So we’re back in England, tired, jetlagged, weirded out by being away for 2 months. It’s the longest I’ve ever been out of the UK in one stretch, for sure.

So let’s look at some tour facts ‘n’ stats:

• We did 19 shows, of which 2 were just me, one was me and Trip Wamsley in a duo, one was me and Julie Slick in a duo and one more was a bass clinic with Lo guesting on a song or two.
• Four of the shows were booked after we started the tour, as other shows became less likely, so we switched
• We did close to 8000 miles, in two rental cars
• We stayed in hotels for about 20 nights, all of which were paid for with Paypal money from Bandcamp sales of both of our new albums.
• We sold out of CDs 2/3rds of the way into the tour, but made most of our merch money from selling 4Gb USB memory sticks featuring our entire combined back catalogues (still available ).
• We did shows with or alongside some remarkable musicians, including Steven Guerrero, Kira Small, Tiger Darrow, Trip Wamsley, Darren Michaels, Catherine Marie Charlton, Julie Slick, Neil Alexander and Trevor Exter.
• We had a wonderful time meeting up with friends old and new, learning from them, sharing things with them, playing music to them, hanging out and generally having a great time.
• We came home with less money than on any tour I’ve done in a decade.

That last one seems a little incongruous, I guess, given the apparent ‘success’ of the tour. And it was, by pretty much every metric that we value, a success. But it was only sustainable within the continuum of a career that usually nets us a lot more money per gig.

The reasons for this were manifold – we did little promo of our own for the shows, relying mainly on social networks to spread the word, and for the gig hosts to pull in their friends. Which worked to greater or lesser degrees. There are some places where a singer/songwriter and a solo bassist playing together is just too strange a concept to pull a larger crowd.

Part of the smaller scale of the tour was intentional – were were initially offered a lot more shows, which thanks to us touring with the 18 month old Baby Flapjack, we were reticent to book in case he got to the States and hated being on the road. So we only booked the shows we knew would be most understanding of us canceling if we had to.

As it was, Flapjack had a whale of a time, and would have been perfectly happy for us to do twice as many shows. We’ve learned that for next time, but his presence, and that of my mother-in-law who came along for half the tour to help look after him (and was awesome) meant that we were far less happy-go-lucky with accommodation that we used to be, and as often as not, we booked into hotel rooms to save having to find friends with enough space for all four of us… That upped the expense considerably.

We’re used to touring econo – Lo and I are experts at that, but with the family comes more complexity. Not as complex as taking a drummer on the road, but who in their right mind would do that anyway?

But, as I said in my first tour post, it’s still SO much cheaper than it use to be. Our gig hosts were amazing, we had a spectacularly great time, spent more time with wonderful inspiring people than anyone has the right to expect in 10 years let alone 2 months, and a heck of a lot of new people found out about us. We were unlucky with the timing of a couple of shows (national holidays), and our solitary festival appearance was marred by MASSIVE sound-spill from the mainstage (no merch sold there, not surprisingly) and were probably feeling the effects of the recession like everyone else, but we still proved that even at the margins, House Concert touring is more viable to relatively unknown acts than any other previous model of concert-ing, especially when you have a child in tow that would preclude a large percentage of all venue shows.

So, we offer up a massive thanks to

• Everyone we saw,
• All the musicians we played with,
• Our gracious and generous hosts,
• People who leant us their deliciously comfortable spare beds,
• And those who came to listen and who bought CDs and USB sticks.

I still find as I have for 11 years that the audience at a Steve Lawson show are more likely to be my kind of people than pretty much any other social situation I’ve ever been in. Now THAT is success.

And of course, another gargantuan truck ladened with thanks to all those who ponied up for download music that you could otherwise have got for free. Your generosity and willingness to express your own sense of the value in recorded music is what made it possible for us to do this tour and not end up utterly broke at the end of it. Please, continue to support the music that means something to you – I don’t subscribe to the idea that art stops without money, but it’s certain that specific ways of presenting it are impossible without the financial support of those who care about its existence. There’s a school of thought that says that digital music ‘should‘ be ‘free‘ as promo for your live shows. To which I say ‘bollocks‘. There’s no ‘should‘ about any of this, there’s no preordained cause and effect between recorded and live music, our relationship with both is singular and of too great a level of complexity to attempt to reduce it to such a ham-fisted bit of self-justifying nonsense. Recorded music can be free in download form, it has no unit cost (save for licensing on cover tunes if you seek to distribute it legally) and no distribution cost – so conversely treating it as ‘online CDs’ is equally nonsensical – but it does have value, based on a whole slew of things. And those of you that pay for ours are part of the ongoing sustainability of a specific aspect of our project. For that, we thank you.

If you did see us and want to get some music, here are both of our latest albums. Have a listen, then pay what you think they are worth (more blogging on that concept in the next few days!):

Bizarrely, 3 of the gigs so far have been in art galleries. That wasn’t planned, it just happened, and for that we’re happy and grateful. Playing music surrounded by great art is a real honour, and a deep inspiration.

The Minneapolis show was particularly good for that – it was at I Ching Art Studio, and was during ‘Art-A-Whirl’ – a city-wide weekend of open studios, with people checking out art and meeting the artists. Geoff Bush, who makes incredible I Ching-inspired art, invited us to play at his studio, via his son Jason, and between them they sorted out a lovely little afternoon soiree, populated by fascinating people. I got a 50 minute improvised recording out of it that, if all goes to plan, will be available on bandcamp before too long, and with physical CDs available from Geoff at some point in the future too… We’ll see how that works out.

So much of this tour was last minute – we weren’t sure how many gigs we were going to be able to do, what with travelling with baby flapjack as a toddler – and we’re amazed at how well the shows have gone. Most of them have been small but perfectly formed, and attendees have been generous to a fault. It’s part of the wonder of this new touring environment that house concerts makes possible, that it’s much harder to actually ‘lose’ money on tour. The costs are so much smaller than the days of sending out endless CDs and posters for ‘promo’, of renting backline or vans, paying tour crew and merch people. It was easy to lose thousands of dollars a week on a tour that was, say, hit by bad weather or that clashed with too many other big name bands being on the road at the same time (or even with a big sports game or reality TV show finale… srsly).

Now, we can go out and travel in a normal car, take our own PA (speaker technology has come SO far in the last 5-10 years, it’s eye-watering), we stay with our hosts more often than not, the internet + a mifi makes booking cheap hotels while driving a cinch, Skype makes international calling as cheap as a cheap thing and facebook and twitter mean that letting people know about shows no longer requires a $300 budget per show for posters, flyers, newspaper and magazine ads…

So we’ve played, total, to less people than we would in a single sold out medium sized theatre, but have made a little money – enough to cover the cost of being here so far – and, thanks to having a new album out, we have a reasonably stocked paypal account for booking hotels, which offsets the cashflow…

No-one’s getting rich and we’ll still need a handful of packed rooms in the 2nd half of the tour – or a flood of new album sales – to go home with any sensible money, but we’re having a great time, breaking even, and telling musical tales to fascinating people. It’s a fabulous way to spend one’s time.

• If the gear is too big, we can’t travel.
• If the sound is bad, you can’t hear what we’re doing,
• if anything breaks, we can’t afford to carry spares so it needs to be fixable.

We need the trinity of tech spec – small, reliable and super-high-quality.

The hardest part of this for us was the PA. We clearly couldn’t fly with the amazing Mark Audio system that we use in the UK, and as supportive as they are to us, they just don’t have any gear in the US at all for us to use (this stuff is hand-made in Italy…). So we used it as a chance to try out something new. I’ve owned QSC gear in the past, and it’s always been super-reliable and solidly built. They agreed to lend us a pair of their K8 powered speakers.

The specs were impressive – very small and 1000 watts a side (yes, a THOUSAND watts in a single 8 speaker!) They were shipped to the venue of our first gig, and on plugging them in we were immediately all smiles. Incredible sound, lightweight, amazing bass response, really well designed back panel. Pretty much the perfect house concert speakers. Gig after gig we were floored by the quality, delighted by the ease of packing them up (QSC have specially designed bags to carry them in), and I was able to use them when recording/mixing at Trip Wamsley’s house too. We were able to run the other musicians we played with through the speakers too, and never got close to the headroom of the speakers. Remarkable.

Every musician we played with or met on the tour was struck by the sound and compactness. Many of them are off to save up for a pair. [if you got to hear or play through these speakers on the tour, feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below]

QSC did us a huge favour in lending us the speakers, and as a result we had perfect sound for the tour. It was tough packing them into their boxes to send them back…

It was also our first long tour using our new MOTU Ultralite mixer, being controlled by my new Dell Mini10V netbook, which we also recorded all the shows onto. The combination of the new mixer and the complete set of Evidence Audio cables that we ordered before the tour (that again were shipped to the first gig – Tony cut into his usual production schedule to finish them for us (we like weird cables) and make sure we got them – a total star!) meant that the whole set up sounds clean, super-low noise, and really flexible. We used to use two mics live, one for looping one for main vox, so we could have a switch on the loop mic (a $30 mic!) but now that I can EQ that mic in the MOTU, it sounds like 10x that, so we only need the one.

I also borrowed for the tour (and subsequently bought) a Kaoss Pad KP3 from Todd Reynolds (the violinist who added so much to the live album) and getting back into that has been a real treat. You can hear it on the version of Grace And Gratitude on the live album…

This was also the tour where I finally fell in love with the sound of my reborn bass. You’ll remember that on our last US trip, the body of my bass was destroyed by the airline, and then replaced by the amazing people at Modulus Guitars. I’d been playing the bass as it was for a decade, so it took me a while to adjust to the new sound. I liked it from the start, but it wasn’t ‘my’ sound in the way that it had been. Now though, it’s sounding better than ever – the recorded sound on Live So Far is the best bass tone I’ve ever had, and the expressive side of the instrument is unlike anything I’ve ever played. Guess it just took a year to settle in, and I’m sure the clarity in the new system helped a lot.

So there you have it – QSC, Evidence Audio, MOTU and Modulus, combined with my ever-present Lexicon MPX-G2 (which broke on one gig – has an intermittent fault that I can get fixed, and work around… phew!) and the amazing Looperlative (which becomes a more and more transparent part of my musical flow every day – I can’t imagine making music without it).

The software we’re using on the netbook for recording is called Reaper, and it’s outstanding. I’m so pleased with it. There aren’t many music recording programs that will downsize to the screen of a netbook, but this is great. Highly recommended.

One of the joys of releasing music through Bandcamp

We’ve already added ‘Happy‘ to the live album, when it became our de facto single, thanks to the awesome video.

And tonight I added three more tracks to it, bringing the total up to ten.

First up, a brand new tune from me, called ‘Born On The 3rd Of July’ - it was, of course, improvised live on July 3rd, at a house concert at Trip Wamsley’s place in Louisiana. I started with the sound, and a few harmonics, with no idea of what I was going to do. The slightly reggae-ish groove appeared, along with the tune, and it built from there… I really like it, hope you enjoy it:

Second tune, Lobelia’s solo version of her song ‘Hell No I Won’t Go (And You Can’t Make Me)’ - she opened pretty much every show on the tour with it, and it became a favourite. This recording was made in Plano, TX, at the same wonderful show where Happy was recorded and filmed. It used to be a chunky rock tune, and the new arrangement came about a couple of months ago, breathing new life into the song. Believe it or not, that’s a nylon strung acoustic guitar on it – I put it through a Vox AC30 amp simulator when mixing, just for fun. Came out well:

And lastly, a brand new version of Grace And Gratitude - I’ve been experimenting with extending the ending on this on and off since I first did it when opening for Max Richter and Hauschka at Spitz a few years back, but it’s got pretty odd of late, culminating in this, recorded in Cincinnati on the last show of the tour. It’s gets pretty strange:

And if you want the whole album, that’s available here:

Have a listen, then hit the download button and pay what you think it’s worth. The price is left blank so you can choose to genuinely reflect what it’s worth to you. And if you have no money, you can get it for free. Please feel free – nay, obliged – to share the link around, embed it on your own site, review it if you wish. Your help is vital in getting the word out.

The show is at The Monastery – an amazing and beautiful recording studio and performance space in Cincinnati. It’s owned by Ric Hordinski – a wonderful guitarist who’ll be playing with us too. It’s going to be a lovely show and we’ll see if we can stream it too…

It’s on July 6th, at 7pm, and the studio address is 2601 Stanton Ave, Cincinnati, 45206. Tickets are $15 (I think – will check!)

• If you’re in the Cincinnati area, we’d love to see you.
• If you’ve got friends near there, we’d love to see them.
• If you’re on the internetz and contribute to social networks or forums where people from the Cincinnati area might read what you write, please feel free to tell ‘em about the show.
• Here’s a link to the Facebook Event Page for the gig. Please share it around.

It’s going to be an interesting experiment to see if we can get word out to people in a week… let’s see what happens!

Anyway, we’ve had 4 shows so far and met up with friends old and new, having our usual fabulous time. We started out in Brooklyn, playing a house concert hosted by an American friend met in London. It was a great night, not least of all because it was a chance for Samantha (the host) to talk about The Urban Collective Project – a fabulous music industry social enterprise that has been a great success in the UK and is now launching in the US.

It was also our first chance to try out the QSC K8 speakers that we’ve been loaned for the tour… Borrowing unknown gear for a tour always seems risky, given that you’re stuck with whatever you borrow. Fortunately, my past experiences with QSC gear suggested that the K8s would make excellent house concert speakers, and I was dead right – they are amazing. The sound was crystal clear, and they kicked out an amazing amount of bass-clarity for such tiny speakers. We’re very happy campers.

We had a rather interesting situation with our rental car, as they (unbeknowst to an American car neophyte like me) gave us a downgrade, which also had a loose front wheel! Fortunately, they made up for it with the replacement, and the loose wheel stayed on long enough for us to return the car…

Gig No. 2 was at Banannie’s house – Annie is one of the original ‘Seesmic’ crowd – back in early 2008, Seesmic was a video conversation platform, in ‘closed alpha’, and a whole load of really remarkable people formed some pretty amazing friendships on it. Annie and her lovely hubby had been to see us in Philadelphia the last time we were in the US, and were the first people to request we come and play at their place. Which we did. And it was fun. Loads of. We were late (thanks to the car mess-up mentioned before) but did have time for breakfast with them the next day. Still nowhere near enough time, but unless we took them on tour with us, it was never going to be enough time.

Gig III was another v. special occasion, as it was our first meeting with Neil Alexander – AKA @nailmusic on twitter. Neil’s one of the most amazing musicians I’ve heard and comes across online as a fascinating and lovely guy, so we were really looking forward to meeting and playing with him. He did not disappoint. He and his family were like old friends within hours, and the music we got to play together was refreshing, exciting and a delightful blend of our two musical worlds. Much of which will end up online in one form or another over the coming weeks…

Gig goes Forth – Todd Reynolds has long been one of my favourite musicians in the world. It’s no exaggeration to say that there are very few violinists on the planet that can match Todd’s combination of exemplary ‘orchestral’ skillz with composition, improvisation and looping/electronica cleverness. Perhaps none. He’s a jaw-droppingly great musician, and has been a great friend for many years. I was particularly excited to hear what he would sound like playing on Lobelia’s songs, and he exceeded my expectations. Due to flapjack being ill, Lo missed out on playing with Neil (much to her disappointment), but at the gig with Todd, they got to play quite a few tunes together, as did Todd and I.

As well as getting the great sound from the K8 speakers, we also rewired our entire live rig with Evidence Audio cables (both were shipped to the Brooklyn gig, so we had them all here for us when we arrived) – the sound of everything in our set up is cleaner and clearer than it’s ever been, so we’ve been recording all the shows (recording straight out of the MOTU Ultralite which now acts as our mixing desk, straight into Reaper on our new Dell Mini 10V netbook) – there will be a lot of music emerging from this tour!

House concert tours are all about people – we feel so blessed to have caught up with so many old friends, met some great new ones, and encountered in the flesh people we’d previously only known by their twitter names and avatars. Special mention must go to our dear friend Kevin Quickle, who came to the first two shows, and has leant us a mic stand for the tour. What a star.

This week we’re spending some time with family, and from this weekend, we’re back out playing again, starting in Toledo on Saturday. More news soon, as well as live recordings…

I’d previously played it at home, but just the chord melody bit. The weirdness in the middle was a whim – I’ve blogged before about the way that the house concert set up lets you take more time over things, and more risks in your playing. Here, they paid off:

Hello by solobasssteve

Then today, lovely Ilicco, who took all the video on my previous post about this particular house concert, uploaded the video for this – so we have evidence that it was all live:

At some point I’ll put the two together. For now, you’ll have to either imagine it or do clever things with syncing them across two browser windows

…and what’s more, it’s only 2 weeks til our first date in the US! We’re in Brooklyn on May 29th. See you there, Native New Yorkers

We multitrack recorded all three gigs, and some of that should be available in some shape or form soon - probably via the USB memory sticks that now seem to make up about 70% of our in-concert music sales!

There are some great photos from the Camberley gig and some Audioboo from the Leeds gig.

But for now, here’s a load of Youtube footage, taken by the lovely Ilicco, starting with a new version of The Kindness of Strangers:

Then there’s Lobelia’s fabulous song, I’m Lost:

And finally two cover versions – Love Is A Battlefield, and You Spin Me Round (Like A Record):

The recordings are remarkably good considering they’re just on a little Tascam digital recorder thingie (recorded by Andrew Buckton – fab singer/songwriter who came with me, and sang beautifully on the gig too).

here they are – enjoy!

New Tunes from Islwyn Guitar Club by solobasssteve

2009 was a fairly easy-going year, music-wise for Lobelia and I

Gigs:

2010 is already shaping up to be a much more musically-focussed year. I’m in the process of booking some solo house-concerts for the end of March/Beginning of April – the open dates are

• March 29th (near Birmingham),
• 31st (near Exeter) and
• April 1st (near Swindon) -
• the 30th already has a gig booked in Southampton (more details ASAP).

If you want to host a house-gig on any of those dates, and are near (or between) those places, please drop me a line.

Then Lo and I are doing some duo shows at the beginning of May - on the 6th we’re in Leeds and the 8th in Surrey (more deets soon) – if you’re anywhere between those two, we’d be happy to come and play on the 7th, or either side of those dates. Do drop us a line.

And at the end of May we go out to the US, mainly to take Flapjack to meet the family, but we’ll be doing some house concerts and ‘house consulting’ as well – if you’re interested in hosting something (or putting us in touch with a music school/university) please drop us a line.

Recording:

It’s now nearly 4 years since I released Behind Every Word, and while it’s currently selling REALLY well thanks to Bandcamp’s wonderful download sales platform, it really is time for a new album. So I’ll be working on that very soon – just need to get the tech side worked out. Hopefully will have that available for the US shows.

In a couple of weeks time, I’m going into a studio for a day with Mike Outram – guitar-monkey extraordinaire. No idea what we’ll come up with, but if its releasable, that’ll be out sometime soonish as well.

And then there’s the archive - I’ve got a whole load of fascinating music languishing on hard-drives. There’s a duo album with Italian guitarist Luca Formentini, a strange-yet-beautiful experimental duo album with free improv trumpeter Jeff Kaiser, a quartet live recording with Jeff, saxophonist Andrew Pask and bassist Steuart Liebig. (that last one is really interesting cos I thought the gig had gone pretty badly, then listened to the recording and really liked it )

And there’s also a double album’s worth of live stuff with Theo Travis, recorded on the tour we did after For The Love Of Open Spaces came out. That really needs to be heard. So maybe I should work on that first.

Suffice to say, there’ll be lots of cool music from me this year, if something else doesn’t get in the way.

For now, here’s the album with Theo Travis – have a listen, and then pay whatever you like for it if you want to download it.