Tag: bj cole

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Benefit gigs

Went to two benefit gigs this week – one as an audience member and one as a player.

The audience member one was particularly fantastic, not least of all because the main musical attraction was Martin Taylor. The other main great thing about it was that it was for Eric Roche’s family. (I’ve just been booked to play at another benefit gig for them on Dec 4th – Eric’s Birthday – at Haverhill Arts Centre – more on that later…)

The first half of that gig was various friends and musical acquaintances of Eric’s playing and paying tribute. Of particular interest was a genius harmonica player called Steve Lockwood (who’s also playing at the gig in December).

The second of the benefit gigs – the one I played at – was on Friday. The events had little in common. What they did share was ropey compering. Given the huge impact they have on the smooth running of any event, it’s a shame when people can’t find good comperes for events. The guys involved in each of these were well-meaning and friendly, just not very good at keeping things moving and linking events.

At the gig I played – a benefit for the Pitstop Ploughshares – the room was an echoey church hall, and the PA was particularly shabby with no monitors, which meant that extra-special care needed to be taken to make sure people were listening, if only for the sake of the performers. This didn’t happen, and while it didn’t seem to bother the folk-singer/performance poet bloke who was on first, it was clearly going to be a problem for the people afterwards. Fortunately, a well placed ‘SSSHHHHH!!!!’ from someone in the audience quietened things down, and as the quality picked up, the chat level dropped.

I have mixed feelings about these kinds of gigs. The cause is one I support, and when I was asked to play, I was very happy to offer my time to help out, but the overwhelming trend with gigs like this is that while you’re thanked profusely numerous times throughout the evening, you’re still treated like some amateur who should be happy they are getting the chance to play to an audience.

I’m still not sure how to deal with these kinds of things – I obviously don’t want to stop doing gigs for good causes just because of crappy planning, and I’m clearly not about to start charging a fee for such things, but it’s pretty demoralising to play in those kind of conditions. Maybe I should just have a technical rider that has to be met for me to do them. I’ve tried the bending over backwards to make life easy route, and it just doesn’t work. I really do need monitors and a decent PA if what I do is going to come across well…

that said, I did sell a few CDs, and got to hear some other talented but very poorly amplified musicians play.

In other news, I’ve just redone the Solo Bass Network site – when I first set it up, the idea was to develop a little community of people who would chat about solo bass and spread the word about gigs etc. etc. Truth was, I couldn’t really be arsed to manage it. It takes a special kind of resilliance to bother keeping something like that going (see the Extended Range Bassist yahoo group – the founders there post incessantly to keep the discussions going, some of it readable, much of it inane bollocks, but it works, and the list has just about got a life of its own…) So I’ve not just reduced it to what it does best – a compendium of links to solo bassists and solo bass related stuffs on the web. Maybe one day I’ll get round to adding a low maintainance gig guide on there, but to be honest, you’re much better spending your time getting coverage in your local newspaper than faffing about with some website where the chances of anyone within 500 miles of you reading it within the time frame of the gig are so small as to be not really worth the five minutes it’d take you to upload the info…

Oh, and I’ve also been mixing an old duet track that I recorded with BJ Cole last December – sounds lovely, and will hopefully be up on the Recycle Collective site before too long.

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Looking forward to tomorrow's gig.

And in other news, I’ve got a very intersting gig tomorrow, in Hackney as part of the Spice Festival. The gig in question is the Solo Summit, at The Bullion Theatre.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, and lots of my favourite musicians are on the gig – Orphy Robinson, Cleveland Watkiss, Filomena Campus, Tunde Jegedi, Celloman (Ivan Hussey), Pat Thomas and just added to the bill, BJ Cole! What a lineup that is!

I’ll be playing solo, as well as looping and processing Filomena and Cleveland, so will be kept nice ‘n’ busy. I love the idea of a gig designed to explore the various ways that people perform solo, and am looking forward to stealing some ideas from all the people there!

Soundtrack – Wheeler/Konitz/Holland/Frisell, ‘Angel Song’ (one of my most favouritest albums ever, a hugely inspiring CD, featuring some of Bill Frisell‘s best playing)

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Another fine Darbucka gig

So last night I was back at Darbucka, which, contrary to previous knowledge is no longer underneath India EC1 – they’ve taken over the upstairs part now, and the whole place is Darbucka! How cool is that?

Anyway, ’twas my third gig there, and I love playing there. The atmosphere is fab, the seating very relaxed and the owner, Ahmad is a good friend and supporter of live music.

Last night was extra-specially fun due to my two special guests, BJ Cole and Cleveland Watkiss.

The slightly surreal air that seems to drift around at my gigs began even before the show started, with George Galloway being in the venue when we got there… …sadly, he wasn’t there for an evening of mellow bass noodling, and left not long after we arrived to set up.

First set was just me, doing my thing. It was fun to play a slightly longer set, and get to play a couple of old tunes I haven’t played for a while – Highway One, and No More Us And Them, as well as a couple of new tunes – one slow country-ish thing so far called ‘What Happens When You Listen To Too Much Gillian Welch Late At Night’ (subject to change), and another untitled one, dedicated to Eric Roche a great friend and genius musician, going through a bit of a rough patch. (speaking of Eric, he’s playing at The Troubadour in Earl’s Court tonight, and is unmissably good – please go along and support him, you’ll thank me afterwards.)

Response to both old and new tunes was good, and Cleveland arrived during the last song of the set, so that was good!

Second set began with me on my own doing on tune (No More Us And Them, I think), and then BJ joined me for the next world premier of the evening – it was the first time BJ and I had played anything that was pre-written together. Usually, we just start playing and see where it goes. This time, we did a tune that BJ had joined in on in my soundcheck, a new tune called ‘So Long And Thanks For All The Thumbs’, and he added a huge amount of loveliness to the track! We then followed that with a bleepy, trippy improv, which ended with BJ in fine industrial soundscape mode, wringing all manner of weird and wonderful sounds from his knitting machine. What a fab player!

So I then kicked him off the stage, and brought up guest #2 for world premier #3 – Cleveland Watkiss. This was the first time Cleveland and I had played together on stage – we’ve played together twice before, but both times in my living room. He started us off with a clicky vocal percussion track, which I looped, slightly out of time, and we glitched it into a really really cool percussive soundscape with layers of oohs and aahs, and some dubby vocal samples, just him singing and me tweaking. At one point I was tempted to join in, but it didn’t need it, so I carried on tweaking and he carried on singing, and that was tune #1.

The second tune we did I started it off, funky thing in Am, which built up with layers and layers of fantastic beatbox into a full on clubby dancey thing, wah-wah guitars, clattering drums, dub vocals, all from just he and I. Another big success.

To finish off, I closed the main set with ‘People Get Ready’, then got BJ and Cleveland back for a mellow country ballad improv thing which just topped off the evening perfectly. A resounding success!

Hopefully I’ll be back at Darbucka before too long, I love it there!

if you want to get BJ’s or Cleveland’s CDs, you can get BJ’s here and Cleveland’s here (BJ’s newest album Trouble In Paradise is fantastic, as is Cleveland’s duet with Nikki Yeo)

If you were at the gig, please post your thoughts over in the reviews section of my forum.

Soundtrack – Maxwell, ‘Embrya’; Lewis Taylor, ‘Lewis Taylor’.

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Preparation for tonight's gig…

It’s gig time – playing a solo gig tonight at Darbucka (which you REALLY ought to know about already – if not, please sign up for the mailing list). It’s going to be a lots of fun – for starters, I’ll get to play for longer than I have been of late – I’ve done a fair few 30-45 minute sets of late, and tonight I’ll get to play at least an hour or so of solo material plus some improv duets with BJ Cole and Cleveland Watkiss.

I’m really looking forward to it, and am just running over some of the new tunes I’m thinking of playing tonight, trying to work out how they go, what order the various weird noises appear in, and to a lesser degree, what the tunes are – at this stage in the compositional process, the melody is pretty open to interpretation, and I’ll improvise a lot of it to see if I can get something better than the bits I’ve got already.

All being well, there should be four new tunes tonight, which only a handful of people have heard (the small person, obviously, the cheat and sue, who finally gets her first mention on a blog – yay for sue!)

Other than that, I need to fill up a box with CDs for sale, decide on what to wear, write out the guestlist, decide whether or not I’m taking any extra lighting with me (Darbucka is pretty dark on stage), then I’ve got two hours teaching to do, then pack up my stuff, load the car (not fun given that I’ve got a trapped nerve or something in my back from sleeping funny a couple of nights ago).

So that’s me today, and tomorrow it all happens again for the gig in Petersfield. What fun.

See you later.

Soundtrack – right now, recordings of the new things for tonight. Before that, Lewis Taylor, ‘Lewis Taylor’; Sophia, ‘People Are Like Seasons’; Kaki King, ‘Legs To Make Us Longer’; Todd Johnson/Kristin Korb, ‘Get Happy’ (I rolled the wheel of my office chair over my copy of this last week, and immediately ordered a new one, which arrived a couple of days ago)

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a great week for gigs

So last night was the third night of going to gigs in a row for me, and another fantastic night out. This one, at , was part of the /-hosted night called , and featured Andy, along with and Deacon Blue frontman, .

Cara was up first – blimey, I wish I had that much talent at 19!! She’s obviously heavily Tori Amos influenced and had a batch of really nice songs, sung well. Bodes v. well for the future.

After that was Andy – as the more attentive of you will know, I’ve played with Andy lots, including being on his last album. We’ve even gigged together at the Troubadour a couple of times. Andy was showcasing a whole load of new songs, as well as a handful of favourites, and sounded great, as always. He also flagged up the campaign, and wrist bands were available, which reminded me that I ought to do that with CDs from the shop… Anyway.

The headliner (and the reason tonight’s gig sold out a week in advance) was Ricky Ross – I was a big Deacon Blue fan back in the 80s/90s, and have seen Ricky solo live before, so knew he’d be good, but was still surprised at how good his new material is. He’s apparently been consuming a steady diet of Randy Newman for the last while, as the influence hang low over most of the new songs, but in a really good way. I mean, if you’re going to be influenced by someone, who better than one of the finest songwriters of the last 50 years?

Ricky’s a great performer and story-teller, and I’m really looking forward to his new album coming out.

And then I’ll be back at the troubadour for My gig with BJ Cole next Friday – so I hope to see you there!

Soundtrack – , ‘Season Of The Hurricane’; , ‘Manic Moonlight’.

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Two gigs – one played one watched

A two gig day, but I only played at the first one.

It was the lunchtime gig at the RFH Foyer, with the mighty , and it went very well. Well, I wasn’t in the PA for the first couple of tunes, due to me plugging the DIs into the wrong outputs on my mixer (doh!), but with my rig, it didn’t really matter… :o) After that, we sounded marvellous! This duo just keeps getting better and better, and one of the improv/goo things we did today will no doubt end up as a new Travis/Lawson tune. Good stuff.

Here’s a piccie, taken by Jude on her phone cam thingie –

Then tonights gig, which began with a lovely surprise – I was going to see and anyway, but I walked down the stairs at the Borderline to the unmistakeable sound of ‘s pedal steel guitar! He was playing in a duo with a singer/songwriter called Laura Stark, and doing a mighty fine job of it too!

After that was Duke Special – Pete’s a great performer, and a truly delightful person. If you ever the chance to go and see him, please take it.

And Juliet, she just keeps getting better and better. Her voice was on top form tonight, the new songs she was playing sounded fantastic, Brian and the-keyboardist-whose-name-I-didn’t-catch were both playing and singing marvellously, and Brian Kennedy made a guest appearance. A truly wonderful night out. They are coming to the end of the tour, but if you’re in Gloucester tomorrow night, or Swindon on Saturday, please go and see Duke and Julie do their respective thangs – gig dates here.

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General Update

…please salute the general…

Anyway, what’s been going on? On the 16th (the day of my last blog post) was my gig at the Troubadour with Andy Thornton. Andy’s very very good indeed, singer/songwriter bloke, and all-round top man. That was lots of fun except for one thing – one of my MPX-G2s decided to stop working before the show – the Lithium battery that keeps the sounds in the memory had run out. Badly Drawn Boyo dropped into Sound Control to pick up a MIDI cable so I could copy all my sounds across from the other machine, but there’s some weird machine ID thing that I couldn’t work out on the gig, so I had to do the gig with one G2.. bugger.

Further investigation reveals that the battery is SOLDERED to the circuit board inside – WHAT ON EARTH IS THE REASONING BEHIND THAT??? That makes no sense at all – why on earth not spend the extra 2p that it would cost to fit a little housing for it (like you get on Computer motherboards) so that it was changable. No, instead, they solder it there. So much for pro-level gear. What balls. Grrrrrr. For that matter, why on earth isn’t it rechargeable anyway??? what’s with having batteries running out in stuff that spends most of its life plugged in???

Alright, calm down, deep breath – I know you’re just as irate as I am about all this…

Day after Troubadour gig was the Greenbelt workers party – that’s not like the Polish Workers Party, not political, it was an actual party – lots of drink and nibbles etc. Except that I got lost on my way there and missed the nibbles. ah well. Much fun was had, and the curry afterwards made of for the lack of nibbles.

Day after that (saturday) was Paul and Angus’ birthday party – Paul was thirty-something, Angus was one. So clearly what they wanted to get out of a party was very similar… :o) Angus being my God-son, I provided the music for the evening, by playing an extended duo improv set with Harry the Cellist – I’d not played properly with Harry for a long long time, so that was a real treat.

On Monday Kerry Getz arrived – Kerry’s a fab singer/songwriter from California that I met at the Kashmir Klub a couple of years ago, and who has helped arrange gigs for me in the US before now. She’s over here for a few days doing some gigs, so she came to stay chez Steve/Small Person. Tuesday was sightseeing with Kerry, followed by a trip to see Ross Noble… again! The Small Person and I went the previous week to see him, and despite tickets being £25, it was worth the return visit – yes, he’s that good. Possibly the funniest 2.5 hours of my life.

Yesterday, BJ Cole came round for more jamming/recording/musical exploration – BJ, as has been said here many times, is an incredible musician, and a very nice bloke indeed, so lunch and noodling with Mr Cole is a very fine way to spend a day. We got some top stuff recorded, so hopefully I’ll stick some up in the Street Team Stash before too long…

And last night The Small Person and I went over to Rickmansworth to see Jenny Eclair’s one woman show, ‘The Andy Warhol Syndrome’ At The WatersMeet Theatre. We saw this at Edinburgh, and it was very very good, so went to see it again. Was very nice to see Jenny again, after meeting up a couple of times at Edinburgh. I’ll not say too much about the trip to the pub after, other than to say that a copy of a certain ex-mrs Peter Powell’s ill-fated autobiography, which was previously on the shelf of said pub, is no longer there, and may or may not be on the shelf of a considerably more successful writer… A book that flops that badly is a rare prize indeed… ;o)

Onto the weekend, and tomorrow I’m up to Edinburgh for the day to record the music from the Greenbelt Festival communion service – the music that we played live was all just bass and drums, but I’m expecting they’ll be adding a little more for the recording… I could be wrong though.

soundtrack – Kerry Getz, ‘Little Victories’; Pierce Pettis, ‘Great Big World’; Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now’; Todd Johnson/Kristen Korb, ‘Get Happy’.

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A fine gig.. .and a fine gig to come!

So last night I went to BJ Cole‘s launch gig for his new album ‘Trouble In Paradise’, and very fine it was too.

While I was uptown, I took the chance to go and check out a venue that Promoter Seb had recommended for my CD launch gig (was a launch gig themed evening, apparently). So I drove down to check out darbucka, just off Clerkenwell Road, and met the manager Ahmad. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL VENUE!! Man, this place is gorgeous. For those of you who’ve been to Greenbelt of Glastonbury, it’s like a posh version of the Tiny Tea Tent – all low lighting, low level seating, great Mezze food and a groovy stage/PA etc.

So that’s where the launch gig is going to be! It’ll be

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even more gigs!

Oh yes, mine and other people’s.

Saturday night I had a gig in Hoddeston (have I spelt it right this time??) – anyway, the gig was at St Cuthbert’s church (great name for a church – St Cuthbert was a monastic dude who lived on Holy Island, and even had his own Island, a photo of which will probably be the cover of my next CD….) – they do a music night a couple of times a year, where the first hour is an open mic slot for local musicians, then the second half is an invited performer. this time, it was me. The church itself was a great place to play, a lovely building. Gig went really well. It was a great chance to try out both my new bass cabs and the new preamp in my 6 string fretted bass, and both sounded incredible.

Then Sunday night I drove down to Southampton to see Gary Husband’s ‘Force Majeure’ project, with a line up that included the wonderful Matthew Garrison on bass, and Jerry Goodman on Violin. Shit, what a gig!! It was incredible. Gary’s an outstanding drummer and pianist – we all knew that, but we can now add stellar composer to the list. Amazing exhilerating music, at times insanely dissonant and nasty but still with an internal logic and a link to whatever the theme of the piece was. Gary gave little explanatory talks before each track – seems like Architecture features highly on his list of inspirations, and they tied in superbly with the music that followed. I can’t wait for the live DVD! ‘Twas also nice to catch up with friends at the gig – gary and matt, obviously, but also Shaun Freeman, the sax-dude from Level 42 and Nick Fyffe, ex-Jamiroquai bassist. Well worth the 200 mile round trip to see it.

Saturday was also Deep To Deep – a gathering of bassists from the Churchbass list, which was a lot of fun.

Ticket sales are going really well for the tour – I’m very excited about these upcoming dates! Please come out and see one of the shows if you can…

Soundtrack – Bill Mallonee, ‘Perfumed Letter’ (fantastic new CD from Vigilantes Of Love frontman. His best since Audible Sigh), Morphine, ‘B-Sides And Otherwise’; Dum Dums, ‘It Goes Without Saying’; Chris Potter, ‘Gratitude’; loads of my duets with BJ Cole.

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3 gigs, 7 bands, 2 comedians and a couple of lovely new bass cabs

Boy, it’s been a busy weekend!

Teaching all day Saturday, on Saturday night I went up to Hoddeston in Hertfordshire to drop in on the Greenbelt Angels Weekend – the Angels are the year round financial supporters of the Greenbelt festival – an arts festival that means so much to people that they will give a monthly donation, and buy their tickets a year in advance, and bring their friends, and then turn out for the angels weekend. Which is largely a mini-greenbelt affair, but with greater emphasis on the organisers of the festival letting the angels know about what’s happening, and brainstorming new ideas.

Anyway, Saturday night was all entertainment – first up Old Solar, a very fine band from Scotland, featuring my very good friend Andrew Howie, who also records solo under the name Calamatuer. Both acts have been played a fair bit by John Peel and had rave reviews, and were rather good, a few guitar tuning problems not withstanding.

Following them was Cathy Burton – angel-voiced singer/songwriter, and another good friend. Cathy’s great. Marvellous songs, lovely stage manner, will be huge soon (musically speaking…!)

then comedy stuff – Jude Simpson was new to me – comedy poet, very funny indeed, runs a comedy/poetry club in Hammersmith, well worth going to hear. She was followed by John Archer – northern comedy magician, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever seen do a gig. Think Peter Kay taking the piss out of Paul Daniels but actually being really really good at sleight of hand… He’s great, and it’s always a treat to see him do his thang.

Sunday morning I was playing bass in church (first time in about two years), and Sunday evening I went to see Bill Frisell at the barbican. He was playing with Djelimady Tounkara, a Malian guitarist I’d seen him with before. Also on stage were Greg Leisz, Jenny Scheinman and Sidiki, er, someone (can’t remember his surname), on Percussion. It was a fine gig, but I do tend to go to Bill Frisell gigs with such extraordinarily high expectations that I found some of the two chord jam tunes just a little too long and twiddly for me. Bill was brilliant as always, so I guess I’m just not a huge fan of Djelemady’s guitar playing. Greg is a god-like genius of the pedal steel – an instrument I’m very quickly falling in love with the sound of (playing with BJ Cole obviously doesn’t hurt!!). Jenny was fine, and Sidiki laid down some rather groovy rhythmic things, but the overly long I – IV – I – IV jams in the first set kind of spoilt it a little for me…

Monday night was another ‘Bob Harris Presents…’ gig at The Stables in Milton Keynes. this time featuring Julie Lee, Vigilantes Of Love, Dolly Varden and Show Of Hands.

Julie Lee is amazing. I’ve played with Julie on a number of occasions, and she’s a gem of a person. She’s also an incredible singer and songwriter. I get this buzz just before she starts whenever I see her play in front of an audience hitherto unfamiliar with her, knowing that they are about to discover something very special indeed. Like the first time you sit someone down and play Hejira by Joni Mitchell to them…

The Vigilantes are another marvellous band – their song ‘Resplendent’ is in my ‘perfect songs’ list (a virtual compilation that’s ongoing in its construction), and they’ve got quite a few other truly wonderful songs. Bill Malonee is a great singer, and Jake (does Jake have a surname, or indeed need one?) was splendid on guitar and vox.

Dolly Varden – husband and wife duo from Chicago. I liked ’em, but will reserve judgement til I’ve heard a full set at The Borderline on Wednesday (VoL overran, as is Bill’s habit, so their set was cut short…)

And finally, Show Of Hands – they played greenbelt a few years ago, and I gave it a miss. WHAT A FOOL!!!! they were amazing. Truly truly remarkable. Brilliant, splendid. Repairs any lost belief you might have in the power of folk music. Steve Knightly on voice, guitar, mandola etc. Phil Beer (great name!) on vox, violin, guitar, mandolin etc… just a duo, but a HUGE sound. Great songs, great voices, amazing stage presence (it’s not at all surprising that they just won the ‘best live act’ award at the british folk awards). I can’t say enough good things about them, they were amazing, and are playing at the Borderline on Tuesday 9th March, so go if you can (I’m teaching til 9 that day, but will find out what time they are on stage, and see if I can race down after teaching…)

And then today, to cap a marvellous weekend, my new AccuGroove bass cabinets arrived!!! Yippee. And a day early – bravo FedEx. These are the passive ones – my signature powered cabs are still in development (we want to get them perfect), so I’m using these for now. I’ve plugged them in, and they sound incredible. Lovely, clear, full. I’m a happy bunny.

soundtrack – right now, I’m listening to ‘The Free Story’ – a much underrated band, with a killer bass player. Guy Pratt asserts that Andy Fraser is more influential in real terms in the rock and pop world than Jaco. I’m inclined to agree. Amazing stuff. And Paul Rogers voice is killer.

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