Robby's Lobby #136

BlogMarch, 2018InRock.co.jp

Hey Hey In Rockers and Welcome to The Lobby ... Happy New Year to you all! I’ve just returned from a nice little mini vacation with my family in Palm Springs California, which is like heaven when for 4 months a year you live in a frozen winter wonderland like Buffalo, NY. Making music with the band around the globe allows me a lot of changes in climate as I travel and this month took me to the warmth of Florida, Los Angeles and Palm Springs, California for shows, recording sessions and rehearsals.

We survived the holidays with a ton of travel bringing our family to Tokyo for Christmas to spend the holidays with friends and family in Japan. I have been spending every other year in Japan for the Christmas break for many years now and have really grown to look forward to all of the familiar sights and sounds of the city. We took a trip to Kawasaki City’s Fujiko F. Fuji Art Museum to see an awe inspiring Doraemon exhibit by a number of acclaimed artists including Morakami, Nara and Sebastian Masada. I took a necessary trip to the farmers market at The United Nations University and bought a suitcase full of our favorite Japanese teas from our favorite tea farming family. We made our way around the city to visit some of my daughter’s favorite places, she’s 6 so every trip is a nice mix of kid’s fun and the general bustle of Tokyo during the Holidays. A few days before Christmas Day we made a nice little tree out of colored paper and you know that Santa found us, even in our hotel room he found us, Santa is an amazing man, and we love Christmas time in Japan.

Unfortunately my Japan trip was cut short and i left my family to further enjoy the stay, but it was for a pretty amazing reason as I made my way to Narita and flew back to New York City a couple of days after Christmas for a couple of Goo Goo Dolls shows. The first New Years Eve at The Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan ringing in 2018 with a roomful of folks which is a truly amazing old school theater. The next morning we set out to Met Life Stadium in Queens to do a short set during the break of an NHL Hockey Game, oh, i should mention, the performance was outside on a 19 degree F (-7c) New Years Day. Yes you heard that right, so we bundled up and alongside Max Weinberg from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and Ace Frehley of Kiss we braved the cold and performed for 40,000 fans and millions of hockey fans around the globe through their televisions and computers. I was pretty jet lagged through the whole thing, but had a great time and made it home to Buffalo to spend a little time recovering.

The next week we performed a couple of unusual shows, the first of which was on a huge Cruise Liner in Tampa, FL with rapper FLO-RIDA and the other on a golf course after a PGA tournament featuring some of the world most famous golfers in the awe inspiring Palm Springs, CA desert. I even got to bring my daughter Hana to celebrate her 6th Birthday swimming and exploring the desert as well as escaping the cold back home!

Between the shows GGDS have been working on combing through tracks for a new live album due out this year on Warner Brothers as well as doing some recording for future use. I have to say it feels great to be back in the studio making music after all of the touring we’ve done over the last couple of years. We’ve been working with the band in LA and I’ve also been spending a bunch of time in the studio here in Buffalo working on the live tracks as well as some other projects; including a new DJ Sashimi (Tokyo) offering for some US performances in 2018 and a new young band from my home town called Mom Said No.

Lots of exciting things coming up here in The Lobby over the next year; international touring for GGDS throughout the year, a crazy list of places, here’s a few, Indonesia, Portugal, Alaska, Sweden and many, many more .... see what i mean? .....and expect new releases from our Japanese acts on Good Charamel Records as well as numerous acts coming from Japan to the United States for touring as we continue to share some of our favorite Japanese music with the North American public.

Hope the new year has been great so far, I know there was just a pretty crazy snow storm in Tokyo, so let’s enjoy the snow for while while looking forward to the warmer temperatures of the spring and catching up with you next month in the pages of the mighty In Rock!!!!

Peace
Robby

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