AFE Tour – Pacific Theatre
Here you will find daily, weekly or bi-weekly updates from the road to Guam and back. Keep in touch.
Click here to view a full itinerary for the trip.
 July 4th 10:30am
first off, let it be known that we are something like 15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. After much study and consultation with the Sons of Bill Scientific Division, we have officially decided we have no idea what the hell that means, so we will be posting these updates with the local time here. Do the math yourselves.
Welcome to Guam! We arrived here Monday night at 1am, after 24 straight (bizarre) hours of travel in which the sun never went down. Apparently if you fly west long enough you just chase the Sun around the Earth. Further consulation with the SoB Scientific Division (SoBsD) yields the finding that we don’t understand this phenomenon either. Who knew?
 Tuesday morning we woke up (some of us never slept) to confirm the rumor that our case full of drums was sitting in Dullus Airport. Incompetence on display as usual. Luckily two highly competent Guam fellows, Frank and Tom, were able to track down replacement gear and arrange for us to pick up the drums at the airport, just in time for us to jet for Korea tonight.
Our first show went swimmingly.  A nice family, outdoor BBQ (just burgers and dogs, no extreme-Pacific-Pigroast action) in which we all acquired attractive lobster tans. Sam walked out of his room this morning looking like he was wearing a red body-suit under a tight white tank top. Then we realized he didn’t have a shirt on. Yipes.
The debate continues as to whether or not we play “Texas” at these shows. We got a request for it (God knows how) yesterday and played it as an encore, prefaced by an apologetic soliloquy by James. After the show we had three seperate groups (including one of Texans) approach us to say they loved it and a girl from Abilene say we were great, but she didn’t appreciate the last song. Oh well. Can’t please everyone I guess.
Today we have the day off to explore Guam. I’m still suspicious that this is all a sham and we actually played in Norfolk yesterday. A 10-minute tropical deluge, followed by a beautiful sunset over the Pacific, did a little to assuage my skepticism, but I’m holding out judgement till we actually get to see the island. We’ll check back in from Korea in a few days, until then check the C-ville website for some Starr Hill video and hopefully some pictures from the island(s).
Best from the west,
SoB
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July 6th 10:42pm
SoBsD concludes: Guam actually exists! After much speculation as to whether we were in Norfolk, Florida, or actually on this supposedly real island of Guam somewhere in the South Pacific, we now feel reasonably comfortable asserting that indeed, we have been to Guam.Â
On our nation’s Independence Day, we took the liberty of renting an 8-seater SUV (God Bless America) and driving up and down the island. Come to find it’s a haven for Japanese tourists, as well as US military personnel, and even a few native-born residents (claiming the Chamorro culture as their heritage). The Japanese we had trouble communicating with (not a promising omen for the next two weeks) but the other two groups were friendly, welcoming, and helpful to the best of their abilities. After chilling on the beautiful beaches all afternoon (minus a few hours to retrieve our neglected drum case from the airport), we took in the sunset over some jaw-dropping oceanside clifftops that Sam and BJ had stumbled upon earlier in the day.
All field interviews seemed to point us to the Chamorro Village Wednesday Night BBQ, which supposedly happens every week, but would be extra-special-hoppin’ on account of the 4th (I guess it is their Independence Day too, through some technicality). The SoBsD Maps and Geography Department took down the directions “go straight through, oh I don’t know, a few lights…then you come to a turn…and it’s right there.” With a little trepidation, we plugged the coordinates into our system and took off. Lo and behold, the directions we spot on and we were treated to a delectible meal of local specialities including ribs, chicken skewers, shrimp fritters, and kelaquen (some kind of ground fish and citrus masterpiece which the SoBsD Ministry of Pronuonciation is still grappling with). After returning to our lodging at Anderson AFB for a quick 2 hour nap, we hit the airport for a frenzied late night plane ride back north to Korea.
Arriving in Incheon (a mist-shrouded island near Seoul which houses the Jetsonesque airport) some few hours after sunrise, we met our friendly contact Mr Hwang (still trying out pronunciations on that one) and our somewhat clever, foul-mouthed driver, Mr Yii, who ferried us safely to our hotel in downtown Seoul. James and BJ promptly hit KFC (yes, The Colonel has arrived on the Asian shores and, from the looks of this particular Chicken Fryery, he’s been here awhile), and then dove into 5-7 hour naps.
Abe, Brian, Sam and Seth found their way to a Korean restaurant (of indeterminable name) and attempted alingual communication with the smiling but confused waitstaff. Apparently the only two words we had in common were “Coca-cola” and “two.” So we ordered ourselves two Coca-colas, and two of two different main dishes which each ended up being enough to feed two middle-class American families, and cost about as much as one number two combo meal at the KFC next door (which I’m told had gross biscuits). Somehow we stumbled our way through a delicious smorgasboard of stir-fry and chop sticks (in sets of two, which it turns out are simply too awkard for certain members of the band to operate) and all manner of delicacies which I struggle to find words to describe, but which tested our stomach capacity, and ended up totaling just this side of $7 each.
Upon reawakening, James, BJ and Abe (who crashed after our lunch for a 4 hour siesta of his own) led the charge to the local (and totally bizarre) Outback Steakhouse. This turned out to be only the first stop in a long line of quasi-American drinking establishments that night, but they will be omitted from this report, mainly because this correspondant, after almost passing out from exhaustion in the booth at Outback, heading back to the hotel.
 This morning we wandered around the city a little more and then reported to Yongsan Army Base for a radio interview on the Armed Forces Network, only to find out that someone (it’s still not clear who) had scheduled our interview for the day that all personnel were on training leave or something. Oh well. Supposedly it’s rescheduled for Tuesday, but we’ve learned that holding our breath is not only distracting, but also makes you light-headed. Our first show in Korea was fairly uneventful, but overall pretty good. After wrangling with the sound system for awhile, BJ got us sounding pretty damn fine, but unfortunately not very many people came (from a combination of the promotional radio spot being cancelled, and the fact that it’s a gigantic base in the middle of the capital city, so nobody was just hanging around the mess hall looking for something to do). Those that did show up were very grateful and assured us that other bases would be more centralized and starved for entertainment, so the audiences would only get better. With that wind in our sails we made conversation with the soldiers and their families for a while and then headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
Tomorrow we play our second show on the Peninsula, and then continue in that manner for a number of days before our next day off sometime next week. Consensus within the band is that this is a good thing. We’re sick of airports and ready to play some music (after all that is what they brought us here to do). However, for this outlook to persevere, we must get some sleep, and so we bid you adieu for now. The SoBsD is still working on figuring out how to put pictures of the trip up on this website, but we’ve been told that the C-Ville will be running some photos on their website. Be in touch.
러ì´ã…로뎌밈 (goodbye and goodnight in Korean),
SoB
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July 8th 9:26am
Here’s to Camp Hovey! And here’s to Camp Casey and Colonel Queen and Sgt. Maj. Gray and all our other esteemed hosts last night at the Iron Triangle. If any of the other bases are half as respectable or a quarter as rowdy as these men and women, this will turn out to be one hell of a tour. And here’s one for the 4/7 Cavalry. Someone else shouted not to keep making ‘em feel like they were special, but you know what? They are special. Matter of fact, if I knew the names of the other groups there last night I’d send one up for you too, ’cause you all are a damned special bunch. Unfortunately for everyone else, Cav just happened to be the loudest. So here it is: toss one back for Camp Hovey. Keep up the good work boys.
Sons of Bill
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July 11th 2:30pm
It’s been a few days since the last update, and in those few days…we’ve played a few shows.
The first week of our trip featured us playing two shows and traipsing around the South Pacific trying to figure out where we were and what we were doing there. Now we find ourselves in our second week and…well, we still don’t know where we are, but we have some idea what we’re doing here: we play music. We play music in Korea
We’ve played four shows in the last five nights and we’ve got four more in a row before we get a night off. All the shows have gone well, especially one at Camp Hovey (an Army Base up near the North Korean border) which ranks as one of the five best Sons of Bill shows ever. Ever.
The rest have been fairly strong as well. Each show we’ve spent about an hour afterwards hanging with troops and signing CDs and promo photos of us (we’re still not clear on where those came from, ‘cause we sure as hell didn’t bring ‘em. We do look pretty damn good though. Except that Brian has more hair and looks alarmingly like a certain Todd Wellons of Boston, Massachusetts). It’s a hell of an experience to talk to these men and women. Still unclear who’s more appreciative of what the other is going. The routine seems to be we shake hands with them and one of us says “thank you, we really appreciate what you’re doing for us,†and then the other one kind of cocks his head to the side and says, “thank you…we really appreciate what you’re doing. For us.†Then we both smile. Then more often than not someone either buys a drink or spills a drink. And it goes on and on.
We took a break a few days ago in Seoul and walked around a lot. We went to a big mall. No one is quite sure why, except that BJ was on the trail of a phantom electronics megalopolis. Eventually everyone else gave up and went back to the hotel (apparently no one else cared in the first place, they were just in it for the walk) and Seth and BJ continued down the trail of the pot of gold at the end of the quite-possibly-black-market electronics rainbow. Eventually we found it – not so much a market, more like an entire neighborhood – but there were so many digital cameras and indistinguishable computer guts, that we got kind of overwhelmed and didn’t buy anything. After another failed effort to get a reasonable dinner (and another walk home in the vaguely poop-smelling streets) we decided, as a band, that we were sick of Seoul. Word on the street is that this beautiful city has a lot to offer the curious and adventurous visitor. Unfortunately, in four days without any guide, we failed to find much of it. Luckily for us, we’re going back for another two days before we head to Japan. Yowza.
I’m writing this update on bus between Reno and Vegas. No, just kidding. It’s a bus between Kunsan and Chinhae. We’ve got another four shows before we get back to the big city. We’ll probably check back in then.
Hold it down back home,
SoB
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midnight July 16/17th
As of this afternoon, the Sons of Bill flotilla has touched soil in the Land of the Rising Sun. However, it was foggy and raining when we landed, and then it got dark, so we haven’t seen anything yet except the inside of the Tokyo Airport and our hotel rooms. We’ll keep you posted on Japanese developments as they…develop.
For now, back to Korea.
Our last four shows were a little disappointing in terms of crowd size, but certainly not lacking in crowd enthusiasm. We’ve said before that we prefer an appreciative crowd to a large crowd. Someone once said you should watch what you wish for. I wished that guy would stop being such a smartass.
Back to business…oh yes, Korea. We played a show at Daegu Air Force Base (also sometimes spelled Taegu, the Pronunciation Ministry has been flooded with requests and putting in overtime nights and weekends, so we didn’t even bother to ask them about it), which apparently used to be half and half South Korean and American, but is now a couple thousand ROK personnel, and about 60 US types. Out of those 60 (apparently the thousands of Korean flyboys either didn’t know or didn’t care about the visiting country band) about ten or fifteen made it out to see us rock. Not a huge crowd, but they were great and afterwards took us over to their apartments for a bonfire and some Soju (some kind of Korean rice liquor that’s virtually tasteless, in the most delicious way possible). We had heard of it, mostly to stay away from it, but the boys at The Gu (as they affectionately called Deagu AB) assured us that they were professionals and we had nothing to worry about. Parts of that were true. We all had a great time. Then we all had a slight headache. But as they say: when in Rome…drink Italian wine or something; and when in boondocks Korea, drink Soju. I think that’s how the saying goes. SoBsD Histories and Anecdotes Department is back-checking that one right now. At some point in the night BJ and Seth were boasting (mostly to each other) about what kind of game they ran on a hardwood court with a leather ball, and were overheard by an enlisted man who commented that the next morning at 7:30 they would be having PT (Physical Training, for you civilian types) and there would be a basketball game of sorts. And so, when BJ heard a knocking on his door at 7:20am, he was mildly surprised – although alarmingly excited - to see Seth standing there with borrowed tennis shoes and his old summer league jersey (which he later forgot and is now sitting in a Deagu lost and found). They played two rousing early morning pickup games (both sandwiched between lined up group stretching a la middle school gym) and then went out for breakfast. And then they collapsed. But let us not lose the glow of the triumph in the gloom of the casualties. It was legendary game.
Upon returning to Seoul we, lo and behold, finally found some cool stuff. SoBsD Strategic Planning Board is still puzzling over how we wasted four days earlier in the trip without finding any of this stuff, but none-the-less, alls well that ends well. To encapsulate briefly Seth and Abe took a tour of an ancient palace and current (though ancient looking) Buddhist Temple. BJ went shopping or something, and somehow got taken to a dance club by a friendly group of Koreans (the first such group with which we’ve had any contact). James and Brian went out together and found a delicious dinner and a fine evening at the bars. Sam, Seth, Abe and BJ hiked up a small mountain in the middle of the city, through (the beautiful and well-kept) Namsan Park and went up in the really really really tall tower on top. It boasted a 375 degree view of the city at the top, which was incredible (despite baffling our SoBsD Arithmetic Bureau) and had cool little graphics on the huge windows telling how far away and in which direction you could find various major cities. The city of Seoul is, contrary to what you may or may not have heard, enormously gigantic. It stretched, quite literally, as far as the eye could see in every direction. Wow. It’s also quite pretty from way above it. You can’t even smell the open sewers.
Upon returning Abe, Sam and Seth ate a delightful dinner (with much good hearted – and largely unintelligible –  banter with the waitstaff) and sampled a little more Soju. After this endeavor, Seth persuaded them to visit the very strange, and fairly low rent, batting cages that sat right on the main road, on the netted-in roof of a Dunkin’ Donuts. You may have read this last sentence and thought “what?! Have I lapsed into bizzaro world?†The easy answer to that question would be a clear and strong affirmative. We then proceeded to spend about one hour and fifteen dollars crushing rubber baseballs that were being hurled at us by a grizzly (and not entirely consistent) pitching machine, and yelling taunts at the top of our lungs to imagined infielders that took on the persona of various personalities we’ve met throughout the trip. Hell of a time. And don’t let his weight fool you, Big Frank (our driver in Guam) is one hell of a first basemen. Can’t say the same for ole Frances at short stop, but I guess you can’t win ‘em all.
And so we left Korea feeling fairly victorious, only to land in Tokyo amidst a serious pea soup fog. I’m told we’re staying at the base of Mount Fuji, one of the most picturesque peaks in all the world, but as of yet I’ve seen nothing but interstates, barbed wire and cloud cover. Of course, we’ve only been on this strange little island for about seven hours, so hopefully things will clear up and we’ll have plenty of jaunty tales for you in a day or two. Until then, tell your friends how good we are and make them buy our CD online. I hear Tokyo is one of the top five most expensive cities in the world and the SoBsD Finance and Economics Advisory Panel has recently confirmed our suspicions that we are one of the top five brokest bands in all of Eurasia.
Good Hunting,
Sons of Bill
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July 19th 5pm – quick news flash
Just a short note to let everyone know that we are nowhere near the danger area of the evolving nuclear accident that happened as a result of a strong earthquake in Japan this week. We’ve been told it’s all over the news in the states, but everything is proceeding according to schedule for us over here. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are being affected by this terrible situation, but for those of you at home worrying about us: we’re fine, worry about the Japanese who are trying to get it under control while we cruise around rocking. We’ll be back with another update in a few days when we have more time. As for now, back on the bus.
SoB
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July 23rd 1:18pm
We find ourselves back in an airport. This time to fly from Tokyo area Japan, down to Hiroshima, in the south. But let’s backtrack a moment. Since we last spoke at length we’ve played five shows and had one “day off” on which we didn’t play a show, but certainly didn’t relax either. When we arrived on the island a week ago, we were ferried to Camp Fuji which, as we discussed before, is at the base of Mount Fuji. We’re told it’s a beautiful mountain. We’re told on a clear day it can be seen from all over Japan. But we didn’t have any clear days. We had overcast days. We had drizzly days. We even had one downright rainy day. We did not have a clear day. Therefore, we did not see Mount Fuji. We did however, see Camp Fuji, where we walked into a terrorism practice lockdown drill of some sort. It seems that about six hours before we arrived, a state of mock emergency was declared and just about everyone on the base was stationed on a street corner (in the rain) with a gigantic gun. Everyone, that is, except us. We spent the day locked in our hotel until we finally bumbled onto a secured airfield while looking for the “chow hall” and managed to score ourselves an escort to the food court from the confused and chagrined Colonel. In a stroke of luck, the food court had a delicious pot roast on special. Unfortunately that was our only stroke of luck at Camp Fuji. We played that night, starting about an hour and a half after the terrorism drill ended. Predictably, everyone was exhausted from being on alert for 36 hours, so almost no one came to the show. I guess that’s the nature of the beast.The rest of the shows were fairly standard. The one exception was Camp Zama, which was fairly well attended by Americans, but even more well attended by some sort of Japanese Line Dancing Club. They were fairly rich, if not smooth, and made for quite a site. I detail this scene more thoroughly on our C-ville Weekly post, but let it suffice to say that watching seventeen middle aged Japanese women two-stepping to the Sons of Bill playing a Drive-By Truckers song was like something out of very strange and slightly surreal foreign film. Something in the vein of a Jack Rabbit Slim’s scene, directed by Quentin Tarantino, with James played by a young Bill Murray and John Goodman playing one of the loud American men trying to join the spectacle in the line dancing pit. Yowza. Maybe even Yee Haw too.And then we had our day off. We all had big plans to take the train to Kamakura (a historic city halfway between our temporary residence and the sprawling metropolis of Tokyo) and then go into the big city for dinner. Abe, Seth and James planned to get up early and hit the historic temple circuit, meeting up with the others for lunch in Kamakura. But as they were preparing to leave, James realized the drier in the hotel had malfunctioned and his clothes were still wet from the night before. So he decided to stay back and ride in with the other boys. Everyone ran into each other by chance a few hours later (a little before the lunchtime destination) at on of the temples. Everyone, except James, who had fallen asleep while doing his laundry and missed the second train. And so we tried to catch up, but it ended up with us spending the day as a five-some with James wandering around the city alone. Them’s the breaks I guess.We saw all kinds of great old structures, including huge (maybe thirty foot tall) bronze Buddha, and then cruised the back streets for some shopping and local cuisine. At about 4:30 or so we went back to the train station to buy tickets for Tokyo (except Abe, who elected to stay behind and drool over the architecture in the old city). We stopped outside the train station for BJ to buy a quick burger, which Seth pulled out his fanny-pack/wallet thinger to lend him some money for. Seth then started counting up money for the train tickets, BJ ate the burger, and then they went in the station. Sam was just buying his ticket when Seth reached in his pocket and found no wallet. The wallet, wherever it was, contained an ATM card, a credit card, about $100 in yen, and an American passport with a picture of a young, clean-shaven Seth Munson Green on it. The next several minutes were fairly frantic, but after retracing steps and ravaging through backpacks, we decided that Seth probably left it on the park bench in front of the burger joint. Now sitting on that park bench was Japanese lad (probably in his late teens) with a satchel and a couple of friends laughing and joking. After several minutes of looking around and politely asking them if they’d seen it, BJ decided to put the Fear of God in the boy and demanded to know if he had it in his satchel. All parties involved agree that the kid will probably never wear that pair of underwear again, but we’ll never know if he was telling the truth when he desperately told us he didn’t have it.We spent the next five minutes or so walking to the local police station to report a lost passport. When we got there they asked for Seth’s name and sat us in the front waiting room. We were all moping around when an officer, with extremely limited English, began asking Seth when and where he’d lost it and what was with it, etc. Then another officer walked out with a large mailing envelope, unzipped it, and extended his hand to Seth. Witness accounts differ as to whether Seth’s jaw or the wallet hit the ground first, as he was so surprised to see the beige parcel in the officer’s hand, that his fingers refused to grasp it as the officer let go. Inside the wallet, everything was intact. Money, passport, everything. The may never know how the wallet managed to beat us to the station. One possible scenario is that the youngsters on the park bench did indeed have it, but were so badly shaken by our interrogation that as soon as we left they sprinted to the police station and passed it off like a hot potato. Or perhaps someone opened it up and was frightened by the official looking military paperwork folded up inside. Yet another option is that some good-hearted Japanese citizen simply picked it up and passed it to the authorities out of some sense of duty. Either way, Japan is one hell of a country. We spent the next hour on the train to Tokyo, thanking the Good Lord for His Everloving Bail-out in our time of need, and discussing the odds of this happening in the States. Estimates ranged from “probably not” to “no way in hell.” But it happened in Japan, and we salute them for it.Seth, BJ, Brian and Sam spent the rest of the night cruising wide-eyed around the Shibuya district of downtown Tokyo. Apparently Tokyo is huge and trying to take it more than one district in any given evening is utterly pointless. Shibuya is somewhere between Times Square Manhatten and a super-trendy punk rock themed college kid hang out. We ate some amazing dinner, at a restaurant expertly selected by Mr BJ Pendleton of the SoBsD Culinary High Council, and then had a few drinks before scrambling to catch the train back home before they stopped running. And now we have stopped running, but only briefly. We board a plane to Hiroshima in minutes where, after an hour and a half plane ride, we’ll set up and play a show at the Army Ammo Depot in Akizuki. The shows will continue unabated until we fly to Okinawa (which has been described as the Japanese version of Hawaii. Sam claims he’s parachuting out of the plane, with snorkel, as we go in to land) end of the this week for our final shows before going home. We’ll check in with you people next chance we get.Hold onto your important documents,Sons of Bill
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July 26th 12:03am
We find ourselves with a free late night minute, although we should probably be sleeping, because tomorrow morning (at 7am!) we fly out to Okinawa. Those of you with real jobs and normal lives may not grasp the tragedy of this scheduling, but if you are a musician (or bartender or nightwalker of some sort) you realize that 7am barely exists. It is nothing but some foggy figment of a childhood nightmare involving school buses and balogna sandwiches packed in Transformers lunch boxes. Anyway, we’ll be up and on our way towards leaving mainland Japan (although we have fly back up to Tokyo for a connecting flight) and headed for what we’ve heard is some kind of tropical paradise (Okinawa, they call it). Sam still claims he’s going to pull some kind of snorkel/parachute manuver as we descend for landing. As of tonight he’s even threatening to board the plane in nothing but sun screen and a Speedo. Yipes.
The past three shows have run the gamut. Akizuki, the first, is only a small Ammo Depot. We were told that there were only twelve Americans stationed there, so we weren’t optimistic about the turnout. What we weren’t told in advance was that our host had invited all of the local Japanese nationals (and their families) to the show. And they all came. It was…bizarre. Somewhat similar to the line dancing experience, but in a small hotel lobby instead of a bar. And less organized. And perhaps even slightly weirder overall. The Japanese loved us. By the end they were dancing and shaking in all different directions. And clapping. A lot of clapping. It is a common thing (at home) for musicians to privately make fun of the peope in the audience who can’t clap on beat. However, it becomes a moot point when almost 90% of the audience is not only clapping off the beat, but seems entirely content to clap along with some rhythm which is entirely irregular and has only a very tenuous connection to the song coming out of our speakers. But what they lacked in rhythm, they made up for in heart. They got down. And it was quite a sight.
A strong word of thanks and appreciation also goes out to Dave, our host at Akizuki. Dave not only treated us fantastically while we were at his base, but he took time off the next day to drive us into near-by Hiroshima to see the atomic bomb memorials. That, needless to say, was a very heavy experience. Words don’t exist to describe the typhoon of emotions you experience walking through a museum full of pictures and artifacts from a city which our military almost entirely annihilated in a matter of seconds. Heavy. But the museum actually rings somewhat of a hopeful tone. As hopeful as museum featuring pictures of burning children could ring. It closes with a section on the rehabilitation of the city. The last picture is of the flowers sprouting that fall from ground that scientists predicted wouldn’t support life for 75 years. And then you walk out into the city which, some 60 years after the bomb, is a beautiful and thriving city. Maybe the prettiest we’ve seen this trip, with bridges and rivers breaking up the conrete jungle around every turn. The Peace Park (at the site of the bomb drop) is also a moving site; and a testament to the peace movement which has blossomed in Hiroshima. A miraculous thing considering how easy it would seem for the city instead to have been consumed by hate and dreams of revenge. Once again, hats off to the Japanese.
We hurried back from Hiroshima to catch a bus to Iwakuni Marine Air Station. This base was huge. Unfortunately, someone dropped the ball on advertising our show. As result, out of some several thousand Marines, only about fifteen people showed up to see us rock a room that would have held at least several hundred. Of those fifteen, about half were great and the other half kept requesting Kenny Chesney. Even after James told them that he’d rather let Sam brain him with a Stratocaster than play Kenny Chesney. They just refused to understand that we didn’t play Top 40 CMT country. As someone once said from the silver screen, “some men…you just can’t reach.” Oh well. Thanks to those Marines who did enjoy the show.Â
From there we got up at 8am (we’ve already discussed how musicians feel about mornings) and drove five hours to the southernmost big island (I don’t remember the name of it, but you probably wouldn’t recognize it anyway) to play at Sasebo Naval Base. This show was slightly uneventful, but overall a good show. We met some great people, played fairly well, and ended our Japan run on a better note than our Korean run (which ended with a show in a pizza parlor with broken stage lighting and five fans). Count your blessings. Especially on the road. We’ll hopefully check in again before we cross back over, but if not we’ll post some sort of last update yeehaw in a few days. Unfold the lawnchairs and stock the coolers. We’ll be home in less than a week and I have a mean suspicion that several Lucky 7’s in the Locust Ave area have a surplus stock of PBR just waiting for us to do battle with.
off to see the palm trees,
SoB
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July 29th 2:56pm
Just a quick note before we go off to play our LAST SHOW! It’s hard to believe we’re heading home tomorrow, but in many ways it’s very welcome. Despite several transportation screwups and a van breaking down on the way to our show (ah, familiar shades of home), Okinawa has been fun.  The beaches are nice, although not quite the paradise it was described as. Admittedly we’ve only seen a small fraction of then, so maybe the other side of the island is breath-taking, but we’ll never know. The shows have been, on the average, better than most of our other shows. The first of three was under a little pavilion right on the beach, which was beautiful, but blazing hot. The weather in general has been…hot. The humidity is like something along the lines of strolling through a heated fish tank. Last night and tonight are both at a big festival/carnival get down. Despite that fact that we’re competing for the crowds with no less than four Moon Bounces and one of those mini bungee thingers, we’ve had the biggest crowds of the whole trip.
We have to leave the hotel at 5am tomorrow to catch the plane back to Tokyo.  An intra-office conference is currently underway over at the  SoBsD.  Our Clocks and Chonology Department is in consultation with Sobriety Prevention Services, working on the appropriate course of action for the next 36 hours. The debate on the floor hinges upon whether we stay up all night partying and sleep on the plane, or go to bed early and drink the free alcohol on the trans-Pacific flight. Another factor weighing in heavily is that today is Sam’s 27th birthday (Happy Birthday to you too Carling!) and we have no intention of letting that occasion pass us by unobserved. We’ll keep you posted on the results, but right now soundcheck is calling.
back soon,
Sons of Bill
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July 31st 11:19am
some of you might have read the last update and are figuring “oh, they must be home now!” That would seem to be a safe deduction. But alas, that is not the case. Somebody somewhere in the chain of command at Armed Forces Entertainment booked Abe’s flight to leave Tokyo for a direct flight to Washington, DC on July 30th. I fine idea, we thought. Unfortunately that same person, in an epic show of competence, booked everyone else’s ticket for July 29th. We were in Okinawa playing our last show on July 29th. We were not in the Tokyo airport flying home. Thus, we have missed our flight.
Right now a buck passing session is going on throughout the AFE headquarters but frankly we didn’t have the patience for it. Seth and BJ took over scheduling on location in Tokyo. The initial result of all this was that Abe would check ten excess baggages (all of our equipment and the bulk of our luggage) and take off for old VA on our regularly scheduled flight. The flight in question being full, the rest of us would wait at the counter (with only our carry-on luggage) and try to sneak on with a last minute Stand-By ticket. If this didn’t pan out, there were several other flights leaving that day for the states. We would, the plan went, stand-by for each of them until we got a ride across the Pacific and then connect through to DC.
Abe took the plane. We waited. Fifteen minutes before take-off they said “we’ve got four tickets and maybe a fifth at the gate! If you run through security you can probably make it.” And run we did. Through security. Down the escalator. Almost to the gate…when someone popped out of an administrative passageway and stopped us dead. Apparently the people who had vacated the seats showed up last minute, which left us out in the cold.
And so we began the waiting process. As we stood by for one flight after another, we discerned that circumstances in the Tokyo airport had conspired against us in a mean way. A plane bound for San Francisco had been cancelled the day before, leaving about 400 travellers anxiously waiting for their next ticket back to anywhere in the states. Furthermore, all the stateside flights were booked up through wednesday night (over 48 hours away). Thus we were stuck waiting with a few hundred other impatient folks trying to squeeze onto half a dozen chock-full 747’s.
One plane after another left the ground without us. Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle. Finally, after about three hours on edge, the last plane of the day left for Honolulu. At this point we were all a bit frantic and BJ started blathering to the receptionist about us getting out of here at any cost. He was ranting about Thailand or some such nonsense when the Japanese lady behind the desk politely interrupted him saying, “there’s a plane leaving for Seoul, Korea in twenty minutes. If you can catch that, we can guarantee you a flight to DC through San Francisco tomorrow.” The word “guarantee” had not been thrown around in previous conversations, so we jumped on it like a drummer on free hotel mini-bar.
The next twenty minutes (make that the next three hours) were kind of a blur, but in that blur we ran through security (for the second time of the day), this time onto a plane, and now we find ourselves back in Seoul. You may remember our previous love/hate relationship with Seoul, but if it gets us home it’ll be right up there with Paris and Crozet on the SoB Top Cities Worldwide list. We had a fanastic Korean Bar-B-Que dinner last night (hopefully on AFE’s tab, if they have any shred of sympathy or accountability) and we’re about to take the shuttle back to the aiport for our flight to San Fran.
wish us luck,
SoB
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August 1st 3:28pm
We’re home.
[deep breath. breathe out.]
I can barely believe it myself at this point, but upon reopening my eyes this morning, things looked suspiciously like Albemarle County. And this time, unlike all the other times I woke up in Albemarle County this July, the vision didn’t fade into hotel drapes and bus pickup schedules as soon as the sleep left my eyes. But rest assured, the journey home was no less complicated than any of our other (mis)adventures in the past month. Here goes…
When we last left our heroes, they were about to leave their hotel in Seoul, South Korea with a “guaranteed” flight to Washington Dullus International Airport via San Francisco. We arrived at the Seoul airport at about noon to check in for our 2:15 flight. We handed them our tickets. They looked slightly confused. We became slightly worried.
Apparently, in her race to get us on the Seoul flight, the receptionist in Tokyo forgot to finalize our San Francisco tickets. This meant that we had a preliminary hold or something, but no actual reservations. Predictably, the flight was full. They politely told us that if we wanted to stand by, we could come back a half hour before the flight left and see if any seats had opened up. Having spent about four hours the day before doing exactly this to no avail, we were crushed. All dignity was thrown to the wind. We were grovelling. Please let us go home! We’ve been stranded on this God-forsaken continent for a month! And on and on in that vein. They were touched, but said that was all they could do. If we didn’t get on this flight, there was another tomorrow at the same time.
So we went to Burger King. If you can’t go home, at least you can clog your arteries and pretend you’re home. Over burgers we decided to call our AFE contact in Hawaii to see if they could do anything to help us out. We finally reached them with a calling card we’d bought to call our families about the delay. The conversation went something like this:
Seth: we’re still stuck in Korea. Can you figure out how to get us another flight out of here?
AFE: sorry, the company that buys the tickets for us is in DC, they’re closed now (it being the middle of the night in DC, on the other side of the world).
Seth: do they have an emergency number you can call? This is an emergency.
AFE: hold on, let me check [about three minutes of rustling papers, our calling card running low on minutes], oh yea, here it is. It’s 1-80…
Seth: NO, wait a second! [explitives deleted] we’re not calling them! We’re on a pay phone in Seoul, Korea! Can’t you call them?! Look, I don’t know who dropped the ball here, but somebody did in a serious way and right now we need someone to say “Yes!  I will fix this!  I can figure out how to get you home.”
AFE: ok, I can call them, but how do I call you back?
Seth: we’ll call you back in an hour, just get it done.
At this point, needless to say, tensions were running somewhat high. We went back to the check in counter where, luckily, the receptionists were in high spirits and did a little to cheer us up by weighing us on the baggage check machine and trying to suck James up the conveyer belt. Then, at about 1:30, they looked up from messing with the printer and handed James three tickets. They proceeded to hand the rest of us bundles of tickets. In disbelief, we asked them if this meant we could board the plane. Yes, they said. The boarding has been closed and we’ve slipped you into Business Class for all your troubles. After some frantic and gushing thank you’s we took off through security (which by now had become common practice) and jumped on the plane. Sweaty and discombobulated, we bumbled into Business Class and right into a smiling stewardess who seemed to be asking us if we’d like champagne or orange juice with our take-off. “yes! Both please!” was the unanimous answer.
The rest of the flight continued in this fashion. By now, the drama was more or less over, although the actual hardship of the travelling had just begun. The trans-Pacific flight in Business Class was delightful, with drinks and chicken and cheeses and omellettes for breakfast and interesting passengers and all manner of fun. Then we landed in San Francisco and it was back to peasant travel, waiting in long lines and boarding yet another long flight across the Great American landmass. We arrived last night and piled all five of us into BJ’s girlfriend’s car (Jen, who saved our asses with the pickup and bought us dinner. She’s too good for you BJ, just admit it) and managed to get to Brian’s car and Abe’s friend’s house (Andy Butler, another heroic bailout in helping Abe the day before) to pick up our luggage. As I write this, all six members of our entourage are scattered about the greater Charlottesville area, and loving every minute of it. We had to cancel our show in Richmond for this morning, but them’s the breaks. We’ll be back on schedule for friday in Tennessee, but some of us may make it out to Orbit tonight to reconnect with the townie scene we love so much.  See you all soon and thanks so much for following our escapades and for all the support you give us. It’s what makes us do what we do. Well, that and the off chance that we may score another Business Class flight someday in the future.
keep in the rock,
Sons of Bill
