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Post by celticbear on Jan 27, 2014 0:00:13 GMT -5
Wow! That was a close one! Glad everything turned out okay! Loved Bruce and Jim's reaction to what CT is all about!
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Post by barbt on Feb 4, 2014 23:31:50 GMT -5
Now that the immediate crisis was over, suddenly there was a lot of bustle around the dressing room as people started to grab quick showers and change out of their kilt sets. Keith was slowly settling down as the ice numbed the pain in his wrist, and Sharon had ducked out of the room again. Still, every few minutes someone would swing by the couch to check on Keith and express their thanks to Jim and Bruce, who were getting embarrassed by all the attention - after all, they'd only been doing their jobs. It often seemed like there were 10 or 12 men in the room instead of 6, especially when someone would start something - try to grab off the towel someone was wearing to the shower, hiding clothes and shoes or mixing them up. At one point Keith looked up as Colm got up, leaving his phone on the counter, and then sighed, saying, "Crap, a perfect opportunity wasted." "For what?" Jim said, grinning as he had recognized a fellow prankster in Keith. "Hijack Colm's Twitter account," Keith said, grinning. "He still hasn't learned to make sure he's signed out before he leaves his phone laying around. But I'm not quite up to typing left-handed yet, and he'll be back to get it - see, here he comes now. Ya gotta be quick with this crew." Jim and Bruce looked at each other. "Good thing we didn't have Facebook and Twitter when we were in college, right?" Bruce said, laughing. "Yeah, " Jim agreed. "We got into enough trouble as it was. Remember the time we moved the dorm room into the Student Services office?" They both started laughing. "You did what?" Keith said with a huge grin, leaning forward to hear this story. "We were friends with the head of Student Services," said Bruce. "So one weekend we emptied his office and moved Jim's entire dorm room into it - bunks and all." "I love it," Keith said. "That takes a master prankster, that does. You'd fit right in around here. Not that we have that much stuff to move around." "There was a whole crew of us once," Jim said. "We're still all pretty much in touch, but it's been years since all of us have actually gotten together. I think we might have to find a way to fix that." "Not to change the subject," Keith said, "but I've got to get a move on. I need to get that brace back on and get out to the buses; the fans'll be waiting." "Waiting at your buses?" Bruce said, surprised, as they helped Keith wrap up his wrist and get the brace back on. "Are they allowed? "Technically, no," said Keith. "But they do anyway, and we always go out and talk to them and let them get pictures and autographs and stuff. Sharon's not too keen on it, but the fans love it, and most of the time we do, too. Every once in a while it gets a little awkward, but it's pretty rare." Keith was gathering up his clothes as he spoke, and grabbed Ryan as he passed by. "Give me a hand, will you, Ry?" he said, and then turned back to Bruce and Jim. "Wait for me, yeah?" "Sure," they both said, and settled down on the vacated couch. "This has got to be the weirdest touring operation I've ever seen," said Bruce. "Yeah," Jim agreed. "Doesn't seem to be much of a divide between performer and fan. It seems like they'd have no privacy at all." George was passing by at that moment, and stopped. "We have as much as we want to have, pretty much, " he said. "None in here amongst ourselves, obviously. But it's up to us how much we want to share with the fans, some of us share more than others. Ryan's probably the most open, but I'm pretty close behind. Most of the fans could pick out my wife and daughter walking along the street even if I'm not with them, and Keith's sister Rebecca as well. But I don't know that anybody would recognize Ryan's brother and sister, or Emmet's family, either." Jim looked up at him. "Doesn't that bother you?" he said, puzzled. "No, to be honest it's one of my favorite things about this gig," George grinned. "We've got the best fans in the world, they support us all the way. Spread the word when we're doing solo shows and about solo albums we have out. See that pile of stuff over there?" He pointed to a corner of the dressing room, where a stack of bags and boxes looked like Christmas had come early. "That's all from fans. They know what we like and they're always giving us stuff. And you heard Ryan, talking about his accident; the fans are part of what pulled him through that so fast." "I still don't get it," Jim said. "I'm not surprised," said George. "It took us a while to figure it out as well, especially the gifts. Took a while to wrap our heads around that." He turned his head as Sharon called him from the door. "I'll be right back, lads," he said. Bruce and Jim looked at each other, but didn't have much chance to say anything before Keith came back with Ryan in tow. Ryan perched himself on the arm of the sofa while Keith was getting all of his things packed up. He looked down at Bruce and Jim seriously. "Thank you so much for helping us out the other day," he said. "It's our job," Bruce started to say, but Ryan cut him off. "It is, but you guys don't do it as a job. You do it because you care, and you like helping people. And you make a real effort to make things easier for everyone. I might have been having trouble that day, but I could see that clearly." He grinned. "I understand the crew that helped me after I fell was pretty much the same, but you expect that when you live in a very small town like I do. Everybody on the crew either knew me or my family, of course they're going to be supportive as well as doing their jobs. You guys don't know who we are, or anything about us, but you came in and slid right into how we were dealing with things rather than trying to make us do it your way. That helped ease everybody's nerves right away." He didn't get a chance to say anything else, as Sharon opened the door and George came through carrying a big cake and with the whole band trailing behind him, singing "For They are Jolly Good Fellows" at the top of their lungs. It was probably one of the times that Bruce and Jim were the most embarrassed they'd ever been, but they couldn't help enjoying feeling appreciated either. It seemed only a few moments before most of the cake was gone, and the guys were headed out to see the fans. Keith grabbed a handful of pens and went right along with them. Sharon grabbed his shirt and said, "Keith, you really shouldn't..." He gave her an cheeky grin and said, "But I'm going to anyway, Momma Sharon, and I'll deal with the consequences later. We've got ice packs on the bus." And he disappeared out the door. Sharon looked at Bruce and Jim and shook her head, grinning. "That boy," she said. "I think I'm the one in charge, but most of the time he gets right round me and does whatever he wants."
(And yes, the incident with moving Jim's dorm room into the Student Services office really did happen!)
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mkk59
Wicked Fan
Posts: 94
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Post by mkk59 on Feb 5, 2014 0:15:37 GMT -5
Great update! You've got those guy's personalities spot on!
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Post by celticbear on Feb 5, 2014 18:58:20 GMT -5
LOL! Loved the dorm room prank! And yes Keith does have a way if wrapping Sharon around his finger! Surprising Jim and Bruce with the cake takes the Cake! Also loved their reaction about how opened the lads are about their private lives and how the fans used to wait for the Lads by the buses after a show!
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Post by HburgEagle44 on Feb 6, 2014 14:55:59 GMT -5
Oh, this was a great one love!
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Post by barbt on Mar 9, 2014 21:36:42 GMT -5
Short update, I've been stuck for a while but at least got this far...
Bruce and Jim were laughing. "Yeah," said, Jim, "it seems like he's a law unto himself."
"He is," Sharon said. "Well, they all are, to a certain extent, but Keith's the worst. And he can be so charming when he wants to be that it's hard to stay mad at him. I met him when he was 20, and he was already like this; it's a wonder he wasn't a spoiled brat if he could wind his parents around his little finger like he does everyone else. He keeps us all laughing, and you never know what he's going to be up to next."
They'd gone to stand at the doorway where Sharon could watch what was going on at the buses. There was a line of waist-high metal railings set up between the buses and the fans, and the guys were talking, laughing, getting and giving hugs, and signing autographs and taking pictures with the fans, Keith in the midst of it and grinning widely.
Watching, Bruce said, "Do you ever have security issues with this? It seems like it would be so easy for something to go wrong."
"Nothing major so far with these meetings," Sharon said. "Our fans are mostly well-behaved, although of course you get a few that get carried away. But the boys are good at dealing with it and security is close by, though we've never really needed them. I do worry about their voices and their health, though, with them being out in the night air, sometimes for more than an hour, right after they've been on a hot stage for so long. It's not so bad here in Florida, but sometimes it's really cold outside by the end of the tour. I'm thinking about putting a stop to it for the next tour, but the guys enjoy it and it's one of the special things about being a Celtic Thunder fan, that you can do this. If I do stop it, I'm sure I'll hear about it from both sides." They chatted for a while longer as Sharon kept an eye on her boys, and then Bruce and Jim had to go so they could get enough sleep to be ready for their shift the next day.
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Post by HburgEagle44 on Mar 12, 2014 0:41:14 GMT -5
Love this update. I've wondered the same about security haha. And yes, Keith is charming and it's a wonder he isn't a spoiled brat lol
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Post by celticbear on Mar 14, 2014 18:34:23 GMT -5
Great update! Security last year became a huge issue! Sharon did get it from both sides about stopping the greet the lads at the buses. I agreed and understood Sharon's reason behind the Bus Ban!
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Post by barbt on Mar 15, 2014 8:26:31 GMT -5
Great update! Security last year became a huge issue! Sharon did get it from both sides about stopping the greet the lads at the buses. I agreed and understood Sharon's reason behind the Bus Ban! So did I, CB, even though I was initially pissed because i never got to do it. I think maybe the guys didn;t quite like it either, considering how many of them decided they would be in the lobby to sign albums after each show as the tour went on...And, of course, Emmet's birthday cake being distributed to fans by Colm and Emmet...
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Post by barbt on Mar 22, 2014 22:18:13 GMT -5
The next week and a half was tough, but not quite as bad as the guys had expected. They had been prepared to listen for the sound of ripping velcro as Keith got frustrated with the brace and tried to take it off to do something, but between the memory of how he'd been bleeding and the experience of trying to clap, Keith wasn't about to risk messing up those stitches by being stupid. He never once tried to take the brace off when he wasn't supposed to.
Keeping him away from the guitars was another story. Keith couldn't get to his own because they were under the guard of their backline manager, and he wasn't about to let Keith get his hands on one and face Sharon's wrath. But there were an awful lot of guitars belonging to other people in Celtic Thunder and generally nobody minded someone else picking up their guitar if it happened to be nearby; they all trusted each other to be careful with them. Keith had, as Sharon had known he would, a lot of times when he "just wanted to try something for a minute" (they all knew that he was incapable of playing for only a minute and that once he got hold of a guitar they'd probably have to wrestle him for it) - but somehow there was always somebody watching him and scolding him before he could actually start to play. He was frustrated to no end; he even tried explaining to Neil or Davie what it was that he wanted to try and seeing if they could play it for him, but that never worked because there was really no way to explain how it sounded in his head. They couldn't keep him out of the music shops in the cities they went to, but at least there he could have somebody else play the guitars to hear what they sounded like. It wasn't the same as playing them himself, but it was better than nothing.
As expected, he was driving everyone crazy with practical jokes. If Keith had nothing else to do, he spent his time dreaming up pranks, and now he had a lot of time with nothing else to do. And of course, once he escalated, the retaliation escalated as well, until Sharon and nearly everyone else was being driven mad by a near-constant string of pranks. More than one person was counting down the days until those stitches could come out and Keith could play again.
Finally the day arrived, but that couldn't go smoothly, either. He'd had an appointment to get the stitches taken out, but they kept calling him and telling him he'd have to wait another hour - and finally he decided that he had to be back at the theatre, so back he went, and enlisted Colm's help to take the blasted things out himself. He knew perfectly well that taking them out wasn't hard as long as you had a sharp pair of scissors and some tweezers, but not being left-handed did make it a bit of a problem. Colm wasn't about to let Keith have a pointy pair of scissors near that wrist in his left hand, so he ended up doing the cutting, and Keith did the pulling. Colm was a nervous wreck by the time it was done, but they managed it without any problems.
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Post by celticbear on Mar 23, 2014 10:05:11 GMT -5
Keith with no Guitar is A VERY SCARY THING! But boy the pranks that resulted from this had to be EPIC! And if I remember right, in real life Keith did end up taking those stitches out himself!
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Post by barbt on Mar 23, 2014 10:51:46 GMT -5
Keith with no Guitar is A VERY SCARY THING! But boy the pranks that resulted from this had to be EPIC! And if I remember right, in real life Keith did end up taking those stitches out himself! He did, for exactly the reason I put in the story :-) I went back and did my research on his Facebook page while I was writing this.
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Post by HburgEagle44 on May 1, 2014 0:54:38 GMT -5
Ugh....that is a scary thought haha. Stitches are no fun. I love this story <3
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Post by barbt on Nov 29, 2014 21:47:37 GMT -5
OK, this one is done, now, too. Hope you enjoy it!
Colm took a good look at Keith's wrist once they'd gotten him cleaned up. "You're going to have to keep that covered for a while yet, mate," he said. The scar was still raised and red, even a bit raw in places. "You catch that on something and you'll tear it right open again. Do you think you'll be able to do your guitar parts tonight?" Keith tried to flex his wrist experimentally, but it was very stiff. "No," he said, sadly. After the previous breaks he'd had, he knew it would take at least a day for him to get the full flexibility back in his wrist. "I just hope I can get it back in time for the Poor David's gig," he added. "I don't want to have to cancel it. And I wanted to do a busking video in San Antonio at the Alamo." "Oh, well," Colm said. "At least you're out of the brace. Let's go find Sharon and let her know where we are, and then I'll help you wrap it up again." They wandered off to report to Sharon, who agreed that the others should keep covering Keith's parts in the show, but who did agree to let him have his guitars back. A collective sigh of relief was heard as everyone saw a guitar in Keith's hands again, although he was doing very little with it at the moment, mostly just bending and rolling his wrist around, a little at a time. Colm had wrapped it very lightly, just enough to protect it, so the bandage didn't limit his movement much. He'd been surprised that Keith wanted a picture of the cut before it was wrapped, but he understood when Keith posted it to Twitter, saying, "It's finally healing!" He knew that all the fans were worrying, and the picture would help settle them down. Back in Sarasota, Jim had been following CT through Twitter after they'd left, and he burst out laughing when he saw the videos and tweets Keith had posted about his adventures getting the stitches out. As soon as he saw Bruce, he said, "Want to guess who ended up taking Keith's stitches out?" "I'll bet it wasn't a medical professional," Bruce said. "You'd be right," Jim laughed. "He did it himself." "Why does that not surprise me," Bruce said blandly. "Got impatient, did he?" "Yeah, after they moved his appointment back a few hours. They heard about it, too, he put up a video complaining about it. All in all, it looks like it's healing pretty well, though. Wish we could have heard him play." Keith worked on his wrist movements for the rest of that day, whenever he wasn't on stage. By the next morning, he'd gotten enough flexibility back that he could actually play briefly, although it wasn't the most comfortable thing he'd ever done. He collected Angie and went out to the Alamo and recorded the busking video he's wanted to do there, without a lot of trouble, but he asked Sharon to keep his guitar parts for the show covered for that night and the following one yet. He needed to do the Poor David's gig the next night and knew he wouldn't be able to get through the guitar work in the show and the solo gig as well. Even so, he had trouble getting through the gig. By the end of it, his wrist was hurting and he'd had to ice it when he got back to the bus. He found out later that he hadn't been able to keep all the pain off his face when a fan posted a picture from the gig that clearly showed him hurting and unhappy. The busking video came out a week or so later, and Jim and Bruce were both pretty impressed. As Jim said, "If he can play like that when he's just had his wrist in a brace for two weeks, he's got to be amazing when he's not hurting." He'd become quite a fan of Keith's. Keith was just glad that the cut was healing every day, and very happy when he could finally leave the bandages off. Everyone else was glad they'd dodged another bullet - and that the pranking had finally scaled back to "normal" levels!
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Post by HburgEagle44 on Dec 18, 2014 17:40:39 GMT -5
Lol Jim and Bruce are wonderful people. And Keith... He's just Keith, always. Gotta love him.
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