PUT-IN-BAY, Ohio (AP) – The longtime tour production manager for country star Keith Urban has died after falling from a stage before an Ohio concert.
Randy “Baja” Fletcher, 72, died on Aug. 27 at a hospital after falling the previous day while preparing for Urban’s appearance at Bash on the Bay on the Lake Erie island of Put-in-Bay, The Port Clinton News-Herald reported.
Fletcher became Urban’s tour manager in 2011 after working for music stars such as Brooks & Dunn, Waylon Jennings, Randy Travis and ZZ Top.
Urban told Billboard magazine that Fletcher had an “orbit of light” that once you were in “would stay with you forever.”
“I loved him,” Urban said. “We all loved him, and I’m grateful he chose us as his road family for 10 years.”
Fletcher received the Country Music Association’s first Touring Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017, describing his five-decade career as “unparalleled.”
His lone break from five decades of touring came in 1969 when he joined the U.S. Army and served a tour in Vietnam.