A Tour Tale
Leather seats!
I’d been working tours for a bunch of years by the time I signed on as stage manager to go to Europe with the Two Feet crew in 2018.
I quickly learned that Two Feet—Bill—leaving the airport without his luggage was pretty common. The time that most vibrantly sticks out in my mind as the quintessential "Bill forgot his luggage again" story is when he did so in Vienna.
Our Poland show got canceled and we found ourselves in Austria with a couple of days off. Everyone was eager to get to the hotel, drop off luggage and go explore the city. Bill, who had gone to his hotel to crash, texted Huff, our keyboard player and one of the producers, that he’d left one of his bags at the airport. So we hopped on a train, retrieved his bag, and headed to Bill’s hotel, which was super fancy.
Huff and I took the only elevator I have ever been in with leather seats up to the top floor. Bill let us in, more excited to show us his huge suite than he was to receive his bag. The place had multiple bathrooms, a living room, and a "Chinoiserie Room," –a small oval shaped pass-through from the entry hall to the living room, decorated with beautiful eastern art pieces and vases.
Bill said he’d had a drink or two, and taken his meds, and they were going to kick in so we had to get the fuck out of there before things got weird. But just as I began to say ok, see you in the morning, Bill walked up to one of the pieces of art on the wall and innocently asked if we thought the frame was glass or plastic. Before Huff finished saying "probably glass" Bill punched the frame really hard, recoiling to grab his wrist and bend over in pain. The frame remained unscathed. We hustled for the door.
Going to get weird in here
In the Chinoiserie Room Bill yelled "Hey guys! glass or plastic?!" Huff said " Bill, stop." Bill took a beat, and then punched the frame. Same result as before.
At this point, I was more concerned Bill was going to fuck up his picking hand, and subsequently the rest of the tour, than I was for the damage he was causing. At the next frame, grinning, he asked "Glass or Plastic?" I lunged at him to try to prevent him punching it, but this time, he jammed his elbow directly into the center of the frame, shattering the glass.
Blood was now pouring out of Bill's arm. We rushed him into one of the bathrooms and wrapped the wound in a towel. As we tried to get a handle on the situation, there was a knock at the door. Huff looked at me and said "Go hide that picture." I grabbed the broken frame off the wall as Huff went to answer the door.
I spotted a small side table with a drawer. I opened it and discovered another fucking broken picture frame! Bill had obviously been playing glass or plastic before we arrived. No sooner did I close the drawer than Huff appeared with a waiter who was rolling in a silver platter on a cart, the kind you see in cartoons, cloche and everything.
When he pulled the top off there was a plain grilled cheese sandwich and two sausages. Nothing else. The guy left immediately. Bill emerged from the bathroom, white bath towel soaked in blood, grabbed half of the grilled cheese and started eating it as if nothing happened. He offered to hand feed us each a bite of the sausage, which we accepted. Then he abruptly decided it was time for us to leave. Before things got weird.
Builder, former Two Feet stage manager