On March 23rd, 2012, my bandmates and I (along with our friends Alex Hwang and Ria Kim) endeavored to fly out to Richmond, VA and embark on an East Coast tour featuring 8 shows in 8 nights in the great cities of Richmond, Annandale, Brooklyn, New York, Piscataway, Boston, Manchester, and Albany. Performing in 4 different churches, 2 universities, and 2 secular bars and driving a total of nearly 2,000 miles, it was a week and a half full of life lessons, unhealthy foods, semi-tragedies, tears, meeting amazing people, raunchy jokes, epic freestyle battles, memorable experiences with an over liberal usage of hot sauce on philly cheesesteaks in the middle of the night, and the Holy Spirit. Whenever I get a chance, I will humbly attempt to chronicle at least a portion of the unforgettable moments we shared together. Here's the worst part of the entire trip at least for me...  

From Day 3 to Day 4 - Philadelphia
So. 

Annandale, VA (NOVA) was great. We prayed. We performed. We cried. We sold CDs. We made friends. We ate. We were feeling really good. 

But we had a decision to make...

After a great late night out at a mediocre but still delicious Korean BBQ spot with newly formed friends, we began talking about our plans for driving to our next gig in Brooklyn, New York - a 5 hour drive from Virginia. Several locals who had made the drive before discouraged us from staying the night in Virginia and driving through morning and late afternoon traffic the following day. Instead, they told us to drive through the night. 

With good food and good company following a good and powerful show, we were feeling pretty good, and so we said let's do this! Let's drive through the night like some rock stars and kill it the next night in Brooklyn! Whoo! Byah! 

3 hours passed. 
I was driving. 
I was falling asleep.
Most everyone else was asleep.
We had 2 more hours to go.

But.

We.

Stopped.

For Philly Cheesesteaks.

It seemed like one of those, well-you-have-to-do-it, type of moments. And it probably was. I had never been to Philadelphia (Or the East Coast at all for that matter), and I had never tried a Philly Cheesesteak from Philadelphia. So we got off the freakin freeway, dead tired, and NOT EVEN HUNGRY. We just had all you can eat KBBQ only 3 hours beforehand!!  

Ok give me a minute. I've probably displayed my frustration a bit too early in this post, because honestly, at this point, I wasn't frustrated all that much. I was mostly just tired and sleepy.

But once we exited the freeway, my tiredness mutated itself into madness and frustration on account of our tour manager's incompetent navigation system! Son of a gun! I hated that witch of a voice!!!!

This GPS chick tells us to exit the freeway and then leads us to the nowheres!

I'm driving a 12 passenger van in Philly with wrong directions, no parking, and only one way streets!

So after a dozen left turns, we finally made it to some famous cheesesteak spot. And I told myself while exiting the van, maybe this damn cheesesteak will alleviate my newfound yet wholehearted frustration towards Ria's navigation system after driving through the night for 3 hours straight with another 2 hours left to go.

So we got out of our cars, and we each ordered a sandwich. I think I split mine with Ria (our tour manager, but also our tour guide, being that she had lived in the East Coast for 4 years).

I got the typical cheesesteak, with cheese whiz.

I took a bite of my sandwich. It was good. Nothing mind blowing. But it was certainly good. The cheese whiz business was a little special, and probably worth talking about for five minutes or so on the drive to NY.

But then Ria sits down after my first bite and matter of factly says to me, "Hey. You need to eat it with hot sauce."  

Well go figure!

Duh!

Maybe this hot sauce will magically blend in with the whiz cheese and the steak and the bread and create new exuberant gustatory sensations! Or something! So I walked over to the condiments counter.

It was one of those pumps. You know those pumps? Where you press down on the pump and then it pumps out hot sauce from within the pump? So I did like 2 pumps or something. Meanwhile, Ria was standing next to me.

So I figured, I've had El Taurino hot sauce before, surely Philadelphia has nothing on Dirty LA Mexican Hot Sauce, and my first bite was swimming in hot sauce. Like the equivalent of 3/4s of a fastfood ketchup packet. 

Did not expect what would happen next...

Instead of a new gustatory sensation, I lost gustatory sensation altogether. That son of a gun hot sauce destroyed me. Like I would've rather listened to Ria's GPS system lead me through the continental united states for the rest of 2012. I think I drank all of Gilbert's soft drink without his permission. I couldn't feel my mouth, or maybe I felt everything inside my mouth burning. I'm not sure which is the better description, but I thought I might die. And I wanted to sock Ria for just standing by me without a single word of caution while I drenched my cheesesteak in hot sauce. Son of a gun.

I'm open to change in the future, but for now, I despise philadelphia.

Anyway, I'm not sure how but, eventually, we made it to Brooklyn, and I knocked out as soon as we got to the hotel room. Like head on the pillow. Split second later. Snoring. And I snore like a son of a gun. According to some sons of guns in my band. 

One thing to note: I actually did not display my frustration to my bandmates or to Ria (or at least I don't think I did) that night. Most of what is described above were my internal thoughts. Outwardly, I was displaying patience and kindess. Or so I think. (Maybe we could have Ria or Alex Hwang guest blog from their perspective or something). I must have really been trying to be biblical, or maybe I was trying really hard to act like the kind of pastor I want to be in the future... which I failed miserably at during other times on the trip, but maybe not in this one particular instance. 

Another thing to note: The next morning (or just a few hours later), someone in the band made a phone call to a local albanian barber. holy crap. that conversation was the funniest moment of the entire 9 day trip. rofl. 

Good times.

Good times.

Hate you.

On March 23rd, 2012, my bandmates and I (along with our friends Alex Hwang and Ria Kim) endeavored to fly out to Richmond, VA and embark on an East Coast tour featuring 8 shows in 8 nights in the great cities of Richmond, Annandale, Brooklyn, New York, Piscataway, Boston, Manchester, and Albany. Performing in 4 different churches, 2 universities, and 2 secular bars and driving a total of nearly 2,000 miles, it was a week and a half full of life lessons, unhealthy foods, semi-tragedies, tears, meeting amazing people, raunchy jokes, epic freestyle battles, memorable experiences with an over liberal usage of hot sauce on philly cheesesteaks in the middle of the night, and the Holy Spirit. Whenever I get a chance, I will humbly attempt to chronicle at least a portion of the unforgettable moments we shared together. Here's Day 1 and Day 2...    

Day 1 - From LA to Richmond
We arrived at LAX with fear of whether or not they would allow us to carry on our guitars. With all our musical equipment and merchandise, we had already spent quite a bit of money checking in bags at the airport. We were hoping to cut down costs by carrying on 2 acoustic guitars and an electric. Thankfully, the attendants were gracious to let us do so.

On the plane ride, Alex, myself, Descry, and Gilbert played a card game called Psoy (aka Big 2)... 

It is paramount to note at this point that our east coast tour took place right in the thick of the Lenten season. You know... that 40 day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday where many catholics and protestants alike voluntarily give up a certain convenience to their lives or perhaps at the very least live life with some more intentionality in keeping Christ' crucifixion at the forefront of their minds? Yes... So the Lenten season also means Filet-O-Fish Fridays. You know... that awesome McDonald's fish-sandwich goodness Asian Americans (at least in the Southern California area) are crazy about? Yes... Take note.

We weren't just playing Psoy. No sir. A simple card game determining which one of us is shrewd enough to rid of all our cards utilizing the best poker hands, pairs, and "big 2s" would be of no entertainment value in and of it self... absolutely not. We had to up the stakes. We determined right away that the first gentleman to win four games of Psoy would be awarded a free Filet-O-Fish upon returning from the North American skies to the Earth. 

I don't think we had a winner. Or perhaps Alex won? I forget. But what's funny is when we landed and Pastor Jonathan Park picked us up at the airport, he asked us where we wanted to eat. Being that it was some of our very first times in Virginia or on this side of the United States altogether, he suggested some popular local spots, but after hearing all his suggestions, we asked if there was a nearby McDonald's because it was still yet a Friday night.

Again, I think it paramount to note at this point that Filet-O-Fish Fridays, at least in Los Angeles, meant that on Fridays alone, the price of a Filet-O-Fish went down to a commonsensical $1.50. Yes. $1.50. Roughly a 50% price deduction. 50%! An ingenius and sensational incentive for anyone fasting red meat during the Lenten season. I know. It defeats the point of Lent. But still. $1.50. I know. It still doesn't - Yeah. Don't judge. We are but frugal humans. 

So we choose McDonald's over Pastor Jonathan's recommendations and he has this facial response of complete pastoral neutrality. What I mean by that is if he wasn't a well-mannered ordained pastor he probably would've said something along the lines of wtf? smfh! gtfo! But instead he just made no comment and calmly took us to McDonald's. We got there and son-of-a-gun!!!!!!!!! Son-of-a-freaking-gun!!!! Filet-O-Fish is buy 1 get 1 free in Virginia all day everyday!!!! Son of a gun!!! We ate lots of Filet-O-Fish that evening.

Day 2 - Show #1 Richmond Korean Presbyterian Church (Richmond, VA)
Terry and Jonathan Park were gracious, gracious hosts. Along with their two kids and pet husky, they took such good care of us, even providing for us one of our absolute most memorable meals of the entire trip - a Saturday brunch with some ridonkulous wheat waffles, potatoes, sausages, and coffee. 

After renting our 12-passenger van, we packed it up and set out for our very first show at RKPC (Richmond Korean Presbyterian Church). After meeting their amazing EM Pastor, a Fuller graduate, we ran through sound check, had a dunk contest, and went outside for a quick breather. 

Alex Hwang, an amazing singer-songwriter, hipster, instagram/diptic master, frontman for the incredibly talented group Monsters Calling Home, and somehow our opening act, was setting up his merch table and put together just the cutest sign ever indicating the price of his CDs. He had some fancy writing, and a picture of a cute little monster. 

Kevin Kim, our electric guitarist witnessed Alex's artistic side and was inspired to make a sign of his own. 

Holy crap he made the ugliest sign I have ever seen in my life. 

He used masking tape. He haphazardly began to rip masking tape to form a group of what seemed to be a poor excuse of some english alphabet letters spelling out "The Nehemiah Band" and "The Morning Came To Me" and "$10" and "$15" and "combo" and some other ambitious words. This alone probably cost him a good 45 minutes. I so so wish I had a picture of this. After cutting out the tape to make those letters, he placed them on poster board and proceeded to use a black and red sharpie to color over and around them... Do you follow? So he has some ugly hardly legible hand-ripped masking tape letters taped on to a white poster board and he is coloring on and around these alleged masking tape letters... the idea in his theoretical mind being once he peels off the tape, the black and red will have outlined the letters... or something. Son of a gun, that thing looked horrible. We made a rule that day: Kevin Kim is banned from making signs. (love you kev).

When it was time for the show, interestingly enough, there was a pretty good turnout. Apparently, the partnering churches had done a good job promoting.

We started out with some worship (led by me), and then the pastor gave a quick word and invited me up to give a 5 minute testimony.

I started out by trying to retell the filet-o-fish story above, but I lost my train of thought, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I started rambling for 5 minutes about how there were a lot of black people at McDonald's looking at us... and my story turned suddenly and unintentionally began to grow painfully racist and awkward... There I am speaking to several strangers who have never heard of menor the Nehemiah Band, and the first thing they hear is me talking about black people in virginia... and just as the racial tension in my rambling was about to climax I stopped mid-sentence and said, "I'm not sure what I'm talking about at this point, but let's just turn to John chapter 1." It was the worst/best!

Alex killed during his set and so did TNB.
We got great feedback and made great friends.

That night, back at the Park's, we decided to play some more psoy. But we decided to spice it up a notch, or more accurately dumb it down a million notches and we invented a new game called No Look Psoy. The game is essentially the same thing as Psoy with these 3 changes:
1. The red joker is the lowest 3
2. The black joker is the highest 2
3. You are not allowed to look at your cards.

It was the worst/best!