Howdy --

It's Walla. Herein lies the full extent of my knowledge of the Tokyo show madness; we knew it was going to be a 'showcase' of sorts, but that's about it. The bacon of the issue, as I understand it:

The economy is bad and investments in American indie-rock bands from overseas are, understandably, not a sure bet -- certainly not as sure as, say, rice futures or TATU or whatever. Three or four years ago Japanese booking agents were throwing money around to get bands to the country, but this just isn't the case anymore; often the agencies need some convincing, something more than the anecdotal evidence of the fans at the label ('they're really good, trust us!'). Like robust sales figures (which, in Japan, we lack), song placement in a MR SPARKLE ad (ditto), radio play (etc), etc (etc). So it's been impressed upon us by our Japanese label that it's vital for us to come to Japan and showcase for booking agencies, or something like that. The budgeting and scheduling concerns surrounding this trip mandated that the trip be only four days long, travel and sleep inclusive -- meaning that we fly in, try to recover from jet lag, do a bunch of interviews, play one show and fly out. The idea, of course, is that some agency or another decides that we're worth their time and we get to come back (on their dime, not that of the band or label) and do a full Japanese tour in February, with a trip to Australia tacked on.

I'm sincerely excited about this trip, and the possibility of a tour in the winter, but I don't think we have much leverage here, especially since we don't even know the people involved that well. I know that we will, as always, do what we can (with as many parenthetical asides as we please).

Thank you, and in the words of Garrison Keillor: be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

-- Chris