Kishi Bashi and Tall Tall trees

So last night I had the immense pleasure of going to see Kishi Bashi.  So amazing.  Seriously this guy blows my mind.

His music makes me so happy.  And he is just so incredibly talented it's unreal.


Anyway here is the story:

We got to The Great Scott where the bands were playing at about 9:30 and the first opening band was on.  It's a great venue in Boston and kind of small and intimate but still holding a good number of people.  We set up camp kind of farther back had a couple of drinks and watched some of the swimming as the music played.

After a while some ppl from the circus came and joined us.  Josh, our guitar player came with his wife, and Umi one of our acrobats from Japan came as well.  At this point they were actually sold out but turns out Josh used to live with the guy in Tall Tall Trees (opening band #2) so they got in!  So we are sitting around having a drink and whatnot and we see this older Japanese guy kind of sitting in the corner.  Umi goes up and starts talking to him and lo and behold it's K Ishibashi's dad!  So he comes over and starts chatting with us.  He lives in VA now but was born and grew up in Okinawa.  So I had this kind of surreal moment of talking to him about that.  And then he asked my name and when I said Keiko he was super surprised.  K's wife is also called Keiko but you don't run into many blue eyed Keiko's.

Anyway back to the point.  Tall Tall Trees was awesome.  He played the banjo and I kid you not this guy is amazing!!  Such good energy and I bet he sounds amazing recorded.. I can't wait to find out!  Just so..... good.

Then Kishi Bashi took the stage and it was nothing short of one of the best shows I have ever seen.  Just super amazing music played by one man.

Without sounding super cheesy... the sense of having music washed over you.... was fantastic.  He covered a Beirut cover as well that was just amazing.  I literally can not say enough good things.

I've put some of his music below but he is even better live.  Please go support this guy and if he is playing in your area go see him.

His music just makes me so happy.  Literally impossible for me to frown if I hear it.  On my ipod for whenever I am having a bad day.  OK ok enough gushing!





This is my last weekend in Boston and I have three days off.  I am spending the rest of this morning packing and then have some errands to do so that hopefully I can enjoy the last two days here before the madness of moving and then DC!

xoxo
K

Kishi Bashi

Just the quickest of posts to say that tomorrow night... well actually tonight.... I will be going to go see Kishi Bashi.  His real name is K Ishibashi.  He is freaking amazing and I am sto glad that I looked up and saw that he was playing here in Boston tomorrow.  I would highly encourage you to check out his music.  It's great summer stuff! And it just makes me happy.

Please just listen to this one and see what you think.


And if you liked that here is him playing live at the NPR studios.



AND THE BEST PART????   The tickets were only $10!!!!!!!


I love music. 


Gotta go to bed.

xoxo

k

Bowaston and Brooklyn

 Hello hello hello!  Sorry sorry sorry!  AGAIN!  I have been busy wrapping things up in Boston!  We are here for about a week and a half longer and though I have a bunch of friends in the DC area I will miss Boston and I am not totally excited to go to DC.  HOWEVER.. I do have some fantastic friends in DC so that should be epic and fun.  I have just had a good time here and Boston was a good place to spend the summer. 


I took this picture while having dinner the other night.  No edits... just a pretty sunset.

And then I went to NYC last week to catch up with some friends from Macau of all places.  There were a few people visiting and a lot of people working and it turned into a mini reunion.  So fun.  3 of stayed at my friend Dave's.  He is working on the Cirque show at Radio City and his place is STUNNING!  The most amazing views!  Anyway he has a one bedroom place and Emily and I shared the bed and Dave and Andrew  shared the couch.  Maybe a bit tight but we all made it work.  So lovely to catch up with people!  I actually went to Brooklyn to get a tattoo by the lovely Seth Wood at Saved Tattoo.  He's awesome, and super nice!  Their studio space is really lovely and literally everythng that I saw that was being worked on or was coming out of the shop was lovely!

 See?  He's a dapper fox!  This is right after, I will try and remember to post some photos in another week or so once it's completely healed.  But yeah.  Those purple colors are not really there, just the light blue.  Bruising, yuck!

Anyway after talking to Seth and seeing the size etc I was expecting to be there for a while.  But he is super quick!  This whole thing took just over 2.5 hours.  My appt was at noon, and after some resketching, resizing, more resizing, tattooing photos etc and clean up... I was leaving completely done at 3:30.  I was amazed.  

In other news Boston has been super hot and I have been doing lots of sanding which means I look something like this:

 I will try and do another post from Boston and then one as soon as I get to DC. 


xoxo

K.

Turning 30!

Yeah so that happened!  I will post some photos soon once I hook up my camera etc.

But I had a nice time with friends.  Celebrations started on Sunday with an after work BBQ (not for me but because Sunday the 24th was Jean-Baptiste Day so all the Quebec'ers were happy).  So we had a BBQ and then went to a bar in cambridge.  Super nice place with super friendly bar tenders who were.... rather liberal in their pours.  To the result of a kind of amazing evening with a rather tender head the next day.  

 

My actual birthday started with a rainy morning and some friends and I went to this place called Blunch for uh... Brunch?  Anyway.  It's a pretty awesome sandwich shop.  This isn't mine, I'm still not eating meat!   But they were all pretty awesome sandwiches and absolutely helped with the headaches felt by all! !






For dinner some of my best friends and I went to dinner.  We decided to get all dressed up because we rarely get the chance to do so.  
So we got all fancied up and headed to Uni.  A super post sashimi bar. So... I am not eating meat I did however eat fish this evening.... I mean... it was by birthday judge away.  So the food was awesomely amazing.  However it was a bit hoity toity for my liking if I am honest.  Like I said the food was amazing.  But.... it was also amazingly slow.  The whole restaurant seats about 25 people.  And I would say 90% of the food is raw. So I just think that for 5 people to eat and it takes 3.5 hours is maybe a bit much?  


But who am I to judge.  In the end the food was really good and as I am sure you can see from a few pictures it was beautiful.  But we were supposed to meet some people at the bar afterwards and to say that we were a bit late is an understatement.  Our dinner reservations were for 7:30 and we made it to the bar at about 11:15.  So... yeah it was a lengthy process.  But it was had in excellent company so that was great!  Maybe next time we will just stick with a bit less fancy food. 

This was the dessert by the way and it was pretty incredible.  Coconut ice cream, mango sorbet thing.... chocolate pieces..... it was yum.














Ok so in other news.... I am doing well!  I found out that I have two weeks holiday so I need to get on planning that.  Maybe South America.... maybe somewhere else in Asia I have not been?  I don't know yet.  Something awesome though for sure!  


Mainly I have been trying to be positive and surround myself with positive people.  I know it sounds cheesy but I realized that a few of my friends were (as my brother put it) a hole that was sucking up some of the fun.  And it's kind of true.  Introspection is good, but too much isn't and at some point you need to just live life and stop worrying about it.  I am working on doing this but when I have people around me who can not do that either it tends to bring me down.  It sucks because I do care about them and I want everything to go well for them but at the same time you can only try and be supportive for so long.  


Rant rant.  Anyway.  I am good.  I have been working out a lot lately which makes me feel good about myself and about life and I am enjoying work because I am getting to learn new things at the moment.  So all is well happy birthday to me.  Lets hope for a good year! 

Quickets of updates

Not too much to report at the moment.  Just trying to settle into Boston which it seems, is a pretty nice city!

Last week I saw ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ the new Wes Anderson film, here near Boston Commons.  I really loved it.  I know his movies are not everyone’s cup of tea.  But I really love how stylized they are and how everything is so planned out.  It’s like a picture book.  Every detail in place and every detail thought out.  Much of the movie is actually pretty quiet with little to no dialogue. 

I like all of the quirky details and I like that all of the books have titles and I like that you can watch his movies over and over again and pick out different things. 

And I like that he went to UT.  Yeah!

What else have I done this week?  I started taking a barre class.  It’s kind of a mixture of yoga, pilates, and ballet.  And it’s super hard!  I am enjoying it though and it is so nice to have something besides work to schedule my life around.  If I continue to enjoy it there is another studio in DC.

And I had a life chat with my boss yesterday.  And I agreed with him to stay on the tour for now.  There have been many departmental reorganizations as of late.  My boss left and we got a new boss, we hired a third person and then he got transferred to another department.  So at the moment it’s just the two of us.  

So… yeah.  And I feel like I am selling out by staying for a while!  I do I do I do.  But here is the upside of staying:  We are about to be closer to my home which is nice because it means that I can go home for the weekend.  I am finishing another class so I can be completely certified.  And yeah, it’s super easy to save some money.  PLUS this show is only stateside until about Feb 2013 and then it goes to Canada.  At the moment I have no interest in going there with it.  So there is a departure date set already it seems. 

So yeah meanwhile I have some tickets to Russia to figure out and some vacation time to use.  But all in time all in time. 

Also… it’s my birthday next week which means I am turning 30!  Holy shit how did that happen?  How scary is that?  Not so scary and super scary at the same time.  When I get all emo I start thinking about how I am 30 and yeah, completely lost.  And how most of my friends are married with kids and “lives”.  A buddy of mine turned to me the other day and said, so do you think with people like us…. We will just be alone forever?  OUCH!  I would hope not.  But yeah probably.  Not that it’s a horrible thing.  I just never thought about it like that.  I don’t want to start a rant about marriage and kids… I will save it for next time. 

Anyway…. Ramble ramble ramble.  Gotta run and do super important circus business.  More soon.

Xoxo

K