…here it is! I’ve been really looking forward to sharing this with you. It’s a 21 minute, 2 song live set from me and double bassist Jon Thorne (from Lamb). It was recorded at the London Bass Guitar Show in March, and I’m massively proud of it:
Some things that you might like to know:
- As I said, Diversion is a live recording with Jon Thorne on double bass, recorded on the main stage at The London Bass Guitar Show, on March 2nd
- It was the first time we’d ever played together. I was booked to play solo, saw that Jon was there, and so invited him to play with me, cos he’s amazing.
- As such, it’s entirely improvised. We didn’t play “songs” we knew or that we’d written. In soundcheck I played something mellow, and we went ‘like that? yeah’.
- Jon is a *monster* musician. What a huge privilege it is to play with him. He’d been on my collaborator bucket-list for a long time. He didn’t disappoint. I’ve done little bits of elec bass/upright bass stuff before, but this was THE one where my idea of what was possible was superceded, thanks to his incredible musicianship and listening.
- It’s a 2 track, 21 minute recording, and is one of my favourite things I’ve ever done. I hope you dig it half as much as I do – that’ll be enough to leave it at the top of your playlist all month 🙂
- As with the rest of my stuff, it’s ‘pay what you think it’s worth‘. Why? Good question – mainly because it’s the music future that I think we all want to live in – one where we’re not ‘policing’ access to music, but instead providing opportunities to express our gratitude for music by paying what we’re able to for it, for that to reflect our sense of its value, and our desire to be a part of the ongoing sustainability of making music. All the while, it’s important to me not to prevent genuinely broke people from having access to music, or to get in the way of the music discovery and sharing process.You’re a grown up, you get how this works. If enough people pay for this, I get a bit of latitude in terms of the time I spend on my next project. The sales of each album help to free up the time and resources to make the next one. I’m not about to stop making music if it stops making money (that particular threat seems to be reserved for the entitled rich) but given how nice it is to be able to say ‘thank you’ to the people who make the music we enjoy, and how life-changing it can be to make enough money from music to keep making more music, there seems no good reason for not linking the two. Be the change you want to see – the change I want to see is more music by more people in more places, and I’m more than happy to help make that possible as an artist and a fan. Does that make sense?
- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE share the link with your friends – your tweets and Facebook posts are vital to the knowledge of the album being propagated. Posts to music forums and mailing lists are also hugely appreciated, as are blog/Tumblr reviews. Also, reviews on Bandcamp are SO SO useful. We’d love it if you’d log in to your Bandcamp fan account (if you’ve ever bought anything on Bandcamp, your fan account is just waiting for you to claim it, if you haven’t already) and write a review. You’re all very lovely. Thanks 🙂
