Horsens, Denmark
We flew from Copenhagen to Billund, roughly an hour's drive from Horsens. This part of Denmark is still very rural, farm land rubbing shoulders with industry. The big wow of the day was to encounter the world headquarters and manufacturing facility of LEGO just outside the airport in Billund. Of course there was a LEGOLAND nearby but it was really the factory that I wanted to take a tour of. With three kids, we've invested thousands of dollars in those sharp little red, blue and yellow suckers and there it was, so close I could almost smell the liquid styrene. But no, we had a drive and a gig ahead of us, models of professionalism, it was duty first and to hell with pleasure. A beautiful day, blue skies and big white clouds, clear as a bell and very picturesque as we made our way to Horsens.
Horsens is a town of about 60,000 that hosts a popular football team and a brand new performance facility. It's a forward thinking community that invests in bringing concerts and cultural events to it. It's also home to a number of museums of which I can tell you nothing. Anyway, it seems to be paying off for them in terms of tourism and prestige. Prior to that its greatest claim to fame was the prison.
On the subject of incarceration, we held about 4,000 fans captive for a couple of hours but nobody seemed to mind, they actually paid to get in and were quite happy to stay on. Out of 60,000 that's a very high percentage of the city's population that turned out for what was a well played show, with the exception of technical errors on my part and an electric guitar that was handed to me with one string tuned a half step out, creating the most hideous noise ever heard round these parts. So bad in fact, that it was reported many of the farm beasts in the surrounding area were seen behaving in an agitated manner precisely at that moment. An investigation is being launched.
We drove back to Billund where the Legacy was purring away on the airstrip and flew to London for a couple of days off before a week of dates in the British Isles. I'll resume these notes then.
So long,
Richard