Allow myself to reintroduce, myself．

The origin story of Mark Tayag Davis

Egads, this blog has 320 page views. This blog was intended for people who donated to my indiegogo campaign to send me on this damn fool quest to Japan, but the number of page views leads me to believe that random folks I don`t even know are reading this. So to those of you just joining me. . .

Hello!!!! My name is Mark Tayag Davis. I am a Filipino American jazz pianist from the San Francisco Bay Area. I was born in Honolulu but moved to Concord, California when I was 2. My East Bay credibility took a huge hit in 1995 when I moved to Marin County, where I did the majority of my growing up. Always sucked at sports, which was a blessing in disguise, because I ended up getting pretty damn good at piano. In addition, I wasted away my youth playing video games, watching anime, and lurking the internet.

In 2002 I got accepted at USC where I studied music for 2 years. Unfortunately I was hopelessly outclassed at the program by what turned out to be an uber group of the next generation of world class jazz pianists, such as Taylor Eigsti and Gerald Clayton. Depressed, and feeling like I was wasting $30,000 a year, I decided to switch gears and join the US Army. If this seems a bit extreme, don`t worry, because I was signing up to the chillest, wimpiest of all Army units: The Army Band. Yep, I got to play piano, crash cymbals, and do random tasks in the service of our nation. Even better, joining the Army allowed me to be stationed in a place I had been obsessed with since childhood: Japan. I was stationed there from 2005 to 2007 and got to see more of the country than most Japanese people. After Japan I was stationed in Georgia for another two years, and then left the army, because Georgia is not Japan.

Back in the Bay Area, I compiled community college units, transfered to SF State, finally completed my music degree, and got started living my lifelong dream: paying the bills as a professional musician. Not as a music teacher, but as a pure performing, gigging piano/keyboard/accordion player. Even met a great girl and moved out of my mom;s house! I couldn`t have been happier.

And then I got tendinitis. As my condition got worse, I first stopped playing funk gigs, then jazz gigs, then accordion, as I tried every miracle cure from Chinese herbs to the CVS pharmacy. But it got worse and worse. Finally I quit the two projects closest to my heart: my weekly church gig at Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, and my assitant music director chair in Pacific Soul Band (the baddest band in the land). This would seem to be the lowest low in the story, but it`s not that simple.

When I made the heartbreaking decision to quit piano, I felt not depression, but euphoria. There is no miracle cure for tendinitis except rest, and instead of praying for a miracle cure all I had to do was wait, and my body`s healing would make the miracle happen for me! I was finally going to be cured of this godawful curse. And it would only take six months for my tendons to get back to normal. For 6 months. WHAAAAT!?!? What the hell am I gonna do if I can`t practice, can`t work, and can`t study for 6 goddamn months?

The answer was to knock out my #1 bucket list goal: the 88 temple pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan. I started a fundraiser, and my friends and family and colleagues came through huge for me to raise enough money to pull this off. And I'm in Japan right now trying to figure out this weird Japanese keyboard, which is why the punctuation is all messed up! So stay tuned for more!!!!