Editors Note: We enjoyed the tour diaries J. Tom Hnatow wrote for us as part of These United States’ last tour, so we asked him if he wouldn’t mind doing it again as the band embark on their first ever intercontinental tour of the UK and Europe. He graciously agreed. This is the fourth and final installment of this series.
The Paris entry:
Thursday October 25th
After our marathon, 14-hour, pre-dawn-to-post-dusk trek from Bath to Paris, we meandered through two relatively average, haggard sets in the smokiest room of the tour, smack dab in the heart of Les Halles… Every time I visit Paris I remember why the libertarian in me keeps quiet when the whole business of smoking bans crops up in the states. I should stick with the smokers on principle alone, but, ya know, that shit’s hard to breathe, and it stays with you for days. And good god, the French know how to smoke… But they also know how to eat… And so we feasted for hours in a cloudy haze on cheese, bread, cheese, wine, lasagna (eh?), cheese, and more wine, courtesy of the good folks at Le Vieux Leon…
Our first night in Paris was our tenth show of the tour and a personal highlight for me, as my wife flew in to join us for a three-day stretch. We have family in Paris—good family… the kind that yearn to host and do so quite well… And so Tom and I found ourselves drinking fancy Bordeaux long into the night, positively giddy about clean beds, hot showers, and a morning without alarms. Jesse, fighting a head cold he picked up in Bath, was swept up into the Parisian night and wandered cobblestone streets into the wee hours with friends new and old…
We woke up this morning just before noon, whipped up a royal spread for breakfast, and immediately started washing ten days of stench of our clothes… Jesse strolled in a few hours later having walked three hours plus from Montmarte to Bourge-Le-Reine, roughly equidistant to a Columbia Heights-to-Old Town trek… Jesse assured my wife that he was, in fact, not crazy… he just needed to get some new ground into his feet. Hi ho.
