Show Day in Udine, Italy

More random shots from today in Italy…

Toilet in the crew room. Yuck!And no, I don't mean urinal. That's the pooper! What we refer to as a "Turkish Toilet."

The crowd of 41,000+ filling up the bowl.

Riggers Chuck and Jim on stage.

My usual 9pm photo, just before the band hit the stage.

Three shots during "Yellow."



Fireworks at the end of the show.



Headed out to the bus around 3am, crawled into my happy place about 4:30…

Production Day in Udine, Italy

After loading in and setting up my office, I worked for a couple of hours, then bailed with some other folks to go back to the hotel. We're staying at the lovely Hotel Friuli, a few blocks from the center of Udine. We were all kind of puzzled as we were pulling up, because it looked more like a gas station with a hotel than a hotel with a gas station in front of it.

This is Ed Jarman (our video engineer) hanging out of his top floor window. He shouted down that this was one of the finest petrol stations he's ever stayed in.

Upstairs for a shower, and then a few of us met in the lobby to head out for dinner - Eric & Mick (merch guys), Jackie (security) and me. We walked around the city center for about an hour checking out some local sites.




Finally decided on a restaurant that we all thought looked pretty good. This was my dinner, a mushroom pizza:

Dessert was Tiramisu and a shot of Limoncello. This was by far the very best Tiramisu I've ever had.

Back to the hotel after dinner, where I joined a few other folks in the lobby bar for a few rounds…

Production Day in Munich, Germany

Had an old friend waiting for me in my hotel room in Munich when I got there…

Show Day in Dusseldorf, Germany

Not too much to report, but I got some cool shots here…

The stage, shot from Front Of House yesterday morning:

Same shot, tonight during the show:

The house, shot from the stage yesterday morning:

Same shot, tonight just before the band went on:That's 42,000 kids out there!!!

Our truck corral out back:

The confetti cannons cranking up during the band's encore, shot from the back of the stage:

My favorite part of the confetti gag is the third blast – it's a different type of confetti and looks great under blacklight:

Show Day in Hannover, Germany

Here are a few of our fine folks. L-R, Ernie Wagner (set carpenter), Julie Matway (Live Nation tour rep), and Kurt Wagner (stage manager):

Good crowd tonight, about 35,000 or so.

Coming in…

From a higher vantage point:

A sea of humanity:

From the other end:

Early in the set:

During "Yellow"

Just as the confetti cannons start blasting:

As is usual of late, made it to my bunk about 3:30am...

I love this comic. Yeah, yeah, I posted it some time ago, but I just came across it again while looking for some photos. It cracks me up…

Travel Day to Hannover, Germany

Another long bus ride, this one included a ferry from Denmark to Germany. This ferry was pretty interesting. In addition to all the cars, trucks and buses, there was a TRAIN in the belly of the vessel. There were rails on the bottom level that lined up with rails on the dock and dang if the train didn't come right onto the ship and park up close to our bus.

This is Peanut, one of our riggers, standing topside on the ferry. Love his shirt…
You may have to click and enlarge the photo to see the image.

Cool bridge we crossed during the drive today. Sorry about the bugs on the windshield…

Show Day in Stockholm, Sweden

More random gig photos, taken today here in Stockholm. Our show is at the Olympic Stadium, which was built for the 1912 Olympics.

My favorite shot is this one, which I took from up on top of the stadium, opposite end from the stage. If you look at the photo above, I was standing up above the welcome slogan you see there.












CM's guitars:
CM's tech Hoppy, working:
JB's two racks o' geetars:

Set Carpenter Minh Nguyen, who (like me) lives in Raleigh, NC:
Rigger Chuck Anderson:
(As always, click on any photo to enlarge it.)

Just Another Day At Work

In Stockholm. We might as well be Little Rock, Arkansas for what little I'm seeing of the place at this point.

Got done about 8pm and headed back to the hotel. Emailed my friend Tatiana, who came out and met me and some other crew folks at the pub down the street for drinks, turning an otherwise boring day into quite a bit more fun…

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I'm getting a bit behind on posting photos, so I'm gonna try to just dump a few in here and there. These below are just a few random shots from our gig in Bergen, Norway on the 19th:




Jens, our barricade guy:


Delay tower:

Travel Day to Stockholm

Another crazy, all-day drive to the next city. Today's a 16-plus hour drive to Stockholm. This one's worth it though, because when you're done, you're in…Stockholm!

I had my own personal movie festival on the bus today, courtesy of my 17" MacBookPro and some killer Etymotic Research earphones. I watched:

Terminator Salvation
Because I Said So (with Mandy Moore)
License To Wed (yep, more Mandy Moore)
Across The Universe

Watching all those made the day just fly by. And yes, I'm obsessed with Mandy Moore. Have been, ever since I met her back in 2000. She was only 15 at the time, and she was totally cool and nice and dorky (in a good way). Got to hang out with her for a while at a show where she was on the bill along with the band I was tour managing that year. She was so sweet and I became a fan for life.

A couple of shots from one of the stops we made...

A shop/restaurant with a natural roof.

The lake it was located next to.

At one point we drove through a tiny little town that had this river running through it.

View out the bus window late afternoon.

This building was on the fringe of Stockholm (if my memory serves me well...).

Made it to our hotel in central Stockholm around 8:30. Checked email, had a shower, and then hit the Skybar on the 9th floor – ever so conveniently, I was in room 934, three doors away.

Had a few beers and called it a night…

Show Day in Bergen, Norway

My buddy Eugene took that "floating head" shot I posted the other day and did this with it.

And then my Facebook friend Allison took it and turned me into this:

Thanks, y'all…

We've got fireworks at the end of the show every night, but today at noon, we had a different kind of fireworks. There was a dignitary in town today who was worthy of a 21-gun salute and the cannons were atop the hill at our show site. And you better believe those bad boys were LOUD!

Our fireworks guy, setting our stuff off at the end of the night.

Production Day in Bergen, Norway

Today started slow because most of our office cases were still on the trucks, to I snapped a couple of photos and messed around on the computer while waiting for them.

Tomorrow show is being held in downtown Bergen (on museum grounds), about two blocks from our hotel. Our stage, under construction.

I even got time to go through some more of the photos from yesterday's long drive to get here…

Quick, follow that bus.

Traveling through the mountains, there was actually some snow up on the hills.


Seems that the mountain folks here in Norway have some sort of fascination with trolls. One of the places we stopped had quite a collection of them, both on display and for sale.








Had to sit at a road repair/construction spot for a few minutes, so the smokers piled out of the bus for a ciggie and a couple of us got off to shoot photos. The stream by the road.

One of our carpenters, Minh, with the flagperson.

Travel Day to Bergen, Norway

Got in my bunk around 4am last night. Up at 9 sharp, not that I wanted to be. Went up front to see the sights and was told by the driver that we were travelling through Sweden at the moment.

Then came the rain.

Hit a service stop a few hours later. That's Jim Ude, one of our riggers, contemplating the nuggets, hotdogs, hamburgers and other assorted goodies.

Meanwhile, inside the store the burger stand was attached to, you have a wide variety of European chocolates and other goodies.


Cool bridge along the way, somewhere in Sweden.



Later, as we made it to the Norweigian border.


Finally pulled up to the hotel at 1:30am. Freakin' TWENTY-ONE-AND-A-HALF hours trapped on the submarine.

Oh, yeah, this is livin' the dream…

Jim Dickinson, R.I.P.

The bad news that started my day was finding out that Jim Dickinson died yesterday. You may or may not have heard OF the man, but you have certainly heard the man. That was Jim playing piano on the Rolling Stones' song "Wild Horses." Also played on the Flamin' Groovies classic "Teenage Head." And he produced the best record The Replacements ever did, called "Pleased To Meet Me." If you don't own that record, you should. Jim was a Memphis legend his whole life alright.

You can read a little more about him HERE.

Finally checked out of the non air-conditioned Scandic this morning. I got off fairly light on my incidentals, too. Freakin' draft beers were over 12 bucks a pop in the bar, but I got out for only $203 USD. Not much considering a bought rounds a couple of times. I limited myself to only 2 beers a night because they're so expensive. And I'm so cheap…sometimes.

Walked around the venue before doors, taking a few photos of this and that…

Beer vendors prepping for the crowd:
The crowd will buy them there, and return them here:


I love these European 4-man urinals. Sometimes, in certain cities, you'll see them sitting in a town square. Just walk right up, hang a turkey neck, and go...

Our GINORMOUS 140-foot wide stage:



Black-lit confetti storm during the first encore:

First show went well tonight. It felt strange not doing my own show settlement for the first time in oh, twenty years. Uwe handled all of that, while I was quite content to carry on with lots of other bits of the tour accounting kingdom.

Hung out in the office, goofing off online while waiting for the stagehands to come get my case. I don't like to leave my office until I know my stuff is safely on it's way – in most venues, I'd just wheel it to the loading dock myself, but we're in a trailer in a field for a lot of the current shows. Hands, it is.

Finally headed out to the bus around 3am. Gonna be a tough drive to Norway. We've got so many trucks that there isn't any ferry space for the buses, so we're having to drive around the long way. Long, as in 20 hours long. That's a Hell Ride trapped on the 45-foot submarine. We likely won't get to the hotel until well after midnight tonight. And to top it off, those last 5-6 hours of roads getting into Bergen are mounainous enough to make for a shitty ride. Off we go…

Almost To The First Show Day

Not much to report. Been going to the gig every day and getting stuff done. Still working on US tour paperwork, whch I'd like to get wrapped up by tomorrow, our first gig day.

Back to the hotel by 9:30 tonight, where I took this floating head photo while websurfing in my room...

More Mott The Hoople Excitement...

Scored more Mott The Hoople tickets today. My buddy Dave Clayton, whose house I'm staying at during my vacation time in the UK, got online this morning and got us a pair of tickets to the Mott warmup show, being held September 26th at the Blake Theatre in Monmouth, Wales. The Blake is a 434-seat theatre. I'm totally jazzed.

After the warmup show, I'll be attending all 5 of the London shows, being held at the Hammersmith Apollo. That's how I'm spending MY vacation…

Les Paul, R.I.P.

Les Paul, of the namesake Gibson guitar model, died today at the age of 94. If you don't know the name, do yourself a favor and check out THIS and THIS and THIS.

I had the pleasure of meeting him in 1976 and again in 1998. A fine fellow indeed, and he had a great sense of humor, too.

Walmart Bingo!

I freakin' hate Walmart. I mean everything about them. But I like this…You'll need to click on the photo and enlarge it in order to read all the goodness...

Oh, by the way, you've seen this photo, right? I mean, it was all over the internet and the joke emails a couple of years ago:

Well, who'da thunk it, but there's finally a follow-up shot of that lovely family. And here ya go:

Production Day in Herning, Denmark

The gig is about 30 minutes away from the hotel. I was gonna jump in one of the two 10am shuttles, per instructions from our production assistant, but there wasn't enough room for the number of people who had to go over. All the other guys were essential to the work being done today, whereas I wasn't, so I bailed out and had to wait for a later vehicle.

While I was waiting, I took a 45-minute walk around the neighborhood. Not much here, but the houses were pretty cool.

Once I got to the gig (around noon), I walked out front and took a photo of our massive stage, still under construction:

It's massive. 140-feet wide, and I don't know how tall. On the way back to my office, I came across this truck, one of 37 that we have on the tour:


Spent the rest of the day and evening setting up my office and getting some work done. Back to the hotel by about 11pm…

Still Traveling...

Made it to Heathrow in one piece. Me and Julie hit the Starbucks for drinks and sammiches. Next flight was to Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Airport terminal:

Once there, we were off again on a flight to Billund, Denmark. And we made it there, in about 35 minutes of flying time. Problem was, our luggage didn’t. Don't know what it is about Copenhagen, but it's always the black hole of luggage.

I flew there in 2004 to start a European tour with Metallica and it took 3 freakin' days for me to get my luggage. Ever since that flight, I've always flown with a backpack to make sure I have a few days worth of clothing and toiletries with me, no matter what. Which came in very handy today.

Took almost an hour to get to our hotel in Silkeborg by way of the show runner who picked us up in a van. All in all, 19 hours door-to-door, Miami hotel to Silkeborg hotel.

Bad news for me – this hotel has NO air-conditioning. None, nada, zilch. Gonna be a long week, laying in a pool of sweat every night. Nothing I can do is gonna change it.

So I threw the window wide open and went to the bar, because...

Travel Day to Denmark

Long, long day. Never left the room until 6:30pm, when we headed to the airport. "We" being me and Julie. Fin had gone over to the airport earlier – he was also on our 8:45pm flight. Everyone else who travelled to Miami with us was on the 5:20 flight.

When we got to the terminal, we saw that their flight was delayed until about the same time as ours. They had to sit around the terminal an extra 3 hours. Not fun for them.

My flight was on British Airways. I was in Business Class. On the first row up in the dome of the 747, just outside the cockpit. My seat:

Watched a movie called "Duplicity" (Julia Roberts & Clive Owen), and had dinner before trying to fall asleep. Yeah, right, like that's gonna happen.

As always, I more or less tossed and turned for a couple of hours, dozing off for a few minutes here and there.

I can't sleep on planes for shit…

Day Off in Miami

Made it to Miami early afternoon. Only my bus came down here. The production manager, riggers, carpenters and stage manager are doing the cross-load of all the Europe-bound gear here. The other three buses went to Washington DC so the rest could fly over today (we'll fly tomorrow).

I went out to walk around the neighborhood and 'bout died. It musta been 100 freakin' degrees and the humidity was waaay up there. Gladly went back to my room and would have spent the rest of the night there, except Julie and Tiffany called and asked if I wanted to go to dinner with them.

Off to the mall we went. It was about 10 minutes away by cab, and the place was absolutely packed! Nutso! Realizing full well that I probably haven't been in any mall on a Saturday night in a bazillion years, I was still stunned at how many people were there.

We ate at a Sushi restaurant that was really good, and then the girls spent some time shopping while I lolligagged around, just people-watching.

Grabbed a cab back to the hotel, where I retired to my room and finished off the bottle of wine I'd been given by the hotel manager upon arrival. I'd started it this afternoon, and now I was on a mission…

Show Day in Charlotte

My sister Donna and her gang came out tonight. Also, my old buddy from my record store days in the 70's, Chris Pittman with his lovely wife, who is also named Donna.

Another friend from way back, Pete Davis (no relation) couldn't make it, but his girlfriend and 3 of her friends came out. On top of that, I got a mid-afternoon phone call from a girl I dated in the 70's, who said she was coming to the show with her 16 year-old son.

But wait, there's more…

Kim Whitford, wife of Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford, came out with two of her friends.

So once again, I spent time running around, making sure everyone got passes and good seats and knew where the Friends & Family room was located.

Crazy night, and when it was over and all my peeps had split, we found out that our show in Tampa on Sunday was being cancelled. That meant that tonight was our last show before heading to Europe. Bummer, I really needed that workday in Tampa to finish off some work.

Oh, well, we roll with it…

Show Day in Raleigh

Hometown show for me tonight. Spent a whole lot of time taking care of friends and making sure they got to the Friends & Family room for drinks and snacks. Pretty sure most of my friends enjoyed the show, seeing the band for their first time. I even got a little hang time after the show, which was nice.

Off to bunky world about 2:30, heading to Charlotte. Another night of friends to look forward to at the show there tomorrow night…

Another Day Off at Home

Woke up around 6am, lots to do. Shopping, laundry, banking, stack o' mail, more laundry, repacking for Europe, etc. Lots…

Managed to accomplish about a million tasks today, which was good cuz I won't be home again until after October 10th.

Closed up the house again, and Foy picked me up to go down the hill and meet the gang for dinner on the Ale House deck. We were there for nearly three hours, then I got driven downtown to the Sheraton (the crew hotel), where I opted to stay tonight in order to make bus call on time tomorrow. Staying at home would have been a distraction and it would have been harder to get a ride tomorrow than tonight.

Won't see my friends for the next two months, bummer…

Day Off at Home

Long bus ride overnight from Mansfield, Massachusetts to Raleigh, but I'm home for a day and a half. Yippee!

The bus dropped everyone at the Sheraton Hotel downtown, and I was gonna jump in a cab to get home (5 minutes away), but my awesome driver Charlie insisted (repeatedly) that he was gonna drive me to my house on the bus. I finally gave up arguing with him, so off we went.

Charlie, evil funny man that he is, as soon as he turned the corner, he started in on the airhorn and continued to blast it all the way down my street. I live on a 900-foot long street and he was taking his sweet time, too. Good thing it was 3:30 in the afternoon, so few people were home to gawk out their windows at the big ol' tour bus rumbling down the road, haha.

Charlie and my bus, pulling away from the house:

After he dropped me, I went into a frenzy. I have so many things to get done today and tomorrow, and not nearly enough time to do them all. I'll do what I do and to heck with the rest of it.

Tonight was our end-of-tour-leg crew dinner, held at Fins, an awesome downtown restaurant. We had the entire place to ourselves, which was cool. I wasn't planning on attending, but around 6, I changed my mind and called Paige to drag her out for it.

Spending the night in my own bed tonight, which will be nice…

Show Day in Jersey City

Today's show was at the All Points West Festival in Jersey City, NJ. They should have called it the All Mud Festival. Today was the eighth straight day of rain here, and the place was a royal mess. A lot of crew people threw away their shoes after the show, because they were completely ruined. Me, I'm a cheap bastard – I'll at least try to wash my Merrills. Not expecting great results, but they're new, so I gotta give it a shot.

Something strange about today's show – there were NO showers on the site, anywhere! Even the very worst, filthiest, nastiest festival site I've ever been to had showers for the crew. At most of the European festivals, there's usually a trailer with showers. You might come out dirtier than you went in, but at least you had running water to get under.

I made the promoter buy six rooms at the nearby Westin for the crew to shower at once the load-out was completed.

Had some killer views from the festival site. Here's what the bands saw when they were onstage:

View of NYC from the northern tip of the site:

View of Lady Liberty's backside:

Show Day in Montreal

Some shots I took from the side of the stage tonight: