CMT Blog: Archive

It's 10 a.m. in Nashville, it's 5 p.m. in Stuttgart. I keep telling myself that it's evening, but it feels like I've been up since 6 a.m. yesterday. Maybe it's because I have. You try to sleep on the plane. You think that if you just sleep on the overnight flight, when the sun rises at 1 a.m. your time, you can pretend that it's 8 a.m. It doesn't work. I got on a plane at 11 this morning (yesterday morning, I can't tell the difference) and I finally crawled out of the van at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Subtract the 6 hours I lost in the air and I'm still traveling 21 hours straight. They say the jetlag is easier heading west to east. I haven't experienced heading east to west, but if it's worse than this, I'm not interested. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I don't have to worry about that for another 34 days when the Infamous Stringdusters take our trip back across the pond.

People you never expect pop up in the most unexpected places, and such was the case with the shuttle bus from the plane. We crammed into the bus and this tall guy next to Pandolfi saw his shirt from Iowa. "My daughter goes to school there. Have you played there?" Panda said that he had and told him about the Stringdusters. The guy looks at his banjo case and says, "I know a couple of good banjo players." Panda replies with an "oh really?" He looks around a little and says he's trying to keep his voice down, "I'm Howard Levy," he says. For those of you who don't know, Howard Levy was the harmonica/keyboard player in the original incarnation of Bela Fleck & the Flecktones. He is also one of the most genius musicians on the planet. Pandolfi started playing banjo after seeing about 35 Flecktones' shows. He's changed his look since his Flecktones days and we didn't recognize him. Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about while we waited for our bags.

We finally reunited with our road weary baggage. (I don't know what they do with my flight case once it goes out of sight, but I doubt that I want to know. The folks at David Gage Cases and the craftsmen at Upton Bass must know what they're doing. No matter what they do, the bass comes out of the case the same way it went in every time.) Heading to the curb to meet our driver, we opted for the driver/soundman option for our European tour instead of attempting to navigate on our own. This wisdom of our choice was made evident when our driver, Herbert, opened the trailer and there sat two cases of Schwechater beer (affectionately refered to as Schwechwater). It was even more clear when he passed a tallboy to each member and cracked one himself before heading out on the Autobahn.