So, today I’m trying to write a press release about Daniel Berkman and I releasing a 13 minute ‘single‘ ahead of an 11 hour, 10 show live set of every note we’ve ever played together, without making it sound like we’re just idiots with a gimmick… Continue reading “Writing a Press Release Without Sounding Insane…”
Is This Unique? Every Note We’ve Ever Played Will Be Released
Here’s a list of facts about Daniel Berkman and I:
- We met at the sound-check to our first gig together.
- The idea to play only improvised duo music came about while setting up for that gig.
- We’ve now done 10 shows together, resulting in somewhere around 11-12 hours of music (I think).
- We’ve never played together NOT in front of an audience. Never “jammed”, never even properly sound-checked together.
- Every note we’ve ever played together is recorded – multi-track proper hi-res recording of every gig we’ve done.
- It will all be released soon. Every minute of it.
I’ve no idea if this is something that has ever happened before. I’ve certainly never come across a band that were able to commercially release every note they’d ever played together. These aren’t ‘board tapes’ that serial bootleggers are dumping on Archive.org. This properly mixed, mastered and released. Continue reading “Is This Unique? Every Note We’ve Ever Played Will Be Released”
Birmingham Bass Night II – featuring Yolanda Charles!
So, we’re back at Tower Of Song, May 19th, 8pm, with a very brilliant headliner… Yolanda Charles.
Click here for the Facebook event page.
Yolanda has long been one of my favourite bassists, having first heard her play with Urban Species back in the early 90s, then seen her with Carleen Anderson, Paul Weller, Robbie Williams… Her session career is an insane list of massive names – in the studio or live, she’s trusted to do the job and bring something amazing to the gig.
Of late, Yo’s been concentrating on her solo project, The Deep M.O. – an absolutely killer funk/soul band that she fronts on bass and voice. She VERY rarely plays completely solo, so we’re in for a really special evening.
Here’s a video of her playing solo, and then her album with The Deep M.O. which you need to own:
The Glorious Dilemma – How To Release A Huge Amount Of Music?
It’s been a long time since the traditional recording release cycle of ‘make a CD, do 3 months of promo, release the album, sell enough to recoup, tour off the back of it, take some time off, do it all again 12-18 months later’ made much sense to me. I’ve been making too much music for that kind of approach for a few years now… So I’m trying to work out what the best way forward is. Let me fill you in…
Here’s the glorious dilemma Daniel Berkman and I find ourselves in right now – we have 8 shows recorded from our January tour, as well as one still-unreleased show from the previous January (and of course the gig that became Accidentally (On Purpose) ) which is all worthy of release. Continue reading “The Glorious Dilemma – How To Release A Huge Amount Of Music?”
Birmingham Bass Night – A Resounding Success!
So the first Birmingham Bass Night was a resounding success. A comfortably full venue, some amazing music and a good time was had by all.
I feel really lucky to have had such a great line-up for what was really the pilot for a regular event. Russ Sargeant played a beautiful opening set, including an exquisite cover of The Blue Nile’s Let’s Go Out Tonight… so often when an instrumentalist decides to sing a number, the verdict is ‘brave but unwise’, but Russ has a voice to match his bass skillz… hope we get to hear him sing again! He’ll be back at another Birmingham Bass Night soon, I promise 🙂
Then me, doing my thing. Running a night and playing at it can be a stress, but I’ve done it enough and have stripped away the unneccesary stuff well enough that I had no such troubles here. It helped that the venue, Tower Of Song, is SO musician-friendly. There are way too many ‘music venues’ these days whose primary concern is selling beer and musicians are just the bait to get people in the building. Tower Of Song is run by a dedicated and talented musician, Tom Martin, whose primary concern is to run a venue where music gets heard in the optimum environment. It makes a huge difference to how you play to know that your music is respected in that way by the people hosting you… almost house concert-like.
I played A Year Afloat, The Kindness Of Strangers, Hello and an extended new version of Grace And Gratitude (a request fromSarah in the audience… was happy to oblige 🙂 )
Then our headliner was Lorenzo Feliciati. As I said in my introduction on the night, hearing Lorenzo’s musical world grow over the last 10 years has been a joy. He was already an amazing musician when I first met him, and has continued to stretch himself and find new vehicles for expressing himself musically. Definitely a kindred spirit. Of late, he’s put together an amazing band called Naked Truth, with Pat Mastelotto of King Crimson that combines fusion, ambient, post rock and deep improv to amazing effect. His latest solo album Frequent Flyer is also magical.
For Birmingham Bass Night, Lorenzo teamed up with Dave Walsh – a brilliant drummer from Leeds – for a duo set that covered Miles Davis and Alan Holdsworth tunes (Holdsworth for bass and drums duo?? yup.) and some of Lorenzo’s own compositions. It was a wonderful contrast to the more mellow sounds that Russ and I conjured up to have something that was at times ferocious and funky as well as gentle and contemplative.
All in a marvellous night. Thanks to everyone who came! PLEASE feel free to post your own thoughts and observations in the comments (there’s been loads of talk about the gig on Facebook which has been great, and it really helps with the promotion of the event to have positive audience feedback to link people to 🙂 )
We’ll be doing another one in May.. stay tuned for an announcement about the line-up ASAP!
This Coming Sunday! Birmingham Bass Night!
Birmingham Bass Night is now LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY! You’re excited right? I know I am. It’s the first event like this that I’ve done since coming to Birmingham, and I’m REALLY excited to be playing alongside two properly excellent musicians – Lorenzo Feliciati from Italy, and Birmingham’s own Russ Sargeant. Both fabulous musicians who happen to play bass…
…By which I mean it’s clearly going to be a basstastic evening, but you won’t have to be a bassist to have an amazing time! This isn’t an evening of tuneless bass wankery. It’s a gig, with excellent music, that on this occasion is made by people who play bass. Life is far too short for bad music. So there won’t be any on my watch.
Gig details:
- Date: Sunday, March 17th 2013
- Time: 8:00pm (doors 7.30, I think… will confirm!)
- Venue: Tower Of Song
- Address: 107 Pershore Road South, Birmingham, West Midlands
- Venue phone: 0121 486 1300
- Country: United Kingdom
- Admission: £7 / £4 concessions
- Age restrictions: All Ages/Licensed
Here’s the Facebook event link. Go see what people are saying about it over there. Lots of people are looking forward to this gig. It’s going to be epic. Then… TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
Anyway, here are some artist bios, in case you don’t know much about us:
Lorenzo Feliciati – one of Italy’s most respected bass innovators, Lorenzo Feliciati’s combination of electric jazz with progressive rock and electronica elements, coupled to his amazing dextrous skill on the instrument, make for a compelling and exciting music-world.
Receiving his initial impetus to play bass from seeing Jaco Pastorius with Weather Report, Lorenzo added Mick Karn, Pino and Percy Jones to his list of fretless-inspirations and forged a celebrated career as both a side-man and a band-leader in his home country, and further abroad.
His latest project, Naked Truth, featuring King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto, brings together his twin loves of jazz and progressive music, and has been critically acclaimed worldwide.
Steve Lawson – it true that there aren’t too many musicians who’ve managed to forge an international music career as solo bass guitarists. But in the last 13 years Steve Lawson has toured the world, produced 20 albums (10 solo, 10 in collaboration), been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, played most of the major bass events, had radio airplay on four continents, and built a reputation as one of the respected bass teachers and ‘new music economy’ thinkers around. His approach to looping and layering his bass in real time builds complex and beautiful soundscapes that sound very little like a bass at all. Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. ‘Steve Lawson is a brilliant musician. I’ve known about him and listened to him for many years. He may not be one of the most famous bassists but he is definitely one of the most talented’ – Victor Wooten
Russ Sargeant – Russ Sargeant is a bass player and multi-instrumentalist based near Birmingham. He uses live looping and effects to create beautiful layered music – sound upon sound; sometimes with multiple instruments but mostly only using electric and acoustic basses. His music is a blend of Ambient, Jazz and eclectic sounds and has been described as, “subtle layers of sound that emerge gracefully like cinematic soundtracksâ€.
www.lorenzofeliciati.com
www.stevelawson.net
www.russsargeant.co.uk
Photos from The California Tour
New Video Pt 1 – Videos from California
Well, the California tour is over, I’ve been home a week or so, jetlag has worn off and the mammoth task of preparing the recordings from the tour with Daniel Berkman for some kind of future release is tentatively underway.
Meanwhile, our duo album seems to have found favour with the people who are listening to it and buying it. Thanks for the positive feedback. Here it is, if you’ve missed it so far:
Accidentally On Purpose – New Year! New Album! New Tour!
2013 is off to to a flying start!
It’s already been a really busy one, with tour planning for the end of this month and now a new album! Hit play now, and have a listen while you’re reading this schpiel 🙂
This is a really special album for me – Accidentally (On Purpose) feels like a high point, a new level if you will, for where my improvised music world is going. Daniel’s sound-world is unlike that of anyone I’ve ever played with before, and unusually for a musician as melodically adept as he is, he spends a lot of the album creating space for me to be tuneful in… there’s a lot of bass melody stuff in here. A lot of slide, and it heavily features an AMAZING Modulus TBX 6 string bass that I was gracious loaned by the guys at Modulus for the tour. I fell in love with it, and you can hear it most prominently on the title track. Continue reading “Accidentally On Purpose – New Year! New Album! New Tour!”