Travel Time - Tuesday, April 6, 2010

We awoke this morning, got our things together, and headed out the door to Korea. Everything was organized and ready to go, so the morning went smoothly.

We met our neighbor and good friend Carlos out front, loaded our bags into his car, and he drove us to the airport. Good friends like this are hard to come by.

We arrived at the airport about three hours and twenty minutes early for our flight, but there was already a line to check in at the Korean Air counter. The line moved pretty quickly, so we got our bags checked, and our boarding passes, then proceeded to the security check-point. For once, there was no line, and we were able to get through with no problems, quick and easy.

On the secure side, we had time to kill. We had breakfast, used the restroom, then headed to the gate to wait. I'd remembered to bring a book with me, so I dug it out and started to read. The book was "Water For Elephants", by Sara Gruen. It's a very good book, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Between the hour or so we had to wait to board, and the thirteen hours in flight, I was able to finish the book before we landed. I just wish I had another one to read on the way back.

The plane started boarding at 10:20, and we were in the air on time at 11:00. The flight is approximately thirteen and a half hours, and you chase the sun the whole way. The aircraft can not quite keep up with the sun, and so falls behind a little bit the whole way. Since the sun never sets on the aircraft during the flight, it seems like just one very long afternoon spent flying. When we finally land, it's 2:30 in the afternoon local time in Incheon, but it's the next day, Wednesday, April 7. We crossed the international date line going over the Bering Sea.

I was fortunate enough to get a window seat for the flight, and so spent a good bit of time looking out at the passing scenery. We had good, almost cloud-free weather the whole way, so I was able to see a lot. The flight takes what aviators call "the great circle route". This follows a great arc up north, through the Artic, and then back south again to the destination. It seems crazy when you look at it on a flat map, but seen on a globe it makes perfect sense. It's actually the shortest distance, because a great circle route, extrapolated around the globe, would be the largest perfect circle you could make around the globe, dividing the Earth exactly in half, right down through the center.

So, this great circle takes us from Dallas/Fort Worth up through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, into Western Canada, barely skirting by Juneau in the lower panhandle of Alaska, across the southern coast and on to the west coast of Alaska near Nome, across the Bering Sea and into Russian Siberia. The route starts it's southwest curve around here, heading out over the Sea of Okhotsk behind the Kamchatka Peninsula, over the western part of Sakhalin Island, over the sea east of the Russian city of Vladivostok, and over the Sea Of Japan (the Koreans call this "The East Sea"), keeping plenty of space between us and North Korea. We finally cross over the east coast of Korea just south of our final destination, Gangneung City. We had to keep on flying, though, on over to the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, to the port city of Incheon. This is where Seoul's international airport lies, about thirty miles from downtown.

We breezed through Immigration and Customs, and caught an express bus to Seoul's Express Bus Terminal. We bought our tickets for the next bus to Gangneung City, and had about thirty minutes to wait 'till it pulled out at five o'clock. A three hour bus ride back across the Korean Peninsula to the east coast put us in the Gangneung Express Bus Terminal at eight o'clock. A fifteen minute, fifteen dollar taxi ride deposited us at Mrs. Kim's front door. Rest at last, after a very long day spent traveling.

Home Again

We are back home from the trip to Korea. All went well, and we touched down at DFW at about 08:25 yesterday morning. Now, we're just dealing with the jet lag. For any of you who have not traveled to the other side of the world on a jet airplane, jet lag is a real thing. It takes your body about four days to adjust to the new time zone. I struggled to stay awake 'till six p.m. yesterday, and almost made it. We both woke up at midnight, and have been awake ever since. I'm going to try to make it 'till eight o'clock toninght.

Over in Korea, I couldn't get an internet connection out where we were staying, so each evening I wrote up my account of the day in a word processor document, then saved them to the computer. I will be posting them here to the blog over the next several days, with photos and videos.

For today, I will leave you with this little teaser video. This was the scene out back, over the garden wall of Mrs. Kim's house. That rooster started crowing around five-thirty every morning.



Official Website for Korea Tourism: http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/

Official Website for Tourism in Gangwon-do Province: http://www.gangwon.to/

Official Website for Tourism in Gangneung City: http://www.gntour.go.kr/

Slaid Cleaves

Slaid Cleaves came by KNON Community Radio yesterday, Friday, April 2, 2010. He brought with him a couple of side men, namely Billy Bright playing mandolin, and Chojo Jacques on the fiddle. Slaid was always one of my personal favorites. His two early albums "Broke Down", and "No Angel Knows" are a couple of the best alt-country albums ever released. Slaid wrote some of his best songs for them, and Lloyd Maines did an excellent job producing them.

Slaid was in town as the headliner for a show that night at the Granada Theatre, on Lower Greenville Ave. This old movie theatre is a great place to see a show. There's not a bad seat in the house, and they have a great sound system.

He kicked it off with a new song called "Hard To Believe":




Friends in the studio watching and helping out were Mark Ivey, Michael Williams, John Bass, Lee Petty, David Callison, and my beautiful wife Ok Hwa. You can see some of them in the background in the videos.

The next song up was "Green Mountains And Me":



I recently bought a new camera, which shoots video in high definition. I decided to give it's first try-out on the song "Horseshoe Lounge". My computer could just barely handle the upload, and my video editing software would not even recognise the file, so I was not able to edit it like I wanted, with fade in/out, titles, and end credits. Here it is in it's unedited form:



It was good to see ol' Slaid after all these years. He's looking and sounding very good. He has some great new material out, and I urge you to check it out. The link is below.

After the program, Slaid headed off to have dinner before his show, and we all went down the the parking lot, where we gathered around the tail gate of some one's pick-up truck for some light conversation and beverages.

Official website of KNON Community Radio in Dallas: http://www.knon.org/

Official website of Slaid Cleaves: http://www.slaidcleaves.com/

Houston Marchman

Our old friend, the singer and songwriter Houston Marchman came by KNON this afternoon. I hadn't seen him since we moved from the old White House Of East Dallas, about six years ago. Houston's looking and sounding good after all these years. He was always one of the best of the local singer/songwriters, with a strong, commanding voice, excellent guitar playing, and interesting songs. His singing, playing and new songs are as powerful as ever.

After some opening conversation and catching up with Mark Mundy, he launched into a new song, "Stones":





The on-air interview was really a conversation between old friends, as Mark and Houston go back a ways. I've edited these videos down a bit for the sake of brevity, and present for you now the next song Houston did, "Detroit":





As usually happens on the Friday edition of the Renegade Radio show, friends arrived to sit in as the show progressed. The Monday host Texas Trevor was there, then friends Mark Ivey and Michael Williams showed up. A little later our friend and the substitute DJ David Besonen arrived. At last our good old friend John Bass arrived, rounding out the group of in-studio guests & helpers.



Houston's last song of the day was the great old song "Wrong Side Of Del Rio", from his 2000 CD "Tryin' For Home":





After he finished playing, Houston had to rush off to the sound check. He's opening for Billy Joe Shaver tonight at the Granada Theatre here in Dallas. The rest of us descended to the parking lot for a couple rounds of beers, some peanuts, and a lot of great conversation. For some of us, this is the only time our wives let us out of the house unescorted, so we have to make the most of it.

Official website of KNON: www.knon.org

Houston Marchman's websites: www.houstonmarchman.com/
www.myspace.com/houstonmarchman

Shannon McNally

What a treat to have Shannon McNally come by the station yesterday. She showed up with her full band, all their equipment, and the icing on the cake, her baby daughter Maeve. We'd been playing her previous CD, "Geronimo" for awhile, and her latest, "Coldwater" just came in the mail last month. From the CDs, I liked the songwriting, singing, and production, so I knew she'd be in the groove live. She and her band did not disappoint. After the briefest of introductions, they launched into "Bohemian Wedding Prayer Song":



Little Maeve was having a good time during the music. She was doing her best to be a part of the show. I really enjoyed it when she came over and hung on Mama while she was singing, vocalizing, and matching feet. How precious!

The band was great, and they were as follows: playing lead on one of the coolest guitars I've ever seen was Eric Deaton, keeping time on the drums was Wallace Lester, and securing the bottom end was Nathan Robbins on bass guitar. The next song was "Lovely":



I've got to hand it to Shannon for her songwriting, and most especially for her singing. She has a strong voice to begin with, and controls and modulates it beautifully.

The next song they performed was a cover of "Lonesome, Ornery, and Mean", and I'd like to present it for you here, but, this is about the time my video camera battery died, my old nemesis. I recharged the battery while they played this number, and was ready to go when they started the final song of the set, "Jack B. Nimble":



So, there you have it, another excellent in-studio performance from a great band. They were all very friendly. Shannon and her daughter Maeve were especially charming. They were in town to do a show the following night at the internationally famous Sons Of Hermann Hall. Between that show and this live radio set, Shannon was going to drive down to Austin for a showcase at the SXSW Music Conference, then drive back to Dallas that afternoon. What a hectic schedule, but that's a musician's life. Presenting the music is the easy part. It's all that driving between shows that wears you down.

Official website of KNON Radio in Dallas, Texas: www.knon.org

Shannon McNally's websites: www.myspace.com/shannonmcnally, and www.facebook.com/shannonmcnallymusic

Miss Izzy Cox

Miss Izzy Cox came by the KNON studio last Friday, March 5, 2010. I saw her in the parking lot as I arrived, unloading a trunk full of stuff. Hers is an equipment intensive operation. In addition to her guitar, she had a small amplifier, and a kick drum made from an old overnight suitcase.

I helped her get her equipment up to the studio, and she set about getting ready for the interview.

A friendly and interesting gal, she proved to be a good interview, and a dynamic performer. Her music seems to be all over the map, stylistically. The first song she did "Bad Bad Woman" was an upbeat rockabilly number. She followed this with "Devil Devil" and finished up with "Jesus Can You Save Me". So, in the course of twenty minutes, she went from being a Bad Woman, down to Hell, and all the way back up to Heaven.

Izzy was in town to do a show at the Allgood Cafe in Deep Elum later that night. She had with her her two latest CD releases, "Love Letters From The Electric Chair" and "Killing My Kind". As you can probably tell from these titles, most of her material is edgy and pretty dark. I bought a copy of each of these from her, and listened to them over the next few days. I must say that they are pretty good. I liked most of the songs on both of the records, and that's saying a lot.

Here are the videos of her in-studio performances:

"Bad Bad Woman"



"Devil Devil"



"Jesus Can You Save Me"



Official Website of KNON Community Radio in Dallas: http://knon.org/

Official Website of Miss Izzy Cox: http://myspace.com/izzycox

Operation Steel

Ken Owens, on of our route drivers, brought this crate back to the warehouse last Wednesday. Inside is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, melted down and formed into a slab. It is in route to Bagram Air Base in Kabul, Afghanistan, where it will be made into a memorial to honor the victims of 9/11, and the American soldiers fighting terrorists in Afghanistan today. It is to remain there as long as American soldiers are in Afghanistan.

I didn't have a camera with me, so I shot these pictures with my cell phone, and I think they came out pretty nice.

Here is the link to the website named in the poster, Operation Once In A Lifetime:

http://operationonceinalifetime.com/