IMG Live Tour Part 1

Alright, so here's the lovely recap of touring for the past three weeks.

At the beginning of July I flew out from LA to Norcross, Ga for another lovely two week training session with the folks at IMG Live. Celebrities old and new were there such as Bryan Icenhower, Josh Pate, and Ryan Smith. Also my ol' buddy Matt was there too.

This made for a lovely time and I got to meet tons of new people which is always a perk when they have a good vibe about them.

Training was usual with lots of early mornings and end of day sessions.

My team for the AT&T West Coast looked to be pretty awesome. I have two people, both emcees, Araceli and Rod to work with on tour. Both have been super helpful from the get go and I can only imagine it will continue that way for the rest of the tour.

However I didn't get to spend too much 'team building' time with them during the work days as they divided the Emcee's and the Tour Managers up so that each could attend to their job to prepare for the tour.

My days were spent with Matt, Charlie, Juan, and Asst TM's Adrian & Cliff. Oh! such is the life of Mary B to always be working with men. But we had a good time getting things done, even though sometimes it took a little longer then need be, I think we really got to accomplishing everything 3 days before we left! haha. I suppose though it was good to spend time with other people since there seems to be a better outlet of communication between the other TM's and myself on this tour then any other tour I've experienced. All tours roll differently though.

After the two weeks of training, we headed out to our first event in Columbus. On the way Araceli and I experienced a minor problem with the electrical wire that runs from the trailer to the car to power the lights. We stopped at a walmart and figured out that the plug to the trailer must have come out and was scraping on the road. We then purchased an extension wire and a new cable to fix the problem. Luckily a kinda couple came over and knew exactly what to do so we were saved by 11pm! In these instances I'm pretty happy to have problems happen, mainly cuz they get solved in the end, but also so if it ever happens again, I can solve the problem.

When we arrived for our event in Columbus, I couldn't have asked for anything smoother & it was actually the first time I was able to see Araceli and Rod's presentation which was awesome. They have this sassy routine down that stands out from the usual cookie cutter presentations which can come off as fake. It's got charm for sure.

Kalamazoo had the same impact and no problems to it. After this event we said goodbye to Rod for the weekend and me and Araceli headed up to Chicago for a weekend of well-mannered frivolaty.

Araceli's friend, Jenn, let us keep our trailer by her house and she joined us in the city, along with our personal tour guide Noel. We went to eat at Lasalle, Rockit Bar, Aja, and the Beachstro. We took in sightseeing on a sunset tour in a boat (which was free) and we went on a bike ride along the water after getting a little sloshed at breakfast.

Araceli and I also went to Lush in Chicago. i got to see some of the new products they put out, like a choclate soap, sugar scrubs, lip balm, and my ULTIMATE FAV, a new face mask with bananas in it! We also went over to MAC and we both got hooked up with some awesome makeup, curtosey of Araceli.

I'd say overall the weekend in Chicago was great. There was a little confusion with boxes getting delivered from IMG Live to our hotel. Everyone in the hotel said there was no record of boxes being delivered. The man who the Transgroup shipping company said signed for the boxes said he didn't. It was a huge mess, luckily we found the 20 boxes in a conference room and the hotel allowed us to keep our trailer behind their grounds overnight for ultimate safety.....only bad this was this happened the next day AGAIN! when I had a package delivered to the hotel. They claimed they didn't have it and no one signed for it, then I went back behind the counter and found it. I don't like being a jerk to people, but after the same thing happening twice I had to tell the manager to get on top of this cuz it was the second instance it happened to my stuff. Sheesh!

Anyways, we drove to Rock Island and are staying in a lovely Hampton Inn by some pretty awesome bars and a cinema that's walking distance from my hotel room. I'm hoping to take adavantage of some of this, but fear that the days been spent. However I will be having dinner with a DIRECTV client and my team tonight, so that should be awesome all the same.

Tomorrow is our event in Rock Island, we're going to kill it like we always do. Then it's on for a night drive towards San Jose, CA. Hopefully we'll make it there by Aug 1st so I can rent a car and drive down to see Matt before his team leaves for Idaho, but most importantly so I can go catch NO DOUBT! with Alexis.

Gotta love touring...

Other news is Courtenay Green's booking seems to be going well. there was a little hiccup a few weeks ago since my time was dedicated to DTV, but now things have settled and I'm focusing on her more.

I'm also looking forward to getting back to Center Staging and see the lovely family there. I should have some catch up work to do for Kerry for sure. Also I'm hoping i can work with Barry on my vocals and I can get this website up and running as well as print some business cards.

Alright well off to do some more work for IMG Live.