Samurai Dave: The Roving Ronin Report

Rambling Narrative of Travels, Thoughts, and Embellishments

Legendary Shack Shakers – Last Show (?) in Nashville

Legendary Shack Shakers are a punk blues agriDustrial band with a little bit of everything thrown in from rockabilly to gothic rock to Delta blues to Texas polka. Originally hailing from Paducah, Kentucky, the band has been together in some form or fashion for over 15 years touring with the Reverend Horton Heat, Hank Williams III, and Robert Plant.

Their current drummer recently developed a heart condition and actually flat-lined a couple of times. Legendary Shack Shakers decided to hold a benefit show for him in Nashville and make it their last show; however, J.D. Wilkes founding member and frontman said that the Legendary Shack Shakers will rise again.

This video is clips from their last show(?) at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville along with interviews with some of the band members past and present.

Legendary Shack Shakers –
http://www.theshackshakers.com/
http://www.facebook.com/legendaryshackshakers

To help Drummer Brett Whitcare with his medical bills –
http://www.brettwhitacre.net/

November 28, 2012 Posted by | music, musicians, nashville, rock, rock band, rockabilly, tennessee | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Roller Derby Girls – Nashville Roller Girls: Heart-Takers & Ball-Breakers

Heart-Takers&Ball-Breakers – Nashville RollerGirls are an all-female roller derby flat track league based in Nashville, Tennessee. While I was home in Nashville, I took in a game and though at the time I didn’t have a clue how the game was played I had a good time with all the energy coming from the players and from the fans.

I was surprised to learn that today’s Roller Derby is actually a sport unlike its earlier predecessor which was more like WWF wrestling on roller skates. Since its recent revival, it’s one of the fastest growing female sports. I can’t wait till Japanese girls start doing it!

Nashville RollerGirls

Music by: Meant To Bleed

Meant To Bleed

I also made a video on Meant To Bleed at their live show at the Hard Rock Cafe in Nashville in June 2011

While I was in Nashville, I saw some of my friends play at the HardRock in Nashville so I decided to do a video on them.

From their Facebook: “Meant to Bleed is best described as a Rock band layered with elements of Rock, Metal, Punk and Pop.”

Basically they’re a fun group and I enjoyed the show. The rhythm (yeah I misspelled it in the video! sue me!) guitarist may seem familiar to those who have seen my Blackwood Fields video.

July 29, 2011 Posted by | music, musicians, nashville, rock, rock band, Roller Derby, Sport, Sports News, tennessee, vlog, WTF | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Samurai Dave’s 2008 In Review Video

2008 was a busy year for this wayward wanderer though I didn’t travel much abroad due to the high fuel surcharge. I did however travel a fair bit around Japan going to a number of festivals. This is a photo montage of my experiences.

January 13, 2009 Posted by | 2008, culture, festival, japan, japanese culture, Kyoto, life, music, music videos, photographs, photography, tennessee, tohoku, tokyo, travel, video, youtube | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Samurai Dave’s 2008 In Review: Travels, Events, and Festivals

Samurai Dave’s 2008 In Review – Travels, Events, & Festivals

Another year has come and gone and it’s time to look forward to next year while reflecting on the last. This year I stayed in Japan save for two trips home. Fuel surcharges increased to ridiculous amounts sometimes more than the flight cost itself. Fortunately in Japan there’s always festivals going on year round to keep one occupied.

JANUARY
The first of the year saw me checking out the acrobatics of old Japanese firefighters, kimono-clad cuties at Meiji Shrine, Momote Shiki – an archery ritual for new adults, and a bit of sumo.

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Old Style Meets New Style

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FEBRUARY
February brought in a surprise snow storm on Setsubun, a day when Japanese drive devils from their homes in a kind of spring cleaning to symbolically end winter. It’s kind of like a pro-active GroundHog Day with devils. Later, I headed up north to the Tohoku region to face off against the deadly monster trees the Juhyo and hairy devils known as Namahage. I also saw a snow lantern festival and snow festival dedicated to the clever Akita dog. Later in the month, I went to Nikko to see the half frozen Kegon Falls then to Nagano, to see the snow monkeys again.

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Setsubun Devils Survery the Wintry Carnage

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Hirosaki Castle

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Snow Lantern Festival

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Namahage – the bane of lazy children

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Snow Festival for Dogs

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MARCH
Plum blossoms, Japanese St. Paddy’s Parades, Swordsmen, an Anime Con, Sumo in Osaka, and a Giant Penis made for a interesting third month.

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Hands up! Who wants pizza?

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I have no idea who she is supposed to be and I don’t care

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My first encounter with Tokyo Decadance – a risque subculture melting pot

APRIL
April offered up yet another penis festival – this one with a very graphic erect to the sky penis carried by some unconvincing drag queens. I went back to Nikko where old style priests forced people to eat large quantities of rice – unfortunately this was all behind close doors. We only got to see them posing before and after so I don’t know if they actually ate any huge bowls of rice. At one of Tokyo’s major temples, I caught a display of Gagaku which is ancient dance style. A few days later I took in some free outdoor sumo at the controversial Yasukuni shrine. Nearby Yamanashi Prefecture had two festivals to honor their hometown here – Takeda Shingen. One had a parade with armored warriors and the other a re-enactment of his most famous battle – Kawanakajima.

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Festival Sponsored by Viagra

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Damn, that’s one big pipe!

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Ancient Court Dance – Gagaku at Zojo-ji Temple

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Shingenko Matsuri

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Japanese and Foriegners duke it out at a re-enactment of a famous samurai battle

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Samurai swimsuits while protective weren’t terribly comfortable

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Takayama Spring Festival

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Gifu Castle

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Traditional Japanese Wedding at Meiji Shrine

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Yabusame Archer Scores a Hit

MAY
The first week of May is Golden Week – a time when just about the whole country goes traveling. I used to stay in Tokyo to avoid the troubles but after learning about the wonders of overnight internet cafes I started venturing out more. I went back up to Tohoku to see the Uesugi Matsuri which I saw the year before. Here too they re-enact the Kawanakajima Battle but from the other side’s perspective, Uesugi Kenshin, Takeda’s greatest rival. Since the battle was basically a draw both sides can celebrate it and pretend they won. Afterwards I went to Hiraizumi which in ages past was a rival of Kyoto and its replica Fujiwara-no-Sato. Back in Tokyo I saw the artistic chaos known Tokyo Design Festa for the first time. The last part of the month I went to Fukui Prefecture to see a festival with big warrior floats.

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Uesugi Matsuri

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Ancient Dance performed at Hiraizumi

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Kaminoyama Castle in Yamagata

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Playing Old Games at Fujiwara-no-Sato in Period Clothing

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A Ghostly Figure from Tokyo Design Festa

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A Warrior Float from the Mikuni Festival in Fukui

JUNE
June is the rainy season so not as much goes on then so I tend to stay indoors to avoid the rain and humidity. I did take a trip to Yunishigawa to see a festival celebrating the Heike exiles who founded the town. I caught the last day of the festival last year so this year I came to see both main days. I saw again my Biwa Player from last year who surprisingly remembered me. At the end of the month I went to a Tokyo Decadance event.

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JULY
Went out to Chiba to see two new festivals I hadn’t seen before. One was a Gion Festival (Gion is one Kyoto’s big Festivals) at Narita City, the place many people zoom past on their way to Tokyo. The other festival only got an hour of my time due to work and inconvenient train schedules. Still it was an hour wellspent at the Sawara Matsuri with its floats of Japanese gods and heroes. Later in the month I went once again to Soma Nomaoi, the samurai horse racing festival. Can’t get enough of horse racing samurai! Maybe next year I’ll start placing bets.

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Noh at Narita Gion Festival

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Ota Dokan, original founder of Tokyo (then Edo) at the Sawara Matsuri

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Coming around the bend at Soma Nomaoi

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Female riders ride after semi-wild horses on the third day of Soma Nomaoi

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Odaiba in Tokyo all lit up

AUGUST
As it was with last year, August was a busy month for both work and travel. Like last year I took the first week of the month off to travel north around Tohoku to all the different festivals in the region. I went again to the drumming festival of Sansa Odori, the somber but artistic Neputa Festival of Hirosaki, the 3D floats of Nebuta with their scary faces, the Tachi Neputa Matsuri of Goshogawara with its towering floats clocking in at 22 meters, and the bamboo balancing Kanto Matsuri in Akita. In between this I went to some new festivals – the Sansha Taisai in Hachinohe which also gave a display of polo lacrosse, the dancing festival of Hanagasa in Yamagata, and the decorative (but boring) Tanabata Festival in Sendai.

That should have been enough for me but no! I returned to Tokyo via night bus, work the same day then caught another night bus to Nagoya in order to catch a fire festival in Gifu which was pretty freakin’ awesome!

Later in the month I went to Niigata where I saw my third Kawanakajima Battle re-enactment! This time there was celebrity presence. The part of Uesugi Kenshin was played by Gackt. Yes, Gackt! Ok, I never really heard of him before either but he’s big in Japan and there were tons of girls there who normally wouldn’t be caught dead at a samurai festival. The next day despite the rainy morning I went to Sado Island to catch the last day of the Kodo drum concert festival. The rest of the month I stayed in Tokyo where I saw street performances in my old neighborhood Otsuka and Samba which got poured on.

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Sansa Odori in Morioka

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Polo Lacrosse in Hachinohe

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Ornate Float from the Sansha Taisai Matsuri

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Fan-shaped float from the Neputa Matsuri of Hirosaki

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Ghostly Girls from Neputa

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Samurai Float from Nebuta

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Towering 18-meter float at Tachi Neputa in Goshogawara

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Kanto Matsuri in Akita

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Hanagasa in Yamagata

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Tanabata Matsuri in Sendai

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Samurai Dave at Inuyama Castle – oldest intact castle in Japan

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Fire Festival in Gifu

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Yasukuni Shrine on Aug 15th the date of Japan’s WWII surrender

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Gackt is Uesugi Kenshin!

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A Samurai Fights Deer on Sado Island

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Otsuka Awa Odori

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Wet Slippery Samba Girl

SEPTEMBER
I had an old college buddy stay over with his GF in September so the first part of the month found me cleaning my dump of a shoebox of an apartment in prepartion for their arrival. I gave them the nickel&dime tour of Tokyo and took them down to Kamakura to see Yabusame and Diabutsu – the Great Buddha. One day we did a Triple Play – caught Kabuki in the morning, saw sumo in the afternoon, and watch a baseball game in the evening. The fans with their little plastic bats and choreographed cheering was most entertaining!

At the end of the month I flew home for my father’s 60th birthday. Damn fuel charge was more than the damn flight cost! While there I went to Nashville’s very own Parthenon. Yep, we got us one just like Greece except ours is concrete and it ain’t broke!

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Kamakura Sake – they wouldn’t let us have any

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Diabutsu and Diadavidsu

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Japanese baseball fans

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Nashville Parthenon – it ain’t broke!

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Golden Athena

OCTOBER
After my father’s birthday I went to the East Tennessean town of Jonesborough to see a storytelling festival. Storytellers from all over the world go there to tell stories of all sorts. It’s a great event!

On the way back home I stopped at two caves – one, the Lost Sea which has the second largest underground lake in the world and is about to become really LOST if they don’t get more rain in the future. The other cave was Ruby Falls whose billboards I had seen for years and years all over the southeast which perhaps made me avoid it for so long. As it was, it was pretty darn neat. The last night in Tennessee Obama and McCain had one of their debates in Nashville which of course I couldn’t get near.

Back in Japan I was lucky to bump into a street dance festival in Ikebukuro and archery demonstration. I went to Kyoto to see the Jidai Matsuri (Festival of Ages) and the Fire Festival on Mt. Kurama despite the pouring rain. Back in Tokyo I rode once more the infamous Yamanote Halloween Train this time with cops and angry internet nerds.

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A Cowpoke tells it like it is at the Jonesborough Storytelling Festival

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The Lost Sea

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Ruby Falls

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A cat in a sink

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Obama supporters on the night of the Debate

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Bambi, no!!!

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Procession of 1000 Warriors in Nikko

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Samurai Street Dancers

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Golden Pavilion of Kyoto

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Kyoto’s Jidai Matsuri – Festival of Ages

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Fire Festival of Mt. Kurama

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The Joker having fun at the infamous Tokyo Yamanote Halloween Train Event

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Enjoying Tokyo Decadance’s Halloween Bash

NOVEMBER
November 3rd is Culture Day, a national holiday where there’s culture galore to be had. I got up late that day so I missed some of the culture but I did see Tokyo’s version of Jidai Matsuri and later a bit of Kendo at Budokan where the Beatles played many moons ago. Later that week I went out past the airport in Narita to see a festival which celebrated Japan’s history from over 1500 years ago. Young people dressed like the figures known as haniwa which were clay figurines buried or placed around earthern mounds known as kofun.

I went yet again to Kyoto to see a Geisha performance known as Kitano Odori then I went to the costume museum to try on some quite fetching 1000 year old threads. At the end of the month I flew home again for Thanksgiving because I love me some T-day turkey!

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Swan dancers at Tokyo Jidai Matsuri

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A hit, a palpable hit!

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Haniwa Matsuri

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Geisha dances a Wintry Fan Dance at Kitano Odori

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Does this make me look fat?[

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Komaki Castle

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Hikone Castle

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Mt. Takao

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A relic from the mysterious Old Stone Fort in Tennessee

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TURKEY!!!

DECEMBER
The last month! Whew! Long year! While still at home I went over to Lynchburg, home of Jack Daniels to have a bit of southern cooking lovingly laced with whiskey. On my last night in Nashville, I saw a kickass show with Nashville Pussy and rockabilly legend the Reverend Horton Heat.

Once again in Japan, I did a little firewalking at one festival – ok, actually the coals were lukewarm before I strode over them! I went to the 47 Ronin festival again and a fair for selling New Years decorations known as hagoita. Tokyo Decadance had a Christmas event and I was able to see decadent cuties in scanty XMAS attire plus girls were making out together – thank you, Santa!

The last night of the year saw me in the same place where I had rung in the the year – Zojo-ji Temple. Couldn’t believe another year had raced by! It had its ups and downs, its thrills and chills but all in all another fine year. I say that because I didn’t have any stock investments.

I hope 2009 is as equally as interesting and exciting and more importantly sees everyone in much better spirits at the end!

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A sign in Lynchburg – no drunken tomfoolery allowed

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Nashville Pussy

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The Reverend Horton Heat

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Come Firewalking with Me

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The 47 Ronin with their enemy’s head

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Hagoita – decorative New Year’s Paddles

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Tokyo Decadance

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Hello, 2009! Don’t disappoint!

January 13, 2009 Posted by | 2008, culture, festival, japan, japanese culture, Kyoto, life, photographs, photography, tennessee, tohoku, tokyo, travel | , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Tribute to Autumn

A Tribute to Autumn
Photographic montage celebrating the season


Red Autumn Leaves

Autumn – the season of change where the world gives forth one glorious burst of life and color before succumbing to the long sleep of Winter. Autumn is a season of reflection and poets throughout the ages all over the world have given into this poetic self-indulgence.


Chinese Zodiac draped by Autumn Leaves at Mt. Takao near Tokyo


Fall foliage at a lake in Bavaria, Germany

“No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face.”
– John Donne (17th Century England)

“…the end of Autumn is in the color of the last leaves”
– Jaukuren (12th Century Japan)


Autumn leaves at night at Rikiguen Garden in Tokyo

“I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne (19th Century United States)


Autumn sunshine falls on a golden floor


Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria

“Everyone hates to see the Autumn go by
This feeling would seemed to be shared by the Heavens”
– Tayasu Munetaka (18th Century Japan)


Fallen Autumn leaves as seen from an English church door

 


Painter paints an Autumn scene at Tokyo Station

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.”
– Emily Bronte (19th Century England)


Pagoda at Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo

“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.”
– Albert Camus (20th Century France)


Chuzen-ji Lake, Japan


Watch Tower of old Edo Castle in Tokyo


A Church in Jonesborough, Tennessee

“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour.”
– Robert Frost (20th Century United States)

“The autumn wind!
The mountain’s shadow
Trembles before it.”
– Issa (18th Century Japan)


Fall leaves frame Kegon Falls in Nikko, Japan

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it”
– George Eliot (19th Century England)


Cornfield in the Autumn morning mist – Tennessee


Old farm equipment amongst the fallen autumn leaves


A Hint of Autumn at Hikone Castle


View from Hikone Castle

“Ah, it was the Autumn Wind
Not she that I was waiting for”
– Socho (15th Century Japan)

 


View from Neuschwanstein Castle

“So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
– Robert Frost (20th Century United States)


Fallen golden leaves


The sun sets at the end of Autumn

November 22, 2008 Posted by | autumn, Bavaria, Blogroll, castle, culture, Deutschland, England, entertainment, fall, Germany, japan, leaves, life, music, nature, photographs, poetry, tennessee, tokyo, travel, video, youtube | , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Outside the Presidential Debate (Nashville, TN)

The second Presidential debate was held on Belmont College in Nashville, TN on Oct 7th. I happened to be in town that day so I thought I’d check it out.

Security was incredibly tight and it was relatively impossible to get in to see the debates in person. Most Nashvillians watched the debate on TV like everyone else around the country.

I wandered around outside to see what I could encounter. I came across some Obama supporters and pro-environment campaigners against the use of coal.

Despite Tennessee’s redness in the last two elections, urban areas there like Nashville are often strongly Democrat.

October 24, 2008 Posted by | 2008 Presidential Race, Blogroll, Democrats, elections, life, McCain, nashville, Obama, Presidential Debate, Republicans, tennessee, travel, video, youtube | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Samurai Dave’s 2007 In Review Video

Here’s a video-photo montage of Samurai Dave’s 2007 In Review with music by Seven Cycle Theory:

http://www.myspace.com/sevencycletheory

The song is called “Only Once” which I think appropiate for life and traveling. You’ve only got one life – go somewhere and do something!

January 3, 2008 Posted by | 2007, 47 Ronin, Bavaria, Bayern, beer, belly dancing, biwa, Blogroll, buddhism, culture, entertainment, europe, event, festival, floats, geisha, Germany, japan, Kyoto, matsuri, montage, music, New Year's Eve, ninja, photographs, rock, sakura, seven cycle theory, sumo, taiko, tennessee, tohoku, tokyo, travel, video, vlog, youtube | Leave a comment

Eclectic Heavy Metal – Seven Cycle Theory Video: Dissociate

Here’s a recent vid I made for some friends of mine back home who are in an eclectic heavy metal band: Seven Cycle Theory – http://www.myspace.com/sevencycletheory

December 20, 2007 Posted by | Blogroll, heavy metal, indie, life, metal, music, nashville, rock, seven cycle theory, tennessee, video, youtube | Leave a comment