While in
Salvador’s Café, a great hangout in Kunming, I met the Tribal Moons an American-British-Chinese-Irish quartet playing gigs around southern China. The band is fronted by the garrulous
John 'Nevada' Lundemo from Reno, Nevada, – “some people call me 'jeronimo,' that was my stage name for years while playing in and around Reno and Lake Tahoe, and up and down the Sierra Nevada mountains in Nevada.
He plays rhythm guitar, harmonica, percussion and sing. From Ireland, bandmate Mark Corry plays slide guitar. Londoner James Martin plays lead guitar and harmonica. The band’s Chinese member is drummer Ma Tu, a Kunming native. Like the two Europeans in the group he’s versatile: all three take turns at bass, drums and join with Lundemo on vocals.
John told me about the band’s gigs and plans for a sunny winter in Thailand the Philippines. Given that he’s a better story teller than me, below I’ll run a transcript of our chat:
“Over Halloween the band played in Kunming on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. We opened for Brandon Thomas, from Texas, an extremely wonderful blues-rocker and guitarist currently on a 16 city tour in China, playing our own show at the Halfway House Club on Thursday night, which really went well and was packed. The band then played two Halloween performances on Friday and Saturday nights at the Dragonfly in Dali, Yunnan.
We met last summer, in July, in Dali, where my wife Caroline (a university English teacher, and from Australia) and I got married. Caroline has been acting and has become our manager and chief 'organizer' and there are so many things we just couldn't do without her! All of our four children and friends and familes from the USA and Australia came for the wedding; we needed a band for the wedding party and dance, and some friends brought Mark, who was living and playing in Dali, and James, our friend of 4 years from central China, who had been teaching and playing music in Xiamen in eastern China, together. We met Ma Tu in Kunming and soon the four of us had settled into Ma Tu's studio and began rehearsing.
We play original music, in a variety of styles: blues, rock, reggae, country, and some jazz-oriented or jazz-flavored songs. We also do some covers of famous blues musicians, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson; and old rock 'n roll songs by the Kinks, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Santana; and country songs by Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams... just to name a few famous people and bands we like. But we choose what we personally like, and don't do the cover versions exactly, but rather, do our own 'take' or concept of the basic song. It works out quite well. I write many of the songs for the band and have been writing music and playing in bands all of my life. Now Mark, James and Ma Tu are also contributing songs they have written and also their specially selected cover tunes.
Our lucky break came when I had submitted my own personal resume and
Youtube videos of some of my songs, and a background of the band to the promoters of the Lijiang Music Festival. I wasn't sure, nor were we at all convinced the Tribal Moons would be selected to play. We worked hard and our performances in Kunming prior to Lijiang, and then at the festival, and then through jamming and playing at the after-hour parties and bars in Lijiang during the festival, and meeting people and promoters and agents, our band began to get some notice and now more and more gigs and opportunities are coming out way. Since the festival we've had to make a few changes in our lives: Mark has moved from Dali to Kunming and is living with James, Caroline and I and James are all university English teachers, so we have had to make some band decisions around our teaching schedules. We have really began to 'switch around' with all of us playing various instruments to build exciting and interesting sets of our music, and finally, we're making some future plans.
I guess our next thoughts have to do with playing the holiday and shows that come up around the Christmas and holiday-New Year seasons. But beyond that we are now developing the itinerary and schedule to get all of us to the Philippine islands, and then on to Thailand for the months of January and February. We have some connections in both countries and are now looking at some resorts and clubs in the warmer climates and scheduling what we can. It will be a perfect time to take a winter break and 'go south' while at the same time keeping us together on the road for a couple of months where we can really work hard on the music and polish our sets. We have dozens and dozens of good original songs and we want to present a variety of sets we can keep in a constant evolving cycle so when we play two or three nights in a row we can keep things exciting and interesting for the audiences.
Beyond that, we'll see. Of course, we must get into the studio and record some CDs to take along with us, or maybe we'll face that recording thing in the spring. We are in no rush and at the present just enjoying playing together. I've played with a lot of musicians in my life, but these three young men are about as easy to work with and get along with as I've ever wanted. We enjoy each other's company, we're good friends, and we have loads of laughs. I have a lot of band and music experience behind me, so they look to me for some direction -- but really, Mark and James are very creative and accomplished writers and musicians and when we all are together, there is a wealth of musical knowledge to draw on, talk about and everyone contributes.
This week the band is resting, rehearsing, and preparing for the Kunming Outdoor Music Festival which will be held about 45 minutes from Kunming on Saturday November 10th. There won't be as many bands performing as at the huge Lijiang Music Festival, but still, lots of local bands, some foreign and most Chinese. All types of music will be represented -- from rock to punk to metal, to..well, us!"
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