Year: 2015

Right, let’s do a month-by-month recap, shall we?

January – Right at the start of the year, I had a lovely trip up to Leeds for an academic conference, which as well as involving a couple of REALLY important conversations about finally starting my PhD, gave me the opportunity to play with Ray Russell – a guitarist whose work I’ve admired for decades.
Then it was off to NAMM. A handful of lovely shows with guitar genius Thomas Leeb, and a one-off show with Artemis and Daniel Berkman made for a really enjoyable California trip.

February – back from NAMM, and my first gig back was at an amazing event hosted by Compass called Change:How? The gig itself was a fairly forgettable half hour of background music (I REALLY need to get better at thinking about logistics with gig booking), but the day itself was notable for a conversation with theatre maker Annette Mees that ended up defining a whole a lot of what happened in the rest of the year, and totally shifted the planned emphasis for the PhD… One of those ‘ahh, so *that’s* what I really do!’ conversations, for which I’ll be eternally grateful.

March began with a masterclass at the London Bass Guitar Show, which featured the amazing opportunity to play with one of my favourite bassists, Ruth Goller, and the chance to plan a future project with another of my bass heroes, Divinity Roxx… The following weekend was another lovely solo show at the Moffatt Bass Bash in Scotland. From those two shows came a lovely little EP for my Bandcamp subscribers – the track with Ruth and the first piece from the Moffatt show…
The last week of March was spent in Leeds teaching and talking PhD stuff, incorporating all the new shiny exciting focus that came from Annette’s input… A plan is taking shape! Continue reading “2015 – A Year In Music”

Another new video of me has just gone up on the BassTheWorld YouTube channel.

It’s called Same Time Next Year, and is another improvised piece from the Warwick Bass Camp this September.

It features the Quneo (my new lil’ MIDI controller that I’ve been using for drums and synth stuff on the last couple of albums) a little more than some of the other videos I’ve put up recently, so you can see a little more of how I use it… will be doing more videos with it as soon as possible…

And just for the reminder, here’s the other video filmed about 45 seconds after this one ended, that was released last month, called Better Than The Plan:

Both these tracks will be available for subscribers very shortly as a little pre-Christmas solo EP. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss out…

I’ve done a couple of masterclasses recently, talking about the evolution of my approach to live playing, sampling, improvising and recording. One was for ScottsBassLessons.com which you can get if you’re  a subscriber over there, and the other was at Kidderminster College. The Kiddy College one is here in two parts.

Part 1, I introduce the Quneo and explain a little about the influence of two of my recent collaborators, Divinity and Daniel Berkman, and deal with a Looperlative fail (a fault I’ve now fixed! yay!) and end up with a lovely wonky hip-hop thing that’s a good example of where a lot of my music is going (comes in around 8:30) – if you can, listen on headphones, or Chromecast this to your TV 🙂 :

In Part 2, I explain some of where the rhythmic stuff comes from historically, via turntablism and the influence of J Dilla, talk a little about the way it has influenced my playing with other musicians, then play another piece, that starts with a Quneo piano solo before evolving into a groove thing with a Posies/David Torn influenced solo and a lovely change of gear just before the end…

Note: Both the tracks here will be available as an EP for my subscribers soon. Today my subscription is a year old! Check out the subscription here and get LOADS of music for just £20 a year: http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/subscribe – it’s by far the best way to support what I do 🙂

[UPDATE!] – There’s a third part to the video! It was, I think, still uploading when I posted this first time round 🙂

Here’s Part 3, which has a lot more talking, exploring a lot of ideas around improvisation and performance:

So my lil’ tour with Jonas Hellborg is over – we did just three dates to test the water, with a view to doing lots more soon. And we had a great time. More of that soon – there are photos and video to be shared, and stories to tell, but for now, something else…

Hopefully by now you’ve had a chance to see the cover story in Bass Guitar Magazine this month. If you’ve not been able to find it in a shop, the digital edition can be bought from Pocket Mags.

So, the big question is, what did we not get to in the interview that you’re most interested to know? Any burning questions about basses, tech, approach, business, my career, my philosophy, improv, teaching.. anything really… This is where to ask them.

Post those questions in the comments here, and I’ll then compile a second interview to sit alongside the already-very-comprehensive one in the magazine (it really is one of the best interviews I’ve ever had – Joel asked a whole lot of questions that I’ve never explored in that way before at all).

This is the solobasssteve AMA. Sound good? Off you go 🙂

My week of rather lovely media exposure rolls on – last night a track from A Crack Where The Light Gets In was played on my favourite radio show ever. It’s not my favourite radio show because they played the tracks, it’s been that since before they started occasionally playing my music about 14 years ago.

Listen to last night’s Late Junction here.

Late Junction is, not to get too hyperbolic, an amazing example of what the BBC license fee does/did best… eclectic, joyous, and exploratory with none of the demographic limitations that commercial radio’s need to appeal to advertisers demand.

I’ve discovered SO much music through Fiona, and earlier on through Verity Sharp. To have my music played in that context is an amazing validation of what I’m up to. The technical side of it is never discussed, there’s no ‘ooh, it’s so clever for a bass player to do this!’ – just my music alongside a whole load of the most beautiful, wide-ranging wonderfulness from around the world. As a validation of purpose, it’s about as good as it gets.

The track that Fiona played last night was ‘Praxis’ from A Crack Where The Light Gets In – have a listen to the whole album below, but do listen to the show linked above – the new context for the track, between all the other amazing stuff, gives a different perspective on it… and you get to hear Fiona say it’s one of her favourite tracks of the year 😉

…and a free download to the first person to Tweet me and tell me the name of the album that the track referenced in the title of this blog-post is from 😉

OK! The next month is getting really exciting – two new albums out now, Bass Guitar Magazine‘s October issue with me on the cover is in shops now, and the tickets for my October tour with Jonas Hellborg are selling well.

There’s a brand new design for the ‘everything’ USB Stick, a limited edition square one, featuring the artwork to both the new albums.

So, Competition Time! I’ll be giving away three of these USB Sticks in October to people picked at random from anyone who posts a selfie with their copy of the new issue of Bass Guitar Magazine with me on the cover. A few people have done this already, which is really lovely to see. Take a pic, post it on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and tag me in it, and I’ll stick all the names in a hat in October and send out 3 USB Sticks.

If you can’t wait that long, You can order one now for £25, OR, for the bargain of the century, subscribe for £20 and then buy the subscriber-only offer on the USB stick for £13 – you then also get the 10 album FingerPainting set included too. So that’s 40 albums (seriously, 40!), a live video and my novel, PLUS a year’s worth of new releases with the subscription, for £33 plus postage.

Which is nuts, right?

So, get snapping and tagging.

And if you’ve bought the new albums, please do post a review on Bandcamp and share the link to them around on Twitter.

Hope you’re enjoying the magazine article. More fun stuff on the way!