Not your usual Japan tour… after we arrived in Nagoya we were told that all the other shows needed to be cancelled because clubs were closing til the virus scare has passed. So this is to be a tour of one show.

We’ll try to make it a great one!

First thing, as usual here, I like to take a wander around and grab photos of the colorful and unusual signs. Here are a few.

We’re happy to have a very special guest on this trip, the fantastic drummer / keyboard player, Gary Husband. He’ll just be playing keys along with Stick Men - though if we had enough gear we could try some two drummer things too. (not this time!)

Slightly jet-lagged, we have a meeting at the hotel to discuss the pieces we’ll be playing. Along on the trip are our sound engineer Robert Frazza, and Leonardo Pavkovic, our friend and booking agent.

Gary’s done his homework and written charts for all our pieces, which are not simple.

“Hey, Leo, take a couple pics with my camera to make it look like I’m doing something here!”

Okay, the next day, over to the club, and it’s soundcheck time - our first chance to actually play together.

After soundcheck, Robert took a photo of all of us, for me to use at the page top.

Dressing room, plenty of food for us… Markus shares new pics of the baby.

Showtime

Oops, I had the backstage exposure setting for that first picture onstage!

And, in the two sets, I had chances, during improvs, to take a couple more

The music was great - I feel it’s been a kind of historic show, with our only having one chance at the music with this lineup. We will certainly try to have Gary join us for more shows sometime, and recording those will be a must.

So, with a ‘start of tour’ and ‘end of tour’ dinner, we’re sadly leaving Japan.

For now I’m grateful that I got to be part of some very special music. More would’ve been even better, of course.

As everyone knows, travel rules are changing fast, and we can only hope that upcoming tours (Stick Men in March and April, Crimson in June and July, Levin Brothers in September, and Stick Men in November) will happen as planned. We’ll see.

More soon, later in March, when Stick Men tour in the U.S.