Getting in the swing

27/09/2014 Traveller Tip: In these countries, Facebook (including Messenger), Twitter, Youtube and Google (including the play store, Google Drive, Gmail, Hangouts) are likely to be unreachable until you get your VPN working. Don’t rely on these to hold any important travel information, and let people at home know that contact may be difficult until you get it sorted.

One with the lot thanks!

 

Solo stuff

In the ‘off-season’ between tours, I undertook a course with Cari Cole all about how to turn musicianship into a profession. There were some great technical and artist developmental tips, as well as an introduction to other artists at all levels and ages, but the most value I got from the course was the slap-in-the-face common sense approach that if you want to make money as an artist, you need to treat it as a business.

We Made It! Now what?

We’re on the road again! This time the PlanB Juggernaut is taking on China. Why China? We don’t have any following here and few contacts, but we figure that if we can engage even a tiny portion of the 1.3 billion population, we’re doing well.

So the next few blogs will be a day by day summary of the stuff we’re doing, both musically and not.

Day 1 – Sunday 15 July

Breaking China

Funding and Managing

So, let’s pick up from the end of the last tour.  We spent a week in Saigon at

Synchronicity or Serendipity?

Synchronicity – Noun: The simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.

Serendipity – Noun: The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way: “a fortunate stroke of serendipity”.

In addition to all the work around the upcoming PlanB tour of China in July, I’ve been working at developing my solo

Back on the tour bus!

It’s been a while since my last instalment back in March 2011 when I was posting the last of the 2011 tour blogs. This intervening year and a half has been jam packed with Solo and PlanB goings on, so I’ll try to bring you up to speed as a lead-in to the next tour.

That’s right, the PlanB collection of

Gooooooooood Morning VietNAM!!

Aside: Apologies for not posting for a while. As you might have guessed from the date stamps on the blogs I’ve been back in Oz for a while now. I wrote a bit while away but since being back I’ve been so busy catching up, I haven’t had the time to proof read and post.

Mon 17th Jan –  Hoi-An
Now that the tour part was over and we

Massages and all that Jazz

Sun 16th Jan – Massage, Sheraton, Jazz Club
Aside:how your mind justifies things is quite funny sometimes. Because wages and excise on things like alcohol and cigarettes are typically quite low, things are very cheap, and you find yourself objecting to prices because you think someone might be taking more profit than they should. This is despite the fact that

Tequila Bob, Buddha, The End

Fri 14th Jan – Gullivers Travels. Show at Buddha

Aside: The way we interact with others is a very subtly learned skill. This came to me as I was walking along Bui Vien, the street our hotel was on, towards Stella’s. Even given the larger number of people, there seemed to be an unusually large number of times that I and the person walking towards me did the “this-way-that-way” dance. At first I thought it might be

Recording, donations, and applause for finishing

Wed 12^th Jan – 5th day recording. All but two songs down. Visit to the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation

I was in recording for a half day today as Karen, Kayla and I had arranged to deliver some things to the Christina Noble Foundation, a foundation set up for local children.  Kayla came with me to