New ways out of lockdown. You can't keep good musos down

I'm prepping Lives in Music Podcast Series 3. It's different now.

I must start with an apology. I've been quiet on the podcast front. There's a number or reasons for this, obvious and not so obvious.

Our gig scene has been squashed flat.

Firstly: we've lost our live music scene. This breaks my heart. One of my great pleasures is to settle in for a night of stonking live music, joining friends and like-minded souls in a warm and welcoming space, with a pint or something stronger to hand. And then the show starts, and I'm carried away by great musicianship. It can be, rarely, in an enormodome. But I prefer smaller venues, where you can relate to the artist. I especially prefer the smallest venues, where it all starts. I've been in pub rooms with a few dozen kindred souls, and I've had  unforgettable nights. I miss that so much.

So it's been difficult to document those golden live moments, when... there haven’t been any. I’ve had a lot less to write about. I've also had to scrap some very pertinent interviews with venue owners. I'll hopefully revisit these when we can get out and about again.

Face to face chats? Forget it.

Secondly, lockdown or no lockdown, I'm under strict instructions to respect those six feet spaces, and in any case to cut contact down to an absolute minimum. It's, I'm afraid, a health issue, and it's definitely got in the way of producing podcasts.

For me, the essence of getting a great interview is to share space, to have eye contact, to have an intimate connection. I've been used to travelling across town, hooking up a mic to my subject, and diving into a long conversation, which finds its way into the finished podcast episode. That is no more, for the time being.

Live performances online? I'm grateful, but it's not the same.

I follow a lot of people online. I check out their streamed live shows. I'm glad to see them, and I hope that their work generates some revenue. But typing a helpful message of support into Facebook is the only way we can react. The artists can't hear our denatured applause. The compromise of streaming a gig with a live audience – if that can be managed – is the best we have right now.

Those multi-artist remote compilations. Love them.

An alternative, and one that I very much enjoy, is the very produced multi-artist compilation. These work, sometimes to great effect, but it's a different confection. The artists must work to a basic track for timing purposes, so the result is, inevitably, produced. In an upcoming series 3 podcast, I go though this in some detail. But there have been some extraordinary work coming our way, which would not otherwise have surfaced at all. 

A way forward. Soon come: Lives in Music Series 3.

Now I've surfed back to the working world – long story - I've settled on a new way of working. It's a compromise, but it lets me get back to doing podcasts with musicians, which I love to do. I'm using software which lets me invite my subject to chat to me remotely though their computer. Think Zoom, but with better bandwidth and no time lag. It's the same kind of software that's in use at Radio – you can tell it's that kind of software, because, every so often, the remote link goes down, embarrassingly.

So now I'm back in business. I'm recording lots of chats, and then diving headlong into post-production. I hope very much to start releasing the new series by the end of February.

It's good to be working on this series, especially as I want to focus as much as I can on how musicians have broken through this new set of wholly unfair barriers. Let's see how everyone is doing!

The Lives in Music Podcast

I've been doing this for about fifteen months now. These are interviews with local 
musicians, covering how music has shaped them throughout their lives. Series 3 
also looks hard at how lockdown has had an impact. There are some lovely stories. 

To review the list of artists, here's a link. 

See more radio and broadcasting posts on Radio To Go

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Lives in Music: a new Radio To Go Podcast series

When you've played for ever, you've got stories to tell

I'm launching Lives in Music, a podcast series. The first episode dropped this Sunday, October 6th. 

You can get all the published podcast episodes on Spotify, iTunes and all good podcast directories. Series 1 episodes are currently arriving weekly.

I've been working on this for some time; I've thought about this for even longer. The series will feature musicians and music workers from our patch who have put in some serious time. These are people who have literally spent their lives making, or supporting the making of, music. Some are very well known; others less so. But they're all pretty damn fabulous and/or interesting. After hundreds of gigs - maybe even a thousand or more - which have brought me great pleasure, I want to try to give back just a bit. Hence this series of interviews. It's a tip of the hat. And the stories I'm hearing are amazing.

So many people, so little time. 

I have a list as long as your arm of people to talk to. I've recorded quite a few, aiming to complete an episode a week. That doesn't mean I'll be able to drop a podcast every week. There's editing, polishing, illustrating, and all the podcast gubbins to do. That takes time. So Lives in Music Series 1, kicking off this Sunday, will be a ten-parter, with an episode dropping each week. Lives in Music Series 2 will kick off after Christmas, all being well.

Nailing some people down can be a challenge, too: after all, some of our outstanding musos are out playing five or six nights a week with different outfits, making money – at last - through their versatility. You can't begrudge them that when some were barely scraping a living forty years ago. 

Free your mind and your music chops will follow

I've long felt that musos can go in one of two ways in terms of creativity and craft as they get older. They can stick with what they know, playing the steady, the safe and the familiar; there's a market for that, and good luck to them. 

Or - and this is where it gets interesting and wondrous - they expand and blossom as they grow older, embracing more styles and experience, for the love and the exhilaration of it all.  Often you find those guys tearing it up with huge smiles on their faces, in tiny places. Those guys interest me, and they're the ones I want to feature.  

Not forgetting the enablers

But there's also a host of people who work in and around the industry, who love the business of making music: promoters, instrument makers, managers. They also help to make all this possible. I'm talking with several for the series; several more have agreed to chat. 

The joy of small venues where the magic happens

These days, I spend more gig time in small venues, close up to the artist, than ever I did in enormodomes back in the day. The attraction? Well, apart from cheaper drinks and free parking, it's the music and the musicians, naturally. Especially the sheer craft of people who have been playing forty years or more. 

I get more out of it, whether it's places like the Hare and Hounds in  Birmingham, or the Kitchen Garden Cafe across the road for Jazz and Folk, or any of the venues where the peerless Lisa Travis has been in charge, including her newest perch, the Prince Of Wales. There's plenty more - space prevents me listing everywhere. But I should mention, and give a tip of the hat to, the wonderful Paul Murphy. Paul ran his second Songwriter's Cafe for several years from his treehouse venue; I did online continuity for him. He was one of the people who showed me just how powerful great music, crafted from deep experience, could be in a tiny intimate venue. He was in no small way responsible for my thinking in this area, especially since he passed on.  

So... who's on the menu?

Ah, that would be telling. Series 1 will be an interesting mix. I'll have a fresh blog post, with all the relevant details, to go with each podcast episode. You'll be able to keep across who's in the series by following the Lives in Music podcast once the first episode drops. On top of that there'll be the usual Facebook and Tweetage. 

But there is one stalwart, who I recorded with, who won't be going up as a podcast. Sadly, the audio quality just wasn't good enough. But not all is lost; I will transcribe, and it will be worth it. Steve Gibbons and I talked for two hours straight about growing up in Brum, where his first gigs were, who looked after him, and how he got started. He was meticulous. So that episode will see the light of day as a Radio To Go blog post... and I will be spending a lot of time researching pictures of the locations. It's making for brilliant Birmingham rock history. 

The Lives In Music podcast is on Spotify, iTunes and all good podcast directories. Series 1 episodes currently arriving weekly!

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The album, the artist, the audience. Are we going full circle?

Grudgingly, I find myself starting to agree with vinyl freaks. Weird. 

I posted a while back about the interesting origins of what we now call an album.  This was in the context of our new, brave MP3 world of digital downloads. After all, when you can cram an entire library onto a tiny piece of plastic, who needs those ancient concepts of singles, albums, EPs and CDs? Tech developments have moved so very fast. I'm not entirely sure that's all good.  

The vinyl revival was a surprise to me. It's really not a huge slice of the market. Vinyl gets more attention than it deserves because it's a retro vintage fashion thing. Personally, I find the obsession with vinyl as a style statement slightly ridiculous. 

But there's another reason for the continued survival of the album, over and above vinyl fetishes. And it's a lot more valid than a business proposition or a badge of identity.  

Festivals 2016! Mud! Rip-off prices! Well, hopefully not.

Which local festivals do best by local acts? Two are absolute stand outs. 

Nile tearing it up at MoJazz 

Here comes summer (although not as I write), and the promise of shimmering music in the sunshine, in good company. And new discoveries: acts you might have heard of but hadn't caught up with yet, playing to you live. Doesn't that sound nice? 

Festivals can mean different things: the term has stretched from the idea of a day or three of music in a field somewhere. Now it's one-dayers, sometimes inside, sometimes all night. Or it's mega operations - holiday camps with drugs - where tens of thousands of punters shell out fortunes to trudge through mud and pay over the odds for designer food. I'm not exactly broken up that Wireless have swerved Perry Park again. But I am dead chuffed that Moseley Folk has headed back closer to its folk roots. 

Miles Hunt. Straight outta Stourbridge to a world tour.

Friendly Company! The Stuffies are coming to yours

 Miles and Erica Nockalls - from The Wonder Stuff pledge page  

Like a thousand other towns across the country, developers and lousy town planning have ripped the guts out of Stourbridge. The town is a tangle of road improvements and pompous corporate new-build. It's totally out of step with the charming, human scale of the unprofitable parts left behind.

I head along old streets of small terraced houses, down a clearly ancient pathway behind a church. I fetch up in a quiet neighbourhood boozer, one of several I'd passed. No piped music, no fruit machines, no Sky Sports; instead, a large affable dog and some excellent ale. 

And Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff. 

The wood from the trees

Taking a mile-high view of your local music scene is tricky, but it's worth a go

It helps to have a sense of perspective.  Photo Elliot Brown

Posts here are mostly on artists and their stories. Everyone has a story; some are amazing. But this week, and probably next, it's about lots of artists. Next week, I'll publish my six monthly survey of local artists who smash it on YouTube. It's interesting, but not definitive: YouTube numbers can be, and are, fiddled for marketing advantage.

No, it's good for spotting early trends. It's fascinating to see who's coming on fast, what genres do well, and to try to work out why.

And recently, with some colleagues, I've picked up a new way of looking at what's happening. Imperfect it certainly is; rankings are subjective and based on reputation, not numbers. The sample is tiny, and taken at a specific point in time. So I won't get carried away. But I'm astonished and pleased at what we found.

A cuppa coffee with Tom Walker

A preposterously talented young guitarist, a power-packed rhythm section, and a studio with history 

It's still cloudy, grey and wet as I climb up out of Five Ways station, drop round the corner and zig zag up to Arc Studios. Arc was set up by Bob Wilson; it's a place that's ridden a lot of changes. 

Now, Arc is pretty much run by son Toby, who drums with a range of local bands. Having effectively grown up in the studio, Toby's a dab hand at production.

They're halfway through a session. Clutching mugs of coffee are Tom Walker, Deano Bass and Jim Simpson (the musician one, that is). 

I give you the Tom Walker Trio, sounding excellent, as you can hear further down this post.

Richard March, he say.... THANK YOU!

It's all about the Bass. And good people doing good things

****  Stop Press **** 

Amazingly, Richard has been re-united with his bass. 

See his message at the bottom of this post. 

Richard March is a happy bunny right now. He plays double bass: you stand up and wrap your self around the instrument. He's in one of the fastest rising bands in town, Rhino and The Ranters, among others. 

Double basses are physical. They're actually bigger than the people who play them. It means intimacy and engagement. Players are on their feet, dancing. All musos have physical bonds with their instruments. But basses are already deep and primal. String basses take it deeper. 

So when Richard posted on Facebook, just before Christmas, that his bass, his amp and bits and pieces had been stolen, it came across like a howl of pain.

Love what you do. Stay professional. Watch your back.

Swimming in shark-infested musicbiz waters. Sharpen your teeth and toughen up. 

I love the Music Industry in Birmingham. I'm only cheering from the sidelines: I don't have a stake. But it fascinates me, as do those who run venues, promote shows, or invest in costly recording kit. Then there's the snappers, the house concert superfans, bloggers, the radio guys, the video producers and more.

This week I had an engrossing conversation with Roy and Jaki Davis, a couple who built Madhouse Rehearsals and the Asylum venue into a solid proposition though sweat and grit.

I knew Roy from his days playing bass with Shy - a fine 80s Brum band, one of many whose talent and promise just weren't enough. 

We did a radio thing together. I got great stories. I also got some scary stuff. 

Kim Lowings: the tricky path twixt traditional and brand new

Traditional music and powerhouse songwriting. Delivered digitally, of course. 

Photo: Laura Whittington

It turned out to be a busy day. I needed a rare vinyl 7" for a show I'm producing. There's only a few hundred copies. But, lo! a dusty copy is unearthed from a King's Heath attic.

Just as well I was in the neighborhood. Long before questions of exotic vinyl, I'd set up a chat not remotely to do with vinyl nostalgia.This was to be all about right now, with a storming folk talent: Kim Lowings.

Kim Lowings heads up Kim Lowing and the Greenwood: a powerful, articulate, highly intelligent folk-oriented local outfit. The new album swings between Kim's own songs, which are resolutely modern, and traditional material. And Kim just happens to have a fantastic voice. Comfortably settled in over coffee, it looks like things are starting to kick off for her and the band. But we did, actually, touch on vinyl. In the end.. 

Draw it, print it, put it up... See it get nicked. Lewes Herriot and the art of poster design

Depraved 19th century libertines, poster design, music promotion and Johnny Foreigner - the world of Lewes Herriot 

If you have muso facebook friends and you live in Brum, you've probably seen Lewes Herriot's work. Lewes is a man of multiple talents, which he cheerfully and resolutely refuses to shout about. As well as playing in a pretty damn successful band and having an exhibition throughout August at Birmingham's Digbeth Warehouse Cafe, Lewes has been delivering catchy and stylish posters for Brum promoters This Is TMRW for some time now. 

They're lovely. They get nicked. That's the trouble with great poster designs. 

It's always happened. I noticed this at first hand when I asked the amazing Hunt Emerson to do a brilliant, gently mocking design for Project X Presents. Hunt's poster placed West Midlands hipster heartland Moseley at the centre of the world, riffing on the classic Saul Steinberg New Yorker magazine cover. Instead of the Big Apple, Moseley was at the core of things; even King's Heath barely got a mention. It was fantastic. Hunt did us proud. 

And all the posters were stolen within days.  

The same has been happening with Lewes' work. It's led to some interesting discussions about creativity and context.  

Pledging My Love with Boat To Row

A modest crowdfunding appeal to get their album pressed: 88% of target in 16 days. Great going. 

Wayne Fox Photography    

Chatting with Boat To Row is a pleasure. They're great company, and damn fine musicians to boot. The band has quietly built up a very loyal fan base in their six years. Now they're working that fan base to cover production costs for a first album, using that cornerstone of fan-funding, Pledge Music.

We met for coffee in Brum this week: me and three band members. The other two? Tied up with a very new baby and teaching paperwork. But the Colmore district was packed with celebrities: Perry Barr MP Khamid Mahmood was hanging at Yorks, and Julian Lloyd-Webber, the new Principal at the Conservatoire, was in the Wellington. Movers and shakers clearly surround this band.

Women in music; a shifting balance.

Live? That's one thing. But at Radio, it's already changed. And there's a programming rule for that.

Sometimes it helps to have a dinosaur perspective. I've been looking at music, local and mainstream, over 40 years or more, and I'm seeing changes. I'm only talking about these two areas in this post. But that's already a lot to be going on with. 

       Rebecca Downes     pic Mick Schofield

The week before last, I chased around Birmingham catching bands I hadn't yet seen. I started with Rebecca Downes - a two-person powerhouse blues/jazz set at the Blue Piano. Then headed to the Rainbow's seven-band indie night, to catch Shaake, a new project from Suzi And The Backbeats, and damn good they were too. Then to the Fiddle and Bone for some of Hannah Johnson And The Broken Hearts elegantly spinning tales of country heartache, love, and loss. 

I had a great time: one night, three bands, all led by strong women. It's part of a trend. 

Mahalia. Four years of development, and she's still only seventeen. Crikey.

Ridiculously young and talented, with a major label deal... that might suggest you got it made. Great expectations then.

Four years ago, Mahalia played a Tea Room Tent debut slot at Moseley Folk. It was a gentle but excellent start, in front of some major Brum music faces. 

Four weeks ago, Mahalia made her BBC2 Later debut, fronting the irrepressible Rudimental. No build-up: the camera panned directly to her from Joan Armatrading. No pressure, then. To see how it went, scroll down for the video. Mahalia is still only 17. She is being guided by her parents, who were both active in the music business in the 80s, and have the scars to prove it. She already has a deal with a major: Asylum/Atlantic. This is not usually how things get done these days. Not anymore. But then again, Mahalia is unusual.

Analogue Tales: James Summerfield and Darren Cannan

Last year, just as summer shaded into autumn, I spoke with James Summerfield, whose latest project is surfacing right now; then it was in the throes of assembly, recording and aligning. Analogue Tales: Sounds From Arden is an extraordinary work, taking the words and ideas of local poet Darren Cannan, and setting it to a lush musical background, supplied by James. It's released on the estimable local label Commercially Inviable. James sings on most of the tracks, but others are voiced by the likes of Paul Murphy, Ranking Roger, Catherine O'Flynn, Mike Gayle, James' nan Marjorie, and myself. 

When you listen to it, the obvious, screaming question is – why don't people do this more often? It's amazing.

I used to go to Barbarellas

People and bands and music and sticky carpet make places 

I've been working up a few posts for Time Out Brum of late. Some of them are on local music history, including this one on lost venues. It's had a big reaction, and I'm now looking at more stories that have come my way. Thank you! And keep them coming. 

We've lost a lot of venues over the years. It's sad to seem them go, of course; hardest on the people who made a particular place what it was. There was a great book published last year about JBs in Dudley. There's memories aplenty scattered around on websites. But there really isn't enough about one place I spent lots of time either DJing or sticking to the carpet: the primo 70s and 80s Rock venue in Birmingham... Barbarellas.

A conversation with Swami: Simon & Diamond and S-Endz

A brand new band that's been going since 1999

Two months back, I compiled a local YouTube chart. It's a labour of love, and I can miss things. Happily, I'm usually swiftly corrected. S-Endz duly pointed out that his band, Swami, had scored very decent views for their new video. So I fixed things, bouncing the bottom entry (sorry, lads) to present a revised 50. And started thinking about Swami. 

There's lots of Asian bands in the West Midlands. But normally they aim squarely at Asian markets; Swami are different. Malkit Singh may sell millions worldwide to Bhangra fans, but Swami aren't cut from that cloth, not remotely. For a start, they're cross-cultural, in the grand Birmingham tradition. The website is slick and impressive. 

A swift introduction by Sharnita Athwal at Shaanti, and I'm sitting with Simon and Diamond Duggal, joined later by S-Endz. Swami has been Simon and Diamond's project, since 1999.

The game is changing: Goodnight Lenin

Goodnight Lenin want feedback on their new songs. See them in the bar afterwards. Oh, and there's three, count 'em, three festivals to talk about. With the Monkees?

The challenge for all performers is to know when it's going well, and why. That's why I so admire people who make great music. It's not just the uncanny talent. It's the pressure to perform, to deliver. Not only that: you have to work out how it's going: you have to manage it all. 

This blog doesn't just celebrate moments of inspiration and warmth, but also the stagecraft that goes with it. To have the balls to take your visions and dreams out to an audience, to lay it out in public, is one thing. That's where it really starts. That's when the game changes.

The Destroyers and their fresh foundations

Eight years of constant change, and the band's hungrier than ever.

I'm sitting in the snug in legendary Moseley music boozer The Prince of Wales, with Leighton Hargreaves, Max Gittings and Aaron Diaz, three long-term members of the Destroyers. It's appropriate: if anything is, it's the band's home base. It's where members come to play at the open sessions; it's where they put on their legendary Christmas/New Year shows.

Now, after what seems like an uncomfortably long time, there's good news to report: the band are issuing an EP, on local label Stoney Lane. There may be more to follow, possibly building up to an album. And there's a tour planned out.

Beyond the band #3: Pete Williams

Nicely connected after a lifetime of rock and roll ups, downs and setbacks, Pete Williams is punching out fabulous songs.

It didn't start with his bass work with Dexy's Midnight Runners in the 80s, or even through the revived Dexy's in the Noughties and again in 2012. But often that's all that you read about him. Pete played in both bands, and people always want to talk about the juicy stuff.

There's a lot more. Williams has just come out with his second, very successfully crowd-funded, album, Roughnecks and Roustabouts, and he's doing shows, on the road in his own name. The past may be lurid and colourful, although much of it is not of his own making. But it's what's come out of that past now that matters.