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Tshirt details –

Here’s a webcam pic of me in one of the t-shirts –

nice, eh?

And they can be yours for a measly £12 if you live in the UK, or £13 round the world, in advance of the festival!

The sizes available are

Small
Medium
Large
X-Large
XX-Large
and a ladies’ skinny t

All lovely top quality ethical threads marvellousness.



– Click here for UK delivery (£12)


– and click here for the rest of the world (£13)

So make sure you put what size you want in with the paypal order!

[EDIT] – OK, so there’s nowhere on the paypal page to do that (doh!) – instead, just email me, or I’ll email you back when I get the order and find out what size you want! Sorry ’bout that.

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Edinburgh T-shirts are here!!

Right, my edinburgh T-shirts have arrived! How cool is that? Those lovely people at Ethical Threads have got them here four days quicker than they said they would.

So later on today, I’ll post here (and a few other places) about how you can order one ahead of time, and a piccie of me wearing one, so you can see just how lovely they are.

Ooh, how exciting!!

Oh, and if you’re in a band and need t-shirts, you so have to do it through Ethical ThreadsSoundtrack – Lorenzo Feliciati, ‘Upon My Head’.

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Italy post no. 11 (last one!)

(written 25/7/05 17.07)

So, on the plane on the way home. It turns out there was wifi available in the airport once you’d gone through to the departure lounge, but I met up with a guy from Naples who was at the gig yesterday, so spent the time chatting to him instead of online. So none of this stuff will be uploaded til I get home.

The good news is that I’ve had no hassle at all getting my bass onto the planes on this trip – it remains to be seen if my rack makes it home safely; it’s currently in the hold, at the mercy of the gorillas that throw your stuff around in a way euphamistically refered to as ‘baggage handling’ – I think baggage mutilation or baggage stomping would be more accurate.

Anyway, it’s the home stretch, and I’m hugely looking forward to heading out for curry tonight with TSP and Jez. Can’t wait to be home.

It’s been a very successful trip – a lot of opportunities have presented themselves for further touring in Italy, and I’ll hopefully be back there in November. Which gives me about three months to learn how to explain the story behind Shizzle in Italian.

From this evening though, it’ll be full speed back into Edinburgh, as well as the gigs in Guildford and Berwick, and planning some more dates for September, writing an extended improv framework for a performance at Greenbelt and planning a couple of tours for early 2006 with Theo in the UK and Michael Manring in the US.

…And now I’ve just been fleeced to the tune of £4.60 for a particularly hideous cup of hot chocolate (I’m dying for a mint tea – I’ve had none for days!!) and a cheese and pickle sandwich… don’t you just love budget airlines?

Oh, things are looking up, I’ve just noticed that one of the flight attendants has taken that crap-mowhawk-boy-band hair thing one stage further and is teetering dangerously on the boy-band/flock of seagulls cusp. Somehow bad 80s hair makes the journey more palatable.

Soundtrack – Maurizio Rolli, ‘Archivi Sonori’; Jonatha Brooke, ’10 Cent Wings’; James Taylor, ‘Hourglass’.

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Italy post no. 10

(written 25/7/05 13.13)

Bugger,

can’t seem to find wifi access in Linate Airport! And I’m stuck here for about three hours. Shitty shit.

<10 minute gap>

nope, just looked around and checked at information, and there’s no wireless access in the airport!! How nuts is that? Apart from anything else, surely they are missing a major money making venture – I’d be happy to pay for it, given that I’m here for hours and would really like to get some stuff done. Instead, I’ll have to read a book or write rubbish like this to upload to the blog later on.

I just can’t believe that an airport doesn’t have wifi! It makes no sense at all… grrrrr. A slightly crappy end to a rather marvellous weekend.

And I can’t even check my rack into Easy Jet for another 40 minutes, I’m that early. It’s good to be early, but it’s also good to have something to do when you are early. Ever get the feeling you’re just typing cos you’re bored?

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Italy post no. 9

(written 25/705 11.28)

just waiting to get a cab from the hotel to the airport, having spent the last hour talking with Maurizio Rolli (fab Italian bassist) and Hiram Bullock (guitarist with Marcus Miller/Jaco etc.) discussing their drummer problems. I love conversations like this – it makes life as a solo artist seem even more appealing, and also shows me just how easy the people I work with are to deal with. I’m feeling very lucky right now both to be able to play solo and to with lovely people like Theo and Jez and Cleveland and Michael and BJ and Orphy and the other friendly low maintainance musical geniuses that I spend my days making noises with.

The rest of the day yesterday went v. well – the Jam For Klaus went really well – I started it with a ebow ambient loop to set some kind of context for it, and each of the bassists added different elements that all complimented the whole and seemed to work as a fitting musical tribute to this local bassist who’d been so tragically killed.

After that jam, a whole other kind of jam – over at the BassZone stand in the expo bit of the day, I set up to play, and was joined by a couple of other Italian bassists, for a version of Highway 1, which worked really well.

And then the last two bits of the gig were Michael playing solo, followed by him guesting with the Maurizio Rolli big band in a tribute to Jaco, playing arrangements similar to those on The Birthday Concert. Maurizio is a fabulous bassist, and the arrangements were really well done.

And now I’m heading home, looking forward to seeing TSP and the Fairly Aged Felines, and getting back on with the process of sorting out my Edinburgh promo. the C Venues art dept. have come back with a whole load of changes to my poster and flyer (layout stuff rather than changing the design, but still a fair amount of work shuffling things around the screen, which needs to be done tomorrow), and I’ve still got to chase up some press and radio contacts for the fest, as well as playing in Guildford on thursday and Berwick On Tweed on Sunday, and fitting in as much teaching as I can in between… it’s all go in StevieWorld!

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Italy post no. 8

(written 24/7/05 17.18)

Well, despite starting almost an hour late, my gig went very well, thankfully. Another fabulously receptive Italian crowd, some of whom spoke good enough english to laugh at some of the bollocks I was talking between songs (cut down from the usual 40% of the set to just a short intro to each song).

The challenge was doing an entire set of songs on the fretless, something I haven’t done for a while (not counting the film gig on Friday). So the set list went

Grace And Gratitude
MMFSOG
Amo Amatis Amare
Kindness Of Strangers segued into What A Wonderful World
No More Us And Them
Despite My Worst Intentions

Nice long versions of Kindness Of Strangers and No More Us And Them, and more succinct versions of the others. The Seque into What A Wonderful World fits better with the theme of Kindness… than the bastardised version of ‘What’s Going On’ did – will have to feed that back into the set as a stand-alone track, as I do like it, and the fact that very few people ever recognise it. :o)

So now I’m waiting to be involved in a larger ensemble improv, title ‘Jam For Klaus’ – Klaus is a local bassist who was killed in a car accident last year, so everyone is playing a piece together for him. It’s a really nice idea, and I hope it works and doesn’t descend into bass wankery.

Other than that, my work here is done – oh no, I’m lying, I’m doing a little AccuGrooveA/Modulus demo slot later on. The distributors of AccuGroove and Modulus here are lovely peoples, who hopefully I’ll get to work with again some time soon.

Anyway, time to get back to hawking my wares to the receptive CD buying Italian public. We like it here.

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Italy post no. 7

(written 24/7/05 12.52)

Right, the big band that are headlining the gig have been on stage soundchecking since 10am. It’s now 2pm, I’m supposed to be on in an hour, and there are a whole load of other bands that need to soundcheck as well. Methinks I’m not going to be starting on time.. It’s a shame, as everything else about the organisation here has been very good – the food is great, the hotel is lovely, and there are loads of lovely helpful Italians around offering to carry bags, get food, or help in any way they can.

All that’s needed now is to get the soundchecks finished, but I as lovely and helpful as all the lovely helpful Italians are, that’s really down to the sound engineers…

So meanwhile I’m listening to Michael and the bassist from the big band shredding on some standards. niiiice.

And meanwhile the connection between my new phone an the laptop seems to have been buggered up somehow – every time I disconnected the phone, the laptop had to restart, so I tried using the drag-to-trash way of disconnecting things on macs, but that seems to have deleted the connection between the two, and I can’t see how to get it back. Bugger.

Question – was Donna Lee ever intended to be a big band tune? That’s a hell of a lot of notes to try and get 20-odd musicians to play!

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Italy post no. 6

(written 24/7/05 10.45)

I’ve just arrived at the venue for todays, gig and it’s unbelieveable – it’s in the grounds of a huge chateau, known locally as ‘little versailles’ – beautiful gardens, an 18th century stately home, and a massive great covered venue in the gardens – huge stage, lighting rig. Ripe for some solo bass loveliness.

The range of acts playing is pretty broad for a bass-centric event – from me at the start, through to a big band playing some of Jaco’s big band stuff at the end, with Michael Manring as featured guest. It’s going to be a fun day.

As well as that, there’s a bit of a gear expo going on – lots of freaky looking high end basses, gadgets and amps galore. The problem with having a set-up that I’m as happy with as I am is that gear loses its appeal, unless it does the same thing only smaller.

Michael and I have been talking a lot in the last couple of days about how to reduce our processing setup down to a laptop and a handful of pedal controllers. The idea of taking two basses and one bag to gigs, especially once I get my powered Accugroove speakers, is sublime. I’m definitely going to start investigating what’s possible, and checking out possible pitfalls like latency. It’d open up all kinds of other options for loopage and processing too – being able to use the Ohm Boys filter live would be a dream, as well as being able to have the tail on a reverb or delay carry on fading whilst switching to a whole other channel to carry on playing, with different reverb and delay settings. Geek heaven!

Today is definitely going to involve a lot of sitting around not doing much, but I can’t think of a nicer place to be sitting around doing nothing in.

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Another London Tragedy

So it seems that the man shot on the tube yesterday wasn’t in any way connected to the terrorist bombings. Why am I more shaken and fearful as a result of this than the bombing? I feel sick to my stomach to know that an innocent man has been shot in the head by police on the underground. I’m not placing blame – I have no idea how thoroughly the police had followed whatever proceedure their anti-terrorist measures require, or just how unlucky the guy was to fit a profile so exactly that his behaviour ended with him receiving five shots to the head, but right now, I’m seriously freaked out.

And I feel deep sorrow for the policeman who fired the shots. The pain he will be going through is inconceivable. What a dreadful dreadful experience. To act to save a train-full of people and end up with innocent blood on your hands.

A very dark day for London.

The comments on the Guardian newsblog’s post about the shooting are an interesting reflection of the feelings of some londoners.

This is a time when it feels very strange to be this far from home.

Soundtrack – Cathy Burton, ‘Speed Your Love’.

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Italy post no. 5

(written 23/7/05 14.37)

So I’m now in Bollate, near Milan – today is the clinic day of the Noi Bassisti bass event, with me, Michael Manring, Lorenzo Feliciati …. and others doing clinics. What I always forget is that doing a clinic with a translator means you can only say half as much. The hour flew by, but people seemed to be into it. We’ll see if I get any more feedback as the weekend goes on.

It’s great to see Michael again – after touring with someone as much as Michael and I have, it’s very tempting and easy to slip into your own homegrown language, particularly in a foreign country… …so we’ve succumbed, but are trying to explain the things we’re laughing at to the people around; an occasionally fruitless task given that no-one seems to laugh at the same stuff as us.

The journey from Brescia to Bollate was made very easy by Andrea and Marco from the film gig last night offering to drive me here, and drop me off. The Italians are such lovely people! I’ve not met one I don’t like. Italian audiences have all been very up for new music, and effusive in their feedback, and the promoters have – contrary to the reputation – been fantastic. I like it here!

Still haven’t had a chance to log on for long enough to see what’s going on in the world – given the amount of time I normally spend reading online news and blogs, it feels very odd to be cut off from the net here. I had a chance to log on briefly this morning, which is when I uploaded the other blog posts, but for the most part, I’ve been netless.

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