Category: Music News

All the latest news about musical goings-on…

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Learning songs…

this is another one of those things that are part and parcel of the lives of almost every working bassist on the planet – they spend their time learning songs to play with different bands or artists… except me. I very rarely have to learn songs, given that most of the time i’m playing either my own songs, or improvising.

So this week is both a challenge and a joy, as I’m learning not one but two sets to play with singers next week.

First up is Ric Hordinski AKA Monk. Ric and I first met, I think, on a gig we shared in LA about 5 years ago, where we were both playing solo. Since then we’ve stayed in touch, and I’ve been trying to get him over for Greenbelt. Finally, this year, he’s coming to play! hurrah! And in celebration of that, we’ve got a gig at Darbucka next Wednesday. It’s a double bill with Ric’s trio (with me on bass, hence the song learning) and my duo with Lobelia (much more usual Stevie-Fare, with lots of looped bass and vocal loveliness on songs mostly written by Lo.) Gigs in August are notoriously poorly attended (everyone’s on holiday and doin’ the festival thang, y’see), so if you can, PLEASE come out and see us play! It’ll be a fab show, with proper songs ‘n’ everything! :o)

The second set is with Sarah Masen, which is particularly enjoyable as I’ve been a big fan of Sarah’s music since her first album came out in the mid 90s, and love the way she writes both music and words. We’re learning these songs for a mainstage set at Greenbelt on Friday, which i’m rather looking forward to…

So I think I’ve got 16 songs to learn… oh, and a bass ‘n’ voice arrangement of a Bond theme to do before Greenbelt as well, for a more secretive show… more on that after it’s happened!

And for your listening pleasure, here are some Myspace links to hear what’s in store…

Ric/Monk
Sarah Masen
Lobelia
Me (inc. one tune with Lo.)

enjoy!

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Gig booking frenzy…

All kinds of exciting gig booking news today – first up, on August 22nd, I’ll be back playing at Darbucka for the first time this year, in my duo with Lobelia and also with Monk aka Ric Hordinski – Ric is a stunning guitarist, a former member of Over The Rhine, has produced records for people like Phil Keaggy and David Wilcox and made a stack of amazing records under the Monk moniker.

I played a show with Ric in LA a few years ago that was a whole lot of fun, and a whole lot of great music, and I tracked some fun noises for his new instrumental record when I was in Cincinnati on this last tour in the US.

The duo with Lobelia is one of the most exciting and fun musical projects I’ve had in ages, and you can hear some of what that sounds like on my myspace page and on her myspace page too.

So that’s gig #1.

Also this evening I’ve booked Patrick Wood and Andrea Hazell to come and play with the Recycle Collective at Greenbelt – both are Recycle regulars, stunning improvisors and just all-round amazing musicians.

AND, as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve booked Andrea, and am just waiting for confirmation from Cleveland Watkiss for the Recycle gig on the 6th September at The Vortex – how exciting!

Lots of great gig news fo’ sho’. :o)

Go and put them in your diaries now, you lovely london peoples.

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Entire gig of mine online!

You may remember that my gig the other night in Gipsy Hill (and yes, apparently that is how they spell Gipsy down there), was web-cast… well now it’s all available to stream online! hurrah! And here it is (click through to the site to be able to watch it in a bigger video window – oh, and headphones are recommended rather than laptop speakers, as the audio is OK, but not great… and you can’t understand a word I say, even worse than usual.. :o)

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Festival gig in Wales in August cancelled…

Just got a (not unexpected) email from the organiser of the Rainbow Spirit Enlightenment Fayre that I was supposed to be doing with the Recycle Collective and solo in a couple of weeks time, telling me that it’s been ‘postponed to next year’, which means cancelled in normal language (you can’t postpone a festival for a year, cos festival’s generally happen every year, unless you’re just going to post-date them all ‘welcome to the 2007 RSEF, in Aug 2008!’ etc.)

I’m not that surprised, but it is a real shame, as I obviously really look forward to all recycle gigs, but the communication over this fest has been pretty poor all along… we sorted out the booking and a fee back in Feb/March, I think, which was all good, then the venue changed (venue change in the same year as the festival was happening? er…). I had to change the line-up due to prior commitments, and the organiser was fine with that (let’s face it, with the Recycle Collective, I’m working with a list of 20 or 30 of the top improvising musicians in the country, with pedigrees as long as someone with very long arms’ arm, so it’s not really going to be hard for me to match the quality of any particular line up…)

And then… well, nothing. No contract, no accommodation details, no requests for a stage plan/spec list, no merch sales details, no stage times, no map, no nothing… not a great sign (with Greenbelt, I always have a contract, even for gigs I’m not getting paid for over the weekend, I get merch things through from the people who run the shop, I get venue managers emailing me to ask for stage plans and any special requirements (knowing that I clearly always have very special requirements… :o)

So it’s off. Balls.

But it does mean I’m now available that weekend for teaching or a house concert, or both – anyone want to book something? :o)

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session day…

After collecting my car this morning, most of today has been spent recording. Having turned the living room into a remote studio, I spent the day recording tracks for an album by LeeSun – a lovely quirky singer/songwriter from Leeds. She initially invited me to go and record with her in Canada back in June, but it was slap bang in the middle of my US tour with L, so sadly I couldn’t do it (how much fun would that have been??), but I offered to do the tracks remotely when she got back, so that’s what I’m doing, in my lil’ studio here. It’s a fun way to work, being engineer and tea-boy as well as musician, and it means I can quickly do multiple versions of a line and send them over to be checked out. This evening I was able to send some MP3 roughs of what I’d been up to over to LeeSun and chat via MSN about what she wanted – very useful. The wonders of the internet. Fortunately, she really likes what I’ve done with the songs – they’re lovely songs, and right up my street – so we’ll go ahead with the rest of the album.

I’m hoping to do more of this kind of work – it’s a great way to be involved in projects that normally couldn’t afford to a) get me to where the recording is happening or b) even afford time in a big studio anyway. This way, I can do it in my studio in a way that suits the budget of the artist/producer, and everyone’s happy. Good for keeping my carbon footprint down as well, i guess, not driving to studios all over the place…

If you’re reading this and you’ve got a project you want me to play on, please do send me an email with some details about the project and you’re budget, and we’ll sort something out.

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fun gig.. eventually

So Mum and I went down to see my lovely Grandparents in the tin-box-on-wheels, a little later than planned due to road closures (pointless detail for the benefit of The Cheat – he panics if he doesn’t get the full picture). Lovely day spent with Les Gramps, then mum and I set off to Gipsy Hill in South London for me to play at Freedom Of Expression II – the second of the nights that Tim Eveleigh is now running (the first being the one in Croydon that I’ve played a few times, and the third being one i’m playing soonish… need to add that to the gig calendar).

Anyway, once again, I gave Google Maps directions far too much benefit of the doubt, and we got hopefully lost in that bit of South London that has towns called things like Pratt’s Bottom and Badger’s Arse or something…. So it took us about 45 minutes longer than it should’ve to get there.

But when we did, all was good – the lovely Cara Winter was on stage as we got there, sounding great as always, was followed by the also-great Gaz Twist, followed by me. The sound was great, the new strings were a little disconcerting (I change the strings on my fretless every 2 years or so, so new strings feel VERY odd to start with…) but I played OK, talked rubbish, and a fun time was had by all.

This morning my car was ready to be picked up, so I took the tin-box back, paid the £369 that could’ve been so much more if what they did hadn’t got it through, and got into my own car… shit, this thing’s easy to drive!!! Only after the tin box did I really get the full contrast. I remember what it felt like when I first got it, after 10 years of knackered diesel fiestas… yummmm.

And onto today magazine columns to be written, albums to be recorded, stuff to be packed. The life of the itinerant solo bassist…

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Gig tonight to be live webcast (Thursday)

Should’ve mentioned this before, but I’m being a bit slack of late with this stuff…

Anyway, my gig tonight in South London is being webcast – come back here about 10 to 10.30pm, and hopefully this embedded link will be featuring me playing lovely music…

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new track up on Myspace page… finally!

I know, I know – with all this talk of us touring and gigging across Europe and the US, y’all have been wanting to hear some of the duo-loveliness with Lobelia – well, there are now two tracks for you to listen to. Firstly on my myspace page there’s a track of L’s called ‘Happy’, which has been given the Stevie-loopage makeover. It’s a great song anyway, and suits my tinkering rather well..

The other is on L’s myspace page and is a version of Black Hole Sun – it’s the arrangement that Cleveland Watkiss and I first came up with ages ago, that Julie and I used at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest last year, and which L adds her own lovely flava to… Good work, fiddy!

Which all means we’ve got work to do on getting this live album together in the next couple of months…

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The last two gigs on the tour

So tonight was the last night of our 7 week tour for L and I, and we’re in Wisner Nebraska, about 100 miles north west of Omaha…

The gig was in a beautiful recording studio, with a gorgeous piano, and the most fabulous sound, not to mention a delightful audience. I made a handful of mistakes, just through being hugely tired, but in general, ’twas a fitting end to the tour.

And it was recorded, which made last night’s gig all the more important as a warm-up. That one was in St Louis, at the Delmar Restaurant and Lounge, which was set up at the last minute, but was a nice venue, provided a reasonable break in the journey, and gave us a chance to see Amy and Joe from Clatter – you’d be hard pushed to find two nicer people, they drove 3 hours to see us play, and we then followed them back and stayed in their lovely house, got less than 3 hour’s sleep, and then talked for two hours before we set off for Nebraska.

And tomorrow we drive 900 miles (according to Google Maps, it’s exactly 900 miles from here to Hartville), drop the car off on Sunday, and Monday I fly to NYC, then Tuesday back to London… I think… I’ll check.

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