At 19:50, MichaelV said…Do you ship the equipment ahead of your arrival to each country or carry everything on the same flight. Must be a pain worrying about all the stuff. Right?
Yes, it is a pain. Shipping gear seperately with a good freight company is very expensive and so we usually travel with the gear, which makes for stressful arrivals… hunting down every flight case, searching for the oversize baggage counter, calming down other travellers who had their puny suitcase flattened by one of our road cases etc…
I remember arriving in Houston from Mexico in the nineties and the custom’s officer telling us: you can thank Carlos Santana for this, but since he was caught with pot here last month we will search you guys as well… – and this was before we even toured with Carlos. I also remember poor Carl getting singled out one year, I believe this was in Dallas or Houston, because he wears baggy pants and those were on the list… My border-crossing experiences have been much easier since I cut my hair. Apparently having long hair AND carrying a guitar case sets off every alarm in the book…
You can thank Antonio Banderas for that. I guess after the movie Desperado if you have long hair and a guitar case, there must be a machine gun inside it.