Here we are high in the air above London, about to land at Heathrow airport for what seems like the three hundredth time.
The European tour has been fast and furious thusfar and shows no sign of relenting. We've been awake by eight nearly every morning to fly to a different country to ingratiate ourselves to the locals.

Here are some thoughts:

So far all of Europe has smelled strangely of the scent of Dewberry, which I thought was oddly coincidental as I had purchased some Dewberry scented oil on the trip over to make my hotel rooms smell less horrible. Imagine my surprise at realizing that the reason all of Europe has smelled of Dewberry is that the oil exploded in my bag. Ooops.

Paris was the first stop on the tour and we played three shows at a place called the Chesterfield Cafe. It's basically a low budget immitation of the Hard Rock Cafe that makes it's trade on American bands coming in for ten and twelve night stands--luckily we only played three nights. That said, it was a pretty pleasant stay. Each show was better than the last, and the band hit some new musical highs. Very promising really. A little scary, perhaps, when I told a guy at a table directly in front to go fuck himself for mocking us, but I don't think he understood, so it was cool.

After Paris, it was off to Germany for two days of interviews and photo shoots. Nothing too eventful, but it was cool. One slightly uncomfortable moment when a journalist said "I don't like your record" (uncomfortable silence here) "at first, but now I like quite a bit". I felt like replying that I didn't like his country--but that would have been a lie--I like Germany quite a bit. Hamburg and Cologne are both wonderful cities with dramatically different architecture.

After Sixteen interviews in Two days (along with three photo shoots) We hobbled back to Paris.

Back in Paris, we did a really fun in-store at a place called FNAC, where I managed to drop a load of money on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan records, and then we ran off to appear on France's equivalent of the Tonight show. We played live on TV for an audience of millions (a very scary thought, if you let it get in your head while you're singing) and then out for a lovely meal.

The next morning, we were up at seven to head out to Amsterdam for a show at the famous "Milkweg" (translated as "milky way"). The show was not exactly sold out, but it was an adventure anyway. There were four very drunk guys up front who'd somehow heard the record (it isn't out in Holland until next week) and they were yelling out for songs. Unfortunately, they found their way into the dressing room, drank all of our beer and annoyed us for the rest of the night

Last night, we played in Rotterdam, which was pretty cool. There was a dog in the audience, which immediately changed the mood of the evening. The dog did a surprisingly melodic solo in the middle of "Small Wonders". Today we're back in London to do some radio and video shows and then we've got a show tomorrow night at a club called the "borderline". Last time I played there, it was to a bunch of journalists who talked through my whole show, so cross your fingers that it's better this time.

The next week brings us to Norway, Denmark, Sweden and back to London before we head back to the U.S.

See y'all soon--you'll recognize us by the bags under our eyes.

Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that we've been added to MTV as a Buzz clip.

Peter