Oct 21 2008

The Road Less Travelled.. On Tour With Clare Teal, Part I

It’s been a busy time for the Clare Teal band of late. Having performed a week at London’s prestigious Ronnie Scotts whilst I was on tour with The Divine Comedy and Maggie Reilly a little while ago, Clare has continued zipping up and down the country playing to packed houses.

I really felt compelled to write a little blog about the two shows we just played over the weekend. They really couldn’t have been more different. Serious chalk and cheese scenario. Fantastic blog material! But first, let me tell you about some of the other shows we’ve played recently…

We had a little run starting in Edinburgh’s Queens Hall on the 10th, then coming back down via Bewdley on the 11th to the Cambridge Arts Theatre on the 12th. The first two shows were just Clare and the trio, until we were joined by Colin and AD in Cambridge.
The Queens Hall in Edinburgh is a great venue. Muddy drove Clare, Mike Gorman and myself up to Edinburgh (thank god, it’s a real schlep), to be met by the wonderful Tom Gordon on drums. Tom had played with Clare before with the BBC Big Band. He’s an amazing musician and he played a storming gig. The show was organised by Scottish jazz vocalist Todd Gordon, who took great care of us during our stay. Maggie Reilly and co came over to see the show and meet the band, which was a real treat. It’s always good to see some familiar faces when you’re so far away from home. It was also lovely to finally meet my Twitter buddy Baxter Tocher and his wife Anne. Clare is planning to do more shows in Scotland in the near future, we had a great time and I’m really looking forward to getting up there again soon.
We drove back down to play a show as part of the Bewdley Festival the following day (we really clocked up a few miles that weekend!). The gig was at the Ramada Hotel and was sold out. Which was great. We were lucky to be joined by Ralph Salmins on drums this time. It’s always a joy to play with Ralph.
We’ve played the Cambridge Arts Theatre a number of times before. In fact, I’m guessing Clare plays there at least once every year. It’s a lovely little theatre right in the centre of town. The staff and crew are fantastic, there’s always a really friendly atmosphere at that place. Colin and AD were back with us for the full on show. We’d been incredibly lucky food-wise on this little run and the Cambridge show provided one of highlights thanks to a couple of Clare’s regulars who arrived at the gig with a selection of cakes and muffins they’d baked especially for us. Let me tell you folks, Rocky Road is my new favourite thing. You can’t really go wrong with chocolate, marsh mallows, nuts and rice crispies. Seriously good. They’re coming to the Durham show next week and frankly, I can’t wait to see what delights they have in store for us…
Right then. Down to business. The real meat and potatoes of this blog post…
Last weekend we played two shows that really couldn’t have been more different. The first was up in York at the Theatre Royal. The second was at The Broadway in Barking. You can probably see where this is going…
Playing a one-off show somewhere like York is an all-day affair. It takes over eight hours to drive up there and back, which is a long time to spend in the car when you have to play a show. But it’s part of the job and you soon get used to the driving. To be honest I love driving anyway, it’s where I listen to most of my music. The day I got a new car stereo with an aux. input for my iPod was a seriously happy one and it’s totally revolutionised the whole driving experience. Anyone who knows me well will be aware of my obsessive iPod fixation. It contains my entire music collection meticulously (some may call it anally) organised and labelled so I have everything to hand. I never leave the house without it.

Anyway, this was the first time Clare had played the Theatre Royal. It’s a 1300 seater and we had well over 650 in, which was the largest crowd we’d drawn in York thus far and apparently this was an amazing turnout for that venue… great news! The theatre is a beautiful old Victorian building which has some parts dating back to the eighteenth century (I’m stealing this info from their website, obviously!). Playing in front of such a big crowd with Clare is a riot; she really knows how to handle the audience and she had them in the palm of her hand from start to finish. The staff and crew couldn’t have been more helpful. Also, they have a fantastic scheme in place where their performances are piped live via the local Hospital Radio to the patients. What a great idea! There was a real community spirit and friendliness to the place that made our visit all the more enjoyable. We had some great food, whatever we wanted from the bar, couldn’t have been treated better and the show itself was fantastic with a massive and appreciative audience… You get the picture? Good. Then we went to Barking…
For some reason (and I don’t think it would take a genius to work out what it is..), Barking council have decided to put on a series of shows every Sunday as part of their ‘Molten Festival’ at The Broadway, a little arts centre right in the middle of Barking; just off the North Circular. The aim of these shows it seems is to promote some kind of cross-cultural, multi-disciplinary ‘Say No To Prejudice/Racism/enter Issue here’ hippy love-in, in the form of a mini festival. I say mini festival because essentially the evening was presented like a variety show, and I think ultimately it was the programming that was the night’s downfall..
First on was some kind of African drumming group, closely followed by a whirling dervish. Okay… Then there was some kind of (allegedly) comedic sketch which frankly fell on it’s arse, as did the long-winded performance poetry of the MC who came on afterwards to introduce Clare. After our set was a short break to turn the stage around for, wait for it….. The Blockheads!! O yes! Never before (and probably never again!) have two more dissimilar bands played back to back on one gig.
Baring in mind we’d played to a busy house the previous night and considering the plethora of acts on at the Barking show, the audience was incredibly small. It looked like around sixty people. The festival organisers said they’d sold around two hundred tickets, but there’s no way we had that many in. We were all slightly concerned about going on in front of a potentially hostile group of Blockheads fans (Clare hadn’t even been advertised on the bill until the last minute it seemed). In fact Chris made the bold statement “We’re coming off stage the minute the first bottle hits the stage!” in the green room just before we took to the stage…
We were met largely with disinterest to begin with, but as always Clare managed to win over the crowd during our 45 minute set. It’s virtually impossible not enjoy a Clare Teal gig. Even for a non-jazz crowd, Clare’s mixture of humour combined with a great performance with a top-notch band guarantees a great night out. I know it’s a cliche, but there really is something for everyone (can’t believe I just wrote that.. sorry). 
After we came off stage, one of the organisers came up to me as I packed up my bass and asked me how I thought it went. I told her that it was a bit weird, but I thought the audience had a good time. She replied “Yeah, the poet was having a hard time”. Erm.. Of course the poet had a hard time!!! It really wouldn’t have taken a genius to work out that a performance poet wasn’t going to go down massively well in front of an audience of Blockhead fans. I have no idea where the thinking behind these kind of events comes from. If only local councils would make the effort to bring in somebody with some expertise in the field (ie; some musicians?!), then maybe such terrible programming could be avoided and the shows that they’ve obviously spent a lot of money on would actually draw more of a crowd. If anyone from the festival is reading this (which I doubt very much), then get in touch and I’ll come help you out next year. Very reasonable rates! And I’ll save you a fortune…
It was great to see the legendary Norman Watt-Roy in action, and indeed meet him and have a little chat. Lovely bloke. When I saw the Blockheads at the Wychwood Festival earlier this year, somebody else was playing bass with the band (Mark Snowling?). Norman is a proper bass legend, and it was a real joy to see him live. We also had a great chat in the green room with guitarist John Turnbull, who was showing Clare some tricks on her new ukelele which, according to him, is a good one. Look out for some ukelele action hitting the Clare Teal live show in the near future!
Well, the Teal Tour continues on apace. We’ll be playing the Dorking Halls this Saturday, before embarking on another northern run next week. We play the Plowright Theatre in Scunthorpe on Wednesday 29th, Leeds College of Music on the 30th, then the Gala Theatre in Durham on the 31st. Clare’s latest album ‘Get Happy‘ is due for release in the rest of Europe early in the new year, so we should be out touring on the continent soon. Literally can’t wait!
On another note, for those of you who’ve been to the shows recently and enjoyed Mike’s Cookery Corner (!), go and check out his blog at Jazz Chefs, where he and various other jazz musicians have been posting their recipes. It’s really quite impressive. I did try to add it to my Blogroll, but there’s something iffy going on with the feed, so you’ll just have to go check it out for yourselves.
See y’all soon
Simon x

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Jazz, Music, Touring

Oct 5 2008

Down and Out in Paris and Denmark (Part II)

Hello folks. Thanks to all of you that left comments and messages on Part I, it’s always good to know that you’re enjoying my tales of rock & roll calamity. And also thanks to all those of you who have subscribed via Feedburner over the last week or so. It’s great to see so many people getting involved in the blog. I had 25 new subscribers today alone (this is a record for me, I usually average around 15), which is very encouraging.
Thought it was about time to compose Part II. My memory is notoriously crappy in these situations and if I don’t get it down soon, I will have forgotten all the details. As it is, the Danish extravaganza was quite literally a whistle-stop tour and I’m finding it rather tricky to work out what happened where… I think it’s about time I started blogging whilst on the road. Expect something of a running commentary on the Duke Special Irish tour in November…
I finally arrived in Denmark late morning after the aforementioned Journey From Hell (including 1 taxi, 1 bus, 2 planes and the joyous overnight stay in the bus shelter). I was expecting to be met by Chrys and the band with our splitter van at Billund airport. As there was no sign of the van I gave him a call to discover that our van hadn’t even made it past Willesden Green. Chrys had spent a lot of time making the van more comfortable and had installed a little flatscreen TV for some on the road movie action (Pimp My Van style), but sadly the van decided it would break down before even leaving London. It turned out they had to hire a new van at Brent Cross, and Mark and Steve had to hire a car when they arrived at Billund earlier in the morning. I was met by our Danish promoter Bent who drove me the extra 90 minutes to Holsterbro. 
We were playing at the Kielgatan in Holsterbro. This is a great little venue and they looked after us really well. Which was lucky; I’d already been up for two days by this point. The stage was a bit of a squeeze, so we had to set up the wrong way around, ie; bass and keyboards stage left instead of stage right. For some reason this buggered me up no end on the gig. I seem to stand stage right in pretty much every band I play with. It’s incredibly strange to me how such a simple thing as where one stands on stage can totally throw you during the performance. I’m making too much of this really, to be honest it just threw out all my rock and roll moves which didn’t really work pointing the wrong way! The gig was really busy; it was a seated audience but plenty of people were standing so there was a good atmosphere.
We moved on to Sonderborg on Thursday. We were staying at the same great little hotel we were in last time. Don’t ask me it’s name, I have no idea. But it’s by the sea and has a windmill attached to it. We were playing at the Sonderborghus again, which is an artsy theatre-type gig in the centre of town. I do have a tendency to remember gigs on the quality of the food (shallow? yes) and this one was not a disappointment! A great little bit of buffet action was a welcome change from the deluge of cheese and speckled ham I’d been subjected to thus far that week. 
I’d had more than my fair share of technical issues during this trip, with virtually every one of my leads crapping out on me at some point and my pedal board performing it’s obligatory “I don’t like European voltages” hums and buzzes all through the week. My setup comprised almost entirely borrowed and stolen leads by the end of the run.
The show went down a storm, so much so that we were forced to bung in a second encore of Family Man at the last minute. Much to the surprise of our keyboard player Gordon, who had never played it before! Luckily, it only has a few chords…
After the show we found ourselves back at the hotel in that classic post-gig scenario we always seem to face in Denmark; the bar was shut. I really cannot fathom why hotel bars in Denmark insist on closing at around 11pm. We seem to end every night during the tour sat in some lobby or passageway nursing whatever spoils we had managed to liberate from the rider earlier on. It’s hardly rock & roll now, is it?
Which brings me on to Gadstrup. We arrived in Gadstrup (which is apparently near Roskilde) the following afternoon to met with the least glamourous of our hotels thus far. To put it mildly, they looked like what can only be described as a poorman’s Butlins chalets, directly facing the noisy railway line in a small town in the middle of nowhere. In fact, I found myself compelled to take a little photo to show you….
Oh, the glamour! Horrible, stinking, spider-infested shithole. The complete polar opposite of the previous night’s accommodation. O well, we thought. Onwards and upwards. Anyone who tells you that touring is all glitz and glamour is frankly talking shit. You can show them this picture if you like…
I got instantly bored after we checked in and went for a stroll around ‘town’ in search of a decent coffee. Fat chance my friend. It was one of the most bizarre towns I’ve ever been to. The centre essentially consisted of one main high street which had a small supermarket, one cafe/restaurant, two charity shops and five (yes, five) hairdressers. Why a town that small requires five hair cutting establishments is beyond me. Christ knows what these people spend their time doing during the long Winter months, but you can be sure none of them will be in need of a haircut.
We played a show at the Ramso Musichus up the road. This was one of those venues, apparently quite common in Denmark, which are run by a committee who get together and hire a band once a month to play in their own venue. I really like this idea, it’s something I have yet to come across in this country. Basically, they all club together and decide who they’d like to see, then approach the artists themselves. Because they owned the venue, they took great pride in the upkeep and had hired in a great sound system. 
It’s always a little odd playing these small folky clubs with Maggie. We are not the quietest of bands and it’s always a bit tricky playing the full-on show in such confined spaces. The room was laid out with a series of long tables set out for dinner, like some kind of masonic luncheon. I jokingly said to Maggie just before we went on that they were having a raffle in the break, and maybe a quick round of bingo. Unfortunately, Maggie didn’t quite realise I was joking and wished the audience good luck in the raffle just as we left the stage at the end of the set. Oops. The show was small but fun. Both the audience and the band had a great time and were very appreciative.
The biggest show of this little run was at Train in Aarhus (“In the middle of our street”). Train is a fairly large venue, which is very popular on the Danish music scene. It’s one of the places everyone plays at and it was good to finally play somewhere with a decent capacity after all the smaller shows we’ve been playing of late. You can tell almost instantly when you walk into a venue what sort of place it is. Train even smelt like a proper rock and roll venue (ie; it smelt like stale beer and sweat, but in a good way!). Nice big stage, fat PA and good lights. We knew as soon as we arrived that this was going to be the best show. It was.
We played the full-on set this time (we tend to tone it down quite considerably for the smaller venues) and loved every minute of it. Maggie’s show works best when we can stretch out with the dynamics. Which kind of requires a bigger venue. Train was definitely the highlight of the Danish run and I’m looking forward to playing there again soon. It turned out that after the show, Train turns into the clubbing venue in Aarhus with literally hundreds of people queuing around the block to get in. We made our escape back to the hotel (bar shut) and watched the carnage unfold outside.
These were the last shows this year with Maggie. Hopefully we’ll be back on tour soon in the new year with a new album, so watch this space.
Since I’ve been back I’ve been busy rehearsing with Jonathan Jeremiah and Duke Special. I’ll be touring Ireland with Duke Special in November promoting his excellent new album I Never Thought This Day Would Come, which will be released in Ireland on October 17th. The dates are all up on my MySpace page. 
As soon as I get a chance I’m going to go into solo bass overdrive as I’ve just got my hands on a new bass. It’s a Warwick Thumb NT VI (my first sixer) and will from now on be known simply as ‘The Beast’, because quite frankly, it’s a monster. I’ve just got it back from Martin Petersen at The Gallery who has worked his magic and given it the perfect setup. Let me tell you folks, it’s been a challenge putting it down long enough to write this blog post. Make sure you subscribe to my Solo Bass Podcast to keep up with the veritable deluge of new tracks that will inevitably come through in the near future!
On another note, I downloaded the new Lawson/Dodds/Wood album Numbers a couple of days ago and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in ages. Go forth and purchase people. If you order it now, you get the download version with a bunch of excellent bonus tracks, and then when the CD is released in November, you’ll receive that in the post too. Such a great idea. You can order the CD from Steve Lawson’s online store here.

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Music, Touring

Sep 28 2008

Down and Out in Paris and Denmark (Part I)


Well it’s been a rollercoaster of a week folks and I thought it was about time I filled you all in on what’s been happening.
One of those classic situations arose where three of my main acts decided to go out on the road at the same time. Some early intervention and juggling meant I was able to play with two of them out in Europe, but was sadly unable to make Clare Teal’s week at Ronnie Scotts. This was the first time she played a long run at the club, and I hear it was a resounding success. I’m sure she’ll be appearing there again soon, so fingers crossed I’ll be there with her next time.
I started out rehearsing with The Divine Comedy in town last Friday. We had an awful lot of new material to get through. Neil had decided to perform about fifty percent of the show in French, singing French pop songs by various artists ranging from Serge Gainsbourg to Vanessa Paradis.
For those of you who really want to know (and don’t know already!), this was the setlist;

1. Amsterdam (Jaques Brel)
2. Europop
3. Poupee` De Cire, Poupee` De Son (France Gall)
4. Generation Sex
5. The Songs That We Sing (Charlotte Gainsbourg)
6. Becoming More Like Alfie
7. Les Playboys (Jaques Dutronc)
8. When The Lights Go Out All over Europe
9. Anita Pettersen (Vincent Delerm)
10. Songs Of Love
11.  Home (Jane Birkin)
12. Our Mutual Friend
13. Les Copains D’abord (Georges Brassens)
14. A Lady Of A Certain Age
15. Sexy BB (Neil’s medley of Serge Gainsbourg’s Initials BB and Air’s Sexy Boy)
16. If..
17. L’amour Est Bleu (Vicky Leandros)
18. The Summerhouse
19. Je Changerais D’avis (Francoise Hardy)
20. Tonight We Fly
21. Joe Le Taxi (Vanessa Paradis)
22. National Express
It became apparent fairly early on in the rehearsal process that this was going to be too much material to learn properly in the short time we had available, so I decided that I would read the bulk of the new material on the gig rather than trying to bluff my way through. The shows were also being recorded which added bit a pressure to the proceedings. I usually hate reading in these situations but the last thing I wanted was to have all my little cockups from the gigs perfectly preserved for all to marvel at in the future.
We left for Paris on the tourbus late on Saturday night, arriving early the next morning ready for another day’s rehearsal at the venue. Cite De La Musique is a fantastic venue in Northeast Paris. Don’t ask me exactly where it is because frankly, I don’t know that particular corner of Paris and I didn’t feel much like exploring further than the street it was on while I was there. Lazy I know. But it was going to be a busy week and I thought I’d use my spare time wisely and do what the Parisians do.. essentially sitting around outside cafes reading, drinking too much coffee and chain-smoking to pass the time.
We met our two guests at the Paris rehearsal. The first was Vincent Delerm. We were playing a cover of his song Anita Pettersen from his 2004 album Kensington Square (check it out if you haven’t heard that album). He was singing Neil’s Songs of Love with us. It ended up being a great version of the song, although changing the key did put our backing vocals up into the stratosphere! Luckily I’d recently invested in a couple of pairs of (very) skinny jeans. I remember thinking, if I was to do an impersonation of a Frenchman singing that song, it really wouldn’t have sounded dissimilar to Vincent’s interpretation! Priceless and perfect.
The second guest was the lovely Daphné. Sometimes referred to as the French Björk (according to her Last.fm biography), she has a fantastically delicate voice. She sang on two songs; Sexy BB and If; which she performed as a duet with Neil….


…wearing a rather fetching outfit I’m sure you’ll agree. Made me feel a little underdressed.

She gave us all a copy of her album Carmin, which I’m listening to right now. Go forth and purchase, people! It’s a great record. Some fantastic songs and lovely production. Tinges of Fiona Apple too… Sounds a bit like Extraordinary Machine in French. Which to me, is a good thing.
The Divine Comedy performed two shows at the Cite De La Musique on the 22nd and 23rd September. Neil had even worked out some hefty inter-song banter in French to wow the crowd (I use the term ‘wow’ in it’s loosest possible sense; for one thing, most of the audience were probably British anyway and would’ve had no clue as to what he was saying. And I shouldn’t think the locals had a much better idea either). In fact, his French teacher from Dublin came to the second show and gave him a glowing report afterwards. He did very well.
Paris is such a great town. You can get fantastic food and great coffee pretty much anywhere and the Parisians are such a great audience to play to. They really got into the music and the response we got at the end of the shows was really encouraging. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we make another appearance…
Everything was going swimmingly for me until after the second show, where it soon became apparent that I was in store for another Journey From Hell (and as any of my regular readers will know, I am no stranger to the Journey From Hell). I had four shows with Maggie Reilly starting the following night in Denmark and all my various cunning plans to get to Beauvais airport in an elegant and cost-effective fashion gradually came unstuck during the last day in Paris. I had no hotel booked for after the show (computer/TDC said ‘No’), and quite frankly I wasn’t up for blowing the entire gig fee on hotels and taxis. Now, I was under the impression that Beauvais was just outside Paris. I was very wrong. It is in fact bloody miles away. Probably further than Stansted is from central London. I eventually found out that a cab to Beauvais would be around 170 Euros, around the same time that I was told I wouldn’t be getting a lift on the tourbus with the rest of the band who were heading to Calais. Nice.
The bus left the venue just after 11 pm. I managed to hook up with a select bunch of TDC fans for a few post-gig drinks (in my case, coffees!) and a late night binge in the 24-hour McDonalds (Oh, the glamour!). By 2 am I was left wandering the streets of Paris alone in the wind and rain, lugging my bass around in it’s less-than-lightweight flightcase.
I decided that with no hotel room to stay in, I’d start ambling towards Port Maillot, where the 13 Euro shuttle buses to Beauvais leave from. I was expecting some kind of bus depot, not unlike the Victoria Coach Station. Sadly, I was met with a glorified bus stop with a little kiosk (shut) when my cab pulled up at outside. By this stage, there really would have been no point in booking into a hotel as by the time I’d have fallen asleep I would’ve had to leave again for the airport.
I found myself sat on my bass case, parched and starving in the cold and wet for about three and a half hours in that bloody bus stop. I was accompanied by two drunken Polish chaps who spent the entire night arguing with each other at the top of their voices, and a couple of sleeping backpackers. Visions of Jaco Pastorius sleeping rough on a Floridian basketball court clutching his bass sprung to mind. After about an hour and a half I really did feel like some sort of vagrant. 
Interestingly,  at around the 4 am mark, a series of rather lovely girls started arriving one by one at the bus station. Which at least made the general scenario rather more pleasing. It also calmed down the Polish guys. I managed to get on the first bus at 5 am and arrived at Beauvais at around 6.30. Coffee and croissants helped ease the pain and the knowledge that I still had 2 flights ahead of me, followed by a 90 minute drive to Maggie’s first show. It seems there were no convenient flights from Beauvais to Billund that day, so I had to fly via Dublin (yes, Dublin!). Deep joy, I’m sure you’ll agree!
So anyway, that’s the end of the first installment of the road diary. I shall follow up with Maggie’s shows in part II sometime over the next few days. For those of you following my Podcast, expect a deluge of new tracks in the near future. I accidentally bought my dream bass (a Warwick Thumb VI NT, from now on to be known simply as ‘The Beast’!) at GAK in Brighton when I was at the Komedia with Clare a couple of weeks ago. Martin Peterson is currently working his special magic on it at The Gallery this week, so we’ll be back in action next week. Can’t wait!

8 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Music, Touring