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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > March > 20 > Entry
SXSW Review: Flower Travellin Band at Smokin’ Music
(11 p.m. Smokin’ Music)
There was a certain amount of tension before Flower Travellin’ Band’s set at Smokin’ Music. Would people show up for this 30+ year old Japanese psychedelic rock band? Would they be playing to like 30 people, many of whom were there for the free smokes from American Spirit? Would the band be any good? The band’s heyday was in the 1970s, when they produced some of the most visionary psych rock around. But that was then and this is 2009 and these guys must be in their 60s at this point. Could they pull it off and would anyone care?
Yes. And yes.
The four members of the bands classic line-up - dreadlocked, absurdly fit singer Akira “Joe” Yamanaka; guitar, er, Sitala-ist Hideki Ishima; serious looking bassist Jun Kobayashi; and monster drummer Joji “George” Wada - were joined by keyboard player Nobuhiko Shinohara. Wada provided weird, almost Parliament/Funkadelic style burbles while Jun and Joji held down weirdly danceable-for-progressive-rock grooves.
All of this was in front of a packed house consisting of aging prog rock nerds, aging punks, hipster kids and people there for the free cigs. There was a massive amount of love for this band; most of the crowd dropped their jaws when it became clear this was no cash in. These guy were prog rock warlords who still had their chops, guys who understood that psychedelic rock needs musical space to work, that rolling, spacious, thunderous spacious music is far trippier than a wall of noise.
It looked at first like Hideki was playing a Chapman Stick, a stringed electric skateboard-looking thing associated with progressive rock bands that might be the single nerdiest instrument ever invented. But no, he was playing a massive Sitarla (sorta guitar, sorta sitar) that he would fret and solo with expert vision, moving from detailed runs one minute to massive power chords the next that he had to mute with this whole hand. It was
But the anchor was Akira, who still has his pipes, his voice powerful and ragged at the same time, a psych rock Billie Holiday (no kidding) who jumped in the air to end songs and danced as hard as anyone in the crowd to everything on stage.
They closed with their classic “Satori,” last show of their tour, first time in America. They killed every note of the set and when they ended and Akira made the mistake of starting to shake hands with the crowd, dozens of hands went up. It was a weirdly moving finale to the best set I’m likely to see of an exceptionally strong year.
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