The Bogle Blurb
By Eric Bogle
13 January 2003, South Australia Hello Folks,
It's been a while since my last blurb, but as some of you know, I've been pretty busy over the last 4 months or so. The North American tour is just a fading memory now. The horrors of the Festive Season have come and gone, and I've got a few days respite before I have to hit the road again. So I thought if I don't write this blurb now, it will be about three months before I'll have a chance to put pen to paper again. Or more properly, fingers to keyboard, or sending electrons into Cyberspace, or - whatever.
Step back in time with me a little, back to the beginning of September 2002. An increasingly nervous and pretty pissed off Eric is still awaiting visa approvals for himself and John Munro for the U.S.A. Wads of cash have been already handed over to the INS. The Canadian visas have been approved, airfares booked and paid for, hire cars and hotels arranged, bags packed and ready to go. All the gigs are locked in and confirmed. But because of the tardiness/ inefficiency/ indifference/ and greed of the INS (delete where applicable), the tour still hangs very much in the balance, and with it, perhaps, Eric's career, or what's left of it. Now read on...
Just as I was about to make a personal appeal to George Bush to fix all this visa crap, my visa arrived. And guess what? It was wrong! It showed an incorrect entry date to the U.S.A.. A phone call to the INS from my by now totally hysterical agent, fixed it up. But John's visa application was refused pending more evidence as to why I actually needed him. Another frantic round of phone calls, elicited letters of support and validation from various individuals and organizations in the U.S.A. May I take this opportunity to thank those people who wrote those letters. Without you, the tour may well not have happened. I wrote a letter also pointing out that, although I appeared on stage holding a guitar, I couldn't actually play it. It was merely a stage prop. I needed a real guitarist, i.e. John Munro. Grudgingly, the INS accepted that John was vital to the tour, and agreed to issue a visa. Then proceeded to take their own sweet time about issuing it.
John was actually in the UK touring with his group Colcannon, so his visa was sent to the London Embassy. John phoned the Embassy daily, and on one memorable occasion actually managed to speak to a REAL person! But the days dragged by and still no visa. Would Eric be forced to do the tour solo? Would he actually be able to imitate a real musician for 11 weeks? Did he have the physical and emotional stamina to appear *naked* on stage, every night, (musically speaking I mean)? Now read on... ...
To cut a long, and what is becoming an increasingly boring story short, John's visa finally arrived. However, he missed the first four concerts of the tour. I had to do them by myself, and boy, was I nervous about that. You must understand that I do very few solo concerts, for fairly obvious reasons. I was pretty apprehensive about my ability to cut the mustard flying solo. But the audiences were very kind, and the whole experience was not nearly as terrifying as I'd imagined it would be. And of course the concert fees were all MINE! MINE! All MINE! so there were compensations. Even so, at no stage did I contemplate flying solo for the rest of the tour. Although, I would have, if I'd have had no other choice. So, it was with a great deal of relief that I eventually picked John up from the airport in San Francisco at the beginning of October. We headed more or less South (by way of San Jose, Santa Barbara, and San Diego -ed), and then North toward Los Angeles, and points beyond. With 45 concerts and 10,000 miles of driving in front of us, a goodly supply of The Water of Life in our car, and a song in our hearts, off we go. Now read on... ... ...
After all the hassles just to get to the starting line, the actual tour was relatively uneventful. Enjoyable, uplifting at times, tiring and frustrating at other times. The usual tour in fact, but uneventful. We did have our car broken into in Winnipeg. The thieves stole two bottles of The Water of Life, the swine, and a box of 50 CD's. No prizes for guessing which upset us the most! Anyway, we ransomed the CD's back from this fellow who claimed he had seen who had broken into the car and knew where they'd taken the loot. Of course he knew. He was one of the thieves. I just wanted to get the CD's back and to cut our losses. So $50 changed hands and the CD's magically reappeared, although not the whisky! I had a certain amount of sympathy for the thieves. They'd probably broken open the box of CD's in great anticipation, hoping to find a bunch of Michael Jackson CD's which they could sell for a large profit. But found instead, 50 of mine, and knew they'd have a lot of difficulty shifting them. God knows I do. So they decided to ransom them back, which showed some enterprise. Luckily we managed to exchange our hire car in Winnipeg for another car, as the original hire car had its back window smashed in by the thieves. All in all it was just a minor inconvenience. The concert in Winnipeg was great, one of the highlights of the tour. Ominously, however, it started getting a mite cold in Winnipeg, and actually snowed pretty heavily. By Canadian standards it was still balmy spring weather I suppose, but to us denizens of sunny Southern climes it was bloody freezing. Up until then, we'd enjoyed a bit of an Indian Summer weather-wise. Now we started rooting around in our suitcases for sweaters and scarves. We stowed our shorts and body-hugging T-shirts away for the rest of the tour, which no doubt came as a relief to those of a delicate disposition. Now read- oh, forget it... ... ...
It would be impossible to pick out the musical highlights of the tour. And to be honest, after a tour is finished, the concerts tend to meld in to each other in your memory, and you have difficulty distinguishing one from the other. At least, that's the case with me. John Munro can remember individual concerts with little difficulty, and is always saying things like, "Remember that concert in Seattle where you played an F# diminished 9th in the fourth verse of, 'No Man's Land' instead of a B Major 16th? And my harmony in the second chorus was 1/32nd of a semi-tone flat?" and things like that. Well, no, John, I don't. And the fact that you can fills me with feelings of awe and envy mixed with, I must admit, some slight irritation. How the Hell can he remember things like that? After a tour, what stands out in my memory, in much sharper relief, is not so much the music as the people I met along the way. Generally speaking, a tour always re-affirms to me the basic courtesy, friendliness and open-handed hospitality that most people will accord to a stranger. You meet the odd total *asshole* along the way of course. However, if 58 years on Planet Earth has taught me anything, it's that they are still by far in the minority, and that you must not let their *assholedness* colour your view of the decent majority. During this tour I met up with many old friends, one of the bonuses of a tour, and made some new friends, another bonus. I sang a few songs, sold a few CD's, saw some beautiful scenery, heard some wonderful music, had some great laughs, and got some ideas for new songs. All that, and I got paid too! What a great job this is!
But there's no place like home. Trite but true. No matter how good a time you've had on tour, invariably the best part of it is when you get home again. For those of you who have asked about Chez Bogle, here is a photo of my home. It's an Edwardian sandstone villa circa 1908, and quite old by Australian standards. Carmel & I have spent a fair bit of time over the last three years renovating it, and we're very comfortable here. I also attach a photo of the view from my back porch. I spend a lot of my time sitting in a comfortable chair, knocking back the occasional beer and thinking about not very much at all.
You can see why I'm always glad to get back home, apart from the fact that I miss my wife and my dogs of course. When I got back from this tour, I'd been away for about 12 weeks. So when I walked in, the dogs growled at me as Carmel kissed me. Or was it the other way around?
Now I have about another week or so before I take to the road again. A short tour this time, only 3 weeks, doing concerts in New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania. Dates for these gigs appear elsewhere in this website (Tour Dates). I've got quite a few other gigs in Australia up until the end of April. Then I get a couple of months off before I head to Europe in July for a 3 month tour. I get back to Australia by the end of October. Then I've got a 3 week tour of New Zealand planned for November/December. So you can see that 2003 is fairly well booked up. I'm planning another tour of North America in 2005. Hopefully, a fairly low-key, battery-recharging, CD-recording year in 2004. But as John Lennon said, "life is what happens while you're making other plans." So maybe I'm tempting fate a wee bit. I suppose the question is, should an overweight, whisky-drinking, chain-smoking 58-year old man make any plans for the future at all?
On that shallow, philosophical note, I shall finish off this epistle. My deepest thanks to all those on my recent tour who came to my concerts, often traveling amazing distances to do so, who reacted so positively to my songs, and to those who bought my CD's. Also, to those people who kept us supplied with bottles of whisky, wine, tubes of foot-cream, candy, cakes, and other sundry little presents. You know who you are, and you will be a large part of the reason I'll be returning to North America in 2005.
I don't know if 2003 will bring much peace or joy to the Planet Earth, but we can live in hope... ... ..
Best Wishes to you all,
Eric
Archives
