SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2019 – PERFORMANCE AT LOFOTEN COUNTRY FESTIVAL, NORWAY:
My plan to jog this morning was ruined by rain! Not a heavy rain…just a drizzle but it was cold as well. So, was forced to work out with bands instead in my room.
Showered and worked until time to go to sound check at 11:45 am. This is a great venue….a “sports hall” and the “floor” is Astro Turf …except for the dance floor, of course. All the people who work with the festival are just so nice and helpful..Reidar, Stig, Anna and of course my long-time friend Gunnar and oh so many other people. One of the staff had brought the mix to make Norwegian “pancakes” (waffles) and had the available when we walked in. Since they didn’t have them at the airport the other day, I took David and Susan one back when we left.
The stage was set and everything was ready for the guys to sound check. Gunnar and I talked while they were sound checking. They finished in less than the 1 ½ hours allotted because of the rockin’ system Tim now brings on the road with them in the USA. He can fly everything in one small case and he mixes monitors and front of house from his iPad. Now we no longer need a monitor or front of house console and Randy Hall no longer needs a bass amp. Big cost savings for the promoters.
Was going to walk downtown to check out all the “booths” but it started raining again just as we were driving back. David, Susan and Howard had walked down and eaten at a Thai booth and said it was excellent. I ate the cheese and fruit that I had brought to my room from the breakfast bar and ended up working from 2 pm until 10:30 pm when it was time to go to the show. I did take about a 20 minute break for room service.
It’s so much cooler up here but no one is complaining after the miserable heat we have had on all the previous dates. There’s a large “green room” backstage and a “container” for the dressing room. Howard and David had several VIP’s to meet and a short interview with a local newspaper. The journalist looked like she was about 12 years old, sweet as could be, and scared to death. She said The Bellamy Brothers are her father’s favorite artist so no pressure on her to do a good job! Of course, Howard and David made it easy for her.
Bellamys took the stage at 11:30 am (yep!) and played until 1 am. The staff had brought vegetarian gluten free pizza, chili, and lots of other items for them to eat after the show. We were back at the hotel at about 1:45 am and I decided to let everything that needed to be done, wait until tomorrow. I was in bed by 2:30 am.
Jude
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8TH – LEKNES TO OSLO:
Slept until 8:30 am and it was wonderful. Had a quick shower, 30 minutes of stretching exercises and went down for decaf coffee and a little food for breakfast in my room. I decided to log into Wideroe/SAS to make sure the airlines hadn’t changed our seats again like they did on the flights over. Yesterday I had gone in and reserved the seats I knew everyone wanted. Sure enough, they had moved everyone around and had 3 of my guys in middle seats. I changed them again and “prayed” it was close enough to departure time that the airlines would leave us alone!
We departed the hotel at 12:00 noon for the 5 minute drive to the airport.
We were the first people there to check in for our flight and it was easy and painless. We did not have to pay any excess charges. It all depends on the “luck of the draw” and the “interpretation” of the rules for excess charges.
Flight departed on time and only took 25 minutes on the little Wideroe Prop Plane. We had a short layover in Bodo (pronounced Budda) and then a 1 hour 45 minute flight on a larger SAS plane to Oslo. All our luggage and equipment arrived and we walked over to the Radisson to check in. I had been emailing with the hotel on a regular basis to make sure everything was set after the nightmare we had with Emmylou Harris at this same hotel. They did have “most” of our information and issued our keys pretty quickly.
Tim, Galen and I dropped our bags in our room and headed back over to the airport to try to check in. KLM – as I have stated many times on this tour – is awful and we weren’t able to check in online. We fly KLM from Oslo to Amsterdam and then usually fly Delta to JFK or Atlanta for the long overseas flight. This time we are on a KLM flight and the plane is really, really “old”. They have two classes of service – Business and Coach. No Economy Plus or Economy Comfort Coach.
After several attempts we were able to check everyone in and print boarding passes except for Randy Hiebert. I don’t know if it is because he is Canadian or if it was something else. We went to the KLM counter and the agent was able to print his boarding passes there.
I had received a notice from the travel agent yesterday stating that Delta was allowing passengers to change their flights free of charge if they would be traveling on September 8th via Amsterdam due to “Industrial Action”. We only missed it by ONE day. Hopefully things will be back to “normal” tomorrow if there is such a thing at the Amsterdam airport!
Everyone ate dinner at the Radisson Hotel restaurant compliments of the Lofoten Festival. The menu definitely wasn’t very “American friendly” with things like Moose Burger Sliders, Kingcrab Loin, burgers, etc. Thankfully the “special of the day” was salmon and it was good. There was an appetizer that was great though – Norwegian “vaffles” with goat cheese, smoked ham and cloudberry jam!
When I checked in, I had asked the front desk clerk to make sure the restaurant knew we were allowed to charge one starter, entrée, dessert and non-alcoholic beverage as part of our hotel booking. She assured me that they did. And, of course, the restaurant knew nothing about it. I had to go to my room and retrieve the paperwork to show them. Then, he insisted that we should have all eaten at 7 pm as a “group” and that they already had a “set menu” selected for us. I assured him that would never have worked for our group. He finally relented and I was able to go to my room at around 7:30 pm. Showered and worked for a few hours. Had planned to go to the fitness room and get in a good workout but just too tired to even attempt it. Will get back on schedule next week – at least for a few days!
Jude
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH – FLYING HOME FROM NORWAY: We all met in the lobby at 7 am and walked over to the terminal. I think everyone finally got a good night’s sleep on great beds. Love the Radisson Hotels! The nice lady we had talked to the night before was on duty so we went to her for check in. She passed half the passports to the agent sitting next to her and that’s when the problems began. That agent would not allow everyone in the same record the same baggage allowance as the person with priority staff. I made her cancel his check-in and his baggage tags and let the lady I was working with check him in! When we finished check in, we still had one more bag we could check in free of charge. Flight departed a few minutes late which meant we had a shorter connection time in Amsterdam. Howard and I were sitting together on the flight and he slept hard most of the way. We landed and got off first and I waited for the others but told Howard and some of the guys who had gotten off to go on ahead and go through Immigration because there’s usually a really long line there. Susan and David were seated right behind us and should have gotten off before any of the guys but they didn’t. They finally got off and Susan said the flight attendant told her someone with our group had left their phone on the seat. She searched everywhere and didn’t see it. She asked another flight attendant if it had been turned in and it had not. She walked ahead to find Howard and he definitely didn’t have his phone. I RAN back to the gate to try and get it before the flight departed. I ran up to the counter and they were just getting ready to announce it over the speaker system. They gave it to me and I thought Howard was right behind me but he was nowhere to be seen! I walked around the gate area and finally saw him coming back up the jetway. He thought I had run back onto the plane so he went there as well. He actually talked to the pilot. I’m just thankful we got his phone back! The Immigration line was very long. I told the attendant what time our flight departed and she didn’t really care. We had to stand in the long line. After about 15 minutes, Tim told a different female agent that we had a short connection and she let us go to the front of the line. We boarded the KLM flight to JFK and departed a little late. It is a very OLD KLM plane with only business class and coach seating…no Economy Comfort. It’s a 2-2-2 configuration and I was able to get Howard out of the window seat and into the middle section with me at the last minute. People sitting in the window seats are “trapped” when the person in the aisle seats lets their seat down flat into a bed! They have to climb over them to go to the toilet! Howard slept while I was awake and I slept while he was awake. We actually landed on time at JFK and our bags were already coming off the belt when we arrived at baggage claim. Howard, David, Susan and I had breezed through Immigration with our Global Entry Status but the guys were still in line. Randy Hiebert has to go through an entirely different line because of his Canadian Citizenship. I texted Tim and told him I was taking them to the gate and leaving him to get the luggage and equipment through Customs. I had previously given him the registered manifest. We put our bags on the “re-check” belt and went upstairs to go through TSA pre-check. We already had our boarding passes since all three flights were on the one ticket we were issued in Oslo. When we got to the TSA Agent, he said he could not accept our boarding passes and we would have to get out of line and go back to the Delta counter and have them reissued! As many times as I have been through JFK, no one has ever told me to get my boarding pass reissued! We got the new passes and headed to the gate. I had not eaten the breakfast on the flight, so stopped at a little café to get something to eat. While I was standing there, I noticed a large black rolling duffle bag. It was standing on it’s end and was partially open. I asked the server if she knew whose it was and she didn’t. No one in the area knew whose it was. Pretty concerning! I left and have no idea if she found who it belonged too but she didn’t seem overly concerned…and she should have been! Our plane arrived and it’s the small jet. I had a window seat by myself and I slept most of the way home. Our luck finally ran out on getting all our luggage and equipment when we landed. Susan’s bag was missing! She had to fill out a claim and have them deliver to their hotel the next day. Fortunately, they were staying at a hotel near the airport and flying home tomorrow. This was such a great tour! Bellamys are always wonderful to work with and they have some truly nice, easy musicians/crew now too. Very blessed to work with them internationally! I’m home for a week and then fly to Switzerland with Rosanne Cash to headline the Gstaad Festival. Then home for a week and back to Norway and Sweden for two weeks with the Bellamys. Home for 3 days after that and then fly to Japan for Country Gold. And then….it’s November! Time is flying by much too fast! Have to share with everyone that on Tuesday Night I attended Charlie Daniel’s “The Journey Home Project” fundraising event at The Palm. Charlie awarded me the “Patriot Award”! So thrilled and humbled by this honor. Darryl Worley was there and “introduced” me and told some wonderful stories about the tours we had done together. Go to my Facebook page to see video and photos from this amazing event!! Jude |