Year: 2006

Posted on

Euroblog… what number are we up to now??

European Bass Day – I did this one a couple of years back, so very nice to be here again. Some great players on the bill, most of whom I miss… Great to see Claudio Zanghieri, Beno (sp?), Markus Setzer, Charlie Moreno… loads of lovely people, who all play great music and I didn’t get to see any of them play!

My own playing time consisted of a bit of a demo on the Hotwire bass stand, who are the German importers of East-Pro preamps, and then a 45 minute gig with a bit of a Q & A, which went very well, and I sold out of copies of Behind Every Word! It’s a nice problem to have…

After me, the last band on was Bill Evans’ Soulgrass, featuring Ric Fierabracci on bass, who were definitely one of the best things I’ve ever seen at a bass-day-type gig. Really really amazing gig. bass, drums, sax, banjo and violin. Superb playing, great tunes.

As usual with these things, a late night hang was to be had, with Stefan Redtenbacher and Marco Meniconi from the ACM – lovely people talking deep bollocks til the early hours…

And today is the gig in Kleve – I need to phone the venue now and find out what the plan is for tonight, but I’m really looking forward to it!

Posted on

in Amsterdam..

after only 14 hours and 10 minutes of train journeys, an hour and forty minutes late, tired, but glad to be here.

And the lesson is, book your tickets a long way in advance, and make sure you get an all-europe pass… :o)

Posted on

posting flourish

OK, one train was late, missed connection, now at Frankfurt Airport waiting for a train to Amsterdam, just bought 15 minutes of e-time, enough to upload loads of blogs, but not to set the dates to the right days etc… use your imagination…

Am now stinking of ciggies, hungry, and won’t get to Amsterdam til 10pm.

Can I get me a ‘bollocks!’, people?

[update] – now the later train is delayed by 25 minutes…. ARSE!

Posted on

Euroblog #8 – a rant about Smoking

euroblog 8 Smoking rant.

so here I am, stuck in smoking carriage because the complete loser at Venice booked me here. It’s horrible. I’d almost rather be sat next to the loos and be able to smell piss. And smokers look so bloody stupid. Smoking makes you look like such a tool. Really, it does. If you’re reading this and you smoke, there’s part of me that thinks you’re a bit of a twat. I might love you dearly, respect you, admire you and think you’re wonderful in every other way, but the part of you that smokes is fucking stupid.

Come on, think about it – it serves no positive purpose at all (OK, it’s a sedative, but an appalling way to take any medication – there’s a reason why even the most heinous of pharmaceutical transnational corps haven’t started producing anti-headache ciggies). It makes you smell, makes me smell, it’s killing us all. Reduces your fitness. You’ve been had, you’re a slave and your money is lining the pockets of twats like Kenneth Clarke. Tobacco production is a hugely evil business, tobacco marketing in the third world is heinous beyond belief.

There’s no such thing as a fair trade cigarette (OK, there’s that company that’s making organic ones, but it’s not the same thing at all) – you can’t have a fair trade company who aim to make you so addicted it kills you. If you claim to be an eco-monkey, and are smoking, you’re an even bigger loser (Greenbelters take note). We’ve all got our hypocrisies – God knows I’ve got mine! – but giving up smoking is just about the coolest thing you can do for the planet, that will also benefit you and those around you massively. Everybody wins except the shitbags who have shares in tobacco companies, and I would so love to see them bankrupted.

So stop, go on. I dare you. I’ll think SO much more of you if you do. And just in case your thinking I don’t know how hard it is to stop, I used to smoke, in my teens, and early 20s. When I was a total dickhead. Stopping was part of my transition into being a human being. I stopped overnight. Cravings? of course. Social pressure to smoke every time I went to the pub? You bet, Did I? Apart from the very occasional cigar through the late 90s, not at all.

Just think how many people are feeling towards you the way I feel towards these fucking smokers in this carriage I’m forced to sit in. It’s not good. not good at all. Avoid it, stop smoking.

Posted on

Euroblog #7

Euroblog 7

Right, lesson #1 from all this has been to get the complete Europass whatever you’re doing. OK, so it costs about £100 more, but it gives you way more options, and stops you getting stung the way I have been just now.

Having bought my tickets in Venice on Thursday, on the train just now, I discovered that all the woman had done was reserve the seats for me, and charge me a booking fee, not actually sell me the sodding tickets! She’s listed them as though I had a pass for the whole of Europe, rather than one that doesn’t cover Switzerland and Germany. so I’ve just been stung for another $50 for the Swiss bit of the journey. I think the same is likely to happen in Germany too… eeek. I mean, it’s not going to break the bank, but it’s a total pain in the arse to have been sold the wrong tickets. I think I might go into the Rail Europe offices in London when I get back and complain – it’s not that I would have minded paying the extra – indeed, I was surprised when she told me the price of the tickets from Milan to Amsterdam via Switzerland and Germany – but the hassle of being sold one lot of stuff, then finding out that it’s not valid is just nonsense.

Other than that, it’s all going fine. I’m on train two out of a five train series – this one’s a local Swiss train, from Arth to Olten, and then I change and get on a train to Mannheim, then to Koln, and thence to Amsterdam. It’s funny, traveling on trains takes a lot longer, but is way less tiring than flying. I’m much more relaxed, can get up and wander around, and can watch some of the most beautiful scenery in the world whistle past the window, safe in the knowledge that my eco-monkey credentials are improving by the second. Also got to meet a couple of lovely americans from Portland Oregon, on their way home after a trip round Italy – always nice to meet fellow travellers, have a chat and move on. It’s great the way orbits intersect like this on the road. Sometimes they cross and merge, as with Luca and I, where we end up working together for years to come. Other times, it’s just a 20 minute chat on a train or plane and away you go.

Current Listening – Tollak, Walk This World – he’s the harp-monkey from EuroBassDay, and this record of his is lovely. It’s kind of classic singer/songwriter stuff, in the big emotional 80s songwriter vein, with a fairly major chunk of Beatles harmony.

Update – now on the train from Olten to Mannheim – I think I managed to flummox the ticket inspector with the number of bits of paper I thrust at her – my inter rail pass, my swiss ticket (which says it’s for Basel but I haven’t been there), my seat reservation, and the following tickets through to Amsterdam, and she just tapped some information into her over-sized palm pilot thingie, thanked me and left. So so long as she wasn’t sending messages to marksmen in Mannheim saying I should be shot on sight when I leave the train, I think I’m OK… We’ll see. More news at the top of the hour.

In other train related news, met two more lovely Americans on the last leg of the trip – two girls from Seattle backpacking round Europe.

And Swiss trains officially kick the arse of all other trains. They’re fantastic! I thought I’d wandered into first class by mistake. But no, this is my seat. yay! However, they still haven’t cottoned onto the idea that a power-point next to each seat is a really great idea for laptop users. I guess i’m the only one… riiiight. Also finally managed to find something veggie to eat in a shop on Olten station – a cheese and jalapeno tortilla wrap! Molto picante e bueno. or something.

The big problem with Switzerland is the language thing – with bits of it being Italian speaking, German Speaking, French Speaking, and Swiss-German speaking. My brain hasn’t at all been able to switch to German thus far… I got to the point where I could hold basic conversations when I toured in Germany a lot in the early 90s, but it’s going to take a bit of work to get it back into shape…

[second update] I take back what I said about Swiss trains, I’m stucking in a fucking smoking carriage, and am going to end up smelling disgusting by the end of this, and feeling rather sick. What kind of loser train network lets people smoke on trains? What more’s the point, what kind of loser ticket agent books a seat for a non-smoker in a smoking carriage! The kind of moron that works at Venice station and doesn’t actually book me any tickets, just seat reservations, that’s who… grrrr.

Posted on

Euroblog #6

Euroblog 6,

OK all you travel-monkeys, I think I’ve found the world’s shittiest hotel. certainly it’s the world’s shittiest 3 star hotel (where the hell did it earn these stars? working in McDonalds?????) Hotel San Marco, just opposite Milan Central Station. Wow. The room is tiny (like the box room in your house, or if you’ve got a big house, the walk-in wardrobe), the view is of… a fire escape. Oh yes. the lighting insufficienct, the decor nasty. It’s not that dissimilar to a visit to Linda’s in Ambleside (B+B for about £16 a night, mangey dog thrown in for free, veggie breakfast is the meat breakfast with the sausage and bacon taken off the plate…) Talking of which, breakfast here is pretty hilarious too, served by Mrs Overall. One poor overworked old lady who speaks nothing but fast Italian trying to deal with requests from picky English bassists with crap Italian for decaf coffee.

Anyway, Thursday, travelled back from Venice, after a fun day with Daniel and Enrico (my Venice hosts, and the hardest working PA-by-boat team I’ve ever come across), back to LucaLand (one day, that’ll be an experimental guitar theme park). Dinner at Cascina Capuzza (without doubt my favourite restaurant in the world – every time I’m there, the veggie option is some new concoction I’d never have even thought of, and it’s always incredible. And then back to mixing/editing the last track. The potential CD is sounding pretty exciting, but it is all being played over Luca’s Genelec 1032 monitors, and recordings of old blokes with bronchial problems wheezing and spluttering would sound great through those, so the rough mixes are transferred to CD and DVD, and I then convert the CD to MP3 and copy it across to my phone for extensive listening on the train.

Friday starts with programming the new Looperlative – after the problems with my prototype, Bob sent me a production model from the States, so I need to copy all the settings into it for the foot controllers and groups etc. doesn’t take long. Lunch back at Cascina Capuzza, a vain attempt to dry the clothes I washed the night before by ironing them, and it’s back to the train station to Milan.

Now, I was supposed to be finishing up an interview for InSound magazine in Milan, but thanks to a family crisis, the journo can’t make it, which means I’m free to meet up for a drink with one of the Italian bassists I didn’t get to see in Verona, Antonella Mazza. She’s a fantastic double bassist, session player, jazzer – and we meet for a drink and a bite to eat in a bar next to the Blue Note (jazz-by-proxy). A most enjoyable chat ensues, and her hubby gives me a lift back to hotel-di-shite.

So now, I’m staring down the wrong end of 12.5 hours on a train to Amsterdam. 4 changes, with all my bags, but an evening with John Lester at the end of it to spur me on. All this getting to hang out with lovely groovy music people all over the continent is pretty fantastic, it must be said.

[update] – on the train now, having just written the press release for the Recycle Collective first anniversary (I’ll post the details ASAP, but it’s on Nov 15th, so put it in your diary now!), half an hour gone, 12 hours to go… anyone know any good jokes?

Posted on

Euroblog #5

Venice. Wow. What a place. I’m sure I’m the last one to get here, but if you’ve not been, it’s great.

The first thing I had to do when I got here was book my ticket to Amsterdam for Saturday. Sounds easy. Is it bollocks. I go to the ticket office, ask for the ticket but get sent to the information desk to get the train times, get them printed out and take them back to the ticket office. Back to the ticket office, that train is fully booked. So back to the information desk for more trains. WTF? Two completely independent computer systems for tickets and time-table!!! 95 minutes later and I’ve got tickets booked for the train up through Switzerland and Germany, but still only costing an extra 20-odd Euros, and actually saving me about three hours on the time it would take via Paris. Worth 20 Euros of anyone’s money.

Anyway, after that, my fantastic host here in Venice, Daniel Deluve takes us to the hotel where the gig is happening. Swanky doesn’t even scratch the surface of how posh this hotel is. 495€ a night posh. Just nuts. Venice, having no roads, is a nuts place to get to, and we travel to the gig by boat (this is definitely the only gig I’ve ever done where the PA and bass rig have been delivered by boat (is it just me, or am I writing in some weird pidgin english? All I can hear in my head is the kind of bizarre simplified english that I use to speak to Italians who speak slight more english that I speak Italian… sorry if all this sounds a bit odd..)

Anyway, we dump the stuff at the hotel and head off for lunch and a wander round this gorgeous city. It’s nuts. it’s one big cliche, in the best sense of the word – gondolas, canals, street musicians playing lutes, and chock full of loud obnoxious tourists. Yay for the English speaking world and our bizarre relationship with the beautiful parts of the planet.

Anyway, the gig was great fun. A mix of residents in the hotel, friends of Daniel and some tourists (including an american dude who lives in Cornwall and is a David Torn and David Sylvian fan – restoring my faith in tourists as people of taste and discernment). All in a great time had by me, and seemingly by everyone else too. nice to get to play two 40 minutes sets too.

Then the journey home, back on the boat with PA and bass rig. Suddenly the boat is invaded by four completely hammered tourist losers from Bolton. Incoherently drunk, singing and dancing, and making me oh-so-proud to be English. One pissed lady comes to talk to me, so I pretend to be Italian – ‘no parlo inglesi’ – shows just how hammered she was that my crap Italian grammar and piss poor accent fooled her. But it was great to have some English buffoon shouting ‘ARE YOU A MUSICIAN? MUSIC? LA-LA-LA???’ in my face while I look blank, and ask my Italian friend to translate for me, then tell her I’m a pianist, despite the fact that I’ve got a bass gig bag leaning against me. Fun with drunks.

So today, I’m heading back to Luca’s to mix the last of the tunes for the album, the tomorrow onto Milan.

I love my life – as John Lester commented on my MySpace page, ‘That ain’t working, that’s the way you do it’.

Posted on

EuroBlog #4

So, Monday – when Oteil and Barri eventually surface, we head into town, and find that Monday is a pretty mellow day in Verona. It’s a bit rainy, but we find a cool little buffet lunch place in the big square outside the Palazzio and have lunch. A lovely couple from San Diego recognise Oteil (he’s in the Allman Brothers Band, who are HUGE in the US…) and we have a nice chat with them.

Then to shopping. This time, instead of being honourary girl, I’m hanging outside the shops with Oteil while Barri heads for the boutiques. It’s one of those things about living in London – I forget that if you’re from small town Alabama, shopping in Verona is pretty damned amazing. Being from London, it’s less of a novelty. But a day spent walking the gorgeous historic streets of Verona with Oteil and Barri is a day very well spent – many laughs, lovely snacks, and a last drink at a pavement cafe. Just as I’m leaving we run into the rest of the Epifani crowd, and as I head off to the train station to head back to Luca and Gio’s, Oteil and Barri have found their ride back to the hotel! Hurrah for coincidence!

Back with L and G, and all is well with the world. A gorgeous dinner and onto mixing the record that Luca and I recorded back in July. And Wow! The tracks sound really great. I remember there being some good stuff, but not this good. This is some really exciting music. The blend of our sounds is amazing, and we bring out different sides in eachother’s playing. I’m drawn into some darker sounding stuff, and Luca is inspired to more melodic playing. We’re constantly swapping roles on these tunes, and the editing and mixing goes pretty smoothly.

Today (Tuesday) I’ve been carrying on with the mixing, while Luca was out at work, and after a pizza with Luca and Andrea Nones (from the Ground Collective – the wonderful chap who keeps booking me for gigs in Brescia), it’s back to mixing. We’ve now got about 40 minutes of really great music. So are pretty much there for the album. I’ll be back here late Thursday to finish off the ‘shaping’ of the tracks, with just polishing to be done before mastering. When it will get released is anybody’s guess, but hopefully we’ll at least have a myspace page before too long!

Italy is such a great place to come and visit – the people here are some of the most open, warm and friendly I’ve ever encountered, the audiences are wide-eared and accepting, the musicians are creative and expressive, the language sounds like song, and the scenery is gorgeous. I think I’d struggle with living here, given the tangled web of beaurocracy that seems to surround everything here, unless you have an old boys network to deal with it, but I look forward to coming back from the day I leave.

Having said that, I’ve now been away from home for over a week, and I’m starting to miss TSP and the Fairly Aged Feline quite a lot. My love of Italy is balanced by the novelty of touring having worn off years ago… ideally, I’ll have to work out a way to bring both of them with me, but methinks the Fairly Aged one would take to journeys across the continent.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Venice for my last Italian gig of this tour… Exciting stuff!

Posted on

Euro Blog 3

So, saturday and we’re onto the EuroBassDay – Verona is a city I’ve visited a few times before, and the organiser of the Bass Day, Giambattista Zerpalloni is an old friend. I get to the venue, and run into lots of Italian friends from prevous visits, and Oteil Burbridge, who I’ve met a few times at NAMM shows, and always got on very well with.

I check in at the hotel (which is miles away from the venue, but nice), and then go back and get ready to play. First up is a half hour Looperlative demo in the main concert hall (the venue is the Palazzio Della Grande Guarda, right in the main square in Verona – a stunning location for a Bass Day!) which goes very well. the LP1 once again behaves itself, proving that it’s fixed, and the response is v. positive.

After that, it’s time to just relax. I head off out to get away from the noise of bass, run into Oteil and his lovely wife at a restaurant in the square, and have dinner with them. A hugely enjoyable meal that set the tone for the rest of the weekend – playing a bit of bass punctuated by hours and hours of hanging out with totally wonderful people.

The rest of the american contingent are Epifani endorsers – Oteil, Andrew Gauche (gospel bass legend), Lincoln Goines (stunning Latin groovemeister and lovely fretless player), Dominique DiPiazza (French solo bassist, possessed of the most terrifying flamenco skillz I’ve ever seen on bass), Nic Epifani and Joey Lauricella from Epifani and Fodera. It’d be tough to find more enjoyable company at a bass day. Hours and hours of hanging out, chatting, joking, and occasionally playing. We get back to the hotel at past 2am, and crash.

Day two of bass day, and I’m on earlier – 2.15 – and it’s a 45 minute set. Oteil agrees to come and play a duet, and in the middle of a gig that also features Grace And Gratitude, MMFSOG, Nobody Wins, Scott Peck, Deeper Still and What A Wonderful World, we do an extended improv thing that just blew my mind. Really really lovely RecycleMusic at a bass day. Totally delicious (I really want to get hold of the video of it!)

After that it’s escape time again, and this time, Oteil’s wife Barri and I head out shopping, me being the honourary girl of the group, so deemed acceptable as shoe and handbag shopping partner. I also prove to be an expert haggler and berry gets get a 45€ bag for €15.

Out for dinner with the whole Epifani crowd again for more fun and japes, and back for the final gig, which goes on far too long, features a few stunning moments (musical hero of the weekend is a harmonica player living in Holland called Tollak who really does have a musical midas touch), and ends with a fairly loose and messy 8-bass cover of Big Bottom, all of us taking solos. Dominique wisely hides and sits this one out. Fun, but hardly a stunning musical finale to the weekend.

Bass Days are a weird thing – on the one hand, there are occasional moments of great music, and some fantastic people (even moreso at this one than usual), but there’s also an awful lot of slapping and tapping and overplaying and noisy nastiness. On balance, I really enjoy it, but I could happily go another year without hearing anymore slapped or tapped demi-semi-quavers.

Another late night, and we’re up to now, sat in my hotel on Monday morning, about to go and spend the day in Verona with Oteil and Barri. Yay for the touring life!

Posted on

EuroBlog #2

Right, bit of a catch up.

Milan first – got the train from Geneva to Milan, which rode through the Swiss Alps on a journey that was beautiful even with loads of low lying fog and rain.

Got to Milan, and was picked up at the airport by Nic Angileri and taken to the masterclass. As soon as I had started the clinic, it was obvious that something was up with the Looperlative. The screen kept shutting down, and while the audio was working fine, there was no MIDI control for a few minutes at a time… big big problem. Was fine for a clinic, as I just demonstrated other things, but didn’t bode well for the gig in the evening…

The gig was at a really cute little venue in the city called Atmosphere Live – we set up, and the Looperlative was misbehaving in the soundcheck, and continued to behave weirdly into the gig – I ended up finishing the gig with a couple of chord melody jazz things and a three bass jam with Nic Angileri and Fabio Rigamonti, both very fine players. As it was, I ended up selling more CDs at the gig, than I have at any gig for quite a while, so either it was pity and I should break my gear more often, or my musicalness came across even with the broked stuffs. I prefer the latter. ;o)

Friday morning, I visited Mollinelli (sp?) guitars with Nic, makers of some beautiful handmade instruments. Italy has a fabulous luthery tradition, and most of the builders here seem to combine beauty with a strong experimental design aesthetic. Good stuff.

Back onto the train to Desenzano, and onto my Italian ‘home’ with Luca and Gio, two of my favouritest people in the world.

My #1 concern was still the Looperlative, and I plugged it in, took it out of the rack, and just as a precaution, took the lid off to see if anything had worked loose (you can see how desperate I was, given my previous track record with blowing up the LP1 whenever I take the lid off) – I made sure that all the cables and connectors were seated OK, and put the lid back…

Gig that night was in Brescia, a little way out of the main town, in the basement of a modern bar in a village – not at all the kind of place you’d expect to find an experimental electronica night. But then, Andrea Nones, who runs the Ground Collective in Brescia is no ordinary promoter. For a start he’s also an excellent musician (he was playing at the gig as well), but has an amazing ability to turn experimental music into something that everyone would want to hear! The night started with DJs and a free buffet (a great idea to make sure everyone arrives at the start of the gig!) and then moved onto a range of different acts, from a solo guitarist with a Frisell fixation, to a duo of electronics and acoustic piano, a vocalist or two, and a lovely solo set by a guy playing a homemade Warr-Guitar-style tapping thing. Very nice indeed.

Then the last act – me and Luca! We’ve recorded a lot together, but never played live, but Luca’s a fantastic and sensitive improvisor with an amazing palette of sounds. The Looperlative behaved very well, and the set was really nice. Lots of interesting twists and turns, and I did a solo version of ‘Behind Every Word’ in the middle. A successful show, and a handful of CD sales.

So the Looperlative seems to be fixed, but Bob in his usual ‘above and beyond the call of duty’ way had already shipped a new one out to Italy to arrive monday…

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top