February 14, 2013
It’s Valentine’s Day. Be nice to the one you love.
Every now and then it’s fun to go back and look at one of Bobbe’s old newsletter just for nostalgia sake. Here’s one I think you might enjoy reading again.
My being a professional musician as many of you are, I would like to relate a recent road trip I took to a far off place. As most of you know, when you are working with a professional country music act, you may be called on at any moment to do something a little out of the ordinary, whether it’s working on a flatbed truck at a rodeo in Phoenix or practicing with a symphony in New York or even playing a big casino in Las Vegas with a 40 piece staff band backing you and the singer up.
I’d like to tell you about a recent trip to the beautiful country of Japan that I made with Hank Williams III. His father was called Bocephus, so I coined the nickname Tricephus.
I had worked with Hank III a little bit around Nashville on the Ralph Emery show and the Opry, but hadn’t worked the road with him. Upon meeting at the airport bound for Tokyo, I was shocked to find one of Nashville’s greater guitar players going on the trip with us, the great Ray Flack, fresh off the Ricky Scaggs show.
I was soon to learn that this citizen of England was a character like I’ve never met. Not only an incredible guitar player, but a guy who’s humor was always working overtime. We flew American Airlines to Atlanta, then transferred to a Japanese airline 747. I was flying coach. The seats were about ¾ the size of seats on our American Airlines aircraft. Since the airplane was full and I was wide awake having had a good nights sleep the night before, I was in perfect shape to enjoy all the pain and misery of this 18 hour flight to Tokyo.
Upon landing and exiting the aircraft, I received my first dose of Japanese culture. The customs officers were firm but very pleasant and let us know that they were going to put up with no nonsense. Our bass player was transporting his upright bass in a custom built, large square 7 by 3 foot bass case. A custom officer looked directly at Ray Flack and in his broken English said, “What is in this box?”
Ray looked directly into his eyes and said, “That’s where we keep the bodies.”
The officer looked at me and my steel guitar case and asked me, “You have little bodies in there?”
I busted out laughing and said, “Yes.”
He laughed to and said, “You’re clear to go.” and put the customs stickers on our cases. I heard him exclaim as we walked out of sight, “Crazy Americans!”
The club that we were working for the first three days was in Fukuoka, the Blue Note Jazz Club. This was at the other end of Japan so we transferred to another 747 and in less than an hour, we were there. They put us in a gorgeous hotel within walking distance of the club in downtown Fukuoka. We had an extra day to kill so I thought I would get out on the street and see what I was getting into.
Since this city was right next to Nagasaki, I didn’t know what to expect from the terrain or the people, but I soon about to be impressed. Walking out of the hotel and mixing with the masses, I was amazed to see that everyone was either wearing a nice business suit or white shirt and tie or a nice uniform from some company or the city government.
Absolutely no trash or dirt on the streets and I was soon to observe a beautiful young girl in a uniform pushing a cart full of cleaning supplies down the street. She stopped at all municipal signs, wiped them off and cleaned all parking meters with what looked like a Windex spray bottle and clean rag.
All delivery vehicles and taxi cabs had drivers wearing uniforms. I was especially impressed with the gorgeous taxi cabs. Not a dent, scratch or speck of dust on any of them. The drivers wore tuxedos and top hats and the interiors were immaculate even down to the hand knitted doilies on the back of the seats in the passenger compartment.
The following day with much assistance, we sat our equipment up in the beautiful jazz club. No tables, it was just set up like a little amphitheater, every seat facing the stage. They furnished the amplifiers which were anything we wanted. I chose a Peavey Nashville 112. Ray chose the proverbial Fender Twin.
Our show consisted of Hank III opening with the pure hard country songs of his grandfather. Then we gradually worked into some Waylon Jennings and Hank Jr. outlaw tunes. Then ending the show with some Georgia Satellite and Allman Brothers tunes.
It wasn’t too long into the second show that we realized what they really wanted to hear by far and loved most was the hard core country of Hank III’s granddaddy.
I had decided before our first show that I could play very commercially and laid back and let the star carry the show. Ray Flack abruptly put an end to these plans with his brutal, blazing speed and gargantuous chords. I couldn’t let him be the only musician in the band to stick out so I put it in high gear and commenced to throw taste to the wind and play everything I knew on every song.
This seemed to work extremely well because Hank III’s end of the stage was getting all of the attention during the first show, but from the second show on, Ray and I had the audience under total control and everytime we took any kind of a solo, we got tremendous rounds of applause. This proves that the audience was into music and not just the charisma of the star they paid to see.
After all our appearances, I was very impressed with the politeness of the audience. They would stand off several feet away from us and only approach us in ones or twos to ask for autographs or ask our permission to take our pictures. No mobbing, pushing or several people yelling at the same time. Just thoughtful consideration.
On the third night, a Japanese businessman came up to me, bowed his head and handed me the equivalent of $500, straightened back up and said, “I’m a fan of yours. This money is for you to have a good time while you are in our country.”
I tried to refuse but it was obvious that this would have hurt his feelings, so I proceeded to talk to him for an hour or so and realized what a wonderful, sincere gentleman he was. He introduced me to his family before I went back up to do the show. His last name was Takashita.
I last three days I was there, we flew back to Osaka. If you are a steel guitar player and about to go to Japan, you will not be disappointed. I found the food much more palatable than I expected it to be. All the food is displayed in the large picture window of all restaurants, complete with number. You make up your mind what you want by looking through the window and remember the number and go inside and tell them the number.
There were about 80 different kinds of spaghetti from spinach to sushi spaghetti. Everything thing except tomato based Italian spaghetti. Even though Ray Flack had nothing other than sushi the whole time he was there, I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything but spaghetti.
The traffic in the cities was more fun to watch than a NASCAR race in Charlotte. It was like watching a series of drag races from traffic light to traffic light. Tremendous mix in the type of traffic. Little trucks, motorcycles, little motor scooters, little hotrod cars, even a few Corvettes and Cadillacs. At a red light, the scooters would filter up through all the rest of the traffic and line up, revving their engines, ready to go as soon as the light turned green. The fast vehicles would take off as fast as they could with the scooters and little trucks being left in the dust. At the next red light, the scooters again would run up into the middle of the cars and line up at the cross walk waiting for the green light again. Pretty funny!
If any of this happened in New York city, you’d probably spend a month in jail. On the freeways, everyone drove 80 miles per hour and up. I never saw an accident, came close two or three times with drivers honking their horns, but no one displayed any anger, regardless of how close they came to having an accident. Every is polite to everyone all the time.
In walking down the street, no one ever made eye contact with me unless I got right in front of them and asked them a direct question. I always got a smile and a courteous answer that I could almost understand.
All I can say to any of you steel players, musicians, stars or just travelers, if you ever have a chance to go to Japan, it may be the time of your life. I left with a great respect for the way they do many things, their culture and their consideration and politeness. Be sure to go if you have a chance.
The trip back was easier as I made sure I was extremely tired so I could sleep the 16 hours back.
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