The Redding Brothersan excavation

2008 · Armed Forces Entertainment

The Middle East Tour

Seven countries, twenty-five days — May 2008.

In May 2008 the band flew east — a tour of U.S. military installations across the Middle East and Central Asia, booked through Armed Forces Entertainment. The band's own press called it a twenty-five-day tour; the ledger logs twenty-three show-nights, May 2–24 — seven countries, moving by military flight between bases:

Kyrgyzstan · Afghanistan · Bahrain · Qatar · Kuwait · United Arab Emirates · Saudi Arabia

They played hangars and rec halls for troops and base crowds, walked mud-brick ruins and bombed-out streets between shows, and filmed themselves the whole way. “Feel” drew the biggest reaction everywhere they went — and when they came home, it became the band's final release, the Feel single.

The run sits in the 2008 tour ledger as a single twenty-three-night line.

The send-off

The tour began at home. After a pre-tour show at Belmont's Curb Cafe in Nashville, the band played a free full set at the River's Edge Cafe in St. Albans on Saturday, April 26 — and the next morning the National Guard Armory in Charleston hosted a public send-off celebration, with Governor Joe Manchin III stopping by to wish the band well. The send-off led the evening news on WOWK-13, WCHS-8, and WVAH-11 — the WOWK report survives. Then they flew.

The photographs

Micah, guitar in a doorway — dust in the air
Micah, guitar in a doorway — dust in the air
Mid-set, beneath the Marine Corps seal
Mid-set, beneath the Marine Corps seal
In the hangar
In the hangar
Among the mud-brick walls
Among the mud-brick walls
Out walking, with tour companions
Out walking, with tour companions
Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Qatar
Qatar
The kit, set for the show
The kit, set for the show
Mid-set beneath the flag
Mid-set beneath the flag
Night show at the amphitheater
Night show at the amphitheater
After the show: a Marine borrows the guitar
After the show: a Marine borrows the guitar
With the crew and the crowd — one soldier holding the record
With the crew and the crowd — one soldier holding the record
The brothers at the Operation Enduring Freedom signing wall, Kandahar Airfield
The brothers at the Operation Enduring Freedom signing wall, Kandahar Airfield
Tim Hortons on the Kandahar boardwalk
Tim Hortons on the Kandahar boardwalk
The boardwalk
The boardwalk
Souvenir patch on the boardwalk
Souvenir patch on the boardwalk
A helicopter comes in over the compound
A helicopter comes in over the compound
A painted truck outside the wire, from the convoy window
A painted truck outside the wire, from the convoy window
The aircraft graveyard at the edge of the field
The aircraft graveyard at the edge of the field
Beyond the wire, mined ground — marked
Beyond the wire, mined ground — marked

From the band's Flickr archive: five photographs they chose themselves, the two that headlined the old site, and a further thirteen selected from the 540-photo tour corpus.

The films

Between shows, they filmed themselves — the road overseas, told as only the brothers would:

A Redding Brothers film · Middle East tour The Saga of the Self-Heating Meal — Part 1 August 2008 · 10:00 On the Armed Forces Entertainment tour, the brothers wrestle a military-issue self-heating meal. Part one.
A Redding Brothers film · Middle East tour The Saga of the Self-Heating Meal — Part 2 August 2008 · 9:57 The conclusion of the self-heating meal saga.

Dispatches from the road

The homecoming

By June they were back in West Virginia, and the tour rolled straight into a homecoming run: the Saint Albans Summer Kickoff in the city park, a Kanawha County library show, and a hang-out night back at the River's Edge — with the tour back on the evening news in late June. From there the summer carried on to Nashville and the Paducah festival stage.

The coda

The connection outlasted the tour: that November, when the band held an online “All Skate Chat,” fans from the UAE and Kuwait stayed up past dawn — through “closely regulated and restricted internet” — to be there.

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