Tag: cds

Posted on

I think that's called 'going out on a high'

Words I wasn’t expecting to hear at the Fringe ‘hello can I get a ticket for ‘Bass: The Final Frontier?’ ‘no sorry, sir, he’s just sold out’.

Oh yes, a sell out. A rather confusing sellout, given that I’d got lots of comps and given them to friends, not expecting the room to be full at all, so just before I went on stage there were people who had bought tickets who didn’t have a seat… all v. mixed up. My fault. But hey, what a problem to have!

The show went superbly, and loads of lovely people were in tonight – the poetry legend that is Jude Simpson sat in on the show and did a cracking version of Femur (to the tune of Fever), Ronnie Golden was there (his show with Barry Cryer, Little Richard III has just started at the fest, go and see it!), Duncan, Simon and Rise – who I spent a fantastic 5 hours rehearsing with today for Duncan’s gig at Greenbelt – were there, Jack Cryer, the guys from Rap Canterbury Tales and of course the potty-mouthed Rev G. ‘Twas the perfect way to end a run at the fest, great crowd, I was on form, played well, bantered well, and sold lots of CDs and T-shirts. If you were there, thanks so much.

The CVenues crew in C Central were great to work with – lovely peoples who put up with a lot of crap.

And now it’s finished, and I’m off back to London, to spend the next week and a half teaching and learning the songs for Duncan’s gig at Greenbelt – the rehearsal was amazing, and the best bass lesson I’ve had in years, getting to grips with the African rhythmic stuff that Duncan and Rise were throwing at us. Being on stage with two guitarists that good will be a dream come true. They are both outstanding (Rise Kagona was the guitarist in the Bhundu Boys, one of the first African bands I was properly aware of, thanks to Peelie and Andy Kershaw).

So tomorrow we’re off home, via Berwick to see the family again. It’s been so much fun staying with Gareth and Jane – they are the perfect Edinburgh hosts, and it’s just a shame we’ve seen so little of Jane, as she goes to work before we get up, and is in bed before we arrive back in the middle of the night.

So if you’re still in Edinburgh please go and see the shows I recommended tonight at the show – , , , , , .

And I’ll see you here again next year!

TAGS – , , , .

Posted on

Tiredness catching up on me.

So much so that I completely forgot to put a ticket on my car today, and so got a parking ticket – £30 needlessly wasted there… DOH!

TSP and I finally got rid of all our remaining flyers today – no more left for flyering tomorrow, which is just as well as I have a rehearsal for most of the day with Duncan Senyatso, for a gig at Greenbelt weekend after next.

I’m truly knackered, and it showed a little in my show tonight – I was a little more vacant than usual, but still played well and was funny enough to carry the gig off, just not as sparky as I have been. It was odd going back to doing People Get Ready on my own at the end, having had the truly wonderful Julie McKee sing it with me on Saturday and ‘Mr Fringe’ himself, Andy Williamson play a gorgeous tenor sax part on it with me last night. (Andy, for those of you who know what this means, is the Ralston Bowles of the Edinburgh Fringe – knows everyone, plays 17 shows a day, is the networking king and basically IS the festival. He’s also a very fine saxophonist and is playing up here with his fabulous Big Buzzard Boogie Band, and in a show called Sex With Mae West.

Anyway, show went well, 33 people in, lots of CD sold (great for paying parking fines with!) – last night tomorrow, and then home…

TAGS – , , , , , .

Posted on

Fringe Sunday…

Fringe Sunday began looking like it was going to be a total disaster – it was tipping it down with rain til gone 12, and given that they usually have almost a quarter of a million people out during the day to see all the Fringe festival-related stuff going on at (a secret location known only as) The Meadows, rain puts a bit of a downer on the day.

Fortunately it had stopped by 1pm, and by 2 it was drying up nicely.

I was booked to play in the Cabaret tent (how the hell did I morph from serious musician to cabaret performer??? Edinburgh seems to do this to you…), but had had a major brain freeze the night before and forgotten to bring my Echoplex pedal with me out of the box backstage, so was left with two Echoplexes and a bass, and no way to start the loops. A brain-wave just before I went on lead to me asking the wonderful Amy Kohn to come and be my footpedal. Not that I was going to tread on her or anything – we just planned it so that I’d count her in and out of hitting the record button on the Echoplex while I played ‘Amo Amatis Amare’. And as she was there on stage, it would seem mad not to get her to play some lovely accordion over the top. Which she did, beautifully.

So that went well. I had a couple of minutes left at the end of the set, so opted (rather unwisely, really) to playing ‘What A Wonderful World’ – I played it OK, but it is a struggle on the fretless, and doing it without decent monitoring, and more importantly with NO REVERB (!!!!), it didn’t sound great from where I was. Still, it was well received.

What I did realise was that being lumbered with armfulls of bass-techie equipment at Fringe Sunday is an f-ing liability, and I’d actually have had much better exposure if I’d not bothered playing and had just spent the day flyering near the music venues. As it was, it went OK, but me and one EDP with no reverb or processing is hardly a fair representation of the show. Thankfully the duet with Amy made it worth doing. She was fab.

So after that I took the Echoplex travel-rack home, picked up TSP and headed back into town. The best thing about weekends in Edinburgh isn’t, as most people will tell you, the larger crowds. Oh no, it’s the FREE PARKING!! We were able to park on the North Bridge, less than 50 yards from the front of my venue. Very nice.

Then it was back to the usual flyering mode, which I’ve been perfecting over the week. Flyering your own show definitely gives you an edge of the disinterested students trying to make some money to pay off their beer deficit for the year, and it does get people to stop and chat if you introduce the fact that it’s you on the flyer in an amusing way. By yesterday my patter for flyering had become (roughly) ‘One Man Music Show, four star review in Three Weeks (pause while they take the flyer) He’s a legend! He’s a genius! He’s MEEEEE!’ – cue much hilarity and a conversation with person being flyered about what the hell the show is… seems to be working well, as I had another audience of around 40 last night (didn’t get the official figure, but that’s the report from the venue manager).

The show itself went well – there were a lot of late-comers, walking in after the first song, so I hope the caught the explaination, or they’ll be going home telling their friends to give the Karaoke bass-monkey a miss, he just mimes to a mini-disc! Still, sold a bunch of CDs and tshirts, so all is good.

The Rev G (where did I get the abreviation Rvd from? I just made that up, and it’s not like I don’t know enough vicars so I have an excuse) was back in the house last night and performed very well in the role as ‘vicar with tourettes’ in the MMFSOG story – it’s odd, I just decided on the first night to explain the tune (not something I’ve ever bothered with at gigs before) and it’s become a bit of a favourite in the show). And the lovely Amy also came to show and was involved in the audience participation number, making a very odd sound which worked surprisingly well! That’s another spur of the moment addition to the set that has worked remarkably well. Might have to expand it to two tunes next year if I can come up with another angle that works…

TAGS – , , , , , .

Posted on

Eric Roche update

As those of you who’ve seen my Edinburgh show or any other recent dates will know, I’ve written a tune for Eric Roche – a very dear friend who’s a breath-takingly gifted guitar player and is currently in a monumental battle with cancer.

He’s recently posted a diary entry on his website – please go and read it. Eric’s a remarkable person, amazing musician and a HUGE inspiration to me in many many ways – if you haven’t got his CDs, all three are highly recommended. His latest, ‘With These Hands’, is one of the finest solo acoustic guitar CDs you’ll ever hear.

It breaks my heart to see someone whose spirit is so strong struggling with a disease like this. Please do send your messages and prayers of love and support to Eric via the guestbook on his website, and spread the word. I’ve no idea if he’s insured or not, but as a pro musician with a family like that, the fear of illness is multiplied a thousand times – the best way to support is buy is CDs, and then play them to your friends. That way you get to hear some music that will enrich your soul and be with you for your whole life, and he gets to pay the bills in the way we musicians do it best.

God bless you, Eric.

Posted on

The weekend starts here

The Fringe has an interesting curve to it, in that midweek gigs tend on the whole to be smaller, especially for late night gigs, and shows tend to build an audience as the run goes on thanks to flyering, word of mouth and press (still no press that I know of for my show.)

So yesterday being Friday, I had fairly high hopes of a good turn out, and Guy Pratt was going to be on the show, so that was something else to tell people – members of Pink Floyd guesting on shows in tiny venues is generally a pretty cool coup, I guess.

Didn’t get into town til almost three, so concentrated on getting lots of flyering done til meeting TSP for munchies in Hendersons – Edinburgh’s coolest fair trade veggie restaurant.

After flyering the queue for Antonio Forcione’s show (I’m getting quite good at the queue-flyering business – just camp it up, smile a lot, and people seem happy to take a flyer and ask about the show – it’s a captive audience!), I met up with Julie McKee, Andy Williamson and some other friends for a mint tea back at Henderson’s, then headed back to The Carlton to meet an old college pal, Brian, who had come into Edinburgh to see the show. Brian was a fantastic bassist back when we were at college, a proper jazz-monster, and a thoroughly nice bloke, so it was great to catch up. The friendship/social side of the Edinburgh Fringe is so much fun, though not that dissimilar to how I live my life anyway, just more concentrated.

About two hours before the show, I rang Guy, who said he was ill and might not make it, but would if I had a bass he could borrow. No problem, says I.

Get to the show starting, still no sign of Guy. I eventually phone him from the stage in the middle of the gig, and he’s on his way. Cool audience in tonight, and my biggest yet by quite some margin (50), a few brought in by the promise of some two-bass-action, so it was a relief when Guy turned up.

Sadly, the duet section of the gig wasn’t great. Instead of playing one of my tunes, as I’d planned and suggested, Guy kicked into a funky riff thing in A, which went on and on, moved into E, and became pretty much what I’ve tried to avoid for most of my solo career – two bassists playing over one chord funk for what seems like ages. It’s a real shame, as I had hoped that we’d have played something more musical together – Guy’s a fantastic player, and has played on a few of my all-time favourite tracks, but tonight, it really didn’t work. Eventually it wound down, and he put the bass down and left (?).

It went on so long that I had to drop two of my tunes (the two with the funniest stories), and the show as a whole felt like something was missing, though CD sales were the best of the run so far, and the audience reaction was still very positive. It also meant that I couldn’t involve the Rvd G in the show, which I’d planned to do on the MMFSOG story – will just have to get him to come back in full ecclesiastical garb on another night (I wonder if a vicar could be struck off for dressing as a bishop and swearing onstage? I guess we’ll find out… OK, maybe not dressed as a bishop, that’s just wishful thinking…)

I’m not too bothered by the way it went – we tried it, it didn’t work, no problem. And in someways, it just solidified my own feelings of rightness about the solo stuff. It was really odd to be playing the kind of bass-duel stuff that I hear all the time at bassfest gigs and am always trying to steer clear of – I dispensed with the notion of ‘bass music’ a long time ago, in favour of just seeing my basses as instruments with no set function and with a total disregard for the tradition of the instrument, in order to come up with a way of getting the music inside my head out without it being trapped in some kind of expectation about what bass is. After tonight, it’s clear how hard that is to do with other players. I’m spoilt by how a lot of the duet situations I’ve been in have worked so easily, particularly the duets with Michael Manring, where the two bassist format works so ridiculously well that it feels like it should be fine with anyone.

Ah well. Fortunately the rest of my guests are just contributing their bit to songs I’m already doing – tonight is Julie McKee, a FANTASTIC jazz singer with her own beautifully original show here at the Fringe. She’s going to come and sing People Get Ready with me, and I’m very much looking forward to that.

TAGS – , , , .

Posted on

Much more productive day today

Today was better – started off with lots of practice, which doubled up as a way to continue experimenting with the laptop looping set up. Am just experimenting with what kind of tolerance the processor has for varying degrees of looping and processing all happening at once and what the optimum buffer size (and therefor latency time) is. It’s a bit of a faff, but I think it’s coming together… Should be able to get something workable soon…

Also managed to get some nice things to wear on stage, and find out how much my programme printing is going to cost – the nice people at The Bass instutute in london sent me their ad through to stick in it, so I now need to put it together with some bio stuff and an ad for my website and online CD shop, and we’re away! That’s probably the main job for this evening.

Anyway, knowing that quite a lot of bloggers read this, I have a cheeky request, which is that you blog about my edinburgh show, and link back to this site – that way it should send a whole load of traffic my way, and get all the Edinburgh-bound readers of your lovely blogs to come and see the show, and then I won’t need to phone you up to beg for food when I lose my shirt on the show, thus posting one blog thingie will save you having to console me on my failed show for hours on end… go on, I dare ya!

the two links you need are to the edfringe.com page for my show – http://www.edfringe.com/shows/detail.php?action=shows&id=BASS where people can get tickets, and to the front page of my website where people can have a listen to some MP3s and find out a little more about the show!

and you can include this picture if you like, too!

thanks!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

First entry from new toy

For a while now, TSP and I have been wanting to get a laptop between us – I could use it for travelling, and TSP could use it for writing when away.

So on Thursday I nipped into the Apple Store on Regent’s Street in London, and on the advice of Photographer Steve, asked if they had any ‘refreshed’ stock – that is computers that have been bought, but then brought back within the 30 day returns period. They are fully checked, reformatted and warrantied etc. as new, just 10% cheaper than the brand new ones! Result.

So we’ve now got a 12″ bog-standard bottom of the range iBook between us, which it has to be said, kicks ass. OSX 10.4.2 is fantastic! It’s called ‘Tiger’, but I haven’t found the ‘install Seigfried and Roy theme’ button yet that makes everything orange… I’m loving some of the features in OSX – the dashboard and expose features are really cool, and the way Safari handles RSS is very cool indeed. I still have to connect to the net via an ethernet cable plugged into my pc, as we’ve not set up wireless or anything yet, but thus far, it’s much coolness.

Soundtrack – Tracy Chapman, ‘Tracy Chapman’ (came across her singing ‘Thrill Is Gone’ with BB King earlier on today, and her voice sent shivers down my spine, so I borrowed the CD off TSP as I’ve only got her stuff on vinyl)

Posted on

And after the gigs, The reviews!

This was quick – the joy of the internet – here’s a lovely review of the Vortex gig from Tuesday night with Theo Travis and Orphy Robinson. Very nicely written.

And if you can read Italian, there’s a lovely review of Grace And Gratitude, in the ‘No Warning’ E-zine. Luigi Ametta who writes it has been very supportive of all the music of mine that he’s heard, and this looks to be another lovely review (though so far I’ve only read the Google translation, which is pretty garbled…)

If you’ve been to one of the recent gigs, please post a review in the forum, and if you’ve bought one of the CDs, you can post those reviews in the online shop.

Thanks!

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top