BARREN EARTH keyboardist Kasper has issued Part 2 of his ongoing studio report. Check it out below:

"The other day back in Louisville, Kentucky, the culinaristic choice of the day was a Chinese restaurant. We were served by a friendly Chinese woman, and the atmosphere was nice. There were, however, problems with communication, since her Chinese accent, combined with a heavy Southern dialect made her speech virtually incomprehensible to us. As a result of this, although me and Marko ordered exactly the same dish, we got two distinctly different portions. But the food was good. The waiter was also in a humorous mode, and was constantly joking. We didn’t understand the jokes, but she was laughing, so I’m sure they were funny.....

In Kentucky, the musical reference of the day was obviously Bill Monroe’s classic ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’. But we didn’t see a blue moon, nor a moon of any other colour. With the absence of gloves, the only thing blue towards the end of the day were our fingers.....

With the cancellation of the Tulsa gig, our route was changed so that we would be spending the day off in Jackson, Mississippi. Although the cancellation was unfortunate, this new bit of routing did provide me with the chance of being able to sing, ‘I’m goin’ to Jackson…’, and that really felt quite cool.....

The day in Ridgewood, Jackson was uneventful. What was notable was the lack of pedestrian paths. It seems that the transport method of choice around here is to drive a car. Many of these places are clearly not designed with the walking citizen in mind. And so our pedestrian group of Finnish rockers was regularly accompanied by honking horns, as we staggered on the busy streets, trying desperately to avoid the menacing Ford pick-up trucks hurdling by.....

In Georgia it was raining, in Kentucky we had snowfall, and now the trilogy is complete, for in Mississippi yesterday we had a shower of hail. Biting and vicious drops of hail were pouring down, as plans of re-christening this tour to ‘Hail, Hail, Rock’n roll’ emerged.....

It seems that the bad weather conditions are not done with us, or indeed USA, yet. It was bad enough to cancel Tulsa, but now things have turned worse. The bus call was at 3 AM, and the plan was to reach the next destination, Austin, Texas, by 4 PM. Waking up at around 8 AM, I sensed that the bus was not moving. Suspicions were soon confirmed. We were, and still are, only 8 miles from where we started. The roads everywhere are covered in ice and traffic has come to a halt. It is so unheard of to have icy roads in Mississippi, that no preparations for this situation had been made. And now it has resulted in this. There is no way to reach Austin today, so regrettably that one, also, has now been cancelled, and we are still stuck in Jackson. It’s quite cool to sing ‘I’m goin’ to Jackson’; it’s not quite as cool to sing ‘I’m stuck in Jackson’.....

This is a major setback, not least because for the whole trip so far, Mikko has been enthusing about a certain restaurant in Austin, namely Stubb’s BBQ. We have heard mouth-watering tales of savoury grill dishes, and had been looking forward to dining at Stubb’s tonight. Then again, I am not always convinced that Mikko is the man to ask for gastronomic recommendations, given that yesterday his main course for the day was a can of SPAM, eaten raw with a plastic fork, straight out of the tin."

Remaining dates on the tour are as follows:

February

4 - Austin, TX - Emo’s Alternative Lounging
5 - Ft Worth, TX - Tomcats
7 - Tempe, AZ - Clubhouse
8 - Los Angeles, CA - Key Club
9 - Santa Ana, CA - Galaxy Theatre
10 - San Francisco, CA - DNA Lounge
11 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre
12 - Seattle, WA - El Corazon
14 - Calgary, AB - The Republik
15 - Edmonton, AB - Starlite Room
16 - Regina, SK - The Exchange
17 - Winnipeg, MB - The Osbourne Village Inn
18 - Minneapolis, MN - Station 4
19 - Chicago, IL - Reggie Rock Club
20 - Detroit, MI - Blondie’s
21 - Cleveland, OH - Peabody’s
22 - Toronto, ON - Opera House
23 - Quebec City, QC - Imperial de Quebec
24 - Montreal, QC - Metropolis
25 - Rochester, NY - Montage Music Hall
26 - New York City, NY - The Gramercy Theatre
27 - Worcester, MA - The Palladium

March

1 - Philadelphia, PA - The Trocadero
2 - West Springfield, VA - Jaxx
3 - Charlotte, NC - The Casbah
4 - Raleigh, NC - Volume 11