Tag: cds

Posted on

Musical diet

i’ve mentioned before how I treat my music listening as a diet – it’s why, after years of trying to be the nice guy, I finally scrapped piles and piles of CDRs that people have sent me over the years wanting me to listen to them – I just don’t have the time for all of them, in between trying to feed my ears with brain food that’ll help take my music to where it needs to be. (I do still listen to a lot of what I’m sent, just not generally the unsolicited CDRs with no info on them…)

So anyway, the listening material so far on these ‘ere train journeys has been as follows –
Annette Bjergfeld – The Kissing Post (an exquisite poppy singer/songwriter record. That she’s co-written with Boo Hewerdine gives you some idea of where she’s coming from. Definitely great ear-food from a melody and joyousness perspective.
Paul Simon – Surprise (never fails to amaze me. Every time I listen to it I take more away from the lyrics, and hear more of the little touches that Eno has added to it. A really really great album.)
Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis (every time I listen to either this album or to the last two Talk Talk albums, I realise again just how much I owe Mark Hollis in terms defining for me what so much of what I do is about – his phrasing, his use of space, the really incredibly wide dynamic range, the emotion… it’s all stuff that I aspire to and try to feed into my music. Truly remarkable timeless deep IMPORTANT music. It’s great listening to an album that feels significant in the grand scheme of things. Not in any trendy way, not because the style mags see it as the soundtrack to coolness, but because it’s the sound of an artist delving so deep into his well of experience and emotion to produce something of worth. It feels like a privilege to listen to it.)
Suzanna Vega – Suzanne Vega (how old was she when she did this? mid 20s? It was her first album, and it’s incredible. That strength of vision, purpose, that depth of self-assuredness in the songwriting and singularity of voice is mind blowing. And it contains ‘Marlene On The Wall’ which is one of the greatest pop songs of all time.)

And that’s just finished – what now? I think a little John Martyn Live At Leeds might be in order – come on, John ‘n’ Danny, gimme something to aspire to…

Posted on

New review of Behind Every Word at puremusic.com

This just in – a really really lovely review of Behind Every Word from puremusic.com – click here to go straight to the review.

Here’re the choice quotes from it –

“This is some of the most beautiful, deeply felt music that I have heard performed on any instrument, let alone bass guitar.”

and

“It is hard enough to make an instrumental record that holds the audience’s attention with a raft of different instruments and players, but Lawson manages to do it with one instrument (albeit modified to create many sounds) and one player.”

so there you go – more reasons, if ever you needed them, to go and buy the CD, if you don’t have it already. :o)

Posted on

Spoke too soon…

While tidying up today (more on that in a later blog) I found a load of copies of Grace and Gratitude! Yay!!

So it’s back being orderable from the shop, if you want a copy. Or, let’s make this easy, you can just click the ordering button here and get it for just £9 inc. worldwide P+P!





Posted on

Grace And Gratitude Sold Out!

Grace And Gratitude is, I think, sold out on CD. I’ll have a look and see if I can find any more copies, but at the moment, it looks like the ones I’ve just put in envelopes to send out to people who’ve ordered them are the last ones I’ve got! How bizarre… I’m sure I’ll find a load of copies under someone’s bed somewhere in the world at some point, and be able to sell those on, but for now, I’ve taken it down from the online shop.

Of course, it’s still available as a download, and also from iTunes, should you want it! And hopefully I’ll repress soon enough – I like it too much not to have it available on CD. Oh, there are probably a couple of copies available via Cd Baby if you want one…

Posted on

House concerts – how it works…

Thursday night’s gig in Petersfield was fun, though to a tiny audience. Playing to little groups of people is always fun, though in a setting where more are expected, it’s not usually all that financially viable. So there’s the trade-off – fun gig, but no way to make a living. Which is where house concerts (like the one pictured) come in.

House concerts are a way for musicians to play to little groups of lovely listeners, in comfortable surroundings with lovely food and drink and make it pay. it’s a chance for people with moderately large houses to present their favourite music to their friends (unless your favourite music happens to be Beyonce, Elvis, The Polyphonic Spree or Cannibal Corpse – too expensive, too dead, too large and too loud, respectively).

How does it work? Well, I come to your house and play to your friends – either you can pay me to do it as a gift to them, or you can get them all to make a donation to make it happen… if you’re going the donation route, I’d need some kind of guarantee (which is going to vary depending on how far I have to travel to get there, and how many people are going to be there – the more people, the better the opportunities for selling CDs…)

I can bring my little PA with me, if you don’t have anything for me to plug into, so all i need is a little bit of space and a plug socket. It’s great fun, and it doesn’t take a massive amount of space – it’s doable even with 15-20 people in a moderate sized lounge.

So, if you’re interested, email me, and check out these links to a couple of american sites on how to put on a house concert – link 1 and link 2.
And this UK one from Acoustic Routes magazine – which looks pretty comprehensive.

Go on, you know you want to… i’m booking them now for the UK in april/may, and for the US in May/June…

Posted on

All four solo albums up on iTunes

Finally, I’ve succumbed to the digital revolution and all of my four solo albums are now available on itunes. The following links work if you’ve got itunes already installed on your computer –

this goes to my artist page there, with links to all four album downloads

And Nothing But The Bass
Not Dancing For Chicken
Grace And Gratitude
Behind Every Word

I also found a handful of copies of And Nothing But The Bass on CD while I was in the US – if you want one of those, email me and we’ll sort it out. They are £10 each including worldwide P+P.

Posted on

gig at the Found Theatre, Long Beach

Lovely gig last night – the wonderful Kerry Getz organised a post-NAMM gig for her friends that were in town – me, Rodney Branigan, Mary Coppin, Vicki Genfan and the amazing Alabaster Rhumb – I saw Alabaster play last year, and in the same way that when I first heard Tom Waits I thought my speakers were broken, when I first heard him play, I thought he was taking the piss. I soon noticed that no-one else was laughing, and adjusted my perception of what he was doing, and realised he’s a genius. One of the most original talents I’ve seen in ages. And last night I got to hear him do four songs, all of which were great.

As was everyone else on the bill – Vicki and I have done three gigs together this week now, Rodney and I have been sharing a house, Mary was new to me, but wonderful, and Kerry was her usual magical self. All in all, a great evening. we each played four songs, two sets with three artists, playing alternately. Rodney played a lovely solo on one of my tunes, and a fine time was had by all. More please!

Anyway, check out all of them via their sites linked above… Vicki may well come and play with me in Santa Cruz next weekend

Posted on

NAMM over for another year




Me and Lee Sklar

Originally uploaded by solobasssteve.

Wow, a crazy NAMM weekend – very little time for anything outside of NAMMness, hence the lack of blogging, but a great weekend nonetheless. One of the things I did this year that I always forget to do was to take a few pictures with people I like, such as this one with Lee Sklar – Lee’s an incredible bassist, and very very lovely man, who has been very complimentary about what I do for a long time. A great bloke and an amazing musician. go and check out my other Flickr photos for some others, including one of me with Alex Webster, the bassist from Cannibal Corpse – a lovely friendly guy who bought a CD and I gave an impromptu lesson to… completely at odds with the utterly sickening lyrics on a lot of their stuff… Never judge a book by it’s cover, or a bassist by the twistedness of his band’s album covers (sensitive readers are advised not to do a google search on CC’s album sleeves)…

OK, let’s catch up on the last few days – Thursday daytime was spent playing on the Looperlative and Accugroove booths, then the evening was The NAMM Bass Bash, where I was playing with Trip Wamsley. I was told it started at 7, but I got there at about 6.30 and TRip was already on stage playing!! So I set up next to him and joined in – we did a rather cool spacey version of Behind Every Word, which went into a huge sprawling ambient thing that briefly morphed into Radar Love… not sure what happened there. Still, Trip was on top form, playing beautifully. The rest of the evening was spent with friends – Doug and Vida, Claudio Zanghieri, Jeff Schmidt, Todd Johnson and Kristin Korb (whose duo set was amazing), Steve Bailey, Gary Husband and others… Much fun.

Friday day was more playing for Accugroove, Looperlative and Modulus, and in the evening a bit of a bass player hang for dinner with Peter Murray, Claudio Zanghieri, Dave Freeman, Chris Tarry| and Yves Carbonne – all great musicians and lovely people. Then late night I drove up to Hollywood to see Doug Lunn and Alex Macachek play with Terry Bozzio’s trio, which was excellent as always.

Saturday back at the show, yadda yadda, and in the evening was invited to play a house concert with the delightful and truly wonderful Vicki Genfan, which as with most of those kinds of gigs involved playing gorgeous music and wonderful people in a great house. What a fun night!

And today, the last day of the show, demoing the Looperlative, playing with Claudio at Modulus and catching up with more friends that I hadn’t seen over the rest of the weekend. All good nothing bad.

So all in a great time – here’s a partial list of the lovely people I got to catch up with, albeit briefly in the case of some of them – Claudio Zanghieri, Peter Murray, Kerry Getz, Anderson Page, Chris Tarry, Dominique Di Piazza, Hadrien Ferraud, Jonas Hellborg, Markus Setzer, Trip Wamsley, Jeff Schmidt, Gary Husband, Vicki Genfan, Thomas Leeb, Doug Wimbish, Yves Carbonne, Stu McKensie, Scott Panzera, Todd Johnson, Kristin Korb, Jake Kott, Mark Wright, Bob Amstadt, Lowell Packham, Jerry Watts, Doug and Vida, Lyle Workman, Jeff Campitelli, Lee Sklar, Leo Nobre, Alex Webster, Lynne Davis, Ron Garant, Justin Medal Johnson, Ed Friedland, EE Bradman, Bill Leigh, Terry Buddingh, Jean Baudin, Jeremy Cohen, Max Valentino, Norm Stockton, Joe Zon, Seth Horan, Marcus Miller, Monster, Steve Bailey, Alessandra Belloni, Joe Perman, Muriel Anderson, Alain Caron, Tony Levin… the list goes on and on, and I’ll add to it if you email me and remind me that we met and I’ve left you off – it’s 1am and I’m getting sleepy!

So, NAMM over for another year, lots of follow up to do now for gigs, teaching and new friends. All good nothing bad.

Posted on

Christmas tunes that won't make you want to puke…

Christmas albums are, for the most part, shit. It’s a fact, and it’s a testimony to the amount of romantic slushy good-will in the air that people releasing them aren’t marched through the streets, tarred, feathered and dumped in a municipal waste disposal skip.

Every now and again, a genius christmas record happens. Fairytale Of New York, for example – possibly the greatest christmas record of all time. Another contender for that title is ‘River’ by Joni Mitchell, also a front-runner in the ‘most miserable christmas song of all time’, it’s a really really beautiful song, and one of the few JM songs that don’t sound really daft when someone else has a go at them.

As indeed James Taylor has! Yay – click here to download his version of River – I might have to get the rest of his Christmas record – if anyone can do unashamed sentimentality without it being mawkish, it’s JT.

Failing that, I’ll do what I’ve done for about the last 10 christmases and let Bruce Cockburn’s ‘Christmas’ album be my only Christmas CD, along with an MP3 of ‘Fairytale…’ – if you can get it, the greatest ever performance of a Christmas song is the version of ‘Cry Of A Tiny Babe’ by Bruce Cockburn, recorded live on the Columbia Radio Hour, with Roseanne Cash and Lou Reed guesting. Lou completely ignores the tune, the meter, everything, and Bruce nearly pisses himself laughing, but holds it together to sing. It’s magique! Yes, Paul, it’s even better than that Wombles christmas record you posted on the forum. It’s that good ;o)

I used to own the GRP christmas album, but you can refer to my first sentence on this blog for my opinion on that one…

Posted on

When a gig takes you by surprise…

A few months back, I did a gig at a venue called ‘The Loft’ in Crouch End – I was booked to open for a band featuring Rowland Sutherland, and the gig turned out to be a really really lovely house concert, put on by a woman called Jenni Roditi – the audience were warm and friendly, the atmosphere one of acute listening, and it was an all round positive experience.

So when Jenni emailed round a circular letter a couple of weeks back, asking for people who were interested to play at an ‘open salon’ night, I thought it sounded like fun. The theme was ‘blank canvas’ and the last gig had been a positive experience, so why not.

As it turns out, tonight’s gig was one of the best night’s music I’ve heard in ages – about 10 acts performed all in, ranging from singer/songwriters to story-tellers, instrument builders demonstrating their amazing inventions to arias by Gluck. And, of course, solo bassists. :o)

A quick run down of what was on, if I can remember it all…!

Stella Dickenson started off demonstrating and talking about her wooden Sounding Bowl with strings – looks like a fruit bowl with strings attached, is actually a remarkably resonant instrument, that apparently works incredibly well in therapeutic settings. Fascinating stuff.

Sarah Warwick: singer/songwriter (former dance-chart-topping singer) – really really beautiful song and beautiful voice.

Jarmila Xymena Gorna: wordless singing, gorgeous piano playing, some lovely pre-recorded harmonies. Great stuff.

Fran Zipang: story from ancient Iraq – really great to hear a damn good story-teller, it’s easy to forget what a fantastic performance art story-telling is.

Mohini Chatlani: Mezzo Soprano, on show tune, one aria by Gluck – particularly liked the show tune (can’t remember the name of it now!) but both really well done.

Belinda Braggins: possibly the most nervous performer I’ve seen in years, but a writer of really really great solo piano music. A couple of things where she comped chords with her right hand, and all the melody stuff was happening in the bass, so we like that!

Bheki Mseleku: South African legend of spiritual jazz piano, apparently – lots of people there had heard of him, and he was very good.

then food and chats with all sorts of delightful people.

Second set –

Malka Rosenberg: singer/songwriter with a voice a lot like Julia Fordham – really beautiful song. Apparently this was her first ever gig, which, if true, was without a doubt the best debut performance I’ve ever witnessed. really great stuff.

James D’Angelo: Blue Monk variations, deconstructed and mashed up. Very good, very funny, very clever.

Jenni Roditi: our amazing host, performing extracts from her opera The Descent of Inanna. Somehow Jenni has managed to channel the harmony of ‘Lame Lies Down…’ era Genesis and ‘Once Around The World’-era It Bites into an opera, without ever hearing either band. Really great writing.

And then me, on last – because the theme was blank canvas, I just took my headrush pedal along, and my fretless, and started out with an improv piece, based on a similar idea to ‘chance’ off of ‘And Nothing But The Bass’, but with a much shorter loop (if you want to overdub on the headrush, you’ve got a maximum of 11 seconds…) – which came out really well. I then did What A Wonderful World, and got people to sing along, and finished off with Grace And Gratitude. I was then really shocked by the demand for CDs – i’d only taken 10 or so with me, but sold all the solo ones I had in about a minute, and only came home with one copy of Conversations. Everything else went. An amazing gig, perhaps it was the inspiration of so much other amazing music, and the great atmosphere that Jenni creates that did it.

Hat’s off to Jenni for hosting such a great gig – it’s a strong reflection of her personality (I guess in a similar way to how the Recycle Collective reflects mine), and she’s built up a fantastic audience and vibe for these gigs. Long may it continue!

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top