Category: Updates

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California part II

NAMM was over as soon as it began. It was definitely one of my favouritest NAMM shows ever. Getting to play all the Looperlative demos (and a Modulus demo) with Lo. and getting to hang out and play a lot with Claudio was just great. Having set times to play at Looperlative made the days much easier to plan, and thanks to a food intolerance, we didn’t make any trips over to Subway (about a 45 minute round trip), so stayed nearer the convention centre for food and coffee, thus giving us more time on the show floor.

As usual, the magic of NAMM was in the lovely peoples – the rest of it is 100,000 music gear makers and sellers lying to each other for a weekend to the atonal accompaniment of slap bass, poorly executed paradiddles and 80s guitar shredding. Thankfully, in 10 years of visiting NAMM, I’ve accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances so lovely and so numerous that there were quite a few I didn’t get to see this year, or saw for such a brief time that it was actually more frustrating than not seeing them at all! So for those of you that I missed, I’m REALLY sorry. Hopefully we’ll be out in CA in the summer for some stuff – watch this space…

It was a really great NAMM for Looperlative, partly because most of the ‘competition’ were conspicuously absent from the show, but largely just because in its third NAMM show, the product has proved itself, there’s a solid user base who swear by it, Bob’s proved he can do the customer service and support required for a product in that market and price range and a lot of people are realising that to get a dedicated laptop looping set up that’s stable enough for stage usage, fast enough for low latency audio, and especially if you want to use it for processing your sound too, costs a heck of a lot of money. The software part of it may be a free download, but trying to run a looper on a laptop alongside all your other stuff and expect it to not crap out on you on tour is asking a heck of a lot from your gear… 2008 could end up being an amazing year for Looperlative…

In other gear news, Accugroove launched a new amp, that sounded great, and certainly bodes well for the hopefully-finally-on-the-way powered cabinets…

From NAMM, we spent a day in and around LA with Claudio and Alex Machacek – who inevitably found that had hundreds of friends and musical acquaintances in common. Alex gave us a copy of his new album, Improvision, a trio record with Matthew Garrison and Jeff Sipe. Really amazing stuff.

Then it was the long drive north to Oakland for a couple of days with Michael Manring, before our last gig of the tour at Don Quixote’s in Felton, near Santa Cruz. Things were looking really great attendance-wise before the show – threads on discussion boards with folks arranging to meet up at the show. Then the weather went to shit, and a snow and ice warning quite understandably curtailed the travel plans of quite a few people. And yet we still managed to pull a decent crowd, and played some of the most satisfying music I’ve been a part of in ages. I started the show solo, then Lo. joined me for a duo set, then after the break was Michael solo, then he and I duo, and finally a trio improv piece. The improv stuff both duo and trio felt really really great, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the video and hearing the recordings that were taken on the night… we’ll see if there’s anything useable in there… Also worth a mention is that the soundman at the venue, a guy called Lake, was one of the finest club engineers we’d ever worked with. A really friendly guy, with great working gear, and just fantastic sound! It was one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard Michael have, and the on-stage sound was amazing too… it makes all the difference.

And then we flew back to Ohio, and both Lo and I fell ill. Proper ill. Fever and shaking ill. Yesterday was a wash-out – having hardly slept on an overnight flight, I slept pretty much all day, and then all night too. Feeling much better today.

So tomorrow we drive to New York, and I fly home on Wednesday – feel free to email me now if you want to sort out teaching stuff for when I’m back! :o) It’s time to start booking some UK gigs now too.

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Spinnin' around…

Yesterday was the closest I’ve come to being killed for a very long time. Driving back from a lovely trip to Kitchener, Canada (more on that in a moment), Lo. and I hit a patch of black ice in the road, just at a point when the wind was blowing hard enough to knock us and the cars in front of and behind us into a spin – the car in front of us spun off the road, I turned to go around him and the car spun across the road, did 180 degrees and we ended up on the central reservation facing the wrong way with more cars and SUVs spinning off the road around us. The spin itself was scary, but we didn’t hit anything, and the central reservation brought us to a fairly quick halt. However, the feeling of watching other cars spin, knowing that if one of them came in your direction it would very possibly kill you – given that we were facing the direction they were coming, so it would’ve effectively been a head-on collision – is quite the most gut churningly horrible feeling I’ve had for a very very long time.

And after that, when the road cleared a little and we’d got turned round and on our way again, the next 50 miles back to where we’re staying was the most stressful nastiest drive of my life, every little movement of the car felt like we were going to spin again, every bridge felt like it was covered in ice, and on a couple of occasions we did slide a little, and my stomach knotted even further. I’ve never ever been so happy to step out of a car as I was when we got back.

So we’re not dead, and very thankful to be alive and in one piece, and to not even have to report a smashed up car to the rental firm (we had fully-everything insurance anyway, and I suggested that they check the wheel alignment, given that the wheels took more of a jolt when we hit the reservation than anything else…)

The reason we were in Kitchener in the first place was to go to a gig by Rob Szabo and Steve Strongman, two fantastic singer/songwriters, with very different but complimentary styles. They traded songs off one another, backed eachother up, and generally made a fantastic singer-songwriter-y noise for a couple of hours. Marvellous marvellous music. Definitely worth checking out both of them.

Anyway, happy christmas, bloglings, thanks for bothering to read this stuff through the year, I hope it’s been entertaining and informative. Here’s to a blogalicious, gigtastic 2008!

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Stephen Fry on Smoking

Stephen Fry’s blog is a wonder to behold. His command of the English language is, as we’ve know for decades, incredible, but he’s also clearly completely at home in the digital realm (I had no idea he was such a gadget obsessive).

Anyway, he posted a while back on addiction, and posts a particularly wonderful description of the utter stupidity of smoking –

Imagine that one day someone hit himself lightly on the head with a parsnip. Instead of stopping (for this is a foolish thing to do) he carried on doing it. When he eventually did stop he went about his business but discovered, much to his surprise, that he had a sudden unconquerable urge to hit himself lightly on the head with a parsnip all over again. So he did. And the more he did it, the more he needed to do it. The act of doing it gave him a tiny surge of joy, a little rush of pleasure that had to be elicited, never mind what a twazzock he looked, parsnipping himself on the head all day.

Smoking is no less stupid than that. In fact it is a whole bicycle-shed more stupid, because it’s smelly, unsociable, carcinogenic etc etc etc. But the principle is the same: smoking has absolutely no point other than to stop the misery of not smoking. Smokers claim that it aids concentration, soothes the nerves and so on, but we know really that it only does those things because it’s tobacco addiction that messes with concentration and jangles the nerves in the first place. Tapping your head lightly with a parsnip would aid concentration too if not doing it made you all jumpy and desperate.

…and so it goes on, in great detail. Marvellously written and argued.

I HATE smoking. With the typical vengeance of an ex-smoker. I hate that it imposes on my by making me smell horrible and damaging my health. If I started pissing on people’s feet in bars just because I was drinking so much liquid that I couldn’t possibly be expected to make it to the loo every time I needed to go, I’d probably be arrested, despite it being arguably less intrusive than smoking in a confined space with someone. It’s certainly far less likely to damage their health, and would only require their shoes to be cleaned, not every item of clothing they’re wearing… (and don’t even get me started on trying to dry clothes in doors in a flat where people smoke…)

So stop, give up, admit defeat. It’s a rubbish, antisocial habit that makes you look like a tragic addict not a cool pop star. It makes you smell, wheeze and is such a gruesome waste of money.

AND – this is the one that really riles me – don’t even THINK to pretend to me that you have any ecomonkey credentials at all if you smoke. Unless you’re growing your own tobacco. Save for the arms trade, there is no legal industry in the world more damaging than the tobacco industry. So if you’re drinking fair trade coffee and smoking Marlbro lights, you’re a complete joke. You might as well buy a copy of the Big Issue then punch the bloke in the face and steal all his money. The notion that smoking is any way ‘counter cultural’ is so utterly laugable. It ties you to the whims of big corporations more than any action short of throwing tear gas cannisters at protestors.

And, let it be known, if you’re smoking near me, I might not comment, but right then, I’m thinking about what a complete nob you look with a ciggie hanging out of your mouth, and I’ll like you a lot more the minute you stop. :o)

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The fine art of friendship

(why do I feel like I’ve used that blog title before? Perhaps it’s because I’m listening to King’s X at the moment, and that’s where the title comes from…)

Anyway! The reason for it is to compare Facebook and MySpace – my Myspace page has about 8.5 thousand friends, maybe 4-500 of whom i’ve met at some point, and probably a 1000 I know who they are… My Facebook page currently has 175 friends, and I’ve met all but about 6 of them, and those I know through online connections.

In the past when I’ve advertised gigs on MySpace, I’ve had a response from about 10 or so people… Most of those are people who would probably have come to the gig anyway, and were just reminded to do so by the mailout.

On Facebook, i recently set up a page for my gig on the 22nd with Lobelia and Monk, and we’ve already got 7 confirmed attending, and about 24 who ‘might be’ attending… Percentage-wise, that’s so far off the charts of anything MySpace can get close to, with the kind of friends-list that I’ve got… Time to thin the herd, methinks, though it might actually be a lot quicker and easier to just launch a new myspace page and start again… Watch this space.

Anyway, Facebook (assuming it doesn’t get shut down in the current law suit) is a FAR better design, and much more pleasurable waste of time than MySpace…let’s see how it develops for musicians…

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passing on a request from the lovely Bananie…

One of my favourite blogs to read is Bananie.com – Bananie is a lovely friend in Austin TX, great blogger and one of those people whose love and concern for lil’ hanimals means she can’t turn down a lost kitten or puppy (hence the reason their house looks like a deleted scene from Dr Doolittle).

Anyway, given that the US doesn’t have anything like the kind of affordable sensible pet insurance that we do in the UK, she’s just about all spent up on protecting helpless cats and kittens, and they currently have this tiny fella, Phineas, who has ringworm (AKA athlete’s foot, hardly fatal, but definitely needs treating) and a heart condition, which as usual is unspecified until lots of v. expensive tests have been done, but will kill him if it’s not treated soon… if you’re moved by the little guy’s plight, head over to bananie.com and drop a couple of cyber-squidz in the paypal donation bucket to help out with his medical bills… no pressure, I just know that some of y’all who read this are animal lovers and will quite possibly want to help out a fellow gentle soul in her quest to turn their house in to a cat ‘n’ dog focussed Ark…

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Are we allowed a little schadenfreude once in a while?

Every once a while, the downtrodden get their own back.

this footage of some fuckwit matador getting gored in the plums by a bull made me smile. Does that make me a sicko, or do is there just a little justice in seeing the twisted sickos that seek sport in taunting animals and spearing them to death get a taste of their own medicine…

Of course ‘Spain bans bull-fighting’ would have been a much better headline, but it’s about as likely as ‘Nugent goes veggie and joins PETA’, sadly…

get well soon, senor plumless… ;o)

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EuroBlog #4

So, Monday – when Oteil and Barri eventually surface, we head into town, and find that Monday is a pretty mellow day in Verona. It’s a bit rainy, but we find a cool little buffet lunch place in the big square outside the Palazzio and have lunch. A lovely couple from San Diego recognise Oteil (he’s in the Allman Brothers Band, who are HUGE in the US…) and we have a nice chat with them.

Then to shopping. This time, instead of being honourary girl, I’m hanging outside the shops with Oteil while Barri heads for the boutiques. It’s one of those things about living in London – I forget that if you’re from small town Alabama, shopping in Verona is pretty damned amazing. Being from London, it’s less of a novelty. But a day spent walking the gorgeous historic streets of Verona with Oteil and Barri is a day very well spent – many laughs, lovely snacks, and a last drink at a pavement cafe. Just as I’m leaving we run into the rest of the Epifani crowd, and as I head off to the train station to head back to Luca and Gio’s, Oteil and Barri have found their ride back to the hotel! Hurrah for coincidence!

Back with L and G, and all is well with the world. A gorgeous dinner and onto mixing the record that Luca and I recorded back in July. And Wow! The tracks sound really great. I remember there being some good stuff, but not this good. This is some really exciting music. The blend of our sounds is amazing, and we bring out different sides in eachother’s playing. I’m drawn into some darker sounding stuff, and Luca is inspired to more melodic playing. We’re constantly swapping roles on these tunes, and the editing and mixing goes pretty smoothly.

Today (Tuesday) I’ve been carrying on with the mixing, while Luca was out at work, and after a pizza with Luca and Andrea Nones (from the Ground Collective – the wonderful chap who keeps booking me for gigs in Brescia), it’s back to mixing. We’ve now got about 40 minutes of really great music. So are pretty much there for the album. I’ll be back here late Thursday to finish off the ‘shaping’ of the tracks, with just polishing to be done before mastering. When it will get released is anybody’s guess, but hopefully we’ll at least have a myspace page before too long!

Italy is such a great place to come and visit – the people here are some of the most open, warm and friendly I’ve ever encountered, the audiences are wide-eared and accepting, the musicians are creative and expressive, the language sounds like song, and the scenery is gorgeous. I think I’d struggle with living here, given the tangled web of beaurocracy that seems to surround everything here, unless you have an old boys network to deal with it, but I look forward to coming back from the day I leave.

Having said that, I’ve now been away from home for over a week, and I’m starting to miss TSP and the Fairly Aged Feline quite a lot. My love of Italy is balanced by the novelty of touring having worn off years ago… ideally, I’ll have to work out a way to bring both of them with me, but methinks the Fairly Aged one would take to journeys across the continent.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Venice for my last Italian gig of this tour… Exciting stuff!

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Euro blog part 1

Right, I’m on a train from Paris to Geneva, sat in first class (very little difference from ‘standard’ class, sadly – glad the extra was only about a fiver), sat opposite a couple plucked straight from an 80s sit-com – middle aged, making half-arsed stabs at French in a broad english accent, discussing inanities like the contents of their sandwiches and reading the Telegraph. However, they are on a train going from Paris to Geneva, so it’s nice to see the middle-aged middle-classes getting out and about. :o)

Journey thus far has been lovely, if a little tricky with my suitcase, rolling rack, double gig bag, laptop bag and huge furry coat. Got v. hot ‘n’ sweaty at Gar du Nord trying to find the right metro platform, and then buy a ticket (somehow managed to get through the barriers without a ticket, then got trapped – in my own personal sitcom moment – in between two barriers unable to go anywhere, feeling somewhat like I’d been caught in some kind of humane trap for tourists, and I was going to be whisked away and released into the wild…

But anyway, the trains are lovely, muchos leg room, space to get up walk around, go to the ‘restaurant’ car (or mobile motorway services, more like). I’ve made a good start on one of the transcriptions for the forthcoming e-book of transcriptions from across my solo albums (couldn’t really do a whole album as on each album there are things that are untranscribable… unless any of you fancy having a go at ‘chance’, ‘journey of a thousand miles’, ‘you can’t throw it away…’ or ‘one step’. :o) )

Will probably be selling them as individual PDFs on the site, as a bundle, and in print via Lulu.com – a fabulous self-publishing system.

Reading material for the journey has been this week’s < A HREF=http://www.newstatesman.com>New Statesman and now The Benn Diaries (nice thing about the Benn Diaries – not much chance of me running out of book to read on this trip – 700 pages, and I’m up to about 110.) Current listening material is Honeytrap by Leo Abrahams, and before that Yell Fire by Spearhead.

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Ned Evett Trio At The Troubadour

Back-pedalling to Monday night, I headed down to the Troubadour (home of my first ever solo gig) to see Ned Evett play with his trio. I’d only ever seen Ned play solo before… actually, that’s not true, i did see Ned with a couple of other musicians when I first met him at La Nuit De La Fretlesse in Mende, France, back in… 2001?

anyway, it’s a long time since I’ve seen Ned play with a band, so it was great to hear what he sounds like in that setting. The only problem was that their bags were lost on the flight over, so Ned was completely without his pedal board and two of his guitars. Yup. My. Worst. Nightmare. Well, not quite on a par with world war, or UKIP winning a general election, but still a pretty fearful thought for any musician.

Still, Ned did a fabulous job with just his one guitar, a rented amp and a delay pedal. The juxtaposition of Ned’s fretless guitar and the upright bass is an inspired combination, and Ned’s well developed dynamic control with his voice was ably supported by the rhythm section. A great night out.

If you get a chance to see them play, don’t miss it!

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