The core of the Get Ready tour circled through Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
At the start of this leg, we could scarcely afford the cheap $3 dinner noodles on our first night (after being cleaned out by the high costs and low sales in Australia). The jump-off was Singapore, where we spent nearly every waking moment recording and producing 4 songs in preparation of a future album. In a week with Tat Tong in his lux apartment-studio we were able to hammer them out and return to our not-so-lux-but-comfortable hostel. The hot air and humidity were not to stop us. Our will-power had grown and resolve steeled. A couple of small shows, and we took off again for Hong Kong.
Back in one of our favorite places, we began to hit high gear. Hong Kong is a place where we have found tremendous support and we did our best to make the most of our shows there (including a huge show at the Queen Elizabeth stadium–my favorite venue to date). The fans started to grow in crazy numbers, and we were inspired to film ourselves singing anywhere we could.
As we moved on to a month long tour around Taiwan, our videos started to go viral and made a couple news stations in Taiwan. We essentially looped the island country and hit every major city. The accommodations were nice and some of the foods were incredible. We even had the lovely Jenny Wu with TCMC and Vocal Asia to travel with us. But by now, we were getting worn thin and tired as hell. The cheap beer and famous lunch boxes were the staple diet. On the flip side, we had polished our show into a real gem. Our sound checks were faster than ever, and we’d figured out ways to reach as many people as possible. It simply started to slam. While in Taiwan, we also got the chance to sing with OMM, the awesome French group, and MICappella, the Singaporean singing group. Awesome people. Awesome music. Check it.
The planning shit hit the fan, however, and we were forced to fill an extended period of time in our schedule. The music business gets trickier with every level of success. We filled it by offering workshops in Hong Kong and filled the time, performing everywhere we could and teaching anybody who’d listen. We were extremely surprised at the success we found and were happy to take on the overwhelming grind of traveling 3+ hours a day to teach music in a different language…nearly every day…for about a month. The truth is we love Hong Kong and would do a lot for the city.
As a thank you and in part, to stir up new music and local artistic pride, I organized the Hong Kong Music Walk (with Cammy Chong and Carol Wong) where we walked through the major parts of the city singing at the tops of our lungs. We were accompanied by a huge crowd of fans, curious wanderers, and eventually security! I believe it was a small statement for Hong Kongers who struggle to find support for their expression. It was an overwhelming success.
As a final stop of the Asia tour we bounced back to Taiwan to put on a huge show. Right in the heart of the city, outdoors, we put on one of my favorite performances. Maybe all of the beer from the tour finally kicked in (in a good way) and a fire was lit under the group…maybe it was the in-ear monitors…either way, it was a great night. The 4000+ fans were a wild contrast to our show for 6 in the hot tent in Perth!
Next up is Europe.