long overdue Drone session, Crediton

Last night. Another highly enjoyable session at the Rainbow.

   
John's sitar, and a Goddess(?) image found on the wall
Henry - percussion
Rupert - percussion
John - sitar, bouzouki, acoustic guitar, electric 6 and 12-string guitars, electric fretless bass guitar, voice
Vaughan - acoustic guitar, electric 6-string guitar, electric fretless bass guitar, voice
me - saz, balalaika, percussion
Keith - electric 12-string guitar, electric fretless bass guitar
Celeste - voice and percussion

This was the first time Celeste had sung with us. John brought his sitar for the first time in quite a while. I can't remember how long it's been since Keith played fretless - wonderful - Vaughan and John gave it a try, too. Rupert was trying out a curious percussion instrument which I think was a Cuíca - Airto Moreira played one of these with Miles Davis at the Isle of Wight Festival. Vaughan described it as "a monkey in a tin". The last piece was another one where we agreed an exact time - 10:35 - on the prominent clock in the room to end the piece. This caused it to come crashing to a sudden, rather clumsy end. Very entertaining to do (the recording ends in laughter of course), but I've editted it out due to general lack of musical worth...

Listen Here

Pulse gig at Henry's

A private party on Saturday night. Two one-hour sets, great energy.

(Here's a description of the idea behind Pulse.)

Henry - percussion
Richard - electric bass guitar
Matthew S - cello, harmonica, clarinet, voice, percussion, keyboard, acoustic guitar, musical saw
John - electric guitar, voice, percussion
Mark - percussion
me - saz, percussively-triggered radio device, percussion


Henry, John and Richard
This was the first time we'd played together in this configuration. John was called in at the last minute. I hadn't even met Mark before (this is a different Mark to the occasional COTD keyboard player).

I managed to get a recording of part of the first set and all of the second, but there's some distortion due to levels being set too high. The second set's pretty listenable though:

(Basslines) Ball of Fire -> Walking on the Moon -> Samba -> Guguletu -> Cantaloupe -> Surfin' -> Papa Was a Rolling Stone -> John's groove -> The Beat Goes On

My highlight was the other Matthew singing "House of the Rising Sun" over the "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" bassline.

Set 2 - Listen (big file - 67 minute MP3)

John Renbourn in Topsham

Vicky and I went down to The Globe Hotel in Topsham last night to see John Renbourn playing an eclectic solo set.


John Renbourn, a while ago, and more recently
I'd last seen him ten years ago, with Robin Williamson, playing in what was basically a large shed behind a pub in Belgium. This time it was in the old malthouse behind the Globe (now a little venue called "The Malthouse", predictably).

The highlight for me occurred about an hour before he actually played. We were slightly concerned that the tickets we'd reserved by phone might get sold if we didn't present ourselves early enough, so we wandered over to see what was happening. The door was locked, but we could hear music - we peered through the window, and there he was, looking a bit like Father Christmas with his white hair and spectacles, soundchecking with one of my favourite songs, "Lord Franklin" - that felt like a real blessing.

He kicked off with something pretty wild and vaguely bluesy, introducing it with the words "Here's a guitar thing". The set included a range of English folk, blues, and jazz numbers, hymn tunes, Irish pipe tunes, a couple of songs from the old Pentangle canon ("Watch the Stars", which he explained Jacqui McShee had learned from Peggy Seeger, and "Lord Franklin"). There was a bit of bluegrass, a Randy Weston piano piece, a Mose Allison song, the jazz standard "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" - seemingly endless diversity. He encored with Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain", a song which suits his guitar style perfectly. John Renbourn is a national treasure, and we felt honoured to have seen him play in such an intimate setting from just a few yards away.

When he was playing "Lord Franklin", one of my favourite moments in the history of recorded music came to mind: when the delicately fuzzed-out electric guitar comes in on Pentangle's Cruel Sister version of the song, with Jacqui McShee's vocals floating over the top. I realised that I didn't know whether it was he or Bert Jansch who played that guitar line, so I asked afterwards. It turns out to have been Renbourn playing. He provided further information: Bert was playing a concertina on that, which he'd bought the night before, and never used on any other recordings. His guitar was played through the relatively new "Bosstone" fuzzbox. "If you got it right, it produced a wonderful violin-like sound," he explained, "but a millimetre out, and it sounded horrible!".

Vicky and I had an interesting discussion during the set break. We'd both noticed that during some pieces, as a result of the highly complex and innovative ornamenation he was using, the pieces almost seemed to slip out of rhythm...but we were both well aware that this was a man who could play in time! We came to the conclusion that he's been playing some of these tunes for so many years that he's 'rearranged their innards' (to keep them interesting) to such an extent that the listener must remain incredibly attentive in order to 'follow' what's going on rhythmically. Also, I pointed out, we've become culturally programmed (because of the over-dominance of click-tracks and sequenced music) to expect everything to sit neatly on a rhythmic grid, with any syncopation 'behaving itself' within reasonable limits. Listening to old field recordings of English and Irish folk-singing can challenge such programming, as it often sounds rhythmically 'wrong'. I concluded that, rhythmically, John Renbourn's playing (like his old partner Bert Jansch's singing) is more like this:


outline of a section of basalt colums at The Devil's Postpile, California
than like this:


some chicken wire
...and if you describe a geological formation (or a section of dragonfly's wing, say) as "wrong" and a piece of chicken wire as "right", then your cultural priorities have obviously been distorted to a dangerous extent.

Rainy Night in the Bell Tent

I've finally got around to processing one of the most worthy recordings in my personal archive.

It's a selection of folk tunes from Brittany, France, Corsica, Ukraine, Armenia, Ireland, Wales, etc. recorded spontaneously in my bell tent in some woods near Ventongimps (near Perranzabuloe) in Cornwall one rainy night in autumn 1997. This was shortly after Inge and I had started travelling with the Dongas, and it's certainly the best recording which exists of the Cornwall-period Dongas.

Listen Here
Ruth - fiddle
Jo - wooden flute, melodeon, recorder
Stef - mandolin (and possibly bouzouki)
Inge - mandolin, percussion
me - saz (and possibly percussion)
Howie - percussion (and possibly octave mandola)
Colin - percussion
Josh - percussion (incl. horizontal tambourine)


Colin, Ruth, Inge, Jo and me playing at Roskilly's on The Lizard, probably summer 1998
This was originally recorded onto high-quality chrome cassette via Howie's professional-quality handheld cassette recorder. Unfortunately, that tape either got lost in the post, or is languishing amongst Funkey's millions of tapes in Sint-Niklaas - I sent it to him for digitisation and safekeeping. Fortunately, Ruth did make a copy (not brilliant quality) shortly after the original recording, which remained with our friend Stevie P in Glastonbury until recently.

These second generation recordings have been tidied up with a bit of digital processing and a few little splices.

I'm not actually playing on quite a few of the pieces, as I was dealing with the technical aspects of the recording. There are a few Irish tunes which feature me and Inge (we'd been travelling around Ireland playing a lot of trad earlier that year) with Ruth and Jo. Also, I can be heard starting the Armenian tune "Ambee Dagez" (you can just about hear Inge giggling at the beginning, as I'd messed up the intro a couple of times before getting it right). There might just be another recorder involved in some of the tunes, too - If so, then I'm guessing that would be Kel.

I remember at one point hearing a tambourine through the headphones I was using to monitor the levels. I kept looking around the circle of people sitting in the tent, none of whom was playing a tambourine, and thinking "Where's that tambourine sound coming from?", beginning to wonder if this was some kind of paranormal phenomenon. When the tune in question ended, it became apparent that it was Josh, lying out of view in his sleeping bag tapping a tambourine which happened to be within reach. Josh had a reputation for "tortoising out" (an obscure Jon Pertwee-era Dr. Who reference we'd picked up somewhere) earlier than most of us, but just couldn't help joining in, despite his horizontality.

The rain on the bell tent can be heard at the beginnings and ends of some pieces (and throughout the last piece, which is just Jo playing a lovely French tune on her wooden flute). As Stevie P pointed out, this makes it sound rather like old vinyl - nice.


The bell tent, in Bosahan Woods near Constantine, our next camp after Ventongimps

visit from Jim

My friend Jim (from Red Dog Green Dog) visited Exeter yesterday - he's over from France for a while with his girlfriend. They'd just been up in Avebury and he was on his way to a forest gardening course at Dartington.

Good timing, as we were having our monthly Drone session at St.
Stephens church. He came along and contributed some lovely concertina and soprano sax. Unfortunately he didn't bring his mbira along (it's in an awkward tuning). This is the first time he's played with us.

His girlfriend Jess is an artist, so I suggested that if she wanted to come along, perhaps she should bring a sketchbook or something. In the end she didn't come, but we (unexpectedly) had an artist called Lou Phillips busily working away at the back of the church during our first set. She'd met Henry at some event last weekend and seemed very excited about the idea of creating visual art in conjunction with improvised music:


Lou Phillips with her work all produced during the first set
James T - piano, percussion, poetry
Henry - percussion
Keith - acoustic bass guitar, mandola, percussion
John - acoustic guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, voice, percussion, low whistle
me - saz, balalaika, acoustic bass guitar, percussion
Vaughan - voice, acoustic guitar, percussion, slide whistle(?)

with

Jim - concertina, soprano saxophone

Pete - voice, piano
Jo - voice, hang
Jeff - voice

Exeter City Council - plumbing and vehicle noises

A very floaty, mellow, multi-layered session. Also, interestingly, Jo brought along a hang, a curious percussion instrument someone once described to me as "a cross between a steel drum, a UFO and a gamelan orchestra". Dan C (who has DJ'd with us in the past) mentioned that he's been playing one of these lately, when I last saw him.

Listen Here