Tomorrow we drive to Nashville – I love Nashville. Some of my favourite people in the world are there. Clever, lovely, talented creative people. What’s not to love about it?
We’re off to the US of A this week, taking Baby Flapjack over to his place of nationality, to meet the family.
While we’re there, we’re doing a handful of House Concerts, as is our want. 🙂
Here are the first few dates, with links to their Facebook event pages. Please send me a message too if you want to go. These are, for the most part, private events, so the addresses aren’t public, and the people whose houses they are want to know who people are, naturally… So email me, tell me who you are, check out the page, and I’ll put you in touch for more details. (it may be that some of the gigs are either full, or the details are not available for some reason or other – please don’t be offended if this is the case – the privacy and wishes of the hosts win out here…)
We’re just back from a fabulous run of house concerts in England and Scotland. All kinds of good times were had, friends were made, internet chums suddenly existed in meat-space too, and a lot of very fine music happened. Big, big thanks to the truly awesome people who hosted the gigs in Leeds, Camberley and Edinburgh. Expert humans, one and all. Continue reading “New House Concert Video”
2009 was a fairly easy-going year, music-wise for Lobelia and I. We played a load of US shows in January, and a handful of other shows across the year, but it was mainly pretty low-key stuff.
Gigs:
2010 is already shaping up to be a much more musically-focussed year. I’m in the process of booking some solo house-concerts for the end of March/Beginning of April – the open dates are
March 29th (near Birmingham),
31st (near Exeter) and
April 1st (near Swindon) –
the 30th already has a gig booked in Southampton (more details ASAP).
If you want to host a house-gig on any of those dates, and are near (or between) those places, please drop me a line.
Then Lo and I are doing some duo shows at the beginning of May – on the 6th we’re in Leeds and the 8th in Surrey (more deets soon) – if you’re anywhere between those two, we’d be happy to come and play on the 7th, or either side of those dates. Do drop us a line.
And at the end of May we go out to the US, mainly to take Flapjack to meet the family, but we’ll be doing some house concerts and ‘house consulting’ as well – if you’re interested in hosting something (or putting us in touch with a music school/university) please drop us a line.
Recording:
It’s now nearly 4 years since I released Behind Every Word, and while it’s currently selling REALLY well thanks to Bandcamp’s wonderful download sales platform, it really is time for a new album. So I’ll be working on that very soon – just need to get the tech side worked out. Hopefully will have that available for the US shows.
In a couple of weeks time, I’m going into a studio for a day with Mike Outram – guitar-monkey extraordinaire. No idea what we’ll come up with, but if its releasable, that’ll be out sometime soonish as well.
And then there’s the archive – I’ve got a whole load of fascinating music languishing on hard-drives. There’s a duo album with Italian guitarist Luca Formentini, a strange-yet-beautiful experimental duo album with free improv trumpeter Jeff Kaiser, a quartet live recording with Jeff, saxophonist Andrew Pask and bassist Steuart Liebig. (that last one is really interesting cos I thought the gig had gone pretty badly, then listened to the recording and really liked it 🙂 )
And there’s also a double album’s worth of live stuff with Theo Travis, recorded on the tour we did after For The Love Of Open Spaces came out. That really needs to be heard. So maybe I should work on that first.
Suffice to say, there’ll be lots of cool music from me this year, if something else doesn’t get in the way.
For now, here’s the album with Theo Travis – have a listen, and then pay whatever you like for it if you want to download it.
Yup, finally, about 5 years after our last one together, I’ve got a London gig with Michael Manring. For those that don’t know, Michael is, IMHO, the finest solo bassist ever to pick up the instrument. He’s been doing this stuff longer than I’ve been playing bass, has sold literally hundreds of thousands of records (how many solo bass players can you say that about??), and has even reinvented the instrument to make things possible that weren’t possible before.
This is the first proper London show in AGES for Lobelia and I, so we’re making it a special one. We’ve asked 3 of our favourite singers to join us for an amazing night of singer-songwriter-ness… and genius Ukulele magic. It’ll be on Aug 25th, doors at 7pm, music from 7.30, at Darbucka World Music Bar, on St John’s Street in Clerkenwell, London.Continue reading “London gig on Aug 25th – the Singers Of Twitter :)”
A week from today, Lo and I will be in New York! How exciting is that? Well, for us, very exciting. For you, probably less so. 🙂
But what may be of a little more interest is the series of house concerts that we’re doing. Being house concerts, I’m not putting the addresses up online, but if you want to more info on any of these please do drop me an email via the contact tab, or normal email if you’ve already got my address!
There are a couple of things still pending, so do keep an eye on the blog, especially if you’re in California or Philadelphia.
So here’s the list:
Dec 19th – Toledo, Ohio Dec 20th – Brown Deer, Wisconsin (near Milwaukee) – details Dec 22nd – Chicago Illinois
Jan 5th – Nashville (this will be a gig in the evening and a future of social media masterclass during the day – lots of details on request!)
(in here there could be a bass masterclass in Philadephia and there will be a future of social media for musicians masterclass in the LA area – more deets ASAP!) Jan 15th-18th – NAMM Show, Anaheim California (demoing for Looperlative, Modulus and AccuGroove) Jan 19th – gig, Long Beach, California, also featuring Vicki Genfan (she’s so good, it’s scary) – details Jan 23rd – House Concert, San Jose Jan 24th – House Concert, San Jose
There you go – that’s quite a lot of stuff going on, and may well be lots more… if you can see a hole in the calendar, and can think of something cool for us to do, be it a gig or a music masterclass, or a seminar/session on the future of the music industry, do get in touch. We’re open to offers :
Right, wireless is now working on Das Boot – will be back to full blogging speed before too long. But first, some news you really need to know 🙂
Hopefully you’re already planning on coming to the Lawson/Dodds/Wood launch gig next week at the Vortex in Dalston. If you’re not, there’s still time to postpone whatever it was you had planned and come and see us do our thing. It’ll be fab, I promise.
If you’re VERY new to this ‘ere blog and are wondering who Lawson/Dodds/Wood are, you can go and listen to (then buy if, as you probably will, you decide it’s the most wonderful thing you’ve heard in a long time, and indie loveliness such as this deserves some investment 🙂 ) – head over to stevelawson.net/ldw – there’s a player embedded there so you can listen to the album, which is out on the day of the gig.
Alternatively, also embedded in that page, are videos and links to a load of other videos about the making of the album. Which is pretty amazing, as the main bulk of the material was improvised live in the studio.
It’s fab, honest, and we’d LOVE to see you at the gig – you can book tickets for it at http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk – please come along and hear us. The CD will be launched on the night, and if you’ve ordered the CD in advance, you’ll be able to pick up your CD on the night.
As if all the geeking in Helsinki wasn’t enough, we’re actually in the home stretch with the release of the Lawson/Dodds/Wood album, which is now officially called Numbers. The album should be available for pre order and download in the next few days, and what’s more, we’ve got a launch gig booked, and therefor an official release date!
The gig will be on November 24th, at The Vortex in Dalston, London.
I’ll be heading over to see Patrick and Roy on Thursday, with the aim of recording some videos telling the story of the project. That will be lots of fun.
Oh, and for those that case about such things, this entire post was written on my Nokia N95, using a WordPress posting app called Scribe – proper mobile blogging FTW!
So watch this space for news of the album going on sale in the next day or so…