Praise God!
We are back in Japan, back from The Extreme Tour in USA!
As you may already know, we joined “the extreme tour” in August-September.
And we played in, Whidbey Island (Oak Harbor) WA, Florence OR, Gold Beach OR, Stevenson WA (X-Fest), Yakima WA, Coeur d’Alene ID, Moscow ID, and Great Falls MT. (We also visited Seattle WA and Spokane WA apart from the extreme tour). We played total 12 shows in these 8 towns.
It was just 3weeks with the extreme tour (and 4 weeks of staying in USA), but let me tell you this, it was a great step for us as a Japanese Christian band.
“The Extreme Tour” is a genuine, real, hardcore Christian tour. They are real people.
They visit small towns instead of big cities. They play in front of homeless people instead of celebrity or industry big shots. They are willing to go to unchurched places, instead of playing ordinary church concerts. Their first priority is obedience to God, not business success.
They are some of the craziest, most extreme people in today’s Christian music world. That’s what we thought. And we loved that.
We played, parks, skateparks, drive-in theater, juvenile detention center, high schools (we changed lyrics because we can’t sing “God” or “Jesus” in school), block party, as well as church and Christian music festival.
Because of the nature of the tour and booking situation, we could only know the exact time and place we play just before the shows. This made it almost impossible to notify our friends and fans about the show information. We are sorry about that, because some of our friends told us they wanted to see us while we were in USA. (Also, we played mostly outside parks, not traditional music venues. That made it difficult for us to notify our fans, too.)
We played some bigger shows, too. We played X-Fest in Stevenson WA. It was a Christian music festival. It took place in a beautiful camping site. We shared the bill with a legendary Christian garage/punk/hardrock band from 1990‘s called The Clergy, and a heavy rock band from Las Vegas called PAR-A-DIGM, as well as many other great Christian bands. It was a blast! (and we put a great show!)
We played Nuart Block Party in Moscow ID, we opened for After Edmund, Grammy nominated Dove Award winning Christian rock band. We were stoked. (And we put a great show, of course!)
Now we are the first Japanese band to join The Extreme Tour. This is a great step for us, as a Christian band from Japan. It’s all because of your help and prayer. Thank you very much.
We say thank you to the people in our home church in Yokohama (Victory International Church). Without your help we could never made this tour.
We say thank you very much to all the people who helped us on IndieGoGo. Because of your help, we could afford the gas money and a rent-a-car (to drive back to Seattle WA).
And we say thank you very much to all of your prayer for us.
Without your prayer, nothing can be done. Because it’s God who can make everything happen.
We also want to say thank you to all of the bands and people we toured with.
The Lacks, DaMac, Colton&Zara, The Burn-Ins, Tim (a great MC and a drummer), Jarrod (a great soundman), John (from Alaska), Preston (from the band “ER”), Steve&April (thanks for fixing my guitar), and….I hope I didn’t forget anybody.
We say thank you to all the people we met on the tour.
Including, Scott&Chrissie (coolest pastor on the planet), John (the blind metal guitarist), April (in Florence), Tim (in Gold Beach), Jim (at X-Fest, whose daughter now in Tokyo), Timothy (the big daddy, at X-Fest), Yumi and her kids (it’s a great surprise to see Japanese people there at X-Fest!), Michele&Brett (in Coeur d’Alene), Derek (in Coeur d’Alene), Jacob (travelling through Coeur d’Alene), Callisto (at high school), Roman (from the band Sons of Day), Anoriaki (a Japanese-Chinese boy in Moscow), Jay (who lived in Japan for years), Brad (in Great Falls), Matt (a great BMX rider), Samuel (in Great Falls), and all the people I can’t spell their names (sorry I’m a Japanese…) and all the other people probably I forgot to mention.
It was surely a life changing experience for us, as a person, as a band. But the next mission God gave us during this tour was…to bring this tour to Japan.
Yes, we want to do “The Extreme Tour” in Japan next year!
We want to bring these guys, these Christian bands and this extreme music event to Japan!
We know it’s not easy, because in Japan everything is different from USA.
But we feel it’s our mission given by God.
We had a great experience with The Extreme Tour. We learned so much. Now what’s next? It’s our responsibility to bring this great missionary to our own country!
It’s gonna be in October 2013, at this point.
We have 1 year to prepare.
Now we are going to contact every person possible to make this thing happen.
So we need your help!
If you are living in Japan and you can help “The Extreme Tour” in Japan, please let us know!
We need, place to play music, place to skateboard or BMX, place to stay, cars and vans, PA system and music equipments, and some little budget. The region/location, we are not sure yet. Possibly in Tohoku, possibly around Tokyo/Yokohama, possibly somewhere else.
We appreciate your continuous prayer.
I believe this will be the best thing we have done to our own country Japan.
Because I’m sure this will IMPACT our society.
So we need many people’s help!
You can contact The Extreme Tour directly via their website.
Or you can simply contact me/us via our website or facebook/twitter.
Again thank you very much for everything.
We are very blessed and we are very thankful.
We uploaded many photos from the tour,
On our facebook page (mostly band photos),
On Tak’s facebook page (all the photos)
and our Flickr (all the photos)
We will upload some of the videos…hopefully soon.
If you helped us on IndieGoGo and still don’t get our CDs and stuff, please let us know. Though I believe we already sent out all the CDs.
And Sean and Kevin at Famicom Dojo, I will contact you soon about the new Famicom Dojo song!
It’s still 10+ days since we came back from the tour, but I already wrote 15 new songs. You will be surprised at our new musical direction! (in a good way, hopefully)
So we will work on our new songs and new musical direction in a studio.
I and my wife will work on our side project called “Atsuki Ryo with Jesus Mode”.
I also started skateboarding, which I know is funny starting at my age. It’s because I was inspired by skatepark experience on the tour. Skateboarding and Christianity are kind of same situation – In USA you have churches in every corner, in Japan it’s hard to find. In USA you have nice skateparks in every town, in Japan it’s hard to find. So I think learning abut skate culture in Japan will give us a hint about Japanese Christian situation.
And of course we will play some local gigs in Yokohama/Tokyo, just like we always did! First show is booked at The Rokudenashi, Odakyu-Sagamihara, Kanagawa, on October 20th Saturday, 9PM. See you there, our Japanese friends!
Thank you very much.
Thank you Jesus.
and God bless you all:)
Tak / Imari Tones
The first Christian heavy metal from Japan
Congragulations, from México.