Tour Diary: Pitom Goes to France

The band Pitom is on tour in France. In the meantime, frontman Yoshie Fruchter is sharing some of the highlights of the tour with Jewcy readers:

September 30, 2009

First blog post. ever.  This is kind of fun. so far.

So we are getting into crunch time for this tour in France that we are doing.  Everything seems to be falling into place, and my to do list items are quickly getting crossed off.  I did some electronic guitar pedal adaptor research today and went to radio shack to outfit my pedal train and digitech whammy pedal with their appropriate wattage converters.  I also recently spent a lot of time consolidating all of our music down to 1 page charts…something I should have done a long long time ago.  By now, we’re barely even using the music, but it still feels great to have everything clean and tidy.

I’m really excited to have a bunch of shows to really develop some of the new music that we have happening.  There’s really no better way to turn song concepts into actual songs than to play them all a bunch of times in a row.

October 15, 2009

I’m writing from Mayliss’s apartment in Toulouse, she is one of the folks from Jerkov Musiques that brought us here.  We just played a show on a freakin’ boat club, like actually on a boat, like Andy Samberg!

October 16, 2009 

Just got back to the hotel from our third show of the tour in Montpellier. The club was this totally random and hidden place called (appropriately) Le Secret Place.  Seriously, this felt like those industrial backroads behind suburban business districts, and you go down this alleyway to come to the club.  The sign for it is spray painted on the wall, so if you miss it, you’re out of luck.

As we were waiting for our set, a woman from the club came in to interview me for a radio show that she worked for.  After setting up her recording device, she asked me the usual opening questions, about our name, and description.  then she followed up with a question that didn’t quite make sense at the start.  After looking at her notes, I realized (sort of) that she wanted to know how I felt about portraying Jewish themes in France, where Israel is very controversial. Needless to say, I was surprised by this, and told her that we are just here to play music, and speak in that language.  I’m sure everyone has their own different opinion, I said, but I think music goes much deeper than politics, and no matter what you believe, we can all communicate with it.

October 19, 2009 

I had an amazing Shabbat.  David Konopnicki, who set up our show in Clamart, graciously agreed to set me up at his parents for Shabbat. His family is not observant, he told me, but his mother would be excited to make friday night dinner a have a feast.  David took me over there after the guys settled in to the hotel and I was greeted by David’s father and sisters.  One by one, people started to come over.  Friends of every family member were all represented, and mulitnational…a French/Congolese man, Taiwanese woman, a west Indian woman, even my ashkenazic jewish American self.  It was a really great time, and the kosher food she provided was amazing.  After dinner, I went and passed out for 11 hours after a long week.

For more, you can check out Pitom’s blog.