Today is the NINTH anniversary of the launch of my Bandcamp Subscription. It has become a lifeline, the mechanism by which I not only fund and release music, but the context in which I get to make the specific kind of music I make, and where I get to talk about it and hear what it means to the subscriber community.

Bandcamp’s subscription offering launched to the public about 8 years ago, but four artists got to trial it for a year before it went public to iron out kinks and see which features worked best. I’d already been talking to Ethan about it for a couple of years at that point – we would meet up every January while I was at NAMM and he’d ask me what worked best for me with Bandcamp and what I’d like to see – prior to the subscription offering, I imagine that most of the things that I wanted that ended up as features were things where my desire just confirmed what they were already working on, but I got to have input into the subscription idea at the ground level, and as such, as this point it’s about 80% of my perfect platform. That’s a pretty amazing percentage for a non-bespoke platform, especially one that has to meet the diverse needs of artists and labels from all over the planet.

So what’s the value of the subscription, for me and the listener? I’m acutely aware that thanks to this model, collectively the subscribers know more about what I’m up to than I do – the sheer volume of music there means that I can’t keep in mind what it all is and what I’ve done before. I’m often too busy just being me and doing me-stuff to step back from it and see what it might mean. I also have a singular take on the impact of things like adding in percussion samples and field recordings to the aesthetic, or a set of assumptions around how much music would be too much music. But across the community there are people who have specific connections with loads of the albums, who came into my orbit at a particular time and the first album they found means something special to them. They are music makers who have a particular take on the significance (or annoyance!) of aspects of what I do, and a significant number of them have been around for two decades and have a deep and enduring sense of how this life in music has evolved. There are people who devour every album and listen to it multiple times, who are deeply grateful that they aren’t expected to pay £8 for every album, even though a handful of them probably would. And there are people who love the music of a particular era in my music-life and listen mostly to that but subscribe to support me because it’s less than £3 a month and they just want to help me carry on doing what I do…

It is still, by far, the best way to access my music, to become a part of its meaning and purpose. Every album is more like an episode in a story or podcast than it is a ‘product’ to be marketed and promoted. The way its released means that the invitation is there to comment, review, discuss, question and delve into the meaning of the music and even to dig into why I made certain decisions that meant particular albums don’t work for you. Those conversations are often the most mindblowing – imagine getting to talk about the confusion that a particular album conjures with someone who has already happily paid for it to exist long before it was conceived. The difference between that and the ‘apologetics’ that one indulges in when releasing a public album that deviates from the expectations of a fanbase is night and day.

I’m grateful to every single person who has been part of that community, whether they subscribed for a year and then (quite understandably!) thought ‘that’s quite enough Steve Lawson music for one lifetime‘, or have been there since day one (shout out to JP Rangaswami, Phil Thomas and Mike K Smith for being the longest standing subscribers, still there from day one. ♥️)

If you want to join us, that would be amazing. If you want to rejoin, that would also be a truly beautiful thing. The link to subscribe will be in the comments. And I’ll do a Bandcamp Listening Party for the latest subscriber album on Friday. More news on that ASAP. 🙂

Later on, I’ll do a bit of a dive into the economics, but suffice to say, the subscription was what sustained me through Cancer, it regularly pays the rent, it has rescued me from tax bills I’d foolishly not accounted for, and it turns every break-even gig into a recording session of deep and enduring value.

Have I ever written anything here about my merch store? Probably not. My bad.

Anyway, here it is – t-shirts, mugs and caps, all printed on demand, available in a bunch of different colours. Give your wardrobe a refresh 😉

Having discovered an amazing plug-in by Baby Audio called Smooth Operator, I recently realised that my mix/mastering process for the last couple of years of releases was underselling a lot of the detail in the recordings. The more muted, introspective tone of the releases made some sense in the context of the Pandemic followed by a year of Cancer related shenanigans, but didn’t represent the music to its fullest extent. So I’ve set about remastering my most recent public albums first, and have now uploaded Time Stops vols 1-3 (vol 3 is Bandcamp subscriber-only).

The remasters are uploaded in place of the original albums, so if you’ve already bought the albums, you don’t need to pay for them again to get the new versions. If you downloaded them originally when you bought them or got them through the subscription, you’re most welcome to download them again and compare the two. If you make music yourself, it might be instructive to do so!

I’m so happy with how these sound, and the consensus in the Bandcamp Listening Parties for the albums was that they were more detailed with greater depth to the audio field.

The next one to be re-released is Rick, which will be uploaded this Friday before the listening party where you’ll get to preview the new version.

Head to the listening party RSVP page for more info on that!

Over the past two Fridays, I’ve been taking advantage of a new feature in Bandcamp and holding Listening Parties. The idea of a listening party is simple, in that it’s about simultaneous listening with a chat room for me to talk about the making and meaning of the music, and you to ask questions about it.

In this format, it started as a Twitter thing during Lockdown hosted by Tim from the Charlatans, branded as Tim’s Twitter Listening Party. He would get members of celebrated bands to tweet along to their album, starting at a pre-announced time when everyone could join in. I followed along and contributed comments and questions to the ones for Tears For Fears’ Songs From The Big Chair and for the The’s Dusk. A whole lot of fun. Continue reading “Bandcamp Listening Parties – The New (weekly) Normal”

I really should pay more attention to my website, right? Anyway, here’s the 2nd in a series of student testimonials.

But first a couple of thoughts on why one to one lessons are the right choice for many musicians. Coming out of the summer and re-entering the academic year, a lot of people find themselves starting to think about their music learning and what can take it to the next level.

There are a LOT of courses online, that offer top quality content and instruction via video lessons and downloadable materials. I’ve created courses like that with Scotts Bass Lessons and I do monthly bass masterclasses for Musical-U, so I’m in no way opposed to that model.

But I have realised over the years that my own gift is in helping individuals or in-person groups with specific questions, helping to guide people to where they want to be, rather than having to rummage through the stuff in a pre-recorded course and find the right theme. There’s a built in dialectic of specificness and genericness to those course – they are specific in as much as each course or module can be targeted to a particular area of playing, but equally generic in that they are a course made for everyone. And not everyone learning style is the same.

So, if you want some one-to-one lessons, they probably cos less than you think and we can start working on the specifics of your own musical journey.

Here’s a testimonial from bassist Steve Whitehouse, who I’ve been teaching weekly for a number of years:

“I’ve had the privilege of being a student of Steve Lawson’s for over two years now. I’ve been playing musical instruments for 45 years and have been lucky enough to have a wide selection of excellent teachers both contemporary and classical. Steve however is on another level altogether. What really sets Steve apart is his ability to teach *music* itself, not just how to play bass. He lives inside music and has levels of understanding I’ve never encountered elsewhere, enhanced by his encyclopaedic knowledge of players and styles. Lessons with Steve have been an absolute game changer for me, opening new horizons and pulling me out of a creative rut and much of what he’s taught me is applicable not only to the bass, but to my other instruments as well. If you are in a creative hole, Steve’s the guy to help you find your path.”

Testimonial Pt 1 can be found here.

Click here for details on lessons and to contact me and book something in.

So here’s a thing I’ve been meaning to do for AGES, and have never done before. A while back I asked a few of my students if they wouldn’t mind writing something about their experience studying with me, to provide some kind of sense of what it might be like for new students considering it.  I’m going to publish them here, individually because they ended up being WAY longer and more involved than I expected! Here’s the first one.

If you’re interested in lessons, please do have a look at my teaching page.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when I became a student of Steve Lawson. I could say it was when I had my first one on one lesson with him online in September of 2020 or perhaps when we shared a couple of exchanges about a set of small 6 string lessons on his Instagram stories he dubbed “down with the sixness” earlier that year. It could have also been much earlier in his courses and seminars in the academy at sbl. The more I think about it the more I realize what was actually going on. You become a student from the first time you hear Steve. It’s inevitable. Both his playing as his words are imbued with so much of himself; that relentless creativity, his generous nature, the sheer immensity of knowledge and love behind every phrase, his quirky sense of humor and joy for the unexpected, his spirit of adventure, the bold honesty behind who he knows he is and who he wants to be.

“I don’t think it’s possible to truly listen to Steve and not become his student. It is such an anomaly, his output, that it demands a closer more meticulous look while at the same time grabbing your hand and taking you on a ride where you need not think or worry only enjoy and let yourself be surprised. I often play a silly game while listening to Steve’s music where I try to imagine how one person can be solely responsible for all that I’m hearing only to find myself minutes later somewhere else, completely enthralled with the experience but with absolutely no idea how I got there. And once in this new destination I’m thrilled to realize how much I’ve grown, learned and changed (And, oh yeah!! remember that thing he did?!?!!! that weird line!! What was that!?! how did he do that?!?).

“Music has the ultimate power of representation and in the hands of a master like Steve it reaches up to its transformative potential.

“That he would also choose to be a teacher in the formal sense of the word is simply an instance of life being too good to us. In his approach of music and teaching I have found a wealth of wisdom but most importantly I have found peace. I, like most musicians and artists, deal with a considerable amount of impostor syndrome and the past 20 years of learning improvisational music through the internet have been daunting to say the least. It is here where I have found Steve’s greatest gift to me. I can clearly see a before and after in my relationship to Music from his lessons. His ability to articulate that which matters the most about your daily relationship to your instrument and your Music allows you to shed and clear away the cobwebs between your current self and your goal. The road must still be traveled and you must go alone but with Steve’s guidance you can see it clearly. Anything is truly possible.”

Rodrigo Flores Miralda
Oct 16, 2022
Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Rick Turner, one of the greatest and most influential bass and guitar builders of all time died yesterday, aged 78. He was a very dear friend, and I’m still trying to come to terms with the idea that he’s gone, but I wrote this this morning on Facebook, so am reposting it here.

I’ve been trying to piece together the timeline of my friendship with Rick Turner. I’d read his column in Bass Player for years, but we first connected, as did so many other bass players, via The Bottom Line – the legendary email discussion list for bassists from the 90s. Rick started posting in early 1998, answering questions and in his usual prescient way pointing out in a discussion about the gender and racial imbalance in bass magazines, that if you don’t like the way someone else is doing things, do it yourself and post it online.

I dearly wish I had my email archive from back then – looking through my photos from NAMM in 1999 and 2000, it’s clear that I made connections with a whole load of bass builders and companies through TBL and then visited them as soon as I got to NAMM. Doing a little detective work, I can see that the two portraits of Rick and I here with the Renaissance fretless were taken on the first day of NAMM (I didn’t have a razor with me and I’m clean shaven 😉 ) – I took the one of him, he took the one of me.

In my head, I’d always thought I did my trip up the coast to SF in 1999, but reading through the archive.org version of my website, I saw that my first year I just flew in and out for NAMM. Did a handful of interviews for Bassist (including Leland Sklar) and went home. I can tell a lot of this from the photos too because in 99 I was clean shaven but after meeting Rick that year I grew the soul patch that I still have. It’s never had any other association in my head to anything other than copying Rick…

So in 2000 I extended my California trip after NAMM and arrived in LA intending to get a train up to SF from LA (ha!!) I told Rick about this and he initially tried to work out if it was possible, then helped me plan a totally different itinerary involving a rental car and the need to learn VERY quickly to drive on the opposite side of the road (and an unbelievably lucky turn of events that meant I found the Michael Manring and Trey Gunn gig at the Last Day Saloon without a map!). Rick helped me sort out where to go, routes between Modulus, Zon and his factory, even tried to hook me up with a visit to Alembic, and then invited me to stay. Which meant I got to meet his then-wife Jessica and their child Juniper, and thus began an annual trip to visit the family after NAMM, to hear new music (I bought SO many records at his insistence), to hear stories, to find out new facts about Geckos and whatever other creatures Juniper was discovering at the time, to go into the classroom with Jess to talk to her students. Over the years, Rick would come out to my shows, to house concerts at Bob’s or shows at the much-missed Espresso Garden with Michael Manring. He’d stop gigs in the middle to tell me how special he thought it all was, including one amazing speech about the individuality of intonation and how much he loved mine. He’s the only person ever to turn round at one of my gigs and tell the people talking to ‘shut the fuck up’. When he heard Lo and I play together he talked about her skills as an independent entity, not as ‘my wife’ or ‘the singer’ but about her guitar playing and songwriting.

In California I have SO many friends. Amazing, lifelong friendships, people who went the extra mile to impact my life in many, many ways. But in those formative years of the 00s I had two families – The Turners in Santa Cruz and Doug Lunn and Vida Vierra in Santa Monica. Places of sanctuary where there was always a spare bed or couch, always a place to decompress, to not be ‘on’ but to be fully myself. Now Rick and Doug are both gone, incredible figures in my life who taught me so much, encouraged me in ways that kept me doing what I’m doing at times when I might’ve ended up going a more conventional route.

That Rick was the co-inventor of graphite necked basses with Geoff Gould, pioneered so much in bass electronics, custom design, piezo pickups, and that he made my beloved Renaissance bass (and that’s officially the first time I’ve ever spelt Renaissance right without spellcheck) was all secondary to the friendship, support, encouragement and love he showed me over the years. We’d been planning a holiday together here for years – initially a canal boat trip, then a visit to Warwick castle (Rick was short for Warwick) and a trip to Scotland. I’m absolutely broken that neither happened.

Rick was arguably the most important figure in the development of the bass guitar after Leo Fender. He knew more and shared more about building instruments than anyone, inspiring generations of luthiers. I got to play the guitar he built for Henry Kaiser to take to Antarctica and it blew my mind. Lindsey Buckingham is still playing his Turner Model 1 guitars to this day – one of the most iconic guitar designs in history. I once played one of his absolute top spec steel strung acoustics and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to switching instruments away from bass. I’ve never felt any instrument resonate like that.

I’ve heard from people over the last few days some of the things that Rick had told them about me, times he’d complimented me or used me as an exemplar regarding fretless playing. I knew it was happening through the years thanks to all the people he would connect me with. I spent an absolutely magical day once with Evelyn Glennie, after Rick had built her a marimba pickup and in the conversation had been talking about looping, with Rick telling her that there was no-one else better to talk to about what was possible. A bunch of you reading this are friends here purely because Rick introduced us either at NAMM or online. He was in my corner to a degree that’s incredibly rare and my life is different because of it.

I’m now approaching the age Rick was when we met – he was 56, I was 26, and I hope I can offer a tiny fraction of the encouragement and support he gave to younger luthiers and musicians, the respect with which he spoke to people, the time he took to make people feel special and like their absurd solo bass plans weren’t so ridiculous after all.

RIP Rick, I still can’t believe you’re gone. x