Tag: guitar

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Gig preparations

Just been practicing for tonight’s gig supporting BJ Cole at the Half Moon – I’m still learning the songs from Behind Every Word, trying out some new arrangement things, working out how to make the tunes as good as they can be live.

Support gigs are always interesting because the audience have certain stylistic expectations based on the headline act. Fortunately, BJ’s music background is so varied that anyone going to see him is surely going to be expecting anything from solo steel guitar arrangements of Debussy tunes to full on clubby dance stuff. Hopefully my noises will meet with appreciative ears.

See you there.

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Two gigs

one mine, one not mine.

Thursday morning I get an email from Todd Reynolds – the amazing violinist who’s doing the RC gig next week – asking if I wanted to go and see him playing at the QEH with the Michael Gordon band that evening. Of course I did!

Got to the gig slightly late due to lack of parking spaces, but walked in to the lovely sound of Max De Wardener and his band. The fact that he was playing Cloud Chamber bowls (a Harry Partch-invented instrument) warmed me to the group anyway, but the music was sublime. Really gorgeous ambient, occasionally minimalist contemporary classical stuff, but with a kit drummer which gave it a post-rock feel at times. Magical stuff.

And Michael Gordon’s band similarly occupied a space between chamber music and post rock, but way more to the RAWK end. I was actually quite surprised as how conventional the assignment of the roles in the band was – bass playing low notes, drums playing typical kit rhythms, keyboards playing pads and ostinatos, guitar doing big guitar and twiddling and violin as the dominant solo voice… not much swapping around within that, but I guess those are the parameters that Michael has set himself to work within, and the music was fantastic. At times majestic, scary, subtle, gentle, bombastic and very clever. A most enjoyable gig. Definitely the kind of thing that would appeal just as much to fans of God Speed You Black Emperor or Sigur Ros as to those of Michael Nyman, Philip Glass etc.

Friday was the me-gig. Well, not just me – it was a duo gig with lovely saxophonist, Andy Williamson. The gig was at Merton College in Oxford, where Andy had studied some time in the late 17th century, and was part of their arts festival.

Merton College is a gorgeous place, though it definitely looks more like Hogwarts than a place to learn modern stuff. I was half expecting to see Prof. Sprout or someone wander out of one of the ancient doorways. The big strangeness was being around students again – the thought that they’re almost young enough to legally be my kids was very strange, particularly when Andy and I nipped into the bar (£2.10 for a G&T and an orange juice???? how do they make any money at all??)

Anyway, the gig went very well – we only had half an hour to play, and the set list was –

Grace And Gratitude (me solo)
Amo Amatis Amare – (andy joined in, doing a fab job on this)
Scott Peck – (a rather different version with extended sax ending with lots of loopage that faded out and left Andy to wander up the venue playing a GORGEOUS unaccompanied sax solo, using the natural ambience of the room to mesmeric effect.)
Lovely – (Andy learnt Theo’s sax line note for note, only played on tenor instead of soprano. Another great job.
and to finish, we did People Get Ready, which we’d played together at the Edinburgh Festival last year.

All in all a top gig – Andy acquitted himself admirably, played a blinder, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. Much fun, hopefully to be repeated fairly soon!

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London Guitar Show

I have a love/hate relationship with music trade shows. On the one hand, I hate the noise, the nasty conference centres, the being bombarded with information about stuff I really don’t want. I hate the idea that’s being sold that it’s possible to tell how good a particular guitar/bass/amp is in a room with an ambient noise level of 90dB.

But on the other hand, it’s a lovely chance to catch up with some friends I don’t get to see too often, occasionally it’s nice to check out some new toys, and very occasionally to hear some nice music.

Today scored pretty well on the friends front – always nice to see Nick Owen (used to work in the bass centre, now doing sessions and stuff, and working part time for House Music), and Dave Marks doing his demo thang for The Guitar Institute. Bernie Goodfellow was there as always, and he had Laurence Cottle demoing on his stand. Davide Mantovani was demoing for MarkBass – I hadn’t seen Davide in ages so ’twas v. nice to catch up with him. And then there’s Steve Harvey and the rest of the crowd from Bass Guitar Magazine.

On top of that it’s the one day in the year when I actually get recognised by anyone – having demoed at previous incarnations of the show for Bassist and Guitarist Magazines, as well as for previous gear sponsors, I’ve been seen around at these shows for quite a while, so get to let people know what I’m up to who otherwise don’t get to find out.

On the new music gear front, my purchase this year was very pedestrian but v. useful – a new music stand. All those of you reading this who study with me will know just how shitty my old music stand is. So there’ll be a lovely sparkly new one here for us to use at your next lesson. Yay!

I spent a total of less than four hours at the show, and was exhausted by the end of it. How do I ever cope with NAMM each year??? Actually, I think the fact that all the floors at NAMM are carpeted has a big impact – soaks up the sound and makes it a lot easier on your feets.

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Sad news

Just received a very sad and shocking phone-call from a friend in Edinburgh to let me know that Duncan Senyatso died last week. Duncan, you may remember, was the Botswanan guitarist and singer that I played with at Greenbelt last year – a fantastic musician and a very generous and patient man, putting up with me taking ages to get my head around the rhythms of his songs, laughing and joking, and being very generous with his praise when I finally got the songs right. He also played a vital creative part in what was one of the best gigs I’ve ever done – my ‘global footprint’ improv piece at Greenbelt, along with Jez Carr, Patrick Wood and Andrea Hazell. He sang and played guitar beautifully, miles outside of his musical comfort zone, but he fell into the a-rhythmic improv setting like a natural.

We’d talked at some length last summer about the possibility of getting British Council funding and taking the same project out to Botswana to tour with it, to do workshops in schools on improvising and music technology, and see how the marriage of the two musical worlds would work. Yet more regrets, to go along with the regret that the Global Footprint gig wasn’t recorded.

Simon, who rang me, was the mandolin player in the band last year, and has known Duncan for more than 15 years, and is flying out to the funeral.

if you click the link above, you’ll see just how highly regarded he was in Botswana. A big loss to the music world in that part of Africa, and a musical partner I shall be sad not to see again.

That’s Duncan on the left, with Rise Kagona in the middle.

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Some MySpace Props…

as they say in the hood.

A few MySpace links to various coconspirators –

BJ Cole – genius of the pedal steel, plays on one track on my new album.
Cleveland Watkiss – Recycle Collective regular, one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard, let alone worked with.
Calamateur – Scottish singer/songwriter and found-sound experimentalist. Writes really beautiful songs, and we’ve got a duet album coming out some time in the next few months.
Theo Travis – Saxophonist… you know who Theo is by now, right?
Leo Abrahams – guitarist at the last Recycle Collective gig. Bloomin’ marvellous.
Orphy Robinson – vibes/percussion/trumpet/weirdness. An amazing musician and composer.
Trip Wamsley – solo bassist, composer, player and writer of gorgeous music. New album coming out soon.
Jeff Taylor – played at the first Recycle Collective gig. Great singer/songwriter.

There you go, I’ll add some more soon. Click on those, have a listen, if you’re on myspace already then leave a comment, buy the CDs of the stuff you like, and check out their gig lists!

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OK, The Recording Really Is Finished…

Yup, this time I’ve finished. Got a great version of the title track, Behind Every Word, that co-pilot Shark agrees is marvellous. So now I’m back to mixing. Have been mixing some of the tracks this evening, and they’re sounded great, in my humble opinion.

Currently listening to my tune ‘Scott Peck’, which features BJ Cole on pedal steel guitar. He sounds so great, it’s amazing. It’s tough to pick favourites on the album so far, but the two tracks with special guests – that one and ‘One Step’ with Julie McKee are both pretty special. Though so is the opening track, ‘Blue Planet’, which was the first thing I recorded for this album, and features a bass line loop played on my Rick Turner Renaissance fretless that sounds beautiful. Sod it, they’re all great. ;o)

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Portsmouth gig

Fine first gig on the tour with Muriel. Nearly didn’t happen, as my car almost overheated on the way down, but some water and a half hour cool-off for the engine seems to have fixed that…

The gig itself was at the Eastney Cellars, a lovely pub with a landlord who’s massively pro-live-music, and has spent a small fortune converting it into an even better live music venue. He’s also generated a fab listening environment.

Most fun for me was having Linda and Geoff there – they’re my step-aunt and uncle (I think that’s right…), and we at my first ever gig! (well, I’d played one school show before that, but they were at the first one in a venue – The Galleon in Spittal, for anyone keeping score).

At that gig I was playing with my band EARS (Eric Adam Robert and Steve – we could have been ARSE but wouldn’t have got to play at school if we had been). And we were rubbish. Largely. We had one good song at that point called ‘Through The Tunnel’ which I could probably still play on bass and guitar (I wrote the guitar part too!) Can’t remember much else of what we played, other than doing Foxy Lady despite only knowing the first chord (or thinking we knew the first chord, we might even have got that wrong…) and Venus by Bananarama. Oh yes, we were that hip. I think we got paid about a tenner between us, by a very very drunk landlord called Keith. Who claimed to be ‘tired’ when he was clearly inebriated beyond the ability to string a sentence together. And we were opening for Faldstool – Berwick legends, formed from the ashes of my first non-gigging band, Mother’s Legs. Maybe I’ll tell the rest of the story of my early bands at another point, when it’s not 1am…

That was 18 years ago! So G and L were back for more, and got to hear the slight improvement I’ve made since those days.

Was lovely to hear Muriel play again – she’s a fab guitar player, and write great tunes. I’m looking forward to the rest of the dates – Colchester Wednesday, Petersfield Thursday and St Ive’s in Cambridgeshire on Friday.

See you there!

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Recycle Collective gig 5

Another fine ‘n’ fun Recycle gig last night. The run up to it wasn’t good at all – thanks to Arsenal playing at home, we got there 45 minutes later than we needed to, and even then I’d left my laptop at home which I’d planned to set up and record it.

Eventually got set up, but didn’t do a proper soundcheck, so it wasn’t til I started playing that I realised something was wrong somewhere in the system – the problem being that when I’m recording, I use all 6 of the Mic channels on my desk ‘cos those are the ones with insert/sends. When I’m doing a gig like this, I need to free up the mic channels for other things (like mics), and somewhere in the process, I’d managed to unplug one channel of the Looperlative from the back of the machine.

Much sonic struggling ensued through my first couple of tunes – the combination of trying out new tunes and malfunctioning gear was a tricky one – but the improvs with Cleveland and then the trio section went really well, so no worries there.

Leo Abrahams was up next, and play three amazing solo tunes (one called Slippery Jack was particularly amazing). we then did ‘My Song Is Love Unknown’ together, which was fine, but would’ve been better if I’d worked out what that weird minor chord was in the middle (!), and then onto the trio, which was really interesting. Leo introduced it as one of his own tunes, and played the progression from the tune (with a beautiful delay and filter guitar sound that I want to steal!), Cleveland and I responded to it in the way we would any improv, and it soon morphed away from whatever Leo had initially intended, as his first loop faded out, and we transitioned into some amazing space. Cleveland is quite possible the most intuitive musician I’ve ever performed with – his instinct for reacting so clearly to whatever is going on, and taking it to new heights is remarkable.

Third set was Cleveland solo to start – he’s got some new Echoplex tricks up his sleeve, and really knows his Lexicon processor now and put on a really great show. Followed by an equally marvellous duo set with Leo, that went to some very strange places in a beautiful and beguiling way.

The last of the trio sets comprised two beatbox-related tracks, with similar grooves but very different textures, the second of which ended up with some crazy double-time swing section that really ended the gig on a high.

All-in, much fun. ‘Twas nice to try out a couple of the new tunes in front of a friendly audience – need to get them down a lot tighter before next week.

For those of you asking for recordings, i’ve got some of it on the laptop, but it crashed three times (my guess is that trying to run a firewire powered soundcard and the laptop itself off the same battery is a bit much for the machine) – so I’ve got a few bits, and I’ll fire it up later to find out what. But the distraction of faffing with it reminded me that if we are going to record these things, I really need to a) get there a lot earlier (like we’d planned to without the Arsenal traffice) and b) DELEGATE.

Next RC gig is May 18th – see you there!

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Imogen Heap gig

This is one I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. I first saw Imogen Heap play at the Kashmir Klub about 6 years ago, at a ModernWood Management showcase gig, along with Nik Kershaw (who also had Leo Abrahams on guitar, to be featured at the next Recycle Collective gig) and the Dum Dums. I then bought her debut album in the US for some tiny amount of money, and it very quickly became one of the favourite CDs in this house. It’s great.

Last night she was playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire – a pretty huge venue for someone who this time last year was just finishing up recording a self-produced CD. However, between then and now, the track Hide And Seek from that CD, ended up being featured at some critical moment on The OC (I’ve never watched The O.C. – I’ve been to Orange County, and if the TV show is accurate, I can’t imagine in being very interesting, and if it isn’t, I’d just get annoyed with it). It was a huge radio hit all over the place, Radio 1 played it a lot here, and Imogen was right there in the spotlight where she belongs. The album’s lovely, BTW.

So, anyway, the gig – Shepherd’s Bush Empire – a v. large and pretty prestigious gig, though not the friendliest for the musicians or the audience. I’ve ranted here before about venues owned by Carling, and SBE is one of them with the corresponding focus on beer, leading to people talking. At times it was impossible to hear what Imogen was saying between songs, and during the two supports there was a bit of chatter coming from the main floor.

Ah yes, the support – first support was Zoe Keating – someone I’ve had a fair bit of email contact with as she’s a looping cellist, and was, I think the third owner in the world of a Looperlative, after me and Rick Walker. Her solo set was lovely, featuring unprocessed looped Cello (and the best live amplified Cello sound I’ve ever heard – apparently it’s an AKG contact mic, will get the details for any geeks wanting to know). Very lovely stuff.

Second support I didn’t get to hear much of… We arrived just before 8 so we could see Zoe play, and thanks to the craziness of guest-list goings-on, I had a ticket, but TSP’s hadn’t arrived yet ( we were meant to be going with TAFKASB, but she had to go to some punk gig instead…) so I went in to see Zoe’s set (not fair on TSP at all, but as my ticket was on Zoe’s guestlist, it would have been pretty dreadful to miss her solo set), then came out again to find TSP and sort out tickets. Which was all during second support.

Sadly, while my first ticket was seated upstairs, second tickets were standing downstairs only. We’re too old for that, but we did anyway, found a place by the stairs where TSP could see the stage and settled in for an evening of chronic backache.

Imogen came on and did her first number just solo, looping her voice with a Repeater (she so needs a looperlative!) – it was one of the most musical, clever, groovy and entertaining loop performances I’ve ever seen. It’s interesting that often the best loop-based performers are those that don’t make a big deal out of it, but that’s by the by. The rest of the night was a gorgeous mix of solo loopy stuff, solo piano stuff and was the first time she’d showcased the full band, with Zoe being marvellous on cello, plus drums, tuned percussion and a second keyboard player (the second support bloke), augmented by a few things on laptop.

Imogen’s stage presence was somewhat akin to an amiable old-school TV chef, like a glammed up Fanny Craddock cooking up the perfect gig; ‘now we’re going to add some Cello – would that be lovely?’ – sadly the constant chatter of audience members lubed up on nasty overpriced lager from the venue owners meant that a lot of the between song asides were lost, but the whole vibe of just chatting to the audience instead of trying to whoop them into some frenzy was right up my street.

All in all, musically and performance-wise one of the finest gigs I’ve seen in a long time, some of the most sophisticated looping and a whole slew of stunning songs (including one of the duets she did with Urban Species years ago, just her, the rapper from the band and piano – lovely stuff!). I just can’t wait to see her play the Barbican or Festival Hall, or the Albert Hall – somewhere with seats and an audience encourages to STFU during the whole gig.

The After-show party was a bit of a long wait – I really wanted to meet Zoe, so we stuck around for about 45 minutes til she showed up. Well worth the wait, as it’s always lovely to meet online-chums face to face. Also got to say hi to Imogen, who I’ve met on a few occasions before, but she couldn’t remember where. :o)

If she plays near you, DON’T MISS IT.

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Third musician for the April Recycle Collective!

Well, it’s been an enouraging couple of weeks. I’ve been asking lots of lovely musicians to take part in the Recycle Collective, with a very very positive response. Those who’ve said they want to take part in the future include Seb Rochford, Byron Wallen, Andy Hamill, Rebecca Hollweg and Oroh Angiama. Lots of fantastic musicians, all lovely people too!

And what’s more, the third musician that’s playing with Cleveland Watkiss and I on April 29th is Leo Abrahams, an amazing guitarist and looper that I first saw live playing with Imogen Heap and Nik Kershaw at the Kashmir Klub about 5 years ago, and who played after me at Greenbelt last year. He’s hugely in demand, working recently with Brian Eno, Ed Harcourt, Stairstailor, David Holmes and others, and having worked in the past with Paul Simon and Nick Cave amongst others. I’m so excited about both hearing Leo’s solo set, and what he Cleveland and I will come up with as a trio!

Head over to Leo’s myspace page to hear some of his lovely solo music.

All this means that the Recycle Collective continues to be unmissable.

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