Question: WHO IS FLOWER TRAVELLIN BAND and why do we have it on our web site ?
Answer:
Flower Travellin' Band is a charismatic hard, psych-rock band made up of five musicians from Japan. They were first active in the late 1960s and early 1970’s, have already released five albums between 1970 and 1973 and now in 2008 their latest work ‘We Are Here’. This album released for their 2008/2009 reunion tour. Jun Kobayashi, partner and product designer for TOKYObay inc. is also the Bass guitarist for ‘Flower Travellin Band’
Jun has been a design partner in the successful San Francisco based Watch and Accessories company TOKYObay for the past 18 years. Jun wears his favorite TOKYObay watch of the moment, the retro inspired ’Speed‘ watch, featured on the TOKYObay web site. He has not been involved in the music industry for a long time, but with the encouragement of the other band members, friends, and his own very musically talented family he decided to start practicing with the band again.
The friends and former band members of 30 years ago: Akira "Joe" Yamanaka (vocals), Hideki Ishima (guitar), Joji "George" Wada (drums) Nobuhiko Shinohara (keyboard) and Jun Kobayashi (bass guitar) have, as of January 12th 2008, officially reunited to create new music for the ‘We are Here’ album. They all went back into the recording studio together in Tokyo and in Canada to make it happen.
Their first big reunion concert of 2008 was the summer Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, an internationally known music festival, where many American and European bands play multiple stages. It was a great show, with many old and new fans showing up and rediscovering their music. The Buzz had started and numerous reviews followed, a further warmup tour was planned.
The band began their first ever American tour in March performing in:
Toronto, Canada – New York – Philadelphia – Washington DC – (SXSW) South by South West Festival, Austin ,Texas.
