Second stop Santa Clarita

Saturday, March 29
It's days later—or so it feels. Two, only, but long ones. The first night was a success on so many levels—a gorgeous hall, a full house, a standing ovation, strong merchandise sales. On the other hand, there were hard lessons and realizations. The crew were weirdly indifferent to the performance, some sat backstage reading as Shidara played their hearts out; the merchandise would not reckon out, and actually took longer to resolve than to load the 6,000 pounds of drums on the truck; my plan for the post-show group meal went seriously astray; and so on.

I pondered all of this the next day because I was disconcerted. Now that they are playing in the major leagues, was the tour going to be this way? Were they being made into a commodity, and would that eventually reduce them to not investing so much in their performances the way countless other artists have? Whereas each event in the last tour only happened because of a highly invested audience, now that anyone could check Shidara's name out of curiosity on a subscription series list, would the experience of their playing shift from transformative to purchased? I pondered this, briefly, and then realized it would never happen. Each concert for Shidara is like the big game towards the finals.They challenge each other, root each other on to do their best, taking the hits and the golden moments as a team. They will always do their best.

The next morning, a bus picked us up in Cerritos for the day drop in Santa Clarita (meaning, since the company is local to the L.A. area, they send a bus out to just pick us up, drop us off and go back to the lot. It's significantly less expensive than having contracted the touring coach a day early). It was a frightening ride, reminding me of the Night Bus in Harry Potter movies. The bus needed shocks, and the driver mumbled under his breath, swerved repeatedly into the other lane and had other driver laying on their horns at us. I was terrified that the next four and a half weeks would be like this.

We arrived in Santa Clarita at around 8:30AM—early, of course, and finally people started arriving. At first glance I was worried: they looked way too relaxed for our bus full of highly intense Japanese artists. However, what I learned as the day unfolded is that Santa Clarita is populated by many people who work in the movie and production industry (our sound guy had just gotten done doing tech for Alanis Morrisette or something like that). They are wacky genius types, a world apart from the respectable union guys employed by the City of Cerritos. The Santa Clarita crew put together an incredibly tight show, improved on the sound, fed us copious amounts of food, and even whipped out a big baltic plywood frame to reinforce the merchandise board. What I learned is that for them, as with the crew at Cerritos, mounting Shidara's show is a job. This is their job, and they've seen the best artists in the world. Hard to impress. This concert ended for me with a sense of validation for Shidara: by the end of the show, the crew were leaning forward in their seats, really watching. Coming from them, it was a great compliment.

On March 30, our Fast Deer touring coach arrived, and was blessedly fabulous. It's beautiful, new, white (like our previous rental fleet) and has drop down dvd screens and a great driver, Martin. He will be our commander and chief for the next four weeks. I began feeling like this would really work out okay.

PHOTOS
Our new tour bus home for the next 5 weeks.
Ichiban Driver: Commander Martin Idior
His co-pilot, Mitsu.