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Blog June 28th 2006

Posted by Aynsley on Wednesday 28th June, 2006.

I should have known better than to think this musician business was all glamour!!I Up at some unearthly hour after several hours sleep to travel to an airport only to hang around for several hours; Hmmm….. queue for check in….. queue for security…..be nice to security…..explain that the item inside the guitar case is actually a guitar….locate departure gate…..realise we’re at wrong gate…. locate correct departure gate…..find comfy seat and try to stay awake….wait for flight to be called…. wait for flight to be called….wait some more for flight to be called…..nod off waiting for flight to be called (has happened on several occasions!!)... queue for flight now boarding….talk nicely to the stewardess explaining that guitar is very precious and could not possibly leave my sight…fail… locate another stewardess and try them instead…. succeed….locate seat….relax and doze off…. get rudely awoken by take off…. doze off again… get woken again by drinks service but order something….. try to doze off again…. now wide awake, can’t sleep…..read emergency leaflet a few times….realise other reading matter of any interest is in overhead bin… under six other bags….blah blah blah!!

Ok, the trip itself. Now although the idea of flying to Missouri, USA just for one gig seemed crazy, the reality wasn’t actually that much different to how I thought it would be!! After 10 hours of flying and countless more hours waiting for connect flights, the Blues Caravan entourage finally arrived on the Thursday evening – the night before our festival show the next day. Checking the itinerary, it says we’re staying at the Hilton – brilliant! Time for some sleep….

Errr… no. We’ve been booked to play ‘The Knucklehead Saloon’ that very night following a cancellation. OK, so still on UK time we finally came off stage at about 7am!!! Now to the hotel !!

So, following a decent nights sleep and some good food at the hotel we arrived at the actual festival site late afternoon for soundcheck. Unfortunately though for the organisers we spent most of our set up time blasting around the backstage area in the little battery-powered buggies they have there. Now that was fun… but we flattened the battery, so we soundchecked instead. We then went on to a fantastic crowd and got a great response. Bucket loads of CDs were taken home by lots of people there and the rest of the evening was spent sampling their barbecue food and drink. Rather good actually.

The next day being the Saturday, had us up at the crack of dawn to do a handful of live radio interviews. A trip to a Barbeque diner later in the afternoon and an impromptu jam at Knuckleheads had us shifting a whole load more CDs before heading back to the festival for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning back to the airport and all the way back to Birmingham – please refer to paragraph one for more info.

A few days at home feeling kinda weird and not quite with it… sleeping at strange times of the day and waking up at 4am ready to go on stage. Just enough time to recover before I’m off again, this time to Austria on Friday morning – please refer to paragraph one for more info.

So we arrived at Zurich airport (Switzerland) and got picked up by the local promoter. It’s a 3 1/2 hour drive to the location in Austria and we haven’t eaten since breakfast so on arrival at ‘Crazy Eddys’ the menu is the first thing to be checked out. Some rather lovely pasta is served to us before it’s time for work. With soundcheck out the way, we headed to the hotel for a couple of hours before returning at around 10pm to go on stage. Another great crowd and the rest of the evening spent soaking up the atmosphere. Back to the hotel for 2.30am to grab some kip before our pickup to take us back to the airport at 7am. Refer to paragraph one for more info.

Home, sleep!