Tag: cds

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home, home on the range

I’m back, after three weeks of fun gigs, fun people, fun travelling, cd sales, namm schmoozing, masterclass teaching, phone dying, car renting, album recording, world domination scheming, cattle rustling etc. and now I’m exhausted. But can’t really collapse until tomorrow cos I’ve got a gig tonight at the National Theatre in London, with the wonderful Theo Travis – after that, I’m sleeping for 36 hours.

After that, and only after that, I’ll start telling some california tales.

Thanks very much to everyone who came to the gigs and bought the CDs – please feel free to post reviews in the ‘interact’ section of the website…

Soundtrack – nothing.

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Happy New Year!

Oh yes, it’s 2004. Another year over a new one just begun, as a songwriter no longer at the top of his game and desparately in need of his old writing partner once wrote.

So out with the old and in the new, hopefully. Or maybe it’ll just be ‘what goes around comes around’. Who knows.

I’m hoping for the usual crap – more time to read, more gigs, more CD sales, less big countries blowing up small countries, less reality TV, more properly researched documentaries, more decent comedies on TV, more going to the cinema, more exercise (!!), more journies on public transport, less using the car, more bass practice, less time wasted online… yeah yeah, right.

So this afternoon, I had a listen to an album I’ve not heard for a while – ‘Beyond These Shores’ by Iona. This is an album that when I first got it blew my mind, but as I’ve only got it on tape, and the tape is just about worn out, I hadn’t listened to it in ages. However, the small person has got it on CD, I remembered this afternoon. So put it on. and. wow. Unbelievable. Still as good if not better than I remember it. Great songs, amazing playing, fantastic production, moving lyrics (it’s a sort of concept album on the legend of St Brendan sailing from Ireland to America a few hundred years before Columbus…) – truly wonderful. Seriously, it’s great, get it.

It’s kind of apt at the start of a new year to be listening to an album about a journey into the unknown – not that stepping over into 2004 is like sailing the atlantic in medieval times – after all it’s just another day in ‘actual’ terms – but new year is a rite of passage, giving us a chance to pause, take stock, rethink, set some goals, change the way we do things, and also chops the past into convenient chunks for us to assess whether they were good or bad.

2003 was very different for me musically than 2002 – ’02 was the year I did the two big tours with Level 42 and The Schizoid Band, but ’03 was a year of fewer gigs but a lot of musical experimenting – loads of new improv settings, gigs with Orphy Robinson, Tess Garraway, Corey Mwamba, Filomena Campus, Josh Peach, Seb Rochford, Theo Travis, Mano Ventura, Michael Manring, Jez Carr, Harvey Jessop; I’ve also recorded loads of improv stuff this year – most importantly the new album with Theo Travis, but also material with quartets in France and Spain, duets with Matthias Grob, Luca Formentini, BJ Cole and Patrick Wood. Loads of space to develop new ideas, much of which will be launched on anyone who wants to hear it in 2004.

So, here’s to the new year – may all your gigs be well paid and your audiences attentive.

Soundtrack – The Smiths; ‘Louder Than Bombs’; Bill Frisell, ‘The Willies’; Rob Jackson, ‘Wire Wood and Magnets’; Iona, ‘Beyond These Shores’;

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A window on my week…

…albeit an overpriced double glaze one.

OK, so I should have known never to invite round a double glazing salesman from a cold-call; it’s a hideous way to do business (I usually just try and sell them CDs… ;o) but the guy caught me at a bad time, and I agreed to getting a quote…

So, Wednesday night, we spent FOUR HOURS (oh yes, four long tedious hours) being spield by a double-glazing salesman, being told that normal double-glazed windows could be dismantled in seconds, that his company was great – the main reason being that they don’t beat up their customers… ????? Your guess is as good as mine…

Anyway, talking to a couple of journos, one of whom is a sociology grad (that’ll be not me then) was clearly a bad idea for a salesman using all the classic sales techniques, culminating in making us feel very guilty for him losing his commission. However, any company who are willing to drop from an initial (insane) quote of

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A week in the life of…

me. what a surprise.

When did I last blog (quick check…), Ah yes, Sunday – right since then? I’ve done some teaching, we’ve scrapped the small person’s car, and on Monday night I went to a ‘Bob Harris presents’ gig at The Stables in Wavendon. The lineup was great – Heather Myles (Mary Chapin Carpenter sings Buddy Holly sort of vibe), Nick Harper and Thea Gilmore.

Nick Harper was the main attraction for me – having seen him play at Greenbelt, after having been introduced to his music by Catherine Streetteam (thanks!), I’ve been looking for a chance to see him play again, and as the marvellous JJ aka mini-harv is promoting the series of shows.

Nick’s live shows have to see seen to be believed. He sings and plays acoustic guitar, but the twist is that he takes two processors with him, one for voice and one for guitar, distorts his guitar to sound like an electric on occasion, puts big delays on his voice, and tunes his guitar down a fourth from usual so gets an insane amount of low end out of it anyway. A genuine one man band, with more on stage energy than most four piece bands and zero gimmick factor – just an amazing show with some great songs. His new album, blood songs, is excellent.

Thea’s set was good, though a bit of the guitar and nearly all the bass parts were on backing tracks, which – call me old fashioned – just doesn’t work for a ‘rootsy’ show – at some points there were three guitars and keyboards going – surely one of them could have actually played a bass line??? Her songs were fine, and he voice is lovely, but the canned part of the show really didn’t do it for me. When she dropped it back to a more acoustic sound, she was really really good, and if she was doing a solo tour, I’d go and see her again in a heartbeat. But the tracks have to go.

The other bizarre highlight of the evening was being recognised by some people who had seen me play at the Stables with the Schizoid Band, and came up to say hi – which I was doing the merch table for Nick… not often that one gets spotted doing merch, but it made for an interesting diversion from selling CDs!

Other than that, it’s been a week of buying christmas cards, writing a christmas newsletter and then today finding out that my new bass will be shipped over from the states this week!!!! HOW EXCITING IS THAT????? I can’t wait. Anderson, the artist relations guy at Modulus, reckons it’s incredible – and despite working in artist relations, he’s not usually given to hyperbole, so I’m even more excited than I would have been!!!

Soundtrack – Nick Harper, ‘Blood Songs’; Martyn Joseph, ‘Whoever It Was Who Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home’ (more magic for the welsh cockburn); Mabulu, ‘Marimbo’ (Mozambique african hip-hop crossover stuff. Marvellous); Stevie Wonder, ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’ (certainly in the key of my life).

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Call me The Accugroover… :o)

So, as I mentioned back on Nov 25th, I’ve changed my amp endorsement deal, and now I’m officially working with Accugroove on the design of a new powered cabinet!

I’ve known about Accugroove stuff for a few years, and have tried their cabs out at NAMM over the last couple of years – loved the sound, but at the time I was enjoying a slightly more low-fi, ‘stressed-speaker’ sound. Now, with my ever increasingly complex rig and the desire to go stereo, I really need to be using powered cabinets, and that’s what Accugroove has agreed to design for me, which is great!

Mark Wright, the owner of Accugroove has been a friend for ages – he’s been to my gigs, and Dan and I stayed at his house on my tour in CA last year. He and David (the other partner at Accugroove) are great guys, and make amazing bass cabs, so despite a few tempting offers from other places, Accugroove was really the only choice.

So now I’m REALLY looking forward to the NAMM show where the prototype ‘Steve Lawson Solo 110’ or whatever it’ll end up being called is going to be first available to try. How excited am I? Very. very very. this is roughly what it will look like (actually, it’s almost certainly exactly what it will look like…)

So there’s a press release that’s up on the news page on my website, and a bit about me on the front page of the Accugroove site, and I’ll obviously be playing on their stand at NAMM, and taking the prototype cab around with me for any other dates I do in California (at the moment I’m working on getting some dates with Trip Wamsley, which would be great. Trip’s a fantastic bass player, very fine songwriter, as mad as a box of frogs and anglophile to the point of actually wanting to live here (someone has to), and his latest CD, ‘It’s Better This Way’ is bleedin’ marvellous.

So anyway, go and have a look at the lovely Accugroove stuff on their website – www.accugroove.com, and if you email them, say hi from me.

Soundtrack – Moondog, ‘Sax Pax for Sax’; John Mayal’s Bluesbreakers, ’70th Birthday Concert’.

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Making it up as we go along!

Had a marvellous gig last night with Orphy Robinson and Corey Mwamba – Corey on Vibes, and Orphy on Marimba, assorted Hand percussion, steel pans, QY-70 drums, wind-synth, etc.

I had mic feeds off of both guys into my looping set-up, and mainly used the one from Corey’s vibes, given that Orphy was looping himself (with an RC-20) and making a marvellous noise without my help!

The venue was Derby Dance Centre – a lovely venue, with a very friendly audience. Slightly surprising given how intense parts of the first set were, with orphy toying with controlled mic feedback and triggering some pretty mad beats off the QY-70…

Second set was more mellow – started with me looping and processing Corey’s vibraphone, Orphy joining him for a vibes duet, and finally me coming in over the top, which drifted into a solo bass thing (which was fortunately recorded, as it was unlike anything I’ve played before…) only to have them rejoin and take it off in another different direction.

The whole gig was a lot of fun, has some magic moments, was an insense listening experience, and bodes well for more trio stuff like that in the future.

What else is happening? bits of teaching, sending out CD sales (and surprisingly sold a load of CDs at the gig, despite playing nothing that sounded remotely like the CDs at any point in the show! :o)

Soundtrack – at the moment, the sound of computers humming.

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Yet more great reasons for staying indie….

“Increasingly, the music companies understand that they have to take some of the money back from the artists to correct a business model that has squeezed their profit margins. The challenge as the consolidation takes effect is whether the artists will agree to sign away some of the rights they have enjoyed in the boom times.”

That’s a quote from an article in The Sunday Times Business Section from a couple of weeks ago, relating to the EMI/Warner deal.

So, let me get this right, record companies are struggling to make enough millions, so they take money from the artists? artists who already surrender the ownership of their recordings (which if they want them back they have to buy back, they don’t actually revert to their possession after they’ve paid of their advance or ‘loan’, like a mortgage where you never get to own the house…), artists who already often end up on a crappy retainer while the record company fritters away their advance on unwanted and unneeded extras to people within the company (hiring their own contracted producers, using RC owned studios, paying for limos/parties/schmoozing journos etc…)…

Good lord, I’m so glad I went the indie route… While there are clearly some advantages to getting signed etc. it seems that the cons far far far outweigh the pros unless you only want to be some educationally challenged cat walk buffoon pedalling rehashed 70s MOR tunes on totp after winning a televised school talent contest (only, at most school talent shows I’ve been to, the winners have been considerably more telented than ANYONE I’ve seen win fame academy or pop idol or whatever…)

the time is now better than ever for supporting indie artists, listening to indie radio (or the BBC, which seems to be be a bit more flexible than national commercial radio in its playlisting), and supporting indie cd shops. Next time you’re thinking of buying a CD, head over to cdbaby.com and have a browse around to find something new and original that you like, rather than spending far too much money on some tripe that’s in the charts. Go on, I dare ya!

in other news, I’ve just been booked for an improv gig in Derby on Wedneday night – obviously, I’ll post more news when it comes in, but it’s going to great fun! Orphy Robinson on steel pans and assorted odds ‘n’ ends, and another vibes player… :o)

Soundtrack – The Rough Guide To Congolese Soukos (amazing stuff, get this CD!); John Patitucci, ‘One More Angel’; some loops that I set up about an hour ago and am still listening to…

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Too many downloads??

One of the uber-cool things about having this new webserver is that I’ve got a really excellent stats program that tells me all about who’s been visiting which pages they’ve been looking at, and what they’ve been downloading. I had no idea I was getting so many downloads!! hundreds of MP3 downloads a week, it’s remarkable.

Which begs the question, is there too much audio on the MP3s page? Is it stopping people from buying the CDs, cos the MP3s are enough? It’s a pretty bleedin’ selfish thing to do to download all the audio, burn it to CD and never buy the proper CDs, but maybe that’s what people are doing – I’ve made it too easy for people not to buy the CDs… I mean, I’m still selling CDs, but not in the quantities you’d expect given the amount of downloaded material there is off the site…

So, here’s the challenge. If you want more downloads, you gotta start buying more CDs! Lots of CD sales = lots more MP3s being made available. If you’ve not got all the CDs yet, then shame on you – go and get them now, via the paypal links etc…

And if you have got them, er, convince someone else to buy them…

What have I been up to? Well, on the music equipment front, I’ve bought a Mindprint Envoice preamp, which is absolutely lovely – really nice clean tube sound, with a great compressor and parametric EQ as well. I’m running it in the FX loop on my MPX-G2, and it just sounds delish.

I’m also in the process of negotiating a new amp deal, after finishing my working relationship with Ashdown – I’ve been using Ashdown stuff for about 5 years, and they make great amps, but a solo player doing what I do needs a certain kind of support from a company like that, and I wasn’t getting it. They seemed to have lost interest in helping to promote what I do, so it was time to head elsewhere. A shame in some ways, given the length of my time promoting their stuff (most of my students use ashdown amps, and I get about 15-20 emails a week asking questions about ashdown related stuff – BTW, from now on, it’s probably better to direct those questions through their website…) but also an exciting time, as I’m in the process of finalising a deal for a ‘signature’ powered cabinet – I’ve been after these for years, and Ashdown never made them. Finally, it looks like I’m going to get really hi quality full range powered speakers so I can start running in stereo. It should all be finalised by the end of the week, so I’ll post more about it then…

I’ve also spoken to Modulus, and my new bass should be ready in about a week! how exciting is that?????

Soundtrack – Zakir Hussain, ‘Making Music’; Three Prime, ‘Three Prime’.

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Boo!!!! …no, really, I enjoyed it…

…I was just saying your name!!!

Last night went to see Boo Hewerdine play. You’ve probably not heard Boo play, but you’ll have more than likely heard his songs, him having written for Eddie Reader, KD Lang and others. I saw him play at Greenbelt this year, and really enjoyed it, and as the gig was part of Delicatessen, organised by sarda and the cheat, then I had to go. Add to that the presence of Rob Jackson, looping guitarist and very nice bloke, and you’ve got yourself a great evening.

Airstar opened the evening – it’s always odd watching them, having played with them before, but nice to hear the songs, which are really strong, and to see the cheat doing a remarkable unwitting impersonation of paul field…

Then Boo came on – somewhere in a parallel universe, Boo’s old band, The Bible, are hailed as the savours of itellegent pop and selling hundreds of thousands of records, while Paddy McAloon is out touring arts centres playing gloriously miserable songs to 90 enthralled punters who feel like their in some secret society for knowing who he is…

…in this universe, it’s clearly the other way round. Boo’s between song banter is hilarious and provides the perfect counter-weight to his miserable unlucky-in-life songs. Rob Jackson’s guitar playing is a thing of great beauty and wonder, and fortunately Boo gets this and gives him some room to loop and layer is Frisell-esque Telecaster loveliness through a few of the tunes. And Rosalie Deighton’s BVs are a little quiet, but add yet another layer to a glorious live sound.

So now I’m sat listening to Rob’s album ‘Wire, Wood and Magnets’, and it’s fantastic – really really lovely. The missing link between Frisell’s country exploits and Phil Keaggy’s acoustic instrumentals. Great sounds, great playing, and some exquisite tunes. Hopefully Rob and I will be recording something or other together soon, so watch this space. We’re also thinking of doing a gig or two – maybe theo and I, with Rob as well… lots of possibilities, but for now, go and buy his CD – there are lots of downloads on his website, so have a listen, then get it. you can buy Rob’s CD at the Burning Shed shop, which also happens to stock loads of other really really cool music – lots of Theo Travis’ other albums (start with Heart Of The Sun, it’s a masterpiece), NoMan (another great miserable adult pop band), and Peter Chilver’s albums (soundscape stuff, lots of fine bass work and a very silly sense of humour just beneath the surface).

Soundtrack Rob Jackson’s album’s just finished, and I’m now listening to Boo’s live album.

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Hi, honey, I'm home…

after being away for about two weeks.

First week was in Denmark, visiting the International People’s College. IPC is a ‘folk high school’ – a scandinavian educational model that looks at learning as something that’s worth doing for its own sake rather than just for the piece of paper you’ll get at the end of it. The various folk high schools around Denmark, Sweden, Norway etc. have different emphases (emphasise?? no idea…) – some are all about sport, or film making or whatever, and this one is an international school (the clue’s in the name), drawing currently from 32 different countries as diverse as nepal, england, argentina, tibet, bangladesh, malta, poland, USA, romania, uganda, kenya, australia and brazil.

the focus of the college is on conflict resolution, cross cultural studies, development issues and for most of the students it’s seen as a great place to learn english. The staff are an amazingly diverse bunch – from cambodia, mauritania, denmark, australia etc. etc. and the food’s great.

The reason for the visit is that my mum’s involved in trying to set up a folk high school in Berwick On Tweed (middle of nowhere and turn left), and I taught on their summer school this year. So we both went on a fact finding trip, to see if all this folk high school stuff was hippie idealism or a the answer to the UK’s current education crisis (education, education, education said Blair. bollocks bollocks bollocks says the entire population of england, 6 years on.) It was amazing – a fully functional school, the classes dealt with some pretty intense stuff, lofty concepts and deep philosophical stuff, all within the framework of 32 cultures under one roof, all unwittingly capable of deeply offending one another! :o)

With a week at the college and a couple of days to look round Copenhagen, we had a marvellous week (also had a nice chance to drop in and see Anders-Streetteam at one of the most amazing drum shops I’ve ever seen!) Copenhagen’s a great city – here’s hoping I can sort out some gigs there soon…

Got home from there for one day, did a day’s teaching, and headed off to Amsterdam on holiday. Warning – if you’re living in London, heading off to Copenhagen and Amsterdam in the space of a week is not a great idea if you still want to feel really good about where you live… Don’t get me wrong, I do like living here, and some things about being in England are magic, but politically we’re losing it, and the whole crime/vandalism/transport/weirdness thing has become the british axis of evil. Amsterdam is beautiful – it’s great to see a city of that size operate with so little car traffic. Thousands and thousands of bikes, but precious little car useage. lots of canals, gorgeous canals, and some very groovy shops. The liberal drug laws seem like a cool thing (when was the last time you saw someone get stoned and start a fight??), and there were much less of an agressive feel there than on a night out in central london, but the ‘liberal’ attitude to porn and prostitution is, according to the UN and other sources, just a front for some seriously nasty illegal stuff. So much for unionising the prostitution industry – doesn’t really help the girls who are being trafficked from asia and eastern europe. London has a huge problem with this too, but at least we don’t pretend that being a prostitute is a great gig and that it’s all kosher here… scary stuff.

Still, it’s a great city, sex-tourism aside, and I hope to go back and do some gigs there too soon!

And now I’m back home – time to get to work promoting the CD, which hopefully you’ve all bought by now! :o) Theo did a huge mailout to radio and media while I was away, so reviews and airplay should start happening soon… til then, play the CD to your friends, steal their money and buy them it for christmas. Lots of people are saying it’s their favourite of the CDs I’ve put out, which is nice.

On the bad news front, I heard today that Mike Yaconelli was killed in a car accident a couple of days ago – if you’ve ever been to Greenbelt, Yak won’t need any intro. If not, he was an author, social activist, realist, speaker, comedian and all round remarkable human being who did far more in his 61 years than many people could acheive in 10 times that. His passing is a loss to the world. here’s the report from his hometown. Please spare and thought and a prayer for his family.

Soundtrack – while I was away I picked up a few CDs – Charlie Haden, ‘American Dream’; Jing Chi, ‘Live’; Living Daylights, ‘Electric Rosary’ and Metalwood’s latest, which is upstairs and I can’t remember the title, but they’re all very good indeed! Today I’ve been listening to Jonatha Brooke, ’10 cent wings’, which is oustandingly brilliant, like just about every note jonatha has ever uttered.

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