Last night’s post from India warned: I thought I was headed for salvation in my hunt for open mics and jam sessions, and especially in one aspect of my challenge therein this year. Thanks to the Turquoise Cottage in Gurgaon, a city 30 kilometers south of New Delhi, and what feels like a suburb of the capital city, it was the whole deal. Whereas one week ago I played at the Turquoise Cottage in Delhi in a funky cool old neighborhood, this time it was in the other Turquoise Cottage located in a modern building on an ultra-modern strip of this city, full of shopping malls, McDonald’s, sports stores, etc.
But once inside Turquoise Cottage, it was the same vibe as the other. It is a recipe that has been going for 15 years now, and obviously worked so well that it expanded from the one in Delhi to the one in Gurgaon. This time there was no 16-piece folk ensemble, and there was, in fact, no Indian traditional music whatsoever. But there was a freewheeling jam and open mic, and I took advantage of both aspects.
I enjoyed immensely some of the other bands, singers and the Jimi clone guitarist. In fact, I liked the latter so much that I asked that he and his band stay up on stage when I played. We scraped through the first song – Mad World -, but got moving on the second – Wicked Game. Then I sang a few songs solo, just me and my guitar. Then I had a different drummer come up and we did a couple more, and then another drummer came up and we did a couple more again.
It was a great way to digest the dish of pasta and chicken…and that is not the right description for that oriental dish of whatever it was – but it was great.
The Turquoise Cottage is really worth going to if you are in Delhi – even taking the metro out to the one in Gurgaon, which is what I did. The feel is a little bit “Hard Rock Cafe,” with the walls covered with music memorabilia, etc. But the spirit is what the Hard Rock Cafe should be but is not, not even near.
So I got to do my jamming with local musicians – because there were no western musicians there last night, as there had been at the previous week’s jam session. So it’s Tuesday’s that the so-called “Rabbit Sessions” take place in Gurgaon, and Wednesdays in Delhi….
It has been an insanely long time since I have posted on this blog from India, and there are probably some readers who are used to frequent posts from me wondering if I have caught malaria, dengue fever or a bad case of Delhi Belly. Quite honestly, there were moments I asked myself the same thing. But apart from a general feeling of fatigue and another cold – after Korea -, the silence on this blog has had nothing to do with any of those things. It has had to do with my situation in Delhi, however.
The race track that hosts the Formula One race that I cover for my newspaper is so far out of downtown Delhi where my hotel is located, that it requires in general an hour and a half trip at best to get from door to door. And the only viable method of doing that trip requires taking a metro and a shuttle bus provided by the circuit for journalists. The last shuttle left Delhi every day at 9:00 AM, and that meant me getting up at 7 AM in order to exercise, eat, prepare and take the metro to the shuttle. The return shuttle left at the earliest from the track at 19:15 PM. That meant a huge full day.
Added to that, I had a workload in my job like none I have ever had before. It is an accumulation of six races in eight weeks and also a special report consisting of eight stories by me that was due today and will be published at the end of this week for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. All of this meant that the usual intrepid adventurer that I am decided to buckle down into a life consisting of the usual journalists’ excitement of: Racetrack, metro, shuttle, hotel room. No more.
Having said that, I continued to look and ask about music venues in Delhi, and as far as I could see, there was nothing for me from last Thursday until yesterday. No open mics or open jams, and no likely or obvious venues where I could gate crash. So it was that I accepted my fate for once of living a one-dimensional life.
Still, I was incredibly pleased and lucky with having managed to get to the Turquoise Cottage jam session last Wednesday on my first day in Delhi – despite my flight related exhaustion. And this morning, just when I thought I will have failed to play again in this city and had for the first time failed in a remaining challenge or two that I had set myself this year… I learned that the other branch of the Turquoise Cottage is holding its own Rabbit Session of jam and open mic tonight.
So I am intrepidly running off tonight to see if I can find this new place, take part, eat, play myself and hopefully with others, and then get another half night’s sleep before taking off to Abu Dhabi tomorrow. Can I feel anymore ecstatic about the Turquoise Cottage bookends to my India trip than I do at the moment? No way! Let’s see how it works out tonight. I have no idea when I will be able to get access to a good internet connection to report the results, but I hope it will be tomorrow night in Abu Dhabi. If not, it will be Thursday….
It is a running theme of this blog that I hope no one gets bored of hearing. But last night again proved to me the wisdom of pushing oneself to personal limits in order to achieve goals and dreams. Of course, it is quite small, just a day-to-day kind of achievement. But last night after a full day trying to work writing articles after having only two hours sleep over Tuesday night, I had the sudden opportunity to go play in an open mic, open jam in Delhi, and despite my exhaustion, I went. Am I ever glad I did….
Last year I had managed to book a full gig in advance at the TLR bar in Delhi on the Thursday night, and I ended up meeting a musician there who invited me to his open mic the following night at a different venue. This year I made no plans, and the TLR already has some bands lined up, and the other venue no longer exists. So I wrote a message to my friend who invited me to his open mic to ask if he knew of anywhere to play this weekend.
The response came almost immediately, and it was for an open mic at a place called Turquoise Cottage. It turns out that the bar has hosted this open mic for around seven years, and gives it the name “The Rabbit Hole Sessions.” I was exhausted, but the Facebook announcement looked so enticing – open to all musicians “including amateurs” – that I thought I just had to go. It seemed lunatic with the fatigue I was undergoing, especially since the trip over meant taking two metros and an auto-rickshaw.
But I went, and I could see from the moment I arrived that I had made the right decision. As I entered, a huge group of 16 musicians was setting up and doing a sound check, but other musicians stood around with guitars to do solo performances, and I was immediately asked by an organizer if I wanted to play.
Of course I immediately said “yes,” and then I went and ordered the most amazing dish of rice, shrimp, chicken and various spices. My only disappointment was that the place does not serve Indian food, but mostly Indonesian and Malay and other such things. But the food was fabulous.
The sound system was superb, the room was full of posters, guitars on the wall, high ceiling in front of the stage, even an old motorcycle. And it was filled with people of all ages. The massive band was the biggest I have ever seen at an open mic. It was superb, and as it turned out, this was the band’s first public performance.
Based in Delhi, the band calls itself the World Folk Ensemble, and is made up of drummers, guitarist, violin players, vocalists, a bass player, flute players…. As you can hear in their presentation of their first song, their approach is to play folk music from around the world. Last night they did tunes from Sweden, Estonia, France, India and elsewhere. A very impressive debut.
And thank goodness I finished my rice quickly enough to play before them. I’d have been dwarfed by their ensemble had I played just afterwards. But play I did, the reception was great, and I managed to take in most of the evening before leaving around midnight as the jam session opened up into the traditional blues kind of thing, and I got back for a good night’s sleep after all – dropping off like a lead weight and not waking until morning…. It was the sort of experience I’d have been mad to miss, and had I given in to my lazy urges, I would have….
No Internet at home for nearly a week, but I’m sitting on the Emirates A380 on my way to Dubai en route to India, and I have an Internet connection…. The world turned upside down – as it were. With a horrendously busy week ahead of me in India, followed by another week – or almost – in Abu Dhabi, I wanted to get a few words down on my badly neglected blog about happenings. The most important, urgent thing to write about is David Broad and his CD and concert in Paris over the weekend.
I wrote about David Broad, the finger-picking virtuoso from Leeds – of all places – when I was in Mokpo, South Korea, of all places, sick as a dog ready to be eaten. I realized a few days after writing that post that I had not done any justice to the subject of it whatsoever. Nowhere in my post about David’s amazing CD and musicianship and skill, etc., did I point out that all but three of the songs on the CD were written by Broad himself.
The reason for that oversight is because I thought that the songs were all old standards of blues, folk, old time stuff. Reading over the CD carefully upon re-listening to it while doing my exercises after returning to Paris from dogland, I realized that David had written all but three of the songs and they were insanely good. I had heard several of them before, and the one, Congress Street, I was certain was an old standard.
Nope, Broad’s broad material.
Anyway, so I went to hear him in his gig at the Zelda bar in Paris on Saturday night, and I apologized to him about not doing justice on that thing I wrote – which he had not even noticed! A very low-key man. The concert at Zelda’s was superb, with just Broad and his guitar. He held the audience electrified for more than an hour.
It also turned out that the bar, Zelda, was run by an old friend, from the band Rock&Roll, a short lived but relatively successful band from the bubble of baby rockers that came out of Paris in the middle of the last decade. Check out the Zelda bar….
On Monday, last night, I returned to two of my favorite open mics, the Coolin and the Galway, and I played at each one, but did not take out my recording device all that much, and in any case, I may have an internet connection here on the A380 above Turkey or wherever I am at the moment, but if I were to upload a single video I get the feeling it would take the rest of the flight – and certainly my allowance in terms of Internet bytes…or is it bits…?
Suffice it to say that Coolin was as fun as ever, if a little late in starting – which helped me check out the Galway first….
Arriving back in Paris after 40 hours of travel from the south of South Korea, I got home to find my Internet broken down. So this means I have no Internet at home until Monday morning, and I head off again to India and Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. So there will be a short interruption in this blog, unfortunately. I am writing this after a day at the office, at the office…. But lack of Internet does not mean a lack of music and a lack of musical adventures. Last night I attended three venues in Paris, a new one, a recent one and an old one….
The first was a new open mic that takes place on the first and third Thursday of the month. I wish I had more time to write about all of these places, but I don’t. This new open mic takes place at a very cool bar called the Kolok, near the Bourse, not far from the Truskel. I found a very neat, young, with-it audience and the wonderful musician MC named Romain. I found good beer, a warm environment, a couple of mics, great service – and quite a loud audience….
I will give more information about the Kolok as soon as I have tried it again or got a better Internet connection.
From there I went over to the Orphee, which I have written about a couple of times recently on this blog. But this time I was hugely disappointed as the owner or manager of the bar insisted that I pay 10 euros to enter this place in order to entertain the large of audience of people who had shown up for the open mic. There are very, very few circumstances in which I will pay money in order to play my music, when I know I am bringing in people to listen to the music, and when I am also buying drinks for myself. After some discussion it was clear the man was not nice and not smart and not worth it. So I left.
I remembered that across the street at the every and endlessly genial Bus Palladium, I had a friend who was taking part in the musical talent “trampoline” event last night. So I decided to go in and give him my support. It turned out that he was not the only member of the talented bunch of musicians whom I knew. There was the band JFK, whom I ran into almost four years ago at the Truskel and/or Mecano. And it also turned out that I knew some of the judges of the competition, the band Gush. Gush is extraordinary, and if they had done the competition themselves, they would have won. So they were well chosen judges.
As it turned out, Rimed – the tapping guitarist – came in an equal second in the competition. Unfortunately, by the time the eventual winners played their set, I had run out of batteries on my recording device. So nothing to show here.
On my last night in South Korea it all finally came together, as it has in the past, at Tony’s Aussie Bar in Itaewon, the cool expat part of Seoul where you feel like you’re in a true multicultural society walking down streets with English bakeries, Vietnamese, Mexican, Italian, American and, oh, yes, Korean restaurants and boutiques, all in a rolling terrain of …. That was becoming a run-on sentence so I thought it better to simply stop in the middle and get back to Tony’s Aussie Bar. Tony, the Aussie, is also a drummer. So when he opened his bar a few years ago, he ended up sticking in a drum set, and that ended up being a jam session, once a week.
I went for the first time two years ago, and I have not missed one since when passing through Seoul. Interestingly, Tony’s also seems to be the place where I end up eating my dinner beforehand, because he’s got great Australian lamb steaks – or at least they are advertised as such, and I like the mint sauce – and he has great Australian hamburgers, like the one I had last night with egg and … pineapple….
But most of all, in addition to the Hardy’s red wine and the various beers, he’s got the chops. Not lamb chops, drumming music chops. And he also attracts the best expat musicians in Seoul – or if they are NOT, then Seoul must be a dynamite city for expat musicians. This guy Ryan on on violin is great to play with, and this guy Ryan on guitar and vocals does the meanest Van Morrison cover I’ve ever heard – sounds more like Van Morrison than Van Morrison does, today compared to yesterday, I mean.
And then last night, this woman named Kira, an American who teaches English in Seoul, she gets on stage and sings this really nice and cool first song, and I wasn’t sure who it was by, but I really liked her voice. Then she announced that the next song is, “Summertime,” and I felt my heart drop. How many times have I heard halfhearted, half-talented attempts to sing that standard and NOTHING comes out? Far too many times to want to hear it again, in short.
But then Kira starts singing it, and I’m going, “What the fuck? That’s new.” She made it different, she has a beautiful natural sound in her voice that is complimented incredibly by some great technique, and visually she is one of those performers you just lock into and know that THEY are locked into the music.
Also met up with my friend and fellow Canadian Yvon Malenfant, who did a couple of very cool covers in addition to playing guitar to back up Kira. And Yvon offered to do videos of my songs. I was a little hesitant, because the truth is, I’m a little bit shy about having videos of me up here – or rather, let’s say I don’t usually like to see myself performing – which is really hypocritical of me, considering the thousands I have put up of other people! But anyway…. they’re up, and I’m grateful he took them so I can have a souvenir of last night’s jam at Tony’s Aussie bar, with Tony on drums. Oh, and get a look at that insane bass, and it’s amazingly good player….
There has been a long break from activity on this blog, partly because I have been traveling from Japan to South Korea, but mostly because I was lying sick as a dog in a tiny town called Mokpo in the south of South Korea for two of the three days. Sick as a dog is not a term I really wanted to use in this place, but it was the best one that came to mind. The good thing about all that is that it did give me time to contemplate the new CD of David Broad, one of the few guitar players I have seen at open mics who has made me briefly contemplate quitting playing guitar.
Mokpo is the location of the Formula One race this weekend, and I got in so much music AND work in Japan that sleep and proper nourishment and all of the rest of the things we do to keep ourselves healthy were left out of my life for a little too long, resulting in a wretched, flu-like deathly cold. Now under control, I found a moment to write about the music I did NOT play, but would have liked to – that of David Broad.
Broad is this amazing finger-picker guitar player from Leeds, England, who spent some time in Paris last year playing at the open mics and doing some concerts. He sent me his new CD a couple of weeks ago, and is it beautiful. You feel like you are in the same room with him and his band listening to his songs performed to perfection. Old time, country, blues, it’s all here. Broad’s heroes are above all the country blues stars of the 1920s and 1930s, people like Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Skip James, Blind Blake, and of course Robert Johnson.
The album is not just beautifully produced in sound terms – with its mix of his finger-picking guitar, warm vocals, harmonica and double bass, and the mandolin, lap steel guitar, fiddle and 12 string guitar of the other musicians – it is also a wonderfully produced physical CD with a screenprinted cardboard sleeve. Recorded in Leeds and released on Folk Theatre Records, it has been produced in a limited edition of only 500 copies – so get one. If you’re sick and/or low, it will bring you out of it. If you are doing just fine, it might head off the flu – or the blues – lurking just around the corner.
Pieces of the puzzle of understanding another country’s music business can take a long time to fall into place, especially when the country is Japan. I have been playing in Japan since my never-ending (I hope) worldwide tour of open mics and open jams began in 2009. It was only last night on my fourth visit to Japan, therefore, that I suddenly discovered one of the mainstay ways bands and pop musicians get gigs and tour the country and develop their thing…. It’s called the “live house,” or in Japanese, “rai-bu.”
But let me back-step a little. It turns out that my previous post and mini gig, at Club Mercury, was also at a live house – but a very small one. When I asked the manager there if he knew any open mics or open jams or places where I could play the following night – last night, Tuesday – he very kindly and enthusiastically told me he would call around and see if he could find something.
So it was that I finally received a tweet and an email from him yesterday and he asked me to meet him at Club Mercury again if I wanted to play somewhere, because he had found a place for me to play, and it would be easier if he took me there. So I headed off to Club Mercury, and we took a cab over to the live house called Soma, in the Shinsaibashi area. This is a very cool, crowded area of small streets and street people and restaurants and bars and clubs near the Namba station.
When we stood outside Soma and he said, “This is it,” I started wondering what kind of place he had taken me to. It looked bloody big, there were posters of bands all over the place, and it really looked professional and hip. I had sudden visions of me making my appearance opening up for some famous Japanese at Osaka’s equivalent of the Bus Palladium in Paris, or hey, why not the Palladium in London? Well, not quite. But anyway….
We entered and I found myself in a hip and colorful cool bar area being introduced to a woman who had been warned of my arrival. I could not understand any of the talk, but she led me to a backstage area and said, basically, “Here’s your dressing room, and the stage is on the other side, there.” She pointed out a wall with a door at the end of the hall, and I heard music and continued to wonder what was going on. But for the sake of adventure, I said to myself, Cool!
She then told me that I was booked to go on a 8:20, for half an hour. Whoa!
I then met up with the manager from the Club Mercury again – whose name I have not put here simply because I have not got a clue of how to pronounce it, even though I tried several times, but it’s sort of like Hajth…. He bought me a beer and he asked if I wanted to go into the auditorium to drink it, during the show.
So we entered the room, where I found a fabulously cool mid-sized live house area with a large stage, great sound system, huge dance floor and tables area and in the very back a control room area with what looked like two or three technicians working the light and sound.
There was a performer on the stage singing to recorded music, and I was now once again thrown into a sense of confusion. It was not, clearly, a karaoke. But what was it? By the time I went up, there were about six spectators plus the sound people, maybe eight or nine people maximum. Some were, I would learn, musicians.
I took to the stage, got the guitar and vocal mic sound checked and then did my half-hour “show.” Later, I met the first singer, she gave me her CD, “Jump!,” and then some other musicians, and I watched the half-hour gig of the musician after me, whom everyone calls Tazz, but whose stage name is Vividamien. She was damned good. Played a nice expressive guitar – which was a neat Ovation, by the way – and also had a very good and expressive singing voice with some original sounding tunes.
Afterwards we all went into the bar area and had some beers and some food – including the local Osaka specialty of takoyaki. We also jammed a little. It was an insanely wonderful evening, and I owed it all to the manager at the Club Mercury, and the open arms of the Soma live house. Because a live house, I learned, is the way that bands find their audiences and get known in Japan. There are no booking agents for small bands because there is virtually no money to be made in it. So instead, there are hundreds, or probably thousands, of these live houses all over the country where bands have access to a staff and great equipment and a stage and a bar. And the band usually is auditioned and has to ensure that a certain number of spectators will come to listen, and buy tickets. That pays for the rental of the room.
I, like most foreign “bands,” did not have to pay for the booking and get people there – that was actually due to the kindness of Hadth – I will get that spelling as soon as I can – who got me the gig, and who in fact invited me to everything throughout the evening. Unbelievable where music is capable of taking a person! This was a real introduction to a whole facet of Japanese musical band culture that I knew nothing about, even after three previous years playing where I could. That said, I had noticed the name “live house” here and there – I just never knew what it was. Now I do….
Oh, and by the way, being on that stage under the constantly changing spotlights and with a sound crew that knows what they are doing, was a real joy – no matter how small the audience might have been….
Sometimes finding a place to play in a new city one has never been to before requires a little more than just an Internet search or randomly wandering the streets. Last night before I set out to randomly wander the streets of Osaka, where I have never been before and where I found no open mics or jams on my Internet search, I decided to contact a friend of mine whom I know in Paris and who frequently plays in Japan. It turned out that this friend, who calls himself LadiesDi, is actually right now doing his tour of Japan clubs. He was unavailable on Facebook or anywhere else – I still haven’t heard from him! – but I noticed the name on his site of an intriguing looking venue in Osaka where he played last week.
So it was that I decided to set out in search of the Club Mercury and see if it was possible for me to play there. Located near the Hard Rock Cafe, I thought I had that landmark to use as a guiding point in a culture where I find it extremely difficult to navigate. But I am getting better and better after several visits to Japan, and this trip has been my biggest breakthrough so far in terms of understanding signs and streets and other cultural marks.
So to my complete and utter shock and surprise and a sense of pride, I arrived directly at the Club Mercury, making no big errors as I went. At the door I found there was a 20-euro cover charge, but some very nice people who did all they could to understand what I was looking for. I asked them if I could play music there, and they said that there was already another band. They then inquired within and said I should come back later if I wanted to play.
So I went across the street and had a sumptuous pizza with cream sauce instead of tomato sauce, and then I returned to the Club Mercury, and went in to find that the show had ended for the evening, but that the owner manager was aware of my desire to play. He asked me what date I was free, and I told him I was leaving Japan on Wednesday.
“Do you have a guitar now?”
I said I did, and he invited me on the stage to play. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. The place had around 25 people there to listen, the stage was sizable and very cool, this kind of bauhausian feel to it, and complete with spotlights, a curtain and a great monitor system. The room was very small, and on the curtain in front of the stage when there was no performance, old movies are projected.
I played a few songs with all spectators listening quietly, and applauding with warm appreciation. I spoke to most of them afterwards, while I ate the noodle soup I had been offered in gratitude and payment for my set. In short, it was all very bloody amazing!!!
I was also told, by the way, that Osaka is full of such neat music venues, hidden, off the main roads, in basements, in places you would never find them if you didn’t know. The Club Mercury has existed for eight years. It has a regular stream of local bands and musicians playing there, and is well worth the visit for the cool atmosphere and people alone.
After I left, I decided to flex my new found navigational muscles and dared myself to walk all the way across town back to my hotel rather than take a subway train. Along the way I met a young band, called The LaQ, sitting in the covered mews thing that traverses the center of town. They gave me their CD, which I have not been able to play yet, as I have no CD player in my hotel or on my computer. I put the CD with that of one of the musicians I met at the Club Mercury, called Side Slow, and I look forward to listening.
As I neared my hotel, I passed a bar and some people within saw that I had a guitar and gestured me to come in and play. There was nothing going on musically, but it looked like a fun group of people in a small, comfortable, corner neighborhood bar. So I went in, played a song and took a beer.
That was the beginning of a long end to the evening playing music myself in the bar, and listening to one of the other people at the bar, a guitarist named Gil, whom I have recorded on video here, which makes up partially for the lack of videos from the Club Mercury, aside from the panoramic. But I truly regret not having heard any of the music from the other musicians at the Club Mercury, and I should never have gone for the pizza – except it was great.
I played music on the first two nights in Nagoya, feeling completely satiated and happy and full of a sense of achievement. So I said to myself on my third night, last night, that I would just simply relax, go to a restaurant, take it easy, not look for a place to play and get to bed early. And then all hell broke loose….
I finished the meal and started walking the several kilometers from the center of the city in Sakae out to my hotel in Imaike. I had been eating and drinking a fair amount in recent days and I thought I could use the exercise of a nice long quick walk. It was a great pleasure. I ended up being slightly unsure of my route, though, but decided that for the sake of adventure, I would just keep walking in that direction and see where it led.
It led precisely to the intersection where I knew I had to turn left to get to my hotel. And as I turned left, I suddenly heard the sound of live music coming from a stairwell. I was about three minutes walk from my hotel, and there I saw a sign that said: Jam Session….
I quickly descended the stairs and found the warmest, coolest, ramshackle underground bar I could imagine, and it was brimming full of Japanese people listening to a bunch of Japanese musicians on a cool stage area playing the blues. I asked the woman behind the bar – who approached me – what time the jam went on to, and she indicated 2 AM.
“I’ll be right back!” I said, pointing at the guitars on the wall to indicate I was going to get my own. After all, it was only then just 10 PM.
So I went to my hotel, took out my guitar and sang a song to warm up my voice, and then I ran off again to the bar, which I later learned was called Nanbanya, and has a weekly jam on Saturday nights. Or most Saturday nights.
The first guy I talk to turns out to be the importer for all of Japan of Godin guitars, which is the company that makes my Seagull S6 – although he does not import the Seagulls, only the Godins. The night, I knew immediately, was going to be immense.
It was. I played three times, getting invited twice more after my first time up, and I met several interesting people, saw some amazing musicians – check out the absolutely nuts guitar players, the young Japanese guy with the Hendrix T-shirt, and the Peruvian with the Gibson….
Man, this was a dream night. I never knew anything like this existed in Nagoya, and I happened to stumble upon it next to my hotel after deciding to walk home and making a mistake in navigation. This is proof that everything we want in life lies just around the corner, and sometimes we will just stumble across it – so don’t give up!
