Slim and The Beast: The Tour Diaries Part I
In early March, 2020, a Paris-based indie rock trio , Slim & The Beast, played three shows with Caravan Palace before the coronavirus pandemic postponed their tour until 2021.
This is a personal account of a small band trying to make it. At the time, this was the biggest crowd we’d ever played (1,500). This entry is followed by an account of playing to a sold out show in Lille (L’Aeronef). The last of this series (for now) is an account and meditation on the biggest show we’ve ever played at Paris’ legendary Zenith auditorium (5,000 capacity) just twenty-four hours before the tour was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Day 1: Rouen — City of Joan of Arc
11:27am
We picked up the van in the 18th arrondissement. The weather was Parisian rain and grey. Aaron went to the pharmacy to buy hand sanitizer. The pharmacy was all out; they sold him a bottle of rubbing alcohol instead. We went to the epicerie next door and bought an aloe Vera infused hand sanitizer, too, but the squirt contraption didn’t work properly so we had to unscrew the top and pour gobs out into our hands. The slime looked far more sickly than our potentially coronavirused palms.
It’s raining and it will be raining much of the weekend. Our “tour van” is a mini van. There are no frills and the door handles are cheap plastic and though it isn’t comfortable by any particular standards, it isn’t uncomfortable either, just your average rental car … nothing a few scrunched knees can’t take care of. I wonder what the biggest questions are or will be when it comes to “being on tour.” Imagine taking a road trip with your favorite family members. That’s about all I’ve got so far.
The sun showed up as soon as we got out of the city limits. I don’t mean this as a commentary on the lamentable early March Parisian weather, just that the sun was warmer and the sky was bluer as soon as we got out of the winter city.
The show is sold out tonight. Hopefully they won’t all be wearing masks. Though we’ve never performed in a hospital ward filed with thousands — few have — and wouldn’t that also be some kind of beautiful experience?
5:25 pm
We arrived at the venue to a rushed-but-no-stress scene. Apparently we were scheduled to be there an hour earlier, which seemed more or less impossible given the time we were scheduled to leave Paris. So be it. The venue seats around 1,300 people and playing in such a space is a joy for many reasons, but especially for the quality of sound. We are used to playing in small living rooms and crowded bars and very rarely the odd-shaped stage. We’ve been lucky to work with on-site sound-engineer a few times, but this is a rarity.
Sound: for those who don’t have a music performance background, imagine bringing your phone up to year ear to listen to a song that has a bass line but also an acoustic guitar and also three voices and also a piano and also an electric guitar and also ambient sounds. What you get is a hodgepodge amalgamation of pretty noises; it’s impossible to differentiate between one voice and the other. Now imagine the same song being played live, right in front of you, in a small cube with reverberant walls that give warmth to every sound. Or imagine the same song being played on your musician friend’s expensive speakers, or in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Now multiply this crispness, this purity of sound by a thousand so that you can hear it in high-definition, with monitors on stage to give you specific sounds at specific times, and you can now recognize the value of being able to hear yourself swallow when up close to the microphone.
The swag that so many people associate with “backstage” is real, at least in the case of the 106 in Rouen. Catered snacks, French style, including goat cheese and shrimp and red wine and oven-baked mushrooms with brie and fig cooked into them. It was a family affair in the communal mess hall: all of the venue’s staff were there eating and drinking in communion before the bouncers manned the doors and the bartenders checked the taps and the sound engineers checked the balances because in “15/10/5 minutes you’re on,” and so the musicians returned to the dressing room for a joint or a beer or a nap or simply a lie-down, and some stretched and/or drank away the nerves or washed their face with cold water, and one member of Caravan, a father of two and an incredible saxophone player, brings his yoga mat to every gig.
And all of a sudden it’s set time.
The four of us — Aaron, Aurelien, Thibaut, Samuél — hugged, and Elsa, our tour manager, gave us a high five and said we were going to be great, and so we walked onto the dimly lit stage in front of a sold-out house of 1,300, and so began the adventure.
9:58 pm
30 minutes goes by insanely fast. This is what rehearsal is for, so that you can pause, take it in and breathe, recognize the moment for what it is, a glowing, different plane. There were small imperfections — how many of us are taught to call them mistakes? — but these words don’t mean much when the music is playing, when you’re in it.
At some point during the set we wholly opened ourselves to the moment (often, for me, this happens during the 2nd song) and from then on you realize the beautiful simplicity of what you’re doing: you’re playing onstage (an Alan Watts quote comes to mind: “This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”) The reflexes are there, which make way for the feeling. Playing harmonica in front of one thousand people, just me and my breath; hitting the guitar solo or the funky bass line or the psychedelic sounds on the drum pads; in these moments you become eternal, just for an instant, because you’e riding a wavelength accompanied by thousands — you’re surfing the moment — and all of you in that moment are interconnected.
There is a cliché that most musicians dabble in some form of drugs. It might be to remind ourselves of this feeling of playing onstage. Of course, there’s nothing like it — it’s never the same — but explaining the feeling of being onstage is similar to attempting to explain a profound psychedelic experience. The reason is simple: in those moments you become a part of everything. It is surreal and ephemeral and eternal and humanizing and beautiful and strange and awe-inspiring and humbling, all at once.
10:03pm
The post-show was what you’d expect: beers and excitement and relief and nicotine and the realization that these kinds of shows are no longer one-offs: we’re becoming professionals.
We left Rouen at midnight to drive back to Paris and there was an accident on the highway near Versailles at 1:30am. The Uber home was driven by an Algerian man who sings traditional Arabic music called Raï. The first thing he asked me was if I was paying cash or card. I was tired and confused. I said I was in a Uber, wasn’t I? He said yes, but that if I paid cash Uber wouldn’t take an extra ten percent for using a card. He was a bit abrasive at first, blamed me for Uber taxing its drivers 35%. He repeated that if I paid cash that would be preferable. I asked him if that was possible. He said it was not. He then asked me if I knew a traditional Arabic song and didn’t wait for my answer before he began singing it a capella. I did not know the song and he blamed me for this, too. He said that as a musician I am a diplomat, that I should know everything. I said yes, we are diplomats. I agreed with him. He said I needed to listen to all forms of music if I’m a real musician. I agreed with him again. He kept singing. He then asked me to prove to him that I was a singer. He asked me to show my vocal range, and so I did. He said, “Yes, okay, you’re a singer.” He continued to sing his traditional songs and played percussion on the steering wheel of the car for the twenty-minute ride. I didn’t really mind.
It was a funny end to the first day of the tour. I got home at 2:15 am and immediately went to sleep. We all met the next morning at 11am. Lille was next on the list.
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