The following article was written by The Smoking Jackets:

Everyone sleeps in on Thursday morning in Trebic, which is just as well because the new driver isn’t coming back until the late afternoon. Our connection in Trebic, Michael, comes by our hotel and gives us a tour of the 17th century synagogue that’s next door.

We hit the road after packing up the gear that we left at the club the night before and get back to Prague by the evening. We drop most of our equipment at the hotel on the way to the club that we’re playing for the next three nights because the place has a house kit, backline, and grand piano.

The place, called the Jazz Dock, is amazing. It’s on the water, though below street level so it might almost be more accurate to say that it’s in the river, with two full walls of glass affording a great panoramic view of the surrounding area. The interior, done in purple and green, is thoroughly modern but somehow maintains a moodiness appropriate for jazz. The piano and drumset are both bright white, and I momentarily regret not bringing a white bass. Do I even know anyone with a white bass? How has the need for one never arisen before now? Apparently the Jazz Dock brings it out.

We play from 10 until about 1 (finally a show that starts after 8), and our sets go pretty well and the crowd is responsive. After we get off, we hang out at the bar with the locals and we make friends with a waitress named Liduska. She’s Czech but she’s lived in the UK for the past few years, and her accent is this great combination of Czech and something like Cockney.

We go home relatively early, around 4, which turns out to be for the best because Joel calls a rehearsal at the Jazz Dock at 11 Friday morning, and we end up playing for about five hours. Liduska says that a lot of bands play multiple nights at the Jazz Dock, but that she’s never seen one that cared enough to rehearse between nights, let alone for five hours. The bar staff is impressed.

After taking some time to chill out at the hotel, I head back to the bar around 9. The hotel is only about a block from the river, but I take the long way. After spending the last few days in small towns, it’s nice to be in a real city, especially on a night like this. Everyone I’ve met here has told me that I “look Czech” and has been surprised when I haven’t been able to speak it, and I feel remarkably at home walking down the darkening streets, dressed in black, a week unshaven. I get to the club around 930.

Joel and Tiago are late and I end up waiting around the bar for about an hour. The bar is livelier tonight and Liduska is busy, but I run into a grad student that Joel and I know from home, Anya, and I hang out with her until the rest of the band arrives.

The first set is a little rough, but apparently it’s decent enough that someone in the audience offers to buy the band a bottle of whatever we want. Liduska refuses to let us pick something cheap, and I feel a little bit bad about it at first, but the manager, Lucia, tells us that the guy has been being an asshole all night, so Tiago and I (Joel abstains) settle on a bottle of Jack. After a couple of drinks, we hit the stage for our second set and nail it. The audience is wild and we end up playing three encores totaling almost another hour.

Joel goes back to the hotel shortly after our set, but Tiago and I hang out until 4 or 5, and after everyone else has cleared out and we’ve watched the sunrise on the river, Liduska and one of the bartenders, Ron, take us to a “nonstop” bar. We’re the only ones there when we arrive, but more people start coming in by 7 or so. Who’s going to bars at 7am? Characters, obviously. An elderly woman who says that her son is a famous Czech film star tells me that I have “beautiful Jewish lips” while the bartender, who looks like she has the worst hangover of anyone in the place, tries and fails to get a guitarist to stop playing and belting horrible By The Way era Chili Peppers.

When we leave, around 8, the streets are surprisingly busy for so early on a Saturday, and Liduska tells us that it’s because today is an election day. We hang out in a park for a little while. Ron throws Liduska in a fountain and I get pulled in trying to help her out. Tiago doesn’t want to get wet, but he leans over to “wet his hair” and ends up losing his balance and falling in completely and almost drowning in two feet of water and only then do I realize how gone he is.

Ron runs off and comes back a few minutes later with milkshakes for breakfast. Liduska invites us all back to her apartment, but I have some vague recollection that Joel mentioned having another rehearsal today at 11 (in like an hour), so we go back to the hotel. On the way, soaking wet, we cross paths with the nonstop bartender, who laughs out loud at us.