Monday 2nd March 2015, Chaka Khan with Incognito Asian tour
It's been an incredibly busy start of the year, lots of travelling and lots of playing. The month of March however was the busiest. I was in the UK for only three days between tours. Most of this time was spent in Asia backing Chaka Khan with Incognito. We flew to Tokyo (via Singapore, essentially for dinner!) first at the end of February for four shows at the Blue Note, my favourite venue in the world. It was such a previlige to perform there with Chaka and once again she sounded incredible.
I met again with Johnny Hashimoto from Atelier Z Guitar Works and Day's Corporation. He thankfully supplied a fantastic M265 maple fretboard 5 string bass for me to use whilst in Japan. He also supplied me with the MM-Box, a combination of the EQ-M preamp from my blue JS460 bass with the Mid Knight EQ. I bypassed the OBP-3 preamp in the M265 - the result was something special. I am continually grateful to Johnny Hashimoto for his enthusiastic support. From Tokyo we went back to Singapore for the Singapore Jazz Festival, our second year there in a row (and second time in a week!)
Next we travelled to Jakarta, Indonesia for the Java Jazz Festival. This was a special moment for me as it was exactly ten years earlier at the Java Jazz Festival that I played with Incognito for the first time (and somewhere I have an unreleased official DVD of that 2005 concert…!) The video has recently been uploaded to YouTube by the Java Jazz Festival, as it was streamed live in real time:
Lastly we said goodbye to Chaka Khan and travelled to Bali, Indonesia for our last gig of the tour. We didn't play at the Bali Live Festival this year (actually I played an impromptu gig with up and coming Dutch artist Daniel von Piekartz on the Sunday night), but we performed at the club Ku De Ta. Originally this was going to be on the beach… however, it rained and rained and rained. And then it absolutely chucked it down! Our crew had to scramble to move the gear indoors and about 90 minutes later, we began our set, minus a couple of amps and pedals that refused to switch on! Not what we had expected but the audience's energy helped us forget that at one point it looked like there might not have been a concert! We ended the tour with a few days in the sun on the beautiful island before returning home for a few days… before hitting the road again FH
