Musing on Music – Page 32 – stevelawson.net

February 4, 2006

Gorgeous Guitars on Video

Rick Turner just sent me a link to this video clip – it’s a trailer to a film called ‘Gourmet Guitars’ – it’s vol 2 in a DVD series looking at great guitar makers, and of course Rick’s in there. The clip itself makes for interesting viewing, but is even more interesting for the inclusion of Bill Walker demoing one of Rick’s guitars through the Mama Bear processor. Bill’s a fantastic guitar player, lovely bloke, and really ought to be a big star.

It’s also nice to see Rick and his son Elias on the video – the transition back to London life is made easier by seeing my friends on film when I get back here.

Soundtrack – right now I’m listing to an NPR recording of an interview/performance by KT Tunstall – KT’s just about the best thing to happen to pop music in the UK in years – in a year that gave us the rancid whinging loser that is James Blunt and a load more Pop Idol one hit wonders, KT has the skills and the songs to be in it for the long haul. Hurrah!

February 3, 2006

Petersfield gig

just back in from the gig in Petersfield with Theo – wow, what a great evening!

To start with, playing with Theo is about as easy as a gig can get – there’s no worrying that he’s ever going to play anything less than marvellous, he’s great fun, and we always have a great time on gigs. Add to that some fine Thai food (the venue doubles as a Thai restaurant), a nice big audience (full room), and some stellar improvs, and you’ve got yourself a damned fine night’s gigging.

We recorded it to minidisc, and the record quality is great except the points where it peaks. A few of the tracks will be editable to get rid of the peaks, a couple won’t be useable, but it does give us a reference point for the general sound quality coming off the desk, so if we drop the record level a bit, we’ll be fine.

Next stop, The Vortex tonight – don’t miss it!

January 30, 2006

Postcard from SF Airport

I’m officially on my way home, sat in San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight.

The last few days have been fantastic – catching up with friends around the bay area, and then Saturday’s masterclass and gig.

Friday night was spent firstly having dinner with Rick Turner and with two lovely new friends from Third World Guitars in the Dominican Republic. I also got to try out Rick’s brand new 6 string Renaissance bass, which was just as fantastic as you’d imagine (John Lester is going to be wanting one of these, for sure…)

Then it was out to see another friend’s band play – a rock/metal covers band called Mr Meanor – great players, who’ve clearly put a heck of a lot of time, energy and skill into what they do – it’s great to see a bar band that plays with such conviction. The weird thing was how few of the songs I knew – the US and UK rock charts in the 70s and 80s were clearly very different!

Onto Saturday – It’s the third time I’ve taught a masterclass here, and the biggest so far – I set a limit of 20 people and we had 20 people, which was good – two long sessions of almost three hours each with an hour off for lunch and trying eachother’s basses etc. it was, as is my usual teaching approach, a lot more about the mental approach to playing than it was about ‘licks to play over a D minor chord’ – I probably only played for about 15 minutes total in the class, but spent most of the time answering questions, and dealing with a lot of the misconceptions that we’ve all grown up with about the music making process. the feedback thus far from the people who came along has been great, and hopefully the discussions will continue on the forum.

From the masterclass, we headed over to the espresso garden – this was my fifth gig at the Espresso Garden, and possibly, sadly, my last, as the venue is being sold, but doesn’t have a buyer as yet. It’s a great venue that has hosted gigs by some of my favourite musicians – John Lester, Kris Delmhorst, Muriel Anderson, Martyn Joseph – a great listening room for acoustic music. It’s the fourth time that Michael and I had played there together, and the second time that we filled it, which felt good. We also had Jeff Schmidt along with us, who played a lovely opening set, and joined us for a cool improv at the end of the gig.

I think the most startling thing about the gig was Michael’s sound – due to the logistics of the gig, he had Mark Wright from Accugroove bring him a couple of speakers to use, which meant that all three of us were going through Accugroove stereo rigs – I’ve NEVER heard Michael’s bass sound that clear or focussed. It was incredible.

It was also a lot of fun for me to be using the Looperlative on a solo gig – it’s the first time I’ve done it, and it sounded great – I even tried a version of ‘Despite My Worst Intentions’, which I’ve never played with that box (and it has some pretty complex looping stuff going on with it) and it worked a treat, it made sense, and felt good.

All in, a marvellous day!

Yesterday was another magical day – the morning spent with Mark Wright, the afternoon with Michael Manring, the early evening teaching a great bassist called Arianne Cap, then dinner with Arianne, her husband Wolfgang, and with Jeff Schmidt and his wife Valerie, followed by late evening with Anderson Page from Modulus and his wife Laura – a day chock full of encounters with fantastic inspiring lovely friends. California is like that for me – I get to see so many great people, who energise me, inspire me musically, politically, spiritually… I really don’t think I could ever live out here (maybe that’ll change), but some of my favourite people in the whole world are here. Thanks to all of you for what you feed into my life.

January 27, 2006

California catch-up

So what have I missed from NAMM?

Well, I posted about Thursday night – that was fun.

Friday – er, can’t remember much about during the day, other than doing some Looperlative demos, and playing on the Accugroove stand. Oh, and did a set at Modulus as well, though where Modulus is stationed, it’s all but impossible to play anything due to them being flanked by hair-metal amp companies and opposite the Taylor booth who have a stage set up with acoustic bands playing all the time. Accugroove and Looperlative are both down in Hall E where the noise level is much lower, so more people could stop and listen to what’s being played. And on both those stands I had AccuGroove speakers to play through, which made all the difference. I just don’t like using regular bass amps any more. The only bass cabinet company that comes close to AccuGroove is Glokenklang – they make some really lovely uncoloured speaker cabs. Great stuff.

Anyway, what else? Ah, Friday evening, Sabian had a big show, featuring some celeb drummers – Dave Weckl, Terry Bozzio and Joey Heredia. Terry being the interest, not just because he’s already more interesting than the others, but because he had the wonderful Doug Lunn on bass. Doug’s one of my closest american friends, and him playing also meant that his wife Vida was at the show on Friday, so we had lunch – that’s what NAMM’s pretty much all about for me, catching up with the lovely people here that I only get to see once a year.

The gig itself started and was unintentionally funny – I was there with three lovely bass people – Peter Murray, Jeff Schmidt and Janek Gwizdala – Weckl came on and it took us a while to work out what it sounded like, but we hit the name on the head with ‘game show themes’ – not my bag at all, I’m just not into clever twiddly fusion like that…

So we wandered outside, and hung out, chatted, laughed a lot – all good.

Back inside for the Bozzio band, which was a whole different proposition. Some seriously dark, difficult music, that owed more to Pierre Boulez or Edgar Varese than to the usual guitar trio reference points. Alex Machacacek who wrote most of the material is a remarkable guitarist, writing incredibly dense structured music, with multiple time and tempo changes each bar. Scary stuff. Doug acquitted himself admirably, playing this scary mathematical music with a serious amount of groove and flair.

Saturday at NAMM is mayhem – way too many people there, lots of celebs showing up (eg Gene Simmons shows up with film crew in tow – I saw him there up close last year and he looks like a pile of offal from a butchers floor that someone has mushed together and re-animated. Not a good advert for ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ living.) So I stayed down in Hall E for a lot of the time, and escaped over to Subway for lunch. Didn’t even think about playing on the Modulus booth, but did a fair amount of stuff down at Looperlative, including some fun duets with Tal Wilkenfeld – a fab Australian bassist living in NYC – I blogged about seeing her play last year.

Saturday night at NAMM means ‘Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night’ – one of the best gigs of the show. Sadly this year, I missed a lot of it due to heading up to Hollywood to see Bozzio’s trio again at the Baked Potato. But not before I’d gone in to meet Patti Larkin – Patti’s a huge favourite of mine, a stunning singer/songwriter who has worked a lot with Michael Manring over the years and I’ve been wanting to meet for years. A few connections were used, and I got a chance to say hello and briefly discuss the possibility of her coming over to play in the UK – that’d be great!

then off up to Hollywood for more Bozzio/Lunn/Machacek craziness. top stuff, but a very late drive back to Bob and Alison’s in Costa Mesa.

And then Sunday – the quiet day, I arrived late at the show, and left early, but not before filming the Looperlative demo and saying goodbye to some lovely friends for another year. And I headed off into Hollywood again to see another old friend, Tanya, who I’d not seen for three years, feeling dried out and exhausted (me, not Tanni) by four days of vicious air conditioning and walking miles.

Soundtrack – in the car here, I’ve been listening to lots of music by friends of mine, to keep me from feeling homesick – Juliet Turner, BJ Cole, Mark Lockheart, Thomas Leeb… it works.

January 23, 2006

Monday in California

Well, NAMM’s over for another year. Much fun, but I couldn’t have handled another day of it. After 8 years of it the novelty has worn off, but it allows me to appreciate the bits of it that I love a lot more – mainly the great people I get to see when I’m here.

I’ve got lots of stories, and much to write, but haven’t got time now – hopefully tomorrow I’ll get to post more.

ta ta!

January 20, 2006

Day one of NAMM proper

So the mayhem started today. Having a US mobile phone has proved to be an absolute God-send, keeping me in touch with all the disparate groups of people I need to meet up with.

A mellow morning, wandering around, seeing friends, explaining the Looperlative to a few people, Lunch with Laurie and Janek, then back to do some playing, first on the Looperlative stand, then Accugroove. Headed up to Modulus to play too, but there was a guy playing Stick in the booth next door, so it wasn’t going to happen.

Then BassBash – v. nearly late getting their thanks to traffic, but we found a way through. Got there, set up and played some duet stuff with Trip, which went down great. Then had to run off to do my second gig of the evening with Jason Feddy – no rehearsal, really shitty charts, but a whole lot of fun. Jason’s songs are great, and he’s one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet (a Leeds lad living in Laguna Beach… oh yes.)

Jason’s set was v. late, and it meant that I was held up at the hotel til way later than expected, which lead to my first let down of NAMM – NAMM is all about let downs, people arranging to meet up and missing eachother etc. This one was that I was supposed to go and pick up Jeff Schmidt again from the BassBash, but couldn’t cos I was playing! Here’s hoping Jeff got back (it was walkable, but it’s a way!) – sorry Jeff!

And the evening ended watching Dave Pomeroy playing bass for Doyle Dykes. Great stuff.

The one stupid thing I forgot to do today was drink enough water, and I’m feeling a little dehydrated now. Must do better tomorrow.

January 17, 2006

last night's gig

V. fun gig last night.

Well, winding back a few hours before the gig, the day was already marvellous as I got to spend a whole day with Todd Johnson, a fantastic bassist, amazing teacher and a lovelylovely person. I got one bass lesson for the year just watching him playing some chord melody standards. Sometimes I think I’m beginning to get this stuff together, then I listen to Todd…

then the gig – it was in a restaurant, not in a back room but in the main restaurant. The lineup for our set was me, Steuart Leibig, Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask – two basses, sax and trumpet and a shitload of electronics. The music got so far out – improv is always MUCH harder to guage with that many players, and it did get overly dense at times, but there were some magical moments, and the relaxed format afforded me the opportunity to step away from the stage and listen to how it was all working. Some lovely noises. Some lovely friends turned up, and the band after were good too, though it was very odd listening to a pretty straight fusion trio after an hour of improv chaos. Much fun. :o)

So today is a relaxing day, currently in a lil’ indie coffeeshop in Long Beach. It’s nice to relax, but time off is time to think about how much I miss TSP and the FAFs. One the one hand I’m chillin’ on the beach, but on the other hand I’m missing out on the fun back home with TSP and the friends that are staying while I’m away… bad planning!

January 16, 2006

Sunday in CA

Starting any day with a tofu and tortilla scramble is a good way to ensure it’s going to be a good day. Yum – must get recipe from Jeff.

Lazy breakfast followed by recording – an hour’s duo material, looped and processed trumpet and me doing my looperlative thing. Some amazing music – Jeff uses a looping/processing rig on his laptop, programmed in Max/MSP, which is an unbelieveably versatile set-up. loads of great sounds and ideas coming out – I’m listening the the CDR of it at the moment, unmixed, and the only downer is that Jeff’s signal picked up some radio interference at points. It’s rarely a problem, and in a couple of places sounds very cool, but it’s a shame it’s there… we’ll work with it, edit where necessary. All in all, it’s some great music, and will probably crop up as a download album in the online shop soon.

Also bought myself a US phone today – last year I ran up a MASSIVE mobile phone bill, without actually spending long online at all! So I’ve just bought a prepay phone and a load of minutes, to save me lots of pennies when calling TSP and also phoning chums in the US.

Time for sleeps now.

January 13, 2006

Few more thoughts on last night's gig

So, the format was that we’d do three sets, and each ‘curate’ one of the sets – I started, and I played solo, then duo with Cleveland, then we played as a trio. Next up was Cleveland solo, duo with BJ then trio, and finally BJ solo, me and BJ duo, then trio.

The three trio pieces were all very different sometimes very floaty, but the last one a high energy beat-box-led number – Cleveland’s contribution to a looping set is huge – being able to beatbox, sing tunes, do that tabla vocalisation thing, layer chords… he’s amazing. Couple that was BJ’s remarkable emotional empathy with his instrument – the steel in BJ’s hands has an amazing yearning quality, and my melancholic but ultimately hopefully noodlings, and you’ve got a rather potent mix.

the duos were really interesting, just to see what happens when you take one element out of the trio – the track that BJ and I did was fun, in that instead of ploughing our usual dark ambient furrow, we actually morphed into a country 12 bar! There was a bridge at one point, but I wasn’t looping at all until the last minute of the piece… an unexpected one for us as well as the audience!

I think the most fun for me as a listener was Cleveland’s solo set – he’s only just getting familiar with the Echoplex, and so his looping method is gloriously haphazard, but the end result was amazingly slick – his ability to respond in a group situation spills over to his looping, and he made whatever was happening work. He was just spinning the dial on his FX unit and using whatever sound came up, and coming up with the most incredible layers of vocalese.

All in all, one of the best gigs I’ve been involved in for ages, and two out of two for the Recycle Collective. It’s definitely turning into what I’d intended it to be – the most vital new music night in London!

If you were there, feel free to post your reviews in The Forum or here in the comments on this post…

January 5, 2006

Peter Murray – Ants and Angels

one of my blog resolutions for this year is to do more CD reviews… You’ve already had BJ Cole’s marvellous ‘Transparent Music’, and today I got a copy of Peter Murray’s ‘Ants and Angels’.

Pete is someone I know best as a bassist, having seen him live playing for Ron Sexsmith in London a few years ago, and having jammed with him a few times at NAMM shows in LA over the years. ‘Ants and Angels’ is much closer to the Ron end of things than the ‘jamming with stevie’ end of things. It’s a proper singer/songwriter album, with a heavy dose of XTC/Squeeze/Elvis Costello – all those great early 80s songwriters – and tunesmiths like The Rembrandts/Lit/Fountains Of Wayne etc. The songwriting, production, playing and packaging are all top notch – it’s amazing to think that it’s a self-produced album. I guess the quality of the musicians on it is a testament to Peter’s standing in the Toronto music scene – everything is impeccably played, the tunes are incredibly strong – if it gets in the right hands, he’s guaranteed a couple of radio hits off this. Really, it’s a must for fans of intelligent alt-guitar singer/songwriter stuff. From the ultra-catchy punky tracks like the opener ‘Gen X DJ on E’ and ‘Ears Make Wax’ to the more mellow almost Neil Young-ish tunes like ‘Murray Vs The Ants’ and ‘Skydiver Friends’, the album is packed with great hooks, instantly memorable stuff.

Have a listen to some of the tracks at Peter’s MySpace page – and follow whatever ordering instructions are there. Definitely one of the strongest self-produced albums I’ve ever heard.