the soundtrack to the day you wish you'd had
Finally, after weeks of preparation, two preview tracks and a lot of sweat and tears over the mixing and mastering, FingerPainting – the new album from me and Daniel Berkman is out now!
Continue reading “FingerPainting OUT now (includes discount code!)”
The release of the album is immanent, so here’s a 2nd preview track to whet your appetites – this one features Artemis‘ beautiful voice. She was on the entire California tour with us (and organised it!) and sang a tune or two with us at the end of every gig. They’ll make an amazing album in their own right when collected together, but for now, it’s here as part of FingerPainting.
Enjoy Invocation ::
Some new music for you to discover on international jazz day. Cos you’ve got 364 days for listening to Coltrane, Miles and Sinatra…
This is nice – on the eve of FingerPainting being released (not the literal ‘eve’, but it’ll be out in a week, or so, I think… 🙂 ), we’ve just had a rather lovely review of Accidentally (On Purpose). It’s in French, so if you’re Francophone, you can read it here.
If you’re French isn’t so hot, here’s the Google Translate version. 🙂
And here’s the album to listen to, so you can make up your own mind (spoiler alert: it’s lovely 😉 )
And here’s the title track from FingerPainting, for free download:
enjoy!
I know a lot of you will have got this from the download code to my mailing list, but FingerPainting is now up on Bandcamp for free download. Not ‘pay what you want’, just free. Take it, enjoy it, share it, get excited about the rest of the album coming out in a week or two!
If you’ve already got it, PLEASE share it with your friends. Here are some of the things you could do:
Whatever you choose to do, thanks so much. We just hope you enjoy it – Listen and Download here:
…so by now, you’ve all heard the preview of the title track from FingerPainting, right? You got it from the mailing list, or messaged on Twitter/Facebook and got the code? Good. (if not, send me a message!)
Today I’ve been sorting out the pre-order packages for Bandcamp. We’re going to put the first show up for immediate download. You’ll be able to buy it on its own, or with the a USB stick of everything we’ve ever done, the USB + access to the daily updates as I edit, via Dropbox, a double CD best-of from the shows, and the CDs + all 10 shows downloaded… Lots of options. Here’s a sneak preview of the images that’ll go with it all on Bandcamp:
And of course, Accidentally (On Purpose) is already there for your delictation and delight.
More news very soon… Til then, I’ll be sending out press/radio/promo download codes in the next couple of days, so drop me a message if you’d like to write about the album, and I’ll send a code over…
So, today I’m trying to write a press release about Daniel Berkman and I releasing a 13 minute ‘single‘ ahead of an 11 hour, 10 show live set of every note we’ve ever played together, without making it sound like we’re just idiots with a gimmick… Continue reading “Writing a Press Release Without Sounding Insane…”
Here’s a list of facts about Daniel Berkman and I:
I’ve no idea if this is something that has ever happened before. I’ve certainly never come across a band that were able to commercially release every note they’d ever played together. These aren’t ‘board tapes’ that serial bootleggers are dumping on Archive.org. This properly mixed, mastered and released. Continue reading “Is This Unique? Every Note We’ve Ever Played Will Be Released”
Here’s a thing I’ve been mentally wrestling with for a few days – I really want to be able to do a Bandcamp download code for each member of my mailing list, which is hosted with Mailchimp. I looked through the documentation for the site, but couldn’t immediately see how to do it.
So I did what I always do when I need a problem solved. I asked Twitter.
And my clever friend Lee told me how to make a custom field in the list database.
He tweeted:
@solobasssteve In MC, select list, click Settings, List Fields. Create a new field eg. Bandcamp. In email enter the tag for the codes.
— Lee Daniels (@Magnitude_V1) April 1, 2013
So I did that, but there’s no import option for a single field… I then noticed that there is the option to ‘auto-update‘ your current list when importing data – which means I can export the list from Mailchimp to Excel, generate the codes in Bandcamp, add them to the newly created column in excel, then reimport the list to Mailchimp using the auto-update function.
Then just add the short-code merge tag for the code in your actual email template. Hey presto, unique Bandcamp code for every list member…
It’s worth noting that this is only advisable if you either have
a) massively higher than average open rates on your mailing list or
b) shedloads of spare download codes that you haven’t used with bandcamp.
I’m in the latter camp, so can afford to give them away and see what happens…
So, we’re back at Tower Of Song, May 19th, 8pm, with a very brilliant headliner… Yolanda Charles.
Click here for the Facebook event page.
Yolanda has long been one of my favourite bassists, having first heard her play with Urban Species back in the early 90s, then seen her with Carleen Anderson, Paul Weller, Robbie Williams… Her session career is an insane list of massive names – in the studio or live, she’s trusted to do the job and bring something amazing to the gig.
Of late, Yo’s been concentrating on her solo project, The Deep M.O. – an absolutely killer funk/soul band that she fronts on bass and voice. She VERY rarely plays completely solo, so we’re in for a really special evening.
Here’s a video of her playing solo, and then her album with The Deep M.O. which you need to own: