February 11, 2009 - Touring in Holland with BETH HART...chapter 1

Hello to all you crazy and wonderful people!! I am back from my European debut and, minus some jet-lag, feeling pretty GREAT :)

***to the left, Beth Hart and I after a show***

It was a whirlwind, I tell ya...a beautiful, amazing whirlwind. There is SO much to tell so I am going to break the blogs up into chapters. Here is chapter 1...

Sunday, January 25th I headed to LAX with guitar player / tour manager, Dave Carducci and videographer / merch girl / security / emotional support, Holly Lucille. The flight was 9+ hours but we all slept most of the trip (well, except Dave...he has a bit of flying anxiety). We arrived in Amsterdam at 12:45pm on Monday and we were off to the Lloyd Hotel, both our first night's lodging accomodations and the venue of our showcase show that evening.

I had no more than stepped out of the cab when I was greeted by Otto, my label contact and the man responsible for setting this whole thing up. He met our weary eyes with a great big smile and welcomed us to Holland. (Below: Otto and I )

That evening, after a couple hours of restorative and totally necessary napping, Dave and I went down to the music room of the hotel to sound check while Holly gathered up the video camera and merch. In the few short hours we had been in Holland, we found one thing that was hard to get used to...everyone was so freakin' nice! Really...we kept waiting for the other shoe to drop or the alterior motive but no, there was none...the people were just friendly as f***! I am going to just post some photos below so you can see the venue and some of the people who were part of that evening. It was a great kick-off to the tour!

Holly, all packed up with the merch for the night!

The Merch table (complete with a half-naked photo of me, courtesy of Kris DeLano)

Me with J.J., the adorable sound engineer intern...he isn't a small guy :)

The larger-than-life projection of my photo (Christina Donnelly) and biography onto the wall above where we were playing.......

Vincent, the exquisite sound engineer at The Lloyd
Good friends, Debra Pear and Dawn Landon...they came all the way from LA to see me!! :)

During the performance.....

New Dutch fans, watching the strange America Girl rock the night away ;)

We played for about 2 1/2 hours to an attentive and appreciative crowd. I kept my eyes open as long as could, meeting and greeting new faces, until I finally turned in around midnight, Amsterdam time (no idea what time it was in LA....). I had to get ready for a very big day on Tuesday....not only was it the day of my first big show supporting Beth but that morning I had a photo shoot with the world famous photographer, Govert de Roos...he has shot everyone from Janis Joplin to John & Yoko to Jimi Hendrix...you name it, he's shot it....more on all of that in Chapter 2.

Stay tuned!! In addition to more blog chapters, I am beginning to edit together all of the video footage from the tour and there is some GREAT stuff you won't want to miss!!

Cheers!!

Julie

http://www.julieneumark.com/