West Of Nowhere's

Toby Keith Big Throwdown Tour II 2006 Journal  

West Of Nowhere was recently offered a one-of-a-kind deal that most bands often dream of. They were asked to join the Toby Keith Big Throwdown tour of 2006 where they played among such stars as Toby Keith, Joe Nichols, Scotty Emerick, Rebecca Lynn Howard, and Sarah Johns. The following is a journal that depicts some of our experiences out on the road on a major national tour. Each week we will add another entry for all of you to read until the entire journal is posted. We were very fortunate and honored to be a part of The Toby Keith Big Throwdown Tour 2006. This was a big step in our career and may very well lead to the big break we've been looking for.

 01/28/06 West Of Nowhere receives a phone call from John Milam asking if the band would like to go on tour with Toby Keith starting in February. The tour will start February 9^th in Sioux City, Iowa at The Tyson Center and will finish up on March 12^th in Savannah, Georgia at The Savannah Civic Center. The band would be performing songs for Sarah Johns, Rebecca Lynn Howard, and Scotty Emerick who as a group were dubbed the Nashville Show Dogs. After a few short meetings and conversations the band decides to take the gig.

 02/07/06 Toby Keiths tour manager David Milam and his dad John Milam from the Milam Music Group arrive at the W.O.N. rehearsal hall to sit in and listen to us perform the new material for the tour and to give us the final okay. We run through the songs and everything is a go!

 02/08/06 The band was split up into two groups. Jerrell, Greg and Jon would ride on the Managers bus while Steve and Will rode on Toby's band's bus. We all arrived at about 12:00 PM at the Prevost bus lot in Irving, Texas to see a huge 18-wheeler with a giant picture of Toby Keith on the side, waiting to have all of our gear loaded into it. Afterwards, we were introduced to the bus, where we met with David Milam to go over some of the details of their future traveling home. This included such things as how to close doors very quietly to avoid waking anyone who may be sleeping in the bunk area, how the custom-designed bathroom worked, what areas of the bus were reserved for whom, and how to get into a top bunk without killing yourself or the person below you.

 Will and Steve went back to the house to await the band bus which would leave sometime around 1:00 am.

 The tour bus is an amazing piece of technology. It included a kitchen, bathroom, 12 bunks (each with their own DVD player, reading lamp, and air conditioning, a rear lounge with a flat-screen satellite hookup & playstation and a front lounge with a big-screen with satellite and playstation.

 Next we met the other members of the management staff and crew as they arrived from various places.  Kirby, Sean, Bones and Bahbee showed up and all of the luggage was stored underneath the bus in the cargo bays. After getting settled in, it was time to hit the road and make it to the first show in Sioux City, Iowa for load-in at 8:00 am.

 We stopped along the way in Kansas and Oklahoma to pick up Knuckles, Dirk, Yancey and Billy Ray to complete the team and we were off to the gig...

 After picking up the rest of the guys, we settled in for the remainder of the 811 mile trip to Sioux City. Activities on the bus during the trip included hanging out in the front lounge watching satellite TV on the big screen (which consisted mostly of the weather channel and history channel) with a movie thrown in here or there.

There was also a poker game going on in the front of the bus with frequent cries of "Baaahbeeee" (inside joke) and "Why does Bones have all the chips?". I'm pretty sure that Kirby had a close second on the game.

If poker and weather wasn't your thing, you could always lay up in your bunk and watch DVDs or listen to music, which we did quite a bit.

Finally, we all crashed in our bunks for the night to get ready for the first show the next day.

02/09/06  We woke up sometime around 9:00 am to find our ALL-ACCESS laminates neatly laid out for each of us. We were told to guard these with our lives and if one ended up on E-bay, we would have to buy it back, as these would be our passes to get into the venues and anywhere within the venues.

We got dressed and ventured out of the tour bus to find snow on the ground (we're not used to that being from Texas and all). We owe many thanks to George, our driver for weathering the storms and driving literally all night long to some gigs.

There was a whole parking lot full of Prevost buses and tractor trailers (about 7 buses and 9 rigs) that were used to hall personnel and equipment for the show. We finally got directions from the nearest security guard as to where the entrance of the venue actually was and made our way inside.

Once inside the venue, we followed the paper signs that were posted to tell everyone which way the dressing rooms, catering, stage, etc. were. First off, we would normally haul our luggage to the dressing room, which we shared with Toby Keith's band. The guys in Toby's band were very cool to us considering we were invading their normally private space on the bus and in the dressing room.

After dropping off our bags, we would head down to the catering room and eat at the breakfast buffet laid out there. Here we met Jimmy who is head of catering and his assistants and were greeted as "the new guys". Keep in mind that we came in somewhere in the middle of the tour and the rest of the people already knew each other there.

The breakfast buffet usually included muffins, cereal, eggs, bacon, sausage, custom-cooked omelets, biscuits, fruits and juices of every kind.

We would usually be done with breakfast around 10:30 and then perform the activity that we would spend the majority of the tour doing...hurry up and wait! We got real good at this over the next couple of months. We resorted to wandering around the halls and concourses of the venue, climbing to the very top seat to see what the view was like, visiting the many toilets scattered about the place, and even walking outside around the neighborhood to see what local life was like there.

Lunch time hit around 11:30 or 12 and again there would be a feast laid out consisting of items like cold-cuts, cheese, breads, soups, muffins, vegetables, entrees, desserts and such.

Around 3:30 PM we would begin to unpack our road cases and start pulling out guitars and drums to get them acclimated to the environment of the arena. This helps make sure that the instruments stay in tune during the show. We would wrangle up our gear in a designated area and prepare it to take onto the stage while listening to the sounds Toby Keith's band getting their daily sound check. Sometimes we would go out and watch while Toby's band and Joe Nichols' band played a few tunes on the stage to get everything checked out.

Then at 4:30 or 5:30 we would haul our gear up on the stage with the help of several roadies (thanks guys & gals!) and get everything plugged in to get our sound check.

Once everything was ready, we would play through a few West Of Nowhere songs and then Sarah Johns and Rebecca Lynn Howard would come up and do a couple each to get their ears adjusted. We never actually saw Scotty Emerick at sound check so the first time on stage with him was the first time we had ever played with him. It went without a hitch. As you look out into the venue from the stage, things are quite different when the seats are all empty and you're just playing to the empty room and the people working there. It's just a big empty hall. The stage is enormous in size compared to the clubs we had been playing prior to this tour and the sound and lighting systems rocked like you couldn't imagine. Dirk on the sound and Bones on the lights made an unbeatable team for the show, not to mention Earl and Ryan in monitor world.

After completing our sound check, we would go back to the dressing room and shower up, get dressed and head back to catering for the dinner buffet. Dinner time is where we would almost always run into Toby, Joe and the rest of the artists and band members. Sometimes we would hang out and chat with them and other times we would talk with crew members, depending on which table we sat. Everyone was extremely cool to us on the tour and would talk with us and treat us like one of the gang.

The dinner buffet included items such as stuffed quail, steak of all kinds, lobster, shrimp, scallops, fish, various vegetables and desserts. You couldn't beat the food around there in any restaurant. Needless to say we got plenty to eat on the tour.

The doors would open around 6:30 and we would hang out backstage, occasionally peeking around the set to see the people filing in...basically more waiting around.

Our show would start at 7:22 PM each evening and about 10 minutes prior we would walk up on the back of the stage and wait with Kenny who is Toby's stage manager. We became good friends with Kenny over the next couple of months of the tour. He would go out of his way to help us with anything we would possibly need to get the show up and running. He would also supervise the roadies as they hauled gear up and from the stage.

Finally, it's show time. Usually a local radio personality would begin by going onstage and making some announcements and welcoming everyone to the show. While this was happening, we would put on our ears and wireless ear and guitar belt packs, and strap on our guitars.

After the announcer was finished speaking we would walk out onto the dimly-lit stage to take our places and wait for the cue as we eyed the audience who in turn was eyeing us back. At this point there is enough light to actually see the entire audience, which was made up of anywhere from 8,000 to 20,000 people. There was one point in LaFayette, LA where we could actually see some fans from home in the very top balcony waving at us. It was so high we couldn't recognize any faces but later found out who they were.

The folks in the audience were very receptive to us as we stood there. Many of them were smiling, waving, whistling and calling out.

At last the cue was given and the house lights went black!  The announcer's voice boomed "Lady's and Gentlemen, here come the Nashville Show Dogs. Please welcome to the stage, Sarah Johns!" As this was being said a bright white spotlight came out of the darkness above and illuminated Sarah Johns as she walked out onto the stage.

During the first month of the tour we would just start playing the first song as the artist walked out on the stage, but later Toby sat down with some of us at dinner and mentioned he would like us to come up with some music to play as the artist walked out. So, we came up with some background music for this.

As soon as Sarah hit the stage, we would break out of the background song and begin with her first song, "When Do I Just Get To Be A Woman". During this song, we would get more comfortable as things went well like they should and the audience warmed up to us. We would smile and make eye-contact with the people in the first 10 or so rows that we could see and they would smile back.

After the first song, Sarah would say a couple of things to the audience to welcome everyone and introduce her next song, "One In The Middle". We kicked off her second of two songs and proceeded to put on a show for the fans.

Sarah would say her thank you's and walk off the stage while we began stage two of our walk-on, walk-off music. As she made it to the back of the stage, the announcer would then say "Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Show Dog recording artist, Rebecca Lynn Howard", and she would come out and walk up to the mic and greet the audience. She gave us the look to signal to start her first song, "Forgive". This was a good power ballad that much of the audience already knew from Video and Radio, as Rebecca has been around for a few years.  The lights would go to a deep blue hue with spotlights hitting Rebecca and then Greg and Steve as they played the solo's.

After "Forgive", Rebecca would then have a few more words with the audience and announce her new song "Everybody's Gotta Love Somebody". Greg would kick off the song with the lead guitar riff as Steve ran the length of the keyboard for the piano slide and we were off into it. This song was a faster, fun rocking song with a great spotlighted guitar solo and some good breaks. Jon and Steve would carry the background vocals as Jerrell and Will laid down the bottom line.

As Rebecca finished her last song, the audience would go into a huge roaring sound that only several thousand people can make. This is much different from the 600 to 2,000 people at our club gigs, although we appreciate every bit of that as well.

Next, we would start off Scotty Emerick's intro music, which we designed especially for him later in the tour.  The announcer would give the "Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Show Dog recording artist, Scotty Emerick" and we would break into "Baby, What's Up With That" as he greeted the audience. This was Scotty's new song and the people in the crowd seemed to like it alot. After his first song, he would talk with the audience and tell them to give a big hand to the ladies who performed prior to him and also that a great show was on the way with Joe Nichols and Toby Keith coming up. His next words were usually "This next song was written by me and my buddy Toby Keith about a mean ex-girlfriend at a Krispy Creme donut shop." We would then kick off "I Can't Take You Anywhere", which the crowd was very familiar with...