tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-94288822011-06-29T09:44:37.952+02:00jamie catto road-journal -- the second world tour after "1 giant leap" -- this time it's "2sides 2everything"2sides2everythinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01538424954011249076noreply@blogger.comBlogger351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9428882.post-1108858457137626852005-02-18T01:13:00.000+01:002007-02-22T10:18:10.906+01:00

Paul Smith reports

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Thursday 27 January 2005

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Monday 24 January 2005

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Sunday, 23 January 2005

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Saturday, 22 January 2005

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Friday, 21 January 2005

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Thursday, 20 January 2005 New Orleans, LA

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Wednesday, 19 January 2005 New Orleans, LA

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Tuesday, 18 January 2005, Durham, North Carolina to New Orleans, Louisiana

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Now I don’t want to make too big a deal of this Capoeira thing, it’s just that the working title of our film is ‘The Dance of Opposites That Drives The Universe’ and there can’t be very many more perfect examples of that dance than Capoeira, so when we planned to come to Brasil, I had visions of these guys acrobatically doing their thing, telling us their version of the dance of opposites, and

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So now the gang’s all here. First Jessica and Lola Mae arrived Monday night from a marathon journey, Sydney to Salvador. I’m not even going to attempt to calculate how many hours Jessica must have been sitting in a cramped economy seat with Lola squirming and wriggling on her lap. Have done flights with Lola Mae before I know what a nightmare it can be just trying to eat for five minutes, let

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I spent the whole of yesterday logging a six hour interview with Christopher Titmus, British meditation teacher, and every hour that went by I kept saying to myself, ‘OK, at the end of this tape I’ll stop and get something to eat’ but I just kept on going compulsively, tape after tape, never really glancing at the clock, and suddenly it was dark outside and I could hear the phone in my room

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Today, as we were flying to Salvador early evening, we were only scheduled to do one session. A favourite all girl band who sing and play percussion called Dona Flozinha. Once again, they’d found us a small theatre (or was it a rehearsal room?) to record in and we set up upstairs on a sumptuous, though tiny, powder blue balcony. I was really looking forward to sitting back and enjoying their

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We were a merry crew setting off for the airport to fly to Sao Paolo this morning. There was no doubt that Rio had been more than victorious and we even managed to slip I one extra interview with our driver on the way to the airport. He used to be a drug cop here in Brasil but was dismissed after he shot four people and one of them was just a bystander. He told us how he’d become totally immune

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There’s a peculiar kind of anxiety I’m experiencing when my daily 40 emails start downloading. I’ve been having so much correspondence with America, trying to get through the armies of agents, publicists and management that surround everyone we want to interview or make music with, that when those emails start arriving I’m anxious we’re going to get bad news. Not today though! Two timely

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Another early start. The phone rang next to my head and waking me from a sweaty dream about scrabbling to find imaginary Hotel expenses for the Company in London. A textbook anxiety dream which comes from having to account so specifically for every penny we spend. I remember clicking on file after file on my laptop but having forgotten to organize which Hotels were where in each country. A

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Boy, did we cover a lot of ground today. It was the first trial with our new camera-guy Bernado, a fun dude in his late thirties who says ‘man’ at the end of every sentence. First off was a session with the organist in the Church we visited a few days ago. But there wasn’t time for both of us to enjoy all the day had to offer and we had to split up. Bernado and I were off to do more interviews,

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Today, a very kind lady allowed us to use her magnificent, nay palatial home to film and record in. She’s the wife of a famous Italian conductor who died and left her this enormous place which she runs as a stately home for Weddings and events. It has gorgeous, polished, dark wood floors throughout, ancient looking sculptures and bookcases, and a grand piano by a huge bay window. The morning

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To go and shoot in the Flavella, otherwise described as the sprawling slum areas of Rio, requires all kinds of permissions and deals with the local underground to be invited and protected there. The place we had chosen was picked out because they say it was there that Samba was born, and they have a kicking drummer group to prove it. They also represent a Christian and African hybrid religion

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Day one, session one, Jaquinho Morelenbaum who is Caetano Veloso’s cellist and arranger. His pad up in the hills above the city is an ultra modern, open plan affair of cream and concrete designed by his father-in-law. The balcony looks over Rio and you can even see Jesus up there, like all fisherman, lying about the one that got away. We set up inside as it was still pouring, and he sat regally

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I slept the whole way. I couldn’t move my arm when I woke up and just gazed at it, half-asleep, experiencing it not responding to my brain’s commands. The queue to get out of customs was over an hour long but as we came through, there were Junno and Shanti, our local crew, all smiles and excitement, and though it was pouring and grey outside, the cool minibus they’d rented, the jovial driver and

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It’s funny how sometimes a totally incongruous thing can set you off. I know Paris is beautiful and sad in December and I was feeling the fatigue of the journey so far in my bones today. We had to get out of the hotel at noon so Carol kindly allowed us to hang out at her little studio in Monmartre today as we weren’t flying to Brasil until midnight. Was it the prospect of another night flight?

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Before we headed off to the apartment Carol had found for us all to play in, a French guy who had written to me wanting to meet us and maybe license some of our Spacious Music (our mellow online label) albums here. It felt very grown up having a label distribution meeting in Paris before recording Clarinets and guitars on the Rue Victor Masse. The flat was so Parisian it wasn’t true. High

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I do love Paris, but the drive to the hotel at 7am looked more like America than Europe. Huge roadside adverts, anonymous office blocks and traffic, traffic, traffic. Dave Randall (guitar) and Frank Byng (percussion) weren’t to arrive until about noon so there was definitely time to top up the four hours kip I’d had with a few more in a lovely soft bed, mmmmmmmm. It wasn’t until half twelve that

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Our last day in Mali. Phew, that was quick wasn’t it? There we were, checking out of the hotel all bleary-eyed at half seven to be ready to leave at 8am on the dot. Rokia was already down and sitting with her Aunt, both looking immaculate in their African robes. Most kids in the street you see here and in other West African countries wear western clothes, usually faded sports tops, tracksuit

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I came downstairs to our sofas again to find Duncan, Rokia Traore, her husband and manager Thomas and the others discussing possibilities for the session. So it was a yes! It was pretty obvious when they said that we might go to her home village a few hours away to do the song that it was a long shot, after all, we had to fly out tomorrow night on the red-eye to Paris and there was no guarantee

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Still no definitive word from Oumou Sangare or Rokia Traore. It all seems really positive when we’re talking to them (or their people) but they are both is huge demand, especially as it’s very rare for them to be in Mali. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed. This morning, however, Oumou’s Kemel N’Goni and M’Balon players agreed to do a session with us which was a great touch. They are the

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Today was a very exciting ‘out of town’ day. It’s always those moments when we’re leaving the city behind us, especially in Africa, when I feel the proper buzz of what we’re doing and how lucky we are to get this unique lens on the world. As the road stopped and the red dust began, carts, seemingly abandoned vehicles and concrete cubes, silhouettes walking along in the haze of the horizon, it was

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Seems like I missed all the action today. It was all about getting the Yes’s for the last few days’ sessions and so as soon as I woke up I called World Circuit in London to ask if they were OK with our terms for collaborating with Oumou Sangare. It was quite a long call but I spelled out the way we work pretty clearly and as they’d heard of us and knew we were artists, it went some way to a quick

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Erich Ludwig (good name) arrived today. He’s the Bostonian who’s our official ‘fixer’ here and who hired Sekou etc. He’s a great vibe and obviously well used to handling all kinds of productions. I always say you have to have an American on a team like this and he proved the theory once more, phoning, meeting, dashing about and filling up the schedule with aplomb. Mussa, our singer, arrived

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This morning promised our first proper session with a musician in Mali. A violinist who also sang with his instrument. We decided to do the session at the gardens behind the story-teller’s courtyard and all hopped into the 4x4 at about 9.30am. It’s great to see Duncan setting up all his new gadgets, his radio headphone receivers and bendy mike-stand arms. Before we knew it we’d set up a simple

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Before we left the UK, after much perseverance I managed to get Damon Albarn to take my call. We really enjoyed his Mali Music album and there were some of the same artists he hung out with here that we wanted to find (even though his Hotel suggestion turned out to be well dodgy!). It was Yves Wernert from France who has his legendary Bogolan Studio here in Bamoko where he records, mixes, or

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OK, day 2. I woke up with dry eyes again today from a disturbing dream where we were playing back all the vocal sessions we’d done on this trip and they all sounded shit. How embarrassingly textbook. For some reason we arranged this morning’s session with the local story-teller and his mate the Djembe player for 9.30am. Don’t ask me why. Ben was looking marginally better this morning and had

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Woke up feeling gummy but well rested. Sekou our local fixer met us in the hotel breakfast 7800cf (£8!!) and we began to discuss our schedule. Ben is ill upstairs and said he needed a day off so Josh did his best to film the meeting. It’s times like this that realise how implicitly I trust Ben and no one else to film what we do. Nothing in particular wrong with Josh, it’s just Ben knows exactly

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My head was absolutely fried when we left for Mali this morning. I’d dropped Indy at school, and even though I’m seeing her in 24 days, the separation trauma floored me and I howled all the way home into Jessica’s arms. She’s used to it. I left her half an hour later amidst packing boxes and gaffer tape. Lola Mae was doing her best to help the workmen but at 10 months all she could do was get

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