I'm Your Biggest Fan

I am always amazed at the behavior of fans. They think they know performers because they have heard performers “over-sharing” on media from the Weather Channel to Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab. Throw in the kind of access on Facebook, Twitter and performer websites, and “celebrities” shouldn’t be surprised when fans know the names of kids, birthdays and the preferred brand of dryer sheets.

Certainly celebrities did not pursue the spotlight to be ignored later. Few imagined they traded away every bit of privacy for the pedestal. There is a tiny range of acceptable fan behavior before it turns border-line creepy. To tell someone you enjoy their work is fine. To tell someone you have all their CDs and listening to their music cured you in some way will get you on a list of people security will know.

To think a performer is singing to you specifically at a concert is the equivalent of hearing voices.

I have seen it all. Patrons want public performances dedicated to them because it is their birthday, anniversary or tonight is the night that they are celebrating a similar event.

Let’s do that math. If there are 2000 people at a show, and 365 days a year, then there will likely be 5.5 people in the house with a birthday at that show. Still the requests come “if you could just announce Happy Birthday to… before the show” as though we are all at a “low rent” wedding reception or Bingo Night at the Lion’s Club.

Performers do not want your gifts, cards, flowers or food. They prefer cash.

Gifts: If you are seeing someone in your town, chances are it is because they are on tour. What are they going to do with a ceramic pelican or 12 pounds of hardcover books about your hometown?

Cards: They don’t know you. They know you like them by the fact that you are in the audience. Don’t send a card back.

Flowers: Flowers begin dying the moment they are cut. By the time your flowers are given to celebrity (if they ever are), they are half dead. Even if they make it fully fresh, they are seen for a moment and then left behind. Don’t blame the celebrity. Touring life is harder dragging two suitcases, a computer and a vase with tulips.

Food: Would you eat food given to you by someone you don’t know? (Not if you ever listened to your mother.) Add to this that most performers are watching their weight very carefully. Looking good (aka skinny) is a full time job. Your chocolate covered cherries will be left behind.

Cash: This universal gift excites everyone. But you’ve already bought a ticket. So keep yours.

My Bad!

After the show in Tupelo, MS, we boarded our buses for the journey to New Orleans. I was nervous about this check in because I have never had good luck at New Orleans hotels. It seemed my worry was for nothing as Brooke, the front desk agent, even met the buses outside with the key packets at 4:30am.

I staggered to my bed and was asleep by 5:30am. My cell phone rang at 9am with my contact in Biloxi asking why the group had not checked in last night. I explained we were checking in there tonight. “Oh, my bad.” She said and hung up. This had me spooked. I got up from bed and checked my hotel contract and rooming list. It was correct. It was her “bad.” I lay back in bed when the phone rang 30 minutes later. “The hotel is saying I have no room.” The bus driver said exasperatedly. I explained he was already checked in and pre-keyed. He should not tell the front desk he was there to check in, just that a key was waiting there for him. Situation resolved. The phone rang again. The hairdresser called to say the hotel had called her in her room to say she needed to come down and pay for her room immediately.

All room and tax charges are routed to the master folio and none of the touring personnel pays for their rooms. I called and spoke to two more front desk people.

Freshly showered and dressed, I walked towards the French Quarter. Bourbon Street was a mistake. There is nothing there except tee shirt shops, strip clubs and tourist restaurants. When I wasn’t dodging urine and stale beer, I was trying to get past tourists walking slow enough as though not to be noticed by an imagined motion detector.

I found a place for an early lunch and an oyster po’ boy sandwich. It was beyond perfection. I walked back to the hotel, packed up and headed down to the buses. Today is Valentine’s Day and like New Year’s Eve, it is a time when being single stings. The swirl of flowers, cards and chocolate-covered strawberries remind you that you have not found someone to share romantic silliness. Being away from home and the boss on tour means you are not going to anytime soon.

Macon Memories

Melbourne seemed promising. The hotel was fine, the venue average. Somewhere between the hotel and the theatre is where it went wrong.

The star bus would not start after everyone was loaded on and we were ready to depart at 10:45pm. After 2 hours of head scratching and hopeful tinkering by 4 bus drivers, I decided to ask people if some would give up their bunks (as I did) to make room for the 8 stranded souls. Bunks secured and blankets and pillows moved, we left our lead bus driver behind with the dead bus.

Later, we heard he got the bus jumped and heard a rattle as he drove. He pulled over and noticed an open window.

Someone on the star bus had opened a window marked “emergency exit only.” These windows have sensors on the latches that kill the bus engine relays but will not indicate the window is ajar. The driver closed the latch and drove the empty star bus without incident. A 500-mile journey was never going to be fun, but the misery would have been shorter. We arrived in Atlanta, GA at about 9:15am and staggered to our rooms. I slept most of my “day off.”

We left Atlanta today for Macon, GA and our 8pm show here. The decision was made to stay in Atlanta on the day off because the hotels in Macon were scary. The mention of bed bugs on hotel review sites, were the deciding factor.

Before our arrival here today, I got an email asking me to warn the cast not to bring any valuables into the building upon arrival. The building did not seem secure. This could be because the “stagehands” doing the load in were all “trustees” from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. Each wore a white tracksuit with the sheriff’s logo on it. I felt bad for them. Some of our crew made “Don’t drop the soap jokes.” And one even played “Dueling Banjos” from DELIVERANCE on the radio shortly before the show.

There was no room for a production office of any kind in the building, so I worked from the bus today. It was very annoying. If you wanted a piece of tape, it was a 5 minute walk into the building where the road cases were. That was pretty much how the entire miserable day went.

I am warned by my superiors about how there are many fans of the show who sometimes send letters / cards/ gifts along with strange notes. Today I opened a nicely wrapped box containing some wooden roses from a former combat solider whom had come home from the front depressed by the “visions of death” until he saw one of our performers on PBS. In his two page, hand-written letter, he quotes the Bible. He also assigns a personality to this performer based on what I imagine is his fantasy of what he would like in a woman. He included a cute picture of himself and his equally cute dog. I felt sad for both of them.

I may be in Macon, GA very far from all that matters to me, but I’m not writing to Dolph Lungren certain he must be a good bit of fun because of how hot his pecs were in Rocky IV.

Ready, Set, Go!

We opened in Lakeland spent the night there. In the morning, we traveled via bus to Orlando for a matinee which now seems a blur. After the matinee, we were off on sleeper bus to Ft. Lauderdale where we did a pre-Superbowl matinee. After that, we were on the sleeper bus for 465 miles or so to Tallahassee, FL and a day off.

I have never done this type of touring where I travel at night on a sleeper bus. Pamphlet B of the musician’s union prohibits night travel. Remind me to thank a musician sometime. If I were a cast member, I would remain sleeping on the bus once we arrived and then check in after that. But as Tour Manager, one of the duties is to get the stars escorted out of their bus and onto the elevator if they choose to get up. If they don’t choose to get up, I leave their room keys in the bus and their luggage in the bellmen’s closet.

I find it impossible to sleep very much on the bus. It is not because I can’t sleep on a bus. I can sleep standing up in a stream. But I do not wake up very easily unless there is light spilling in my sleeping chamber. The sleeping chamber on the bus is the closest thing to a coffin I have ever been in. It is not uncomfortable as coffins go, complete with air conditioning and DVD players. But if my job description says I have to be ready to jump out of the bus and be “on” for the stars, it does not lend itself to an easy sleep.

Tallahassee is the capitol of Florida and like the capitol of New York (Albany), it is overshadowed by many other Florida cities. I walked around today and enjoyed the hanging moss and balmy temperatures, even in the rain. I saw not one other company member and it was fun to pretend I was someone else doing something else.

The gym at the hotel is beyond anything I have ever seen at a hotel. I will get in a workout tomorrow before we check out at 3pm and head in for the sound check and another evening trip 133 miles to Jacksonville, FL. I don’t imagine anyone will sleep on such a short journey, so there will be lots of drinking and “fun” for all but one.

The person who had this job previously is now back in NYC and trying her best to do the job remotely with well meaning emails like: “What has happened so far today?” and “I would….” I realize this is her baby and she is just trying to show me what the group is used to from the Tour Manager. Still, I am glad I am not her child, even she is treating me as such. I once had a woman I was replacing on a tour tell me: “One of the things you are gonna want to do is make sure that all the soda machines on each floor are full. Because people really like soda.” In that instant, I knew why she was being replaced.

Tech Rehearsals continue

Today I start the fourth day at the theatre. It is a large arena with a stage in the center and black drapes hanging down to close off the unused ½ of the arena from view. Unlike most arenas where I’ve been, this one is immaculately clean. On Riverdance, I recall walking into the arena in Amarillo, Texas where the PSM greeted me with a series of sneezes: “ I guess I’m allergic to camel dung.” She sniffed. How do you know? I asked. “The circus was here last night and there were still camel droppings all over when I got here.” I didn’t ask how she knew they was camel droppings.

The Lakeland Center is 180 degrees from there. You could eat off the floor here.

The only weak link seems to be the catering on site. My gay hillbilly friend had warned me that the show had opted not to use the in house caterer and were using someone he said was “horrible. “ The Untouchables is the aptly named catering firm. A tractor-trailer sits in the parking lot with a kitchen of sorts. I do not see a water or electricity hook up. So they are either Amish or creative. Guessing from the food so far, I would not pick either.

A VIP with the show proudly announced the other day in the office that he had never seen a Broadway show. I am very curious to see this show.