So last night I was importing ‘Stranger’s World’ by the wonderful Patty Larkin from CD into iTunes. For some reason the CD wouldn’t read on my iBook (about 1 CD in 4 doesn’t…), so I hooked up my external drive to my desktop PC (now safely installed in new house) and burnt it on there. took external drive, hooked it back up to iBook, sync’d iPod, and listened to said album… now here’s the inexplicable weirdness – for some reason there are bits of one or two of my tunes scattered in amongst the MP3s – you get 30 seconds of ‘Dear Diary’ by Patty, followed by a load of something off one of the Lessons Learned albums… then back to Dear Diary… WTF??? How the hell does that happen? How have I managed, by sheer force of narcissistic will, to pollute other people’s lovely music with chunks of my own lovely bass noises??? that surely doesn’t make sense?? Geeks? Bueller? Anyone?
we have a server down. I repeat, the server is down…
just a note that the stevelawson.net server seems to be down – no mail, no website, so nothing right now, and I can’t log in to cpanel to see what’s happening (cos, obviously, it’s on the same server…) – normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Until then, here’s some music…
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Cottage Industry…
I’m in the middle of doing what’s often referred to as a ‘remote session’ – an artist or producer sends a MP3 of a master track to a musician to get that musician to record their parts in their home studio. They then send high res WAV or AIFF files back via FTP or burnt to CD in the post, and everyone’s happy. The benefits of this system are obvious – it means that projects that couldn’t afford to either hire big studios or fly musicians around the world are able to get the musicians they really want to play on it, and the musician doesn’t have to leave home, and has access to all their favourite gear, records into their program of choice and can spend some time experimenting in a way that would probably scare the producer if they were to do it in a studio.
This project (the LeeSun session I referred to here yesterday) is a particularly fun one because I get to play ‘bass’ bass and then do all the other StevieStuff on top – I REALLY enjoy playing normal bass, and am rather good at it, and these days I don’t get asked all that often to play normal bass (this coming month I’ve got a fair bit of it, what with playing with Sarah Masen and Monk at Greenbelt), so to get to do that stuff and then overdub ebow loveliness and crazy big slide guitar parts, tremolo baritone guitar-esque stuff and fretless melodies is a real joy.
The other recent change in what I’ve been doing work-wise has been house concerts – as mentioned before, these are gigs in people’s living rooms, conservatories, gardens, even garages for lovely audiences of music lovers and supporters of the arts. Sometimes is just a gig, sometimes is a garden party, sometimes it’s a charity thing… Whichever, they are really enjoyable shows, pay much better than trying to play in a pub or most little music clubs and invariably result in a better time for audience and musician. All Good Nothing Bad.
It really is a cottage industry – small-scale, mobile, flexible, personal, enjoyable, creative and all built on relationships between real people for the mutual benefit of all concerned. Like the teaching I’ve been doing for so long, it’s my dream job because I get to meet so many fascinating and wonderful people, play great music, learn loads about music myself from the whole process and somehow in the middle of it all actually pay the bills… I am blessed.
I guess I ought to add at this point, that I’m available for all of the above – playing on records, playing in your house, or teaching you bass… just drop me an email and we’ll get the process started on any of those! :o)
But for now, I’ve got LeeSun’s songs to finish off…
must.. get.. over.. jetlag…
I am officially knackered. Jetlag done got me bad, mama… or something.
I’ve got a gig tonight (just a restaurant gig with a guitarist, hence it not being on the gig list), so must get ready, find smart restaurant gig clothes etc. as well as sending out CD orders, and dealing with the speeding fine I got before I went away…
but all I want to do is sleep some more.
my taste in soundtracks vindicated at last…
Just read this post about Bugsy Malone on the Guardian music blog. It’s long been one of my favourite films – there’s something fabulously surreal about the kids-as-adults thing – like a school play, without the forgotten lines and corpsing. And, as cited in the article, the soundtrack is stellar. I only own a tiny handful of Soundtrack albums (odd, given that everything I’ve ever recorded sounds like a soundtrack album) – Local Hero, Paris Texas, One From The Heart, Bill Frisell’s albums of Buster Keaton music, and of course Bugsy Malone. It was the first thing I searched for when I discovered you could buy music online, trying in vain to find it on CD. I think I eventually got it in the Virgin Megastore in London.
Anyway, it’s magic, give it a listen.
Telling half the story…
Just saw this article about the demise of the Record Industry on RollingStone.com – it’s a good read, but here’s the salient bit for this blog –
“In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 785.1 million albums; last year, they bought 588.2 million (a figure that includes both CDs and downloaded albums), according to Nielsen SoundScan“
Now, I’m sure I’m not typical of ‘the average consumer’ – I know I’m not (I’ve only ever bought one CD from a supermarket…) but I do know that all of my sales, or most of the CDs I buy will never show up on a ‘Nielsen SoundScan’ report… I’d love to know how indie sales impact that figure, and the parallel figure about the number of people now making a living, or part of their living, from their own music. I’d like to see figures on the number of indie labels and artists that are self publishing and selling more than 500 CDs a year (given that if you’re pressing it yourself, you can make between £5-£7 clear profit on each disc – $10 to $14 – so that’s over £2,500 a year in CD sales income, which carries with it the assumption that you’re making probably at least as much again on gig money…
I think the future looks VERY bleak for the majors. They’ve long relinquished their part in the process of pushing the art of popular music forward, settling into a pattern of releasing tried and tested formulae, usually being at least 3-4 years behind the cutting edge of any musical movement (how long had the ‘grunge’ thing been happening before Geffen released Nevermind?). So now they are trying to do marketing tie-ins, computer game promotion, TV show placement – anything to keep their grubby fingers in the many musical pies.
But the major label end of the industry is imploding, the indies are thinking faster, changing, adapting, and in many cases thriving.
It’s a tough time to be a musician and make a living at it, for sure, but the opportunities and potential are there, especially if you lot keep supporting the indie peoples (check out the links page here to get some new musical ideas)
…did you just call me Pardner???
We’re here in Texas. Plano, just outside Dallas to be precise. It seems like a rather lovely place – still strip-mall-based, like so many american cities, but definitely a better class of strip mall than most (and a huge Whole Foods market to be explored…)
We’s here for a house concert tonight – the house is gorgeous, and the concert is going to be marvellous.
Now where did I blog from last? Ah, yes, Nashville – well the Nashville house concert at Sarah and David’s was a whole lot of fun – we set up on their front porch, blankets were laid out in the yard, and we played for lots of lovely friends, surrounded by fairy lights, candles and the sounds of crickets between songs. A most enjoyable evening was had by all, and the duo stuff between the lovely L and I just gets better and better. Her ability to ‘learn’ a loop after one listen is uncanny, and to stack harmonies on something that seems pretty random… She also bought a gorgeous new guitar – a nylon-strung takamine that sounds incredible. Really relaly lovely, and got for a fantastic bargain at Nashville Used Music, or whatever that big shop out on Nolansville road is called.
So favourite things about Nashville? the people, Fido’s, Baja Burrito, the gig, TOGH being there, The Belcourt (Sheriff ElRon and I went to see Rock The Bells – a film about delusional people putting on the last ever gig by all the members of the Wu Tang Clan (though even with ODB being dead, I’m sure they could just get Shane McGowan to fill in, and people would just think Dirty was looking a little pasty…)… Nashville is a town full of good things (and rubbish, it is the home of CCM too, and therefor plays host to much of the most mediocre nonsense ever produced in the name of popular music, as well as the occasional gem…) and certainly somewhere both L and I could live if pushed…
From there we embarked on what i think is the longest drive of my life (yup, I just checked, this was the previous winner) – 700 and something miles from Nashville to Lake Charles Louisiana. Which was, to be honest, a pretty easy drive. Freeways here are much much clearer in general than motorways in the UK, (if you’re not in or around NYC, LA, Chicago or San Francisco), so we never seem to hit much traffic, and just drive from one place to another at 70 mph all the way. In our extensive research, we’ve discovered that IHOP and Denny’s do the best options for vegetarians on the highways of the US. TGI Fridays is shit, Waffle House isn’t actually food, and the burger places are all horrible, with indie places being either non-existent, or really risky in their quality… so we’re happy for IHOP and Denny’s.
The trip to Louisiana was for a house concert at Trip Wamsley’s house – Trip, as y’all know, is one of my most favouritest solo bassists in the world, and fun to hang out with too… it was nice to witness him in his natural habitat, for sure.
The gig was really lovely – Trip played first, and played really well, as always, then L and I got to do our thing, and had much fun, sold a load of CDs, and all was good.
On Sunday, i put down a load of bass tracks for a track on Trip’s new album, and realised just what a HUGE improvement putting this ART tube preamp in the FX loop on my Lexicon has made. It sounded incredible. I can’t wait to hear what Trip does with it. The evening was spent watching Ross Noble DVDs, and hanging out. Much fun at the Trip-house with Trip, Mrs Trip and lil’ Bubba Trip.
And so on into Texas, heading from Chez Trip to Plano TX, from where I’m writing this, trying to decide whether to walk or drive to Whole Foods – how far was it again??
Oh, and the title? We stopped in a auto-mart or some such place, to get directions, and the dude behind the counter actually called me ‘Pardner’ (as in Partner with a silly accent, for all you Englishes) – indeed. He sadly didn’t say ‘you ain’t from around here are you boy?’, but there’s still time for that…
Tour blog Pt II – Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia…
Right, continuing the story of the tour – from Grand Rapids we drove to Akron to swap the crappy tiny car (which served us v. well for the Northern bit of the tour) for a lovely rental car with A/C – yay!! marvellous. Renting the car was a bit of an ordeal – the poor dear at the airport rental place in Akron had never seen a British driving license, so it took a while…
From there we drove to Cincinnati (this was all on the same day as the drive from Grand Rapids… lotsa miles…) and arrived at Ric Hordinski’s place at about 11ish… Ric is a fabulous guitarist, gigs as ‘Monk’, used to be in Over The Rhine, produces lots of marvellous records for other people, and owns a gorgeous studio in an old church, called The Monastery, which is where we stayed… Great to see Ric, fo’ sho’.
the next day was spent putting some spacey stuff down on a track for Ric’s new album (the rest of the tracks I heard sound amazing), then heading down to Rohs Street Cafe where the gig was. It’s a gorgeous, spacious coffee-shop venue, with a nice PA, and really lovely staff. The whole vibe of the place is fair trade and mellow, with stacked book-cases all over the place and lovely drinks.
The gig was a lot of fun – small crowd (the story of our lives), but lots of lovely friends there, and by now L and I are playing really well…
The next morning we head off on another stoopid long drive – this time to Richmond Virginia. The drives across this part of the States are stunning. West Virginia is so covered in trees that the hills look like giant broccoli plants, all green and bobbly. Finding edibles on the road is tricky for a pair of veggies who don’t like filling their faces with too many chemicals, but we do OK.
We arrive in Richmond pretty late, at the lovely and marvellous Greta’s place in a really cool part of town.
Sleeps, followed by a fantastic veggie breakfast, and a walk round an old cemetery, about half full of civil war graves – this is an area with a REALLY chequered history, as JamesTown, the port of the James River, was one of the main off-loading points for the slave ships back in the day… Anyway, the trip round the cemetery with Greta and her amazing dad was a lovely walk on a scorching hot day and an education.
Back to the house to do washing, then head off to Richmond Music Centre, in search of preamps, reverb units and keyboard stands – #s 1 and 3 on that list are procured – a lil’ ART tube preamp which sounds great, and a cheap-ass keyboard stand. All good nothing bad.
The gig is a house concert hosted by the marvellous and lovely Jay and Crystal – their four-car garage makes for a fabulous lil’ concert venue, and thanks to the ever-wonderful, resourceful and street-team-alicious Justin, and Roy, the PA sounds really great too. The gig was fab, the first half being a mixture of tunes and bass-clinic Q and A, the second half more straight song oriented. Lots of CDs solo, new friends made, all good once again. Big big thanks to Jay and Crystal, Greta, Justin and Roy…
The next morning we leave the house at 7am to head for West Virginia – a 530 mile drive (London to Inverness, basically), more gorgeousness. L does most of the driving today, and the only downer is a dodgy breakfast in some crappy lil’ diner…
The Morgantown/Grafton area is L’s hometown, so much visiting of relatives and friends ensues, before heading to the venue – Gallery 62 West – a lovely little community arts gallery. Dinner is procured at W*lM*rt (I know, I know) and we are promptly both poisoned by it, rendering us both v. v. ill in the run-up to the show…
Somehow we manage to balance the trips to the ‘bathroom’, and both play without any sudden mid-song disappearances – me first, then L, the lots of duo fun. Another fab gig in front of a really really friendly audience – full marks to Josh Trout for driving the furthest on this one (Josh is a v. old cyber-chum – the story of this tour has been meeting people I previously only knew in the virtual world..) big ole WV thanks to Kevin Ford for making this one happen.
An even earlier start is planned for the longest of the drives so far – Grafton to Decatur (on the outskirts of Atlanta) – alarm goes of at 5 and we hear… flapping… flapping???? Light goes on and there’s an effing BAT in the room!!! Flying around, landing on the curtain then flying around again. Much squealing ensues, before bat escapes, followed closely by us escaping to a bat-free car… much fun, and definitely a help in waking up!
A very easy drive down gets us into Atlanta mid afternoon, we find Darren and Cindy’s place for the house concert, and set up. this show also features Darren Michaels and Trip Wamsley, who both play great sets. We play in the middle (after a tussle with Trip over who gets to play second – we win thanks to having been awake for 16 hours already at this point…) – our set goes great, L sings like an angel, much CD sellage takes place, new friends made, all good and, indeed, nothing bad. click here to see loads of photos from the gig… Darren and Cindy definitely know how to put on a stylish house concert. hurrah for D & C!
which brings us to today – finally a day of rest. On a sunday no less. up v. late, much internetage, followed by an some Ross Noble on DVD, followed by an afternoon in Decatur. and no driving. Yay!
So on to Nashville… hurrah! We’ll be there at the same time as the TAFKASJ, which is something to muchly look forward to, as is giggling at the lovely Rachel’s fabulously confused Scottish/Rural Tennessee accent!
more soon… what have I missed??
Tour blog Pt 1 – Ohio and Michigan
OK, we’re four dates in, and having lots of fun and adventures! Tonight’s gig was a real odd treat, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Wednesday was the first date, a bass clinic organised by Low Down Sound in Detroit, which was great fun. A lovely audience who asked lots of really great questions. Got to do three or four songs with Lobelia too, which was fab, sold lots of CDs. All good.
Thursday – Toledo, at a pub/venue called Mickey Finn’s. Great room, fab sound-man, small crowd, but much fun. A mixture of solo stuff and duo songs, well received and CDs sold.
Friday up to Grand Rapids to stay with Sarda and Kari, and for the first of our two gigs here, at Quinn and Tuites, another Irish pub (this one for some completely mental reason had great big posters imploring the visitors to ‘Vote Gerry Adams’ and ‘Vote Martin McGuinness’, big ole Sinn Fein posters… riiiight) – this was an hour-long in-the-round set with Lo. and Ralston Bowles, which was much fun, and well received. All good this far.
Saturday (today) we head down to the venue at lunchtime to check it out for PA etc. All looking good. Go out, come back to the venue at 7 to set up, and it’s closed. Yup, not a person in sight, sign on the door saying ‘closed early today’… huh? WTF? we’ve got a gig booked here! Tense moment as Ralston calls venue owner and manager with no answers…
Sounds pretty bad, but with Ralston, there’s always another way – this dude’s like the Johnny Cash of Grand Rapids, knows everyone and can organise all kinds of craziness at the drop of a hat. So he says ‘I wonder if anyone’s playing at the Pony’, meaning the One Trick Pony – a rather cool lil’ restaurant venue three blocks away. We turn up there, Ralston works some Ralstony magique and we’ve got ourselves a gig. Once again, very well received, Cds sold and another gig in St Louis all-but-confirmed, with a possible return date to One Trick Pony within the month… watch this space.
muchos fun and games so far, serious black mark against the coffee-shop we were supposed to be playing at for fucking up on our gig, but full marks to the magical Ralston for conjuring a gig from nowhere. He rules…
Tour update… finally!
Right, we’re now in Amsterdam, staying with the marvellous and wonderful John Lester for a couple of days, between the Germany gigs and the Denmark masterclass…
Where did we leave it last time? On the train to Madrid… OK, Madrid – what a great city! I’ve not been to Spain since I was 17, and last time was to a little holiday resort on the South Coast where we went to english-run pubs and sat on the beach, so not really much of Spain was seen. So this was my first proper trip. Madrid’s gorgeous – we were in a hotel right in the middle (thanks to the wonders of Priceline.co.uk), so had ample opportunity to explore.
The first gig however, did not go well – it was booked at the very last minute (actually, it was booked, cancelled, and finally rebooked on another day at the last minute) and the venue hadn’t really told anyone about us being there… so no-one showed. Yup, no-one. A gig for the people who worked there. Who enjoyed it. But that really doesn’t pay the bills. Anyway, it was a good warm-up, and thankfully, the second gig was pretty full, very much appreciated, we played well, sold a load of CDs, and all was well. We’ll be back in Spain, again with the wonderful Charlie Moreno (whose set was excellent), in October… Got a bit of a shock when I had to send out all my CD orders from Spain – international postage rates from Spain are nuts! Note to self – never try and run a mail order business from Spain…
After that it was back to Geneva to see the lovely Paul and Rachel again for a couple of days, then onto Magdeburg, where L had organised a gig through some friends of hers – the marvellous blokes of Studio 201, who were fantastic hosts, great fun, and exemplify the concept of ‘work hard, party hard’ like nobody I’ve ever met before. Deadly serious about having fun, as Michael Franti might say. Anyway, the gig was at UrBar, a very cool music bar/venue in the gorgeous city of Magdeburg, and much fun was had, CDs sold, and plans for a return made. Favourite thing about Magdeburg was Green Citadel, designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser – definitely in my top 5 wishlist of places to live one day!
From Magdeburg it was to Kleve and a return trip for me to the truly marvellous XOX Theatre – I played there last October, and it was such a treat to go back and take L. with me. I did the first set solo (including a massively extended improv on the end of Amo Amatis Amare – will be doing that one again!) and then L joined me for the second set, which went amazingly well – once again lots of CDs sold, and amazingly for me (cos I hate the damn things) we did two encores, the second one being a very impromptu version of Stand By Me (!!)
So some fab gigs, lots of lovely people, a whole mix of languages (French being the most comfortable, my German was coming back after 4 days there, Italian I’m still working on, Spanish was pretty much a right-off, given that the Spanish L. learnt at school was Mexican Spanish which is very different from Madrid Spanish, and now dutch where I know how to say please, thankyou and byeee!)
And tomorrow we head to Denmark for a couple of days… We’re racking up the miles, and definitely getting the most from our interrail tickets, watching a lot of films on the laptop on the train (I’d forgotten just what a great film The Hudsucker Proxy is!!)
So, films watched so far – The aforementioned Hudsucker Proxy, Withnail and I, Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire, Peep Show series 1, Wedding Singer, Dodgeball, The Life Aquatic and Jump London.