Europe Feels Their Payne

"There were big girls, 250-pounders (Pomerenke adds farting noises), but there are a couple that are super hot. And if you make any eye contact longer than like two seconds, they are all over you.

"After that, everything on tour was funny, with big Danes running around yelling at each other in a foreign language."

Paris when it sizzles: The members of Les Payne take a stroll on a Parisian parkway.

Brendan T. Morse impersonates a booking agent.

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More About

• Les Payne
• James Karnes
• Chris Pomerenke
• Brendan Morse
• Concerts and Tour Dates

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One night the VW tour van was stopped at the German border. The Les Payne boys couldn't find their passports and everybody was ordered out of the van.

Roadie Fallos "had a little brick of hash in his hand. And I was driving," continues Pomerenke. "When we got to the border, they're like, 'Pahs-ports.' And the whole time Fallos is walking around out in front of border security with the hash in his hand, ready to eat it if they ask him the wrong question!"

The beer, too, Les Payne says, is heady, 12-liter monsters with 10 percent alcohol. Crowded Orifice would swill it all night, could drink Les Payne under the table.

Les Payne returned home having, unbelievably, broken even. After 22 dates in four countries, Les Payne had sold dozens of tee shirts and CDs, and established a fan base from which it can launch future Euro tours. They got high, drunk, froze across countrysides in a VW van that had a hose fixed from the motor to the cab blowing hot air, and won over crowds of American-haters.

They slept on floors, couches, in hotels and in strangers' houses while other strangers copulated loudly in the next room.

And they know going on tour is exhilaration -- a reclaiming of lost enthusiasm.

And all due, they say, to the Internet.

Pomerenke says, "Minus, maybe, a couple hundred dollars, we did okay. And as unromantic as it sounds, it was MP3.com and this crazy kid addicted to chocolate.

"The tour was half done already when it dawned on us that we should contact MP3.com for a tour sponsorship," says Pomerenke. "We are trying to do the same thing with Mexico City right now. But there are only six bands (listed on MP3) there.

"But," he says stopping mid-sentence. He smiles. "There are other sites."

Contact Brian Smith at his online address: brian.smith@newtimes.com