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All the latest news about musical goings-on…
All kinds of awesome fun was had last night as we hosted our first house concert since we got to Birmingham.Â
The remarkable Emily Baker agreed to come and play – she’s been a favourite of Lobelia and I since we shared a bill with her at the Ginglik many years ago. Continue reading “Emily Baker Playing Live in Our House!”
I’ve got three gigs this month! Yes!
After quite a while off from the live scene thanks to moving house and all the stuffs that go on around that, Lo and I are going to be down in Devon and Cornwall on the 12th and 13th November, playing with the brilliant saxophonist Andy Williamson – I’ve known Andy for ages, and we’ve done a couple of really lovely gigs together over the years. He’s a joy to play with and a delightful man to hang out with, so we’re hugely looking forward to the visit.
Nov 12th St Endellion, St Endellion Church, North Cornwall
Nov 13th Ashburton Devon, St Lawrence Chapel – both with Andy Williamson and Lobelia
Then, on the 24th, I’m playing a duo show in Derby with another old collaborator – Corey Mwamba. Corey’s an exceptional vibraphonist, composer and music maker. The gig I did with his band at the London Jazz Festival a few years back was possibly the hardest music I’ve ever had to play, but also some of the most enjoyable. Here we’ll be improvising, making a gorgeous noise between us, and you’re invited to come and enjoy it with us.
24th November, Deda, Chapel St, Derby, with Corey Mwamba.
You may remember that back in August, a trip to Edinburgh to do some work with the Arts Council happened to coincide with the opportunity to guest with beatboxing genius Shlomo on his Edinburgh Fringe show.
I’d seen Shlo play a few times, and love his music – he’s one of the most musical and versatile beatboxers I’ve ever come across, and as meeting him confirmed, always seemed like a really lovely bloke too. Continue reading “Video Of Improv with Shlomo in Edinburgh.”
Over the last week or so I’ve been thinking about the best way to bring the Recycle Collective back into effect.
A lil’ bit of history – the early part of my ‘solo’ career actually involved a fair bit of collaboration – I did two duet albums – with Jez Carr on piano and Theo Travis on sax/flute, and then in 2005 spent much of the year focused on exploring the collaborative potential of all this looping stuff.
A big part of that was getting together with other musicians, in particular Cleveland Watkiss and BJ Cole, to experiment, try things out, record. It became apparent fairly quickly that what we were doing really ought to be happening in front of an audience, so I put together the first idea for the Recycle Collective – a series of improvised music nights in London, with no prior stylistic constraint.
after a couple of events that were based around solo and duo playing, mostly, I settled on a format of 3 musicians, 3 sets, each set progression solo > duo > trio. So you had each musician playing solo, all 3 possible duo combinations, and 3 loosely curated trio sets… It resulted in some remarkable music and quite a fabulous underground reputation for providing some of the loveliest improvised music in London.
Now that we’re in Birmingham and a little more settled, I’m going to see about bringing it back up here. So here’s a lil’ taster of the kind of thing that happened – it’s an improv duet of Cleveland Watkiss and I, from April 2005 – one of those sessions that inspired me to start the collective:
Gregorian (Steve Lawson and Cleveland Watkiss) by solobasssteve
This week sees the first anniversary of the release of ‘Slow Food’ – my half of the ‘two albums in two days’ project that Trip Wamsley and I recorded when Lobelia and I visited Louisiana in the summer of 2010. Listen and download/buy here: Continue reading “First Anniversary Of Slow Food with Trip Wamsley”
I’m just back from a fabulous weekend at Greenbelt – where I’ve spent my August Bank Holiday for all but 3 of the last 22years (and one of those was only because Greenbelt was moved to an earlier slot in the year, so I’ve actually only missed 2 in 22 years – this being my 20th GB).
Anyway, time to catch up on two interesting things that have happened. Firstly, I was interviewed last week by the wonderful Tom Robinson for his ‘Fresh On The Net’ BBC Introducing show on BBC 6Music – click here to go and listen to it (the listen again runs out in about 3 days, but I’ll chop the audio and get it uploaded somewhere 🙂 ) It’s a wonderfully succinct, pithy interview – sadly not because I’ve discovered how not to waffle, but more because they edited it rather well – my bit is 33 minutes into the recording, but the rest is worth listening to for some great new music… Continue reading “BBC 6Music And Improv With Shlomo – 2 Things To Listen To”
FINALLY – you asked for it, so it’s here. Live So Far on CD! It’s our live album from our US tour in 2010 – a mix of solo tunes from Lobelia and I, plus two VERY special guests in the from of Todd Reynolds on violin and Neil Alexander on keyboards.
It was a really special tour for us – if you’ve not heard the album yet, here it is. Click the picture to order the CD.
and if that’s not enough, Lobelia’s new album, Beautifully Undone, which I mixed and mastered, and play bass on one tune of (and took the photo on the cover of!) is also out on limited edition CD. Listen to that here too:
Here’s something lovely that has just been posted to Vimeo – it’s from a house concert that Lobelia and I played in Plano, TX earlier in the year. Brian, who expertly hosts the gig for us and filmed it so beautifully, had seen Tiger Darrow play a few weeks earlier opening for Zoe Keating, so asked her to come and open the show. She did, was brilliant, and thus we had to play together at the end. Here it is: Continue reading “New Improv Video With Lobelia and Tiger Darrow”
Two bits of news relating to being about to buy my (and in the case of Bandcamp other people’s) music in bulk.
You may know that we started selling our entire back catalogue on a single 4Gb USB stick, just prior to the US tour. We continued to sell them on the tour, and they proved very popular with the iPod-wielding members of the audience. So we’re still selling them. Here’s a list of what’s on it:
My Solo Albums:
Steve and Lobelia Albums:
Lobelia Albums:
Other Collaborations:
Video:
All of the albums are in MP3 format, with all the official ones being 320K files. Both mine and Lo’s latest albums are also on there as 24bit FLAC files.
You can read a sort-of review of the USB Stick here.
All of that is just £25. Which, obviously includes a rather nice 4GB USB Stick as well. Insane value. Click the Paypal button below to buy it. (there’s an option on there to pay an extra £5 or £10 if you a) want to pay more or b) want to contribute something to the international postage, but it’s not compulsory…)
IF you don’t want the stick, or want to pay more (or less) for all the non exclusive stuff on there, Â you can now get multiple albums on Bandcamp, across different artist sites, with a single transaction, via their new shopping cart.
So you can go to my site, Trip Wamsley‘s site, Lobelia’s site, Mike Outram‘s Site, Lawson/Dodds/Wood‘s site, and another other bandcamp sites, collect them all together, distribute the cash across the albums however you wish (for those that are Pay What You Think It’s Worth), and pay once. Awesome, eh? Try It!
A couple of weeks ago, this review showed up on a French Website called indierockmag.com – with my paltry French skillz, I could tell it was nice, but it wasn’t til I asked on Twitter and Facebook the other night for a translation that I got what it really said… I got 5 translations sent to me, by 5 very lovely people. I’ve only included one here, for obvious reasons, but am v. grateful to Guylaine, Dave (who posted a translation on Facebook), Lorna, Michael and Wayne. Here’s Wayne’s translation – the link to the original review is http://www.indierockmag.com/article14847.html
“Since Steve Lawson became a father, the Londoner appreciates the weight of the years, philosophy, and still more the number three. And that’s good, because we are just as into the poetic meditations that the musician draws from the single six-string bass which, in his hands, becomes a tool of dreams.
“The first electric bassist to have performed solo at the Royal Albert Hall, he is a protege of Michael Manring, who said of Lawson’s 2004 album Grace and Gratitude that it was a real step forward in the art of the bass solo, doubtless referring to a world closer to the ambient music of Brian Eno or the subdued post-rock of Come On Die Young era Mogwai rather than the technical wizardry of Jaco Pastorius. Lawson continues in the same soft lyrical vein with his first album in five years, possessing the good taste to allow it to be downloaded for free. Knowing that the collection in question is even more gargantuan than its predecessors – easily passing 80 minutes – should especially not stop you pulling out your bank card should you turn out to fall in love with it.”
And, of course, you can listen to it here: