Russia, Perm. Amble #1

Well, my phone ran out of gas and, of course while looking up links for the last entry, I became distracted and went away for a while, you know, Huun Huur tu, APAP, etc.

So more back story.

So here we were the first few days of 2006 getting the gist that someone in Russia would be bringing us over...in 2007. Yes, that's how it is in this business. You get booked years in advance and hope to god you can still perform. But hey, it's good to be scheduled in advance. It gives one a little knowledge on how much to budget for a year. Savings...hah. Investing, har, mortgage, yep. You know all of that stuff. It's almost like having a real job.

Yep. A year goes bye-bye. A tour comes and goes, actually two concurrent tours come and go. And another is scheduled. The Mozart Was A Punk tour was just getting under way with planning and working out financing, We produce a lovely musical in Kansas City (www.idoidokc.com) . and on.

So it gets to be another January and we are thinking...hmm did this really happen? ARE we going to Russia? So we get on the horn to Eric Amada to see if this things is indeed going to happen because, usually when one gets booked so far out, there is a contract. In any case there is a contract. No contract, no contact. And we've set aside these dates. so, you know, we are in it financially, especially with our pending MWP tour.

Finally we get word back and the long slow agonizing process of fashioning contracts and negotiations et al are finally under way. February rolls around. Beau and I begin to travel through basically every snow storm in the North East. and we, losing money in sieve-like fashion are wondering, uhhhh. Finally we get contracts. And they are very one sided. We add things and take other thing away and even put in things we had actually discussed through select email.

Also, at this time, Laurie and I had been seriously discussing her coming, as well as Beau's wife, Zhanna. Then people start getting poisoned and I start to get very uneasy. What would happen if Laurie were to be poisoned. Of course she would never do anything to warrant it, unless she is some kind of spy, which I seriously doubt since I see her most of the time :)

Also her new job status had made it more difficult to think about going as a feasible thing during the time we were thinking we were going to be there.

We had only found out the tentative dates of the festival and heard more definitely when we would be required to be there.

At last contracts were sent resent, fixed, fixed again and lo and behold, ratified...by all parties. Closer and closer still. But by no means a done deal. We still had invitations to go.

In Russia, you must get invited to Russia if you are going for business. They aren't messing around either. We got faxes of the invitation, printed them off and sent our paperwork, including our passports to the Russian consulate in DC and Houston. This is somewhere at three weeks off. We should be getting our Passports and our visas back shortly.

Indeed, I got mine back pretty promptly and Beaus had yet to arrive. Waiting waiting, waiting... finally we find that Beaus invite was illegible. Crap, only a few days left.

SO this is when I find Zhanna isn't coming with us either, for she offers up her invite for Beau to use and surprisingly, they let them do it. Sooner than later B got his Passport with the visa fused to one of it's pages, like mine in the mail.

We still didn't know how we were getting to Russia. No tickets, or word about tickets. I mean, from day one, it seemed like we were always in the same position. There was never a progression of states, it was always, all or nothing. If this didn't get done, we don't go period, If that didn't get done, we weren't going period, so there was never any kind of real build up, no real yayyyy factor, there was always something else.

Seriously, we didn't even know how we were getting from New York to Moscow and then ultimately to Perm. I had bought tickets to NYC, but since we didn't know the airline, time flight or even airport, I chose really early in the morning arrival in NYC just so, if things got no better and we had to go to another airport, we could.

We finally got emailed our flight times and flight number, but still no airline. Zhanna figured this one out really easily. "Aeroflot, duhh. They're the only airline in Russia." so then there it was. The last piece of the puzzle; our hurrah moment.

We did have a little hurrah. And no sooner did we celebrate our actually happening gig in Perm, Russia that we did indeed take off.

Without my or Beau's love, but at least we were going. We were breaking that ground and we were taking the Dobro with us!!!

-fin -

NG