Secret Society Drummer Guest Blogging

Hello all! Let me introduce myself.My name is Jon Wikan; I am currently the drummer in Darcy's Secret Society, punk rock, jazz, indie rock, modern, "secret" underground, hard rock jazz orchestra as well as a big fan of Darcy's great music. I will be traveling for nearly 5 weeks with a quartet, led by Seattle vocalist Kelley Johnson, to Central America, South America and The Caribbean early this morning for an interesting state department program called rhythm abroad, "American Music Abroad" which is co-led by Jazz at lincoln Center. As you may expect the first thing the state department told us in our briefing in DC was "do not refer to yourselves as Americans, as they too are Americans". I understand this as I have been to the region before but why name the program "American Music Abroad"? The band includes New York bass player Nathan Peck, myself, Seattle based pianist John Hansen, and vocalist Kelley Johnson. Darcy was kind enough to invite me as a guest blogger for this trip as it could turn out to be quite interesting. Our tour countries include Panama, Nicaragua, Dominican republic, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago as well as the original Banana republic, Honduras. We have already done a dates at the National Geographic Society in DC and a concert at Lincoln with a great group called "Universes" and this group is fucking great! The are poets that sing! They are very political (in a good way) and I think the DJA crowd will really dig their music/poetry/rap; so be sure to check their stuff out on MySpace. They are simultaneously touring Africa under the same program. I will try to post some pictures as soon as I figure this blogging stuff out. This is my first blog post ever! Cheers mates! Jon Wikan