Simon Little

Hello folks,

As many of you know I spent last week up in Glasgow with the Maggie Reilly band. We played two shows at the Tron Theatre on Friday and Saturday as part of the first ever Limelight Festival.

Limelight is Scotland’s first professional music production company run by people with impairments and the UK’s leading producer of high quality inclusive music. The company specialises in raising the profile of disabled artists in the mainstream music and theatre industries. It was set up originally in 1989 as Sounds of Progress by Gordon Dougal (who plays keyboards and guitar with Maggie) with the main aim to bring professional musicians with impairments into the mainstream. Gordon stated in an interview with the Herald Scotland

“part of that challenge is to do with getting the mainstream to look beyond their prejudices and preconceptions about performers with disabilities. That’s why, when we changed the name to Limelight and decided to have a music festival as a launch event, we wanted our artists playing alongside mainstream names, proving to audiences – and to themselves – that they have the talent, the professionalism, the high performance standards to be out there.”

We spent Wednesday and Thursday rehearsing in Glasgow and then played on the Friday and Saturday. This time we had Tony Soave from The Silencers on drums alongside the usual lineup of myself, Davie Dunsmuir, Stuart MacKillop and Gordon. We also had a couple of special guests from previous lineups; on Friday we were joined by guitarist Morph and Saturday featured Brian McNeill.

These were to be the first UK shows Maggie has played for almost twenty years. Mainly she tours around Europe; more recently concentrating on Germany and Scandinavia. We added a few of the old Cado Belle songs to the set including Airport Shutdown, Got To Love and Stone’s Throw From Nowhere. Both nights were recorded and Saturday’s show was filmed so hopefully I’ll have some footage to show you sometime in the near future when it’s been edited. There is talk of a possible live album but I guess it all depends on what the recordings came out like…

Hopefully these shows will be the beginning of Maggie’s return to UK touring. I’m hoping we’ll actually play in London so people I know will actually see me play with Maggie!! Both nights at the Tron were a resounding success and I’m looking forward to getting back on the road..

Incidentally, the one place I have to go whenever in Glasgow is the fantastic Trans-Europe Cafe behind the Tron. They do the best breakfast anywhere and I highly recommend you check it out next time you’re in the general vicinity… I went there three days on the trot and it kept me going through the long days of hanging about 🙂

Until next time…

The time has come…

It’s all well and good me babbling on about my new project with Steve Alexander Little Alex, but what does the music sound like? I hear you ask… Well hopefully now we can give you some idea.

We’ve been spending a lot of time jamming out new ideas and recording our efforts at Chez Alexander and we had one rather successful live session at Terminal Studios. I’ve been getting used to my new Line 6 setup and programming a whole new sparkly range of sounds, whilst Steve has been torturing his thumbs on the kalimba (see the bottom of the page!) and getting to grips with his brand new Maschine.

At our last writing session we recorded one track of live bass that we quite liked as it stood. So Steve took it away and programmed some drums with the Maschine…

Ladies and gentlemen; here is the first sneak preview of things to come:

The Littlest Alex by simonlittlebass

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Remember you can sign up to the mailing list at Reverbnation and ‘Like’ us on Facebook (that sounds so naff, but that’s what they call it nowadays). Feel free to leave your comments here on the blog; in fact you can even click on specific bits of the track and comment in time with the music. Oh yes indeed folks; it’s all very technical here.

I’ll leave you to ponder the forthcoming joys that Little Alex has in store for you. And just for a laugh, here’s the video I shot of Steve hammering away on the kalimba from the same writing session. Just watch the concentration on his face…

Until next time 🙂

Hello folks,

This is just a quick update to let you know that my solo album Mandala is now available on virtually all the major music download providers including iTunes, Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, eMusic and Napster. This is thanks to those lovely folks at CD Baby (where incidentally, you can also buy the download!).

Now, CD copies are still only available form my website via Bandcamp, and the best way to help support me and my music is to buy the album from me directly there. I know some people prefer to use iTunes or Amazon and it is for this reason that I’ve submitted the album to these sites. I also really wanted the album to be available on Spotify, which it should be in the next couple of weeks.

Now for a little plea… If anyone who already has the album fancies writing a short review or posting their ratings over on the iTunes or Amazon MP3 sites, that would be much appreciated. Niche music like mine relies so heavily on word of mouth and personal recommendation that any help you can give would make a real difference. If you have any questions on how to go about this, please leave a comment here or contact me on Twitter. Thanks guys 🙂

I have already started work on the follow up to Mandala here at Little Towers. But that is another blog post entirely. I posted a little sketch over at Soundcloud a couple of weeks ago to give you some idea of the direction it’s heading in. Here it is again so you can have a sneak peek..

Glitch #1 by simonlittlebass

If anybody’s in Glasgow at the end of the week, I’ll be playing two shows with Maggie Reilly at The Tron Theatre on Friday and Saturday. These are very special shows as they are the first UK dates Maggie has played in over ten years. Seriously not to be missed. Hope to see some of you there.

Until next time…