Thought I’d drop a quick post updating you on some recent developments and news.
Firstly my new trio with Lea DeLaria and Janette Mason Triage had it’s first gig last Friday at the Albert Hall’s Elgar Room. This is a brand new project for which we are developing a lot of new material. We tried out quite a few new arrangements on Friday, as well as some of the tunes from our long running Wall To Wall residency at the Pizza Express Jazz Club (Incidentally, we’ll be back at the Pizza on November 15th as part of the London Jazz Festival). The whamola even got it’s first outing in a stomping version of Straight No Chaser. As is to be expected I have duly started a Facebook page and a Twitter account which you can all subscribe to in order to keep up to date with all the news. Needless to say, we’re all very excited…
In other news, I had my first movement session this morning with the cast of A Comedy of Errors at the National Theatre. I am really looking forward to this production and it promises to be something really very special. The cast are a fantastic bunch of people and the band will feature Merlin Shepherd on reeds and the fabulous Ian ‘Squeezy’ Watson (my Divine Comedy colleague) on the accordion. There is an extensive period of rehearsal just starting now and the show opens for previews in November.
Now a little update on my Westminster Parking rant. The response to the post has been incredible. The level of outrage at the proposals really doesn’t surprise me. A great deal of people still have no idea that these changes are still going through; or that they are planned at all. It is therefore very urgent that we spread the news wherever possible; especially amongst the musicians and night workers in the West End that will be the most affected.
The petition against the proposals is still going over at GoPetitions; currently with 4548 signatures. This is still the petition that the Musician’s Union are directing it’s members towards. You can find it at
Last week I was contacted by somebody from BBC Inside Out London. I will hopefully be doing an interview for the program sometime over the next few weeks detailing the impact the proposed changes would have on musicians working in the West End. In the meantime, there is a demonstration outside Westminster City Hall this Wednesday at 6pm organized by the Musician’s Union in conjunction with other night worker organisations. I urge all musicians who regularly work in the West End to attend; whether or not they personally have to drive. Your bass players, drummers and keyboard players need you too!! And all the music lovers who don’t want to see a lot of their West End venues struggle. Here’s the flyer from the MU for those of you interested in attending:
I’ll keep you posted on the BBC program. We only have until December 1st, so there really is not a great deal of time to make a difference.
My latest album The Knowledge of Things To Come was featured in this month’s newsletter from Line 6. So I thought now would be a good time to say a few things about my effects setup for the solo project. Over the last few months since the album was released, a lot of people have been asking me how I get all the sounds and what effects I used. Let me clear that up for you…
After I finished Mandala, I decided that I wanted to further explore the world of multi-effects. I used my Lexicon MPX-G2 with the Looperlative for all the sounds on Mandala and whilst I loved some of the sparkly sounds and pitch shift effects, I couldn’t quite get the more guitar-orientated tones I was looking for. After much research online and faffing about in various guitar shops I eventually decided to invest in a Line 6 Pod X3 Pro (the rackmounted version). I also bought the FBV foot controller to give me some proper control.
The unit is dead easy to program and some of the presets (I use both bass and guitar presets) are astounding. They are also incredibly easy to tweak. I always found the Lexicon UI massively complicated and unrewarding, but the X3 Pro is very intuitive and sounds great. Each patch I program is like having access to a whole new rig and switching between sounds is fast and reliable, especially with the foot controller.
Line 6 have been very helpful and have been plugging the album since it’s release a few months ago. They asked me to upload some of the key tones from The Knowledge of Things To Come to their Custom Tone site so that other Pod users can download my patches and work with them on their own machines. So I uploaded six of the key tone patches from the album. You can download them all at the following address:
I hope you have fun with some of the patches. The L For Leather patch is particularly fun…
If you haven’t got your copy of the album yet, you can download it from the Music page, where you’ll also find Mandala (CD and download) and the Rejectamenta EP. I’ve still got plenty of CD copies of Mandala left, so if you want a signed copy just let me know when you order.
Here’s a little player so you can have a listen. Until next time…
Thought I’d drop a quick post to let you know what’s been happening of late. Those of you that follow me on Twitter will already know that for the past few weeks I’ve been back at the National Theatre working on a new series of plays.
The series is called Double Feature, and we perform two short plays per night. There are four plays in total and they will eventually alternate each night. They are:
Edgar & Annabel by Sam Holcroft
The Swan by DC Moore
Nightwatchman by Prasanna Puwanarajah
There Is A War by Tom Basden
We’ve just finished three previews of the first two plays and are about to start technical rehearsals for the next two. The plays are being staged in the National Theatre’s Paint Frame which has been transformed into a unique performance space. This is the first time the space has been used to stage theatre and everyone is really excited about the project.
We have a four piece band drawn from the Duke Special gang. Our MD is Ben Castle and we are joined by Phil Wilkinson and Mark Edwards. We’ve got some great music and I’m getting a chance to play my Dano 63 again which has been great fun.
I really love working at the National on the Southbank. It’s one of my favourite parts of London. I’ve also been taking the opportunity to take lots of photos with the wonderful Hipstamatic for iPhone (my latest obsession). Here’s a few choice pics from the last couple of weeks…
The press nights are in a couple of weeks so there’s still a little while to go with previews. Hopefully see some of you there in the near future. The Double Feature runs until September 10th.
Until next time 🙂
ps. I had another lovely review for The Knowledge of Things To Come on Guitar Jar last week. You can read the review Here.
I’ll keep you posted on the BBC program. We only have until December 1st, so there really is not a great deal of time to make a difference.
