Category: Music News

Before I started the list of things I’d done in 2012, it felt like a year of not much happening… I mean, I’d put out three new albums, but all three of them were actually recorded in 2010 and 2011, so only the mixing and mastering took place this year (actually, given that Believe In Peace was released on January 1st 2012, all the work on that, even uploading it to Bandcamp, happened in 2011!)

But the list looked a little more impressive. So here it is, by month: Continue reading “2012: A Musical retrospective”

Go on, admit it, you had no idea I was going to release an album today…. (OK, maybe you’d seen a tweet or two about it over the last week, but not MUCH clue… 🙂 )

I didn’t know about it until last week! Then I discovered that my friend and collaborator Andy Williamson was going in for a kidney transplant on Friday. I had a couple of beautiful unreleased improvs that Andy and I recorded on a mini-tour he, I and Lobelia did last year, where we played a couple of shows in churches in Devon and Cornwall.

So I hatched a Kickstarter-esque plan – to explore the possibility of doing a load more ‘sacred space’ shows with Andy – there’s a certain creative mindset engendered by playing in buildings designed to inspire awe and facilitate contemplation. Listening to these improvs, both Andy and I take our time. They formed the centrepiece of each of the gigs, and are extended solo improvisations by me which Andy joined whenever he felt it was ‘the moment’, and we then finished together. The fact that he comes in when he does on both of them (from the back of the room, working his way forward filling the building with his incredible sax tone) was as much a generous affordance from the space and the audience as it was an exhibition of his creativity and control.

So here’s the plan – we sell the album, and use the album money to plan more duo gigs for Andy and I as soon as he’s well enough to be back gigging. For musicians who need to take time off due to big illnesses and operations, it’s pretty inspiring to have creative work booked in, something to focus on, something that makes you feel a little less like you’re neglecting your artistic calling by daring to be incapacitated.

Who knows how much we’ll make – that’s up to you. But whatever we get will go towards us sorting out some gigs.

Also, anyone who pays ten pounds or more gets a free ticket to one of the shows. If you’re able to come to one, then great, it’s yours. If you can’t, it’ll be given to someone else who can’t otherwise afford it. So whatever happens, someone will get to see us play live if you pay a tenner… And of course we’ll record the gigs anyway 🙂

Is it REALLY 10 years? honestly? It really doesn’t feel like it.

10 years ago today, my 2nd solo album, Not Dancing For Chicken was released. I was in the middle of the (still) biggest tour I’d ever done, opening for Level 42 on their Greatest Hits tour. The gig the following day (Oct 27th) was at the Swansea Grand Theatre, which would’ve been the first time I had them for sale, and then on Oct 31st, I played at the Royal Albert Hall (as far as I know, I’m still the only solo bassist to ever do a whole set there… would love to know if anyone else has…)

So here it is – I’ve remastered it, but weirdly it didn’t really need much of a tweak. Have a listen, download it if you like it. Pay whatever you think it’s worth. I’ve set everything on my site back to ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ today to celebrate, so grab a few albums, think of a number, double it, pay that.

This was the album where my sound really emerged – the idea of what I was doing as a solo artist existed from my first solo gig in Dec 99, but what it was meant to sound like on record took a little while longer, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jez Carr for his wisdom and patience there… This version of Not Dancing For Chicken is actually the second one I recorded – we turned Jez’s parents house into a studio and – against Jez’s better advice – I insisted on mic’ing my amp, that it was an important part of my sound. Which proved to be nonsense. Not least of all cos it meant everything was in mono (I hadn’t switched to a stereo live set up by then).

So after recorded a load of weird nonsense at Jez’s place, I went home and set about making v 2.0 of the record. Which is what you hear. The pivotal piece was, I think, Danny And Mo – dedicated to two of the greatest British bassists of all time, Danny Thompson and Mo Foster. At the time, I was spending a lot of time listening to Mo’s solo records and Danny’s ‘Whatever’ band, and it was in relation to their work that it struck me that all my clever glitchy looping experiments were lacking the melodic side of what I do, which is such a key feature of my music… (some of the glitchy stuff ended up on Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 1…)

So I made a melodic record. It’s a pretty sparse record, mostly pretty simple loop-wise (I I think I used one Gibson Echoplex and a Lexicon JamMan on it, but I’ll have to see if I can find a CD copy of it and check the gear-list! EDIT: I checked the sleeve, and it was EDP + Line6 DL4 🙂 ) and the recording side of it was SO minimal – my soundcard at the time was a gaming card (Soundblaster live, I think?!) and it’s all recorded direct to two track in Soundforge! Crazy stuff. So that it sounds as good as it does when I clearly had no clue at all what I was doing is remarkable.

I’ve had a great time revisiting the album in order to remaster it, but it was an even bigger thrill to discover the minidisc live recordings from the Level 42 tour, and so the four extra tracks here are taken from two shows on that tour – straight from the mixing desk to minidisc. Three are from the afore-mentioned Royal Albert Hall show and one track from the last gig on the tour at the Plymouth Pavilions. It’s interesting to hear how the tunes that are on this record had already morphed into something quite different by the time the record was even released! In the case of Channel Surfing, I think I prefer the live version to the album one…!

If you came to see me play on that Level 42 tour, please do drop a comment below – I made some great friendships through that time, and still meet a lot of people who first heard me in that setting. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.

Hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane!

(as per usual, the album is ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ – if you’ve already got it on CD, please feel free to upgrade without paying, but if you want to drop me a coupla quid for the live tracks, I shall be most grateful!)  

A couple of weeks ago, I has the privilege of playing two wonderful shows with Dave Bainbridge and Martin Nolan from the band Iona. They were doing a couple of duo shows before Iona’s band tour started, and I was invited to open for them.

Dave and I had played together on a tour a few years back, and Iona were a HUGE influence on my in the 90s. There are so many elements to my music that have the fingerprints of Iona’s music – and Dave’s guitar playing in particular – on them.

So any chance I have to play with him is gratefully received!

At each of the two shows, we did a trio improv section. I hope the one from Leicester will emerge at some point, but for now, here’s the one from the first gig in Sheffield. It was a whole lot of fun. Look out for more gigs with this line-up soon! 🙂

It’s been a lovely first 5 days for Invenzioni – sales are going pretty well (we’ve made a few hundred quid so far, which is a fine start), and the general consensus is that it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Largely, I guess, because of Mike being the other 50% of it. 🙂

A few people round the internet have written things about it. Here’s a round-up:

John Toolan, over at ThisIsNotAScene.com gave it 9/10 in this lovely review:

http://www.thisisnotascene.com/2012/steve-lawson-and-mike-outram-invenzioni/

Kevin Johnson at NoTreble.com wrote nice things about it too:
Continue reading “What People Are Saying About Invenzioni”

You: “Steve, how was your Saturday?”

Me: nice of you to ask! Not so great, to be honest – we drove a 13 hour round trip to play at a festival. Only because of the flooding we (and pretty much everyone else) didn’t even make it to the festival site. It was cancelled around lunch time… Our route home was marred by multiple road-blocks thanks to flooding and mudslides, and involved hours of fairly torturous winding down backroads.

You: “wow, shitty deal!”

Me: Yeah! Though, it’s nothing compared to what the organisers have had to deal with – Continue reading “Rain Stops Play, No Play Means No Pay”

All 10 of the ‘essays‘ are now written and printed – here’s what the full set looks like. Only 10 sets have been printed and a couple have been sold already, but if you want one, head over to Bandcamp to order – pay £30 or more to get the full set, or £25 to get the USB stick plus one postcard. Please message me if you want to confirm that they aren’t sold out before buying… The bandcamp page has a full list of everything that’s on the USB Stick – now 21 albums…

Here’s the entirety of what you get. Proper lovely 🙂

 

 

Yesterday was a busy day for album releases – two albums that I’m on were released!

It’s always exciting to be involved in new music, and fun to have more stuff for y’all to listen to, doubly so when they all arrive at once (I’ve got 3 more albums to release before the end of the year!) But anyway…

So, the first of them is this one from Neil Alexander and I, called Hidden Windows: Continue reading “Two New Albums Featuring Me!”