The Blog/News

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Getting Ready for the FingerPainting Release

…so by now, you’ve all heard the preview of the title  track from FingerPainting, right? You got it from the mailing list, or messaged on Twitter/Facebook and got the code? Good. (if not, send me a message!)

Today I’ve been sorting out the pre-order packages for Bandcamp. We’re going to put the first show up for immediate download. You’ll be able to buy it on its own, or with the a USB stick of everything we’ve ever done, the USB + access to the daily updates as I edit, via Dropbox, a double CD best-of from the shows, and the CDs + all 10 shows downloaded… Lots of options. Here’s a sneak preview of the images that’ll go with it all on Bandcamp:

And of course, Accidentally (On Purpose) is already there for your delictation and delight.

More news very soon… Til then, I’ll be sending out press/radio/promo download codes in the next couple of days, so drop me a message if you’d like to write about the album, and I’ll send a code over…

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Is This Unique? Every Note We’ve Ever Played Will Be Released

Here’s a list of facts about Daniel Berkman and I:

  • We met at the sound-check to our first gig together.
  • The idea to play only improvised duo music came about while setting up for that gig.
  • We’ve now done 10 shows together, resulting in somewhere around 11-12 hours of music (I think).
  • We’ve never played together NOT in front of an audience. Never “jammed”, never even properly sound-checked together.
  • Every note we’ve ever played together is recorded – multi-track proper hi-res recording of every gig we’ve done.
  • It will all be released soon. Every minute of it.

I’ve no idea if this is something that has ever happened before. I’ve certainly never come across a band that were able to commercially release every note they’d ever played together. These aren’t ‘board tapes’ that serial bootleggers are dumping on Archive.org. This properly mixed, mastered and released. Continue reading “Is This Unique? Every Note We’ve Ever Played Will Be Released”

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How To Send Bandcamp D/L codes via Mailchimp…

Here’s a thing I’ve been mentally wrestling with for a few days – I really want to be able to do a Bandcamp download code for each member of my mailing list, which is hosted with Mailchimp. I looked through the documentation for the site, but couldn’t immediately see how to do it.

So I did what I always do when I need a problem solved. I asked Twitter.

And my clever friend Lee told me how to make a custom field in the list database.

 

He tweeted:

 

So I did that, but there’s no import option for a single field… I then noticed that there is the option to ‘auto-update‘ your current list when importing data – which means I can export the list from Mailchimp to Excel, generate the codes in Bandcamp, add them to the newly created column in excel, then reimport the list to Mailchimp using the auto-update function.

Then just add the short-code merge tag for the code in your actual email template. Hey presto, unique Bandcamp code for every list member…

It’s worth noting that this is only advisable if you either have

a) massively higher than average open rates on your mailing list or
b) shedloads of spare download codes that you haven’t used with bandcamp.

I’m in the latter camp, so can afford to give them away and see what happens…

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Birmingham Bass Night II – featuring Yolanda Charles!

So, we’re back at Tower Of Song, May 19th, 8pm, with a very brilliant headliner… Yolanda Charles.

Click here for the Facebook event page.

Yolanda has long been one of my favourite bassists, having first heard her play with Urban Species back in the early 90s, then seen her with Carleen Anderson, Paul Weller, Robbie Williams… Her session career is an insane list of massive names – in the studio or live, she’s trusted to do the job and bring something amazing to the gig.

Of late, Yo’s been concentrating on her solo project, The Deep M.O. – an absolutely killer funk/soul band that she fronts on bass and voice. She VERY rarely plays completely solo, so we’re in for a really special evening.

Here’s a video of her playing solo, and then her album with The Deep M.O. which you need to own:

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The Glorious Dilemma – How To Release A Huge Amount Of Music?

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…

Here’s the glorious dilemma Daniel Berkman and I find ourselves in right now – we have 8 shows recorded from our January tour, as well as one still-unreleased show from the previous January (and of course the gig that became Accidentally (On Purpose) ) which is all worthy of release. Continue reading “The Glorious Dilemma – How To Release A Huge Amount Of Music?”

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Rock And Roll Is Dead Gets A Proper Release!

So, only about three years late, I’ve finally put my novel, Rock And Roll Is Dead, up for proper download. You can get it by clicking here:

Previously it was a free PDF and an ePub version that a friend put together for me. Now, via Leanpub, I’ve done it properly, and you can get it in PDF/EPUB/MOBI versions, for Kindle, iBooks and everything else.

So what’s the story? It’s about a band, playing pub gigs, who decide to get out of the rut they’re in. And it’s quite a journey.

It ends up being a bit of a fictional music manifesto. Like condensing all the New Music Strategies blog stuff here into a book and adding loads of swearing (they get quite angry at various times through the book…)

Here’s a lil’ promo video about the book:

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The 360 Deal – A Book Of Very Useful Music Advice

I’m in a new book!

It’s called The 360 Deal, and was conceived and assembled by Andrew Dubber (my colleague in New Music Strategies). A few months back he shared the idea with me and we started to assemble a list of possible contributors and in this first digital release are about 100 of the eventual 360 contributions. If you buy it now, you’ll get all the future updates for free!

The book costs $3.60 (or more, and some people have paid LOTS more) and ALL the money is going to Music Basti – an amazing charity that works with at-risk children, using music to strengthen and empower them.

You can buy the book on Leanpub here. Go to the 360 Deal website here.
Listen to the podcast that Dubber and I recorded about it here.
Read what Hypebot had to say about it here.

Then go and tell ALL your friends about it. Let’s all get wise, get educated, and help kids in poverty in India while we’re at it, yes?

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Birmingham Bass Night – A Resounding Success!

So the first Birmingham Bass Night was a resounding success. A comfortably full venue, some amazing music and a good time was had by all.

I feel really lucky to have had such a great line-up for what was really the pilot for a regular event. Russ Sargeant played a beautiful opening set, including an exquisite cover of The Blue Nile’s Let’s Go Out Tonight… so often when an instrumentalist decides to sing a number, the verdict is ‘brave but unwise’, but Russ has a voice to match his bass skillz… hope we get to hear him sing again! He’ll be back at another Birmingham Bass Night soon, I promise 🙂

Then me, doing my thing. Running a night and playing at it can be a stress, but I’ve done it enough and have stripped away the unneccesary stuff well enough that I had no such troubles here. It helped that the venue, Tower Of Song, is SO musician-friendly. There are way too many ‘music venues’ these days whose primary concern is selling beer and musicians are just the bait to get people in the building. Tower Of Song is run by a dedicated and talented musician, Tom Martin, whose primary concern is to run a venue where music gets heard in the optimum environment. It makes a huge difference to how you play to know that your music is respected in that way by the people hosting you… almost house concert-like.

I played A Year Afloat, The Kindness Of Strangers, Hello and an extended new version of Grace And Gratitude (a request fromSarah in the audience… was happy to oblige 🙂 )

 
Then our headliner was Lorenzo Feliciati. As I said in my introduction on the night, hearing Lorenzo’s musical world grow over the last 10 years has been a joy. He was already an amazing musician when I first met him, and has continued to stretch himself and find new vehicles for expressing himself musically. Definitely a kindred spirit. Of late, he’s put together an amazing band called Naked Truth, with Pat Mastelotto of King Crimson that combines fusion, ambient, post rock and deep improv to amazing effect. His latest solo album Frequent Flyer is also magical.

For Birmingham Bass Night, Lorenzo teamed up with Dave Walsh – a brilliant drummer from Leeds – for a duo set that covered Miles Davis and Alan Holdsworth tunes (Holdsworth for bass and drums duo?? yup.) and some of Lorenzo’s own compositions. It was a wonderful contrast to the more mellow sounds that Russ and I conjured up to have something that was at times ferocious and funky as well as gentle and contemplative.

All in a marvellous night. Thanks to everyone who came! PLEASE feel free to post your own thoughts and observations in the comments (there’s been loads of talk about the gig on Facebook which has been great, and it really helps with the promotion of the event to have positive audience feedback to link people to 🙂 )

We’ll be doing another one in May.. stay tuned for an announcement about the line-up ASAP!

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This Coming Sunday! Birmingham Bass Night!

flyer for birmingham bass nightBirmingham 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 soundtracks”.

www.lorenzofeliciati.com
www.stevelawson.net
www.russsargeant.co.uk

 

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