| Touring tends to be very high up on the list of things that bands want to get into, with touring abroad being one of the ultimate goals. But how to raise the cash? Steve Lawson recently toured America on a budget by staying and performing in people’s houses. We had a bit of a chat with him about how it’s going.
1) You’ve recently done an American tour entirely inside other people’s houses. Tell us why you decided to do that. My wife Lobelia and I started doing house concerts together about 3 or 4 years ago – I had previously played some solo house concerts, but our duo show seemed to fit perfectly in that more conversational, friendly environment. When our son was born 18 months ago, we moved to doing house concerts almost exclusively, as a way of continuing to tour with a baby. He loves getting out and meeting new people, and houses tend to be far easier places to manage the dual responsibilities of performing music and parenting at the same time! We’ve also found that booking and promoting house concert tours is MUCH easier than trying to book more traditional music venues is – we can book later, and be more flexible in how we go about routing a tour.
2) How did you go about finding houses to perform in? Was it difficult? It’s surprisingly easy – both of us have a small but committed audience for our music, and within those people, there are enough who are willing to host the house concerts. So we tend to just post a message on twitter and facebook and invite people to contact us if they’re interested in hosting. So far, it’s worked out great! Social media has made it so much easier to have conversations like that with our listeners, and to do the organising and promoting without having to spend hundreds of dollars on posters, flyers and local news ads.
3) Has it been successful? Would you say there are any particular advantages or disadvantages over touring in pubs/venues? We’re able to re-draw the lines around ‘success’ – the costs involved in touring are now so much lower, that the chances of us actually losing money on tour are very slim. And if we did, it’s not going to be a sizable loss. So we can play to small audiences and still make enough money to keep us on the road, knowing that every now and then we’ll have a show that ends up being a lot more profitable. Sometimes we’re able to get guarantees for shows, if they involve us driving a long way out of our way to play a speculative show. And of course, the human side of touring is so much more fun now – we make a lot of new friends, get to spend better quality time in places, to meet other musicians and music lovers as we go round. No-one’s getting rich, but you’d have to be insane to go into music with the aim of getting rich! That’s a great way to ruin what is otherwise an amazing privilege. The biggest advantages are that you can play in nicer places, through a better sound system to audiences who listen more intently, with no espresso or smoothie machines buzzing away, no drunks at the bar talking over what you do, no stopping mid-set for the meat raffle or any such nonsense. You’re not there to sell beer, you’re there for people who love music and care about the people who make it. So we get to tell a lot of stories about where the music comes from, to answer questions and to eat and drink with our audiences between sets. Come to think of it, there are very few things about pubs and venues that I miss…!
4) Do you think it was easier to find places to stay because you were an Englishman touring in America? Do you think, for example, that if you tried to do the same thing in the UK people would be less open to putting you up? We do do the same thing in the UK, and it works fine. My wife is from the US, so she’s the curiosity when we play in the UK. But I do know British artists who doing house concerts in the UK and do fine. If people like your music and are interested in you as a person, where you’re from is just one aspect of that. I’m not sure any Americans would go and see a British bassist just out of a love of our freaky accent!
5) I read on your blog that three of your gigs so far have been in art galleries – how did that happen? Total chance! The first was in Toledo, with a good friend and fellow solo bassist Steven Guerrero – he’s a wonderful musician, and we’ve played shows with him 3 times now. Each time, he finds an interesting place for us to play, and this time, it was in an art studio where a mutual twitter friend of ours works – an amazing artist called Steve Mockensturm. The Minneapolis show was booked about 10 days before the gig, via twitter – a twitter friend saw that we had a cancellation in Madison, Wisconsin, so invited us to play as part of a city-wide art weekend. We had an amazing time there. And the third one was again a late booking, via some more remarkable musician friends – Amy and Joe from the band Clatter, who found another beautiful creative space for us to play in called Zuzak’s in Boonville, Missouri. So there was no plan for that to happen, but the beauty of this kind of touring is just how flexible we can be, and how quickly a day off can turn into an exciting new gig!
6) What have been the highest and lowest points of this tour? The high point for me gig-wise was the show in the Minneapolis art gallery – I was able to play an hour long improvised set before we did our usual set, which I recorded and will be released at some point soon. But my favourite thing by far about touring is meeting up with some many amazing friends, old and new. The community of people who support our music around the world constantly surprises me, and getting to catch up with them and share music with them and their friends is a real privilege. Low point? Just tiredness – we’re doing some LONG drives and it gets tiring pretty fast.
7) Is touring in people’s houses something you’d do again? Would you look at doing it in other countries? Where would be your ideal place to tour like this? This is pretty much the only way we can tour as a duo now – we have our son with us, and playing regular venues would just prove too difficult logistically. So we’re looking forward to playing more house concerts in the UK and Europe before the end of the year! I think my ideal situation in anything is ‘variety’ – I love the way that our touring life is heading, and I hope it continues!
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After cancelling on an interview with them once I wasn’t going to let an epic Sunday hangover prevent me from meeting up with NED this time around, and so I met Keith, partially responsible for said hangover in front of The World’s End. From there he led me to NED HQ, conveniently hidden just around the corner from The Black Heart, where I was greeted with a cup of tea and the rest of the NED team: Vaughan and Nicole - the core of NED - and Rob. We took our places around the room filled with books, movies, records and guitars hung on the walls. Centre stage definitely belonged to the drum kit, occupying a significant amount of the room’s space.
Vaughan, introduced to me by Keith as ‘a friendly Viking’, is the driving force behind NED - “a band who have a message that is clear, it’s pretty obvious what we’re talking about” - he explains. “Our main passion is to play live - that’s all we wanna do, create something for people to enjoy, something they wanna get involved with. We want to give people tangible things that they like - we have CDs, we want to make vinyls as well, even tapes to give away for free at gigs.”
Thinkpol formed to compliment NED’s philosophy of the “new normal”. The name is taken from Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’; it was the Thought Police responsible for punishing thought-criminals. “We all got a bit disillusioned with the music scene. I had met Rob on a handful occasions and what I loved about him was that as a band, he would treat you well; he’d make sure you get paid correctly. Then Keith and Nicole stepped in. It seems like we’ve got a good team. We want to play better nights, well attended nights, pay the bands right. We can offer them other things - we can do videos for them quickly, look into what their next step is…”
It seems like Camden’s version of Thinkpol has the reverse mission to Orwell’s original. Vaughan jokes, “We sound like Scientologists! It sounds like a cult!” In fact it’s more of a creative collective. “At the moment it’s based around NED, then we’re gonna branch out. Eventually we’ll bring more bands on the roster and expand it.” It is clear that everyone present in the room gets the creative buzz.
Rob, sat on the drum kit’s stool, jumps in: “I stayed over last night and during that time we achieved so much more than we would normally achieve during a week. It’s weird what energy does. We were doing a video till 3am yesterday and we cracked on with it when we woke up. Energy is contagious; it comes when you’re really working towards something.”
It certainly seems like energy was what brought them all together. Vaughan remembers the exact night. “I was playing a gig in Kilburn on my own, some of the NED stuff, like ‘Mass Manipulation’. I played on a banjo, but with loads of distortion, it was a bit of a crazy set. And Nicole came down. I must’ve played about a thousand gigs by then and she’d pretty much come to about 995 of them. And after that one I said ‘I don’t really fancy playing on my own. I just don’t like that, I don’t mind it, I can do it sometimes, but I like the feeling of being in a band, collaborating, being creative with people’. And out of the blue she just said ‘you need a beat, that’s all you need. I could just kick a foot drum for you, that’s all I’d do.’ I was shocked because she’s not at all a performer! The next day she bought that drum kit” - Vaughan points to the kit in the room. - “I came home and it was here!”
They started to play gigs together as a two-piece and originally that’s what they wanted to be. They grew thanks to Vaughan’s other band, Dirt Diggers. “They’re all amazing musicians; they’ve all done it for years, so it’s quite an established band in terms of our musical ability. My guitarist heard NED as a two-piece, he loved it, he wanted in”, Vaughan explains.
The official launch of NED’s debut album ‘A New Normal’ is taking place on the 19th July at The Wilmington Arms in Islington. Keith’s artwork, combined with the lyrics and videos released to date, seem to suggest there’s a pretty well thought through concept behind it all, however ‘concept’ is the word that Vaughan doesn’t associate with NED. “Every time I hear it I think of Emerson Lake and Palmer, you know?”, he laughs. He wouldn’t call ‘A New Normal’ a concept album, however he admits there is a running theme behind each song. “It’s basically how I view society by living and working in London. As a nation we accept all the changes that are happening right now. Even when our train ticket prices are being increased every second week of January we accept it and we move on. We live in a society where inflation is rising but no one’s wages are going up... it all becomes the new normal. The whole record is about questioning all these things. Maybe it will make some people pay attention...” He’s not interested in making NED a political force, but he’s clearly passionate making a statement.
George Orwell is mentioned as one of the obvious inspirations, as is Chomsky and the diaries of Che Guevara. As soon as Guevara’s name is mentioned, despite his previous statement that NED are not a political group, Vaughan slips the word ‘revolution’ into the conversation. “I read somewhere that any revolution can start – all we need is 50 people. 50 people and you can start something. And that’s kind of the ethos of NED – we need 50 people who are gonna believe in us and then we will hopefully take it to the world”.
We go on to discuss the current events, with Istanbul and Brazil both getting mentions. He explains that, although he is more focused on writing about what is happening at home, he is also concerned that our knowledge of what is happening overseas may be clouded by the angle of the media. Throughout the conversation, a screensaver on a laptop in front of him has been prompting random words from the dictionary and at the best possible moment Vaughan points to the screen and says “I like that word! Espionage: a practice of spying, typically in governments to obtain political and military information.”
Thinkpol is definitely set to make a difference. After the launch on the 19th July, Thinkpol and NED want to become a regular monthly night for London’s open minds. Vaughan and Rob cannot help but talk over each other to introduce the acts that will play on the 19th. “We’ve got our friend J.D. Smith, who’s a rockabilly guitarist. We’ve got Plastic Horse who Rob found, a rock & roll psychedelic four-piece. There’s a band called Voodoo Binmen who are a two-piece and they’re great! Then there’s Diamond Lights, another two-piece, quite simple guitar, very heavy drums, not like Voodoo Binmen who are a bit more light-hearted. Just before our set we’re gonna have a poet who we all like. He does the whole ‘end of the world’ poetry thing. He’s hilarious, but great at the same time. So we’ve got quite an eclectic night going on, but we think it’s all gonna make sense. That’s the idea for all the Thinkpol nights.”
It seems like it does make sense to the audience already, as the launch night was originally planned for The Black Heart, the natural choice next door to NED HQ, however ticket sales made them move it to a higher capacity venue. It is also becoming apparent that London’s music scene is craving creative collectives focused on bringing good music to good audiences. There might not be fifty of them around just yet, but the bohemian storm is brewing...
Kscope have been releasing the very best of the new wave of progressive music for five years now. The label, which put out its first release with No-Man’s ‘Schoolyard Ghosts’ on 12th May 2008, is a division of Snapper Music and has seen its profile rise with extraordinary speed over the last couple of years in particular. A rise in commercial success for Steven Wilson can largely be credited for the transformation, alongside the signings of Amplifier, Anathema and Ulver amongst others. To celebrate the label’s anniversary we’ve spoken to the label's Johnny Wilks and picked out five of the essential releases in the label’s back catalogue...
When did the formation of a label first come into your thoughts? How difficult was it to originally get things going?
We had always discussed it from the early Porcupine Tree days but Snapper Music was running a slightly different model at the time with a large DVD catalogue and its own rostered frontline artists. Our MD Fred Jude came on board in 2005 and we started to focus more on the new label alongside sister label Peaceville.
Never easy but there was a lot of enthusiasm and the timing was right not just with the new signings but the media in Europe as more bands were embracing the genre.
What do you think is behind the resurgence of “progressive” music in recent years?
I think the interpretation has changed in some circles and bands such as Muse or Radiohead have been giving the genre good press. Bands have been re-establishing the movement’s original desire to experiment with eclectic musical sources and sonic possibilities in order to produce something meaningful in the here and now. I feel that there is less snobbery within musical genres and music fans are open to new music.
One of the best things about the label for me is that it showcases the fact that there are lots of different aspects to the progressive scene. It’s not just a load of bands with one sound. Having said that, is there a point at which you would draw the line as a label? Would you release an experimental techno record, for example?
There are parameters for us today but they may change tomorrow.
We are all about experimental – I would never rule out an experimental techno record!
The quality of physical releases from Kscope is outstanding, and there are always plenty of options available as well. How important is it to you that fans can get exactly the release format they want?
We certainly hold high standards especially when it comes to physical product (CD/ Vinyl)
We support traditional retailers and spend a lot of time and effort in creating physical packages for the fans. The industry has changed without a doubt but there is a market for CD & vinyl and they deserve quality packaging.
Has there been any one release in the label’s history which, for you, equates to a turning point?
Probably ‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’. The label had really got going and we were working with Engineers, Gazpacho & Steven Wilson when they delivered the record. I really felt we were establishing ourselves as a label.
The shows to celebrate the five years of Kscope so far take place in London next month. What can you say about them to tempt any readers who may be unsure about their attendance?
You’ll see the brilliant Anathema in a small venue, a one of show with Bruce Soord & Jonas Renkse playing their acclaimed (Guardian best of albums of the year so far) album ‘Wisdom Of Crowds’ and one of the best live bands around Amplifier. Plus Mothlite (listen to Something In The Sky – pop genius) on stage with a lion’s head (yes) and the Zane Lowe championed North Atlantic Oscillation (yes Radio 1 played the post progressive sounds).
As Kscope continues to develop and grow, what are your plans for the future? Where do you think the label will be five years from now?
2nights at the O2… We just want to keep championing the genre and entice more people to discover the sounds.
Finally, I’m sure you have more releases in the pipeline in the immediate future. What should we look out for in the coming months?
Working on the new Ulver album ‘Messe’ due in September, Swedish band Katatonia have reworked their latest studio album for Kscope (the band are signed to sister label Peaceville) & Anathema have a concert film coming soon. We also have Steven Wilson playing the Royal Albert Hall in October.
Five Essential Kscope Releases
No-Man - ‘Schoolyard Ghosts’ (2008)
(((o))): As gracefully haunting as one would expect, but also containing No-Man’s most ambitious musical arrangements to date.
KS: A great partnership with Tim Bowness’ gentle vocals - listen to ‘Wherever There Is Light’
Anathema - ‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’ (2010)
(((o))): In which Anathema finally complete their transformation from the world of doom and gloom to something more hopeful and upbeat, but no less poignant.
KS: Danny Cavanagh came in and said ‘listen to this - no talking just listening’. I listened and smiled
The Pineapple Thief - ‘Someone Here is Missing’ (2010)
(((o))): The band’s finest release to date, shaking off the Porcupine Tree comparisons and diving full-length into emotionally charged art rock.
KS: Our art designer gave it to the late great Storm Thorgerson and boldly said ‘ listen to this, you should design the cover for this record’ – he came back the next day (and agreed).
Ulver - ‘Wars of the Roses’ (2011)
(((o))): The Norwegian legends captured at their most accessible, and yet also their most playfully experimental; possibly the most sonically fascinating release in the Kscope catalogue.
KS: Always loved Ulver – expect the unexpected. They were a band on our wish list when we started the label and Nosound’s favourite band.
Steven Wilson - ‘Grace for Drowning’ (2011)
(((o))): The moment when Wilson’s progressive rock influences merge perfectly with his more forward-thinking experimental leanings and even pop leanings. An undeniable classic of the modern “post-progressive” era.
KS: The Porcupine Tree frontman followed Insurgentes with this double album. Postcard, Raider II – brilliant. I actually heard it for the first time when in New York when Porcupine Tree were playing Radio City (I always remember the first listens).
