Brother Leo – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop artist, Brother Leo, shares one of his stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

It’s 2014 and me and my band had just finished a 3-week European tour which meant it was time to go to Russia for a couple of shows.

The first stop was Sibiria… Which we first of all thought was a bit weird location for a show… I remember we sat on the flight over to Moscow discussing how we would even get there.. does anybody live there.. only info we had was that the tour manager in Russia would meet us up and sort everything out…

We meet the tour manager at the airport, jumped on another flight and landed in some small city somewhere else in Russia that I can’t remember.. the tour manager explained that we were going to a yearly festival in a town somewhere in Siberia.. and to get there we need to go by helicopter for an hour or so… He then took us to some sort of abandoned section of the airport where the helicopter was placed…

We got there and realized we were going to Siberia in this old military helicopter! There were 2 other bands coming as well.. and the look on everyone’s face staring at this… slightly broken, old, a military green helicopter is something I’ll probably never forget… We sat down in this massive space in the back of the helicopter. It was those types of seats that you pull down from the ”walls” with no seat belt… There were literally holes between the sections of the floor.. my base player almost got his little pinky through it…

First, we just sat looking at each other almost like we were wondering if we should be scared when we all just have a massive laugh…

Below us was nothing but forest and then more forest.. it never ended. What and where is this festival.. no one can possibly live here…

When we finally got there some kind of local politician met us up in this little forest grove where we had landed… The politician gave us all one red rose each before we went into these black cars with tinted windows. 20 min drive and still not a single person in sight except for the driver and the politician sitting next to me. When we got closer to the venue to set up and do the soundcheck we finally could see glimpses of a massive spaceship (stage) behind and above the trees. I remember my drummer, who sat in the front seat, turned back and said ”Guys, enjoy, this will only happen once”.

The venue was massive, like some sort of old-school E.T spaceship. 3 hours until show time and the only people we saw were like 30 working at the venue… We went backstage for some beers when suddenly people started to come out through the forest, from seriously everywhere! 2 hours later there were 15 thousand people in the crowd and the energy was mad.

The next day we all got one red rose each again before we jumped on the same helicopter back to Moscow.

Keep up with him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.