Robby's Lobby #168

BlogJune, 2021INROCK Magazine

Hey Hey In Rockers and Welcome to The Lobby, written to you today from the middle of a forest the world looks like it’s beginning to be released a bit from the pandemic’s hold. Hope you’ve been enjoying the Cherry Blossoms and the warmer weather as we’re all able to gather more comfortably outdoors. As of a week ago I’ve gotten both of my vaccinations (it ended up being Pfizer for me) and I’m so looking forward to getting back to a more normal life.

Our annual Cherry Blossom festival in my hometown of Buffalo New York runs this week, unfortunately we had a freak snowstorm and all of the blossoms are now covered with snow and ice at the Buffalo History Museum’s Japanese Garden . Temperatures are supposed to go up in the next few days so we are anxiously waiting to see how the trees and the blossoms react to the sudden freeze after their initial bloom! The festival activities (aside from enjoying the gardens) are being held virtually this year. We’re holding a variety of exhibitions of Japanese cultural activities, my organization Music is Art provides musical entertainment for the event including performances on shamisen, shakuhachi and classical guitar as well as performances by traditional Japanese drum and dance groups all recorded and streamed online.

Many things are happening in a much different way this year as we make our way through the conclusion of this pandemic. Goo Goo Dolls had to make an unfortunate announcement postponing our North American tour until 2022. This is the second time we’ve had to postpone this tour due to concerns over the pandemic. We have rescheduled the dates for next summer, but truly hope to be out doing shows before then, we are hoping to reschedule appearances in Asia that were also cancelled last year as soon as the borders open. I can’t believe how much I miss the interaction we have at the shows; it’s become a huge part of my life over the past 30 plus years of traveling the world playing our songs for people.

Meanwhile, out here in the woods ….. Goo Goo Dolls have been living as hermits deep in a forest in New York State making a new record! It’s a big change for all of us being out in the woods when we’re all used to living in the city for our whole lives. We are recording in an old church built in the late 1800s that was turned into a recording studio in the early 1970s. It has an amazingly musical performance space to record in, the church hall is pretty much untouched since the 1900s, so the sound quality of the room is very special. Many, many legendary records have been recorded here, but I’ll stop short of telling you all where we are as we are going to be here making music for a little while and don’t really need any unexpected visitors during our stay!

We just released a new EP called “EP21” with 4 songs from our catalog recently re-imagined as acoustic pieces and now available digitally through Warner Records. One of my songs called “Happiest of Days” from our Magnetic record is included on this EP, it was produced by my partner John with piano played by our drummer Craig Macyntyre.

Oh! ....... good luck to veteran Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi as he makes his way up to the International Space Station for the 3rd time on the Space X rocket that launched earlier this month! OK, that will do it for this month’s update from The Lobby, enjoy the Spring and have a great month!

Peace,

Robby

Related