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A timely reminder.

Was rehearsing with this morning for the couple of gigs we’ve got coming up over the next two weeks, and was reminded once again how much fun playing with Theo is! It really is the simplest most immediately effective musical hook-up I’ve ever had, and I’ve had quite a few others that were pretty painless. When we were trying to remember how ‘Flutter’ goes (the opening tune from For The Love Of Open Spaces), we actually played the first minute of the tune twice in a row – that’s the most work we’ve ever had to do on anything!

Anyway, we were sounding just fine, and it gave me renewed impetus to get more gigs with Theo. He’s a fantastic musician and a top bloke. If you haven’t got his new CD, Go here to get it.

And now I’m listening to – those of you in the US will probably have heard her (she was on Letterman recently), those of you in the UK might have heard of her if you keep up with David Torn-related news (he produced the record), but she’s pretty much unknown on this side of the pond at the moment. She’s a solo acoustic guitarist, in the Hedges/Forcione/Roche/Ross school of playing, and is magic. Writes great tunes and is a great performer. I’m hoping to bring her over for some gigs together this coming summer. ‘Til then, check out her site and buy the CD on-line from the states!

Soundtrack – Kaki King, ‘Legs To Make Us Longer; Steve Lawson and Theo Travis, ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’; , ‘Matthew Garrison’.

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After a 10 year wait…

…I finally got to see live this evening. The venue was in Balham, hosted by the legendary Tony Moore.

Jonatha played five songs – Back In The Circus, Red Dress, It Matters Now, Linger and Because I Told You So – all of them incredible, all of them worth the 10 year wait. Fortunately it won’t be another 10 years, as she’s got lots of London gigs coming up, and those of you that are within about 2000 miles of London owe it to yourselves to catch one of her gigs. She really is that good. We talking Joni Mitchell/Bruce Cockburn/Paul Simon good. Up there with the greatest. No shit. This is your chance to see her play in a tiny venue, and say you were there first… well, ignoring the first seven albums… :o)

So, go to her website, listen to the albums (I think you can stream all her albums there…) check the gig list, but tickets and I’ll see you there (except tomorrow, cos it’s sold out and I was too late trying to get a ticket).

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What's my name again?

I think he’s still the only other Steve Lawson I’ve met, and is now the editor of Total Guitar magazine (a magazine I’ve written for in the past…), but here’s photographic evidence that we met at NAMM last year!

so there you have it – two Steve Lawsons. If I was on a Dave Gorman-esque quest for more of them, this would be #2 and would take pride of place on the list… The big question, however, is why I’m doing a Garth Algar smile???

Soundtrack – , ‘Day One’; Francis Dunnery, ‘Man’; , ‘Back In The Circus’ – going to see Jonatha play tonight at The Bedford!! How excited am I???

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A like-minded teacher

There are a lot of really really bad bass teachers around. I know ‘cos I end up having to undo their efforts when students come to me with some really twisted ways of thinking about music, and some odd ideas about the student teacher relationship. So it’s great when I find a teacher who is speaking the same language as me.

is arguably the best bass tuition book writer working today. His books are always full of great material, and contain precious little filler material. I recommend them highly. He’s also an amazing player (come on Ed, do a solo album NOW!!), but I’d ever read the page about private teaching on his site before. Go and read it – he says all the right things, and I’m certain he lives up to them. It’s just a shame he lives in Tempe Arizona, or I’d definitely take a lesson or two with him.

Maybe I should start a list of teachers I would recommend. It’d be a pretty short list at the moment, given that I don’t really know that many other teachers, and even fewer whose work I would vouch for.

is another bass teacher I admire greatly, and the only person I’ve had a bass lesson from since I left college. He’s also one of my favourite bassists, and has recently released an amazing CD along with called ‘Get Happy’ – you can get it from Todd’s website – it’s one of my favourite CDs of the last year, and shows just how adept a chordal instrument 6 string bass is – Todd’s bass arguably sounds better than a guitar would along with Kristin’s voice as it stays out of her range, leaving more room for her. Add to that Kristin’s marvellous swinging upright bass playing and Kendall Kaye’s drumming and you’ve got one fantastic record. Again, it’s a shame that Todd’s tucked away in the mountains above Los Angeles, or I’d be getting regular lessons with him too!

soundtrack – McGill/Manring/Stevens, ‘Controlled By Radar’; , ‘Back In The Circus’ and ‘Plumb’ (don’t forget she’s playing a load of gigs in London, starting next Tuesday!!!!); , ‘Grand’; , ‘Entremundo’ and ‘Oriental Bass’ (Renaud is my new bass hero – the most frightening chops and musicality that I’ve ever heard from an upright bassist. Get these CDs!!)

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Every Picture Tells A Story

Nice man The Cheat told me about a fine bit of free software yesterday, called – it’s a free photo archiving/editing/sorting program, that finds all the photos on your harddrive, and catalogues them for you. I discovered that I’ve got loads of duplicate sets of promo shots and stuff from my websites, from various incarnations of it being left littered around my hard-drive.

This is the best free application I’ve seen since (if you’re still using Internet Explorer for web-stuff, you REALLY need to get Firefox – more stable, safer, and easier to use, please, for the sake of all of us, switch!).

head over to the Picasa Website for more info and to download it. It’s developed by the people behind Google…

Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’ (fast catching Julie Lee at the top of my Audioscrobbler most played list!); , ‘Drastic Measures’.

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Things to Do In London When You're… In London

A couple of events that deserve a heads up, not involving me (more of those coming in the next day or so…)

Firstly, Jenny Eclair is doing a one-woman show at The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, called The Andy Warhol Syndrome. It’s a play in which Jenny plays a former reality TV star, and it’s fab. I’ve seen it twice. It’s great, funny, moving etc. Go see it.

Click here for the details. There a couple of cheap ticket offers that look good value…

The second one is that one of my favourite singer/songwriters is finally coming to London! has a whole run of gigs coming up in London in tiny venues. If there’s any justice in the world, she’ll be playing the Brixton Academy in 6 months, so go and see her now while you can – the dates are on the tour dates page on her website – she’s playing the Bedford in Balham, The Betsy Trotwood in Farringdon and the 12 bar in the west end. I’ll be going to as many of the gigs as I possibly can. She’s a genius, up there with Joni Mitchell, , etc. in my list of faves. Truly marvellous. Take friends with you – you’ll thank me, and they’ll thank you.

Both of these shows are not to be missed. Great stuff. Go on, go and book tickets now, I dare you.

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A full compliment of toys!

One of the strange things about overseas touring is that I can only take a small section of my usual live rig with me. The lovely people at always take care of the Cabinet side of things, and I can always borrow a poweramp from or in this case, from Accugroove again, but there’s no way I can fly with my entire rack – three processors, two echoplexes and a Mackie desk. What I took with me for NAMM this time was two Echoplexes and one of the Lexicons.

I hadn’t really figured out what I was going to do about carrying it all around, and the day before NAMM started, and I went shopping for a soft rack bag to carry it all around in. Fortunately, I didn’t actually get one, as when I got to NAMM, Dale Titus sorted me out with a 3U soft rack case WITH WHEELS. Dale’s a very nice man. The case is a Warwick Rockbag, and seems pretty solid. It certainly saved the day when I suffered a (suspected) broken toe on the Friday morning of NAMM. Getting out the shower, I caught my toe on the top of the rail on the bath. cue much pain and screaming, to the bewilderment of Bob and Alison’s cats. Nail was ripped and bleeding, toe wasn’t moving. No point going to the doctor with a suspected broken toe as all they’ll do is what I did – splint it to the toe next to it. It obviously wasn’t so broken that it would set weird (was still toe-shaped), so I did that, hobbled for a few days, and waited for my toe-nail to fall off (it’s still there, just a bit blackened… ewww, TMI!)

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, not being able to take all my stuff to NAMM – so I was playing through the G2, with two outs into two EDPs, split most of the time into two separate amps! It sounded pretty odd, and didn’t really afford me much control over where things were going, or what the relative levels of the different layers and sounds were. It was useful in that it provided a new set of limitations within which to try and create something of substance (always tricky with 85db of background nastiness at NAMM), but now I’m home and have finally wired up my rack again, it feels great to have my main sound back in stereo, the loops separately pannable, and the option to post process everything again. This set up is so maleable. I need to work on a smaller version of this so I can do more of this on tour. The new rack bag will certainly help in Europe, but I still don’t think I can fly with much more than I’ve got here…

Anyway, I’m going to have fun getting reaquainted with my toys over the next few days… in the few minutes when I’m not teaching!

Soundtrack – Scritti Politti, ‘Cupid And Psyche’.

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nothing to write on your blog today? take the old-school BBC approach…

I’m in the middle of reading David Attenborough’s marvellous autobiography, ‘Life On Air’ – which is one of the most fascinating and illuminating looks at the birth of TV broadcasting in the world – David joined the BBC very early on in the life of TV, and as controller of BBC 2, introduced a whole host of elements to the channel that still define its output today.

Anyway, I’ll write more about the book at another time, but one of the things it reminded me of was that time back in the 70s and 80s when TV channels were honest about having nothing to put on, so instead of showing endless reruns or commissioning shite like Kilroy or Trisha, they just played some music and showed the test card… maybe it’s something we bloggers should adopt when we’ve nothing of interest to say… :o)

Soundtrack – Kristen Korb, ‘Where You’ll Find Me’ (a fantastic CD); Armen Chakmakian, ‘Caravans’ (another album featuring Doug Lunn on bass).

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