French, Algerian, West African, all mixing and blending. As anyone who really knows me and my gypsy soul might have imagined, I fell in love with this city right away.

I was hype. Alex had a lot of work to catch up on the first night, as it seemed we hadn't stopped moving for more than five minutes in two weeks. Afar and I left him to work at the house, while we roamed Marseilles late at night. It was the first time I really felt like- 'yea, this is how i hoped it would go down'. Bringing Afar along on the tour for me had been just as much about the experience as the music. Whenever I returned to Syracuse, I would tell him all my stories of European adventures and we would talk of a day when we could go over together to tour and see the sites. Well, while we were walking past castles that were built in the 1300's, alongside the traffic flooded urban landscapes that compromise downtown Marseilles- I thought to myself- yea, this has made all the struggles to organize this tour worth it.

We wandered around during the days, then on Wednesday night Sekou called to tell us his brother Omar was playing at Paradox- one of my favorite Marseilles music clubs. Its hard to know how much detail to get into- but Sekou is from a huge musical family, and his brother Omar is a singer and kora player as well. For those of you unfamiliar with the instrument of the kora, it is an African instrument kind of similar in tone and construction to a harp. Another one of Sekou's brothers, Kandia, plays the kora on the Mixtape Champs track 'Water'. Here is a little clip of Sekou from a very long time ago, playing on his kora:

Well, I couldn't have been happier to give my boys a taste of what the music scene is like in Marseilles. Sekou, my friend Arcenio, and myself were all invited up to jam at different points in the evening- and it ended early in the morning- in a proper Marseilles style. Rum and laughter poured out into the streets of Marseilles, with three very happy yankees hyped on the adventure they were having. We had to get some water and get some sleep, because we had a lot a lot a lot of travel right ahead of us.

I had to wait until 4 in the afternoon the next day to get all the proper paperwork back from the french department of vehicles to verify the vehicle was mine. Once we had that we packed up the new car, and hit the road. We were driving 8 hours north, to the port city of Calais. Timing was tight- as we had to be in Calais by Friday afternoon in order to catch the ferry in time to make the gig in Canterbury Friday night. We drove through Thursday afternoon, night, then into the morning. We pulled over around 2 or 3 am to get a hotel room, but it was all booked up. Too tired to trek on and find a new hotel- we all passed out in the car.

Morning found us absolutely shattered and exhausted, with three hours sleep- but we trekked on to catch the boat over to England. I was a little nervous coming into immigration border check. Afar had gotten harassed by immigration on his way into England, and I was nervous they would harass him again. However, as we had taken the boat from England to France earlier in the week- we found no border checking as we got off the ferry. I wrongly assumed perhaps the border checks were a little less severe on the ferries. It's just that they are less severe in France then they are in England.

We pulled the car up, and the woman noticed my passport was stamped with a work visa. She asked me to produce some paperwork verifying my work visa, which I didn't have on me. I had been told before at an airport that the previous stamp of entry was enough for me to gain re-entry. Not to this woman. We were told to get in the lineup of people who needed to pass visa inspection before they could be granted entry in to the U.K. I felt my gut sink, as I had a horrible sense from that moment that we were going to be in for trouble.

I could make this story about six pages long, but I'll try to keep it to a paragraph or two. Afar got picked out by this very unpleasant border agent, and pummeled with questions for what seemed like an eternity. Where do you live? Where do you work? How much money do you make? What are you doing in the U.K.? How long will you stay? Where is your return ticket booked out of? More and more questions, it all began crumbling. The woman just kept catching him on little inconsistencies, and it began to become apparent that Afar would not be allowed entry into the U.K. They searched the car and found his mixer and record bags, indicating he was here to perform- which is against immigration laws. I was absolutely devastated. Gutted, destroyed. I was kicking myself for ten million reasons as that old 20/20 hindsight started kicking in. Why didn't I leave Afar in England once he'd already gotten in? I knew this would happen. Why didn't I bring my work visa info with me, just in case anyone had questions? Why didn't I prep Afar better with the questions immigration asks? Why didn't I interrupt the lady and speak out for Afar? Why didn't I follow him into the questioning rooms?

Well, the thing about 20/20 hindsight is that it's all usually useless by the time you have the realizations. Afar was denied entry in to the U.K. and was being transferred from U.K. immigration over to the French police where he would be released in Calais city center after they had taken his information we were told. Alex and I were still panicking. Does Afar have any cash on him? Does he have the phone numbers of our friends in Marseilles? He has no phone! What can we do? I got one of the cops to sneak Afar a note with Marseilles phone numbers and my ATM card with the pin code. Alex didn't think that was enough- so we ran to the main ferry lobby to take out cash from an ATM, just to be sure. There were no ATMs or cashpoints in the whole of the ferry terminal. We found that unbelievable. We ran back to see if Afar had been released yet, or what was happening.

We went to UK immigration, and they told us Afar had been taken away by the French police. We ran to the French police station to try to find him. It took us a few minutes to find a police man in the empty station. Finally, I found one and asked 'Parlez-vous anglais?' (Do you speak English?) to which he replied very firmly and coldly 'No'. Now, call me crazy, but I find it very very very hard to believe that a policeman who's permanent job is to work the border between France and England speaks not a word of English. No doubt in my mind he at least spoke 'un peu' (a little bit), but he made it a point to speak very quickly so I couldn't understand and avoided all eye contact with me that could be helpful. He made no effort to explain where Afar had gone, or how we could find him. In fact he made every effort to not help us out. The English speaking U.K. border patrol could offer no help, as the French police had taken him. The French cop made every effort to not communicate with us, and not convey where our friend had gone. Admittedly, my french is horrible, but I kept saying 'l'homme noir, mon ami'! (the black man, my friend)-- but he just kept shaking his head that he didn't know what I was talking about. People, now just to explain: he had seen us all together several times that day- and there was only one black man that they took in to custody that day. The damn cop knew what I was saying. I hope by some miracle, someone reading this knows that French border police man in Calais- and you can tell him what a shmuck i think he is. Tell him I hope someday he is in a foreign land, falls down some stairs and breaks his leg, and I hope everyone pretends they can't understand what his problem is - as he screams ' Merde! Aidez moi! Ma jambe!!' And when he looks up at me with that same look of desperation I gave him, and says 'Parlez-vous français?', I will reply with that same cold,dead, yet slightly self satisfied expression and say 'No'.

So Afar gone, we didn't know what to do, where to find him. I was panicked, lost. We had fifteen minutes to catch the last boat to England to try and still make the Canterbury gig that night. Executive decision, we hopped on the boat. I felt horrible in a million ways- I'd been in the exact same situation as Afar one time- denied entry to England, not speaking French, no money. I knew exactly how anxious and confused Afar felt- but in all honesty, there was nothing more we could really do besides track him down and say how horrible we felt about the situation. He had the contact numbers in Marseilles, my ATM card, and my French vocabulary isn't that much greater than his as to make my presence majorly helpful. Plus, as I've always leaned on the old phrase 'The show must go on'... and so it must.

Well, luckily- we got to Canterbury and got word to Afar that we hadn't just ditched him- they had swept him off and we had had no way to retrieve him. He understood, and plotted his way back to Marseilles. We went on to play Canterbury, and by the end of the night, knowing Afar was safe and not in some French prison somewhere, we were able to shake away some of the blues.

We spoke to Afar Saturday during the day, and he relayed that his border denial had morphed into a really fun adventure- in true 315 style. After the police station, he caught a bus into town, and headed to the local Calais bar for a stiff drink. The English speaking bartender asked him about his adventures, and before Afar knew what was happening the locals were apologizing for the mean UK border agents, feeding him drinks and shots and offering to help in any way they could. After a few drinks, the bar owner suggested Afar go grab his records and DJ the bar for the evening, which he did with smiles all around.

So... alls well that ends well? Haha. We spoke to Afar again in Marseilles, and he said he is having a great time, good adventures. Alex and I went on and rocked the house in Liverpool, with a wild capacity crowd at Django's Riff- and then headed further on down the road. (Check Alex's photos to check the Liverpool gig) There have been enough bumps in the road so far to last us the rest of the tour- but we give thanks that all the bumps have been laughable ones- and that all our crew has remained safe and had a good adventure thus far. Alex and I both hope Afar is living it up Marseilles style with my friends down there, and that we'll all share a pint and a laugh back in Cuse.

We've also posted the second in our acoustic session series, this one filmed in Marseilles- jamming with my friends. Nothing rehearsed-- I just started jamming on my song 'Clear Mind' when my friend Arcenio started adding some vocal vibe- so we decided to start filming it for the blog. Then my soul brother number one Sekou heard the jam, couldn't resist and popped his head in for a verse or two. Just jamming in Marseillses, my way of life there. Check the video to get a peak at me jammin with my main homies in Marseilles, with Afar on the beatbox!

Alls well now- Alex and I have been bouncing between Bristol and London, and tonight we head up to Leeds to play The Wardrobe, with my Wallah family partners in crime 'The Drop'. We've never played Leeds before, so if you know some peoples up there- please give em the heads up we're coming to town!

This week coming up we're playing The Cellar in Oxford on Thursday, The Tap in Peterborough on

Friday, and The Maze in Nottingham on Saturday! Thanks a million to everyone for checking in- hope sun is shining for you wherever you are- and keep checking in- we are going to start giving away the remixes from Mixtape Champs in the upcoming weeks- so keep checking in for new free videos and music! Peace and blessings to one and all

- Joe D.