Hey y’all! Just a quick update here about the first week of my European trip – there’s quite a bit to report!

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On Tuesday I departed from Lexington and flew to Frankfort via Chicago. The flight was uneventful, but completely full. Despite staying up the whole night on Monday, I was only able to get about 2 hours of sleep on the plane. So instead of my plan working out to beat the jet lag, I wound up arriving pretty much exhausted. But I made it and made it to Klaus and Inge’s house at about 2pm on Wednesday via the Deutsche Bahn (train). We hung out for a while and unpacked my stuff and I managed to stay up until 9pm and then proceeded to sleep for the next 14 hours 🤣. I am still kind of jetlagged because of that blunder…

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After getting rested up, I decided to test all my music equipment that I had left there in 2019 and was distressed to learn that the battery on my amp was no longer working. A minor distaster, as I plan to do a lot of music on the streets where there usually is not a plug available. Klaus and I took it to Thomann, which is the largest music store in Europe which also happens to be near their home, and after some investigating, learned that the battery had suffered from “deep-discharge” as it had not been used or charged for nearly 3 years. Luckily, they were able to find me a new battery and I got out of that pickle for only 22 euros as opposed to paying nearly 300 for a new amp. I also picked up some strings and slapped a new set on the guitar and got it sounding as good as a $150 guitar can sound.

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After the music store, I took Klaus and Inge out to eat on Thursday evening at their favorite local beer garden. It was the least I could do for them letting me use their spare car for the next couple of months and putting me up for a few days. The food, and of course the beer, were amazing.

After the beer garden, I went home and came up with my set-list for my two Germany shows I had coming up over the weekend. It took me some time thinking about the best mix of my original music, good country music, and songs I thought the German public would recognize. But I think I can more or less re-use it for any bar gigs I play this whole summer, so that is one small chore completed.

On Friday, Klaus was nice enough to fix me up with some roasted potatoes (bratkartoffel in German) and a type of meat jelly called aspic (sülze in German) that I had read about and wanted to try while I was in Europe.

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On Friday afternoon, it was time to head to Kronach, Germany to see my very good old friend Harry and play the gig he’d lined up for me in his friend’s bar across the street from his house. I’ve know Harry for about 15 years, as we worked together in the kitchen of an army dining facility in Germany when I first got out of the army and needed to work so I could stay in Germany a little longer. He and I and the other German cooks used to have a lot of fun in that kitchen and getting drinks together after work. And Harry and I have had a few big jobs in Kronach before, so I was much looking forward to returning there.

Harry didn’t think there would be much of a crowd because the big city festival was starting the next day and he thought everyone would be laying low and saving it up for Saturday. But it actually turned out to be a decent crowd at the bar and it felt great to get my first show of the tour under my belt and get some beers and laughs in with Harry and his friends and also the random Germans who happened upon the show and decided to hang out with us. I wound up making nearly 200 euros Friday night in tips and CD sales.

After the show Harry and I took it pretty easy (which I think was a first for me and him in Kronach) and went back to get some rest at his place. It had been a great night so there was no complaints from me about turning in a little early.

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On Saturday morning we got up and went to see Harry’s mom, Anna. Anna is such a wonderful lady and there is a tradition that she cooks her famous home made Goulash for me almost every time I come to Kronach for a visit. The stuff is legendary!

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After lunch with Anna, Harry and I decided to climb up to the fortress to check out the medieval city festival that was going on the whole weekend before I needed to head back to Klaus and Inge’s in Breitengüßbach to get ready for my show there that evening.

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I got back to Breitengüßbach in the late afternoon on Saturday and got cleaned up and ready for the 6pm show I had lined up there. My good buddy, Moritz, has opened up a new bar there and was kind enough to offer me to be one of his first music performances. I knew Moritz when he was just a little kid, as I had rented the apartment that was attached to his parents home when I decided to stay in Germany for a year after I got out of the army. This was in 2005-2006. Since then he’s become a bodybuilder and an entrepreneur and it’s been great to follow his success throughout the years and see him whenever I visit Germany.

They had decorated the whole patio at the bar with Western themed items and even offered the customers a free beer if they showed up in boots or a cowboy hat. It turned out they were taking this “country night” pretty seriously and I was pleased to find that the entire patio was reserved and the place was going to be standing room only for my performance. It turned out they were ready for country night at the Lineup.

To say that this gig was amazing would be an understatement. I was getting great feedback from the crowd after nearly every song and it was a very lively and crowded atmosphere. I was proud to be able to keep an audience of foreign people engaged for over 5 hours of my kind of music! Very few people left the entire night and I got 3 or 4 encores at the end of the night as well. Finally, my fingers were hurting so bad that I had to stop – even though they were hollering for me to play more. Instead of going back for a 6th set, I convinced Moritz to come up and play a little and also had another guest musician before finally broke down my equipment and headed home at about 1am.

I was so happy to be able to do something to support my friend’s new venture and he was thrilled and appreciative of the type of night we had. I wouldn’t take any money from Moritz, but I did get fed well and filled up with free beer and schnapps the whole night long. I also sold 4 CDs, but I totally forgot to put a tip jug out and I believe that may have been a costly mistake – but not something I stressed about too much. I was pleased that I got to perform for the first time in front of Anna-Maria’s family, as her parents were there along with her sister and her boyfriend who had traveled down from Berlin to see me. They all seemed to enjoy the show.

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On Sunday, I slept in a bit and then it was time to get on the road for the beginning of my tour! The first stop was to be 3 hours away to tiny Haarbach, Germany to see my wife’s aunt and uncle, Dagi and Werner. They are such good people and I haven’t seen them in many years, so I made the detour over to pay them a visit. Werner and Dagi live way out in rural Bavaria, and they used to host me and my army buddies for trips to nearby Pullman City, which is a western themed park where we could listen to German bands play live country music and we’d visit a few times a year. Werner has kind of an outlaw attitude and loves country music (which as I mentioned is a rarity in Germany) so we’ve always gotten along very well. I think we are kindred spirits. 🤣

The three of us caught up for a couple of hours and then I headed 45 minutes away to Braunau, Austria for what was supposed to be a recovery night at a cheap hotel before driving another 4 1/2 hours to Ljubljana, Slovenia. However, when I arrived at the hotel, I found out quickly that a recovery night was not in the chips….

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Driving from Haarbach to Braunau, Austria was interesting due to a massive downpour and multiple detours, but eventually I made it to the hotel at about 1030pm. I was pretty worn out from the two late nights of drinking and was looking forward to checking in to my room and relaxing. However, upon arrival at the “Haus Bertha” where I’d reserved my room, I was greeted by a lone employee who insisted on pouring me a beer and a shot before letting me check in. Not wanting to be rude, I reluctantly accepted. Soon we were talking about why I’d come to Austria etc, and when he found out I’m traveling to play country music he got very excited and started telling me about how we was in Alabama at one time and how much he loved country music and then started jamming some Alan Jackson on his Bluetooth speaker. Then he poured me some kind of schnapps and then another beer. So much for my quiet night of rest…

After a beer and a half and a shot, I got my key and put my stuff in the room and then headed back out to finish the beer before retiring for the evening. However, when I came back to the patio there was another guy there who started talking to me. His name was Rene, and it turned out he was from the Czech Republic and had been a member of the Czech special forces in the first Gulf War and had also been in Somalia where he’d nearly lost a hand to a machete attack. He spoke no English, so I was communicating with him totally in my elementary level German (he’s lived in Austria for the last 10 years and is fluent in German). He insisted I have another beer with him, and then another, and then another. By that point I didn’t care about it anymore as I was having so much fun carrying on by far my longest ever conversation entirely in German (and understanding and communicating nearly everything – I guess necessity is indeed the mother of invention) and listening to his story and showing him my music – which he was very interested in hearing. Before parting ways, he gave me a hat from his local motorcycle club and I gave him two CDs as a gift in return. Finally at 3 am, I was able to go get some sleep, but I had enjoyed my unexpected big job in Braunau.

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Coincidentally, I learned through my research that Braunau was the birthplace of Adolph Hitler and that his birth house was still standing, so after breakfast I found it and snapped a few photos before getting on the road to Ljubljana. There is evidently debate about wether the house should be torn down or made to look different than it did when Hitler was born there, but for now it stands the way it did all those years ago. In front of the building there is a monument (made with stone from the Mauthausen concentration camp) that I believe reads “For peace and freedom, and democracy, never again Fascism. Remember the millions of dead.”

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The drive to Ljubljana was very pretty. Austria is up there as one of the all-time great mountain scenery places I’ve seen, along with Alaska and Switzerland. The drive was pleasant, but I was feeling a little rough after night 3 on the bottle and was eager to get to Ljubljana to meet up with my buddy Jimmy Blackmore and then hopefully chillax. Jimmy is a Slovenian country music singer that I met when I visited Ljubljana in 2019. I enjoy his music and humor and we’ve kept in touch these last three years fairly often, so I definitely wanted to get back to see him this year.

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Luckily, Jimmy had a big gig with his band “The Pointless Rebels” on Sunday night and was of the same mind as me about taking it easy tonight and resting up for the gig he got us on Tuesday. So we decided to meet for pizza after I arrived and checked in to my hostel. He brought his bass player, Gasper, and the fellas and I enjoyed a pizza before Jimmy and I took a stroll through the Metalkova neighborhood adjacent to my hostel. The neighborhood was formerly a Yugoslavian military base during the cold war and the hostel I’m staying in was once a military prison. These days, it is the center of the arts scene in Ljubljana and you can always find people hanging out there, drinking and often strumming guitars or doing art or just chilling. While we were there, a guy recognized Jimmy and soon we took a round of strumming a couple songs on his guitar before parting ways for the evening. It was good catching up with my old pal and hearing him do a little singing as a sneak preview for our gig tomorrow evening.

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After saying bye to Jimmy, I came up to my room to relax and work on finishing up this post for y’all. It takes a long time to get one of these together, but it is worth it to be able to share my experiences with anyone that’s interested in following along.

That’s all the news I have at the moment. I’ll check in again in about a week and tell ya some more then. The plan is to be here until Thursday and then travel to Lake Balaton in Hungary. After that, I have yet to fully decide, but the ultimate goal is to get to Poland and then the Baltics from there. Talk to ya soon and don’t forget to subscribe for an email when I post the next update.