I’ll be playing at two events this weekend, the “June-i.ro.do.ri” music festival in Alice’s Garden on Saturday, and the “Senda-machi Wasshoi Festival & Flea Market” on Sunday. Both are outdoor events, and today I’ve begun to worry a bit about the weather. A typhoon is coming up from the south, and it appears as if it will be here just in time for the weekend.

I’ve also been asked to perform at the annual Sundance Beach Party held on one of the islands in the Seto Inland Sea, just south of Hiroshima City. Right now the only information I’ve heard is “through the grapevine”, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some more details from the organizer before long.

I’ve been exchanging email recently with a Japanese musician named Yoshiharu. He plays an instrument called the Koyabu-Board, which appears to me to be a derivative of the Chapman Stick. Yoshiharu plans on spending some time in Hiroshima during his tour of Japan in July, and we are planning to meet. I look forward to hearing his music, as well as getting my first look at a Koyabu-Board.

I had another busy and incredibly fun weekend. On Saturday, I went to Otis! to see Gotoh Izumi play a short opening set for the headlining band, Tembera Stars. Izumi normally plays accordian and sings for Nekomushi, the widely popular band that she leads. Saturday night, she played a wonderful solo set of original music on accordian with vocals/storytelling.

Sunday was our second gig at Molly Malone’s. Although our first performance there last month was fun and went quite well (from our perspective), the crowd size and response were a bit lower than we had hoped. So, we were a bit anxious about how things would shape up on Sunday night. As it turns out, we had nothing to worry about; the place was packed, the crowd was very attentive, and they seemed to enjoy what we were doing.

After the end of the first set, a man approached me, introduced himself as Paul, and began asking about the Stick and mentioning how much he liked the sound. Paul was playing solo guitar and saxophone at a beer garden across the street, and had stopped into Molly’s for a pint during his break. It turns out that his last set would be ending at just about the time we would be starting our third set, so we invited him to bring his soprano sax over and join us. The result was just incredible. Jamie, Kit, and I loved the extra dimension he added to our blues, and Paul was an incredible player. The crowd really appreciated him, too. It is unfortunate that he had to return to his home in Nagoya the next day.

Today was officially my first day working from home. Aside from a few minor glitches that eventually required me to cycle down to the office to borrow replacement software, things went quite smoothly. If the first day is any indication, I think I’m going to adjust to this change quite well.

Things have been pretty busy around here recently. The Aoi Flower Festival on Saturday and Sunday was a lot of fun, and the crowd seemed to really enjoy all of the music. We all received many nice compliments from several people, and have been invited to come back next year, which will be the 10th anniversary of the festival.

Tonight, I played at Starbuck’s for the first time since March. I had a bit of trouble getting the sound right; I kept overloading the PA. I was getting a really bad distortion out of one of the speakers during my first tune, and so I had to spend a few seconds re-adjusting the levels before starting the second song. I kept fiddling with the levels while playing, and never did get a volume or a sound that I was completely happy with. I could of course solve this problem in the future by taking my own amp and cab to the gig, but that seems like a bit too much lifting and carrying for one 40-minute set.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a significant change coming into effect in my working environment. Starting next Monday, I’ll be working from home, but still an employee with the same company. This is something that I’ve been at my boss(es) about for several years. I expect I’ll be able to work more efficiently away from the (noisy) office, while also taking care of minor house work and getting in some practice time during lunch hour and breaks.

Wow, Sunday was an amazing day/night. It started with me pulling myself out of bed at 9am to get ready for the day’s events, and ended at 3am with me battling a centipede intruder before going to bed. In between I had a wonderful time playing with Jamie, Kit, and Maggie at the Wasshoi Festival, although there were serious concerns that we were going to be rained out. As it turned out, the rain never got bad enough that the canopies weren’t sufficient to protect both us and the equipment.

Later, we hurried over to Barco Tropical for the 2nd Anniversary Party. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people at a Barco live music event before. The place was packed. About 30 musicians in all played in rotating sets, with a very wide variety of styles from country, to tango, to hard rock, to theatrical performance art. Yes, it was a wild night, but we didn’t want to stop. Finally, exhaustion got the best of us.

Sometime over the weekend, I found the time to watch The Last Samurai on DVD. There was a mild controversy recently on a local website about this movie, and how some people didn’t like the way it takes so many liberties with Japanese history. At least, I think that was the argument. I didn’t participate in the conversation, because I hadn’t yet seen the movie at that time. For my part, I enjoyed the movie.

Oh, by the way, that centipede won the 3am battle against me. He didn’t survive my wife’s wrath the next morning, however.

I’ve been asked to play at Starbuck’s again in June. Hopefully I’ll be able to nail down the exact date in another day or two. This will be my first time back there after my moderately disappointing performance in March. I’m anxious to get back and redeem myself a bit.

Although I’ve always been somewhat susceptible to wide emotional swings, last night was my first dip in quite a while. I’m not quite sure what brought it on, but it seems like it was probably numerous inconsequential things that compounded as the night wore on. During a conversation I had with a friend toward the end of the night (around 3am), I was told that I’m too sensitive. Thinking back on it today, I’m not entirely sure that is a bad thing.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, with the Senda Wasshoi Festival in the afternoon, and then the 2nd Anniversary Party for the open mic events held at Barco Tropical every month. Busy, yes, but I’m really looking forward to having fun with my good friends.

Although at this point I still prefer to perform as and be known as a solo player, I’ve been giving some thought to some interesting musical collaborations. While I’ve got no interest in forming a “band”, I also realize it is easy to stagnate without external input. I will be having my first “face-to-face” with a local musician tonight to discuss and hopefully take the first steps toward eventually making music together. This person performs in a genre of music in which I have no experience, so I’m looking forward to expanding my horizons.

I’ve been told that the “white text on black background” design of this website is hard on the eyes. I’m going to give some thought to making a change, but the truth is that I really prefer to leave it as it is.

I’ve been a cycling fan for many years, and with the start of cycling season I often spend hours with my ass parked in front of the TV, watching these incredible athletes race across the plains and mountains of Europe. The Giro D’ Italia is being broadcast now in Japan, but on a delay of about 2 weeks from the actual start of the race. I always try to stay away from sports news during cycling season, to avoid spoiling the outcomes of these races.

It’s shaping up to be a very busy summer for me. Beginning this weekend, I have performances scheduled every weekend for 4 weeks straight, sometimes with 2 performances a weekend. (See the Schedule section.) It also looks like I may be doing a monthly show at Molly Malone’s; it is even possible that it may become twice a month, but nothing has been settled yet. A few people at the office have jokingly been asking me if music isn’t actually my “real job”.

Speaking of the office, there may be a potentially exciting development in my work situation in the next few weeks. More info on this later.

On Monday I went to a local club to catch a performance by John Russell. I’d never heard of Mr. Russell before, other than that he is a well respected free-jazz guitarist. My decision to go to the show was largely based on the fact that the amazing Kajiyama Shu, a local bassist and friend, would be on hand as a supporting musician.

Kajiyama-san opened the night with his awe-inspiring solo bass/vocal/looping performance. That was followed by Mr. Russell, performing with local musicians in various combinations of duos and quartets. Having never heard free-jazz before, I hadn’t really known what to expect. I had assumed something along the lines of free melodic and harmonic improvisation, built upon a solid rhythmic foundation. To my surprise, the performance was 100% free, in every sense of the word. Although I tried to keep an open mind, the seemingly endless and random waves of squeaks, skwaks, swishes, slaps, pops, taps, twists, scrapes, peeps, bumps, clicks, thumps, crashes, and occasional fwips, from guitar, drums, saxophones, and assorted woodwind implements, left me grasping for something familiar to hold onto and keep me afloat.

I didn’t hate it. But, I didn’t understand it. And then, I found myself wondering if I was missing the point by trying to understand it, which led to a whole mess of thinking too much for someone who had paid good money to be entertained. There were very few moments when I felt the individually improvising musicians gelled and melded into a common spirit. I began to hope that Mr. Russell would do some solo performance as well, but it apparently wasn’t on the schedule.

The night ended with Kajiyama-san coming back to the stage, this time with a different drummer, percussionist, and didgeridoo. This was quite the opposite of the previous set; nearly an hour’s worth of amazingly wicked improv, over funky dance beats and constant bass drone alternating from electric bass and didgeridoo. It was a wonderful way to end a night of musical contrasts.

Well, I had a very busy, but also rewarding and enjoyable weekend. It started on Saturday with my solo performance at Rendez Vous. Actually, it started several hours before the show started. Since last week had been very busy for me at work and I hadn’t had the time to practice as much as I would have liked, I spent several hours Saturday morning and evening practicing and preparing for the show that night. There was a nice crowd, although it thinned out quite a bit for the second set. I’m not sure if that was because of the rain, or for other reasons. Several friends came by to support me, and I received many nice compliments. There are definitely areas to work on in my songs, but overall I’m pleased with the performance. The management at Rendez Vous has asked me to come back again next month, and we are working on a schedule.

Sunday at Molly Malone’s with Jamie and Kit was every bit as fun as I had expected it to be. After the moderately stressful gig the night before, this was a great way to just sit back, relax, and have fun playing. The crowd wasn’t large, but they seemed appreciative of, if not particularly enthralled by, our 2 sets. Jamie (guitar) and Kit (harp, vocals) play mostly blues, and when I sat in with them I generally stuck to the bass side of the Stick, only occasionally throwing in a melody chord or a short solo. In the middle of the fourth or fifth song of our 1st set, during the part where Jamie’s solo was supposed to come in, I wasn’t hearing a solo from that side of the stage. I looked over, and saw this mild look of panic on his face. “I snapped a string!” I tried to cover with a solo that was supposed to resemble something bluesy, and then we did the outro and brought the song to an end. We ended that set a song early so Jamie could go buy strings. Moral of the story: bring spare strings (for Jamie); learn to play the blues (for me); sit back and laugh at the incompetence (for Kit).

I received some nice compliments for the two songs I played solo, and also fielded a few questions about The Stick.

The highlight of the night: the delicious dinner. The food at Molly Malone’s is absolutely amazing, and it was a delight playing for our meal. I think the three of us worked up more of a sweat digging into our food than playing the music.

I have an important performance coming up tomorrow, and I am experiencing a bit of anxiety over it. It is important to me for two reasons: it will be my first completely solo performance over two sets, and it will take place at Rendez-Vous. I think it would be nice to perform at Rendez-Vous on a regular basis, but the possibility of that happening will depend largely on how the manager views the success of tomorrow night’s show.

Unfortunately, I’ve had a very busy week at work, and the result has been much less time devoted to practice this week than I had hoped. So much for trying to keep my anxiety under control.

Yesterday I was reading a particular website’s user-submitted reviews of a CD released by an internationally-known and respected musician. For some, his latest effort doesn’t measure up to par. Many of these critics also seemed disappointed in the spiritual/religous content of the lyric. My stomach churned at comments such as “this truly gifted artist wastes his talents” and “[d]on’t mistake this for art”. These remarks betray an ignorance of the compulsion of a true artist. Art is not a medium for showcasing one’s talent; rather, it is an expression of the artist’s soul at that particular moment in time. Concerns for popular appeal are secondary, at best.