The Blog/News

Posted on

A Skype Chat with Brad McCarty of TheNextWeb – Musicians And Money

A few weeks back, I was interviewed by Brad McCarty of TheNextWeb, for this article on how musicians are making money online. Brad asked a lot of excellent questions, and naturally, there was no room for it all in his article. So with his permission, I’m making a (slightly edited) version of our conversation available here. We range through quite a few bits of the new music economy, so I hope it’s useful to you:

Brad ::
I’m trying to piece together a story about how both large and indie artists are finding ways to make money in the age of somewhat rampant piracy.
I’ve seen you talk, at length at times, about your thoughts on the subject. I wondered if you could tell me what you’re doing to grow your audience and career.

Steve ::
What am I doing? making music and inviting people to listen to it, then pay what they think it’s worth. I’m also asking those who are listening to tell their friends. I still send out some info to magazines/radio, but rarely bother. And I focus on making sure that the rest of the stuff I do is interesting, so people who are drawn in by the conversation or the commentary have a reason to investigate the music, cos ‘hey, check out my shit!’ isn’t interesting when 500,000 people are saying it. Continue reading “A Skype Chat with Brad McCarty of TheNextWeb – Musicians And Money”

Posted on

BBC 6Music And Improv With Shlomo – 2 Things To Listen To

I’m just back from a fabulous weekend at Greenbelt – where I’ve spent my August Bank Holiday for all but 3 of the last 22years (and one of those was only because Greenbelt was moved to an earlier slot in the year, so I’ve actually only missed 2 in 22 years – this being my 20th GB).

Anyway, time to catch up on two interesting things that have happened. Firstly, I was interviewed last week by the wonderful Tom Robinson for his ‘Fresh On The Net’ BBC Introducing show on BBC 6Music – click here to go and listen to it (the listen again runs out in about 3 days, but I’ll chop the audio and get it uploaded somewhere 🙂 ) It’s a wonderfully succinct, pithy interview – sadly not because I’ve discovered how not to waffle, but more because they edited it rather well – my bit is 33 minutes into the recording, but the rest is worth listening to for some great new music… Continue reading “BBC 6Music And Improv With Shlomo – 2 Things To Listen To”

Posted on

Live So Far and Beautifully Undone now on CD!

FINALLY – you asked for it, so it’s here. Live So Far on CD! It’s our live album from our US tour in 2010 – a mix of solo tunes from Lobelia and I, plus two VERY special guests in the from of Todd Reynolds on violin and Neil Alexander on keyboards.

It was a really special tour for us – if you’ve not heard the album yet, here it is. Click the picture to order the CD.

and if that’s not enough, Lobelia’s new album, Beautifully Undone, which I mixed and mastered, and play bass on one tune of (and took the photo on the cover of!) is also out on limited edition CD. Listen to that here too:

Posted on

The Internet – Fundamentally A Force For Good

OK, this post has come about through a few things. It’s a topic that comes to mind every time some numbnuts in government starts talking about how the internet causes riots, or the massive liars at the RIAA/BPI start ranting again about the evils of piracy and how the internet needs to be taxed or shut down, or whatever bullshit they’re peddling this month.

I tweeted a coupla thoughts over the last few days:

Continue reading “The Internet – Fundamentally A Force For Good”

Posted on

New Improv Video With Lobelia and Tiger Darrow

Here’s something lovely that has just been posted to Vimeo – it’s from a house concert that Lobelia and I played in Plano, TX earlier in the year. Brian, who expertly hosts the gig for us and filmed it so beautifully, had seen Tiger Darrow play a few weeks earlier opening for Zoe Keating, so asked her to come and open the show. She did, was brilliant, and thus we had to play together at the end. Here it is: Continue reading “New Improv Video With Lobelia and Tiger Darrow”

Posted on

Tweet-Rant #2 : 23 Tweets About Bandcamp

I had another tweet rant the other night, this time about Bandcamp, and some of the issues surrounding it. Here it is again, annotated with additional info about each tweet:

A couple of @bandcamp stats for you. The average price of a paid download of mine on bandcamp is £6.49 – for something available ‘free’.
 10:02pm Jul 28th 2011

[that one’s self-explanatory – a quick conversion online shows me that £6.49 is currently $10.63] Continue reading “Tweet-Rant #2 : 23 Tweets About Bandcamp”

Posted on

Teaching Bass Via Skype

This week, I’m starting to offer lessons via Skype (or iChat or Google+ Hangout… whichever private video channel works for you). I’ve done a little of this in the past, and had a lot of people asking for it, so am getting round to sorting it out.

Here’s how it works:

  • you’ll need a computer with a fairly fast internet connection, your bass and some way of amplifying it so I can hear it – either via the mic on your computer, or by plugging it into a sound-card so it plays straight to me (I’ll see if I can write a tutorial on this after I’ve had some more experience with it and seen what the problems can be).
  • If you do go the soundcard route, you’ll probably also need a mic. Headphones will make it easier for you to avoid weird echoing problems.
  • You then book a lesson the same way anyone does (email me and sort out a time), pay me upfront via paypal (or in the UK, by bank-transfer, which must’ve cleared before the lesson), and we do the lesson.
  • The cost will be the same as for a face-to-face lesson: £30 for one hour, £50 for two. (Paypal will do the currency conversion for you).

Simple-as.

If you have some way of recording Skype, you’re welcome to do that for your own use/reference (not for distribution – I’ll be doing more video lesson stuff on youtube soon, but one on one lessons are for you).

And that’s it. You in your house, me in mine. Hurrah!

Interested? Email me now.

Posted on

Buying My Music In Bulk (USB Stick And Bandcamp)

Two bits of news relating to being about to buy my (and in the case of Bandcamp other people’s) music in bulk.

You may know that we started selling our entire back catalogue on a single 4Gb USB stick, just prior to the US tour. We continued to sell them on the tour, and they proved very popular with the iPod-wielding members of the audience. So we’re still selling them. Here’s a list of what’s on it:

My Solo Albums:

  • And Nothing But The Bass: Live At The Troubadour (2000)
  • Not Dancing For Chicken (2002)
  • Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 1 (2002)
  • Grace And Gratitude (2004)
  • Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 2 (2004)
  • Behind Every Word (2006)
  • Ten Years On: Live In London (2010)
  • 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything (2011)
  • Believe In Peace (2012)

Steve and Lobelia Albums:

  • Live In Nebraska (2008)
  • Live So Far (2010)

Lobelia Albums:

  • 040515 (2004)
  • Beautifully Undone (Songs I Wish I’d Written)

Other Collaborations:

  • Conversations (Steve Lawson and Jez Carr) 2002
  • For The Love Of Open Spaces (Steve Lawson and Theo Travis) 2003
  • Live in Cambridge (Steve & Theo, previously unreleased, double length official bootleg) 2005
  • Numbers (Lawson/Dodds/Wood) 2008
  • Slow Food (Steve Lawson and Trip Wamsley) 2010
  • Infrablab (Trip Wamsley and Steve Lawson) 2010
  • As Yet Untitled Album (Steve Lawson and Mike Outram, Preview of forthcoming album) 2011

Video:

  • Steve Live in Belgium (45 minutes)

All of the albums are in MP3 format, with all the official ones being 320K files. Both mine and Lo’s latest albums are also on there as 24bit FLAC files.

You can read a sort-of review of the USB Stick here.

All of that is just £25. Which, obviously includes a rather nice 4GB USB Stick as well. Insane value. Click the Paypal button below to buy it. (there’s an option on there to pay an extra £5 or £10 if you a) want to pay more or b) want to contribute something to the international postage, but it’s not compulsory…)


Price (with optional international pricing)




IF you don’t want the stick, or want to pay more (or less) for all the non exclusive stuff on there,  you can now get multiple albums on Bandcamp, across different artist sites, with a single transaction, via their new shopping cart.

So you can go to my site, Trip Wamsley‘s site, Lobelia’s site, Mike Outram‘s Site, Lawson/Dodds/Wood‘s site, and another other bandcamp sites, collect them all together, distribute the cash across the albums however you wish (for those that are Pay What You Think It’s Worth), and pay once. Awesome, eh? Try It!

Posted on

24 Tweets About Digital Music.

Over the last few days, a lot of people have been talking about the arrival of Spotify in the US. I blogged a LOT about Spotify when it first arrived – and many of the same “it’s the future of music!/it’s the end of civilization as we know it!” conversations are happening now. So I posted a handful of tweets about it, which people liked, so I gathered them together into a single page with ExquisiteTweets.com.

Now I’m tidying them up here (fixing the wayward numbering in the process), and will maybe expand on them a little as time goes on. I’ve left the original links in place in case you want to retweet any of the tweets on Twitter… Continue reading “24 Tweets About Digital Music.”

Posted on

French Review Of 11 Reasons… (with Translation)

A couple of weeks ago, this review showed up on a French Website called indierockmag.com – with my paltry French skillz, I could tell it was nice, but it wasn’t til I asked on Twitter and Facebook the other night for a translation that I got what it really said… I got 5 translations sent to me, by 5 very lovely people. I’ve only included one here, for obvious reasons, but am v. grateful to Guylaine, Dave (who posted a translation on Facebook), Lorna, Michael and Wayne. Here’s Wayne’s translation – the link to the original review is http://www.indierockmag.com/article14847.html

“Since Steve Lawson became a father, the Londoner appreciates the weight of the years, philosophy, and still more the number three. And that’s good, because we are just as into the poetic meditations that the musician draws from the single six-string bass which, in his hands, becomes a tool of dreams.

“The first electric bassist to have performed solo at the Royal Albert Hall, he is a protege of Michael Manring, who said of Lawson’s 2004 album Grace and Gratitude that it was a real step forward in the art of the bass solo, doubtless referring to a world closer to the ambient music of Brian Eno or the subdued post-rock of Come On Die Young era Mogwai rather than the technical wizardry of Jaco Pastorius. Lawson continues in the same soft lyrical vein with his first album in five years, possessing the good taste to allow it to be downloaded for free. Knowing that the collection in question is even more gargantuan than its predecessors – easily passing 80 minutes – should especially not stop you pulling out your bank card should you turn out to fall in love with it.”

And, of course, you can listen to it here:

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top