Heatwave

It’s great, the number of e mails I get congratulating us all on the hard work we’ve completed as these regular tours come to an end. We’re truly appreciative of your appreciation of it all. I get e mails saying ‘…now you can put your feet up and relax between tours’ and so on. It’s kinda like that but not really. Actually the most work on behalf of the band is done during these ‘down times’. I love it all, of course, but just logging the amount of e mails, planning sessions, accounting tax work and so on that I completed today, it makes me smile a little.

Wishbone Ash these days is like any other small, home-run business. I manage it, with great help from our team – Guy, Leon, Joe, Muddy, Bob, our publicists, Kate and Billy and countless other unsung heroes. The tours are possible precisely due to this forward thinking and planning. Nothing happens by accident. I know it looks like we just roll up and have fun and then move on to the next town but each and every journey is planned out, hotels are booked, sound checks are prepped with tech guys before the actual arrival of the band. Merchandise has to be ordered. CD releases planned to co-ordinate with the touring and so on. This is why it all seems to run so smoothly. The budgeting for the tours has to be even more precise these days, due to escalating fuel costs. Hotel accommodation costs have doubled in recent years. Everyone is on the move, as well as us.

So, at this moment, while I must confess to sitting by the pool with my laptop on my knees, I am actually working right now. Currently, we are going through a heat wave in the North East. August has come in June and it’s 100 deg. Fahrenheit today. School children are being sent home for fear of heatstroke and no one is moving very fast. I tried tinkering with my Jeep to replace the dead battery but gave up. I’m going nowhere today.

The lawn is badly in need of mowing, with the grass waving in the breeze at a height 2 feet. Hedges need cutting since you can’t get into the driveway due to the vines and undergrowth and there’s a foul smell in the yard where a dead raccoon is attracting the flies and buzzards. This will definitely have to be moved. Oh well, give it another day and this heat has to break. We’ve had a few power failures and the AC units are blowing fuses in the breaker box.

It’s been about a two month sojourn away from home, on these last two tours. Everything needs fixing and there is a pile of mail and bills a mile high. I know of more than a few rock and rollers who make their homes in hotels these days. Kind of a long–stay arrangement. You have maid service, email, fax and phone, concierge, laundry, taxis all on call, a restaurant downstairs, fitness, sauna. Mmmm it’s sounding mighty tempting but no, I’ll join the rest of you and derive great pleasure from the trials and tribulations of domestic life until such time as the great wide open beckons – how’s it go? A rebel without a clue….

Take it easy and have a great summer ~ A.P.