Lost in the rain in Juarez And it's Eastertime too...

I put some audio clips in this post, but I'm not sure if they will work for everyone, play all at once, or do something else funky so let me know if it's messed up and i'll try to do something different with them.

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues



I've played so much music this week. "The Lapsap String Band" practiced so much to get ready for our gig at the Turkish Restaurant in Mui Wo.

We've been "on tour" to various parts of Hong Kong, we took a trip up to Tong Fuk on Lantau last week and then to Lamma Island last Monday.

We have a pretty good deal worked out, we walk around or talk to some local people to find out where a good place to play might be. We go there and or a drink or whatever and we just "happen to have our instruments with us" then within 5 minutes of being there the inevitable question comes. "You guys playing somewhere?" "Do you guys know and Beatles/Dylan/Metallica?" or something along those lines To which we reply, "Maybe...we'll pick out a couple songs if you're interested" Then by that time the owner/bar tender is usually into it since 5-10 of his customers want to hear live music. So we sit down and play, while usually acquiring food/drinks from the audience.

Going to Lamma Island was pretty awesome last Monday, although it was a little challenging at first. I had to transport all our instruments to Central alone, so that meant taking a bus with a guitar strapped to my back, hardshell mandolin case in one hand and my hardshell banjo case in the other. So the bus pulls up and just my luck it's standing room only, haha. It was quite the operation holding two hard cases, keeping the guitar from falling off, and balancing myself on a seat. As I was falling all over everyone in the first two rows during the 10 minute ride to Mui Wo an older lady motioned to me to hold the mandolin so I gave it to her for the rest of the ride, it made things much much easier.

So I caught the 4:10 fast ferry into Central and arrived around 4:40 where I met Nate, James, and Bryan. We caught the ferry Lamma and had some dinner at an Italian place there, then talked to some people about where to go to find people that might want to hear some music. We ended at "The Island" supposedly where most of the expats hangout. Sure enough the usual plan came together and we were playing through their P.A. within 10 minutes of getting there. One guy came up and asked if we wanted a bass player, we said "sure" and he came back with his full size acoustic upright. Then the other Lamma Islanders that he plays with showed up, so there was another mandolin, a classical guitar, and a fiddle player. I guess they play Jewish blues music together once a week on Lamma. I had my mp3 player so I recorded a few of the clips from that night:

Red River Valley->St. Anne's Reel->Foggy Mountain



Wagon Wheel



Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad


Unfortunately the last ferry from Lamma is at 11:30 so we had to make a mad dash back to the pier to catch it. We made it with 3 minutes to spare.

The rest of the week consisted of finished up our second set of music so we could have two solid 45 minute sets of music.

We had our sound check on Thursday, the owner wanted to do it early so he could have an idea of the setup on Friday (not a lot of music played there comes from acoustic instruments). That went really well, it wasn't the greatest sound setup I've ever played, but definitely definitely not the worst.

I also went to the monthly full moon party that some of the locals put on. There's a bonfire circled with candles and a bunch of drums an rhythm makers lying around for anyone to use. I arrived a little later and there were 3 police officers there talking with some of the Cantonese speakers and they left after a little while, supposedly someone complained about the noise, which is surprising since it's a good 800 meters (meters?!? yea, meters) up the beach from where there might be people camping in the public site. Anyway, they "recommended that they put the campfire out" and that was it. Police are so much different here than in the US, I could just picture 5 squad cars showing up and hauling people away. After 20 minutes of them leaving the drumming started again and it was fine until I left.

The show on Friday went well, we showed up around 8, finalized our sound setup, and were treated to our complimentary Turkish dinner which consisted of a hot and cold Meze platter and a large lamb skewer. Pretty good food, although nothing compared to the Nepalese food I had last week.

We started off with a set of slow songs since there were still quite a few people still eating. Then took a break and then opened it up a little more with our second set. Before we knew it 11pm arrived, we could have stopped there, but instead decided to play a few more songs and we really let it loose. It was all a blast and we were paid $1000 HKD for our work. Hopefully we'll get a chance to go back and play again sometime before Nate leaves for Malaysia for the summer.