We had a total of 3 days off in Sao Paulo which also gave us the chance to schedule a great recording session at C4 Estudios on Tuesday night where we recorded live sessions of the band playing the classic Rainbow track Death Alley Driver and Deep Purple’s King of Dreams. The sessions were also filmed for a future web broadcast, to document the entire process of each instrument being recorded and played etc... On Wednesday we had a press conference at Souza Lima Music School in Jardins. Afterwards I spent the early evening with Marta and Joe shopping around Jardims and having a great dinner, then after a few drinks (and a lot of rain!!) we went back to Souza Lima and presented a musician’s clinic to 75 attendees. The band performed King of Dreams, Jealous Lover, Divided and Burn (I think there may have been one more song at that clinic).
The next day we drove a few hours to Jundiai to perform. After the show in Jundiai, we left a few hours later for a long drive to Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais. We arrived just enough time to eat a great meal and get cleaned up and relax with some drinks before our show started. This show was one of the best of the tour. The audience was awesome, the club was awesome, the sound, everything was great, really a perfect gig. All the players were very much giving their all and the audience gave their all back to us. After the show I must have heard “Juiz de Fora rocks”at least 100 times during the rest of the tour!
We drove back to Sao Paulo very early in the morning and arrived around 1:00 and checked back into our same hotel rooms. That was nice the entire staff already knew us and had our laundry cleaned and messages waiting for us, etc. The restaurant there had a great pasta with bolognese sauce that Joe and I were enjoying every night and a great place to eat falafel for lunch down the street and the owner was a huge Rainbow and Deep Purple fan! So we slept pretty much all day and woke up to sound check in the early evening at Blackmore Bar in Moema. In the later evening before we went to Blackmore’s for our gig, we all had a cocktail reception in my hotel room to toast Joe’s for his birthday. He was so happy, we all had an hour to celebrate before we went to the venue. Once we arrived there I met with drummer Paulo Zinner and guitarist Fernando Pui and we arrranged a jam for after our set and invite them up for jam to celebrate Paulo and Joe’s birthday. Our show in Sao Paulo went very well, the band seemed to build a great momentum where each night we sound better, tighter and like we had been together for years. We left the stage it was about 4:00 am, Then the jam with Joe, Paulo and Fernando started. It was awesome, the songs were Black Night, Long Live Rock n Roll, Hey Joe and a blues shuffle in G that lasted for 55 minutes. Joe also played lead guitar trading riffs with Fernando. Very old school and reminiscent of what I remember seeing Joe do with Ritche Blackmore in Deep Purple. The jam ended at about 5:00 am.
We had a show in Novo Horizonte in the north of Sao Paulo state the next day. So we drove up rather late and and arrived a few hours prior to our performance. That show was also fantastic a nice outdoor venue with good sound and video! There was a great highly enthusiastic audience and we played a very long set as well.
The next day we drove to Ribeirao Preto and Joe, my wife Marta and I caught a plane to Rio and the rest of the production headed to Porto Alegre. We had 3 days off so Joe wanted to visit friends in Rio and celebrate his birthday there. We met up with Maila, Davis Ranay for a great night of drinks at an Irish pub in Copacabana and ended up singing Karaoke until the early hours of the morning, The next night we spent with Maila, Rodrigo Scelza, Davis Ranay and the boys from Brazil (Joe’s backing band from his 2008 Brazil tour) for a party that Rodrigo threw for Joe at the Calabouca club, it was such a great night, we got to see the band play a full set of Rainbow, JLT, Whitesnake and a few other songs, they are a great band. At the end of the set, Joe and I were asked to sit in and jam on a few Rainbow songs as well. We had a great time in the VIP area and later we drank an entire bottle of cachaca... That was not such a great idea!! But our time in Rio was nice for a rest and great for Joe to celebrate with his friends in the city he loves so much!
We flew to Porto Alegre the next day and met up with our band mates for our show there that night. We played in an very nice theatre there. Rodrigo and Davis also came from Rio and we invited Davis to play guitar on Stone Cold that night. That show rocked, we shot a lot of good footage there and put it in the tour clip that is on our JLT Brasil tour site at www.jltbrasil2009.com.
The final show we performed was in Florianopolis. We did a clinic to 75 highly enthusiastic fans in the afternoon and that night we played what was probably the best show of the tour. We stayed up very late and as always Joe signed autographs to a lot of his fans.
The next night we had a very nice end of tour party at Chopp do Gus in Floripa with all the friends we made there, the band Fred Lee and their manager Andre who was the promoter with Baba Jr (bassist of Fred Lee) of our show and the clinic. |
