Japan Tour Diary, Part 1

Our band, The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, is leaving for a five date Japanese tour. This has been arranged by Transduction Records and LITE manager/ Parabolica Records main man Kazuto. I run a music club called the Ballroom of Romance and a few years ago we were lucky enough to put on a show for LITE under request from Transduction, who had released their records in Europe. This was a revelation - LITE played an incendiary set of intricate post-rock and instantly won over Irish audiences. They’ve since come back for two more tours, building on this success. In Japan we will be touring with LITE and Parabolica’s latest signing Marvin’s Revolt from Denmark.

To set the scene, here is a clip of an interview I did with One More Tune talking about the Spook, my involvement in the Ballroom of Romance live music club and the background to this tour.

It’s a very cold morning as I drag myself out of bed at around 6 am. We’re due to fly out at 9.40am and there’s a very real risk of the airport shutting down due to the cold weather. LITE are arranging backline and guitars but as I’m left handed I’m bringing over my own guitar and banjo. I bundle everything into the car and drive over to Stoneybatter to pick up our Japanese friend Keita. Keita has offered to come to Japan with us to act as our tour manager. Next I drive over to Irishtown and pick up Enda, our bass player and Brian, our drummer. Brian has arrived back safely from his gig in Waterford last night despite a treacherous four hour drive along icey roads. He’s barely in the door and we’re off to the airport where we meet up with Donnchadh, our guitar player. We check in only to find there is a problem with Keita’s ticket. After a bit of a panic, Keita arranges to travel the following day. The four of us head on without Keita through to our gate. Keita is going to carry my guitar to even out the baggage load.

At the gate we see snow coming down thick and the progress of flights leaving the airport grinds down to a trickle. Thankfully we get on our way only one hour late after the plane is sprayed with de-icing fluid, still arriving in Schiphol with plenty of time to transfer to our onward flight. After a two hour stop over, we jump onto the flight to Narita Aiport near Tokyo. I have Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler book to read and my iPod to keep me going, and KLM long haul flights have a pretty decent entertainment system, so we have a range of films and TV shows to watch. We hunker down for an 11 hour flight. Brian has some herbal sleeping pills which seem to make us hyper rather than knocking us out. Donnchadh and Enda get a few hours sleep but myself and Brian barely close our eyes.