Birmingham Bass Night is now LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY! You’re excited right? I know I am. It’s the first event like this that I’ve done since coming to Birmingham, and I’m REALLY excited to be playing alongside two properly excellent musicians – Lorenzo Feliciati from Italy, and Birmingham’s own Russ Sargeant. Both fabulous musicians who happen to play bass…
…By which I mean it’s clearly going to be a basstastic evening, but you won’t have to be a bassist to have an amazing time! This isn’t an evening of tuneless bass wankery. It’s a gig, with excellent music, that on this occasion is made by people who play bass. Life is far too short for bad music. So there won’t be any on my watch.
Gig details:
Here’s the Facebook event link. Go see what people are saying about it over there. Lots of people are looking forward to this gig. It’s going to be epic. Then… TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
Anyway, here are some artist bios, in case you don’t know much about us:
Lorenzo Feliciati – one of Italy’s most respected bass innovators, Lorenzo Feliciati’s combination of electric jazz with progressive rock and electronica elements, coupled to his amazing dextrous skill on the instrument, make for a compelling and exciting music-world.
Receiving his initial impetus to play bass from seeing Jaco Pastorius with Weather Report, Lorenzo added Mick Karn, Pino and Percy Jones to his list of fretless-inspirations and forged a celebrated career as both a side-man and a band-leader in his home country, and further abroad.
His latest project, Naked Truth, featuring King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto, brings together his twin loves of jazz and progressive music, and has been critically acclaimed worldwide.
Steve Lawson – it true that there aren’t too many musicians who’ve managed to forge an international music career as solo bass guitarists. But in the last 13 years Steve Lawson has toured the world, produced 20 albums (10 solo, 10 in collaboration), been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, played most of the major bass events, had radio airplay on four continents, and built a reputation as one of the respected bass teachers and ‘new music economy’ thinkers around. His approach to looping and layering his bass in real time builds complex and beautiful soundscapes that sound very little like a bass at all. Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. ‘Steve Lawson is a brilliant musician. I’ve known about him and listened to him for many years. He may not be one of the most famous bassists but he is definitely one of the most talented’ – Victor Wooten
Russ Sargeant – Russ Sargeant is a bass player and multi-instrumentalist based near Birmingham. He uses live looping and effects to create beautiful layered music – sound upon sound; sometimes with multiple instruments but mostly only using electric and acoustic basses. His music is a blend of Ambient, Jazz and eclectic sounds and has been described as, “subtle layers of sound that emerge gracefully like cinematic soundtracksâ€.
www.lorenzofeliciati.com
www.stevelawson.net
www.russsargeant.co.uk
It’s been a long time since the traditional recording release cycle of ‘make a CD, do 3 months of promo, release the album, sell enough to recoup, tour off the back of it, take some time off, do it all again 12-18 months later’ made much sense to me. I’ve been making too much music for that kind of approach for a few years now… So I’m trying to work out what the best way forward is. Let me fill you in…
Right, part 2 of the new videos round-up. Firstly, here are two fairly long videos of a panel discussion I was involved in as part of a UKTI (UK Trade & Industry) event about music and enterprise, put on by Chinwag. I was on a fabulous panel with the ever-so-clever 
