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Hello Y’all,
*Before I forget to say something about this- we’re playing three Northwest shows in May & June. -May 15th, Thursday @ Graceland (Seattle/All-ages) with Lungfish and The Tiny Kings. [Lungfish is quite possibly our all-time favorite band. It is not like anything else you’ll hear or see again soon., (they haven’t toured the West Coast in seven years). If you can make it to any of the Lungfish shows on the West Coast, do it. You will thank yourself. Their additional tour dates can be found online at www.dischord.com -June 1st, Sunday @ The Vera Project (Seattle/All-ages) with The Beauty Pill (Washington DC/Dischord Records) and The Prom (Seattle/Barsuk Records). -June 2nd in Bellingham, WA @ 20th Century Bowl,1411 North State Street, with The Beauty Pill, Garden Variety Tsar and the Partitions, Cardinal $5 |
-Preface-As I may or may not have alleged in past Juno Updates, being in a band is brilliant. But even with that said- in the years Juno’s been a band it would be no exaggeration to say that things have often been more hard work and struggle that wacky fun times. In the Juno camp we don't often experience the ‘rock and roll fantasy realm’ tales you read so much about in the glossy music rags and online zines. At least not on a large or common enough basis for us to feel like we’re slaying dragons out there on the road night after night, week after week, tour after tour. No one in Juno is playing ‘hide the fish’ or buying a Rolls Royce airbrushed in their three favorite shades of blue... if you know what I’m saying. Nonetheless, touring has been an essential part of how we've defined ourselves in this band (hence, the massive tour journals & photographs). We’re fortunate to have had many wonderful experiences. We may slay half a dozen dragons during an eight-week tour, which is to say every now and again we might: A) play a clutch of great shows, B) laugh our asses off with our friends, C) explore interesting sights and D) make a slightly-better-than-bad grip of cash. But still, “every now and again,” well, those ain’t the best odds. Most tours we rough it all the way, occasionally graced with a good spot of luck here and there. There’s no denying it, if you’re a do-it-yourself kind of band schlepping your way through the underground there’s no getting around the dark side of van-life. The ass-loads of long drives, bad food, hard floors and massive debts are the most enduring, inevitable elements of touring in the U.S. For most DIY bands, life on the road is also a life of lost jobs, label woes, inner-band tension, and barely-held-together romantic relationships waiting to fall apart or, if lucky, be salvaged upon ones’ return home. Don’t consider these to be complaints. Rather, consider them merely statements of fact (and perhaps a sideways explanation for why we aren’t coming to a town near you at this very moment). During our time together, we’ve played astonishing, life affirming shows with great bands and we’ve met such lovely people. We’ve been witness to a lot of good and bad. And though we might crack ourselves up on the bad now and then, we've appreciated all of it. We’ve seen and done things I’d have never imagined possible in all the years of my aimless youth. Sentimental and silly as this may sound to some of you reading this, there are just three great equalizers against many of music’s shortcomings and labyrinthine pitfalls: 1) Touring to new places (like Japan!), 2) Staying home to write and record new songs (which is what we're trying to do now), and 3) Returning to the old places that feel good (which is what we hope to do when a new album is completed). With any luck, during the sixty-minute cacophony of a live show we're doing exactly what we want with our lives, sharing work we believe in, and having fun with each other, our listeners and our friends. In those brief minutes it's my sincerest hope that people will enjoy and connect on some level with the music we create. Which turns us to Japan. After our last European tour we took ten months off to lie low, reconnect with our lives back home and figure out what would come next for us collectively and individually. During that time, Gabe and I started mapping out new material. As well, we worked with our friends and promoters to see what we could do about getting to Japan. It was time and energy well spent. After a lot of planning, anxiety and intensive rehearsals, on January 7th we left for Japan.
JAPAN 2003 TOUR JOURNALSo here it finally is. My apologies for taking so long to post it but there’s been a lot to contend with since our return home from tour: Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Patriot Act, The Office of Homeland Security, bills, ailments, jobs, local shows, songwriting rehearsals, label negotiations, and a slow moving avalanche of other, less easy to express events. Without a doubt, it was the best tour of our lives. We have much to be grateful for. Here are the stories, please enjoy. -January 7th, 2003: I spent the afternoon and evening of the 6th running errands and asking cashiers stupid questions like, “Do you have this sleeping bag stuff sack but not in purple?” A music writer from the city’s local weekly paper, The Stranger, made the mistake of coming along in an effort to conduct an interview. Which means she basically rode shotgun, asking difficult questions and scribbling shorthand notes while I drove all over hell until nearly midnight, both of us laughing at my garbled, evasive answers and frantic last minute preparations. I gotta hand it to her, Megan Seling was a champ. Thanks for being so patient. I finished packing at 4am. Gabe picked me up for the airport around 5am. We drove around freezing our asses off gathering the rest of the good old Juno Boys Band; Greg Ferguson, Jason Guyer and Jason Lajeunesse. As some may recall, Lajeunesse played bass for us while we were touring the U.S. with Ted Leo & The Pharmacists a little more than a year ago. He also plays drums in the band Hint Hint (they’ve got a new e.p. out on the Cold Crush label- get it!). When we arrive at Lajeunesse’s apartment he’s nowhere in sight, nor is he answering his cell phone. He’s not even responding to our jackhammer attack on the building’s buzzer. This is bad. We’re already late to the airport and still have to pick up Guyer at his joint in the Central District. My mind races through all the possible worst-case scenarios: “What if Lajeunesse slipped in the tub? What if he’s been murdered? What if a leaky gas line snuffed him in the night? He’s a powerhouse party dude, what if he’s passed out? What if he’s O.D.’d? What if he’s simply not home? Maybe he’s forgotten we’re going to Japan?” And then I snap out of it- I’m thinking crazy, nobody forgets they’re going to Japan. As we stand outside throwing coins at his window I realize I’m so tired I’m not even tired anymore. I just feel wrong. I’m spazzing out on worst-case scenarios because my mind’s gone all wrong. It’s the effects of eight months of planning all coming to a head. I’m aware of the weight of my eyelids bearing down on my face and not much else. I tell myself this will change once we’re on the ground in Tokyo, surrounded by all the people, the sights and sounds, the cities, and the shows. At this point all it takes is getting on the planes. No more/no less. Magically, Lajeunesse appears at the doorway; suave and collected in a fashionable black scarf and new beige Pumas. Grinning wide, he whoops, “Hey buddies- Japan!!!” It’s on. Apart from a stunning sunrise and unseasonably clear skies, the flight from Seattle to LAX Airport is uneventful. Los Angeles, however, is a fantastic circus as always. The motherfucker is 83 degrees, sunny and swarming with people of all shapes, sizes, and colors. It’s a blur of bodies rushing to every imaginable global destination. Getting through the search points proves a bit of a hassle, between Guyer and I, we have enough film and cameras to sink a battleship. Assholes that we are, we request hand-checks for every roll of film, rather than let the bastards nuke them with their x-ray machines. Now aboard the finest airline in the world, Singapore Airlines, we’re on our way to Tokyo, Flight SQ 11. At the backside of every headrest is a min-television. The in-flight movie’s a bit of a dud. Honest to God, nothing is more boring than Jennifer Lopez, except for maybe Jennifer Lopez fucking George Clooney in a corny cops-and-robbers-get-romantic-in-a-bank-heist flick. Why is this playing on our flight, didn’t this movie come out about 5 years ago? Next! Oh shit, The Power Puff Girls…are awesome. Watching this cartoon with Japanese subtitles scrolling across the screen makes for a pretty good time. I flip between the cartoons and some crazy Asian martial arts-meets-acid-flashback program (a guy dressed in a giant white foam squid outfit gets the rubdown from two handmaidens. Sad to say, the girls behave like rejects from Hotdog On A Stick. They sing wide-eyed songs of devotion at the squid-man’s feet while bubbles blow around the room. This is wrong and marvelous). We’ve got turbulence. Lajeunesse chimes up, “All right, this right here I am not into at all.” He’s right. It’s bad. Maybe the worst. Our painfully attractive flight attendants unleash their pearly white smiles all around the cabin, making eye contact with every passenger as if to suggest, “Oh this? Pay no mind, this isn’t a big deal.” Fakery. This is bad. They race to return the beverage carts to their “secure” locations. To the unobservant eye these ladies are beautiful professionals, calm and collected, but on the inside they’re just as gripped with panic as the rest of us poor slobs sitting in our seats. The plane bounces around on and off for an hour. The guy next to me is double-fisting a Coke and Jack and a gin and tonic, more gets on his lap than against his tongue. Poor bastard, you’ve got just eleven more hours of this. I’ve got to get some sleep. Visions of J. Lo fucking a giant squid light up on the backsides of my eyelids. |
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JANUARY 8th:
Hiroshi, Ari and Shuko meet us at the Narita Airport about 30 miles outside Tokyo. They arrive in a small white passenger van the size of a loaf of bread. An additional van awaits us back at Ari and Shuko’s flat in Toyosu, a prefecture skirting Tokyo Bay. These will be our tour vehicles. Hiroshi’s our 21-year-old promoter. He’s slight, wears wire-rimmed glasses, black jacket and jeans. He smiles wide but speaks very little. He chain-smokes and constantly presses his index and middle finger against his left temple like he’s trying to quell some internal storm. Ari plays guitar, sings and chain-smokes for the band Blasstwolicks. A three piece, BTL sounds like Husker Du sung in Japanese. Ari’s a born performer; all smooth moves and excellent comedic timing. He’s the band mom. His band mate, Miu, is very cautious and courteous. He plays drums and behaves like the dad of the band. Ryu, the bassist, is generally carefree, handsome and remarkably quiet. He loves Jackie Chan and prefers we call him “Dragon.” He just wants to play shows, smoke grizzlers, drink sake, smile occasionally and always keep cool. True enough, he looks badass. Juno will be doing four of our five shows with BTL around Japan. Hell yes, the band is awesome. Shuko is Ari’s fiancé; she is also our translator. She used to live in Ft. Worth, Texas and played in the Japanese noise rock band, Aspera Bay. Shuko now lives in Tokyo where she teaches english to Japanese businessmen. Shuko will travel as our interpreter for the duration of our stay. Without her we are idiots. Leaving the airport, we drive back to the flat in Toyosu. It’s on the 32nd floor of a 36 story high-rise overlooking a series of canals and bridges below. We face east, with a view toward Chiba Prefecture. Our balcony’s high vantage best reveals the craziness of this city; it extends as far as the eye can see. Shuko explains to us that Tokyo is more an over-arching idea than it is a specific city. A massive sprawl of multiple cities all linked by subway lines, urban gridlock and highway toll roads- I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Tokyo’s 33 million inhabitants comprise nearly 1/4th of Japan’s 127 million population. |
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After dropping our bags and instruments at the flat we go for dinner at Ikki. The restaurant’s an izakaya, a Japanese traditional style bar. On this tour we’ll eat at many izakaya’s. Ari orders dinner for us. Huge plates of sashimi and stir-fried vegetables. Guyer and Lajeunesse freak out when the waiter carves up a live fish and places it still breathing on our table, lips gasping and tail flexing. Welcome to Japan, fellas. With a real tear in his eye, Guyer names the fish, Herman. We return to the flat, divide up the floor space and go to sleep. It’s 3 am, we’re off to a good start.
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JANUARY 9th:
I awake around 6 am. I can rarely sleep on tour. Like those scenes in Blade Runner, a marvelous sunrise does battle with a dense gray mist obscuring the bay and most of the outlying cityscape. The human ingenuity of this place is both magnificent and horrifying. It’s just huge; skyscrapers for miles and miles. Bright blue cargo vans, bicyclists and screaming yellow taxi cars zip across the canal bridges below. Today we have a day off to rest and deal with jetlag as we drive to Hiroshi’s parent’s home in Nagoya some four hours away. It’s windy and ballz-cold here. Japan isn’t the tropics; on the roadsides occasionally patches of snow dot the ground. We stop at every Hello Square rest stop along the way to stretch, buy oddball snacks and bullshit with Ari’s band mates, Ryu and Miu. This extends our journey to seven hours. BTL travels into Nagoya proper to find a hotel for the night while we make our way out to Hiroshi’s folks house in Nagoya’s farming region.
Upon entering Hiroshi’s house I come face to face with his tiny, rolled shouldered grandmother. Silence. Not a word passes between us, only the slightest bowing acknowledgement. She retreats to her room. Hiroshi’s father sits smoking in the living room wearing light blue pajamas and a black down vest. He makes us a huge feast of soba noodles, fried chicken, pumpkin, cuttle fish, and pickled daikon. Delicious. Hiroshi’s mom heats sake and then retreats to another room, returning twice only to see if we’ve finished up. Pronto, she wants us to please take our white interloping asses to the room they’ve arranged for our evening’s quarantine. Off we go. For the remainder of the night we sit around on reed mats and pillows next to a low, heated table, the kotatsu. The boys drink sake and Kirin beer. I eat chocolate covered soybeans until I nearly puke. Everyone huffs grizzlers till they can no longer see each other. Madness. We listen to Hiroshi’s cd’s and reminisce about our favorite Clash songs.
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JANUARY 10th:
Around 6 am, the neighbor’s dog goes ape-shit. Somewhere in the kitchen a shrill beep kicks in. It goes like this for the next two hours. Barking and beeping. I lay on the mats doing slow back-stretches with my eyes closed, unable to think of anything except how ice cold my blood is. Time for a shower. Showering in Japan is genius. You just hang your towel outside the door and walk into an enormous wet room. Everything gets wet, you’re hotter than hell, you choke on steam, and the water filters down to a series of gutters in the floor. Nirvana. Still, the freeze-attack waits on the other side of the door. It’s 8 am, Gabe and Greg rouse Guyer and Lajeunesse. Guyer’s gluttony kicks in early, he plows through a mountain of pre-packaged donuts and other sweets, sampling blobs of this or that but devouring nothing in full. Still in his sleeping bag, Lajeunesse wriggles his way over to the kotatsu in search of a lighter. For breakfast he just wants a smoke and polite hangover conversation. That’s my guy! We wake Hiroshi, pleading with him to kill the beeping kitchen. I go for a walk and shoot photos of the neighborhood while the light’s still good. Around 11am we start our drive back to Nagoya’s city center to meet up with BTL. Hiroshi pulls off the highway to a western style breakfast joint. Locals stare at us like we’re a herd of zebras come sauntering in on hind legs. Hiroshi orders us hardboiled eggs, toast with butter and coffee. Lajeunesse finds a porn mag some earlier patron had stuffed in with the menus. What are the odds? Classic. Once in the city, we head for sound check at the club, Huck Finn, and then rent rooms upstairs at The Hotel Choraku. Later that evening the club’s doorman runs up to Shuko, takes her hard by the arm and frantically warns her not to walk with gaijin (foreigners) on the street in front of Huck Finn. A local Yakuza mob gang controls it. Shuko tells me they run the bar next door and reportedly are quite happy to carve up foreigners. In quick order this bit of good advice gets passed around. The club holds approximately 150-200 people. It’s a long, narrow rectangular shoebox at the bottom of a stairwell below street level. The P.A.’s gigantic for how small the space is. We were played with the bands NAHT, Sick of Recorder, Park Loam and Blasstwolicks tonight. The motherfucker was sold out. I’m astounded. This was not only Juno’s first show of the tour but also our first show in ten months. Hello Nagoya, welcome to our train wreck! Anything that could go wrong did. Still, the show was amazing; a dissonant clang of opposing instruments but amazing nonetheless. A girl named Eiko, notorious to American indie rock bands touring Japan, comes to the show. She brings presents and shoots a boatload of photos of herself with us. We also meet Takuya, a local Nagoya promoter and the owner of the Stiff Slack label (www.stiffslack.com). He’s been helping Hiroshi plan the Juno tour and very generously is loaning me his Fender Twin amp. At the end of our set people cry, scream and ask for autographs. Not kidding. This is bizarre… uh, beautiful. After the show all of the bands go out drinking at another izakaya, this time named Yabuya. I’ve never experienced more camaraderie between touring bands than on this night in Nagoya.
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JANUARY 11th:
We wake, shower, freeze our asses off, pack the van, buy coffee and digital video tapes, and then wait around for Gabe and Lajeunesse to return from their brisk morning stroll through Nagoya. Miu is concerned that we’ll be late to our sound check in Osaka. Road Rule # 214: American bands are late, always. The drive takes four hours. We pass through the mountains via a highway system of high tech tunnels and glass-smooth, two-lane toll roads. Massive sound walls guard towns against the constant slippery “swoosh” of automobiles. Roadside hedges, manicured as a queen’s rose garden, divide the oncoming traffic. Japan ain’t slouching, even rural areas look more modern than most major American cities. As we move through the mountains, a visible smog hangs on the horizon; a striking curtain of brown grit softening the rise and fall of the topography ahead. This region looks like a post-apocalyptic Vermont. Everywhere is industry: factories, agricultural works, lampposts, smokestacks, power grids and pipelines. Whether riding in the van or loitering around outside, I notice the constant hum of huge, brilliantly painted, flat-cab semi-trucks carrying crap from point A to B, day and night, 24-7. Our show is at Club Water with the bands Fahner’s Witch, Dig A Hole, Vifida and Blasstwolicks. Again, an employee warns us not to hang around the small side street in front of the club. Apparently, two doors down is the largest Yakuza office in Osaka. This place rules. Neon signs big as office buildings. Out on the Nanba District’s main drag a hulking bullet train platform rises above hundreds of small streets and thousands of shops. This is Japan’s second largest city, and by the looks of it all 3.5 million inhabitants are either out shopping, dining, testing sex toys, or perusing photos at the many storefronts pitching escort services. Or playing pachinko. The parlors are packed with chain-smokers; their blank eyes gone all puffy, staring straight through the machines, pulling handles, pushing buttons, lazily clutching handfuls of those little polished silver balls.
We play well, the audience is happy. Afterwards we’re all soaking with sweat. I don’t remember much more about the show than that. Near the van three “comfort girls” stand on the corner in their symbolic white coats. Their schtick is to hit local men up with offers to join them for drinks, dinner, and conversation in exchange for a fee. Shuko explains that it’s like prostitution but rarely involves sex. Intrigued, Juno’s resident Drunky The Bear goes off to ask a few questions of one of the girls. He comes back no more than three minutes later laughing, “Hey buddies, she’s got no love for Mr. Baka Gaijin (crazy foreigner)! No love at all! Haaaaaaa!” |
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Guyer shows up inhaling his newest and most favorite Japanese candy discovery- a massive waffle and ice cream sandwich. These things can be purchased at convenience stores and are as big as your face. I believe it is his fourth of the day. We pile into the van and make our way back to Nagoya where we sleep for a few hours at The Hotel Kiyoshi. Bunking up with Father Miu, I enter the room before him and can’t find the thermostat. I panic. It is freezing, 4-fucking-real. But I spy the blow dryer affixed to the wall. Exhausted out of my head, using a pencil and the dryer’s cord, I rig the trigger to stay depressed. I get that fucker bumped up to blasting the hot winds of hell. It is cold in this cooler and I’m ready to burn the building down! My eyes goggle in their sockets when I see Miu walk in. I’m terrified he’s going to make me turn the blow dryer off- no, please! Anything but that! He looks at me, then frowning he looks at the blow dryer, exclaiming, “Ahhhhhhhh!” Between our two single beds he walks over to a radio built into the nightstand. He punches a few buttons and much to our mutual delight somewhere in the room a heater goes on. Of course, the thermostat’s inside the fucking radio! Japan. |
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JANUARY 12th: Today is a day off. We do the long, fine drive back to Tokyo. I write in the passenger seat up front while Lajeunesse ropes the boys into a gambling game of UNO. At first Guyer says, “I don’t condone gambling.” We all roll our eyes. Lajeunesse smiles, drags on a grizzler and says, “Awwww, c’mon buddy it ain’t gonna kill ya.” The Bear wears him down. Soon enough Guyer’s hollering, “You little bitch! Take that- AHHH!!!” as game after game he takes their money. Hilarious. We stop at a Hello Square to admire Mt. Fuji and the surrounding acres of green tea plantations. Back in Tokyo we go to dinner at yet another izakaya, this time called Uoya Iccho in hipster Shibuya. We eat Japan. We eat it all. The gentlemen kill about four hundred grizzlers and drink enough Kirin to fill a bathtub. Out of hand. At the behest of a friend from back home we try to get Ari to take us to Roppongi, the foreigner district. This is where all the non-Japanese congregate to disco dance, do drugs, drink, get lap dances, full-body massages and other obnoxious pursuits. Ari isn’t having it. He says, “Roppongi, mmmmm- no. Roppongi, not for ‘us,’ very bad. For ‘baka gaijin (crazy foreigners).’ Maybe when tour is over we go.” Ari exhibits a kind of wisdom we just don’t possess.
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JANUARY 13th:
Tonight we play with Blasstwolicks, Kiwi Roll and Downy in Setagaya, Tokyo at Club Que in the Shimokitazawa District. Say that five times fast. Again, a sold out show. Bizarre and great fun. Though the sound on stage is terrible it sounds great out in the room. To their hometown crowd BTL play their best set of the tour. It is a diverse bill. Kiwi roll drops bombs with a set of aggressive screamo-math-rock. Downy is Japan’s answer to Sonic Youth and Radiohead. Unsurprisingly, once again all the bands are very good. When it comes time for Juno’s set Guyer borrows a Marshall JCM 900 head and a matching 4x12 cab. During the encore he and Lajeunesse get a little too Drunky The Bear-aggro and topple the head off the back of the cab. KABLAMMO! Guyer’s guitar cuts out midway through the song, not good. He just shrugs, drops his guitar, tosses a grizzler behind him (landing it in my hair), waves to the audience and walks off stage leaving us to finish up. Lajeunesse destroys the stage with thunderous bass moves. It is awesome and totally stupid. After the show I meet a few people from the audience. I can’t get used to the crying. We truly appreciate the enthusiasm. But still, it’s freaking us out a little. We miss the last train back to our flat in Toyosu. I buy a $4 cup of Starbuck’s drip coffee in Shibuya’s town center. How is it grizzlers cost as little as $2 per pack in Japan and yet a small cup of coffee is four bucks? Japan likes to keep the smokes cheap. Everyone smokes in Tokyo. Everyone. And now they’re gonna get fucked on bad drip coffee. Criminal on both fronts. Oh, and our cab ride back to Toyosu costs $100 US. |
