Tag: art

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Greenbelt Pt 2

So where were we? ah yes, Sunday. Met up with Patrick Wood, and gave him the passes for him and his family, then wen to the sunday morning communion service – 15,000 people taking the Eucharist is no mean feat, but it went without a hitch… oh, except the PA cutting out 10 minutes from the end.

Anyway That followed by another trip to Martyn Joseph’s songwriter thingie, The Rising, featuring Cathy Burton, Denison Witmer and Pierce Pettis – another fantastic sesh, and Martyn played a song or two of his own which was a treat – he’s kind of Greenbelt’s unofficial troubadour, and plays a full gig most years, often with fun special guests like Tom Robinson or Steve Knightly. This year, he just did The Rising.

After the Rising, it was back to Cheatsville, AKA The Performance Cafe, for an afternoon of astoundingly good acoustic music – Stephenson and Samuel (Stocki with Sam Hill), Ben Okafor, Old Solar and Denison Witmer all one after the other! Even though the programme was put together by Evil Harv, and it pains me to say this – it was fantastic.

The evening’s music began with Brian Houston in The Performance Cafe, then Cathy Burton rocking out on the mainstage (bit of a shock for those who’d only seen her in The Rising, especially the QOTSA cover!), and back then the catching the last train to cheatsville to see Pierce Pettis and my other join fave gig of the weekend (along with Cleveland Watkiss) Duke Special, AKA Pete Wilson (not the former govenor of California). I’ve known Pete for years, heard him as The Booley House, and just Booley, but Duke Special is a whole other level – beautiful songwriting, outstanding performance, and Greenbelts own Hobbit, Chip Bailey on drums and percussion, playing perfectly, dramatically, sensitively. A genius pairing, playing oustanding music, with the occasional backing track on minidisc, but with a replica gramaphone there to make it less rubbish! A truly awe-inspiring performance – they are on tour loads, so check the website to see them when they come near you.

Monday and we’re into the home straight. It’s also the day when stevie-thoughts momentarily turned to work, as Patrick Wood and I had a gig in Cheatsville in the morning, and an improv workshop in the afternoon. The gig went very well, was equal parts mellow ambient and dissonant scariness, lots of fun for us, and a very positive reaction from the audience. The rest of the afternoon involved listening to Peter Tatchell (fascinating and no doubt hugely disappointing the representatives of the national press that were there due to the total lack of sensational material – Peter was friendly, charming, and laid out his thoughts on human rights in great detail, and there wasn’t really much for anyone to disagree with), then off to hear Anita Roddick speak about trade (oh, it was Trade Justice day, in partnership with Christian Aid), then back to the performance cafe to hear Nick Harper (Catherine Street Team – you were right, he’s a genius and a very nice bloke), Cathy Burton (minus rock posturing this time), then off to sort out stuff for the improv seminar, which went well, and over ran by half an hour.

The day finished with The Polyphonic Spree (good but not my bag) followed by Billy Bragg, who was so breath-takingly wonderful it was almost contrived. Almost too good – all that he said and sang was great (except some new song called ‘no power without accountability’ that was turd-on-toast). Finished off with ‘waiting for the great leap forwards’ into ‘a new england’ and an accapela encore of the old hymn jerusalem. A real spine tingling moment.

All in all, one of the best Greenbelts ever. Great music, great speakers, great atmosphere, great weather, great food, great campaining stuff, great friends. All good, and because I was playing music less than usual, I was able to spend loads of time with The Small Person, which was a treat I’ve not had at Greenbelt for many a year, and the thing that pushed it into the top 3 greenbelts ever for me. I’ve been going to Greenbelt since 1990, and only missed 91 and 96 since then. lots of great greenbelt memories, and this weekend swelled the stash of marvellous moments. It’s truly the finest weekend of the year.

soundtrack to follow in next post…

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Greenbelt 2003

Just got back from Greenbelt – ostensibly a Christian Arts festival, but with a strong focus on justice issues, and some seriously great music and seminar speakers.

We arrived Friday afternoon, pitched our tent (oh yes, proper camping), and went to watch Eden Burning (reunion gig – their final gig was infront of 10,000 people at Greenbelt 97, and they reformed for a one off this weekend to celebrate this being the 30th year of Greenbelt), then saw Pierce Pettis, Iain Archer, Juliet Turner, Boo Hewerdine with Rob Jackson, Kate Rusby and Old Solar – all marvellous, and a great start to the weekend, in fact, too much great stuff to take it all in, and I missed a lot of artists that I’d have to catch in other venues over the weekend. Watching that many amazing gigs in one evening does make you a bit blase about the genius on offer, but any one of the acts listed about would be worth driving 50 miles to see on an ordinary evening – Pierce I’ve seen lots of times before, and played with in Reading earlier this year, Iain Archer has been getting better and better over the decade that I’ve been watching him play (new album out in a few months, which promises to be a blinder), Juliet is another singer I’ve been familiar with for a long time and have got both her albums, Boo Hewerdine I was more familar with as a songwriter than a singer, but he was marvellous and Rob Jackson who was guesting on guitar is a solo looper that I’d had contact with before, and showed himself to be equally adept providing gorgeous pedal steel-esque guitar parts to Boo’s finely crafted songs.

Kate Rusby’s gig was a particular treat as she had Ewan Vernal on bass – former Deacon Blue bassist, and one of my earliest and biggest bass influences (check out the bass/voice tracks ‘Orphans’ and ‘Trampoline’ by Deacon Blue for a taste of his genius)…

Old Solar are old faves, and old friends, and played a very fine set.

Saturday began with a Dave Andrews seminar – Dave is an radical activist/speaker from Australia, and regular speaker at Greenbelt, this time expounding on the notion that we’re in the new dark ages with the financial and governmental institutions in the west providing a heavily protected fortress for the extravagance of the world’s rich to the exclusion of the poor, who are battled in a feudalistic way to protect the already disproportionately huge share of the world’s wealth that those of us in the so called developed world have. His answer was to look to St Francis for a model – Francis having been an aristocrat who gave up his wealth to work with the poor. He wasn’t a politician, and didn’t set out to change the world, just to live right. As Schumacher put is ‘think global, act local’… all great stuff…

after Dave, it was off to a Mike Riddell seminar – Mike’s an author from New Zealand, and another Greenbelt fave, talking about artistic integrity and freedom – nothing new but very encouraging and helpful nonetheless.

Next up, Martyn Joseph’s songwriter’s circle event, The Rising – lots of great songwriters playing their songs and discussing them. What a treat to see MJ, Juliet Turner, Pierce Pettis and Brian Houston talking about their songs and playing together. Amazing stuff.

Other gigs – Elan (very good), Juliet Turner and Pierce Pettis (genius, obviously), Cleveland Watkiss (with Orphy Robinson on Vibes) – outstanding, joint best gig of the weekend, Calamatuer (marvellous) and Denison Witmer (another new discovery for me this weekend – fantastic singer/songwriter from Philadelphia).

But as always, Greenbelt is about people – meeting up with loads – hundreds – of friends, meeting loads of people I deeply admire, amazing musicians, great speakers, writers, actors, and just really nice people that I aspire to be like. Spent lots of time between gigs drinking apple tea in the tiny tea tent and enjoying the gorgeous weather.

..and tomorrow I’ll tell you about Sunday and Monday!

(and in case you’re interested, the virus email count for over the weekend was in excess of 650!!!)

Soundtrack – right now, the first mixes of the tracks I recorded with the quartet on my most recent trip to France – more on that when I’ve heard them some more. Before that, Denison Witmer, ‘Recovered’ and Jaco Pastorius, ‘Jaco Pastorius’.

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You Call That Hot???

….London’s heatwave, described below, suddenly didn’t seem quite so amazing when I stepped off the ‘plane at Verona Brescia airport, and into a furnace. Now THAT’S hot!

What a marvellous time I’ve had for the last few days – great music, great people, great food, great weather.

The solo gig was at the Rivolta Art Restaurant (or something like that – not sure what the official name was) – a marvellous place in Rivotella, on the banks of Garda Lake. The gig was outside the front of the restaurant, so I had people who’d come just to listen, people who’d come to eat at the restaurant and people who were just walking by (which kind of reflects the healthy attitude to the arts that seems to be pretty widespread in that part of Italy, but that may just be the very groovy people I was spending my time with) – anyway, the gig went really well, despite a bizarre introduction from a slightly crap clowning troupe who decided to do a 10 minute show about 20 feet from where I was playing! Time to take a break… sold a pile of CDs, and paved the way for quite a few more shows in that part of Italy.

The next three days involved lots of recording – duo with fab guitar user/abuser, Luca Formentini, quartet with Luca and a rhythm section of Gianni Sabbioni and Frank Moreno, and trio with Luca and Moreno. The duo and Quartet were very good, Trio was good, but I think due to the kind of sound we’d go with the quartet, we slipped all too easily into trying the same thing, and in the quartet lineup I’d not been playing much in the way off basslines, leaving that to Gianni, so the trio was a little empty sounding when attempting the same thing…

Anyway, it was all good, got tonnes of stuff recorded.

Sunday night was spent at a marvellous Italian family birthday celebration, and due to my total lack of Italian linguistic skills (Ciao, Gracia, and a bunch of musical terms is about as far as it go at the moment, but I’ll be learning more soon… ;o) I ended up talking in French to a marvellous Italian artist called Albano Morandi. All in all, a great way to spend a Sunday night in Italy.

So I’m home now, glad to be back with the small person and aged feline. Time to get ready for Greenbelt next weekend, and to get back into finishing the work off on the album with Theo…

Soundtrack – now it’s Janis Joplin, ‘I Got Dem Ole Kosmic Blues Again Mama’, before that Sigur Ros, ‘Agaetis Byrium’; David Bowie, ‘Heathen’; in Italy, Bruce Cockburn, ‘You’ve Never Seen Everything’; Mark Knopfler, ‘The Ragpickers Dream’; Fripp/Sylvian, ‘Damage’; The Cure, ‘Disintigration’; The The, ‘The Naked Self’; David Sylvian, ‘Gone To Earth’; Bill Withers, ‘Best Of’.

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Blimey, has it been that long???

Well, what’s happened since I last blogged? Well firstly, my hard-drive is fixed!! Yippee!! I got loads and loads of offers of help from blog-readers, one of which was an offer from Ted to fix the drive if I shipped it to him in Portland, Oregon. So I did, and he fixed it, and shipped it back, and all it’s cost me is a the cost of the new drive and shipping each way. Amazing. Huge gratitude to Ted for that!

For all of last week, I was on Lindisfarne (AKA Holy Island), off the coast of Northumberland, teaching at the Borders School For Life. The idea behind the school is based on the Scandinavian folk high school idea, where learning is pretty much for the sake of learning, rather than for the certificate that you get at the end of it.

The theme for this week was spirituality and ecology, the the many talks, classes and workshops took in themes of the Celtic history of the Island and Northumberland (Lindisfarne was pretty much the first home of the Celtic Christians in England), some stuff on the wildlife in the area, the notion of nature as sacrament, and some other ecological and economic stuff.

There was also a strong creativity thread, which included garden design, all sorts of arty things, and me doing a series on the parallels between music and language, and how to see music as an extended metaphor for communication – looking at music theory and improvisation and examples of language and conversation… It went very well, and much fun was had by all. The rest of the tutors included lots of experts in their field – professors of economics and sociology, design lecturers, authors and the director of the centre for human ecology! All round a marvellous week, and one I’m sure I’ll go back to next year whether I’m teaching or not…

Since getting home, the small person and I have been to a friend’s wedding, and installed a waterfall in the garden, that given the current heatwave has been doubling up as a foot spa. mmmmmmmmm.

So this week is going to be lots of teaching, getting back up to date with the duo album with Theo Travis (artwork nearly finished, just final touches needed on the track mixing), and then off to Italy for a gig on Thursday night!

Soundtrack – The Cure, ‘Disintigration’ & ‘Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me’; Cloud Chamber, ‘Dark Matter’; Phil Keaggy, ‘Acoustic Sketches’; Bruce Cockburn, ‘You’ve Never Seen Everything’; Paul Simon, ‘One Trick Pony’; Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner, ‘A Closer View’.

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essential listening

earlier on today, I was listening to ‘Straight From The Heart’ by Patrice Rushen – a truly remarkable funk record, which features, amongst other great tracks, Forget Me Nots. The whole record is a repository of amazing bass playing, and is truly essential listening for bassists. Which got me thinking about essential listening for bassist, so here are 5 essential bass albums (not neccesarily the top 5, but 5 nontheless) –

  • Straight From The Heart – Patrice Rushen (Freddie Washington on bass)
  • Hejira – Joni Mitchell (Jaco Pastorius and Max Bennett on bass)
  • What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye (James Jamerson on bass)
  • Michael Manring – Thonk (Michael on bass)
  • Secret World Live – Peter Gabriel (Tony Levin on bass)

….we’ll take it as read that all three of my albums should be in the list, but I’d hate to blow my own trumpet.. :o)

and while you’re here, check out some really good lyrics.

Soundtrack – KD Lang, ‘Ingenue’; Price, ‘Sing O The Times’; Patrice Rushen, ‘Straight From The Heart’; me, ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ and ‘And Nothing But The Bass’.

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Can't… Get… Motivated…

Loads to do, can’t seem to get on with any of it. Good job I’ve got lots of teaching on, or I’d be sat around doing nowt. Really need to start working… lots to do… must stop reading bass discussion groups… practice… prac. tice. wash-up, tidy, work out some teaching stuff for next week. Anything, just get on with it!

Soundtrack – now, Keith Jarrett Trio, ‘Inside Out’, before that Phil Keaggy, ‘Acoustic Sketches’; Patrice Rushen, ‘Straight From The Heart’; Ben Castle, ‘Four From The Madding Crowd’.

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a new top 5…

inspired by a conversation I’m currently having with evil harv on MSN, here’s my guess at my top 5 most listened to albums of all time, in no particular order

  • Steve McQueen – Prefab Sprout
  • Strength – The Alarm
  • Dusk – The The
  • We See A New Africa – Friends First
  • Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me – The Cure

Which says absolutely nothing about my taste, really… no jazz, no singer/songwriter stuff – it says more about the albums themselves as being ones to get obsessional about…

Soundtrack – was listening to Erin McKeown on Late Junction – she’s fantastic, gonna have to get her album…

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clearing out my closet..

…no, not in the eminem sense! With the impending release of my duo CD with Theo Travis, I need to make some space for the new CDs, hence the ‘special offers’ link now posted in the sales bit of the website front page… if you or any of your chums have been waiting for some reason to get my CDs, now’s the time to do it – cheaper than ever if you buy all three! :o)

Anyway, talking of new releases, I’m just listening through some of my recordings with Patrick Wood, keyboardist and guitarist extraordinaire, with whom I’m playing a duo set at Greenbelt. We’ve been talking about the possibilitiy of doing a limited edition CD for the festival, so I’m listening through the recordings with a view to editing some of it down…

Oh, I’ve just noticed that this is my hundred and first post in this version of the blog! happy birthday for yesterday, I Guess… silly of me not to notice and post something of great pith and moment in my last blog entry, but still, it’s a landmark and must be made mention of somehow. I’ve no idea how many blog entries were in the old version – maybe I’ll go back and read some.

What else? nothing much. Just parcelled up a box-load of CDs to send of the cdbaby.com – cdbaby is an excellent site for independent musicians. The way my cd sales breakdown, the majority are either at gigs or through evinsol.co.uk, but that’s largely because evinsol tends to get them listed before anyone else, and is the place I use for pre-orders of a new CD when it comes out (the usual deal will be available when the CD with theo comes out, with advanced orders getting a very limited edition free extra CD!)

But aside from that, cdbaby has been a really good sales outlet for me, as it’s made my music available to a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise have found it – the search functions there are really intuitive, and it seems like a lot of people shop there as a way of finding new hidden gems, and of supporting independent music – something I obviously endorse wholeheartedly. I’ve bought some great cds from cdbaby – cds by Pamela Sue Mann, Ron Miles and Alex Skolnick, all three of which are Excellent, and highly recommended. click on any of those links to head over to cdbaby and hear samples of their stuff!

…it’s a simple as that, which is the odd thing with the internet – the potential market at any one time is ENOURMOUS. I mean, huge. millions. but it’s the same for any artist, and we’re all vying for people attention. The best we can hope for, being fair and realistic, is that people who connect with what we do can find it. The mainstream industry relies on sensationalism, titilation and crass hype to foist sub-standard music onto the public. The indies having neither the money of a billionaire not the morals of an alleycat can’t really stoop to that, so we’ve got to rely on actually being worth listening to (imagine that!) – so far, it’s working out ok… ;o)

Soundtrack – right now, it’s the duo tracks with patrick wood, before that, Cara Dillon‘s album – she’s a folky singer with a beautiful voice, and some gorgeous songs – well worth investigating.

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Bass overload!

This morning was fun – Victor Nicholls, a very fine looping bassist came round for a jam and to swap a few ideas. He’s a very fine musician, and rather annoying from the point of view of my constant harping on about the need for fretlines on fretless basses in that he plays an unlined fretless with marvellous intonation! Still, that’s one more on the plus side to outweigh the millions of tuneless warblers using excessive vibrato to simulate being ‘in tune’… you’re not fooling anyone!

Anyway, I digress. Victor came round, and made some great noises – he really ought to do a solo album (victor, you really ought to do a solo album). the other projects that he’s been involved with that I’ve heard have been very good – you can check one of them out and find out some more info about Victor at www.big-hair.co.uk.

Yesterday, I hooked up a TL Audio 5051 preamp that I’ve borrowed from student simon into the FX loop on my Lexicon MPX-G2 – it sounds amazing. Really really great tone. I’m going to have to get one of these for the solo rig. On thursday I used it as a mic pre for BJ Cole’s sound, and that’s pretty damn fine too. So it’s going to be time to buy a bigger rack very soon, so I can get my other echoplex and this preamp into the rack. Also time to switch to a stereo set up for live work – powered speakers are on the horizon…

this afternoon I’ve been mocking up some artwork for the me and theo album – we haven’t even got titles for the tracks yet, or even agreed on a final running order, but it’s always nice to have something to work from, so he can come round, have a look at what I’ve done so far and say whether he loves it or hates it! The whole process of putting an album together is so much fun – I could quite easily do it four or five times a year, given the budget (so go and buy some CDs now, as it’s all dependent on how fast the last album sells… ;o)

soundtrack right now, it’s Daft Punk, ‘Homework’; before that Nik Kershaw, ‘To Be Frank’, and lots of me and theo and me and BJ!

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The strange ways people find my music!

as you know, my CDs are on the cdbaby.com site, and one of the things you can get from cdbaby as an artist is a list of where people came from to find your site – and this is one of the links that someone used to find me –

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=hear+baby+chicken+sounds+&FORM=SMCRT

so, buy my CDs and hear baby chicken sounds – simple as that!

…anyway, this reminds me that I need to send another box of CDs to CDBaby as they’ve just about sold out of Not Dancing CDs… there’s been a mini-rush of sales to Japan, which is rather cool… must get a japanese language page up on this site somewhere… hmmm, time to email Chi, methinks…

Soundtrack – right now, Mary Chapin Carpenter, ‘Time Sex Love’ – one of the most consistently fantastic singer/songwriters around, rarely does anything edgy or groundbreaking, but just focusses on write fantastic songs and using great musicians. Is also blessed with a gorgeous voice… Before that was listening to Ma, ‘Links’ – Ma is a French electronica/dancey stuff artist, who came over the London to buy an Echoplex from me last week (still got a couple left is anyone’s interested – drop me an email…) – she’s just sent me her CDs which are really really good. Great sounds, great voice… ….and before that, Morphine, ‘B-Sides And Otherwise’, which is genius.

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