SUNDAY, MARCH 11TH – TRAVEL TO ANSBACH, GERMANY:
I forgot to mention that when Bill brought me the little electric heater, we couldn’t get my door open. The lock just kept turning around and around. He finally got it open but accidentally put my key in his pocket. The next morning I looked everywhere and finally asked the hotel for another key. I could not believe that they only have ONE key for each room and then their master key. Their solution was to have me change rooms…NOT! Thankfully Bill had it when he met us. I told him I would have slept with one eye open if I had known he kept my key. J So, I got a couple of hours sleep (which is more than the boys and Bill got) and then went down to see Tony off. He has to return to Nashville today against our wishes. He and Bill were already in the restaurant and neither one of them had been asleep. His taxi came right on time and we left shortly thereafter. Our bus driver is Johannes and a really nice guy. It was about a 2 ½ hour drive to the hotel and we stopped right before we reached the hotel at a McDonalds – the only thing open. The hotel is only 5 minutes from the base and about a 15 minute walk into Ansbach. The guys were thrilled to learn that the McDonalds takes U.S. currency – because they are so close to the military base! It’s a really nice – but “bare bones” – hotel. When we walked inside, there was no one at the reception. This little lady who looked to be around 90 years old and wearing an apron came out of the restaurant to help us. She spoke not one word of English. Thankfully Johannes was there to rescue me. I had to “pry” every room key away from her and each time I wrote down the room number on my rooming sheet, she tried to grab the paper away from me! Okay, I KNOW I could have taken her but since we are staying here two nights, I tried to exercise patience – not easy for me. We finally managed to get everyone checked in and thankfully there is an elevator. The internet works – T-Mobile like I purchased at the other hotel – but it is excruciatingly slow. I bought a month of T-Mobile and am hoping I can use it at most of the places we stay. I worked all afternoon and then took the boys out to dinner at 7:30 pm. We drove down to the walking street. It’s Sunday, so most places were totally deserted. It is a cool little town though. We found a restaurant serving German food indigenous to this area. It was really, really good food. I had grilled bratwurst with some of the best sour kraut ever. Lots of the guys had the same thing and some had schnitzel again. Again, the couple working the restaurant had to be in their 80’s. Sure hope our crowd tomorrow night is a little younger. I’ve been back in the room for hours now, just trying to send out a few emails but it’s taking forever. Our call time tomorrow is 1:45 pm, so I’m hoping the rain stops, it warms up, and I can JOG down to the walking street. Jude
MONDAY, MARCH 12TH – FIRST LOCASH PERFORMANCE FOR THE TROOPS – ANSBACH, GERMANY:
Wow, I slept in today and got 5 hours of sleep. Even had time to work out to my DVD before showering and leaving for the venue. I wanted to jog but it was freezing outside and I didn’t bring the right running clothes. Maybe somewhere else…SOON! So, now I can put this in my Road Report since Bill (our promoter in Germany) is out of the doghouse. When I went in his office the other night to use his computer, he accidentally knocked over a wood carving of Christ on the cross. It was a “one of a kind” item and Marianne is a super religious Catholic. One of the arms totally broke off. He grabbed some glue from a shelf only to find that it was completely dried up. His next brilliant idea was to “hide” it! I tried to get him to tell her I did it accidentally but he wouldn’t agree. I teased him off and on the rest of the time we were there. Even took a photo with him with one of my arms outstretched and the other hidden behind my back. MEAN! At one point during the show, he walked over behind Marianne and started hugging her. I was shaking my head and telling him “No, No, No. Dead give-away. She will KNOW you are guilty of SOMETHING”. Anyway, she found the broken Christ and he confessed. Think he got some really strong glue to repair it and will probably keep it on hand for the future. J Vicki – our MWR escort – met us at the gate and escorted us to the venue. This is the home of the 12th CAB (Combat Assault Battalion). Lots of the guys and girls here will be deploying to Afghanistan in about 2 months…IF we are still there at that time! Had one little “blip” because the Production Company accidentally sent out an old backline list and there were personnel changes that required a different keyboard and amp. Now keep in mind, this Production Company is the BEST. But, when my buddy John is on tour and leaves it up to the “boss” to take care of business….well, enough said, John? LOL. They fixed it before the show even began. Brought a keyboard and amp that were on our backline list. Like I said, they are the BEST. If you ever need a production company in Germany or anywhere in Europe, contact Public Address (shameless free promotion). We left the band to begin sound check and took Chris and Preston to “play on the Blackhawks and Chinooks. Boys and their toys is all I need to say. They had a blast. And these guys are so respectful of our military. It’s their first tour for the troops and won’t be their last. We spent about an hour there and signed autographs and took photos with everyone. Then I took them to the Base Exchange – their first visit to one of those as well. By the time we got back to the venue, the band was ready for them to sound check. We walked over to the BOSS center and had a catered dinner which consisted of a salad and three types of pasta…no carbs there! But it was SOOOOO good. The internet at that building was slamming and no one wanted to leave. The internet in our hotel is horrible. We had to pay for T-Mobile connection but the server at the hotel just can’t handle the connection. I started to download something last night and it said it would take 23 hours! And I get kicked off every few minutes. Takes me three times as long to open and send an email as it should. We didn’t have as large of a crowd as I would have liked because it is a Monday night and the base population has to work tomorrow and kids have to go to school. But the ones who attended got the show of a lifetime. The guys had everyone out of their seats and crowded around the stage before the show was over. The Command Sgt. Major and a Colonel wanted to make a presentation. I sent them up after the last song and before the encore. They got so excited, they went on stage and talked but forgot to present the plaque! Had to send them back on after the encore. The guys signed autographs for about an hour and then we drove back to the hotel. Got back at around 10 pm and I don’t know if they were going to bed or walking into town. It’s almost 1 am and I’m still working, of course. Tomorrow we drive to Bamberg and my dear friend Silvia who I met in Bosnia in the 90’s is coming to see me! Jude
THURSDAY, MARCH 15TH – PERFORMANCE AT EDELWEISS LODGE:
For some reason which I can’t remember, I got up in the middle of the night. I think I had opened the window and it got too cold. Anyway, I tripped over the end of the bed because it was very DARK. Have a large piece of skin missing near my elbow and a big bruise on my calf of all places! Had a light breakfast and was heading out to job when I was stopped by AFN radio. They were broadcasting live from the lobby and wanted to interview Chris and Preston. I knew I would be waking them up but it was PR for the shows, so they came down. Actually Chris was the only one who made it before they went off the air. Preston thought it was for TV and took time to dress accordingly. I couldn’t call Preston’s room because evidently his phone was off the hook so had to resort to yelling through his door and guess some of the details got lost in the process. I had a great jog into the town. LOTS of tourist places but a great shopping street as well. I was just looking for the Post Office so I could mail the key back to the hotel in Bamberg. Had to stop at the Tourist Office to get directions but I didn’t get lost ONCE which was a big surprise. Back at the hotel and had lunch at 12:30 pm and then worked until 3 pm when the guys did a soundcheck. Preston, Chris, and Jared went skiing this morning and they all came back with nothing broken. But Jared took a really hard fall and has a big “scrape” on his back. He told me he had back surgery last year for 3 ruptured discs in the same area. Not good. Preston said nothing will be able to top skiing down the Alps for him. J Had dinner at 6:30 pm and now working until show time at 9 pm. We have an “early” departure for us tomorrow – 9 am. Another 4 hour drive this time to Stuttgart. One of my friends that I met at Camp Summerall, Iraq in 2004 will be there with his wife (who I have never met). Can’t wait to see him. We manage to see each other every couple of years – either in a war zone or somewhere in the U.S. There was a great, rowdy crowd in Zuggy’s Club where they performed. But there were also some really cute kids right up front dancing. Guys had another fantastic performance and we had to pull the plug on them at one hour and 45 minutes. J Our tech crew still had to load out, travel all night, and start working on our next show at 4 am tomorrow. I had to leave the room for about 5 minutes and when I came back, they were singing “My Girl”! Someone must have made a request. LOL My dear friend Karri Turner had surgery on her back on Tuesday and is having a hard time. My boyfriend had basically the same surgery today! What’s up with all these back problems. Prayers for both of these special people. Going to bed soon since we have an early call time tomorrow. No jog tomorrow. L Jude
FRIDAY, MARCH 16TH – TRAVEL TO STUTTGART:
We all agree on one thing…no one has any idea what day it is! We had a quick breakfast before loading the bus and traveling about 3 hours to Stuttgart. We are at the Kelley Lodge on Kelley. Biggest disappointment for the guys is the fact that there is no wireless internet service. I know my office called every hotel and we were told they all have wireless. At least there is a DSL line. I walked over to the little shopette and bought some Monster Milk for “lunch”. No sugar and only 7 carbs! Got a few emails answered and then we had to drive to Robinson Barracks for our performance. That installation doesn’t get a lot of entertainment and the building where we played didn’t even have a stage. But Public Address, our German production company, worked their miracles once again and it looked great. LoCash wants to take them back to the USA with them! J We went to a restaurant right outside the base gates for dinner. I ordered the schnitzel and pommes frites “to be safe”. Mine wasn’t very good at all—very dry, both the schnitzel and the fries. Nothing like Marianne’s cooking! We went back to the base and my friend Ryan and his new wife, Jodie were there waiting for me. I had never met his wife and she is as sweet and beautiful as I expected. Got to chat with them for a few minutes before getting the show started. It was definitely a family audience. The entire dance floor in front of the stage was covered with little children. And they got up on stage and danced and danced throughout the entire show. It was so cute and the band was awesome with them. Everyone agreed it was a great, fun show! Guys signed autographs for about an hour. Then I had to say goodbye to Ryan and Jodie and get everyone on the bus for the trip back to Kelley Lodge. Our bus driver has a curfew so he can drive tomorrow. My three “skiers” are so sore they can barely move today. They started telling stories about their ski trip yesterday and had all of us cracking up. Evidently two of them had never skied before. The ski instructor comped their skis, clothes, boots, everything and then taught them in 1 hour what it takes days for others to learn. Sure wish someone had videoed them! Was back at the hotel before midnight but it’s 1 am now and I am really tired. Hate that we didn’t get to see the city of Stuttgart and spend a little time here. Chris’s dad served at Stuttgart many years ago so would have been very interesting for him. Jude
SATURDAY, MARCH 17TH – PERFORMANCE AT “K-TOWN” – HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!:
Today we drive to Kaiserslautern (K-Town) for a show but we are staying at Ramstein Air Base. I haven’t been at Ramstein since I brought Chris Young, Craig Morgan, Joe Bowser, Scott Lilley and the whole GAC-TV Crew through here in 2009! Love this base. Has a quick workout and thought I was going to have breakfast…wrong. All they had was cereal (which is NOT on my ‘no sugar’ diet), bagels, and that was pretty much it. I finally found some oatmeal and made it in a cup! We left on time – sort of – had to retrieve everyone’s hotel room keys from them. Since they are the plastic credit card type, no one knew they had to turn them in. They do! We arrived right on time BUT could not get on base. Evidently when Michael Tietze didn’t start driving our bus, the names never got changed on the access roster. We spent well over a half an hour calling back and forth with George (circuit coordinator who lies here) and he finally sent Jessica (from K-Town) over to sign him in. But, he could only drop us off and not stay unless Jessica stayed with him. So he parked the bus and Jessica took him to the K-Town base where he does have access. Then came the check in at the hotel. I walked up to a female who looked competent and she immediately said I would have to let a man standing next to her check me in. I swear he was the brother to the guy yesterday who checked us in. It took FOREVER for him to enter the names and make the keys. The lady next to him checking people in was doing three to his every one. But, he was nice and nothing we could do to hurry him along. We didn’t get in our rooms until 3 pm. By then, everyone was starving. This hotel is connected to the largest military shopping mall in Europe. I spent some time there when I was here in 2009. I grabbed a sandwich and then started looking for “empty boxes” so we can ship the plaques home that the guys have received. The ones they had for sale at the exchange were much too small. I spent an entire hour searching and finally got someone in the shoe department at the exchange to give me several. It was a real treat trying to hold all of them (they were folded flat but are BIG) and take them in the elevator to my room. Couldn’t just put them on the bus because – no driver! We all met at 5:30 pm and drove over to K-Town. It was a really nice club and I knew we’d have a big crowd on a Saturday night. My friend John from Public Address came by to say hello. Really nice to see him. George didn’t make it out to see us because he had to babysit tonight! We had a great catered dinner after sound check and got to meet Johannes wife as well. Show started at 9 pm and I knew we were going to have to try and stay on time because our bus driver had to drive us to our base, then drive home another 40 minutes away because he can’t get onto our base! The show was fantastic and people just kept coming up to me raving about the band. The autograph line was our longest yet (of course, since we have a “curfew”!) but was got everyone taken care of. Made it back to the hotel at midnight and have a 9:45 am bus call tomorrow for a 2 ½ hour drive to Spangdahlem – our last show. Haven’t been there since the mid-90’s with Jolie Edwards and Ricochet! Jude
SUNDAY, MARCH 18TH – LAST PERFORMANCE IN GERMANY – SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE:
Woke up to WONDERFUL news via a text from my business partner in Switzerland. The Bellamys and DJ Otzi have 3 songs in the top 12 Rock/Pop Download charts in Germany! “I Need More of You” is #1, “Crossfire” is #7 and “Like a Star” is #12. That is really, really impressive for the first week out. Next week is going to be a great week for our Promo tour. Can’t believe tonight is our last show of this tour. In a way, it seems to have flown by and in another way, seems like I’ve been over here for a month already! Last time I was here was November, 2001…hard to believe. Got up and planned to go jogging but it was raining. The “gym” consists of cardio only and since I hate running on a treadmill or elliptical trainer, I opted to work out in the room….again. L Walked into the mall and found a little fast food restaurant that made me an omelet. We departed Ramstein at 10 am and arrived Spangdahlem an hour early because of no traffic on Sunday. They Eifel Arms Lodge had our rooms ready for us and were super organized. I “re-packed” everything so I can send a bag back with the group. Got to get my weight down because I’m being forced to fly on Air Berlin (the worst airline in the world) on several flights on the Promo Tour. Don’t want to pay $500 for one piece of excess ever again!!!! I walked over to Pizza Hut and got a salad and then answered the emails that still come in on Sunday. We left for the show at 4 pm and sound check only took about 20 minutes. Walked over to the base exchange and had them change some U.S. Dollars to Euros for me. Not sure how hard it will be to change money once I get out on the local German economy. We had dinner at the DFAC. So strange to see such tiny little DFAC’s with very little selection of food and beverage after the outstanding ones we ate at in Iraq. We still had about an hour to kill before the show started. Think some of the guys actually walked back to lodging. It’s a small base so hard to get lost. We had dinner at the DFAC. So strange to see such tiny little DFAC’s with very little selection of food and beverage after the outstanding ones we ate at in Iraq. We still had about an hour to kill before the show started. Think some of the guys actually walked back to lodging. It’s a small base so hard to get lost. The show was in a Club and the crowd was small but enthusiastic. Lots of people on this base flew to Ireland for St. Patrick’s day and are just getting back tonight. Others have to work tomorrow or have school. But, it was a great show and the band brought our production company up on stage with them at the end of the show. Had the same comments after the show in the autograph line that we got after every performance – what a great show and fantastic entertainers. J Guys signed autographs and we came back to lodging. They were debating whether or not they should just stay up all night since we have to load the bus at 4 am!!! I took a shower and am “dressed” to leave since it’s already 11:30 pm. Jude
MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2012 – LEAVING GERMANY:
Ever just had “one of those days”? I did today! Went to bed at 1:30 am and got up at 3:30 am. Rough!!! Some of the guys decided to sleep on the bus but forgot to leave their hotel room keys. So we were scrambling at 4 am trying to figure out who was in their room, who was on the bus and where to find keys. We finally got everything sorted out but one guy’s alarm didn’t go off, so we were a few minutes late departing. I tried to go back to sleep in my bunk, but it just didn’t happen. Slept for maybe 30 minutes in the 3 ½ drive. We actually arrived at the airport early and it was a good thing we did. The line for the guys flight to Nashville via Dulles was extremely long and moving very slowly. I decided to go ahead and check in so I could get rid of my luggage. When I went to Lufthansa to check in, the nice lady could not find my reservation. She sent me to the United check-in counter but they couldn’t find it either so they sent me to the Delta counter since my international ticket was on Delta. They couldn’t find it either and sent me to Brussels Air which is the airline I was flying on. Finally, the agent found my reservation only to tell me it had been CANCELLED on March 17th on the same computer that had booked it. I tried calling the travel agent but the only number on the print out of my reservation was their office number where I got a recording saying call back during regular office hours! I had no other option but to purchase a one-way ticket to Berlin at a cost of approximately $1,000. Was not happy about that! I walked back to see if the guys had worked their way to the check in counter but they still had quite a way to go. They finally started getting checked in and were down to the last 3 who had the excess pieces to check. Then an agent for the airline stopped their line and said they were only going to check in passengers going to Chicago because they were all going to miss their flights. Didn’t seem real fair since we arrived 4 hours before our flight time and these passengers show up 15 minutes before their flight and expect to be accommodated. Getting them checked in took 45 minutes and then my guys finally got up there. One of the guys didn’t hear my “instructions” when I told them to each check ONE piece of excess. So his first bag was free, his second bag cost 50 Euros and the 3rd bag cost 150 Euros! Got everyone checked in and then I headed to the Lounge for several cups of coffee. My flight left on time and was uneventful until we started to land in Berlin. The wind was blowing really hard and it was a turbulent landing! Both pieces of my luggage arrived and “Frank” our driver in Berlin was there to meet me. A really nice guy and I enjoyed talking to him. The hotel is really, really “FUNKY”. It is a very, very old building that has been remodeled. It was a Hospital in World War I and then when the war ended, was home to the KGB. Google Lux-11 and read the history. Tell ME this place isn’t haunted. The room is very “artsy” and totally non-functional. There are no shelves and no drawers! The shower and sink is right next to the bed and there’s no wall between them….just the glass for the shower. Was hard to get both my bags open at the same time but I finally managed to get everything out of the suitcases and placed “somewhere” in the room. I do have a dishwasher, toaster, microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker, water pot, and stove top! I was able to answer a few emails then walked over to the “Galleria” to buy some coffee filters and water. I didn’t get lost walking over but did go past the hotel when I came back. I know this area pretty well because I was down here shopping a couple of times when I was here in July. Iris arrived at a little after 7 and we went to dinner shortly thereafter. Went to some “steak” restaurant where we both ordered salmon! J It was really good food though. We got back to the hotel at around 10 pm and I’m still trying to answer emails. Day “off” tomorrow but looks like I’ll be working most of it!!!! Jude