by John Ringhofer (from Half-handed Cloud)

Last Autumn, Daniel Smith invited me to play bass guitar and sing backing vocals for Danielson’s 2006 European tour. He said we’d be doing songs from the recent Ships album and that the usual bassist wouldn’t be able to come, “Could you fill-in?” It didn’t take long for me to answer yes—I’d been a friend of Daniel’s for years, and a fan even longer. As a listener, I pretty-much already knew the backing vocal melodies by heart (a cinch!). The bass parts were more of a challenge, but after practicing at home and about a week of touring, I was starting to get more comfortable with the notes. We did a more rock-sounding version of “Sing to the Singer”, most of the new Ships songs, plus oldies like “Cutest Lil’ Dragon”, “The Lord’s Rest”, and “Idiot Boksen” (really fun). The beginning of the tour had few hang-ups (the worst part involved a couple of our uniforms being stolen in Belgium), and on-stage things were starting to click pretty solidly within the first week.

The stage that wasn’t as fun as I was expecting was in Glasgow, Scotland. I had pretty high hopes because the last time I got to visit there was on the Illinoisemaker tour, and Sufjan and I were able to walk all over the city absorbing most of the major Charles Rennie Mackintosh architecture sites. I had my sights set on Glasgow well before this Danielson tour started.

When we got to the club at the end of November, they fed dinner to us before sound-check (it’s not uncommon for venues to provide meals for the bands that perform there). Everybody else in the band had the regular meal, and I had the vegetarian meal: a type of pasta with some sort of leafy arugula they called “rocket.” After the meal, and following sound-check I had just enough time to trek through the rain for a visit to the record store. By the time I got back though, I had a pretty awful stomach ache. The Danielson guys were all, “Are you sure you want to play, John?” “Yeah, should be fine,” I said.

We went on. The show started well, but about half-way through, after Daniel had already asked the crowd for trumpet-stepping stories, we were playing another song from Ships, and… I started to black-out on stage! Within a few moments I was down on one knee. Daniel initially thought, “John’s really getting into the song, like a real rocker!” David thought, “Looks like he dropped his pick.” Chris wondered if I was having a spiritual experience on the floor. All were wrong, though—I was sick, very sick. Was it food poisoning? Daniel looked over towards my side of the stage at the end of the song, and could tell what was really going on: I had to leave and get some fresh air for a couple songs (it was pretty dramatic). The Scottish people were incredibly gracious though, chanting my name from the audience. The next day, after a whole night of violent sickness, Daniel joked that if I blacked-out on stage again, we could turn the drop-to-one-knee-experience into a routine, kind of like James Brown and his shiny cape. Oh Brother!