Tag: music

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Next weeks unmissable Recycle gig

We’re only one week away from the next Recycle Collective gig, and it’s going to be a blinder.

It’s a three part gig – part one is my album launch! Yes, I know that lots of you have already bought Behind Every Word (if you have please head over to the shop and post a review of it there, please!), but here’s your chance to hear lots of the tunes from the album live, and it’ll be a longer solo set than my usual 25 minute opening to the Recycle gigs.

then part two is Julie’s and my Edinburgh preview gig. Yup, it’s the only chance you’ll have to see the entire New Standard show from this years Edinburgh fringe, in London. We’ve been rehearsing lots, have come up with a pretty much perfect set list, and you need to come and see it! No really, it’s a must. Julie’s great, I’m not bad, and what’s more, there’s a part three to the gig, where Julie and I will be joined by Cleveland Watkiss, UK jazz legend, and one of the most amazing musicians ever to play at the Recycle Collective. He’s great.

So there you go, next Wednesday, at Darbucka, it’s only £7 to get in (£5 if you’re a student or an OAP or in the MU or whatever – bring proof, please) and the venue’s fab. bring friends, come early and eat, make a night of it.

Yay!

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Rock is Dead?

A fabulous post this morning by Jyoti on Why Rock Is Dead.

I emailed him about it, and it seems the tipping point for him was the same band that I was despairing at on the T in the Park coverage last night – WolfMother. How much more could they want to sound like Led Zep? How much more heinously anachronistic could it be to write ‘new’ songs like that in 2006? Is one of them about to buy Alistair Crowley’s old underpants, just to be like Jimmy Page? A really tragic show, and why on earth are they given such a huge platform?

Jyoti’s right – mainstream rock has become hopelessly derivative, retrogressive and stultifying, the record companies having latched onto a certain lazy section of the music buying public’s desire for perceived novelty and nostlagia at the same time. And it’s balls.

What’s worse – a thousand times worse – is that they’re rubbish. They aren’t even 5% the band that Zep were. None of these bands improve on the blue-print, none of them ever take a 70s formula and end up sounding like the greatest band the 70s never had. They just sound like a half-arsed tribute band with copyright issues. It’s balls.

I’ve always said that it’s more important to be good than to be original. But I’m not talking about slavish cloning. The desire for completely new music can be just as asphyxiating as mindless hero-worship, but to do either without coming up with anything worth listening to is the worse crime of all.

Mediocrity is the single most offensive quality in music. Bands that take risks and end up being appalling get my sneaking admiration. Bands that aren’t great, but are stretching towards something don’t sound mediocre, they sound interesting. To be truly dull requires a level of mis-placed self-satisfaction that stops you from ever looking for more, from moving forward, from building on the innovations of your heroes and finding your own space.

My music isn’t completely new – I wear a few of my influences pretty brightly on my sleeve, and am delighted when someone spots that John Martyn or Joni Mitchell or Michael Manring are in there somewhere. But I don’t actually sound like any of them.

The reason for this is pretty simple – I love Joni’s music. Think she’s pretty much perfect. But I don’t want to write music that sounds like Joni – that would be derivative in exactly the same way she never was – no, instead I want to WRITE MUSIC THAT MAKES ME FEEL THE WAY JONI’S MUSIC MAKES ME FEEL. That has that same sense of being spoken to, being taken on a journey, where the narrative and the music are married perfectly without ever feeling like either is being tugged in a wrong direction by some other unnecessary influence. Joni had her influences, from Dylan to Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. She started out as a folk singer. But she always had her own story to tell, and always sounded like no-one but herself.

That’s the plan. Is Rock Dead? I don’t see why the behaviour of ‘the mainstream’ should be allowed to be seen as killing of an entire genre, but the challenge is certainly there to avoid sounding like the new wave of ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ shit photocopies of 70s and 80s icons, and instead to take the language of rock into somewhere new and interesting, to tell a post-millennial tale, and sound track the current world paradigm, not the three day week, rolling blackouts and the rise of Thatcherism.

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Friday Random 10

Stick iTunes on random, and write down what gets played…

Stevie Ray Vaughan – Pride And Joy
KT Tunstall – Through The Dark
From Branch To Branch – Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner
Like A Star – Corinne Bailey Rae
What A World – Bill Frisell
(Used To Be A) Cha Cha Cha – Jaco Pastorius
Whatsername – Green Day
Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
Things Can Only Get Better – Howard Jones
She’s Leaving The Bank – Ry Cooder

That’s a pretty accurate version of where my head’s at, musicially, I think!

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back from Italy

Back from a fantastic trip to Italy – a hugely enjoyable and creative time with Luca Formentini – a fabulous guitarist, and a great friend.

The trip started with a gig in Brescia, playing a soundtrack to a silent film, ‘The Unknown’ by Todd Browning. I’m not much of a silent/old film buff (I’ve seen Dodgeball more times that I care to remember but had never heard of Todd Browning before, and have never even seen Citizen Kane), but I really enjoyed this film. For the soundtrack I was joined by an Italian guitarist, who did a good job (though the circumstances surrounding him playing in the first place were a little more murky – I’ll save that blog-story ’til an email or two have been sent), and the whole thing was well received.

the plan for the weekend was to record a load of duo stuff with Luca – we’d recorded together before, and one of the tracks has ended up on a compilation of Italian electronica artists (Stefano Lawsoni? perhaps…) – the last time we recorded was certainly interesting enough to warrant a repeat session. With both of us being loopers, it always takes a few sessions to settle into roles and what to do with all the shared sonic space.

However, before that, we had a total nightmare with getting soundcards sorted out – Luca had ordered a new RME card, which wasn’t available in time, so his local music shop (the remarkable Musical Box in Verona) were lending us a card. First up, we took a MOTU 828, which just wouldn’t work at all. No good. Not happy running with Audition on a PC.

Back to Musical Box, and swap it for a PreSonus FirePod. Once again, not happy with the PC set up. Which eventually led to Luca swapping over his looping laptop with the Pc, so he did all his loopage on the desktop and we recorded onto the laptop, finally using Cubase LE.

Much stress and lack of sleep was the result for Luca, so it took us another half a day to settle into playing, but from there on, we got a lot of great music recorded. Whereas the first session was predominantly dark ambient, this time we were more melodically driven with more groove oriented stuff. I’m really looking forward to mixing these tracks…

So lots of recording lovely music was punctuated by regular swims in the pool, great food, much inspiring conversation, cuddling the cats, and generally having a totally wonderful time in Italy…

those of you of a sports-fan persuasion will already have worked out that I was there for the football final on Sunday night, when we decamped to a local restaurant to eat great food and watch the game. Penalties are officially a really shit way to end a football match. I reckon widening the goals by a foot every 10 minutes, and tying one of the goalies hands behind his back to speed up the chance of a goal would be better… I was really glad Italy won, though Zidane’s headbutt aside, the French played MUCH better football in the second half and in extra time…

Tuesday morning I got the train back to Musical Box to talk with the owner about playing at EuroBassDay in October, which is booked now, and to show him and the rest of the guys who work in the shop the looperlative, which naturally they all thought was amazing (because it is).

Then Tuesday afternoon I was special guest at a week-long intensive english language camp for teenagers, playing some tunes and having them interview me about what I do, about live in england and generally allowing them to try their english and stretch them in trying to understand me. A hugely enjoyable way to spend an afternoon, which I hope to get to do again.

And Tuesday night, as if all this wasn’t enough, Luca, Gio and I had dinner with Roberto Zorzi – a fantastic improv guitarist and fascinating bloke all round. Another magical Italy evening.

Got back Wednesday night, and poor TSP drove to Gatwick to pick me up in an overheating car. Need to get that fixed ASAP.

All in a marvellous week in Italy. It’s such a great country, the people are generous and positive to a fault, and the climate is just amazing. Love it.

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Deeper Still

just had a beautiful email from a friend in California about the new album. I didn’t know that this guy knew Eric Roche, but it turns out he was a big fan, and was deeply saddened by Eric’s death. Likewise he had no idea that I knew Eric or would have been inspired to write a tune for him.

His email spells out his own loss, and the feeling of something missing at NAMM this year with Eric (formerly an ever-present figure on the Avalon guitars stand) no longer being there. ‘Deeper Still’, it seems, says something that he was feeling as well as what I was feeling, and I’m once again reminded that this music lark is deeper than all the day to day stuff of marketing CDs and getting gigs and hoping people like it enough to buy it.

It’s emails like this that are the REAL reason for music. They aren’t, to be honest, what I have in mind in the day to day business of being a musician (it’d be easy to pretend that my motives are that lofty, but obviously they aren’t), but they are the reason why music is there. They are about what music gives us, a wordless language to tell stories that we’d never get round to telling with words, or where a particular form of words would alienate some who would otherwise get the message, just not the syntax.

I don’t write music to move people. i write music to tell my own story, and to try and get as deep inside that story as I can. There are certain things within that story – in my case, they are very often deaths, but also environmental, political, social and personal concerns – that can indwell a particular piece of music, and when that comes across, it’s a very special moment. Not everyone who hears that new album is going to get that much from ‘Deeper Still’ – clearly, that doesn’t happen with anything – but to make that kind of connection with someone is a very special thing, and one not to be taken lightly.

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Marcus Miller at The Bass Centre

Got an email last week from the lovely Nick at the Bass Centre telling me about the Marcus Miller clinic they were hosting last night.

The Bass Centre normally hold their clinics in the shop, but the take-up for the clinic was far to high, and they moved it to a local pub. I’ve chatted about this with a few people, and other than Victor Wooten, can’t think of any other band-leader/bassists that would draw that kind of crowd for a clinic. Even big names like Doug Wimbish, who did the last Bass Centre clinic, can’t compete with that…

The pub was packed, and Marcus played a handful of tunes (starting out with Run For Cover, a tune from David Sanborn’s album Voyeur that I haven’t heard since I was at college!) and answered questions. His natural sense of humour and passion for music comes across really well in this kind of setting, and the audience lapped up every demonstration.

These kind of events are always a great chance to catch up with friends, meet other bassists, and generally hang out with bass-people. this was no exception – the guys from the Bass Centre, Alex from The Gallery, Steve Davis, Mike Brookes, John East…

The gig was organised by Fender with the Bass Centre, and Fender UK’s AR head is an old friend from Ashdown days, Hoda – I so rarely get to see Hoda, he’s a v. busy man, so getting a chance to catch up was fab. The other lovely surprise was bumping into Pris from Holland – she helped organise the UK Bass Day last year, and is on tour with Marcus’ band doing merch.

Come the end of the night, Hoda, Pris, Marcus, BeBe (sp?) and I hadn’t eaten, and where else is there to go from the Bass Centre but over to Brick Lane for a curry – Chutney’s did the business, and much lovely food and chat was to be had. Then, like Bruce Cockburn in the song ‘Coldest Night Of The Year’ I ‘drove all the people home, I was the one with the car’.

A fun evening all round.

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Gig in Crouch End

Saturday night I had a gig in Crouch End, at a venue called The Loft – which isn’t actually a dedicated ‘venue’ but is an apartment belonging to Jenni Roditi, a composer, singer and musician who uses her flat as a venue. It’s spacious, beautiful and acoustically lovely.

I was invited to play by Rowland Sutherland – the genius flautist who has played at the Recycle Collective before now. The non-me part of the gig was a new quartet that he’s a part of with Alwynne Pritchard – voice, Thorolf Thuestad – laptop processing and Roger Goula – guitars.

My set followed on from the end of the football (apparently bad things happened to England – ah well), and went very well. I was slightly concerned that my stuff would be a little to pop for the audience, given the contemporary composition theme of much of what happens at the loft, but the portrait of Joni Mitchell on the wall gave much encouragement, as did the hearty applause of the audience. All in, a very well received set, with much positive feedback.

Mytle’s set was a mix of composed stuff, improvised stuff and mangled-beyond-recognition standards. I have a hard time with post-Schönberg classical singing – so much of it sounds like the soundtrack to encroaching mental illness (I think this is largely due to me relating so much in music to the process of personal soundtracking, whether playing or listening – it’s all about providing a soundtrack to the world…) – There were moments I really enjoyed, and it was all expertly done (all four musicians are hugely talented), but I did come away feeling slightly traumatised by it. Maybe that’s the intention? I’m certainly not averse to being left confused or upset by music, or any other art.

Anyway, ’twas an enjoyable, fascinating evening, in a lovely venue with a very warm audience. Great stuff. This kind of house concert happens a lot in the US, and I hope it catches on here (if you have got a big room in your house, and a lot of music loving friends, and want to organise a gig, please do drop me an email…)

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Mammoth tour blog

Right, I said in the mini-post that it looked like things were going to be rough, but that was an understatement… please try to keep in mind as you read this that Ned and I aren’t Spinal Tap, and this shit actually happened…

So, the back story is that the promoter – Blooz Promoz, run by a guy called Nigel in Leeds – was someone that Ned had worked with last year, he’d organised a few gigs that had gone OK, so it seemed like a good idea to go there again. I’d not had any dealings with him, but as a proven entity, was more than happy to just let Ned take it from there. We had two gigs booked on a £250 promise for each gig, and a clinic at Sound Control in Leeds.

We drive to Wakefield, get to the gig, and the venue owner says he hasn’t heard from the promoter for weeks (at this point it’s worth pointing out that he was booked as ‘promoter’ not just ‘booking agent’…), but we assume he’ll be turning up.

It gets to gig time, still no promoter, punters start to show up, in small numbers, all via my mailouts and friends of those people. Not one from any contact with the promoter, and he wasn’t there to collect the money on the door, so WE DIDN’T GET PAID. Not a penny. The people that were there loved it, and we sold a lot of CDs and t-shirts etc, but still nowhere close to the £250, and anyway, merch money wasn’t in anyway factored into that figure.

So we head to where we’re staying (with Nicola from Greenbelt – thank God we weren’t in a hotel as well!) and crash.

Friday morning we head into Leeds for a wander around, and serendipitously Ned recognises in the market the area where Nigel promoter-monkey has his stall. We head down there, and some dodgy mate of his is looking after it, who clearly not knowing where we were playing, let it slip that the venue was ‘shite’ telling us that Nigel wasn’t booking there anymore… uh-huh.

Nigel eventually appears, and after some chasing around and half-made apologies, claims he’s been ill (an email or two telling us that if it was true would have gone a very long way) gives us £100 for the previous night’s gig (hmmm – £100? what happened to the other £150?) – I’m in a rather strange position at this point as I’ve had no contact with him up to this point, so can’t argue from any real knowledge of what has been said/agreed/emailed, but Ned does a sterling job, and Nigel assures us that the Oceans Eleven gig is going to be fine, and he’ll have someone there to meet us at 8ish, and we’re on at 9. We then say ‘so we’re all fine for Sound Control this afternoon then?’ – er, apparently not. That’s not going to happen. WTF? excuses blah blah bullshit blah blah fucking nonsense etc. etc. Cancelled. Not happening. Let’s face it, almost certainly not booked in the first place.

So we head off back into Leeds city centre in search of wifi, and notice that there is NO mention of the gig anywhere (remember, promoter not booking agent) – no posters up in the music shops, no nothing. The guys in one of the guitar shops haven’t even heard of the venue…

Out for a much needed and much appreciated curry, then down to the venue. Which is closed. And by ‘closed’ I mean closed as in ‘in receivership’. Notes on the door saying ‘this property has been purchased by ************, please phone *************** for details’. So our fuckwit promoter has added barefaced lies to his catalogue of fuck ups (remember, this is Blooz Promoz in Leeds).

So grand totals for Leeds area leg of the tour –

  • gigs ‘booked’ – 3
  • total guarantees agreed prior to this leg of the ‘tour’ – £600 (£250 for each gig, £100 for Sound Control – all of which are low figures anyway, but you figure when a promoter is planning to give the band £250, there’s going to be an audience, and therefor decent merch-ops, and the chance to make it all worthwhile…)
  • gigs played – 1
  • total income – £100
  • petrol costs – about £30
  • curries eaten – 2 (each)
  • venues no longer in existence – 1
  • effect of stench of bullshit from the catalogue of lies and misinformation – overwhelming.

Now, at this point we meet up with Greenbelt chum Steve Thackray – lovely bloke, very friendly and helpful, who in 10 minutes (10 minutes!!!), gets us closer to having a gig than Blooz promo buffoon does in four months. Given 24 hours, Steve could have given us a range of venues, and found us an audience. Next time I go to Leeds, I’m talking to Steve first – he’s a man with his finger on a pulse or two…

So Saturday we get up and head to Stockport for masterclass at Riffs Guitar School, which was much fun, but underpaid. But hey, it actually existed so we’re already ahead on Leeds, and we met lovely people, sold lots of CDs, had a great time, and we had a gig in the evening anyway, so all in a fab way to spend an afternoon.

We then head into Manchester to Iguana – it’s funny how after the nonsense of the previous two days, normal treatment suddenly feels luxurious. We get there, one of the bar men comes to help us with gear and there are lots of staff there to advice, provide drinks, and the venue has many posters up advertising the gig (OK, so their own adverts say that I’m an ex-member of King Crimson and Level 42, but you can’t get everything right).

Once set up, we head to the MEN Arena, where Ned’s buddy Curtis Stigers (yes he of the mullets and power ballads in the late 80s) is opening for George Benson, and we’ve got time to catch his set before we play. Yes, you read that right, I’ve got a free ticket for a George Benson gig, and I’m leaving before he comes on. I’m crying as I type this. No, really, it hurts. A lot. George frickin’ Benson – one of the greatest human beings ever to pick up a guitar. I’ve half a mind to blow our gig and stay to watch. But we don’t, we watch Curtis, who is actually not bad at all, perfect for the audience, does a rather cool little beatbox thing in one tune, and scats a hilarious and very impressive upright bass solo in another, and while not being world-class jazz singer material by any means, does a pretty fine job and was worth going to see.

Back to the venue and lots of lovely friends have arrived – students of mine, web buddies, greenbelt friends, and people from MySpace. A proper gig with a proper audience that actually know where the gig is, and a venue that’s real, open, and has a cheque waiting for us when we finish.

We play well, sell CDs, chat to all the lovely people (special treat to see L1z there – yay!), and eventually head off home at about 12.30. Without the cheque. It’s made out to Ned. Doh! It will be sorted, no problem. Iguana’s a lovely place, and I really hope to play there again.

And we drive home through the night. Laughing about the fuck-ups of the last few days, glad to have had the last fine gig, and wondering what on earth can be done to get the dismal promoter to pay up. Believe me, if he does, I’ll amend this blog so it’s less likely to be the top hit on Google should you go looking for info on Blooz Promoz in Leeds. But right now, they’re on my black-list, shit-list and every other list that says don’t even think about working with them in a million years. We’re down £500 on a tour, Ned’s had to fly from Boise Idaho for this!!!

Next on the tour list is either Saucy Jack or Jazz Odyssey.

What’s wrong with being Sexy?

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Recycle Collective 8 – Fret Phobia 2

no, not a football match, it was in fact the 8th RC gig and the 2nd Fret Phobia gig.

And much fun it was too – BJ had brought along Emily Burridge on cello, and they opened the show with a gorgeous duo set. The logistics of getting musicians with lots of looping toys and gadgets onto the tiny stage at Darbucka is always an interesting one, and tonight was as tight a squeeze as we’ve had since the gig with Orphy, Roger and Patrick, but we made it work eventually.

After BJ and Emily, I played a 25 minute solo set, with BJ coming up and doing his special cameo on ‘Scott Peck’ – as much as I still love the solo version of the tune, it’s just not the same without him. I also did Amo Amatis Amare, which isn’t the same without Theo after having recorded it with him… such are the perils of having fabulous collaborators.

from me, we went straight into Ned Evett’s solo set, which was fab. Lots of fretless resonator guitar, and some crazy loopage, especially on ‘Are You Experienced?’ – good noises, very much appreciated by the audience.

And then the RC Royal Rumble, all in at the end – two improv pieces, the first of which started as a disparate ambient mush (in a good way) coalesced around the ‘Windham Hill Blues’ (Am7-FMaj7), and then shifted somewhere else entirely. Good stuff. The second one started with a bubbly filtered slap percussion thing by me, I think looped a pizz. cello line which I doubled in speed and pitch that became the hook for the tune, and gave us something to hang the rest of it on, and it finished with me processing Ned’s voice with the Kaoss Pad… Most enjoyable.

Thanks to all who came along, another fine evening.

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Fret Phobia gig pt 1

So while a nation of armchair critics parked their carcasses in front of the TV to watch some football, a lovely select group of more discerning music lovers came out to see Ned and I in Cambridge on the first night of the Fret Phobia tour. And much fun it was too – I played solo (even did ‘The Inner Game’ which I haven’t played live for about three years!), then Ned played solo, and then we did some most enjoyable improv stuff together, with me looping and layering bass, guitar and voice into a lovely mush…

So, if you’re near, don’t miss the rest of the Fret Phobia gigs – tonight we’re at Darbucka, Recycling.

see you there!

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