woo tour again

i really am anxious about the upcoming tour w/ bk. i need to finish all my classes. i feel like i'm getting an ulcer!

i haven't finished my australian tour blog yet..haha. oh well, maybe a year later..i'll sum it up now:

dan the bassist was my adventure buddy on this trip. we had the same goals. don't spend money but have an adventure! his grandmother lived in australia so he's been here before. he let me experience my first meat pie! things are really expensive in australia but one time, we got a suite so our room (my roommate was gremlin) came with a kitchen. dan and i bought two days worth of breakfast and made some good old fashioned Oz breaky. Canadian bacon, eggs, a tomato and we subsituted the toast for english muffins because we couldn't eat a whole loaf of bread in two days. we shared our breaky of course w/ our australian tour manager and gremly.

dan made australia fun. i had some alone time and it was great. i loved exploring the cities by myself too. i looked up places online before i left so i had maps with me and special places i wanted to visit..I FORGOT TO SEE THE OPERA HOUSE THOUGH! it was a sad time, dan wasn't with me and i didn't know where he was so i went shopping. turns out he was looking for me too and he went to the opera house alone! booo. bondi beach was fun. dan and i climbed a really big mountainous hill that overlooked the beach and it was beautiful. i can't keep up w/ dan's legs though. his legs are the length of my entire body.

the headlining gigs in sydney and melbourne blew my mind. fans are crazy in aus. they spend a lot of money! we had to jack up the prices for conversion purposes and people bought them still! we sold out of everything we had except for 8s and smalls so that was for the tiny japanese girls.
the festivals were a great experience for me. i don't know if it is something i'd like to go into but it sure was fun. i learned the most from our oz tour manager. first, shes a she. she runs her own visa business, the only one in Oz for bands, etc and she is also a TM and a Promoter in one of Australia's biggest Talent buying/Promoter companies. Pretty neat. She gave me a lot of great advice and really boosted my confidence.

anyways, that's all

my next bk tour is going to be a complete 360. we're touring half of the tour in a van. i'm excited, i really want to see the country. i bought a new lens and camera just for this moment.

a walkabout

In Australian aboriginal cultures, a "walkabout" is a ritual in which a young man goes on a solitary journey through the wilderness in an attempt to learn more about his own character and strength.

My first walkabout experience occurred when I was 18 years old. I was in Europe and it was when I followed Ben Kweller and band around for the first time. I left a few days after I turned 18 and I left after he invited me to his England tour. I went by myself and explore England by myself. I stayed at hostels by myself and traveled on trains by myself. I left with 300 US dollars which had to last me a week and a half and paid for my hotel stays, my transportation, and my meals. It was tough but it was the best experience of my life. I remember the moment when I was sitting on a train and I just looked around and I was surrounded by business people in suits, asleep in their seats as they were waiting to get to a board meeting or to get home and I was writing in my journal, looking outside the window as the landscape passed me by. It was in that moment that I realized I never wanted to wear a suit, I never wanted to be bored with my life and I always wanted to travel. It was in that moment that I knew I wanted to be in the music business and there was a surge of joy that just went through me. It was a point in my life that I thought I would never reach. I was really depressed for most of my young life and luckily that string of depression broke before I entered HS because I don't know how I could have survived high school. But that realization on that train made me realize that I will never want to die again and that there is something to live for that will make my life meaningful. Ok that was corny..but whatever. I learned so much about myself on that trip. So much. I made friendships I STILL have. I got a job out of it 3 years later. It is hard to describe. I ate one meal a day to save money so I could have a roof over my head. That was the extent of the "wilderness" in my story but I was in awe, I was amazed, I was surrounded by the greatest musicians and I'm still amazed looking at the tour ahead of me.

Wow. Sometimes when you think of all the stress in your life and it just doesnt compare when you realize what your life is and how you can make the best out of it. Of course I know some of my friends LIVE to be in suits and live for crunching numbers and balancing books and everything and I am in no way saying that's bad because that's their passion and they have as much joy doing it as I do doing what I do. I respect them so much for doing something I can't do. In fact, I hope they'll loan me 12 dollars for dinner when I can't afford it. ha