Tag: Gigs

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CD round-up…

Been listening to Cipher a fair bit recently – Cipher is Theo Travis’ other duo with a bassist, this time the bassist in question is Dave Sturt. Most of the gigs they do are providing soundtracks to silent movies, but their last CD, ‘One Who Whispers’ was conceived as such, as far as I know.

Anyway, however it came together, it’s fantastic – you really ought to get it. If you enjoyed ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’ (which you really ought to have by now…), then you’re love the Cipher CD – lots of very fine bass playing, lovely ambient textural stuff, and Theo’s marvellous sax playing over the top. All available from the Cipher website.

I’ve also been listening to Ben Castle‘s new album, Blah Street, which is fantastic. Ben’s quartet features some of the finest musicians around – Tim Harries on bass, Mark Edwards on keys and Winston Clifford on drums, and the new record is stellar. Also worth of note is the ‘Bop Idol’ game that you can play on Ben’s website. very bizarre… Anyway, his CD is out now, and you can get it from usual places, like Amazon.

Another album I’ve listened to a bit recently is ‘Adventures in Hammered Dulcimer’ by Scott Brannon – one of the many many CDs I was given at NAMM this year (I’m about a third of the way through listening to them). To be honest, this almost didn’t get listened to, cos the artwork really doesn’t say ‘Play Me’ to me – it’s in the same ballpark artistically as the Ragatal sleeve was (which, you’ll know if you’ve seen it, is pretty dreadful). Anyway, I gave it a listen and really enjoyed it! Folky Jazzy instrumental stuff, with some proggy elements, and the rather refreshing sound of hammered dulcimer thoughout. Recommended, if you can stomach the artwork…

So there you go, a few things for you to buy this month!

And how about another webcam photo? here’s me about 40 seconds ago…

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3 gigs in three nights

that’s going to gigs, not playing them this time.

Monday night was Carleen Anderson at the jazz cafe. I’ve see her there before now, and it’s always an amazing gig. Her band is wonderful – Ben Castle on Sax, Andy Hamill on bass, Winston Clifford on Drums, Mark Edwards on keys, Mark someone on guitar (didn’t catch his surname, but he was very very good), and a backing vocalist I think was called Natasha. Anyway, a great gig – Carleen’s voice is amazing, her songwriting is really strong, the grooves were exceedingly funky, and a fine time was had by all.

Tuesday night involved going to hear Duke Special at Sound Acoustic in Leicester Square, which is a lot better than the Sound venue upstairs in the same building, which is horrible. Duke Special, AKA Pete Wilson, is brilliant – dread-locked piano-playing singer-songwriter with a stellar voice, beguiling stage presence, and some fantastic songs. His EP ‘Lucky Me’ is brilliant, and he was one of my top three favourite acts from Greenbelt last year. He’s on again at The Barfly in Camden tonight, but I’m teaching til 9, so don’t think i’ll be able to make it. I’ll have a mooch around online and see if I can find a stage-time…

Then last night (wednesday), I spent a very pleasant evening listening to the JazzBerries in the Crypt at St-Martins-In-The-Fields, in Trafalgar Square. It was a rather lovely set of vocal standards, well played and sung. Good stuff.

I love wandering round London on balmy evenings – the centre of london is such a gorgeous historic place, brimming with culture and marvellousness. Theatres, restaurants, street musicians, historic buildings and monuments, groovy cafes and swanky celeb bars. Add to that the majesty of the museums, and you’ve got one amazing city. OK, so we’ve got one of the worst recycling records in Europe, the public transport infrastructure has gone to shit, the hospitals are being sold off to people who don’t want to do operations that aren’t ‘cost effective’, the government are happy to ignore democracy in action, gun crime is rampant… etc. etc. but it does have its upside too… :o) I tend to walk around with a big grin on my face at this time of year.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening through all the tracks that I recorded for ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ that didn’t get used, and some of it’s really good! I obviously did a really strong stylistic selection job on what went on and what got left off, and there’s tonnes of stuff here I really like. So it might be time for a downloadable extra and live tracks album… I’ll get round to that ASAP!

– right now, more of the out-takes. Before that, Carl Young, ‘A Few Sides Of Myself’; Ben Castle, ‘Blah Street’ (which is out next Monday, and is fantastic); St Germain, ‘Tourist’; David Sylvian and Holgar Czukay, ‘Flux and Mutability’.

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Video Killed The Radio Star

Just got back from seeing Billy Bragg at The Barbican – what an amazing gig!!

For those that don’t know (can there really be people in the world who don’t know about Billy Bragg???), he’s a singer songwriter, but not in the fey acoustic guitar, wannabe James Taylor way. More Woody Guthrie meets Joe Strummer. Very political, very literate, very stauchly working class leftie stuff. Did benefit gigs for the miners (added extra gravity to the gig that we’ve just gone past the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the miner’s strike…) and for the labour party back in the 80s (can anyone imaging Red Wedge existing now? I think not…)

Anyway, he was brilliant. Inspiring, refreshing, funny, moving, challenging, entertaining. Simply marvellous. his latest album is a double best of, which is a pretty good place to start with his stuff.

The sad thing about it is thinking that there’s no way that a new Billy Bragg could get anywhere near the mainstream today. Back in the early 80s, bands with something to say were all over the place, whether it was UB40, Billy Bragg, The Clash, Steel Pulse, The Specials – there were loads of them, and political songs were topping the charts and changing the hearts and minds of the country. I’m trying to think of the last time a really political song got anywhere. Not ‘We Are The World’ style bollocks. I mean something that really meant something. These days you get a lot of nu metal bands ranting on about the evils of corporate music – the machine within which they dwell and who pays their bills – and there’s still a healthy protest music scene underground (Show Of Hands, the folky duo I blogged about a while ago are doing very political stuff, as is welsh songwriting genius Martyn Joseph and God’s favourite singer, Bruce Cockburn) but those that are doing anything have either been doing well for years (hence Billy selling out the Barbican) or are playing the folk circuit.

I guess it’s healthy that they are still there. It’s just a shame that they don’t get the exposure. I mean, even the early hip-hop stuff got exposure – the first couple of Public Enemy and NWA albums were all over the place back in the late 80s, and made some fairly big changes on the political scene (NWA arguably helped trigger the LA Riots… good thing or bad thing?) these days, very little seems to get past the blandness filter. The new idea of being ‘risky’ is wearing ever more revealing clothes, or swearing on your records… yeah, really dangerous…

Anyway, three cheers for Billy Bragg. The man’s a genius and an inspiration.

Oh, and I mustn’t forget Jill Sobule who was supporting him. We got there late and only caught the second half of her set, but she was marvellous, and I bought the CD – will report back, cos if it’s as good as her set, it’ll be excellent. She was an added treat (and she came out and did a duet with Billy on ‘All The Young Dudes’ as part of the encore!)

Soundtrack – Toupe, ‘Alopecia’; Peter Gabriel, ‘Hits’; Zakir Hussein, ‘Making Music’.

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photos from traders gig in february

So I finally got round to looking at the photos I was sent of the gig at Traders in February – some of them are rather good! So here’s a selection. The smiley chap in the highly dubious T-shirt is Iain Martin who runs Stiff Promotions (hence the slogan), who organised the gig, and the Petersfield and Southampton gigs on the tour with Michael Manring.







and here’s one from the Traders gig last week, with Michael Manring –

there you go!

Soundtrack – nothing yet today.

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Happy Christmas (tour is over)

Last night was the last night of the tour with Michael Manring. Another great gig in a long string of great gigs. I think this was probably the most enjoyable tour I’ve ever done – all the gigs went supremely well, nearly all of them were filled to capacity, the promoters of the gigs were all marvellous, the audiences were all very responsive, we all sold loads of CDs. There are lots of very fine reviews coming in on various forums (see the interact forums on my site for the biggest repository, and if you were at the shows, please sign in and say hi!)

Thanks to everyone who came to the gigs, and especially those of you who took the time to come and say hi. It’s always lovely to meet people at gigs.

Thanks also to Bass Guitar Magazine for their sponsorship, Mansons Guitar Shop for hosting the clinic in Exeter, Stiff Promotions for promoting the Petersfield and Southampton shows, Ali Martin for doing the posters for those two gigs, Sebastian Merrick for co-promoting the Troubadour gig, Ayshegul for all her hard work on the Troubadour show, Catherine for doing CDs at the Troub, Delicatessen for the Reading gig, especially evil harv and Terri, Richard Ravenhill for doing such a killer job on the Brighton show, Grant Sharkey for his help promoting the Southampton gig, Mark the soundman at Joiners for the best live sound we’ve ever had, and my street team for loads of promo assistance, flyering, and generally being very cool indeed. And of course, to Michael Manring and John Lester for doing the shows – what fun!

So the next gig is Thursday in Stoke Newington – that’ll be a lot of fun, as it’s with Theo Travis, so we’ll be playing the material from ‘Open Spaces’.

Soundtrack – Prince, ‘Sign Of The Times’; David Sylvian, ‘Secrets Of The Beehive’; Rain Tree Crow, ‘Rain Tree Crow’; Paul Simon, ‘Greatest Hits’; Abe Laboriel/Greg Mathieson.

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half way through and I've rarely had so much fun

What a week!

The Exeter gig was sold out three weeks in advance, the Petersfield gig was sold out, the clinic at Basstech was standing room only, the Brighton gig was standing room only (no idea what the fire limit was for the room!). Blimey, this solo bass stuff is really catching on!

We’re having so much fun, it’s unreal. Michael’s been playing through my amp set up, which means that I can now also loop and process him as well, which has opened up a whole new soundworld for us to explore! And seeing as how I nicked the whole bass + looping deal from him in the first place, it’s no wonder that he reacts to what’s happening in the loop so unbelieveably well. I can throw just about anything at him, and it works!

Fortunately last night was recorded, by two different people, and videoed for us, so I’m looking forward to seeing some of that!

If you came to one of the gigs – thankyou very much. The audiences have been great, and the feedback’s been marvellous.

And to cap it all, I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard as I have in the car on the way to the gigs in a long time.

Miss the next three gigs at your peril!

Soundtrack – Kelly Joe Phelps, ‘Slingshot Professionals’; Rob Jackson, ‘Wire, Wood and Magnets’.

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1 down, 6 to go….

So last night was the first night on the tour with Michael Manring, and went exceedingly well. The show was at Mansons Guitar Shop in Exeter, and was sold out three weeks in advance, which is nice! The format was fun – we alternated between improvising duets, playing solo tunes and fielding questions from the audience, and got lots of very interesting questions. The duo material was really interesting – it bodes really well for the rest of the dates.

There’s already one review up at talkbass, from Matthew Foote – thanks Matthew, glad you liked it. If you were there, please feel free to post a review of the show over in the interact section of my website.

We almost didn’t make it, having had a tire blow out on the M25 about 15 miles from home, but we changed that and got back on the road pretty quick.

Touring with Michael is a lot of fun – I think I’d happily take him along even if he was a rubbish bassist… ;o)

The rest of the gigs are still selling really well – it’s going to be a great tour. Tomorrow night is Petersfield in Hampshire, then Friday daytime we’re at BassTech, Friday night in Brighton, Saturday in Reading, Sunday in London and finally Monday in Southampton. Please come along if you can, but do phone and book in advance, or you might not get in.

Soundtrack – John Coltrane, ‘Live At BirdLand’; Kelly Joe Phelps, ‘Slingshot Professionals’; Michael Jackson, ‘Off The Wall’; Stevie Wonder, ‘Natural Wonder’; Robben Ford, ‘Supernatural’; Dapp Theory, ‘Y’all Just Don’t Know’; Medeski Martin and Wood, ‘The Dropper’; Marc Johnson, ‘The Sound Of Summer Running’.

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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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Oh Lucky Man

or is that just lucky me?

Had a marvellous gig last night – Traders in Petersfield. Nice little music venue, attached to a Thai restaurant (great food!), in small town between Guildford and Portsmouth. Enthusiastic listening (or maybe just bemused…) audience, who listened, applauded and bought CDs. What more could any self respecting solo bassist ask for?

I do feel very lucky to do what I do for a living – I get to play gigs to nice audiences, sell CDs to friendly people who email me to say thanks (as though them buying the CDs wasn’t thanks enough!), collaborate with fascinating musicians, and travel around some interesting bits of the world, from California to Petersfield. And then after all that, I get to teach bass to lots of lovely people. The trade offs against things like job security, enourmous record sales, fast cars etc. are more than worth it. :o)

‘oh what a lucky man…’ hang on, that song is about some bloke whose life goes down the pan… maybe I’ll go for something else, er… gimme a moment to think of something… ‘My Life Is Good!’… nope, next line of that is ‘…you old bag’, so that doesn’t work. Maybe songs about being grateful for stuff aren’t as prevalent as ones about people who took it for granted and ballsed things up.

anyway, I digress.

Michael Manring and I will be back at the same venue next month, and I’m really looking forward to it! I mean, I was anyway, but now even more so cos I know what to expect.

Also of note is that it was the first gig booked for me by my new booking dude for that area, Iain at Stiff Promotions – lovely bloke, insanely efficient and helpful, and an allround god-send to musicians. Bodes well for future ventures!

Soundtrack – nothing much today. I’ve had a few days of mainly silence, which has made a nice change…

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