The Blog/News

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An Interview from AlternativeMatter about Believe In Peace and Improvisation.

Last week, this interview was posted at AlternativeMatter.net. The questions, from John Toolan, about the new album and improvisation, were really interesting to answer – here it is, if you want a read, or click the links above to see it on their sites too 🙂 (if after reading you have your own questions about improv, please post them in the comments).

What inspired you to record and release this particular piece of improvisation?

The recording part was easy – as far as possible, I record every gig, and most of my practice sessions. This is possible because my live and studio rigs are identical, so instead of using a mixing desk to pull all the various looped and processed elements together, I use a MOTU soundcard, which I can hook up to my laptop for instant multi-track recording! It’s made for some wonderful live stuff being captured that in any other setting, we’d have been lucky to get a tape from an audience member of. Continue reading “An Interview from AlternativeMatter about Believe In Peace and Improvisation.”

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NAMM, Shows, and Fun Times in California

After a two year absence, I’m heading out to California for the NAMM show in just a week’s time. I’m really looking forward to catching up with the many friends I’ve made at the show over the years. In amongst the schmoozing and nonsense, a great number of remarkable music-loving people come together at NAMM and I always relish the chance to catch up on everyone’s news and make plans for the next year!

I’ve managed to fill up my schedule pretty well, so here’s what’s happening so far:

  • Thurs 19th – AltBass. at El Torito in Anaheim – the whole bill is Steve Lawson, Chris Tarry, Steuart Liebig, Darren Michaels, Tom Shad – music starts at 7pm.
  • Friday 20th Jan – BassUp! at Viento y Agua Coffee House – also on the bill Steuart Liebig, Edo Castro, Stew McKinsey, Christopher “C3” Cardone, Brittany Frompovich, Zen Beer, John Ady, Rod Taylor, and Darren Michaels!
  • Saturday 21st – AltBass Pt 2, at El Torito in Anaheim again – the bill this time is Steve Lawson, Julie Slick, Gustav Fjelstrom & Tom Shad.
  • Sunday 22nd – House Concert in Sherman Oaks, CA – message me if you want to come. There may be limited spaces… the amazing Julie Slick will be guesting with me 🙂  $10 suggested donation…
  • Monday 23rd – house concert in Newport Beach california – along with a lot of other people TBC.
  • Tuesday 24th – at The All American Melodrama Theater in Long Beach, CA, with the wonderful acoustic guitarist Muriel Anderson. http://www.allamericanmelodrama.com/ – tickets $15.
  • Thursday 26th – House Concert, Bayview, San Francisco. – See the facebook event page for details. (with Daniel Berkman on Kora!)
  • Friday 27th – House Concert, West Oakland – see the facebook event page for details. (with Daniel Berkman and Lattanand)
  • Saturday 28th – house concert in San Jose with Michael Manring – message me for details. $20 donation…
  • Sunday 29th  – Northridge Music Center, Citrus Heights (Sacramento), CA – hybrid concert/masterclass, focussed on looping. http://www.northridgemusic.com $20.

More details will be added here as and when – if you need info on any of them, please message me via email, facebook or twitter and I’ll hopefully see you or the friends you send my way a a show! 🙂

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Nice Things Are Being Said About ‘Believe In Peace’

So, it’s been out a week, and a few nice things have been written about Believe In Peace. Well, a lot of nice things have been said about it, but I’m not about to start linking to all the Tweets and Facebook messages. That’d get weird.

Instead, here are three blog posts that say nice things about it.

The most involved of them is this in-depth review at AlternativeMatter.net – I’ve just done an interview for them too, which should be up in a day or two, and I’ll post here in a couple of weeks.

Then there’s these lovely and encouraging words from the fabulous Laura Kidd, AKA She Makes War.  She’s writing a blog post a week about lovely things she’s found. My album was in week one.

And finally, No Treble wrote this piece – I’ve stepped away from seeing the online bass community as my primary place for conversation here, so I’m hugely appreciative of the bass blogs and news sites that take the time to write about what I’m up to.

Here, in case you missed it, is the album again – it’s been my fastest-selling digital album ever (and that’s without it being on iTunes or Amazon or any of that stuff – this is all bandcamp), and it means I’ll be able to make a healthy donation to Reprieve. (a third of all the money I make on the album is being donated to them).

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A Little “Buy Music With Bandcamp” Primer…

As you know, all of my albums come out first on Bandcamp (as of writing, I’m in their top 5 ‘current best-sellers’ thanks to you – I won’t bother linking to it (though I did get a screengrab).

I may or may not put this on iTunes/Amazon/eMusic etc. I haven’t decided yet. I’d MUCH rather you got it from Bandcamp, for all our sakes. Here’s why:

  • You get to choose your file type. With Bandcamp I can release 24bit audiophile FLAC versions and the highest possible quality MP3 versions (we well as AAC/ALAC and OGG) all in the same place. No faffing about for you searching out the best format, just choose the one you want.
  • Sleevenotes, artwork, extras. I can add PDFs of sleevenotes, photos, lyrics, individual art for each track. and I can change it. As often as I want. Freedom 🙂
  • The ‘Pay What You Want’ thing. It just makes sense – not only does it let you put in the price that represents both what you can afford, and what you think it’s worth, but it means that people who are in parts of the world where they otherwise can’t get ‘legal’ digital music can download it without paying, and if you ever lose your copy in a harddrive crash, you can just come and download it again for free. Or if you decide you want to give FLAC a go and see what all the hi-res fuss is about – again, you can replace it for free.
  • Payment is easy. OK, so not quite as easy as buying on iTunes if you’ve got an iTunes account, but its’ way more friendly. If you’ve got a PayPal account, it’s 3 clicks and a password confirmation. If you haven’t, you can pay with a credit/debit card.
  • Full previews. Let’s be honest, in the grand scheme of things HARDLY ANYONE HAS HEARD OF ME. Even fewer have heard my music. Hiding it away behind 30 second previews on iTunes/Amazon is utterly insane. As would be hosting it all on a listening service that’s separate from the buying/download bit. It’s utterly vital for indie musicians to remember, you don’t get an audience by selling music, you have the chance to sell music ONCE YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE. The unlimited listening makes people hearing what I do as easy as possible. You can listen on the site, on Facebook, other people can blog it. It’s just great! A lot of the people who may hear my stuff are likely to need quite a while to decide they want it enough to buy it. It may take years. I don’t want to stop them listening in those intervening years. I’m in this for the long game, not some get rich quick plan. You can listen on the site as much as you want. That’s great. …it’s also worth noting that the pages will also play on an iPhone/iPad, thanks to them being HTML5, not Flash-driven – you can’t download from Bandcamp to either of those, but that’s because Apple are idiots, nothing Bandcamp can do about that.
  • Sharing via social media. Bandcamp is SO friendly. the URL turns into an embedded player on Facebook, anyone can blog it and have it playable to their friends, every page (album or track) has facebook and twitter share buttons, when you’ve bought it and it’s downloading, there are sharing buttons there too. It’s made for sharing.
  • Sharing the love via Creative Commons. iTunes and Amazon don’t give me the option to change the license terms on my music. It’s All Rights Reserved or nothing. But I don’t want to make it illegal for you to share the music with your friends. I don’t want to make it illegal for you to add the music to your videos, to remix it, to sample it… If you’re not making money from it, you can do what you want with it. If you want to make money off it, we negotiate the terms as normal. That’s friendly, right?

Convinced? Here you go:

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Believe In Peace – Out Now!

Here it is, my brand new album, Believe In Peace. Click the play button while you read the rest of this, and download it if you like what you hear:

So, in case you’ve missed the rest of the info about it, Believe In Peace was recorded live in Minneapolis last summer, improvised in an exhibition of art by a wonderful artist called Geoff Bush.

Geoff’s work explores the symbols and themes of the I Ching, focussing on his meta-theme of ‘Believe In Peace’, hence the album title. Continue reading “Believe In Peace – Out Now!”

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My Favourite Music Of 2011

Unlike the dickheads who are paid to write about free CDs for newspapers, i think 2011 was a year when a lot of great music got made. I, like everyone else in the world, only got to hear a tiny fraction of it, so this is in no way a ‘best of’ list for the year, just a handful of things that I heard that constitutes my favourites from that tiny selection. Also in no particular order. I’ll start with the ones you can hear straight away, and then list a few that aren’t available to stream online…

Calamateur – The Quiet In The Land

Andrew Howie’s been making brilliant music for years. I love pretty much everything he does. Here he gets angry, he tackles doubt and confusion head-on and writes music to match. It’s at times unsettling but is nothing short of brilliant. (if you get it pay lots for it, so Andrew will send you the hour long ambient track that comes with it – it too is marvellous)

Rob Szabo – Rob Szabo

Rob’s an outstandingly great singer-songwriter. He’s one of those people who like Tracy Chapman, will suffer in his career from being consistently brilliant – there’s no big story in ‘great musician puts out another great record’. Fortunately, we no longer need big stories. We just want great music. and THIS is truly masterful music. I love it.

Lower Case Noises – Migratory Patterns

Andy Othling creates amazing soundscapes that on headphones will make any place you walk through while listening to it feel like a whole new landscape. I love all of his music that I’ve heard, and this is his best so far, IMHO.

Deborah Jordan – What You See

Soulful IDM/Electronica gorgeousness from an incredible singer. Love it.

Fer Isella – #Cosecha

A pure twitter discovery – Argentinean post-jazz experimenter making utterly gorgeous music. A bit fusion-y but without the unnecessary twiddles. Some 70s Miles, some ECM, and then a few songs to finish. Great stuff.

FreekBass – Concentrate

Supremely funky goodness at the intersection of old school funk, hip-hop and electronica. Magic.

Of those that were made by people who don’t put their music on bandcamp, I’d recommend checking out a few of my favourites:

  • The Waterboys – An Appointment With Mr Yeats
  • Bruce Cockburn – Small Source Of Comfort
  • Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What
  • Tiger Darrow – Hello and You Know Who You Are (two amazing albums, released by an 18 year old, on the SAME DAY.)
  • Animals As Leaders – Weightless
  • Yvonne Lyon – More Than Mine
  • Civil Wars – Barton Hollow
  • Kt Tunstall – the Scarlet Tulip EP
  • Bela Fleck and The Flecktones – Rocket Science.

That’s a fair chunk of the new music I’ve been enjoying this year. Google ‘em, find ‘em on a streaming thing if they’re there, or just buy the indie ones by people who are nice enough to let you hear the stuffs you’re about to buy 😉

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2011 – A Year In Music

I’m going to stick to what happened to Lobelia, Flapjack and I during the year, rather than a world-events review. I leave that to those who have the time and resources to do the subject justice.

We kicked off 2011 in a new (if temporary) home, one where for the first time in a long time we would be able to record vocals and guitar. I’d finished 2010 with a couple of new tracks being recorded, so plans were hatched for both Lo and I to start making new records. Continue reading “2011 – A Year In Music”

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New Album Out Next Week!

If we’re friends on Facebook or Twitter, you may already know that I have a new album coming out next week.

It was recorded live in Minneapolis, after a fortuitous sequence of events (outlined in the sleeve notes) lead us to play in an art exhibition by a fabulous artist called Geoff Bush.

The music was all improvised in response to Geoff’s beautiful art. His theme for his work is ‘Believe In Peace’ – which is also the title of the album, and his work is based on the I Ching from which the four track titles come.

So we have four tracks, all played on my fretless 6 string bass (I only take one bass with me on tour in the US), and there’s some clever weirdness going on from my Kaoss Pad.

Here’s the opening track from it. Like all my recent stuff, it’s mixed and mastered for good speakers/headphones, so if you’re listening to this on a laptop, you’re going to miss a lot…

Enjoy, please tell your friends, and look out for the finished thing on the 1st or 2nd of January! 🙂

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A Birthday Present, From Me To You

Today’s my birthday, and to celebrate, I’m offering you a free download. Please feel free to go and grab an album of your choice from my site, with no obligation to pay at all. if you feel like paying, please download two albums – the first one’s on me.

All I ask in return is that if you like it, you tell your friends about it. On Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Forums, or even in actual real life. However feels most comfortable to you.

So head over to http://music.stevelawson.net and have a listen to the stuff there, or just click the download link on my latest album in the widget below:

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