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London, England The European leg of the Private Radio Tour started with two weeks of rehearsals in London. It was my first trip to Europe. The sights were great and we had a blast. The full crew, equipment and stage was set up for us in a large studio. We would rehearse from around 4pm until late. My lovely wife Kim (LWK) was with me during this time, so we had a full agenda when not rehearsing. The music really began taking form as the band started to gel during this time. Billy was busy during the day doing lots of press and promotions, sometimes traveling to other countries like Ireland or Germany pumping our shows there yet to come. As the rehearsal period wound down, everyone was excited about heading to Ireland to kick off the tour. Dublin, Ireland
Monday night in Dublin, April 1, 2002 at the Vicor. Our first show of the tour. The show was sold out, and had already been moved to a larger venue. We hit the stage running. We performed well and the Dublin audience was to be some of the coolest on the tour. After we left the stage, everyone kept yelling for more. It was a super cool event when Elvis Costello joined us onstage to sing an old Hank tune called Lost Highway. Elvis and I both played acoustic guitars on the tune and created quite a hillbilly groove. Dublin was a great show, and we left really happy. Liverpool, England Next show was in Liverpool, England. After a ferry ride from Ireland, we bused on into Liverpool. The Cavern Club there was a huge Cool Factor venue for us. The Beatles played there more times than can be counted and their fingerprints are everywhere in the city. They gave us a very special Magical Mystery tour of the city on the very cool Magical Mystery Bus, not unlike the images of the Yellow Submarine. The special tour given us by the Cavern Club's own manager, Alex, took us to places such as Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, and the tomb of Eleanor Rigby.
The crowd at the Cavern was quite rowdy, and we had been clued in on this earlier by Alex and other locals. Of course, a hot, steamy, packed place where the band sweats is right up this Big Dizzy Daddy's alley. Naturally, we rocked this place. After the show, Gerry hung with us back stage. Kim and I got to discuss some of his history in Liverpool and his song about that ferry ride across the Mersey. Gerry and his family were mighty hospitable to us and it was a huge honor to meet him. Manchester, England We took the bus ride to Manchester, England for a performance at the university. This was a large venue that reminded us of playing in Arkansas at high school auditoriums when we were still in high school bands. We didn't have much time to hang out there in Manchester. We had a great show, and it was a much different crowd than the Liverpool rowdiness from the night before. For Manchester, we opened the show with another hit by a local resident from the British Invasion years. We cranked off with Game of Love in our heavy little way. I managed to hit some obscene guitar licks and Billy pumped some mean vocals into an old standard. After the show, we got to meet the Game of Love man himself. Wayne Fontana, (no the Mindbenders were not with him); what a huge honor for us to hang with him. He looked super great, maybe not exactly like I remembered seeing him when I was a kid watching Shindig or Hullabaloo growing up in Blytheville, Arkansas, but he still looked great. It made me happy to see him being so nice, especially to Kim as we chatted with Wayne while Billy was finishing with the press after our show. London, England Finally, we were headed back to London, ready to do our 4th show in 4 days. The Union Chapel in London, referred to by locals as "the Church" was an awesome venue. It had been a church for centuries I suppose. It still had the carved scriptures, the massive podium in the middle of the stage. It would have been an excellent opportunity for some prima donna rocker to be obnoxiously sacrilegious, but what with our superstitions, we simply wanted to rock the large audience that had gathered. Billy had a great time at this show. He invited a group of girls and a few guys up to sing Angelina with us. Judging by the number of people in the audience that knew the words to the songs, this was probably a great sales area for Private Radio. One of our guest on stage seemed to have had a few too many suds, as she fell on stage, uninjured except for some pride and a busted ass. We rocked on. Next Stop: Stockholm, Sweden |
We landed in Dublin, Ireland on March 30. Because it was my birthday, we were looking forward to the night off in Ireland. Our venue for our show was called the Vicor, a popular place in Dublin. For my birthday, Billy was taking us to the Vicor to see some heroes of ours who happened to be in town. The Monkees, featuring originals Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz were quite awesome, and had a long list of hits to go through. Also joining us this evening was the great Elvis Costello who hung out with us in our choice seats for the full show. Elvis is a resident of Dublin and had been a fan of Billy's for some time. He was extremely nice and made us feel welcome. After the show, we chatted for a long time with Mickey and Davy and the rest of their band.
Showtime at the Cavern found the house packed. The Cavern Club was probably the smallest venue on the tour, but we had to do it. The vibe in this place, knowing it is where the British invasion started, was a lot like the vibe Billy and I felt when we recorded in Sun Studios in Memphis. For this show, we opened with Its Gonna Be Allright. This was an old hit by Gerry and the Pacemakers around 1964. Gerry Maersden was a favorite of ours when we were mere babes.