Year: 2007

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Jeff Schmidt's new album…

The bass-heads amongst you may well have heard of Jeff Schmidt – he’s a solo bassist from the States, and has just released his debut album, Outre. It’s a lovely record, most of it on piccolo bass in a similar ball-park to Michael Manring and Trip Wamsley, with a fair amount of influence from the nu-acoustic guitar crowd – Don Ross, Michael Hedges, Preston Reid etc.

Jeff’s also a regular at the masterclass that I give in Northern California each year in January, but the reason I’m blogging about it – other than it being a lovely album that you should hear – is that he’s previewing it via a Podcast which you can subscribe to here for free – Jeff’s pretty good at dissecting what he does and why, so the podcast will make for interesting listening for any musician, not just bassists (he doesn’t sound much like a bassist anyway… ;o) You can find the podcast on iTunes as well, just do a search on ‘jeff schmidt’.

Oh, and if you want to buy the download of the album you can get it here for the ridiculous price of $7 – that’s what I did, and it sounds great…

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Festival gig in Wales in August cancelled…

Just got a (not unexpected) email from the organiser of the Rainbow Spirit Enlightenment Fayre that I was supposed to be doing with the Recycle Collective and solo in a couple of weeks time, telling me that it’s been ‘postponed to next year’, which means cancelled in normal language (you can’t postpone a festival for a year, cos festival’s generally happen every year, unless you’re just going to post-date them all ‘welcome to the 2007 RSEF, in Aug 2008!’ etc.)

I’m not that surprised, but it is a real shame, as I obviously really look forward to all recycle gigs, but the communication over this fest has been pretty poor all along… we sorted out the booking and a fee back in Feb/March, I think, which was all good, then the venue changed (venue change in the same year as the festival was happening? er…). I had to change the line-up due to prior commitments, and the organiser was fine with that (let’s face it, with the Recycle Collective, I’m working with a list of 20 or 30 of the top improvising musicians in the country, with pedigrees as long as someone with very long arms’ arm, so it’s not really going to be hard for me to match the quality of any particular line up…)

And then… well, nothing. No contract, no accommodation details, no requests for a stage plan/spec list, no merch sales details, no stage times, no map, no nothing… not a great sign (with Greenbelt, I always have a contract, even for gigs I’m not getting paid for over the weekend, I get merch things through from the people who run the shop, I get venue managers emailing me to ask for stage plans and any special requirements (knowing that I clearly always have very special requirements… :o)

So it’s off. Balls.

But it does mean I’m now available that weekend for teaching or a house concert, or both – anyone want to book something? :o)

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Duke Special – officially a genius.

Yup, after last night’s show at the ICA, it can be officially confirmed and empirically demonstrated that Duke Special is a genius.

I’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve seen Duke play, not to mention the various bands and projects that Pete Wilson (aka Duke) had before this band, at Greenbelt and beyond (some of which I’m sure he’d rather forget about, so I won’t bring them up here… :o) But last night’s show was a new high point, and bodes incredibly well for his mainstage set at Greenbelt in a few weeks (I definitely pity the dull-as-shit Delirious who have to go on after him…).

The gig was a double header with David Ford, a singer/songwriter of some ridiculous level of talent (watch the video for State Of The Union for some evidence), but whose band are just a little ragged round the edges… It was a still a great show, with some amazing songs, and probably not something I’d have noticed if Duke Special hadn’t been on afterwards…

Duke has a remarkable ability to pick the PERFECT musicians for his stuff – Chip Bailey on drums is a wonder to behold (and at least half Hobbit…), Ben Castle has long been one of my favourite musicians in the country, Paul Wilkinson is a genius guitarist and bassist with the coolest sounds and feel ever, and the new guy in the band on sax/timpani/keys was up to the talent of the rest of them, a great musician.

Add to that some of the most imaginative and exciting arrangements I’ve heard in a long time, amazing use of dynamics and of course Pete’s stunning voice, piano playing and those glorious songs and you’ve got yourself one hell of a night out.

Was nice to catch up with the various members of the band after the show (bizarrely all the security at the ICA go home at 11, despite the bar still being open, so I was able to just wander through into the green room and say hi – useful for me, not so great for bands who don’t want their guitars stolen…), and then head home.

Roll on Greenbelt!

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we have a server down. I repeat, the server is down…

just a note that the stevelawson.net server seems to be down – no mail, no website, so nothing right now, and I can’t log in to cpanel to see what’s happening (cos, obviously, it’s on the same server…) – normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Until then, here’s some music…
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Cottage Industry…

I’m in the middle of doing what’s often referred to as a ‘remote session’ – an artist or producer sends a MP3 of a master track to a musician to get that musician to record their parts in their home studio. They then send high res WAV or AIFF files back via FTP or burnt to CD in the post, and everyone’s happy. The benefits of this system are obvious – it means that projects that couldn’t afford to either hire big studios or fly musicians around the world are able to get the musicians they really want to play on it, and the musician doesn’t have to leave home, and has access to all their favourite gear, records into their program of choice and can spend some time experimenting in a way that would probably scare the producer if they were to do it in a studio.

This project (the LeeSun session I referred to here yesterday) is a particularly fun one because I get to play ‘bass’ bass and then do all the other StevieStuff on top – I REALLY enjoy playing normal bass, and am rather good at it, and these days I don’t get asked all that often to play normal bass (this coming month I’ve got a fair bit of it, what with playing with Sarah Masen and Monk at Greenbelt), so to get to do that stuff and then overdub ebow loveliness and crazy big slide guitar parts, tremolo baritone guitar-esque stuff and fretless melodies is a real joy.

The other recent change in what I’ve been doing work-wise has been house concerts – as mentioned before, these are gigs in people’s living rooms, conservatories, gardens, even garages for lovely audiences of music lovers and supporters of the arts. Sometimes is just a gig, sometimes is a garden party, sometimes it’s a charity thing… Whichever, they are really enjoyable shows, pay much better than trying to play in a pub or most little music clubs and invariably result in a better time for audience and musician. All Good Nothing Bad.

It really is a cottage industry – small-scale, mobile, flexible, personal, enjoyable, creative and all built on relationships between real people for the mutual benefit of all concerned. Like the teaching I’ve been doing for so long, it’s my dream job because I get to meet so many fascinating and wonderful people, play great music, learn loads about music myself from the whole process and somehow in the middle of it all actually pay the bills… I am blessed.

I guess I ought to add at this point, that I’m available for all of the above – playing on records, playing in your house, or teaching you bass… just drop me an email and we’ll get the process started on any of those! :o)

But for now, I’ve got LeeSun’s songs to finish off…

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session day…

After collecting my car this morning, most of today has been spent recording. Having turned the living room into a remote studio, I spent the day recording tracks for an album by LeeSun – a lovely quirky singer/songwriter from Leeds. She initially invited me to go and record with her in Canada back in June, but it was slap bang in the middle of my US tour with L, so sadly I couldn’t do it (how much fun would that have been??), but I offered to do the tracks remotely when she got back, so that’s what I’m doing, in my lil’ studio here. It’s a fun way to work, being engineer and tea-boy as well as musician, and it means I can quickly do multiple versions of a line and send them over to be checked out. This evening I was able to send some MP3 roughs of what I’d been up to over to LeeSun and chat via MSN about what she wanted – very useful. The wonders of the internet. Fortunately, she really likes what I’ve done with the songs – they’re lovely songs, and right up my street – so we’ll go ahead with the rest of the album.

I’m hoping to do more of this kind of work – it’s a great way to be involved in projects that normally couldn’t afford to a) get me to where the recording is happening or b) even afford time in a big studio anyway. This way, I can do it in my studio in a way that suits the budget of the artist/producer, and everyone’s happy. Good for keeping my carbon footprint down as well, i guess, not driving to studios all over the place…

If you’re reading this and you’ve got a project you want me to play on, please do send me an email with some details about the project and you’re budget, and we’ll sort something out.

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passing on a request from the lovely Bananie…

One of my favourite blogs to read is Bananie.com – Bananie is a lovely friend in Austin TX, great blogger and one of those people whose love and concern for lil’ hanimals means she can’t turn down a lost kitten or puppy (hence the reason their house looks like a deleted scene from Dr Doolittle).

Anyway, given that the US doesn’t have anything like the kind of affordable sensible pet insurance that we do in the UK, she’s just about all spent up on protecting helpless cats and kittens, and they currently have this tiny fella, Phineas, who has ringworm (AKA athlete’s foot, hardly fatal, but definitely needs treating) and a heart condition, which as usual is unspecified until lots of v. expensive tests have been done, but will kill him if it’s not treated soon… if you’re moved by the little guy’s plight, head over to bananie.com and drop a couple of cyber-squidz in the paypal donation bucket to help out with his medical bills… no pressure, I just know that some of y’all who read this are animal lovers and will quite possibly want to help out a fellow gentle soul in her quest to turn their house in to a cat ‘n’ dog focussed Ark…

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