Another crazy tour through Brazil! This one was extra crazy since it was put together VERY last minute. I was originally going to Brazil for meetings and to work on the duet, but I figured since I was going to be there I should play some shows for you all! So shows were booked just days before I left. And leaving was no easy task as getting a Visa to work in Brazil takes 4 weeks and we only had like 4 days. So the trip was delayed twice and everything was rearranged multiple times…and once I finally made it there I felt the effects of that! It was insane…

Arms and I left for Brazil via Chicago on the morning of December 11th. We had a long layover in Chicago and then jumped on the 10-hour flight to Sao Paulo. We arrived tired and zoned out on the morning of the 12th at the Sao Paulo airport. It's 6 hours ahead of Los Angeles. We were greeted by fans and the street team….thank you guys for waiting around to see us! I always get a nice welcome when I get to Brazil and it's much appreciated. Although I had just slept and spaced out, sitting squished between two people 35,000 feet in the air for 15 hours of flying…so I'm not quite "picture ready"…lol, but who cares.

There was no time to get to a hotel or rest or any of that since our first show was tonight and it was in a far away city called Porto Seguro. We actually just hung around the Sao Paulo airport until the next flight to Porto Seguro. Of course, they changed the gate 3 times and the flight was delayed…but such is travel in Brazil! We had to get our luggage and then recheck it…and of course the most important thing didn't come with us from Chicago…my guitar. Crap. So I told our new Brazil team that was traveling with us to figure out getting me a guitar for tonight's show and the following shows since we had no idea when and how I was going to get my guitar. Poor guitar…sad and alone in some airport…people probably manhandling it and abusing it.

We finally got on our flight to Porto Seguro and flew 2 hours. My head was spinning by this point as it had been 24 hours + of straight travel. We arrived in Porto Seguro and headed to the hotel for a quick hour of "relaxation". The hotel was all wooden with hammocks hanging in the balcony of each room…it was visually cute and homey but it smelled like poop and nothing in my room worked, including the hot water. Before I knew it, it was time to leave and head out to the gig. Now this is where things got interesting… I was told we needed to bring our luggage down from our rooms already since we won't be staying at this hotel tonight. Huh? We've been here for like an hour! Yes, actually we will be flying all night to the next city. The only way to get to the next city by tomorrow night for our next show was to take 3 different flights through the night and day tomorrow…12 more hours of travel. WHAAA!? So not only have I been up and traveling for 24 hours, but now I'm supposed to go play a show, then head back to the airport at 3AM and travel 12 more hours to the next city and then play another show tomorrow night!? Aiaiaiai.

So we brought our luggage back down to the cars (mind you no elevator in this hotel and we were on the top floor…haha) and headed to "the gig". Now since this tour was set up so insanely last minute, I had no clue where these shows were, what they were about, or our scheduling (obviously!). So every turn had been and continued to be a mystery. We drove for some time and ended up at what appeared to be a dark harbor or lake, littered with old boats. Were we taking a boat!? I guess so! Turned out the show was at a huge outdoor venue/club on some island. So me and Arms and our bodyguards and crew and all of our luggage piled into this bizarre boat and sailed away into the night. It was very, very dark and hard to see what was going on or where we were headed, but about 5 minutes later we pulled up to this island's dock. Everyone piled out and we rolled our luggage and gear through dirt trails for about a ten-minute walk. To my left and right were tanks full of sharks and stingrays…then there would be a bar…a few stands selling odd merchandise….what the $%^*& was this place? Finally we went through a clearing and found ourselves at a huge stage. It actually was quite beautiful. As much as I was glad we didn't have to walk anymore, within a minute of standing still in the crazy heat and humidity I felt the bugs starting to bite. Yes, bugs everywhere…. EVERYWHERE. We were shown our "dressing room" behind the stage which was a little room with very high ceilings, no air-conditioning and LOTS of god damn bugs…oh and lizards and spiders. Do these mosquitoes biting us have yellow fever? Malaria? No one knows. Hopefully not! Arms and I asked for bug spray, but by the time we got it, it really didn't matter.

We had to wait to sound-check for the stage to become ready, for me to be delivered a guitar (that didn't suck), and for batteries. Once everything came we hit the stage and sound-checked. It was hot, hot, hot and sticky and buggy, but the scenery was awesome…full moon, strange island, big stage, and pretty lights. Now sound-check should be easy when all you have are two acoustic guitars and two vocals…so easy in fact that I didn't bring my own sound guy, thinking any simple idiot can figure out getting that working and in our monitors and out in the house speakers. But noooo, no no no…this was the first of many sound checks to come that were unreal long, stupid and frustrating. Arms and I really wanted to kill ourselves after about an hour and just agreed to not really be able to hear one another and let it be what it was going to be. I mean the odds that anything we had adjusted during sound check would even be the same when we hit the stage at 1AM were very, very slim.

After sound-check I was told that we had to do the 10 minute walk back to the boat, all pile back in the boat, sail back to that other dock we came from, get back in the cars and drive to some restaurant place where a bunch of press were waiting to do a press junket with us. Aaaahhhhh. I was starving and food was supposedly going to be there, so we made our way.

About 45 minutes later we found ourselves pulling into what appeared to be an abandoned gated estate or something. It was all dirt road and odd colored lights with fancy shaped white tarps pulled tight, tied from the ground to the trees. There was a doghouse in one area that also served as like a portal to another gated estate…WTF? Arms and I joked that it was the entrance to John Malkovich's brain:) We headed through some courtyard to a building in the back which seemed to maybe have life in it. We passed a naked dude wearing nothing but a leopard skirt, just standing there. Very strange! Low and behold there was indeed a restaurant with a dance floor and a bunch of people…a couple transvestites too, dancing away. We ate a bunch of small strange offerings, all the restaurant had. And then I did the press junket there. I found out that I was the first international artist to ever come to Porto Seguro….yikes! But cool. After we were done it was back in the car, then back to the boat, then back to the island for show time.

The crowd was big and we were ready to go on. A big Brazilian conga type band played before us, so I was a little weary about getting on stage with our acoustic guitars and playing an hour acoustic set, but that's what we did. Of course the sound was horrible and the mics kept feeding back and Arms and I couldn't hear each other or ourselves, but the crowd made the show a lot of fun. I would have loved to sign for people afterwards but he had to rush to get all our baggage and gear back on the boat, then in the car, then to the airport for our first of many flights.

We barely made our 3AM flight, they were literally holding the plane for us. The rest was a blur as we traveled all through the night. First a 2-hour flight, which was split up with a landing somewhere and a layover in the plane. Then at around 5AM we were in some other city's airport with a 4-hour layover. I remember sleeping on chairs and eating something disgusting…my brain was fried. Arms was getting sick, already, we hadn't slept in days. After the first layover was another hour flight to some other city, where we had a 3-hour layover. Then we got on another plane and flew 2 hours to another city, I think it was actually Belo Horizonte. We waited in that airport for hours then got on one more flight to Palmas…our final destination. We arrived at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, completely destroyed. Arms headed straight to a hotel where he took a nap for a little bit since he was really feeling ill, but I had to go straight to a radio station where I talked and performed acoustically. It's all such a blur at this point. Then I went to sound-check at the venue and Arms met us there.

The place was like a huge airplane hanger outdoors. This show was set up very last minute so they weren't expecting too many people. Definitely not as much as the night before. After another painfully long and stupid sound-check, we gave up and went to go eat dinner.

The only place that was open at that time (12AM) was some strange Chucky Cheeses type place called Karnivalle. It had indoor playgrounds and video games and a movie theater and a huge cafeteria mess hall type room where they were serving food. They sat us in a table in the middle of the big room where we were surrounded by young kids. It became one of those uncomfortable fish bowl experiences where you're trying to eat and all these people are taking pictures of you and pointing and coming up and trying to meet you. I would have normally been happy to meet people and take pictures but at this point I was completely fucked up. Our bodyguards held them off until we finished eating and then I took a few pictures with the owner and his daughters, and then other people, and then everyone. We had to get out of there to get back to the venue and perform at 1:30AM. We were going on 3 days of pretty much no sleep other than an hour here and there on planes or on airport floors…I had yet to even feel a bed.

The show was really fun and the crowd was awesome. They sang along to every song. It's a whole different experience sitting there and performing these songs acoustically, it's much more intimate and I can enjoy it more since I'm not running around and killing myself as much. At one point in the show some crazy guy jumped on stage and screamed some crap in Portuguese into Arms' mic. Arms said he thought he was coming up to kill him…haha. After the show at around 2:45am, we stayed for 2 hours to sign all the CD's we had sold and meet everyone. Really great fans at this show, thank you guys:) We had this awesome interpreter while we were in Palmas named Vinnie, he rocked. And his band opened for us and they rocked too! Thanks Vinnie!

We finally got out of there at around 5am and headed back to the hotel. I got in bed at 6AM and fell asleep before I could even get undressed. Man, it felt good to sleep in a bed. We had to leave the hotel though at noon the next day to fly to Sao Paulo, so the sleep was bitter sweet.

Arms was feeling much better after a solid 6 hours or so of sleep. In fact he was pretty much totally healthy again which was great…I was worried about that. It took two plane flights with a layover to get from Palmas to Sao Paulo…we didn't arrive until late at night. And the car ride from the Sao Paulo airport to our hotel took 2 hours through traffic…those 2 hours in that car felt longer than anything I had done yet for some reason, probably cause I hadn't eaten anything and was starving.

We ate at some Brazilian BBQ place across the street from the hotel while my peeps checked us all in. I couldn't even eat I was that hungry and screwed up. Luckily tonight there was no show and I could get a long sleep. And that's what I did.

The following day I had a bunch of meetings and also a little time to go shopping. I bought some killer shoes at Diesel. While I was there I remembered this glass staircase they had leading up to the second floor. I tripped down those stairs like 6 years ago when I was here on tour! I even remember writing about it in a tour diary. Ah yes, fond memories of being a klutz.

We went to dinner that night with this really cool businessman dude named Eddie and his buddy Fernando, who I learned was the most famous Brazilian Olympic Swimmer ever. The restaurant they took us too was amazing and having not really eaten much of anything yet, especially anything GOOD, this meal left a pleasant mark in my brain. And these dudes were a lot of fun. The following morning, early, it was off to Florianopolis for another show, so we said goodbye and went to sleep.

Ah, Florianopolis…that lovely place where I was held hostage once upon a time…I must say I was a bit concerned about going back. But I'm glad I did cause I got to see the city during the day and in a different light, and it's beautiful. On the second flight to get there I was awoken by everyone on the plane looking at me, including the stewardesses…all pointing and talking. I had my in-ear headphones in and was pretty much comatose so I had no clue what was going on at first. But then it struck me…I was the lucky winner on the plane, and I had won a fruit cake! Yaaaayyyy….a fruit cake….yaaayyyy…..back to sleep.

I got off the plane, fruitcake in hand (had to take it with me, didn't want to be rude) and we all made our way out of the airport. I still hadn't gotten my lost guitar back and had been worrying about it as it is my favorite, favorite guitar and very valuable. And I really wasn't having a good time playing the stand in guitar….it wasn't that it was crap, it just wasn't MY guitar, and it needed to be set up by a professional very badly. Anyway, when we arrived in Florianopolis, I was told that my guitar had made it to Sao Paulo and that we would get it tomorrow when we arrived back there! Yay!

So we headed to our hotel in Florianopolis, which was nice. Time to take a shower and change. And then it was off to the venue for sound check. The venue was by far the smallest place I've ever played in Brazil, more like a restaurant than a venue. But it was really pretty and decorated beautifully. And the dressing room was by far the nicest I've had in Brazil, and with the best food and drinks. The people who worked there were very accommodating. This show was booked super last minute and it had been raining 4 months straight around these parts, flooding and people dying, so they weren't expecting many people to show at all. Crazy. Why are we here?

Sound-check went OK, certainly far less painful than the last two. We had some time to go eat dinner, so we had our driver take us to a Mexican restaurant. They were closed but opened especially for us, which was really nice of them. Sadly the food sucked big time…but it was food, and we ate it.

When we got back to the venue/restaurant to play the show there were maybe 50 people in there tops! Talk about intimate! By far the smallest crowd I've ever played for in Brazil, and one of the smallest in a long time. But it didn't matter, we played like we always do and the 50 or so fans that were there were totally awesome and made it feel great. I got to meet a bunch of them backstage afterwards to sign CD's. We got back to our hotel at around 4:30AM…it was hard to get to sleep knowing I had to wake up in three hours to leave for the airport.

We flew back to Sao Paulo early in the morning. When we arrived at the Sao Paulo airport we had to find a certain person that worked for the airline who was holding my guitar. We finally found them and low and behold…I was taken back into a dark room, and there was my sweet, sweet guitar! Yay. We went straight to Globo TV from the airport to do pre taping of a popular late night show called "Altas Horas". It's supposed to air the first week of February. I crashed in the dressing room waiting for sound check. There was only one tiny couch so Arms and I took turns sleeping a bit. They had a cafeteria so we grabbed some food but my stomach and brain was so confused by this point between the 6 hour time change, the massive lack of sleep and the insane schedule. We did a little sound check in the studio…typical for Brazil TV this was "in the round" with 360degree bleacher type seating, full of mostly young girls. They originally wanted us to play to track and have some random drummer and bass player pretend to play with us, but I wasn't interested in doing that…I wanted to just play acoustic with Arms since that is what we had been doing and it's uh, real. Shortly after sound-check the taping began. They brought us out of the studio for a little while and then back in once the show started. The plan was to talk a bit, play a song, talk some more, play a song, sit around while other guests come on the show, play a song, etc. We ended up playing 3 songs acoustically over the course of an hour. Not being able to speak Portuguese is tough when you are trying to understand what everyone is talking about, but luckily our awesome translator/tour manager/assistant extraordinaire named Michele, who was with us throughout the whole tour, translated every word that was being spoken. This one sex specialist came on the show and took questions from the kids in the audience. It was unreal funny. This one little dude asked if it's a problem that his penis is only 10cm long…lol! The host of the show was a really nice guy and we talked a bunch throughout. There was this other band that played a couple songs as well…I forget their name…but one song was so catchy and it ended up being stuck in my head for days…and I would sing it over and over and make everyone crazy. The words were something like "Tchau, we have to go now, we have to go now, Tchau, Tchau". Aaaahhhh!!! We went to a hotel and checked in after the Globo TV. This was my first night to really sleep as long as I needed. I slept 13 hours straight.

The next day we all piled in a huge van and drove 4 hours to the next show's city called Araraquara. We went straight to do radio and winner meet and greets at some station there. There was a shit load of people outside and throughout the building waiting to see us. It was a lot of fun. These two awesome girls who I had met last time I was in Brazil made Arms and I each a huge poster collage of our live performance pictures. Thanks guys! After radio we headed to the venue.

I was feeling good about tonight's show, although it was booked just a week or so before, the locals had done a fair amount of press and radio to promote it and the venue seemed really cool. Sound-check was actually decent and the equipment there was really good. We didn't have too much time afterwards to go eat dinner out, so we ended up going back to the hotel and ordering room service while we got ready for the show.

When we got back to the venue I saw a massive line outside, a good sign! The dressing room at this place was really sweet, even had this huge private outdoor courtyard type setting. And this was one of the first places to have the mint tea and honey I always ask for but never get…thank you! Fans were screaming for us over the wall of the outside portion of the dressing room. We showed our affection by throwing them some tasty fruit:) A local rock band was opening for us and I could hear them through the walls…they were pretty good. Before they went on they asked my people if I would perform Adrienne with them after my set…cause I guess they were going to perform after we did as well as before. I said yes of course, that would be fun!

Arms and I took the stage at around 1am. I was floored by how many people were there…thousands. This was by far the biggest acoustic show audience I can remember ever playing for. The show was insane, everyone sang every word, the energy in this place was magical, it was really just fucking amazing…and I had my guitar back which made it even better:) I had to get up in between songs and go to the edge of the stage to reach out and touch everyone, it was too hard to just sit there removed like that for an hour, stuck behind my guitar, sitting on a chair. That's the only bummer about acoustic shows is that I don't get to physically interact with the audience as much, but I do feel more emotionally connected to them. I made this show the best of both worlds for myself. After we finished the show and left the stage, that local rock band came back on. And so did I. They played a pretty damn good version of Adrienne and I ran around with the wireless mic, no guitar in hand, and did my normal thing. It was a perfect ending to a perfect show. But we were far from done with the night, even though it was 2:30AM already.

Hundreds and hundreds of people had bought CD's, and true to my word as always, we sat there and signed every single one of them. It took a long frigging time, but was so rewarding. I got to see all the Street Team peeps, you guys rock, thank you thank you thank you for everything! It was really nice to see all your familiar faces and talk to you a bit. I think we got done at around 5AM…it would have been nice to have been able to slip into a bed and sleep at that point, but it was back in the bus for us and back on the road for the 4 hour drive to Sao Paulo. Nuts. When we got to our hotel in Sao Paulo I went to sleep and pretty much slept the rest of the day…I'm pretty sure I woke up once to eat something, or at least I dreamed I did. We had to wake up super early the next day for a flight to the final city's show, so I just kept on sleeping.

Someone royally fucked up the timing of the drive to the airport the next morning, cause our scheduled departure from the hotel did not leave nearly enough time to get there for our flight. It ended up taking us over an hour to get there and our flight had long since departed. The only other flight to Vila Velha was leaving 5 hours later from some other airport. So we drove to some other airport and waited around for the flight. And that flight actually took us to Rio, not Vila Velha. So once we got to Rio we had to get all our luggage and drive to another airport and then fly out of there to get to Vila Velha. SERIOUSLY!??!? Evil, just evil. I mean, why…wwwwhhhhyyyyy?!? Painful. If there is one selfish thing I could have in this world it would be a fucking private plane, I mean…the amount of torture it would take away could actually fuel the thing. Anyway, we traveled all god damn day to make it to the show in time. When we finally arrived in Vila Velha it was 7PM…we were supposed to have gotten in at like 10AM and done press all day to promote the show…oh well. We checked into our hotel and then drove straight to the gig, which was an hour away to sound-check. This place was MASSIVE. A giant outdoor shed that could probably hold like 20,000 people. And the stage was like 50 feet high…what's with that? It was so high that people down below could barely see us when we were sitting on the stage playing. Dumb. The place was pretty cool otherwise though. Except the dressing room was like a mosquito nest and they didn't have anything to drink or eat for us. We had been traveling all day and had barely eaten or drank anything, so we were freaking out. But we had to sound-check before we could get out of there and find something to eat.

This sound-check was the most frustrating horrible experience I can remember since I started in this business 12 years ago. Every moron on that stage had no idea what they were doing. They couldn't even figure out how to turn shit on, let alone change the volume or get anything to sound good…on stage or in the house. After an hour and a half we got up and gave up and told everyone to kiss our ass. At that point all we could do was hope that our shit would at least be turned on for the audience to hear when we took the stage later.

We were told there was nothing anywhere near by the venue to eat, that it was best to drive the hour back to our hotel and eat there. It made no sense to drive back, but we had to eat and get ready for the show …so that's what we did. I think I had 20 minutes at the hotel once we got there to order something to eat, pray it came in time, eat it, shower and change. We drove the hour BACK to the venue and got there just in time to go on stage…the very, very high stage. We almost didn't make it back cause the long dirt road to get to the venue had become a swampy muddy mess and our car's tires were just spinning in place…we got stuck twice. We were really in the middle of nowhere…I can't even explain it, just very, very creepy and lost and dark and strange.

There were plenty of people there, but far, FAR from the amount that would have to be to make the place look anywhere close to full since it was huge. But all the fans that were there, and the trusty Street Team group, made the show as fun as it could be. On stage it was rough….our monitors were just OFF…I guess that was the sound idiot's solution to their not knowing what they were doing, just turn them off and we won't have a problem! At least we were coming through the speakers in the audience! But trying to sing and play and hear Arms' playing is impossible WHEN YOU CAN'T HEAR IT. I relied on listening to a delayed echo of my voice bouncing back through the massive venue's metal surroundings to keep me in tune, or close to. Plenty of people bought CD's, so we did our CD signing and meeting thing afterwards. It was our last show for this mini tour, so we soaked up the good vibes at the signing and had a lot of fun. All the security and staff at the venue wanted CD's and pictures and stuff to, which we normally don't do, but I felt bad since this show had been booked so last minute and we missed our day of press and the turnout wasn't that great. Hopefully we can come back sometime in the future and do it justice. We finished at 4:30AM and made that hour drive back to the hotel, one more time. Sleeeeeep.

The next day we flew to Rio where we would be spending the last couple days of our trip, for meetings, press, and most importantly working with Marjorie in the studio on our upcoming duet single. We arrived in Rio, ate some tasty food at a restaurant I can't remember the name of, and went to sleep.

I found out the next day that Marjorie had to leave town to do some other work, so it would not be possible for us to do anything. Damn. That was the original reason I came here! Now I will have to come back in February or earlier to do the work. Oh well, I do love Brazil and don't mind coming back at all. So there we were, at a beautiful hotel overlooking the ocean in one of the most beautiful cities in the world…with two days of really not much to have to do. Arms immediately had an idea. I didn't do it with him cause I don't want to die, but Arms got his wish and hang-glided from the top of a huge mountain cliff, over the city of Rio and finally landing on the beach. It was crazy to see. He had a smile from ear to ear! You can see a couple of the pics from it on his Myspace page, along with some pics of this tour. You can also see lots of pictures from the fans and press at alexmaxband.com.

After hang-gliding we went to the beach since I had to do some TV interview there. The interview was fun, we yapped and ate acai and walked on the beach. I have no clue what channel or who it was for, I forget….but you'll see me in shorts on the beach! That's rare. On our way back to find Arms, who had been sunbathing in another spot, I saw some paparazzi taking my picture and following us….yikes, not in the shorts! Haha. I ended up pretty much falling asleep on the beach for a little while, the weather was perfect and the surroundings were beautiful. And there were dudes who would bring you towels and chairs and tasty beverages.

I had a couple meetings, we had some food, and then it was time to head back home to the US already. I knew getting home was going to be tough, seeing that it was now the night before Christmas Eve that we were leaving Brazil and the weather all over the US was a mess. Our flights got all screwed up and instead of flying through Chicago as we planned, we were changed to fly through Washington DC. The only bummer was that there was no flight available from Washington DC back home, so I had to be waitlisted once I arrived in Washington DC and ended up spending 8 hours at the airport. Luckily I finally made it on a flight and got home Christmas Eve night. Phew.

So, that's that…another insane Brazilian rollercoaster ride! I want to apologize to the fans for the confusion surrounding dates and times and everything regarding the tour, it was completely out of my hands and clearly designed by mad men at the last minute. I think I'll be coming back next month or maybe sooner to do work and more meetings, not shows. I believe the next full band tour through Brazil will be later in the year, once the album is out (yay!) and the first single is playing all over the radio.

I want you fans to know the power you have…even in the midst of no sleep, an insane schedule, everything being a mess, people being dumb, starving, thirsty, tired, sick, insane…there is still a light that made it all worth while, and it's not money, cause there is very little of that to be made these days…it is you all, you are the light that shines bright enough to warm even the coldest heart on the darkest days…thank you:) All the love…