The Steve 'n' Jeff Show - podcast available now...

So the podcast is already up! - you can read Jeff's take on it here - I had a listen to it last night, and it sounds pretty fun. We talk a fair bit about the relationship between technology and music (or more getting information out about being a musician), about some of the things that turn us off and on in the music world, how much 'bassness' there is in how we see what we do... It roams a little, but Jeff's a sharp cookie, and fortunately interrupts me when I get to long-winded... He's the ideal foil for this kind of thing, and I think I do the same for him...

I guess it's worth noting that there's some grown-up language in there (both in terms of hopelessly long words, and some 'strong' ones too), so if you're overly bothered by such things, you might want to proceed with caution, though if you've ever had a normal conversation with Jeff or I, you'll be in the same territory. :o)

here's the download link, or via the player below -

or apparently you can find it on iTunes... not tried that yet...

Enjoy!

First Podcast recorded... available ASAP.

I've just finished my first joint podcast with Jeff Schmidt - we recorded it via Skype, and talked for about an hour about lots of musical things (we both were expecting it to get all political/religous but it didn't this time - it's going to be a series, so there's plenty of time for that!)

Jeff's the ideal person to do this with, in that he's a solo bassist and tech-geek, but has enough of a different take on things that we can get our teeth into it without it becoming a podcasted mutual hagiography.

I'm looking forward to listening back to it, and will make it available as soon as possible.

So, bearing in mind that it's Jeff and I talking nonsense about bass playing, music, marketing, the web, geek-stuff, and will contain rants about religion, politics, philosophy etc... have you got any suggested titles?

If you want to follow the development of the podcast, and any other whacky ideas that Jeff and I may come up with, you can subscribe to our combined twitter feed here - that way you can read our conversations about it in real time... or you can just sign up at twitter.com and join the conversation yourself...

Cabaret, variety and the joy of artistic cross-pollenation.

I just got in from playing a cabaret show, organised by Moot, an urban spiritual community, with a particular fondness for the arts.

This was the second of their cabaret evenings I've played at, and once again the line up was hugely mixed in terms of artistic disciplines, but all of really high quality. There were 4 musical acts (me, two singers with guitar and Foreign Slippers, a comedian, a performance poet, and a dramatic monolgue. Last time there was also a guy playing contemporary classical works on a giant marimba... a really great mix.

In the UK, there's an old tradition in performance called 'Variety', not just the concept of 'having lots of things' but an actual school of performance where the performers were multi-disciplined - they had to be able to sing, dance, play at least one instrument, act, tell jokes, compere, etc. etc... It's why old timey british comedians often turn out to be great musicians or dancers (Bruce Forsyth being top of the shop - a stunning tap dancer and really lovely piano player too.) I guess the US equivalent was Vaudeville...

It was a relatively low-brow kind of show, the variety show, but it did mean that people going out weren't going to watch two similar bands play for ages and ages, they got to experience a range of culture.

Cabaret, as a term, has slightly more cultured connotations than variety, but is still largely a kind of nightclub type show with a range of entertainers.

I rarely get to play on bills as diverse as this. The main other places where it happens are at Greenbelt (obviously, being an arts festival), and at Jenny Roditi's 'salon' events at 'The Loft' in Crouch End - I've had a couple of really wonderful gigs at Jenny's, particularly the time I played for about 15 or 20 mins with just one loop box and a bass, not processing or toys, but shared the bill with some incredible and diverse musical talent and a couple of story-tellers.

Artistically we need this kind of inspiration - this evening I followed Bart Wolffe, doing a dramatic reading of Nikolai Gogol's Diary Of a Madman - he did an incredible job of portraying the descent into paranoid delusion, which started out kinda funny, and got incredibly dark. So dark that I couldn't just go straight in and play what I was going to play. I did a much more dissonant twisted improv thing to start with just to respond in some way to what I'd just seen... I've no idea what the audience thought of it, but it felt like a much more appropriate transition into what I do than just dropping straight into one of my tunes...

So for the audience it was a fantastically mixed evening, all high quality stuff, and a huge range from funny to deeply tragic, romantic to cutting and sarcastic.

And for us as the performers, it was a chance to cross-pollenate. For me to get to respond to Bart's performance, to listen to the cadence of the poetry, to hear the other musicians, and to play in a gallery space surrounded by amazing art, it's pretty vital stuff.

Somehow we need to engineer more such spaces... any suggestions how? :o)

New Steve Lawson and Lobelia EP to download

You may remember back in December, Lobelia and I put out a limited edition CDR release of our live in Nebraska EP - 5 tracks taken from our forthcoming live album (release date TBC!)

Well, it's now avaliable for download from the online store here - for &3.50

It's over half an hour long, and the track list is

happy 7:34
mmfsog 4:09
i'm lost 5:11
rain 9:14
jimmy james 6:51

and it's fab - if you go to my myspace page you can hear the first song from it.

anyway, you can get it as a download, it's fab, you'll love it, I'm sure. :o)

It's worth noting that in general, I still sell way more CDs from the online store than I do downloads. I sell more downloads from itunes than I do here, though probably the highest volume of track sales is from emusic, though the unit price is much lower... I'm guessing, I've said before, that is at least partly because as a solo bassist/jazz/ambient/whatever artist, my core audience is that bit older, and not comprised of the digital natives in the 15-25 age-group that seem to dominate so much of the discussion around online music. I have a number of listeners who would be unhappy even with 198kbps MP3s (the new ones are 256k VBR), and so still want CD for the quality... I think the next full album will come out on high res MP3 and flac... I may do what Trent Reznor and Saul Williams did and put out a free low-res version, and a paid download much higher res version... we'll see...

Behind Every Word video - happy Monday!

Here's a video for a live version of Behind Every Word, most notable because it shows what I'm up to with using a slide on bass pretty well... Enjoy!

Michael Manring and I on video...

Here's another video from the gig in Santa Cruz - this one is of Michael Manring and I. It's the second half of a REALLY long improv, and goes through about 5 or 6 big changes of direction, all seemlessly transitioned, thanks to the magic of the Looperlative.

Michael and I have been playing together for about 7 years, touring in England or California. We've never played together not on stage, and have only once or twice even vaguely discussed what we were going to do before a song, and that was usually because there was some hidden comedy element that one of us had come up with... We just get on stage, smile and start playing, and see where the muse takes us. It's proper 'pan-idiomatic' improv (thanks to David Torn for the description) - it goes through any genre or idiom of music that we choose to steer it, from folk to metal, avante garde to funk, minimalist to contrapuntal neo-fugues...

Anway, here's the video - it's a lot of fun, but sounds pretty muddled on laptop speakers. Break out the headphones, or plug into a hifi to get some idea of what we were actually doing!

...and another Steve and Lobelia video

Time to play name that tune again, but a 90s classic this time...

(don't forget to comment, stumble, rate, favourite, digg, facebook etc... please)

Grace And Gratitude now available on Amazon.com

I've just seen that my 2004 album Grace and Gratitude is now available on Amazon.com for download - $8.99 for the whole album, which is less than a fiver if it works from the UK... is that good? ;o)

And in keeping with my current obsession with Youtube, here's a video of the title track (not the album version :o)

and now a solo video - MMFSOG

OK, after yesterdays three Lobelia duo videos ( here, here and here), here's a solo one - I'll post a couple of these today...

Enjoy!

Last Steve and Lobelia video for today... I think...

Here goes another round of 'name that tune'...

as Rolf would say 'can you guess what it is yet?'

If you've been enjoying the video clips from today, you can now buy the 'Steve Lawson and Lobelia live in Nebraska EP' as a 256kbps (vbr) download from the online shop at stevelawson.net... It's fab. :o)