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October 3rd-I woke up early…I know, almost every day starts like that…but lets pretend like it’s still interesting;) So, I woke up early at 4AM and headed to the Los Angeles international airport…with all my hundreds of fancy pieces of luggage packed to the max with snacks…uh, and hair wax, and…uh, ex-lax? I don’t know…a whole bunch of clothes mostly! Our flight to Brazil, via Miami, was scheduled to leave at 9:15AM. Sacha made it very clear and important that Chops and I were to be at the airport no later than 7AM sharp! The rest of the guys were leaving tomorrow. So, I get dropped off at the airport at 7AM and found Chops already there waiting for me. I asked him where Sacha was…he didn’t know…hadn’t heard from him since yesterday…strange. I called Sacha on his cell and at home, no answer either places. By now it was 7:30AM and no word from Sacha. I was starting to get a little worried, he had our tickets and our passports, so it wasn’t like we could have checked in or anything, and you need to be checked in no later than an hour before take off for an international flight. So now it was 8AM, still no word from Sacha. I had called at least 20 times by now and we had only 15 minutes to check in or we weren’t making this flight! Finally, Sacha calls in a panic, “I slept in! My alarm didn’t go off! I’m the worst tour manager in the world! I’m sorry! I’ll be there in 5 minutes!” I was like, “No Sacha, you’re not the worst tour manager in the world, I still love you, but hurry the f*ck up!” Luckily, once he arrived, a personal escort showed up that worked at the airline we were flying to help us out. So she walked us through to the front of all the lines and we made our flight just in time. We arrived in Miami after a 5 hour flight and had some time to chill and eat some crap airport food. Then it was on to the next flight to Sao Paulo…this one was a long one, 8 hours…fun fun. Why do I like to use “…” all the time instead of periods or comas? I don’t know… Oh, just did it again. OK, but see, that was just a period..…sh*t…wait watch this… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …wow. God I’m dumb…and obviously bored…Now, on with the tour diary! …
October 4th-We arrived in Sao Paulo at 5:15AM. I wasn’t expecting a mass of hysterical fans to be waiting for us this early, and there weren’t…See, for this trip to Brazil, we kept all of our flight info and hotel names super secret, so all the fans were unaware. Still, our super devoted Brazilian Street Team members, led by Priscilla, were there to greet us nice and early…actually, they were there for just about every moment of this tour! Thanks for the support guys! Anyway, by this point I was beyond tired from all the flying, so once we got to our hotel I slept until like 2 in the afternoon. The rest of this day isn’t very interesting…we ate, we shopped, and we did some phone interviews and…then we slept again.
October 5th-Today Chops and I visited three different radio stations and played acoustically at each, The first one didn’t tell their listeners we were coming, so no fans knew to be there…the same was with the second station. But the last station we visited, “Trans America”, did tell their listeners we were coming and there were like 200 fans waiting for us there. The interview on air was nuts! There was this one DJ guy who kept saying he wanted to come kiss my head! And he did! Then they all sang WYWG really badly, on purpose. It was fun! Before we left, I went outside to sign for the fans. I recognized a lot of them from our tour last year in Brazil. This one girl who couldn’t have been any older than 16, pulled her shirt up and asked me to sign her very big pregnant belly! What the hell? I’ve heard that some Brazilian fans were upset with me because I said they were “crazy”, so I just want to say now that I mean that in a good way! The Brazilian fans are the best in the world because they’re so enthusiastic and happy to see us! It makes our time in Brazil that much more fun and the shows that much more exciting! Eu amo as Brasileiras! After radio was done, we did some more interviews and TV stuff. The rest of the band and crew arrived this night after their long journey…we all went to sleep to energize for our first show tomorrow night!
October 6th-We all got up at 5AM to catch an 8AM flight to Porto Alegre, the first stop on this short Brazilian tour. We checked into our hotel, ate lunch, and then drove a little ways to Nuvo Hamburgo, where the show was actually taking place. We sound checked at the venue, which was a decent sized club, the smallest of all the other Brazil shows this week. We ate an awesome catered dinner at the gig that was served by many beautiful Brazilian girls…the band was in heaven! We did a meet and greet with fans and this one 5 year old boy who had sent a fan letter to the local newspaper saying he was a big fan of The Calling and wanted to meet us. He was so cute! Vanessa Carlton showed up at this point…we were lucky enough to have her come open for us for these few shows in Brazil! I was just excited to be able to watch her set each night…she’s really talented and I love her new single, “White Houses”. After her set was over, we went on and played our show for like 1500+ people. It was a very late night show, all of these shows for the next few days are going to be…the schedule is completely nuts…we go on at 10:30PM each night, play until midnight, don’t leave the gigs until 1:30AM, then have an average one hour drive back to our hotel, don’t get to bed until 3:30AM, and then have to wake up less than two hours later to do it all over again! I was already getting sick from the schedule…Nooooo!
October 7th-Me and all the other early waking cranky dudes got up at 5:30AM. Sucky suck! We rushed to the airport to get on an 8AM flight to beautiful Rio. I was feeling like total sh*t by this point…the flu was setting in, head was so congested that my brain felt like it was gonna explode on the plane. We got to our gorgeous hotel on the beach…the same place where we stayed 2 years ago. Rio is such a cool city. The Hotel staff had made famous Brazilian drinks for us all when we arrived…everyone was too tired and crappy feeling to start getting drunk at 11AM though! I took a very long sickly nap and skipped sound check. I woke up completely disoriented in the late afternoon and jumped in the car to go do a radio visit. We drove through horrible traffic for an hour and a half to get to this station. My head was spinning and I could barely talk, let alone sing…and sing I must! So Sacha ran down the street to a pharmacy and bought every over the counter cold medication available for me. I sniffed, swallow and chewed every drug possible. I tried to sing Our Lives live on the air with Chops and Arms acoustically and I was definitely sounding like sh*t. I was really getting worried about the show tonight. I needed to rest more. We finished radio, got back in car, and sat in the worst traffic ever once again. It took us another hour and a half to get to the venue, which was only 25 miles away! Once there, we ate some good catering for dinner and started preparing for our gig. This was the same venue in Rio we played last year …I remembered being in this dressing room a year ago watching CNN in Portuguese. There were millions of New Yorkers wandering the streets, fleeing the city. We couldn’t understand what was happening because it wasn’t in English. We thought for sure some huge terrorist attack had happened again…we found out later that night that it was just that massive power outage. Anyway, back to now…well, not “now” now, but then….when? Right now…now? No, just then….uh, yah. We did a big meet and greet for a whole bunch of fans and a backstage interview for some TV show…they followed us around with their cameras as we got ready for the show. We got onstage and played a great show for about 4,000 people. It was a really good crowd, all singing along to every word. My voice was somehow still holding up, even though I couldn’t breathe out of my nose and my head was pounding. I wanted to sign afterwards, but was just too sick and there were just too many people! I had to go sleep. I got back to the hotel once again at 3AM…we had another 8AM flight tomorrow morning, which meant like no sleep again…and now I was really feeling awful, Sacha came to the rescue and changed my flight to a later one for tomorrow afternoon so I could sleep in. Thank God.
October 8th-I get to sleep in! Yay! That’s great! But, alas, I woke up feeling worse:( Sacha and I got on a 1PM flight to Sao Paulo…the poor band and rest of our crew had to get on the 8AM flight and only slept like 2 hours…some of them were starting to get sick too, nice. Vanessa and her tour manager were on the same flight as Sacha and I. We picked her up on the way to the airport. My head was really feeling like it was going to explode on this flight, especially do to the crazy Brazilian flying techniques…they ascend and descend twice as fast as in America or Europe, not a good thing in my condition… My ears were so f*cked that I could barely hear anything. When we landed in Sao Paulo, I went into the bathroom at the airport. I tried to pop my ears to help the mad pressure from the plane ride by holding my nose closed and blowing out like I always do…but this time, once they popped, my whole world started spinning and I fainted there in the bathroom…falling on the dirty peepee floor...Come on! That was scary!!! And gross. I’ve only fainted one other time in my life and it sucks big time. Between that event and the fact that I couldn’t sing worth sh*t, Sacha and I agreed that I needed to see a doctor, immediately. The car ride from the Sao Paulo airport to our hotel took 3 and half hours, stuck in more frikking traffic! It should have taken no more than 40 minutes max. By far this was the worst traffic I had ever been in anywhere in the world…and I was not in the mood. Once we finally arrived at our hotel, a super doctor came to my room with a nurse and a whole bunch of equipment. I got a steroid shot that was suppose to make me feel like a million bucks within 4 hours…and I got every drug possible. After the doctor did all the usual testing, temperature, heartbeat, ears and throat check…he stuffs this huge 3 foot long alien abduction lighted fiber optic probe up my noise and into my frikkin brain!….very painful. WHY!? The doctor saw that I didn’t have a sinus infection, but I was about to get one...He thought this flu I now had was a relapse of what I was sick with a month ago when I was home in Los Angeles (refer to older tour diary). I WILL NOT CANCEL A SHOW, so I mustered up my strength, said goodbye to the Doc and went to the venue. Tonight was going to be the biggest show of the week, and the venue was huge! Come on steroid shot! The band and I did a big meet and greet with some really awesome fans. We got some great gifts…this one girl came into the room where the band and I were signing, dragging a huge box behind her. Inside the box was the longest scroll ever! One mile long! Completely insane! The girl said it took her and her friends one year to complete! The scroll said, “I love The Calling! I love Alex!” etc…literally millions and millions of times. I told BMG to ship it back to my house in LA, along with all the other fan gifts…I have to keep this stuff! By the time it was show time, I could feel that magic shot kicking in…I still felt like sh*t, but my head was clearing and my body wasn’t aching quite as much. We play for 6,000 people that night! It was an incredible show, even though I was sick…what energy that crowd had! Man, I could almost feel it healing me on stage…or was that the doctor’s steroid shot starting to make me feel like a million bucks!? I don’t know, but either way, the guys and I came off stage at the end of the show floating on cloud 9. Yay! Sadly, this was Vanessa’s last show with us. She had to go back to the US tomorrow and wouldn’t be able to play the final gig tomorrow. We said our goodbyes to her and thanked her for playing with us. I hope we can get the chance to play with her in the US next year…that would be great. Anyway, I got back to the hotel once again at 3AM and slept for a sad 2 hours :(
October 9th-That’s right, we woke up at 5:30AM again. I was still feeling crummy, but a lot better than the last few days. Tonight was our last show in Brazil…and we weren’t ready to leave! We got on a 9am flight to Belo Horizonte, the final destination on this tour. We drove to our hotel and this one actually had fans waiting for us in the lobby. I signed for them all and went up to take a nap in my room and do some work. I skipped sound check yet again…thank God for our awesome sound engineers, Dan “the man” and Ronnie! They know exactly how I want things to sound like, without me even having to be there. That night we played our last show for over 4,000 screaming fans in a mini arena type place…I felt like Bono for a moment…mini Bono…it was cool. The show went great, a truly amazing crowd. We are all sad it was our last show…we love you Brazilian fans! Thank you so much for coming to see us! Thanks to all the different Calling fan clubs for helping support us so well…you guys all rock! We had an amazing time and can’t wait to come back! After the show, the band and I escaped from the back door, jumped into vans, and drove our way through the hundreds of fans swarming on the streets outside of the venue. They were banging on the van windows, screaming our names…one girl even jumped in front of our moving car, but quickly changed her mind and decided it’s better not to be run over and killed than to meet The Calling! By now all our bodyguards were sick, the entire band was sick, Sacha and the rest of the crew were sick, and even the people from our label, BMG, were sick! Oh No! What did I do? Well, I was feeling better at least :) And that was a good thing, cause tomorrow is going to be one of the longest travel days we’ve ever done…well, since Australia to Austria (read tour diary spring 2002, funny stuff). We got back to our hotel at 2AM. The really sweet promoter who handled our visit to Brazil threw a little party for the band and I in a disco like dance room at the hotel. I stayed at the party for like 5 minutes cause I was about to pass out…I had pushed my body well beyond it’s limits playing these last 4 shows in a row totally sick. I needed to go to sleep and I needed to get better fast…
October 10th-We all got to sleep in and then departed Belo Horizonte in the afternoon for the airport, There were tons of fans waiting for us there to say goodbye…I tried to sign for them as much as I could. When we went to check in, the airline told us that there was no way we were going to make it to our second of the three flights, Sao Paulo to New York, because the time in between the flights was too short...great! Thanks American Airlines! Isn’t that something they should realize when they are selling these tickets? We barely made it on this first flight, Belo Horizonte to Sao Paulo, after arguing with the airline forever. By this point my body and brain was so fried that I didn’t even care that this turned out to be by far the scariest flight I had ever been on…I just laughed the whole time! We flew through a major storm for 2 hours, had multiple freefalls, and got hit by lightening twice! Yay! Everyone likes getting hit by lightening! It’s fun! And, apparently it doesn’t hurt the plane…unless you get hit like 7 or 8 times. Any other day I would have been totally freaking out, but I just didn’t have the energy to be. Once we got to the Sao Paulo airport, Sacha told everyone that even though the airline said it was impossible for us to make this next flight, we were going to attempt to. “OK guys, listen up! We have ten minutes to get our 30 pieces of luggage and gear from baggage claim, go through immigration, go through customs, get all our tickets, recheck our luggage, and go through security again! Ready? Let’s go! Move it, move it, MOVE IT! Now, what could have possibly made this situation even more difficult? You guessed it…there was an entire school of hundreds of young girls who had just come off a flight waiting in the baggage claim when we arrived…MASS HYSTERIA!! Airport security immediately saw the problem as the band and I were starting to get attacked and they got us out of there fast. So there we were, getting chased by 200 schoolgirls screaming “Photo! Photo! Photo!”, as we tried to get through all the steps the awaited us on the way to catch our flight. With the security escort and a whole lot of sweat and luck, we somehow managed to just make it on the flight to New York! We were the last people on the plane…I sat down and we took off before I could even buckle my seatbelt. God! That was nuts! Well, we had a 9 hour flight to think about it….hey! Maybe I’ll watch a movie? Or do some work? Or play video games? Or listen to mu….::snore::….::snore::....OK, sleep it is.
October 11th-We arrived in New York at 6AM, tired, wasted, hungry, and sick. The next flight wasn’t for 2 hours, so we had some time to eat garbage. The next flight to London was another 9 hour long flight! AAAAH! By this point Justin was the sickest. He hadn’t been able hear out of his left ear for the last two days do to the major pressure from all the plane rides…I told him, “DON’T TRY TO POP YOUR EARS!! TRUST ME!” We finally arrived in London at 8PM that night…I felt like I was gonna fork!…too much flying! And not enough food, too many drugs, jetlag, antibiotics, cough syrup, fever reducer, vertigo pills, anti congestion medicine, blah! I got to my London hotel after 20 hours of flying, 30 hours of travel, and my brain still thought it was on a plane…I had to sleep with one foot hanging off the bed touching the ground to help with the spinning. Thankfully, tomorrow is a day off before the mad 3 week tour through 7 countries in Europe begins….I think I will sleep the entire day tomorrow…I really think I can do it…we’ll see…
