Tag: improv

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Croydon gig

Just back from a lovely little gig in Croydon, at the Freedom Of Expression night down there. Modeled on quality acoustic nights like the Kashmir and The Bedford, Tim Eveleigh has put together a great little gig down there.

I say ‘down there’ – Croydon’s a hell of a long way away! I’m sure I saw signs just before I got there saying ‘you are now entering Mordor – heyre be dragons’ – I felt like Reapacheep in Voyage Of The DawnTreader, getting into my little boat and sailing off to the end of the world…

Anyway. The line up was fab, but the audience was even better – especially one completely nuts woman who spent her entire time there shouting in a really loud and shrill voice at her brow-beaten broken-looking husband. Oh, and at anyone who suggested she might keep her voice down during the music. A total disaster that just screamed ‘mail order bride’ – came across as one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever seen, but had sadly left before I went on, or we’d have had some fun.

As it was, I realised just before I went on that I’d forgotten the power supply for the Looperlative!! Oh bugger. Not good at all. There goes all the tunes off the new album that I was planning to do.

Fortunately, help came in the form of the lovely Cara Winter, who had been using a DL4 for some excellent vocal loopage in her set, and offered to lend it to me. Yay! It’s a hell of a long time since I last did a gig with a DL4, that’s for sure! But it meant I could do Grace And Gratitude, Amo Amatis Amare, an improv groovy thing call ‘Mail Order Bride’, and in between I did What A Wonderful World, Deep Deep Down (the Eric Roche tune) and Deeper Still. All in all, not a bad set, which was very well received, even by the mad drunk bloke who kept giving me quite positive heckles, but didn’t seem to mind me just referring to him as ‘nutter’.

So, a fab gig – if you live in Mordor, (or even Morden) do check out Freedom Of Expression – it’s every Tuesday night, and I’m bound to be back down there soon…

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Music things over the last few days

How far back are we going? er, Thursday i think – had a rehearsal with Estelle Kokot for a gig in a couple of weeks time – Estelle is a very fine jazz singer/songwriter – rather mad, but very talented. Her songs are a mixture of lovely simply 3 and 4 chord vamps and complex compositions with loads of chords and written bass parts and odd sections. Plenty for me to get my teeth in to. Definitely looking forward to the gig.

Then Thursday evening was back in the Vortex watching Evan Parker’s quartet, featuring Orphy Robinson on MalletKat (MIDI vibraphone) – it was a full on crazy improv gig, two sets of about 45 minutes each, with no breaks mid-set at all, long periods of really full on intense squealing improv. i go to gigs like this every now and again to reorient my ears to the effect that chaotic dissonance has. It’s not something I’d ever want to do for entire gigs at a time, playing fully out stuff in that way, but with a melodic structured counter-balance, I love the effect it creates, and I’m happy to engage with occasional concerts like this as a lesson in what that kind of thing is supposed to sound like, rather than trying to pick through it for what I like and don’t like.

Friday I was back recording Ruthie Culver – the singer I’ve been helping to redo the vocals on her album, recorded in a studio where the headphone monitor mixer didn’t work. This is proving to be a most enjoyable bit of work, and the result we’re getting are sounding great – I’ll definitely be looking for more engineering/production work on projects like this (basically anything that can be done easily in my office – electric instruments, solo voice and guitar, anything that’s multitracked and doesn’t include live drums. etc.)

Then Saturday, and to the picture at the top here – during the week, jim, the Fat Controller contacted me about playing a house concert in Lymington near Bournemouth. it was at the end of a day out for a bunch of people in their late teens/early 20s, and he fancied exposing them to something new, musically speaking. And it seemed to go really well – a most mellow setting, a very friendly crowd, and some rather fun experiments with the vocal looping stuff that I did at Edinburgh last year (record random percussive sounds made by audience members, make a tune out of it). As you can see, it was a v. intimate affair, and this was before another 10-15 people piled into the room…

Anyway, it showed how well my set-up works for house concerts (I’ll have to measure the exact surface area I need to be able to do it for future reference), and if any of you readers are interested in hosting one, please drop me an email to discuss the logistics and economics of hosting such a thing (and if you’re a bassist with lots of bass-monkey or musician friends, it can be coupled with a bass workshop/improv workshop as well.)

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A solo theremin gig???

Yup, that was the first half of the gig I saw last night – Pamelia Kurstin’s gig at The Vortex was one I happened upon while looking at their website for something else entirely last week. When I saw that her two collaborators on the gig were Seb Rochford and A< HREF=http://www.liamnoble.co.uk/>Liam Noble, it was a sure thing – had to see that.

The first half of the gig was a solo looped Theremin set – Pamelia was using two DL4s and an EH Bass Microsynth – and the first 20 minutes of it was captivating. After that it was still good, it’s just tricky to sustain that level of interest without varying the arrangement ideas (would love to hear what she’d do with a Looperlative instead of the DL4s).

The second half was wonderful – lots of mad squeaky gate improv stuff with Seb on drums and Liam on piano. Both guys are such great and original improvisors, and worked really well with the theremin craziness coming from Pamelia, who veered from violin territory to clarinet tones to the sound of a pizzicato double bass. Fascinating stuff. All in all a top gig, and I’ll have to get her for the Recycle Collective next time she’s in London!

What was also most fun about the night was the number of other players that showed up – Julian Seigel, Estelle Kokot, Mandy Drummond, Phil Robson, Dylan Bates, Jason Broadbent – a most enjoyable jazz-hang! And what’s more, the Vortex are wanting to book the trio from August’s RC gig – me, seb and Andy Hamill – for a gig in Jan/Feb! Yay! And I got booked for a gig with Estelle in a couple of weeks time – more on that soon…

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Recycle day…

My favourite day of the month. It’s Recycle day! Yay! The day when all discerning music peoples in London pile into Darbucka World Music Bar in Clerkenwell for an evening of amazing improvised music, great company, fun and marvellous food and drink.

Hope to see you there – I’ll be the tall guy with the long hair on stage. Do come and say hi if you make it, but not while I’m playing, obviously…

joining me tonight are two outstanding musicians – Leo Abrahams on guitar and Jason Yarde on Sax and whatever else he brings with him. Oh yes, it’s going to be excellent.

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singer/songwriter genius shows Street Team how it's done…

Juliet Turner, fabulous singer/songwriter and Recyclist from Greenbelt, sent this out to her mailing list yesterday –

“Hey. For any of you who are in London, try and check out this gig. Super amazing bassist Steve Lawson gathers together GREAT musicians and they play off the cuff/of the moment/who knows whats going to happen next/ music. I did some singing with Steve at the Greenbelt festival this summer which was a lot of fun. There’s a Recycled gig on the 21st Sept at 182 St John’s St. Clerkenwell, London when Jason Yarde (saxophonist, very celebrated jazz musician) and Leo Abrahams (guitarist, Brian Eno, Ed Harcourt, Roxy Music) will be joining Steve. The music will be extraordinary. More details on their myspace site.”

How lovely is that? The date is a day late (MySpace quite often lists gig dates a day late for some reason – always click on the gig and check the ACTUAL date of any gig you get off MySpace), but that’s the kind of support and encouragement that any musician craves but rarely gets.

As I’ve said numerous times before on this ‘ere blog, you REALLY need to check out Juliet’s music – her website is julietturner.com and her myspace address is myspace.com/burntheblacksuit – all three of her albums are beautiful, and her new single is utterly gorgeous (if you were at the Greenbelt RC gig, you might recognise the words to ‘Joy’ as she used it as the basis for the improv she did with Harry Napier, Huw Warren and I.)

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Recycle Collective recommended in Time Out again…

Next week’s Recycle Collective gig gets the recommended gig treatment again in Time Out this week. Here’s what they say –
Steve Lawson’s Recycle Collective/Jason Yarde/Leo Abrahams –
“Improvised, organic electronica from a fabulous trio featuring bassist and live sampler Lawson, producer/saxophonist Yarde and Brian Eno’s guitarist Abrahams.”

so there you go – we’re fabulous, it’s official, so you can’t miss it!

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Reality music TV – is it improved by Rocking Out?

I’ve just wasted the last 20 minutes watching RockStar Supernova – I was mildly interested to see if ‘Rock’ musicians did reality music TV any better than the manufacturers of pop. The answer is a resounding no. Watching losers trying to impress Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted and Gilby Clarke enough to be allowed to be their front person, by playing heinous cover versions with the house band makes for pretty wretched TV, and doesn’t seem to be any more about having anything artistic or creative to say beyond ‘check me out I’m an identikit rawkstar’.

Nope, TV talent shows are just the same as any other lame-assed talent show just with a bigger special effects budget.

Shit on a stick.

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it's all about the lovely peoples

This being a musician thing, it’s really all about lovely people. I love playing music, I love being a musician, I love recording and releasing music and I love doing gigs. And the thing I love about all of those the most is that I get to do it in the company of lovely people.

I’ve mentioned before on here that I’m continually delighted to find that the people who come to see me play are by and large the kind of people I’d like to go for a curry with – and fairly regularly do end up friends with them, on more than just an ego-massaging ‘hey how great, you like my tunes’ kind of way. I’ve somehow managed to write music that attracts nice people. This is a good thing.

Likewise the musicians that I spend my life playing with are lovely. Jez and Theo, they of the duo albums on Pillow Mountain Records, are two of my most favouritest people to spend time with. Delightful, friendly, funny, generous people, who also happen to be fabulous musicians.

The amassed hordes of the Recycle Collective are just great – Cleveland, BJ, Orphy, Leo, Andrea, Julie, Seb, Andy, Patrick etc. etc… great people one and all. I’m a lucky man.

Today I spent the day with Evelyn Glennie – genius percussionist, and of course, an utterly delightful person. Evelyn’s always been a very progressive force within classical music, experimenting with improvised music, processed sound and MIDI instruments for years, and I was up showing her more about looping, exploring the possibilities for her percussive set up. With a musician that good, and that open minded, she’s bound to discover all manner of gorgeous music in the midst of the technology, and hopefully we’ll get to do some things together as it progresses. But more than the music, I’m just delighted that once again being a musician has put me in contact with more lovely people. I is feelin’ blessed.

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Recycle-type things across the globe…

Just got an email from the delightful and lovely Doug Lunn – an amazing bassist and human being from Santa Monica, CA. He’s got a gig coming up with guitarist Mike Keneally, and it sounds very Recycle-esque… or rather The RC sounds very ‘Circus Of Values’-esque, as Keneally was clearly doing it first – read this;

“Hello there, MK here — I hope you’re doing well and that 2006 has been OK for you so far. Thanks for reading this!
I want to let you know about some stuff – here’s “stuff fragment” number one:
CIRCUS OF VALUES re-ignites THIS WEEK The first round of Circus of Values was a series of improvised shows I hosted at Dizzy’s in San Diego, back around five years ago. Each one had a different theme and title, and a different group of players. All of the music was invented on the spot. It’s time for another round of this madness. I’m
very happy to be returning to Dizzy’s (a super-cool spot to hear music) for another series of Circus Of Values performances.
I’m very delighted to report that Chad Wackerman (drums) and Doug Lunn (bass) will join me for the first show of the new Circus of Values series; the performance is entitled “Ah Mr. Solid Gasoline.”
Here’s details for y’all:
Mike’s intimate improvisation series
Mike Keneally’s Circus of Values
returns to
Dizzy’s
344 Seventh Avenue
(between J & K, on the edge of San Diego’s East
Village)
San Diego, CA 92101
Thursday, September 7, 2006
8:00 p.m.
Tonight’s episode: “AH MR. SOLID GASOLINE”
Featuring Chad Wackerman and Doug Lunn
Tickets: $15
All ages welcome
Info: 858.270.7467
All attendees will receive a special exclusive concert program with odd art and text by me. Please be an attendee! (Check later in this email for the dates of two more Circus Of Values shows.)”

Sounds very Recycle-ish to me – and such great players! Doug’s a remarkable bassist, and Chad’s, well, Chad; a percussive legend. Definitely one that’s worth the drive if you’re in Southern California

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None More Prog




The Tangent

Originally uploaded by solobasssteve.

Went to Southend to see Theo playing with The Tangent last night. For those of you that don’t know (I’m guessing that’s most of you), The Tangent are a prog rock band, in the old fashioned sense of mini-moogs and obscure time signature changes, too many band members and 22 minute songs. Andy Tillison, who basically IS the Tangent, is a driven man, and I have a huge amount of respect for him, bordering on awe, mixed with bewilderment… That his musical vision requires him to hire six other musicians, write this insanely complex music and play it in little clubs in Southend is a remarkable testament to his tenacity and dedication.

And it is very well played. Despite a number of nasty technical hitches (an electrical spike that shut down all the keyboards and synth stuff), the band played the ridiculously complex music very well indeed, especially considering this isn’t a band that gigs week in week out (three of them are over from Sweden for the gig), and there are moments in the gig when I’m reminded why I loved prog-rock so much in my teens – the complexity, energy, the bizarreness of grooves in 7/8, 11/8 etc – it doesn’t really sound like anything else.

But I also breathed a huge sigh of relief that I’m not destined for the kind of logistical hell that Andy is every time he puts on a gig. My own musical goals in life are scalable to the degree that I could play solo in people’s living rooms for the rest of my music life and be not only fulfilled but probably make a reasonable living doing it.

I’m rarely at the mercy of club sound engineers and sysyems built to make Stones tribute bands sound loud, not 7 progsters sound clear. Even when I add other musicians, there are never any scores to hand round, rehearsals to be hand (except the duo with Julie, and that actually made a nice change, to have things to remember for once!)

My own musical journey is one deeper into collective spontaneous composition – beyond what usually gets described as ‘free improv’ and into something where ‘Is it Good?’ is the question of the hour not ‘Is it Right?’ – it’s what the Recycle Collective is about, it’s what the duos with Theo and BJ and Cleveland are about, it’s where I’m happiest, and where I play best.

So, a salute to Andy Tillison for his remarkable tenacity in the face of unrelenting technical obstacles, and a prayer of thanks that the musical monkey on my own back isn’t quite so demanding.

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