NYSQ SAYONARA

After a couple of days off, we got back on the Shinkansen and headed two hours north of Tokyo to Sendai. (I haven't written anything about the Shinkansen but these trains are really fun to ride. Sometimes when we are in a station and a train comes through without stopping, at full speed, and it creates a huge noise with the wind streaming crazily around it, Gene will yell as it passes: YATTA! Which is what kids yell when a really fast train is passing (actually it's what you yell when you win in a sporting event) and it IS kind of a rush. Usually, after that happens, Gene will say, man, I LOVE Japan. Or else we'll eat something, one of the two...) Anyway, Sendai, at least where we were--near the station--is a sleepy little town with nothing much going on. We went over to the club, another small one (could seat about 60 I suppose if they were really jammed in) with the usual mix of famous and not so famous names that people have signed on the walls (Sheila Jordan, Bruce Barth, Ray Drummond, etc.) We did a quick sound check, glanced apprehensively at the still empty room and I walked around the area. It was a fairly odd mix of local bars, places I couldn't identify that had some sort of sex or hostess thing going on inside, and, as I walked further, I found myself walking beside a drainage ditch that was teaming with bugs, gnats and flies. It was evening and suddenly bats were swooping around me, diving to eat the bugs. Well, I like bats, bugs and drainage ditches as well as the next fellow (I once had a bat slam into my head when I was fly fishing, but that's probably a story better told on my "bat and fly fishing" blog, so I won't get into it here) but it seemed like maybe it was time to head back to the club. When I got back to the club it was packed to the rafters with jazz fans, and we played a fun-filled couple of sets to a very enthusiastic crowd. It turns out the master, a drummer, is a local jazz guru and has been sponsoring jam sessions for years. He has helped raise the jazz consciousness of several generations of Sendai area jazz fans and jazz players. After the gig, we had another uchiage and then the jam session started. In a tiny out of the way place in Japan these kids were playing great. It was very bebop-y and everyone had a lot of traditional sense of melody and swing. There was one fat-bodied guitar player in particular (actually, the guitar player was pretty thin, lest you get the wrong idea here, the GUITAR was fat) who sounded a lot like Grant Green. Anyway, the whole thing was very inspiring, it was a love-fest, at least up to the socially sanctioned point, which is what touring with 3 other middle aged married guys is about these days, and we signed the wall (I'm next to Sheila Jordan, if you stop by there) and we left: full, happy and having pretty much forgotten about the bats and the bugs.

The next day we left early-- we had a 3:00 sound check for a gig in Yokohama to get to at Motion Blue, a kind of sister club to the Blue Notes. This is a terrific club, with a beautiful 9 foot Yamaha piano, a really good sound system, great monitors and all that. This was our last gig and we knew it had better be a good one, or we'd have to start over and do the whole tour again. We got there early, walking in on the piano tuner working on the piano. This is always a good sign. I sat down at the piano and played for a while, noodling through some things and working on an idea for another arrangement. After about 20 minutes one of the staff came up to me and said, "is the piano okay? The tuner has been waiting to see if you had any complaints." (After which I said: man, I LOVE Japan, and gave him the thumbs up sign.) Once again we were a bit apprehensive, a 5:30 Sunday gig in a fairly out of the way location in Yokohama can be difficult to bring people out to. Still, the staff was very nice and attentive and we ate and hung around waiting for the show to begin. Once again, we needn't have worried. We played to a packed house and had a ball. Some of the people from our earlier gigs came out. At the end of the second set a great Japanese sax player named Nao sat in. I had first heard him about 15 years earlier on my first tour of Japan and I really liked his playing then and he has only improved with age (as we all do, I am hoping.) It was another socially acceptable love fest, we sold and signed a bunch of CDs and, that's it--the end of the 3rd NYSQ annual Japanese tour. We had a great time and hope that the band can continue moving forward. This has been a very good year for us--our new record is out, our first US tour happened, our best Japanese tour just finished, Yosuke named 1 Japanese bassist in Swing Journal Reader's poll. We are hoping to go to Spain, the US and back to Japan in 09 and then maybe a location near you! That's right, we want to come over to each and every one of your houses and eat something! Thanks NYSQ and for now, Sayonara!