stevelawson.net

Musical Equipment Used

- Modulus Graphite Basses (6 string fretted and fretless and 4 string fretted), A Rick Turner 5 String Renaissance ‘Amplicoustic’ fretless bass, Mark Audio powered speakers, the Looperlative LP1 for looping, Lexicon MPX-G2 for processing, an E-Bow+, Bass Centre Elites strings, East-UK preamps, Evidence Audio cables. And I carry my bass around in an InCase gig-bag.

Musical History

1986 – got a bass and joined first band
1988 – broke arm, kicked out of first band, formed second band (EARS) – played first gigs
1989 – GCSE Music, Grade C
1991 – AS Level Music, failed – fine at composition, not so hot on history… ) Somehow got into music college in Perth, Scotland. Teaching as head of bass at West Lothian Rock School.
1993 – left college, moved to Lincoln, tour with Canadian singer/songwriter Johnny Markin. Gigs all over Europe, played on three albums.
1994-96 – working as a pro in Lincoln, teaching, studio and live session work.
1996 – moved to London, more session work, including TV, Radio and theatre work, more teaching.
1997-99 – teaching at Drumtech and Basstech, West London.
1997-2000 – freelance reviewer/interviewer/columnist/gadget guru for Bassist magazine in the UK.
1999 – Toured Europe with Howard Jones. First completely solo gigs in London.
2000 – Released And Nothing But The Bass on Pillow Mountain Records. More solo gigs around England.
2001 – 2 Solo tours of California, including headlining the world’s first solo bass looping festival, and tour with Michael Manring and Rick Walker. Clinics for Ashdown Amps and Modulus Basses. Solo gigs in France.
2002 – Another tour in California, Released Conversations, duo CD with Jez Carr, on Pillow Mountain Records, 2 Major tours of UK Theatres and concert halls supporting first the 21st Century Schizoid Band then Level 42. Two shows at the London Guitar Festival. National TV and local radio appearances in the UK. Featured in the Sunday Times Culture Section. Released second completely solo CD, Not Dancing For Chicken. NDFC picked as one of the best CDs of the year by Aural Innovations
2003 – four week solo tour of California, gigs with Michael Manring and David Friesen, including the Anaheim Bass Bash, featured interview in Euphoria magazine, and review of NDFC in Bass Player (Feb issue). New recordings with Theo Travis, BJ Cole and Patrick Wood for future release. Duo gigs with Theo Travis. Gig at the barbican with orphy robinson. Recording in France with Vigroux/Cury/Rives for upcoming release. first italian solo gig and recording session in august. Duo CD with Theo Travis – for the love of open spaces – released in oct.
2004 – Recording session in LA with Ned Evett and Kofi Baker, three week solo tour of California with Michael Manring and Trip Wamsley, Interviewed for the March 2004 issue of Bass Player Magazine. UK tour with Michael Manring in March. Extensive airplay on BBC radio 3’s Late Junction. Third all-solo album, Grace And Gratitude, released in August, followed by tour of England and Scotland, including a successful 7-date run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Live appearance on BBC Radio Scotland’s The Arts Show, alongside Jenny Eclair and Barry Cryer. Acclaimed appearances at The Detroit Bass Fest and European Bass Day. Gigs in US and UK with Muriel Anderson. A second tour in England with Michael Manring in November.
2005 – another year another NAMM show, followed by a few promo gigs with Michael Manring in California. Dates with pedal steel guitarist, BJ Cole, and recording and gigs with singer Cleveland Watkiss, as well as more UK dates, the Edinburgh Festival and a trip to Italy. Started monthly music night, Recycle Collective.
2006 – back to California, NAMM again and some more dates and another day-long masterclass, Recycle Collective continues to be one of the best live music nights out in London, and features musicians such as BJ Cole, Cleveland Watkiss, Orphy Robinson, Seb Rochford, Todd Reynolds, Jason Yarde, Andy Hamill, Patrick Wood, Leo Abrahams, Julie McKee, Andrea Hazell. UK tours with Theo Travis, Muriel Anderson and Ned Evett. 4th solo album, Behind Every Word, released on Pillow Mountain Records. Recording in Italy with guitarist Luca Formentini. New duo formed with singer Julie McKee, for the Edinburgh Fringe. European tour in October, including EuroBass Day and European Bass Day, as well as an electronica festival in Italy. Behind Every Word makes a number of end of year ‘best of 2006′ lists.
2007 – guess where it started? Yay, NAMM!! Bass-Bash, two days of masterclasses, Modulus clinics and gigs both solo and with Muriel Anderson and Vicki Genfan. Much fun. First New York show too. European tour with Lobelia, including first time visit to Frankfurt Musik Messe and gigs in Italy, Spain, Germany and Denmark, 7 week tour of the US, 24 states, 7000 miles. Gigs at Greenbelt festival with Lobelia, Sarah Masen and Ric Hordinski. Recycle Collective relaunched in September. Playing on one track on Luca Formentini’s album, Tacet. First Amsterdam and Geneva gigs in November. Released live EP with Lobelia in December. Recorded improv album with Patrick Wood and Roy Dodds.
2008 – NAMM again, with Lobelia this time, playing the bass-bash and for Looperlative and Modulus. More California shows. Back to England, playing lots of ‘acoustic’ shows with Lobelia, London Solo Bass Night in March with Todd Johnson and Yolanda Charles, . Year ended with Lawson/Wood/Dodds album ‘Numbers’ released, and some LDW gig dates round London, followed by a whole string of house concert shows in England and the US with Lobelia. 2008 was also the year of social media – 10 years of running my music career online turning into a 2nd career teaching and consulting on how it all works, including Nokia flying me to Helsinki for their Open Lab, and working on the launch of Ucreative.tv at UCA in Rochester. Finished the year with a series of house concerts in the UK and the US with Lobelia..
2009 – …which continued into the new year on a trip that included a trip to NAMM, a masterclass at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and a series of masterclasses in bass, looping and ’social media for musicians’ in various people’s houses. But I did miss the bass-bash for the first time ever. Back to the UK for more bass masterclasses and other University-based projects around the future of the internet… look out for a new solo album at some point this year!

Current Musical Projects

Solo gigs and recording -::- Duo gigs and recording with Lobelia -::- the Dodds/Lawson/Wood trio -::- The Recycle Collective -::- ‘Open Sky’ with Dave Bainbridge and others.

trivia

favourite artists. – “I’m a big fan of good singer/songwriters. Top of the list is Canadian, Bruce Cockburn, who in 30 years of recording has yet to release a bad album. also top of my singer/songwriter list would be The Blue Nile, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Kelly Joe Phelps, John Lester, Nik Kershaw, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder Rickie Lee Jones, James Taylor, Jonatha Brooke, Randy Newman, Michael McDonald, Martyn Joseph, Julie Lee and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Other favourite artists include The Pixies, The Cure, Iona, Prefab Sprout, anything King Crimson-related, King’s X, Mike Watt, Michael Manring, D’Angelo, David Torn, Lewis Taylor. I love great pop music – good old fashioned POP, like The Carpenters, Deacon Blue, Duran Duran, Wham, Chic, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper… I’m also a big Jazz fan, and top of my play-list there would be Bill Frisell (he’s my other huge musical obsession) John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ron Eschete, The Yellowjackets, Keith Jarrett, Ralph Towner/Gary Peacock, John Patitucci, Bill Evans, Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Jim Hall, Charlie Haden, Marc Johnson… Just getting back into ‘classical’ music, mainly Bartok string quartet’s and Olivier Messiaen’s bird song piano compositions.”
top 10 (or so) favourite albums – “In no particular order, and subject to change at a moment’s notice!

• Joni Mitchell – Hejira
• Spearhead – Stay Human
• Jonatha Brooke & The Story – Plumb
• John Patitucci – One More Angel
• Pat Metheny – Bright Size Life
• Bruce Cockburn – Nothing But A Burning Light
• Bill Frisell – Ghost Town (or anything else he’s ever done)
• Talk Talk – Spirit Of Eden
• Lewis Taylor – Lewis Taylor
• James Taylor – Hourglass
• The Pixies – Doolittle
• The Blue Nile – High (or anything else they’ve done)

bass influences – “My current favourites are Tony Levin, Michael Manring, Mike Watt and Matthew Garrison but there are literally hundreds. I suppose, in roughly chronological order, those players that have influenced me the most would be – John Taylor (Duran), Nick Beggs (Kajagoogoo/Iona), Chris Squire (Yes), Simon Gallup (The Cure), Pino Pallidino (everyone!), Doug Pinnick (King’s X), Ewan Vernal (Deacon Blue), Steve Swallow, Billy Sheehan, Abraham Laboriel, Jaco Pastorius, Scott LaFaro, Freddie Washington, Nathan East, Bernard Edwards (Chic), Ray Brown, Family Man Barratt (The Wailers), Verdine White (EW & F), Tommy Simms, Alain Caron, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, Red Mitchell, Jimmy Haslip, Jaco Pastorius, Danny Thompson, Eberhard Weber, Mike Rivard, Marc Johnson, Kermitt Driscoll, Mo Foster, Todd Johnson, Doug Wimbish, Yolanda Charles and loads more.”
Fantasy Band – “This changes all the time, but right now it’d me on bass (obviously), Lobelia on vocals, Nels Cline on guitar, Roy Dodds on drums. With guest appearances by Theo Travis, BJ Cole and Michael Manring.”
Favourite Books – “Oh, there’re loads! Long Walk To Feedom by Nelson Mandela, Strength To Love by Martin Luther King, Wild Hope by Tom Sine, The Chronicles Of Narnia by CS Lewis, The Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be by Middleton and Walsh, anything by Douglas Coupland or Mike Riddell, Tar Baby by Toni Morrison, Cat’s Eye by Margaret Attwood, The Burnt House by Adam Lively, The book of Ecclesiastes in The Bible, The Tao Te Ching, The Road Less Travelled and Further Along The Road Less Travelled by Scott Peck, Life On Air by David Attenborough, No Future Without Forgiveness and God Has A Dream by Desmond Tutu, 45 by Bill Drummond…”
Favourite Films – ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer’, ‘Natural Born Killers’, ‘Pulp Fiction, ‘Salvador’, ‘Bugsy Malone’, ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘Barton Fink’, ‘Dead Poets Society’, ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, ‘Falling Down’, ‘Life Of Brian’, ‘Spinal Tap’, ‘Monty Python and the Hole Grail’, ‘the Wedding Singer’, ‘The Breakfast Club, ‘Pretty In Pink’, ‘Whale Rider’, ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’, ‘Fight Club’, ‘Muppets Treasure Island’, ‘Brassed Off’, ‘Lars And The Real Girl’, ‘Calendar Girls’, ‘Amelie’, ‘Spirited Away’, ‘Raising Arizona’, ‘Dodgeball’, ‘Team America’ ‘Zoolander’…”

I’ve FINALLY got round to adding the latest bunch of gigs to Reverb Nation. The first of which is this sunday, at the Brickhouse, on Brick Lane in London (deets below in the gig cal widget).

The gig’s with my new trio with Patrick Wood and Roy Dodds – two of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever had the privilege to play with. I’ve just added a fan-exclusive track to the Reverb Nation page, which you can play from from the widget below if you’re already on the mailing list, or you can just sign up! Enjoy…

Right, I’ve got loads of fascinating stuff to blog about (no, really), but that can wait, cos right now, I’ve got loads of great free music to tell you about. First up, Lobelia is giving away a whole album of voice ‘n’ piano stuff on Reverb Nation. The album, called 040515 (the date it was recorded, in Canadian apparently), was recorded live at Power Base Studio in Nebraska, which is where she and I recorded our fantastic live E.P last summer.

It’s a really beautiful record, and was the first thing I heard from her ages ago. The track ‘Wake Up And Lose You’ is particularly amazing. Some of the songs you might recognise if you’ve seen us live over the last year and a half, but perhaps not in this format…

Anway, downloading it is v. easy, either via her Reverb Nation page or via the widget embedded below – just click on ’songs’, and the downloadable ones start with Wake Up And Lose You… You’ll have to sign up to her mailing list, if you’re not already, but you’ll want to anyway, cos she’s amazing. )

For more on Lo and her music, see her website, or add her as a friend on her Facebook musician page or via MySpace page.

Go! download! download like the wind!!

Much to blog about, but real life getting in the way of cyber-time at the moment. All good (if you want to keep track of that stuff, sign up for Twitter and follow me.

Anyway, what is worth mentioning just now is that all the recent activity on my Reverb Nation page, with the free album and the mailing list migration, has sent me to the top of the Reverb Nation jazz charts!

It’s a little surprising, and largely to do with the fact that Reverb Nation, as yet, as precious little internal traffic, and I’m therefor doing a better job of actively sending traffic to my page than, say, Jamie Cullum or Will Calhoun, despite them in any measurable real terms being massively more successful than me. But I guess that’s the advantage of being a social media early adopter. )

Still, it is nice, and you can keep it going if you want to by downloading the free album on there after signing up for the mailing list! How cool is that – a completely free kick-ass album in exchange for an email address that I promise not to ever pass on to anyone else, and only to email you when I’ve got something useful to tell you…? Sounds great, I know. So, using the widget below, go get the freebies!

Right, I’ve just made a ’stumble this!’ toolbar link, for those of you that want to stumble stuff but don’t want to use Firefox or IE to get the stumbleupon tool bar -

Stumble This! – drag this link to your toolbar and you should be, as the americans say ‘Good to go’.

Please experiment with it by first logging into Stumble Upon, then coming back and stumbling a few of my blog pages. You can do this anyway without my wikkid new stumble button by clicking the Stumble Upon icon at the bottom of any post –

But this trick means you can stumble anything, from any browswer, not just by using embedded buttons or the SU toolbar – try it, it’s fab! (obviously, again, you have to be logged into Stumble Upon for it to work… oh, and don’t forget to marvel at my wikkid javascript skillz… )

Not sure why I didn’t think of this before, but you can download all of Lessons Learned from An Aged Feline Pt II from the widget below. It’s a four step process, as follows:

1. click the word ’songs’ at the top of the widget.
2. click on ‘What Was Going On’
3. put your email address into the box that appears (you have to sign up for my mailing list to get the download)
4. while the track is playing, click the little download arrow to the right of the play-timeline, underneath the tracklist.

Then repeat steps 2 and 4 – click on each song and click download. And you’ll have a shiny digital loveliness copy of LLfaAF Pt II.

One of the fun things about doing this experiment with the free downloads has been listening back to two albums I’ve not listened to of mine for a long time. LLfaAF Pt II is the record where I fell in love with my fretted 6 string bass – The majority of the tracks on it are recorded with that bass. Melodically, it’s probably the most ‘jazz’ thing I’ve done, as I was quite consciously experimenting with more ‘outside’ lines and some bigger intervals in the melodies. It was nice to go back and rediscover a few things I was doing then that I haven’t done since, and am now wanting to reincorporate into my playing.

For those of you who are musicians wanting to make your music available in different places, Reverb Nation widgets are a great way to do it – if you go to my page and click on the widgets tab, you’ll see all the ones available. You can even make the one above the main music interface on your blog.

It’s a good way to manage collecting mailing list subscriptions in exchange for the free stuff, rather than just giving it away AND having to play for the bandwidth from your own server.

And of course, your legions of fans can include your widgets on their myspace page, blog, facebook page, bebo page. etc etc.

As the user-base of Reverb Nation grows, it may increase in native currency. For now, it’s largely about traffic you send to your page, and the widgets it makes available.

Though the nice thing about it being pretty small right now is that I’m at Number 2 in their jazz charts! – that’s 2nd out of 1789 ‘jazz’ artists. And that’s without even being proper jazz. Good work.

OK, for one moment, I’m going to think about what record companies did well when they were functioning (very few people that I know who were ever signed to labels had this experience, but it’s what in an ideal world labels offered artists):

1. A Label Let an Artist be An Artist – those of you reading this who are trying to run your careers as booking agent, publicist, record label, distributor, web master, etc. will know that the most scarce commodity in the midst of all that isn’t money, it’s time. Money’s hard to come by too, but the reason for the lack of money is a lack of time to do things properly, not the other way round. And what’s the first thing that disappears in this new multi-tasking time-economy? Creativity time.

Why is that? Because it’s very difficult to be unfettered in your creativity but it’s pretty much vital if your music is to really mean anything. If you’ve just been designing posters, on the phone trying to book shows (usually targeting a particular kind of venue), and on MySpace dealing with add-requests, comments and feedback, sitting down with your instrument and trying to empty your mind of all that nonsense and JUST PLAY is damned near impossible. It takes time to create that kind of headspace, and it takes frustrating hours of working all the hackneyed tired cliched nonsense out of your system before the magic starts to flow. In terms of pure instrumental technique, if your music is in any way challenging, it may require a whole load of ‘maintenance’ before you’re in any position to really get ‘in the zone’.

A functioning label gives you time to do that. Just imagine if you even had a web administrator, how much extra time you’d have to practice? Imagine if someone else was dealing with your press, how much less you’d be thinking about labeling what you do, about niche marketing, about whatever – that’s the stuff that labels are supposed to do, while we’re busy creating genre-busting epoch-defining life-changing music.

2. They allow us to get our creative priorities straight – one thing I decided very early on in my career – and that I still say out loud to other people as often as I can just to remind myself of it – is that my number one aim in making a record is to make the record that I want to hear, that soundtracks the world as I see it. AND THEN – once it’s done – start thinking about the best way to market it. Music that sounds like it’s been dreamt up by marketeers is horrible. No-one wants to be listening to music that’s been decided on by a committee. Actually, that’s not strictly true – a heck of a lot of music that sounds like that sells a lot, but doesn’t really have that much significance in the lives of the people who buy it and then forget about it.

No, we should be making the music we love. That doesn’t mean that outside influence isn’t important – it can be vital to stop us from becoming completely self-indulgent, or lost in our own creative mire. What it means is that the influence has to be from people who know what we’re trying to do, people who’ve earned the right to critique it by understanding what the end result is trying to be. I get less of them now, but I used to get a lot of emails from bass players telling me that I should write more uptempo music, to which my response was usually ‘No, YOU should write more uptempo music, cos it’s you that wants to hear it!’ – the assumption that I’m some kind of music producing automaton trying to meet the listening requirements of a bunch of faceless bass-monkeys sat at their computers across the world critiquing what everyone else does is utter bollocks. With the best will in the world, I’m really not interested in the opinions of people who have no idea why I do what I do.

I have a very valuable ‘council of reference’ – a range of musicians, listeners, fans, friends and people who have proved that they ‘get’ what I do – not by being super-fans, but by demonstrating an understanding of where I’m coming from. Record Label people are very rarely qualified to understand that stuff – not always, but almost everyone I’ve ever met who had record company interference in their project has ended up being deeply unhappy with it. Even some records that I love are the product of undue RC influence, and I can only imagine how great the record would have been if the artist had been able to choose their own sounding boards.

Here’s one of the bits of the entertainment industry-end of the Record business that is most horrible and that we don’t distance ourself from enough – that a label’s job is to sign ‘raw talent’ and then manage the career of the artist, handing them a producer, band, designer, etc. etc. etc. and then paying them a pittance for the privilege.

What would be a far more useful and productive way to operate if we’re interested in letting musicians be the ones who make music would be to look for the music that is already there. If musicians and writers forged relationships with producers, arrangers and ideas people for creative reasons rather than having those people foisted on them by labels as a matter of expediency, labels could concentrate on finding great music that they have a hunch they know how to market, and producers could be shopping for work based on creative understanding…

3. Labels built a reputation based on quality within a field – are there any labels that you trust? Chances are if you’re into old school jazz, there are quite a few records on Prestige, Blue Note and Verve in your collection. If you’re into more modern progressive jazz, ECM and Nonsuch may feature more highly. For free music, Cryptogramaphone may be up there. For extreme metal see Earache and Metal Blade, neo prog see Magna Carta… Do all the artists on ECM sound the same? Not at all. There are actually a few different ‘ECM sounds’, but there’s definitely a feeling of quality, and as a listener you kinda know that some thought has gone into the stuff that gets signed. Labels at their best are enthusiasts as much as they are business people. Why? All the business planning in the world can’t pick our exciting music. Great music is great music is great music – finding it is step one, working out how to market it is step two. Get those two round the wrong way and you’re screwed. Any deal that gets a so-so artist and tries to drop them into a marketing formula is back to front.

The problem with all this in terms of discerning what’s important is that getting it very wrong can be very profitable. I’m not talking about what’s ’successful’ on a business level here. I don’t think that’s what being an artist is about. It’s important, but it’s ancillary to the job of creating great music. A good label lets musicians make music. A good manager does the liason, and anyone worth their salt will delegate the stuff they can’t do. Most of my headaches in negotiating my way through the future-is-now new media revolution are from trying to keep my creative energy at the forefront of what I do. I’m deeply passionate about finding new ways to market what I do, to communicate, to monetize, to get the music out there, but the music has to be what it is, not an attempt to second-guess an imagined potential market. That’s bound to fail.

This imaginary great label all in an ideal world. It didn’t happen much before. It happens even less now. So why bother writing about it? Because all those things still need to happen – you still need time to make music, you still need to think about how to market it, you need to find your audience, you need to build credibility with the people who are spending money on what you do. All those things that good labels have built in, YOU STILL NEED THEM. They’re just harder to find.

What we need to do is to abstract them as principles for making art happen then making it available, then finding a way to pay the bills while we do it. That’s the three steps. I’ll try and address the questions more as we go on…

I’ve blogged about Reverb Nation quite a few times, but it’s always worth another heads up as the user base is growing, and people’s familiarity with the two Facebook plug-ins (My Band for musicians and Reverb Nation for fans) is also growing.

The widgets on their site are a great way of compiling players for all your favourite artists onto one page, as Kev Cooke has done on his myspace page.

They still don’t accept information ‘pushed’ to the site, and don’t allow all that much tweaking and customisation of the widgets themselves, but the range of sizes available is a great idea, and the basic design is pretty cool looking…

Here are a few of the widgets for me, for playing music, adding to the mailing list, and showing your gigs…

Oh, and if you go to my reverb nation page and click on the ‘favourites’ tab, you’ll see all the fantastic musicians I know that are on there, with more stuff being added all the time!

Right, with no advance notice at all, Lobelia and I have a new live EP available. It’s a pre-release of some of the tracks that will be on our live album, coming out towards the middle of next year, and features three bass ‘n’ voice duo tunes and two solo tunes of mine. Track list is -

Happy (7:34)
MMFSOG (4:09)
I’m Lost (5:11)
Rain (9:14)
Jimmy James (6:51)

The version of MMFSOG is by far the best take of that tune I’ve ever recorded, and the version of Jimmy James is an all-fretless one. The tracks were all recorded live at Power Base Studio in Nebraska earlier in the year.

“So how do we get one of these lovely very limited edition discs?” I hear you cry… All you have to do is send £5 via paypal or nochex, which includes WORLDWIDE POSTAGE AND PACKING. (send it to steve[at]steve[dash]lawson[dot]co[dot]uk please)

What’s more, if you buy this disc now, it’ll save you £2 when the album comes out.

The CD itself is a CDR with all the info printed on the disc, and comes in a pretty plastic clam-shell case, like these -

To make it easy, here’s a paypal button which goes straight to the ‘pay Steve £5 for his and Lo’s delicious new CD’ page -

and in the player below, you can listen to the first track from it – ‘Happy’. It’s fab! )

Enjoy…

As you’ll have seen yesterday, I’ve started posting my upcoming gig dates as entries on the blog – this puts them on the front page of the website, means that you get to read about them here, and also it means I can generate a separate gigs RSS feed direct from here, that contains all the microformat data (the bit that means it’ll add to a calendar apps).

….except it doesn’t… because the tag-specific pages here (here’s the one for stuff tagged as gig dates) strip out all the formatting, so you don’t get the weblinks, you don’t get the hcal mark-up, and you don’t even get the line-breaks that stop it from just looking like a jumble of text.

So, for now, it’s back to the iChat drawing board with the lovely Sarda to see if he knows how to make it work the way I want it to work. )

The eventual idea is that this will be the feed that is directly linked from my gig calendar page on my site, and it’ll contain the hcal information so that clever readers can extract the information and you’ll be able to add individual gigs to your calendar if you want to go to them and need a reminder.

stevelawson.net – providing for all your bassgeek needs since 1997… )