Music News – Page 22 – stevelawson.net

December 22, 2009December 24, 2009

A Decade In Music – The Solo Bass Years.

My first ever solo gig was at the Troubadour in Earls Court, London, on Dec 15th, 1999 – 10 years ago last week.

The eve of the new millennium, and a gig that started with a lie (the lovely chap who booked the gig asked me if I had a whole set of material after seeing me do one solo tune in a band-gig. I lied and said ‘yes’ 🙂 ). It wasn’t the first time I’d played solo bass in public – that was a product demo at the National Music Show for Bassist Magazine in Nov 97. I also played weird improv noise stuff for a contemporary dance company in Nov 98.
Continue reading “A Decade In Music – The Solo Bass Years.”

November 23, 2009

Live In Nebraska EP Now On Bandcamp

Finally! Thanks to a little help from a friend who had the CD (we sold out of them ages ago, and didn’t have any left to get the high-res files from!), We’ve now got the Steve Lawson and Lobelia EP up on Bandcamp.

As you know, I’m a huge fan of Bandcamp, and it now handles physical CD sales as well! How exciting is that (you can buy Behind Every Word on CD from there).

I’ll be ditching my online shop altogether soon and moving all my sales over to Bandcamp, or just simple Paypal buttons for the CD-only sales – if you want a one-stop shop for listening and browsing now, you can just go to the MP3s/Downloads page here on this site.

Anyway, here’s the Nebraska EP – Listen, Enjoy, Share it, Embed it anywhere you like, and if you want to keep it, pay whatever you think it’s worth:

October 12, 2009January 10, 2010

Bandcamp, Soundcloud And The Portability Of Music

For many years, Â musicians have been looking for decent ways of hosting, embedding, distributing and selling music online. The shops that sell MP3s, on the back of iTunes success, are myriad. As are the sites that let you upload a few tunes and put them on your profile, ala Myspace, Reverbnation etc.

But two services are now becoming essential in the web-savvy musicians tool-kit – BandCamp and Soundcloud.

I’ll blog about Soundcloud tomorrow, but let’s start withBandCamp: Continue reading “Bandcamp, Soundcloud And The Portability Of Music”

October 10, 2009January 10, 2010

Second Lot Of Video – Solo and Duo – From the Gig with Michael Manring

I’m processing the video I’ve got from the gig as fast as I can – two more are now up for your delectation and delight. Firstly, the second of the duet improvisations: Continue reading “Second Lot Of Video – Solo and Duo – From the Gig with Michael Manring”

October 9, 2009

Video From Wednesday's gig with Michael Manring

The first bit of video from me, and a lovely little trailer for the gig (and therefor future gigs!) from BenjaminEllis of BassGuitarBlog.com:

Here’s The trailer:

And here’s the first of the duo improvs that Michael and I played, with my introduction to it (about 2 minutes of talking – I’ll probably put the music-only version of this on youtube!) More audio and video coming soon:

Steve Lawson and Michael Manring, live improv in London. from Steve Lawson on Vimeo.

October 9, 2009

Photos From Wednesdays Gig With Michael Manring

I’ll blog more about it – and the rest of this week’s musical activity – as soon as possible, but for now, here’s some amazing photos from the gig with Michael Manring taken by the lovely and talented Benjamin Ellis:

September 21, 2009

New London Gig: Singers Of Twitter II – Oct 6th!

After the huge success of the last ‘Singers Of Twitter’ gig at Darbucka last month, we’ve got another one coming up! Yay!

We’ll be back at Darbucka, and this time, it’ll feature Ben Walker AKA @ihatemornings out of Twitter, as the musical sandwich filling in between the gluten-free bread slices of the ever-wonderful Lloyd Davis on first and lovely Lobelia and I on at the end! Hurrah! It’s on Tuesday Oct 6th, doors atÂ 7pm, music fromÂ 7.30, atÂ Darbucka World Music Bar, on St Johnâ€™s Street in Clerkenwell, London. Continue reading “New London Gig: Singers Of Twitter II – Oct 6th!”

September 15, 2009January 10, 2010

SL On The Radio

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by the wonderful Tom Robinson for his show on 6Music, ‘Introducing‘ – a show all about new music with, rather brilliantly, lots of handy tips for bands and artists starting out and trying to negotiate the tricky transition from the age of the mega-deal-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow to the scary world of DIY and talking to your audience. Continue reading “SL On The Radio”

September 14, 2009

New Live EP: Releasing Music 2.0

So, if you read my last blog post about the gig on Oct 7th with Michael Manring, you may have seen that I embedded in that post a widget containing a free-to-download live EP of Michael and I playing together in California.

The EP happened because while blogging about the gig, I remembered that after that show (which at the time felt like a particularly good set of music) someone had sent me a recording of it… I’d been meaning ever since then to put up the rest of the improv that made sense of this video on youtube, and when I dug out the recording (which was sat on my incredibly messy desktop), I found that the entire improv set was worth putting out. Continue reading “New Live EP: Releasing Music 2.0”

September 10, 2009

Upcoming London Gig – Oct 7th with Michael Manring

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.

The gig is at Round Midnight Jazz and Blues Bar, on Oct 7th, starting at 8.30. Tickets will be Â£8 on the door, Â£7 in advance – to reserve tickets, call 020 7837 8758 or email “ntmusic [theATsymbol] gmail [a dot] com”. (it’s highly likely to sell out – we played to about 130 people at the Troubadour last time he was here…) Continue reading “Upcoming London Gig – Oct 7th with Michael Manring”