Tag: teaching

Posted on

A new american dawn? not yet, but it's a start…

Well, looks like the Dems to the House AND the Senate, eventually. Not really a shock given the opinion polls on Bush’s approval rating, agreement over Iraq and the economy, but still lefties and centrists the world over breathed a sigh of relief.

It remains to be seen if the ‘progressive agenda’ proposed by the Democrats gets pushed forward. Let’s hope so. But I’m not holding my breath. The inexorable drift to the right in all political parties is as pernicious in the US as it is in the UK, so the Democrat leaders are still by and large a bunch of free market ideologues, who just tip the scales slightly less against the poor. Some tax reform seems like it’d be a good thing in the US, repealing those tax breaks for billionaires that Bush introduced a couple of years back… And healthcare – C’mon America, enough’s enough. Y’all need a national health system of some kind. It’s going to save you all money in the long run, and a lot of people dying from insufficient treatment are going to live. I’ve got a number of great friends who are in a major financial hole after having the temerity to have heart attacks or liver problems – that’s just what you need when recovering from a major operation – a bill for $$$$$$. Great. It’s savage, and y’all need to get it fixed. (note, I’ve even translated this into ‘Merkin with Google Translator so y’all can read it ;o)

In other news, I’m in the process of sorting out lots of gigs. Back teaching this week after my EuroJaunt, but not sleeping well at all, and struggling to get things done. (me? not sleeping? I can sleep standing up… this is weirdness…)

Posted on

le weekend

spent a large chunk of Saturday afternoon sending out MySpace event invites to the Recycle Collective first anniversary (which you’re all obviously coming to). Then had to attack the bomb site that is my office to get it into good enough shape to teach in.

After teaching, headed down to the Vortex to see Partisans – a fab electric jazz quartet from London, whose individual members I’d seen on lots of different gigs, but never in this lineup. A very fine it was too. Also great to see a packed room at the Vortex. It’s got a lot of vibe when it’s full, and there are always a whole load of musicians in checking out whatever’s going on, so it’s great for meeting up with friends. Have a look at the Vortex Website for a list of what they’ve got on during the jazz festival – lots of great music.

Sunday I decided to skip church and head up to the Music Live thingie at the NEC in Birmingham. These kinds of shows are always a great way for me to catch up with a lot of friends in the industry on one day, call in, say hello, and as happened yesterday, get booked for a load more masterclasses in colleges all over the place! Yay! I got a free pass thanks to Jono at Access To Music, but the ticket price on the door was £17!!! That’s insane for a show that’s essentially about selling stuff to the public (unlike NAMM or Frankfurt, no-one would dream of launching new product there, it’s definitely a show for the public first, and any other business that goes on is a bonus.) It’s a great place to get christmas bargains if you’ve got a family full of musicians, but at £!7 a ticket and £7 to park, the savings are all but gone in the cost of being there.

Still I got to see a couple of really nice acoustic singer/songwriters on the Access To Music busking Stage… good stuff.

Home around 7ish, and another evening spent catching up on email from when I was away, chatting to lovely friends online, and trying to console a v. distraught fairly aged feline, who REALLY doesn’t like fireworks.

Tis a heavy teaching week this week, as well as sorting out gigs for next year for California in January, and Europe in March… yay me!

Posted on

Euroblog #932

Home stretch! I’m on the train from Nijmegen to Rosendaal in Holland, having played in Kleve in Germany last night. The Kleve experience was one I won’t forget for a while…

So yesterday morning, the morning after European Bass Day, had breakfast with all the bass peoples who were at Bass Day, in the hotel, then got a lift down to Krefeld Haupt BanHof, (that’s train station to you), and got the train to Kleve. For some stupid reason I’d left it til that morning to email the owner of the theatre I was playing in, but I sent him my phone number and the email address that goes straight to my phone, and thought that the worst case scenario was that I’d end up meeting him at the venue when he got there to set up. I had the map from the venue website to be able to find the place, and was happy to have a look round Kleve and check into a hotel in the afternoon.

I get to Kleve, find a town map outside the station, and set off in the direction of the venue. I walk for about 5 minutes and a car pulls up alongside and asks me in German if I want any help. I answer in English, and the driver then guesses that I’m doing the concert at the theatre, as she’d read about it in the paper that morning (a very good sign), it turns out she knows the guy who owns it and his family, and offers to give me a lift first to the theatre, and then to the house of the owner when there’s no-one there! As a general rule, I don’t advise getting into stranger’s cars, but Oopie (I’m assuming that’s how it’s spelt) clearly did know the theatre people, and the Serendipity of the situation seemed way too go to pass up… Thank God for slightly nuts people in small-town Germany who are willing to stop and help lost looking musicians!

So we go the house of the theatre owner, Wolfgang, he’s not there, but his family take v. good care of me, speak excellent english, and prove to be utterly delightful, interesting, funny and wonderful people – just the kind of people that would make all of this worthwhile even if I didn’t enjoy the music. That I get to play music I love and meet people like this makes me a most happy and lucky bunny.

Wolfgang arrives, matches his family for friendliness and all-round wonderfulness, and we head down to the venue – xox theatre (xox is actually a word, not just X O X, which I thought it was… xox, pronounced like ‘socks’ with an x in front, was a biscuit manufacturer, and the theatre is on the top floor of the old converted factory.) It’s a gorgeous little theatre, with great lighting and 99 raked seats. Just perfect for a StevieGig.

The house PA proves most satisfactory, and I set up and soundcheck with tonnes of time to spare, and meet Theo from MySpace, the guy who set all this up in the first place.

The gig itself was pretty small (the big problem with being on the road is that’s pretty tough to keep track of all the promo stuff for each gig, and make sure everyone has everything they need), but the people there were hugely generous in their appreciation for the music, I sold a lot of CDs (on this tour I sold out of all the copies of both Behind Every Word and Grace And Gratitude that I bought with me, and have only a couple of the other two left each!), and met a whole host of utterly delightful people. Is there anyone horrible in Kleve, or are you interviewed to measure you general niceness level before moving in? All in, one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve had in a long time, and the theatre want to book me again early next year and do it again with a bigger build-up. What fun!

So I’m back on the train, heading home, via Brussels and the Eurostar, looking forward to a couple of days off before my gig in Wales on Friday. Time to regroup, send out the CD orders that have come in online while I’ve been on tour, sleep A LOT catch up on all the teaching-related email that I’ve neglected, and generally relax.

But, barring some kind of utter disaster today, this training-it round Europe thing is definitely the way to go. Book a month of gigs at a time, fill in off-nights with as much fun as possible, the more gigs you do, the cheaper the travel works out per-gig, you can play in Italy one night and Portugal the next , and all it’ll cost you is the food on the train and a cheap hotel if you don’t have someone to stay with… I can’t understand why the trains of Europe aren’t chock full of musicians on tour!

So who wants to help book a gig in Europe in March? :o)

Posted on

Jonatha Brooke Live in New York DVD.

Jonatha Brooke is on of my time favourite singer/songwriters. Up there in the big four with Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.

I finally got to see her play live when she came to London last year, and she was as wonderful as I’d ever imagined she would be.

Which is why I ordered her live DVD months ago, long before it was actually available, to help her out paying for the damn thing.

And this morning it arrived. So between teaching, the fairly aged feline and I have been watching it. And it genius. Of course. Beautifully shot, great song choice, her band sound remarkable, her between song chat is as charming as ever. It’s all great. You really ought to get it. It comes as a CD/DVD set, not sure what if any extras there are yet…

I own very few music DVDs. Two I think. Both are Jonatha Brooke DVDs. That says a lot.

You can buy it now from her website. It’s $17.50 + shipping, which works out to about £12 all in. For a double disc set. Shipped from the states. From the artist. It’s a no-brainer, as they say over there.

Come and see us in England again soon, J-Bro!

Posted on

Fringe Friday.

Second last day, time to ratchet up the promo.

Miles walked – 174
Flyers handed out – 234,000, approx.
posters stuck up – 7,001
legs no longer functioning – 2 (rounded down to nearest whole number of legs).

Meeting lots of people around who had seen us play, either had come to the gig or seen us on one of the cabaret shows, which is nice – it’s always the case that if you do a one week show, you’re just picking up momentum when you leave. Next year, I’m doing three weeks, for sure.

So most of the day spent flyering. Went to meet the most lovely J for dinner, and bumped into Howard Jones’ marvellous guitarist Robin Boult on the way – Robin’s a fantastic musician and really lovely bloke, so I was delighted to get the chance to catch up and have a chat.

Dinner with J was equally delightful. She and Rev. G are two of my favouritest peoples, and part of what makes coming up to Scotland such fun. Everyone’s favourite sweary priest was off running a kids camp, no doubt teaching small children the art of ecclesiastical swearing, and TSP was back in London. So J and I headed to Henderson’s for much needed veggie marvellousness and chat.

From there, I hobbled on my by-now-completely-rubbish legs up to the famousSpiegeltent (famous?? Is that an official designation? Could I just start randomly referring to myself as ‘the famous steve lawson’? hmmm) to see Mich En Scene – a Belgian duo of accordianist/pianist Frederik Caelen, and singer Micheline Van Hautem. The show was the songs of Edith Piaf, Sarah Vaughn, Peggy Lee, Bjork, a few others and some originals, and was chock full of theatrical energy, humour and a strong sexual intrigue (which seems to be the defining characteristic of most cabaret, no? What made this ‘cabaret’ and not just ‘a gig?’ – methinks that sexy theatricality is the key…) – most of cabaret stuff I’ve seen here, and before, really didn’t do it for me. It seems like cabaret is where musicians go who can’t play well enough and comedians go who can’t tell good enough jokes to just do stand up. There are exceptions (The Midnight Carousel compere Dusty Limits has a big voice and did a gorgeous arrangement of Love For Sale, though the piano part was more conventional cabaret than it would have been in an ‘art’ gig.) But Mich En Scene were amazing. Definitely highly recommended.

it’s great, I haven’t seen a less than fab show this year – from Stephen Daltry before our run even started (who just got a fabulous review in Three Weeks, that really described his show to a t – go and see it!) through to Mich and Freddie, via Sue Perkins, The Allotment and Amy Lame. All great stuff.

If you’re around tonight, it’s big finale time – come to the show, bring your friends, and we’ll party like it’s 1985. :o)

thenewstandard.co.uk

Posted on

Rehearsing done, gig tonight

Yesterday was last rehearsal before tonight’s gig for Julie and I – ran through the whole set twice, with only a couple of mistakes (if you’re at the gig tonight, please remind me when Julie says ‘this is our last song’ or something like that, to make sure the ‘Feedback’ on the Looperlative is set to 100%. Thanks). but all in, it’s sounding great, the song order really works, it’s fun, surprising and I think it’s going to be marvellous.

So, be there!

Today is teaching, followed by solo set practice, followed by gig. click here for Gig details

ta ta!

Posted on

New phone, panic over

Right, got a new phone yesterday afternoon, so mobile is back working again… :o)

You might be wondering why I’m blogging at 9.40 in the morning, given that I’m not normally awake now… well, I misread my diary last night, and thought I started teaching at 9, not 10… couldn’t work out why I’d booked teaching in for 9am anyway, so I guess that should’ve told me to double check…

Ah well, it’s made for a nice leisurely transition from the world of sleeps to the world of being awake.

Posted on

CDs are here! CDs are here!

Yay! Just as I was teaching this morning, a TNT delivery lorry pulls up outside and a man with a palette and a hand truck thing arrives at the door, bearing CDs by the shit-load. Loads of copies of ‘Behind Every Word’.

the first load of orders have been posted already (you’ll have received an email if yours has been sent – if it hasn’t it’ll go first thing tomorrow), and because the ‘release date’ is the 20th, it means that if you order the CD now, not only will it go out in the next day’s post, but you’ll still get the free download album. How great is that? Go on, you know you want to… :o)

It’s been a busy couple of days – I’ve been booked to play at Greenbelt at the end of August, and have a gig or two in Italy the second weekend in July. Now the CD’s here, I need to get sending that out to press peoples, along with the press release for the Edinburgh festival gigs… I’m going to be sick of jiffy bags before too long…

Anyway, off you go and order the new CD, fair blogling.

Posted on

Too long since I last wrote anything…

So what have I been up to, I hear you ask… Well, the usual stuff – teaching, practicing etc. More practicing over the last few days, as I’ve got two gigs this week – tomorrow and Friday (tomorrow is at the Half Moon in Putney, Friday is at The Free Church in St Ives) – need to get the new songs learnt as well as I possibly can!

Also been distributing posters for the Fret Phobia tour at the end of the month, with Ned Evett. Which reminds me, if any of you are anywhere near any of the venues (we’re playing London, Cambridge, Leeds, Wakefield, Manchester and Petersfield) please drop me an email or a comment and I’ll send you a handful of posters to stick up in music shops/coffee shops/waiting rooms/etc.

Been spending lots of time with the Ginger Fairly Aged Feline, who has made the most remarkable recovery… it’s the second time he’s come back from being that close to death. The vet’s amazed. We’re in Friday morning with him, to see what’s happening with his kidneys via the wonder of blood-tests. But as for now, he’s spending most of his time in the garden, running around (if you’d told us 10 days ago that he’d ever run again, we’d have laughed bitterly at you) and generally enjoying himself immensely. Hurrah for the tiny ginger one (no, not you Jude, the cat.) (well alright, hurrah for jude too…)

Tonight I was going to go and see Orphy Robinson do a solo gig in London, but got back from my postering outing and realised I hadn’t done the food-shopping I’d promised to do. So that took precedence. I was meant to be doing a gig tonight playing bass for a friend, but she’s disappeared off the face of the earth! how odd…

See you at the gig tomorrow!

Posted on

Album deadlines – it's all suddenly very real!

The recording part of the album is just about finished (still might do another version of the tune for Eric… watch this space), and I’m onto mixing now. Not only that, but it’s booked in to be mastered on May 10th. The mastering will be handled by the genius that is Denis Blackham – Denis mastered Grace And Gratitude, and he got that gig because he’d mastered Theo‘s albums, as well as Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden. He’s good. Very good. So he gets the repeat gig.

The album now has a name – it’s called Behind Every Word. The title is taken from an interview I heard on Front Row with Guillermo Arriaga. At the moment I’m mixing the title track (which got an airing at the Recycle Collective on Wednesday, but thanks to my having pulled one channel of the Looperlative out, it wasn’t sounding its best…)

It’s amazing to think now that Not Dancing For Chicken was all recorded to stereo! that explains why some of it is rather noisy (so noisy in the case of Jimmy James that I’ve rerecorded it for this album). With being able to separate out the loops from the direct signal from the extra weirdness process is a real treat, and means that I can get better separation between the tracks, less noise, and clearer stereo imaging. I can’t wait to get a production model Looperlative and start doing this stuff with the loops going to 6 separate outs!!! that’s going to be amazing…

Anyway, From today onwards, for the next couple of weeks, there’s going to be a lot of mixing happening. next week I’ll be mixing each morning, and gigging each evening (with a little bit of teaching on Tuesday). All very exciting.

Gimme a day or two, and I’ll get a couple of tracks up on MySpace for you to hear.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top