Here’s something lovely that has just been posted to Vimeo – it’s from a house concert that Lobelia and I played in Plano, TX earlier in the year. Brian, who expertly hosts the gig for us and filmed it so beautifully, had seen Tiger Darrow play a few weeks earlier opening for Zoe Keating, so asked her to come and open the show. She did, was brilliant, and thus we had to play together at the end. Here it is: Continue reading “New Improv Video With Lobelia and Tiger Darrow”
Steve and Lobelia House Concert tour 2011
Plans are now underway for us to return to the US this May/June and play some house concerts. We had such a great time last year on our visit, and we’ve already talked to many of our hosts from last year about return visits.
This week is when we start putting in dates and routing our trip – we’ll be flying into and out of New York, in at the beginning of May, out at the end of June/beginning of July. Aside from time with family and friends, what happens in between is largely reliant on people booking us for house concerts.
What’s a house concert? Continue reading “Steve and Lobelia House Concert tour 2011”
Happy Birthday To Me – Help Yourself To Some Music
2010 has been a bumper year for me, musically. Not only have I – as my top 20 shows – found more brand new music that I love than I know what to do with, it’s been an unexpectedly busy and productive year of music-making.
The ‘unexpected’ part is because it was also my first full year as a dad – 2010 is definitely the year of the Flapjack. At the start of the year, he was barely a month old and we had no idea what we’d be able to carry on doing as musicians and how much would have to go by the way-side. Continue reading “Happy Birthday To Me – Help Yourself To Some Music”
Two EPs On The Way, Duets With Trip Wamsley
Trip and I have been friends for over a decade. We met at the NAMM Show in LA in ’99, and I was immediately a fan of his music. I doubt he heard anything I was on at the time – I was still 11 months away from my first ever solo gig, and he’d already been doing the solo bass thing for best part of a decade – he was SO far ahead of the curve, inspired by Michael Manring, playing opening shows for big name acts in The South all on his own. A real inspiration. Continue reading “Two EPs On The Way, Duets With Trip Wamsley”
House Concert Footage: Hello?
I’m SO glad that our new live mixer set up allows us to multitrack record everything. It means we can capture lil’ moments like this one, when I decided to open the House Concert in Camberley with a version of Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Hello‘.
I’d previously played it at home, but just the chord melody bit. The weirdness in the middle was a whim – I’ve blogged before about the way that the house concert set up lets you take more time over things, and more risks in your playing. Here, they paid off: Continue reading “House Concert Footage: Hello?”
New House Concert Video
We’re just back from a fabulous run of house concerts in England and Scotland. All kinds of good times were had, friends were made, internet chums suddenly existed in meat-space too, and a lot of very fine music happened. Big, big thanks to the truly awesome people who hosted the gigs in Leeds, Camberley and Edinburgh. Expert humans, one and all. Continue reading “New House Concert Video”
More New Music: Cruising Towards a New Album…
I’m finally making some headway on ideas for a new solo album (or whatever a collection of music that used to be called an album is now called). I’m still not sure whether it’s going to be all completely solo, have a few special guests, be all collaborative, or what, but at least some musical ideas are happening.
I had another go at the new tune I posted on Youtube a couple of weeks ago, at the gig in Edinburgh last weekend. This new version is a lot faster (not sure that’s a good thing) and has a nice little loop/delay thing going with the melody about half way through, and then an improv section at the end where the main loop disappears, a bit of the tune continues and a few other interesting things happen around it – so here’s the 0.2b public beta version, on youtube: Continue reading “More New Music: Cruising Towards a New Album…”
House Concerts, and More New Youtube Video.
Last Friday (April 17th) Lobelia and I played our first house concert in a couple of months in Leith, Edinburgh.
It was a great demonstration of everything that’s cool about house concerts:
- It was organised very much at the last minute (wasn’t even advertised at all until 2 weeks before the gig),
- It was booked by someone who’d seen me give a masterclass a few years ago and couldn’t be bothered to wait for a ‘proper’ venue to get round to booking Lo and I, so got on and did it himself.
- It was populated by friends and family of Paddy who booked it, most of whom had little idea who we were beyond Paddy raving about it.
- It was marvellous. Continue reading “House Concerts, and More New Youtube Video.”
House Concert Hosting: a Beginner’s Guide.
I’ve blogged a lot of late about the whole house concert phenomenon, and Lo and I seem to have inspired a few people with our house concert tour to get out and do it themselves. On Sunday afternoon, Neil Alexander and his amazing jazz/prog/fusion/rock trio Nail played a web-cast house concert from upstate New York, watched by about 15-20 in the room, and across the course of the gig, over 100 online.
Continue reading “House Concert Hosting: a Beginner’s Guide.”
House Concerts – what to do when you're not acoustic.
One of the main responses I’ve been getting to our tale of house concert touring success is ‘that’s great, but my band is too loud/too big/too jazz/too dancey/etc… to work in that setting. What do you suggest?”
The implication there is that there’s only one way for a band to perform. So, let’s consider house concerts as the modern equivalent of doing an in-the-studio radio performance.
Continue reading “House Concerts – what to do when you're not acoustic.”