I’ll write a full round-up in the next couple of days, but for now, here are two videos that have appeared in the last couple of weeks.

The first is a live one from the All American Melodrama Theater in Long Beach – a gorgeous theatre that was booked for a show at the last minute, which I did with the lovely Muriel Anderson. This is a version of a A Year Afloat from 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything:

The 2nd video is an interview with me about the freelance life, about creative freedom, balancing work/life and a load of other good stuff, from the lovely people at Kindred. Enjoy:

Two of the shows I did out there were with an incredible musician called Daniel Berkman. One of my favourite ever improvisation partners. The live recordings will be appearing soon enough, but for now, here are some photos, taken with my camera by the lovely Artemis Robison, who was the match-maker than brought Daniel and I together for the shows:

Also while I was away, the lovely Fiona Talkington played a track from Believe In Peace on Late Junction on BB Radio 3. It’s been my favourite radio show in the world for many, many years so to be played on it again after a few years away was a big thrill, and resulted in a quite a few new people finding the album, for which I’m most grateful. Fiona mentioned on the broadcast that she’ll be playing more tracks from it soon, so I’ll try and give you advance warning of that.

For those that don’t know, NAMM is the National Association Of Music Merchants – the American trade body for those who make and sell stuff-to-do-with-music-that-isn’t-recordings. 

I’m back there this year, having missed the last two due to being busy being a dad. I’ve really missed it – having attended every year from 1999 – 2009, doing demos on behalf of the various companies whose equipment I was using at the time, finding out what’s new and catching up with the many amazing music-world friends that I only get to see once a year at NAMM or in California if I get to travel around afterwards.

So, anyway, if you’re going, it’d be great to meet up – feel free to send me a message. If we’re friends on Facebook, you can message me there, or tweet me, or email me or just keep an eye out for me around the MarkBass and Modulus booths.

See you there!

Last week, this interview was posted at AlternativeMatter.net. The questions, from John Toolan, about the new album and improvisation, were really interesting to answer – here it is, if you want a read, or click the links above to see it on their sites too (if after reading you have your own questions about improv, please post them in the comments).

What inspired you to record and release this particular piece of improvisation?

The recording part was easy – as far as possible, I record every gig, and most of my practice sessions. This is possible because my live and studio rigs are identical, so instead of using a mixing desk to pull all the various looped and processed elements together, I use a MOTU soundcard, which I can hook up to my laptop for instant multi-track recording! It’s made for some wonderful live stuff being captured that in any other setting, we’d have been lucky to get a tape from an audience member of.

Deciding to release it was just a matter of it being interesting enough, and feeling like it represented the art well – Geoff Bush has been very supportive of the idea, and was kind enough to invite us to play at his exhibition in the first place. The initial recording had some horrible interference on all the tracks, but computer wizardry being what it is these days, I was able to remove the buzzing sound without affecting and the music at all. It’s remarkable!

In my review of Believe In Peace I cited the work of guitarist Derek Bailey who has written extensively on the art of improvising, how important to a history of music as a craft is improvising to you?

I was really pleased to see the Bailey reference, as his work, and that book in particular were touch stones for me. As an improvising musician from London, the work of that original 60s free improv crowd – which included Derek, and Evan Parker, Gavin Bryars, John Stevens, Kenny Wheeler etc. – and that of their musical descendants, has been huge influence on me. Obviously, I don’t come from the same ‘non-idiomatic’ place when it comes to playing, but that’s partly because I never felt the strangle hold of jazz as something to react against. I also saw improv as being about ‘conversational music’ – saying the best thing that can be said in the moment. In conversation, I don’t feel any need to neologise, or say things that no-one has ever said before. I just want to say the right thing, the most useful and helpful thing I can, the most beautiful thing I can. Same with improvising.

Its place in music, for me is defined by the distinction between ‘right’ and ‘good’. If I’m playing a composition, my first question is ‘is it right?’ – have I correctly rendered the music in the way it was intended, or the way that the bandleader expects me to. Within that is the assumption that it exists because someone else thinks it’s good, but that aesthetic judgement is not necessarily my primary concern.

If, however, I’m improvising, then there’s no such thing as ‘right’. There is only good. I’m asking myself, ‘what’s going on? where are we, and how can I add something to this that will make it fuller or better realised than without me, how can I move this forward (if indeed it needs to move forward)?’ – I’ve often sat silent in improvised music situations for entire sections – 15 or 20 minutes – because what was happening around felt fully realised without my contribution. That’s not really an option if I’m playing in a string quartet, to spontaneously remix Schubert by deciding to mute the cello part for a while and see what happens… I mean, I guess you could, but it’d be a fairly dramatic turn of events in a gig where people have paid to hear the original!

So, that coming together of musicians in a democratic space where the main basis for playing is mutual respect and admiration, and hopefully a very high degree of trust, is a wholly different proposition. Of course, improvised music isn’t always like that, just in the way that performing pre-written music doesn’t always (often?) reach that ecstatic height of realising the artistic vision of the composer in its most transcendent form. But that’s the journey. And that journey is mirrored in the journey of the music itself. In some ways, improvising is a microcosm of a life in music, or a culture’s relationship with music, or indeed that of humanity and music!

In a sense improvisation may be regarded as “impulsive composition”. How true do you think that is?

I think that’s very much true, for me. I know musicians whose main ‘use’ of improvisation is to play LOADS of stuff in the studio and then edit the good stuff from it – to just blow and see what comes out, then cut out the rubbish. I’ve never done that. It’s always felt antithetical to my sense of the journey that’s happening in the moment to play like that. If what I’m playing doesn’t ultimately matter, I can’t feel like it has any value… I have to play as though each thing I’m playing IS that impulsive – or spontaneous – composition, that it has ultimate value, that it is the highest expression of what I’m capable of at that moment.

For me, being a musician is all about making great decisions, and then having the physical control to make the music that those decisions require for their fulfillment. That decision making process is in response to awareness. Awareness and control are the two poles that it all hangs on, whether I’m composing, interpreting or improvising. I still have to make wise decisions and then make a good noise.

How important is the audience reaction, either approval or disapproval, to the process of musical improvisation? Presumably recording improvised music in a studio environment denies the artist that spontaneous feedback?

I do love getting that instant reaction, and I’ve very rarely ever had a ‘bad’ reaction. Perceived indifference is about as bad as it gets – usually if I’m opening for another act and there’s little context for what I’m doing for the audience. But for the most part, I’ve actually got my head down, focused on the things that I need to do to make my music work – my fretless intonation, what’s going on with the various loop stuff, which sounds are on which track in my looper for future processing… The sense of audience appreciation usually comes at the end. But my own assessment of it can sometimes be at odds with the audience’s reaction. I’ve played things I thought were incredible, even when listening back, that the audience didn’t really seem to get, and I’ve had standing ovations for gigs that felt like I was wading through creative treacle… So it varies.

What are the specific challenges for the improvising musician, particularly playing solo bass, who is performing alone without other musicians available to stimulate or influence you?

Ideas. The hardest thing is having the gem of an idea to start with. Most of my practice time is spent building vocabulary – note sequences, chord ideas, phrasing options, sounds – that can be drawn on as a launch point for a particular improvisation. I often build things on very open ideas – pad or chordal parts that have harmonic content that’s not too restrictive in terms of what can happen against it. That means I can then react on an emotional level to how that first idea comes back to me in the room. Does it suggest something dark, something light, something rhythmic, something fluid? All are possibilities… Bass is a wonderful instrument on which to improvise because it has very little in the way of ‘baggage’ – there is no ‘Stairway To Heaven’ of the bass, it doesn’t pull you quite so desperately towards playing whole, conceived pieces. So improv starts from a place of possibility. That feels great.

If I’m playing with someone else, then you basically kick the ball to them when you start and see what they do with it – it’s like a game of consequences, only you can see what the last person wrote. So you add your bit and it goes back and forth, hopefully with a natural flow of attention from one of you to the other…

I must admit to being a lover of improvised music in many forms, but how difficult do you think it is to transfer that spontaneity to a permanent medium such as CD or download?

I don’t see recordings as ‘permanent’ in any sense other than the existential one. They are a memento, a snapshot of the experience of the music happening. Recordings aren’t music, they are recordings of music, so as a musician you let them go and they take on their own life. They get played through endless stereos of varying quality, in different environments with different background noises and distractions, so every experience of that recording is different. Meanwhile, I’m onto another thing, and more music is being created and recorded and those are being allowed to set forth into the world… I see recordings as narrative entities – they are part of my story, but they have their own story, and other people will use them for their own story telling quite apart from their origins. That’s a wonderful experience.

In the arena of purely improvised music, who would you recommend as a starting point for the listener who may be reluctant or apprehensive to investigate?

There are a few that I have found particularly inspirational over the years – there are three guitarists that have informed by aesthetic quite extensively – Bill Frisell, David Torn and Nels Cline – all of whom switch very freely between composed elements and freely improvised music. David Torn describes his improvisational approach as ‘pan-idiomatic’ which is one I’ve claimed too.

Beyond that, I’m a fan of Keith Jarrett’s improvised music, both the solo piano stuff and the trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. And finally King Crimson – I love the risks the various members of Crimson take with improv. If you listen to THRaKaTTaK – the album of improvisations that the double trio version of the band put out, there’s a lot of stuff on there that is the sound of them finding where to go next. That’s fascinating. It’s gritty and real and honest, and I like that a lot.

Using spaces to perform music in that are not traditionally regarded as concert spaces, such as art galleries or house concerts, has long fascinated me, how important are these spaces to you as a performer?

Hugely important! It wasn’t until Lobelia and I started playing almost exclusively house concerts that I realised just how toxic so many environments where music gets played are to both its performance and enjoyment. The sense that you as a performer are there primarily to get people to buy beer can stifle creativity a lot. A house concert is all about music, but it’s music stripped off the bullshit of fame and celebrity. No-one who thinks of themselves as a celeb is going to play a house concert to 20 people, unless they’re charging 5 grand a ticket and only playing to their equally wealthy friends. House concerts are a great leveler. You’re there to play music, but we all come together around that shared desire for the music to be made a priority, for the experience of it to be something of value, rather than something that provides a way to make money out of something else. I love that.

Making your music available on such user friendly and flexible sites such as Bandcamp appears to be such an efficient means now to build an audience for your music. How important are these sites to your model of how the music industry has developed over the past 3 to 5 years?

They are of such importance that the terminology of ‘the music industry’ is pretty much redundant right now. We have a music economy that is ‘post-industrial’ – or perhaps even pre-industrial. For me it’s no longer about the manufacture of ‘stuff’ but about an ongoing experiment in making music that I feel is meaningful available to people who share that sense, and then between us finding a way to make it possible to allow more of it to exist, and more like minded people to find it. The transactions are built on the listeners gratitude for the existence of the music and the story that it is the consequence of.

So there’s a financial component to that, but the notion of sustainability is no longer just about making a wage, or market share, or whatever. It’s relational, it considers artistic freedom and integrity as a factor, and it also invites in those who would otherwise be excluded due to the higher financial barrier to entry. When you’re  confronted with a ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ proposition, you have to make a decision. Do I take this seriously or not? I’m sure there are some people who lazily see that and go ‘great, free shit!’, but my guess is they are in the minority. By and large, the people who download my music for free do so as an act of discovery, or because they genuinely can’t afford to pay for it, or because they are in a part of the world where none of the only payment options are available to them. Those are all wonderful and worthwhile reasons for getting free music, and I’m glad to be able to make that possible.

The flip side is that a high percentage of my listeners pay more for the music that they would on iTunes or Amazon, or even on CD at a show, because they are serious about wanting to be a tangible part of the ongoing financial viability of making music. If they pay for it, I can spend more time making it. It’s a pretty healthy relationship.

As an artist trying to get people to pay attention to your music, how important do you think social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are now?

Twitter changed so many things for me – Facebook I largely tolerate, but Twitter feels like the thing the internet was invented for – open, friendly, inquisitive conversations happening across the globe with the option to share loads of great things. Sure, people use it to be horrible to each other, to spread lies and to talk about the x-factor too, but it’s so easy to avoid those conversations and not give them the oxygen of attention.

I spend about 9/10ths of my ‘music-talk’ time online pointing my Twitter friends to other people’s music. I’m responsible for far more sales of other people’s music than I am of my own – that stands to reason, I’m a solo bassist and that’s a fairly niche pursuit. But I’m also a solo bassist with a large percentage of non-bass playing listeners, and that’s mostly down to social networks, and a discovery mechanism that isn’t based on searching for keywords. It’s based on interestingness. So instead of trying to think of superlatives to describe what I do in adverts, I just write about things I find interesting, share the good stuff I’ve found elsewhere, and invite others in to be part of that conversation. The soundtrack to all of that is, of course, my own music so there tends to be a point where the people I’m talking to on Twitter will go ‘I wonder what this dude actually sounds like’, mostly with a wildly inaccurate set of assumptions about what a solo bassist will sound like! And then some of them go ‘that’s nice, but not my thing’, some actively dislike it, but still like me, and others think it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever heard. I’m happy with all those three outcomes!

Time for the final question. What specifically inspired you to donate the money raised from the online album sales to the human rights charity Reprieve?

The title of Geoff’s art show was ‘Believe In Peace’ – the onus being on peace as something worth believing in. Not an extant reality that we just assume exists, but as part of a vision of the future that we commit to. So I thought I wanted to do something practical, tangible, towards that end, and I’ve been a supporter of Reprieve for a long time. Their work pursuing legal justice for people whose human rights have been taken from them is deeply inspiring. They campaign on behalf of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo and against the inhuman horror of the death penalty. They’re great people, and I’m happy to be able to do something that raises money for – and awareness of – their vital work.

-o0o-

…As you can tell, I love talking about improvisation – if you’ve got any further questions, stick ‘em in the comments below, and I’ll write a post to answer them! 

After a two year absence, I’m heading out to California for the NAMM show in just a week’s time

I’ve managed to fill up my schedule pretty well, so here’s what’s happening so far:

• Thurs 19th - AltBass. at El Torito in Anaheim – the whole bill is Steve Lawson, Chris Tarry, Steuart Liebig, Darren Michaels, Tom Shad – music starts at 7pm.
• Friday 20th Jan – BassUp! at Viento y Agua Coffee House – also on the bill Steuart Liebig, Edo Castro, Stew McKinsey, Christopher “C3″ Cardone, Brittany Frompovich, Zen Beer, John Ady, Rod Taylor, and Darren Michaels!
• Saturday 21st - AltBass Pt 2, at El Torito in Anaheim again – the bill this time is Steve Lawson, Julie Slick, Gustav Fjelstrom & Tom Shad.
• Sunday 22nd – House Concert in Sherman Oaks, CA – message me if you want to come. There may be limited spaces… the amazing Julie Slick will be guesting with me  $10 suggested donation…
• Monday 23rd – house concert in Newport Beach california – along with a lot of other people TBC.
• Tuesday 24th – at The All American Melodrama Theater in Long Beach, CA, with the wonderful acoustic guitarist Muriel Anderson. http://www.allamericanmelodrama.com/ - tickets $15.
• Thursday 26th – House Concert, Bayview, San Francisco. – See the facebook event page for details. (with Daniel Berkman on Kora!)
• Friday 27th – House Concert, West Oakland – see the facebook event page for details. (with Daniel Berkman and Lattanand)
• Saturday 28th - house concert in San Jose with Michael Manring – message me for details. $20 donation…
• Sunday 29th  - Northridge Music Center, Citrus Heights (Sacramento), CA – hybrid concert/masterclass, focussed on looping. http://www.northridgemusic.com $20.

More details will be added here as and when – if you need info on any of them, please message me via email, facebook or twitter and I’ll hopefully see you or the friends you send my way a a show!

Instead, here are three blog posts that say nice things about it.

The most involved of them is this in-depth review at AlternativeMatter.net - I’ve just done an interview for them too, which should be up in a day or two, and I’ll post here in a couple of weeks.

Then there’s these lovely and encouraging words from the fabulous Laura Kidd, AKA She Makes War.  She’s writing a blog post a week about lovely things she’s found. My album was in week one.

And finally, No Treble wrote this piece - I’ve stepped away from seeing the online bass community as my primary place for conversation here, so I’m hugely appreciative of the bass blogs and news sites that take the time to write about what I’m up to.

Here, in case you missed it, is the album again – it’s been my fastest-selling digital album ever (and that’s without it being on iTunes or Amazon or any of that stuff – this is all bandcamp), and it means I’ll be able to make a healthy donation to Reprieve. (a third of all the money I make on the album is being donated to them).

As you know, all of my albums come out first on Bandcamp

I may or may not put this on iTunes/Amazon/eMusic etc. I haven’t decided yet. I’d MUCH rather you got it from Bandcamp, for all our sakes. Here’s why:

• You get to choose your file type. With Bandcamp I can release 24bit audiophile FLAC versions and the highest possible quality MP3 versions (we well as AAC/ALAC and OGG) all in the same place. No faffing about for you searching out the best format, just choose the one you want.
• Sleevenotes, artwork, extras. I can add PDFs of sleevenotes, photos, lyrics, individual art for each track. and I can change it. As often as I want. Freedom
• The ‘Pay What You Want’ thing. It just makes sense – not only does it let you put in the price that represents both what you can afford, and what you think it’s worth, but it means that people who are in parts of the world where they otherwise can’t get ‘legal’ digital music can download it without paying, and if you ever lose your copy in a harddrive crash, you can just come and download it again for free. Or if you decide you want to give FLAC a go and see what all the hi-res fuss is about – again, you can replace it for free.
• Payment is easy. OK, so not quite as easy as buying on iTunes if you’ve got an iTunes account, but its’ way more friendly. If you’ve got a PayPal account, it’s 3 clicks and a password confirmation. If you haven’t, you can pay with a credit/debit card.
• Full previews. Let’s be honest, in the grand scheme of things HARDLY ANYONE HAS HEARD OF ME. Even fewer have heard my music. Hiding it away behind 30 second previews on iTunes/Amazon is utterly insane. As would be hosting it all on a listening service that’s separate from the buying/download bit. It’s utterly vital for indie musicians to remember, you don’t get an audience by selling music, you have the chance to sell music ONCE YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE. The unlimited listening makes people hearing what I do as easy as possible. You can listen on the site, on Facebook, other people can blog it. It’s just great! A lot of the people who may hear my stuff are likely to need quite a while to decide they want it enough to buy it. It may take years. I don’t want to stop them listening in those intervening years. I’m in this for the long game, not some get rich quick plan. You can listen on the site as much as you want. That’s great. …it’s also worth noting that the pages will also play on an iPhone/iPad, thanks to them being HTML5, not Flash-driven – you can’t download from Bandcamp to either of those, but that’s because Apple are idiots, nothing Bandcamp can do about that.
• Sharing via social media. Bandcamp is SO friendly. the URL turns into an embedded player on Facebook, anyone can blog it and have it playable to their friends, every page (album or track) has facebook and twitter share buttons, when you’ve bought it and it’s downloading, there are sharing buttons there too. It’s made for sharing.
• Sharing the love via Creative Commons. iTunes and Amazon don’t give me the option to change the license terms on my music. It’s All Rights Reserved or nothing. But I don’t want to make it illegal for you to share the music with your friends. I don’t want to make it illegal for you to add the music to your videos, to remix it, to sample it… If you’re not making money from it, you can do what you want with it. If you want to make money off it, we negotiate the terms as normal. That’s friendly, right?

Convinced? Here you go:

So, in case you’ve missed the rest of the info about it, Believe In Peace was recorded live in Minneapolis last summer, improvised in an exhibition of art by a wonderful artist called Geoff Bush.

Geoff’s work explores the symbols and themes of the I Ching, focussing on his meta-theme of ‘Believe In Peace’, hence the album title.

This picture is of one of my favourite works by Geoff, simply titled ‘I Ching’, and each of the four vertical surfaces of the cube has a different hexagram on it, and that’s what the four tracks on the album are named after.

So I sat down, surrounded by all this beautiful art, and played. And what you hear is exactly what I played. No edits. The only difference is the removal of a REALLY loud electrical hum that was all the way through – I think this is because I was playing just as the MASSIVE tornado touched down a mile away… the sirens were going off outside, and I’m assuming that’s going to mess with the energy supply. Anyway, the wonders of modern plug-ins for audio means I could clean it up with pretty much no discernable loss of anything else! Miraculous, eh?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I’ve decided to do something concrete towards the theme of ‘Believe In Peace’ – I’m going to donate a third of all the money I make from this to Reprieve, the Human Rights Charity. My initial thought was to put a £3 minimum on the download and give that to Reprieve, but I REALLY like the honest trust-based system of ‘Pay What You Think It’s Worth‘. I’d LOVE to still be able to give £3 per album. But I understand that some of you can’t afford to pay £9 for it. As usual, it’s entirely up to you – pay a pound, pay a hundred pound. Give it a listen first here and decide later. We’re grown-ups. If you want to help me afford to spend more time playing music, and help Reprieve in the process, you know what to do

Oh, the other thing – PleasePleasePleasePleasePlease tell your friends about it if you like it – post the link to facebook, click the facebook ‘like’ button, play it to people, tweet/blog about it, post it to forums you’re a part of… This is the nub of the sustainable future of independent music. Taking out adverts has NEVER been a profitable exercise – it’s a loss leader towards something else. It’s just not possible for proper indie artists to pay for ads. So it’s down to you. People knowing about my stuff is largely in your hands.

I’m going to stick to what happened to Lobelia, Flapjack and I during the year, rather than a world-events review.

We kicked off 2011 in a new (if temporary) home, one where for the first time in a long time we would be able to record vocals and guitar. I’d finished 2010 with a couple of new tracks being recorded, so plans were hatched for both Lo and I to start making new records.

We had all kinds of fun juggling parenting and recording – I’d take flapjack out during the day, Lo would record, then I’d come in at night, mix and edit her recordings, and then start work on my solo stuff late into the night. The house in Muswell Hill was the perfect place for us to make the records we did, and we’ll be eternally grateful to Tim for renting us his house for those few months.

However, plans were put on hold when, in February, I was asked to put together the best band I could possibly find for a gig in Thailand, with one months notice! Given the budget and the scale of the event (it was a corporate event, but one where both the venue and the people who booked us for it meant that it needed to be something extraordinary).

So I got to put together my dream band, to hire the greatest musicians I knew, to rehearse properly and to jet off to Thailand for both an adventure and the chance to do a REALLY great job. And we nailed it. The band and crew were both amazing people to travel with and played brilliantly. And what’s more, we improvised the entire first set – no charts, no prearranged tunes, just start playing and follow where it goes. It was fabulously received, and we all came back pinching ourselves at the opportunity to play great music to lovely people.

The sense of personal achievement in booking and organising a trip like that, putting the music together (which mostly consisted of having the final word on song list then giving the musicians permission to be amazing), was huge. Extra special props to Kira Small who flew in from Nashville, rehearsed for a week, flew to Thailand before her jetlag here had worn off, sang like an angel and then made an epic 30 hour trip home! Way above and beyond…

After we got back, it was straight back into the delayed recordings for mine and Lo’s album, along with planning our trip to the US for the summer. We ended up finishing the albums with just a few days spare before we flew off to New York to begin a two-month, 8000 mile trip. We visited friends and family, we had adventures, and we played 20-odd house concerts across the trip. It was a whole lot of fun to get out and play the new material from our albums, and such a treat to catch up with so many friends. It was a massive help to have Lo’s mum with us for part of the trip, and it was all made much easier by Flapjack’s LOVE of travelling and meeting new people!

The most memorable moments for me were

• the gig in Minneapolis, where I recorded ‘Believe In Peace’, which will be out on Monday,
• meeting and playing with the remarkable Tiger Darrow at our house concert in Plano, TX,
• playing an improvised set with Catherine Marie Charlton – a remarkable pianist and long-time online friend we finally got to meet and play with, and record some lovely improvised music that’ll be out very soon!
• a visit to Victor Wooten’s Music/Nature Camp, where I got to perform and answer questions at Vic’s invitation. The Wooten Woods is an amazing place for music learning, and I think Vic is doing a really special thing there. What an honour to have been a part of it.

Huge thanks goes out to all the lovely friends who hosted us for shows and extended us such generous hospitality. It was a magical time.

When we got back from the US, we were soon into the process of finding somewhere new to live. Having been in Tim’s lovely house in Muswell Hill, we were loathe to go back into a rabbit-hutch flat on the outskirts of London, and just weren’t in the position to play the £1000-a-month ‘London tax’ for the privilege of having a normal house anywhere accessible. So, after I got to play a fabulous duet with beatbox genius Shlomo at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Lo and I did a one-off tech-gremlin-messed-up show at Greenbelt, we headed north, to Birmingham.

We already had some lovely friends here, and the travel to London is cheap and quick for work. Add to that the joy of finding our perfect house via a friend on Twitter, so we not only have a great house but a wonderful landlady, and you’ve got yourself some happy Lawsons. Flapjack has lots of room inside and outside to run around, we’ve got a music room, we’re 2 mins from a train station (so still don’t need to own a car, which is great) and are generally settling into the area. Hoping to pick up more work, gigs and musical fun times in the city in the new year… Suggestions, please

The autumn brought with it a handful of gigs – Lo started to play with the lovely Kev Cooke on double bass for a few shows in Brum, and I got to open for Welsh prog lovelies The Reasoning and play a fabulous and fun show in Derby with the brilliant Corey Mwamba.

Those gigs were followed by a fairly intense stretch of college and university music masterclasses – Salford Uni, the British Academy Of New Music, and the Academies of Music And Sound in Hitchin, Southampton, Swindon and Birmingham were all tremendous fun, and offered as teaching always does a chance to point the finger at myself for the things I’ve let slip, and thus get some of those sorted out.

In other work, 2011 was a slower year for Amplified, but we continued to work with organisations like the Arts Council, Festivals Edinburgh, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, PCG and others to help get the conversations around the wonderful events they were hosting happening online. It was a privilege to be a part of all those events, and to learn so much while being there! More in 2012, please!

So, what does the New Year hold? Well, I’m wasting no time, and the first album of the year will be out on January 2nd – Believe In Peace was, as mentioned, recorded in Minneapolis on our US tour. More on that soon. I’ve STILL got the duet album with Mike Outram to release – all we need to do is title the tunes and get some artwork together! Terrible, I know, but that’ll be next.

Lobelia will be doing more gigs with Kev, and with me, and is working on a new piano-based album. I’ve got a few other collaborations underway, as well as fledgling plans for a HUGE Kickstarter/PledgeMusic-funded project that will result in a lot of recorded music, video and gigs happening if it comes off…

And also in January, I’m off to the NAMM show in California for the first time in 3 years, having missed the last 2 shows due to parenting duties. I’m REALLY looking forward to catching up with old friends and playing some shows, though I’m not at all relishing two weeks away from Lo and Flapjack…

So, New Year, new ideas, new plans, new commitments to make meaningful things in 2012. I’m entering the new year with an even deeper commitment to working towards the independent sustainability of musicians working outside the broken, messed up machine of the old recording industry. It’s a massively exciting time, and I invite you to be a part of it, to seek to support independent musicians, to make entertainment choices that feed your soul AND feed the families of the artists involved. Let’s have a great year, OK?

All I ask in return is that if you like it, you tell your friends about it. On Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Forums, or even in actual real life. However feels most comfortable to you.

So head over to http://music.stevelawson.net and have a listen to the stuff there, or just click the download link on my latest album in the widget below:

The remarkable Emily Baker agreed to come and play – she’s been a favourite of Lobelia and I since we shared a bill with her at the Ginglik many years ago.

One of the tricky things with house concerts is that each attendee, by virtue of the smaller size of the audience, represents a bigger percentage of the audience, so when a handful of people drop out at the last minute, the audience size can be shrunk to critical level.. That’s what happened to us last night. The upside of house concerts is that when that happens, the people who are there get something even more special, as any notion of ‘performance’ disappears and you get a remarkable insight into the world of the person playing the songs. As you’ll see from the video below, Emily ended up playing part-gig, part-songwriting masterclass. I learned loads about the way she writes and why she writes. It was amazing.

We streamed the gig via Ustream, and thanks to us using a Blue Snowball mic, the sound is remarkable – Emily played completely unplugged, and it’s easy to forget with ‘normal’ gigs what acoustic guitars are supposed to sound like, such is the risible state of live sound in most pub/club venues.

Anyway, we ended up with hundreds of people watching online, joining in, sharing the video link and buying Emily’s brilliant ‘House Of Cards‘ album (available on CD or as a Name Your Price download) – here’s the archived video, followed by her album. Watch the gig, buy the music. Simple!

and the album: