Tag: music

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sleeping with the enemy…

…actually, that’s too horrid a metaphor to use. Writing to the enemy, more like…

Having just had another read of TurnUpTheHeat.org, I emailed David Cameron. Here’s what I wrote (check out me with my not swearing or calling him Tory scum!)

“Dear David,

it’s been wonderful to hear you highlighting the dangers of climate change in your many public engagements of late. It’s quite clearly the single biggest issue facing mankind over the next few years, and your assertion that there are things more important than money was surprising for a Tory leader but deeply heartening.

In the light of this, I’m decidedly puzzled by your choice of John Redwood as Shadow Transport Minster, a man who is a climate change denier who is clearly more in favour of promoting private car usage than providing incentives to promote mass transit in the form of trains and trams (I’m a musician and travel regularly on the continent by train to avoid flying, and the trains there put ours to shame – surely we need a transport policy that would reinvigorate the train system in order to give people a positive incentive to use them as an alternative to cars, which are such a huge contributor to our climate change emissions problem).

As I said, I’m utterly delighted that you are so concerned (and informed) about Climate Change, but it is definitely going to require a joined up set of policies that regulate the aviation industry, the car industry and house building.

I look forward to seeing your concern coalesce into a strong defined environmentally minded set of policies.

yours,

Steve Lawson
www.stevelawson.net “

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Ned Evett Trio At The Troubadour

Back-pedalling to Monday night, I headed down to the Troubadour (home of my first ever solo gig) to see Ned Evett play with his trio. I’d only ever seen Ned play solo before… actually, that’s not true, i did see Ned with a couple of other musicians when I first met him at La Nuit De La Fretlesse in Mende, France, back in… 2001?

anyway, it’s a long time since I’ve seen Ned play with a band, so it was great to hear what he sounds like in that setting. The only problem was that their bags were lost on the flight over, so Ned was completely without his pedal board and two of his guitars. Yup. My. Worst. Nightmare. Well, not quite on a par with world war, or UKIP winning a general election, but still a pretty fearful thought for any musician.

Still, Ned did a fabulous job with just his one guitar, a rented amp and a delay pedal. The juxtaposition of Ned’s fretless guitar and the upright bass is an inspired combination, and Ned’s well developed dynamic control with his voice was ably supported by the rhythm section. A great night out.

If you get a chance to see them play, don’t miss it!

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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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now THIS is why I got a freeview box…

Before we upgraded our TV options from the regular 5 terrestrial channels to the greater variety of FreeView, I would regularly read about people watching Joni Mitchell live gigs on there, or Dylan documentaries, or jazz gigs or whatever, and that drove my resolve to get a freeview box in the place.

And now, after God-know-how-long, I’ve finally been enjoying the fruits of BBC4’s output – for some reason I’ve always missed their music output until this evening, but today have watched Liane Carroll live from Brecon Jazz, Oscar Peterson live (with the majestic Neils Hennigs Orsted Pederson on bass), a Johnny Cash documentary, and now Roseanne Cash in concert. What a marvellous evening’s entertainment!

Today’s been a fun day, recording Ruthie Culver’s voice for her album – the rest of it was recorded a while back in a studio, but thanks to a major technological breakdown in the studio, the vocals weren’t useable. So we’re redoing them in StevieStudio. Much fun! We’ll be spending a few days on this over the next couple of weeks…

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MOBO drops Jazz. Jazz not happy

The one downside to being at the Recycle Collective last night was that I missed the protests outside the MOBO awards at them having dropped Jazz as a category.

I mentioned this on the blog when the issue was first raised by Abram Wilson – it’s such a nonsense to have an awards show for ‘music of black origin’ and not have jazz, unless all you’re celebrating is Spirituals and Field Hollers. Hip-hop, soul, R ‘n’ B, reggae all trace a big part of their sound back to Jazz, and, Paul Robeson aside, jazz musicians were the first worldwide black music stars.

So last night, outside the Royal Albert Hall where the awards were taking place, about 100 people gathered to protest, 20 or so musicians played, including Soweto Kinch, a former MOBO winner, led by Abram Wilson. I saw some photos at the RC last night, as John L Walters came straight to the RC from the protest – looked like a lot of fun!

So, balls to the MOBOs and their hideous bling-fest. Support jazz in the UK, peoples!

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More Recycle Magic

Favourite Day is over again til October.

Got there just after 6, so plenty of time for set-up, though TSP was coming from work which meant that the door wasn’t covered for a while (not sure what I’d do without TSP on these gigs – she’s a lifesaver).

I’ve rarely seen so many gadgets and gizmos on one stage, and even then Leo only brought half his stomp-boxes with him! I’ve only seen Jason play acoustically before, so even though I knew he did an electro-acoustic processed thing, I had no idea what that would be, so he turned up with saxes and percussion and a great TC harmonizer an airFX, JamMan and another boss multi-FX. Lots of great noises.

As is customary, I kicked things off solo (No More Us And Them, Amo Amatis Amare, Scott Peck), then Leo joined me for the duo bit. He’s just been working on a project with a ranting mad new york bloke, so had these fabulous and ever-so-slightly scary vocal samples that he brought into the piece. Great stuff.

I had a feeling when I booked Leo and Jason together that the combination would work really well, and I wasn’t wrong – the combination of my setting up progressions, Leo alternating between playing the progression and punctuating it with crazy detuned guitar noises and Jason veering from gorgeous Garbarek-esque soprano sweetness to multiphonics+harmoniser squeals made for some really fascinating music, that often drifted from really ‘out’ to very ‘in’ indeed across the course of a couple of minutes.

The Recycle Collective works so well on so many levels – from giving people who don’t often get the change to play solo to explore that, through to bringing together disparate combinations of players who otherwise might not have met, as well as just playing gorgeous music in a gorgeous venue.

Crowd was fairly small, but I had lots of apologies waiting when I got in from people intending to be there who were ill or called away by mini-tragedies.

Next one is with BJ and Theo, on October 12th – put it in your diary now!

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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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gigs where the act doesn't turn up…

Yesterday afternoon, Tony Moore at The Bedford send round an email saying that Tommy Sims was playing. Now, those of you with a memory for the credits on early 90s CCM albums will already know Tommy as the bassist on just about everything that Charlie Peacock produced around that time, but he went on from there to work with Springsteen and then to put out a stunning solo album called ‘Peace And Love’ – proper late-70s-Stevie-style soulful singer/songwriter stuff. A great record.

So naturally I was very excited to see him play, and changed plans to head to the Bedford.

But he didn’t show. Bugger. Got there, and the lovely Tony Moore was most apologetic, with a ‘he might turn up later, he’s got a session’.

So I stuck around, and watched the various singer/songwriters on offer. A couple of good ones, a fairly duff one, and Tony himself playing the best set I’ve heard him play. Some great songs.

The Beford is a fab venue, and Tony does an amazing job booking there. the quality is WAY higher than most venues where the bands are being paid, let alone a free-entry no-one-gets-paid gig. The problem for me is that there seem to be a lot of career song-writers there, who don’t seem to have much to say. Lots of songs written because the subject would ‘make a good song’ not because it’s something that stirs the soul of the writer. On some occasions this doesn’t bother me at all, and I just enjoy the skill of the songwriting. Other times it bugs the hell out of me and makes me resolve to make music that matters.

But it was a fun night out anyway, and at least one of the bands had a great lil’ bassist, who had seen Michael Manring and I do a masterclass at The Guitar institute a few years back, so that was a lovely conversation. :o)

I now need to find out what Tommy Sims is up to while he’s in London! Would still love to meet him and say hi.

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