DAY ONE
We landed in Denmark a few hours ago with no real problems or surprises.
Other than Howard having ants crawling all over his Pocket mailer and papers he was working on when we flew from Nashville to Detroit, the flight was very normal. His light would not work on the flight from Detroit to Amsterdam (long way to go and not be able to read), so the flight attendant brought him a “clip on light”. Problem was, there was NO WHERE to clip it!!! He had on a ball cap and I tried to talk him in to clipping it to the bill of that but he wouldn’t listen to me.
One of the male flight attendants was gay and very, very flamboyant. Howard asked him to bring him a banana and got the response, “Well, okay, it’s yours but everyone’s been fighting over it”. Howard was scared to eat it after he brought it!
End of a very long day. More news tomorrow.
Judy
ROAD REPORT DAY TWO
Got up at 6 am so I could run my 5 miles but decided to check email while I was warming up. Big mistake. First email of the day (night?) informed me that our flights from Macedonia to Zurich for our trip home had been cancelled. Now, we didn’t want to fly Macedonia Airlines anyway, but we did want to get home. Spent most of the day trying to work out another flight option only to land — ready — Avio Impex. I’ve never heard of it either, but it connects with our flights out of Zurich and gets us home. For a couple of thousand dollars more, of course
The run was beautiful — nice weather — no heat and no humidity like Nashville. Rest of the day was definitely downhill.
We had a press conference for the Bellamys and CMC Records presented them with a Gold Album for sales in Denmark. Very impressive. David Bellamy celebrated his 50th birthday last weekend and is not handling it well at all. So, we had him a cake made with 50 candles on it. He DID not blow them all out at once.
We also hired a “stripper” to come backstage after the show as a surprise for him. Now, keep in mind that we ordered this lady off the internet and we had to pay her $200. (“we” being Susan — David’s wife — and myself). I recognized her the second she walked into the theatre (she wanted to come see the show and brought a “friend” with her. The “friend” turns out to be another stripper who is the most famous one in all of Denmark — tv exposure, ya know? “Bettina” asked Susan what kind of show she wanted and Susan replies, “oh whatever”. Bettina wanted to know if Susan would get jealous and Susan assured her that she would not. Well, “whatever” has a totally different meaning in Denmark that it does in the U.S I have enough blackmail photos for a very early retirement. Can’t even attach one and send with this report. That bad! David turned red and stayed red throughout the entire performance. All of the band guys loved it. The monitor engineer missed the show and went backstage to tell the strippers he had missed all the fun. She then proceeded to give him a free show. Denmark is a very liberal country….
Got back to the hotel and my phone rang as soon as I walked inside. One of the musicians is yelling that 5 of our guys are stuck in the elevator between the 4th and 5th floors and I had to do something quickly. Got the front desk clerk to get them out pretty quickly, but not quickly enough for them.
It’s now 1 am and I have a 5:30 am wakeup call, so it is definitely bedtime!
Only on tour with the Bellamys does life offer me these little challenges.
Watch for Day Three tomorrow — maybe with photos!
Jude
Actually had a pretty normal day today. Up at 5:30 am to work out in the Hotel “gym” of sorts…Left Copenhagen for Kolding (population 40,000) and it was a 3 hour drive on a nice tour bus.
The Bellamy’s drummer is “new” and not accustomed to our pranks. He admitted that when they told him he had to come backstage to see a special presentation last night, he really didn’t want to come sit through a bunch of speeches. He was standing in the doorway and saw the production engineer coming into the dressing room with two females. His first thought was “Oh No. Opie’s bringing band groupies in here right in the middle of this presentation!” He was really happy when they turned out to be strippers. Says any meeting the Bellamys call from now on, he’s there!
Howard had to perform surgery on my foot today. Had a couple of stitches removed before I left, but one had to remain in with the understanding that Howard would remove it in 3-4 days (Howard was a Vetenarian!). I noticed that the stitch seemed to be disappearing and had him look at it. The knot had disappeared and was grown over with skin. He had to pull and pull with tweezers to get the knot above the surface. He kept asking me if it hurt and I kept promising him it didn’t. It HURT! Just didn’t want to hurt his feelings because he was being so nice. He was successful in getting it out without me passing out.
A very drunk, much older woman was “hitting” on Howard in the autograph line tonight. She kept trying to get him to go home with her for drinks…I got a photo of her leaning over the table talking to him and told him I’m going to service this one as “Howard and his stripper”.
Two a.m. and another early call tomorrow. Playing in the “country, redneck” territory in Denmark tomorrow night. Should be interesting…
Judy
DAY 4
Up at 6 am to jog but it was still very dark. With my sense of direction, I knew better than to even attempt going outside. The hotel was in the “woods” and sure didn’t want to end up in Sweden somewhere. Worked out in the funky little exercise room at the hotel.
The hotel room in Copenhagen was so small that I could not even get all my luggage inside (2 bags!). Had a big, spacious room in Kolding but the shower was so small I had to stick my leg outside the enclosure to shave! The hair dryer was mounted on the wall with about a one foot cord on it. Had to scrunch up against the wall just to reach my hair with it!
Three hour bus ride from Kolding to Viborg today and then had to back track to Arhus for an “in-store” with the Bellamys. Nice big record store and they had quite a “spread” laid out in the green room. Susan and I are “back on the strict diet” so we pretended not to notice all the goodies. I got a cup of coffee but when I poured the milk (skim at that) in, it looked like water. I looked in the carton and the top half was water and the bottom half was solid. The smell was horrendous. I didn’t want to say anything, so I just didn’t drink the coffee. Susan decided we should both have one of the tiny little chocolate chip cookies and she really had to plead with me to agree – right. One bite and we both choked. Definitely NOT a cookie. Sort of tasted like paper?? We put both cookies on the saucer with the coffee. I got up to take a photo, came back and there’s this lump of chocolate on the saucer with the bad coffee and the two “cookies”. I asked Susan what she had tried while I wasn’t looking and she had a mouthful of nuts and almost choked to death laughing. So much for the diet….
One of the musicians thought I left my coat backstage after the show. He went over, picked it up, found a wallet in the coat so he opened it up to see if it was mine. Some guy runs up grabs the coat and jacket and starts yelling at him in Danish! Obviously wasn’t my coat!
Largest and wildest crowd on the entire trip. Definitely Danish rednecks. You should have seen some of the “western wear” they were selling.
Busing overnight to Copenhagen to fly to Switzerland for a show tomorrow night. Hope all our flights are on time!
Jude
Road Report Day Five (I think!)
Of course, we didn’t get to stay overnight in the NICE hotel. Had a strange thing in my bathroom that I have never seen before – a hand held “bidet” (not even sure how to spell it!). It was really weird.
Howard, David, and Susan Bellamy decided to ride the bus with me and the two crew guys instead of staying in Viborg and flying to Copenhagen. There are 9 bunks on the bus, so we were all going to be able to get at least 4 hours sleep. Wrong. The road manager decided he just couldn’t split the group up and had everyone ride the bus. Now, there’s 11 of us and 9 bunks. David and Susan decided to sleep together and free up one more bunk. They had to sleep with their feet at opposite ends of the bunk just to fit. Needless to say, they got NO sleep and kicked each other in the face regularly. One of the musicians (who did get a bunk!) snored so loud the entire 4 hours that no one else could sleep. We were all up sitting in the lounge before the bus ever arrived at the airport at 7 am. Not a good way to start the day….
Checked in with Swiss Air in Zurich and I had “schmoozed” one of the Operations Managers by giving her tickets to the show, photo with the Bellamys and all the swag I could round up. She agreed to waive an additional 85 pounds of excess for us so we thought we were covered. When everything was checked in, the charged us almost $2,000 in excess! There’s no way an artist can tour Europe with charges like that and make any money. Just before we were ready to board, they paged me and our new “friend” said that her colleague had made a mistake and only allowed us the number of kilos for people traveling within Europe. We were actually more than a hundred kilos under our limit and they refunded our charges.
The hotel and little village in Switzerland (Frick) is lovely. I forget how fortunate I am to be able to come to Switzerland several times a year and I hope I never start taking for granted how beautiful the entire country is. The hotel is fabulous – huge room. I even have 2 beds (single, of course) so I can sleep on one and work off the other. The shower is so large I’m going to shave my legs even though they don’t need it. AND, there’s wash cloths!!! I’m in heaven.
The weather is perfect so I decided to go for my 5 mile run. The hotel told me to go through the town then run up a hill and go into the forest (not a good idea for me anyway since I need to stay on city streets that go straight in one direction to keep from getting lost). Since there didn’t appear to be any other options, I set out for the “hill”. Trust me, there are no hills in Switzerland. This was definitely an ALP. I ran straight up for 25 minutes and was only halfway to the top. Gave up and came back down and finished up the 5 miles.
Walking back to the hotel, I found a Solarium. In Europe, these are unattended. You just walk in, put your coins in a machine on the wall, and tan to your heart’s content. Piece of advice – never tan in a tanning bed where all the instructions are in a foreign language. The beds were incredible – like something out of Star Wars. They were black and yellow and had huge fans mounted in them with a smaller fan inside the top for your face. Nothing like the “caskets” back in the States. The only thing I could read was 5 sfr = 5 min and 20 min max. I also figured out Neu for (new) and then there was English saying Jet Black. I put my coins in and went for the 20 min max like I do back home. I’m fried. I will be standing the rest of the trip.
I can always tell how stressful a trip is by my fingernails. I only have 4 left and one of those has a fake tip. I’m going to the CMA Awards with no fingernails and that’s about the right amount of time for all my skin to peel off. Very impressive!
Had a fantastic show tonight. There were 4,800 drunk Swiss Germans just rockin’ out. Bellamys did two encores. Promoter was VERY happy. We thought we’d have problems with the crowd when we were selling the merchandise but they were not obnoxious. The worse thing that happened was a lady was dancing wildly around in front of our table – by herself – with a cigarette in her hand. She burned a hole in the seat of a man’s pants as she danced by. He never even knew it.
1:30 am and we have a 5:30 am wake up call. We fly into Skopje tomorrow. It’s election day in Kosovo – do we have perfect timing or what?
Jude
September 24th – Day 6
Today we flew from Zurich to Skopje. The Skopje airport was interesting to say the least. We had a guy name “Marjan” who met us and took us right past immigration and customs without even stopping. It was great. When you walk outside, there are people everywhere trying to get you in a taxi and all the men are “interested” in the American women. I knew that I had to deal with the airline tickets in trying to get a refund on the cancelled Macedonia flights and get us on the Avio Impex flights. We loaded the band and gear on the bus with strict instructions from both me and Marjan, “Do Not Leave Me”. They left me.
You do not want to be stranded in Macedonia at the airport. Thank God Marjan spoke excellent English and stayed right with me. We tried to get a refund on the Macedonia flights but were not successful. Everyone yells at each other all the time, but it’s just their way. It’s not that they are angry, they just yell. We then went to Avio Impex to buy the new tickets and they tried to charge me $485 per person instead of the $193.50 per person that we had our contact reserve. I learned how to yell back real quick. Finally she asked if we had “identity cards” and I realized I only had to show a copy of our military orders and we would get the special rate. It still took an hour since everything had to be handwritten. They made me sit in a chair with the staff back behind the counter. I was sitting in front of a computer (very ancient terminal) when a man comes in and starts yelling at me and pointing at the computer. I got up, he sat down and took off his jacket and I realized he was a pilot. He booted up the computer and proceeded to play Pacman for the next hour! A flight attendant came in, yelled at him, pointed at her watch and stomped off. He did not get up and leave but I assume she was telling him it was time to fly. Sure hope we don’t get him for our pilot on Wednesday.
Marjan took me out to his van and tried to convince me to have a shot of straight whiskey. All he does is meet people at the airport all day and night and get them through customs. Guess he keeps the whiskey for “medicinal” purposes?? I got the worst migraine I’ve had in years as soon as we drove away from the airport. My doctor is convinced that he will find the “right drugs” to keep me from getting migraines. Not. They are caused by stress as proven today and I threw his prescriptions away tonight.
Tonight we went out to dinner – ten people total. Everything was a la carte and most people had a salad, starter, entrée, coffee and desert. The entire bill for all 10 people was $81 and the food was excellent. Took a walk through “Old Town” which is now just hundreds of shops but still very impressive. We passed a marker and they told us it was the original sight of the house where Mother Teresa was born. Little gypsy children are everywhere begging for money and we were told to definitely NOT give them anything. David said it seemed sort of ironic to be standing in the spot where Mother Teresa lived and trying to get rid of a little child begging for money!
There was a lot of rain in Kosovo and the road up to the first base where we perform washed away and the bridge sank. Our equipment truck from Germany (which left a week ago, drove through Italy, ferried to Greece and then drove up to Kosovo) ran off the rain-slick road and landed in a ditch. We’ll probably have to do an acoustic show tomorrow night since it is doubtful that we can get all the PA on a Chinook.
The elections are on tv tonight for Kosovo and it’s pretty wild. Milosovich (sorry, can’t spell) has already built a stage for his acceptance speech. They are reporting “irregularities” at the polling places and fraud. It will be really interesting to see the outcome.
It’s no secret that I am a huge supporter of Bush for President. We had dinner with one of the soldiers tonight. He was telling us that Gore has never done anything for the U.S. Military but he also said that Cheney is the CEO of the company that owns Brown & Root. Brown & Root has the monopoly on all the building in Yugoslavia and Bosnia. Cheney bought up land in these countries years ago for very low prices and now sells it back to the U.S. Government for very high prices. Additionally, anything that is built on the military bases, must be built by Brown & Root. A troop of soldiers could erect a tent in about a half hour. Brown & Root takes several days and charge $8,000. The tent may only be up for one day. Then they charge $2,000 to take it down. Every facility on base is operated by Brown & Root and they hire “locals” for pennies an hour. But the U.S Government pays them top dollar for the use of the facilities. Now I am depressed.
This has nothing to do with our trip, but it is one of the funniest stories I think I’ve ever heard. Will end this report on a note of humor. Years ago the Bellamys performed at a huge convention in Houston. The lineup was a skating chimpanzee, The Bellamy Brothers, The Righteous Brothers, and Bob Hope! The Bellamys were backstage waiting to go on when the chimp skated up to say hello. They were all shaking his hand and talking to him. The pedal steel player had gone to buy a coke and came out to meet the chimp. He reached out to shake hands with the chimp and the chimp took his knuckles and slammed them as hard as he could between the guy’s legs. He doubled over and the chimp grabbed the coke and skated off!
Later,
Jude
September 25th – Day 7
We were standing outside at a market buying cokes when David’s wife turns to him and says, “Did you HIT me?” . He replied, “No, but that bird did!”. Yuck. All over her beautiful leather jacket….
There is a fantastic gym here in the hotel. With just one machine you can do 30 different exercises. The weight is controlled by air pressure and the push of a button. Surprising to find something this modern in Macedonia! The breakfast bar was incredible. There was grilled shrimp and the freshest tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., I’ve ever had. We asked them why everything tasted home grown and they told us that the country is so poor, they can’t afford to put “chemicals” on the food. There was one little “tin” that I thought was honey but when I opened it, there was some kind of brown paste in it. We all sniffed it but everyone was scared to try it. Called the waiter over and he told us it was liver pate!
We flew on the Chinook with no problems but they call it big windy for a reason! David’s wife had ironed their show clothes and the clothes for the road manager. Since the iron did not have any English writing on it, she was unsure how to set it. Road manager’s shirt was the first one and the iron stuck to it…only a small little spot and she sure wasn’t going to tell him. He put it on the helicopter and during the flight, it slid off into the floor. He spent the rest of the day until show time trying to brush the “dirt” off it!
The flight up was interesting. Kosovo is not at all like Bosnia. There were no buildings blown up. Kosovo was a ground war with massive executions rather than bombings. Camp Bondsteel is probably now the largest in the world. We expected tent city but instead, there are 3 different “cities” all with buildings! The show was typical U.S. military in that it was completely disorganized. Surprised I didn’t get another migraine yesterday. But, we had a large crowd and the soldiers loved the Bellamys. David’s wife and I were stared at all day because the Camp is 99% male with the few females dressed in fatigues. We all had to wear flak vests and helmets on the helicopter and I had on my red, orange, yellow and black snakeskin pants. David felt I definitely defeated the purpose of “camouflage”!
I started feeling bad on the flight back but the helicopter pilots were giving us a treat by doing some unexpected turns and dips. By the time I got in the room at 1:30 am, I knew it was more than the ride. I got food poisoning from the meal that evening! Never, ever eat scallops on a military base in Kosovo! Spent the rest of the night lying on the bathroom floor praying for death. It’s almost noon and I’m still not sure I WANT to live. Have to leave now for the show, though.
Got a response to my Cheney comments which I should share with everyone. Makes me feel better. Will share it with you “anonymously”!
You shouldn’t be so depressed. That soldier went JUST a bit overboard with his Cheney/Brown and Root Services Corporation (BRSC) story. Yes, Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton Industries, the parent of BRSC. No, he did not buy up land in those countries to sell back to the U.S.. BRSC does not have the building monopoly in Kosovo or Bosnia. Yes, BRSC does have the Balkans Sustainment contract to build on the U.S. military bases. I spent 6 months on Camp Bondsteel last year as a contracting officer (not having anything to do with BRSC), and our office did contracts for work on camp, and I personally wrote about half a dozen contracts with local contractors to repair some of the local schools (paid for with humanitarian funds supplied by the State Department). Other folks in my office wrote a total of about 2 dozen more school repair contracts. Oh, and those theater seats in the big tent at Camp Bondsteel? I bought those from a firm in Greece, with installation. If BRSC had done that, it probably would have cost another $100,000. They don’t get to do everything on camp. The locals working on the camps aren’t getting paid much by our standards, but it’s the most money they’ve made in 10 years. Believe me, I’m no fan of BRSC, but they do good work, and it’s the contract some civilian in West Virginia signed on behalf of the government. The prices are pretty much agreed to up front, so someone thought the prices were “fair and reasonable”, as we put it. I’m backing Bush, too, and I didn’t want you to be depressed about it.
Probably won’t get another road report until I get back to Nashville.
Jude
SEPTEMBER 26TH – DAY 8
Our last show day! I think my “mood” is reflecting on the others. I didn’t tell any of my guys what was wrong because I didn’t want them to be afraid to eat the food on base. They are already paranoid enough. Been drinking lots of 7 Up and finally ate a couple of crackers. It’s going to be a long day!
The guys got to go drive humvees this afternoon. I was too sick and would have really been bummed if I hadn’t done this a couple of years ago. They had a blast.
Today is the drummer’s birthday. We’re trying to get our sound engineer to dress up like a female and strip for him. Our sound engineer is about 70 pounds overweight but a real sweetheart. The trick will be to find “women’s clothes”. The 99 women on this base only wear fatigues! The helicopter pilots let him sit with them and wear the headseats on the flight over today. It’s a little jump seat that folds down and you have to step over from behind and sit in it. He stepped over sat down and the seat didn’t hold. He landed on the floor with arms and legs waving like crazy. Could definitely have won “America’s Funniest Home Videos”…
Susan got to sit up there last night and look through the night vision goggles. NOW we know why they were flipping the helicopter last night – trying to impress Susan!
The Bellamys wrote a special song for the troops in Bosnia and Kosovo which will only be available on the internet. You would not believe the response it gets when you’re standing among the soldiers. Everybody tears up! Had another great show. At both Camps, the soldiers were so happy to see real, big name artists coming to perform for them!
Pilots decided to do stunts on the flight home. Don’t mind this in a Blackhawk, but the chinook scares me. It crashes enough under normal circumstances and I don’t like turning flips in that one! Sat near the front so it wouldn’t be so “bumpy” but the window where the gun is mounted has to stay open, so it was freezing.
1:30 am now and have to get up at 3:00 for lobby call. Short night and long flight tomorrow.
Photo attached. Guess which one is “sniper bait”???
Jude
LAST DAY
Well, we certainly went out with a bang. Got in bed at 2:30 am and up at 3:30 am. At the airport at 5:30 am! You would not believe that airport. Thank God our interpreter/facilitator was there to help us. Avio Impex is definitely a third world airline. They had to hand write all the baggage claim checks and boarding passes. She had already tagged and sent back two of the bags when I noticed she had written “NAH” as the airport code for Nashville which is “BNA”! We got the bags back and she start scribbling on the claim checks with a pen to change the tags. We had to take them away from her and correct them with a sharpie just to be sure they were tagged for Nashville. The boarding passes were numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
I tipped Marjoin (our interpreter) $50 for helping us and he tried to refuse, but I insisted. I later found out that this is more than a month’s wages for him from Brown & Root in Macedonia! This guy speaks 20 languages fluently. Makes me wonder what he is doing in Skopje?
We tried to buy some breakfast at the airport, but it was just one counter with some kind of meat pies and they had flies all over them. NOT that hungry. When they were ready to board the flight, we all had to get on a bus. Everyone started walking to the bus and someone from Avio Impex yells, “Stop, business class first”. Everyone stopped and let me and the Bellamys get on. They made us sit in the very front seats. Then they did the same thing when everyone tried to get off the bus. Sure made everyone else love us immediately.
“BUSINESS CLASS” was the front section of the plane with 3 of the smallest seats you’ve ever seen on each side. But there was about 20 rows of seats and just the 4 of us and 2 other people. So we each had our own row. My legs would not fit in front of me. Had to turn sideways just to sit in the seat! And the pilots smoked so much, I thought the cockpit was on fire. The guys in the back said everyone was smoking and the body odors were so bad, they were all green when they got off
We landed in Zurich to find that our flight to Amsterdam was cancelled – no explanation — just no flight. They had to re-book us on 3 separate airlines just to get everyone home. Not a good thing to split everyone up! Since our luggage was checked all the way through to Nashville, they had to rush to find it and re-tag it. Then, they didn’t even give us our own personal bags. Just sent 10 bags with one group, 8 with another and 7 with another. Nice to try and go through Customs in the U.S. with someone else’s lugagge, huh? That’s airport security for you. I flew with the Bellamys direct from Zurich to Washington then home to Nashville. One group flew through London and Chicago and one group flew through Paris and Chicago. We landed at 7 pm and everyone else was supposed to land at 11 pm. The four guys on the Paris flight never showed up. One of them had called from Paris so we knew they made it that far. We finally found out that their flight had to make an emergency landing in Montreal to take off a sick child and they missed their Chicago connection. This group also had all the band equipment and NONE of it showed up.
The Bellamys have a show on the 29th in Texas, so we were all in a panic about the equipment. It finally came in the next day and everyone left for Texas.
Definitely time to start digging out at work now!
Jude