borntohang

I'm already planning to do a bit of a blog about it on here but the scriptwriters are really phoning it in this year and our schedule has become totally divorced from reality, so as stupid as it sounds this will actually be the most intimate show we're doing that week. Tuesday we're at Anfield, Wednesday we'll be driving to Belgium to open the main stage at Rock Werchter on Thursday afternoon, after which the van will head back to the UK while we fly out to Switzerland for this show, then hop back on another plane and hopefully get back just in time to play Wembley Saturday and Sunday nights. Then we're back off into Europe again for another two weeks. All starts to sound a bit daft when you type it all out like that doesn't it...

We stayed in the studio at Parr Street the week after Coldplay were in there tracking X&Y. They wouldn't tell us which room Chris and Gwyneth stayed in cause they knew we would make it weird. We managed to make it weird anyway but I appreciated the effort at discretion.

Sadly no Shaggy on this date. I'm actually playing guitar and organ for this show, but when I asked the guitarists nobody knew who Sting was and then the keyboardists just started talking to me about modular euroracks and other nonsense so I thought I'd tell you fellas instead. Anyway, get your important bass-playing questions in now and I'll get you the lowdown on all those crucial details: Do tortoise pickguards really sound better? What HPF do you use to make your rig cut through in the back room of the Dog and Duck? Where did your accent go? How do you stop having tantric sex??

Wilko played a venue I worked at a few years back before his illness and from what I saw backstage they don't leave home without at least a brick or two! An old mate of mine has been teching for Norm on both Blockheads and Wilko duties, which must be cool. I should really get in touch sometime and see if we can hook something up because I'd love to have a proper chat with him. On the Wilko date I saw him real close up in a 150 cap venue and the man just does not make mistakes.

That's a real shame, we played there last year and it was a great turnout and atmosphere apart from briefly having to bounce a Sir Richard Head III down the front. In a slightly weirder turn of events there were also a few people sketching in the audience who left their work onstage for us to take home, which I thought was kind of sweet. Absolute pig of a load in though!

Congrats on the new bass - pretty sure I was keeping an eye on that one myself but unfortunately I'm not in the market right now. It's a cool looking shape and I haven't seen them for sale over here before. Got any clips?

I've been using an Eastwood Map for the last year and get lots of questions about whether I'm running sub-octaves or anything in the background. Astoundingly deep and subby when you set it right but also very sensitive to playing position. I'd like to go to 32" scale just to get a bit more twang but in fairness between the single cut body and the two big mudbuckers it's not really a twangy design so I'm not sure how much difference it would make...

I want to try one next time I'm in the Eastwood shop for sure, but wish they'd done one with some different pickup options. I actually tried out the Baritone Tenor model and it would work quite nicely as a super-shorty in the right context.

Package tour is a classic move but you need at least a bit of a name outside of your local area to get promoters onside - they aren't going to want to put a big local act on as opener and if you're the supports then they may as well just use all locals with a guaranteed draw.

Keyboardist in a big jazz group - up to 14 of us depending on lineup. Blinding soloist; sensitive piano accompanist; brilliant mind for theory and arrangement; total and utter asswipe. Virulently racist, sexist, and many of the the other available 'ists' or 'phobes' in the dictionary; Everyone he had ever been in a band with was an idiot (ignoring the common denominator as per); regularly belittled his long-suffering business partner because of her religion; unseemly penchant for girls a third his age; demeaning comments about the relative 'phwoar' factor of his teenage students; total lack of situational awareness after three pints; delusions of grandeur etc etc etc. The list was fairly endless and compounded by his constant inability to hit cues or not screw up simple parts - he was brilliant you see, so he didn't need to practice or engage brain for anything less than a Metheny tune. Regularly turned up for weddings and photo shoots in scrubby t-shirts and bright orange trainers but luckily was so hidden behind stacks of vintage keyboards that often entire shows could pass without anyone realising he was back there. It ended fairly acrimoniously when three members approached me separately within a few days of each other to tell me that either he went or they did. One of them told me in no uncertain terms that, although he was a brilliant arranger and a massive asset to the group, if they had to bunk with him again on a tour he would be preparing a lively and engaging original composition arranged for his fists and the keyboardist's face. A day after that he turned up on another member's doorstep late at night panicking about band finances and how we would be dividing royalties when we got on Jools Holland, totally ignoring the fact that due to the huge running costs required to keep us on the road we weren't actually making any significant amount of money at any time in the near future and not to mention that Jools rarely books wedding bands regardless of the quality of their interstitial jazz-fusion widdlings. The whole thing collapsed pretty quickly after that and lo and behold he suddenly had another set of 'idiots' to complain about. Real shame because there were some great moments but can't say I miss it much.

The song is one of those 'funny once' things in the way most parody music that isn't Weird Al is, but Merle Hazard is a top tier stage name.

We've been using click for the last year I've been in a band - it's actually a click alongside some sequencing so it's a bit more structurally rigid than just a click you can improvise around, but there's some clever tricks that the drummer does with re-triggering to let us spin out certain sections. He's the only one with it in IEMs so honestly I haven't really noticed any difference between playing with click vs just playing with a drummer with a strong tempo. We're all transitioning to IEM soon and I'm thinking of asking for a bit of the click in mine just to test it out, but don't think it'll be as useful if two of us are following the click instead of each other.

Setting the master on full and controlling your volume from the gain pot is the easiest way to bypass a master volume circuit in a tube guitar amp. In theory gives you overdrive that's sensitive to changes from the guitar by winding back your volume pot. It's not an approach I would use for bass unless you're running into a tube amp and wanting power amp distortion.

That would be the sensible way to do it, but I like the sound of the preamp always in the chain! I get more compliments from sound techs regarding my sound than I ever did with my full rig and it's small enough to chuck in the bass bag. I'm seriously considering buying a second to run as a Wet/Dry rig.

I've used the VTDI straight into an amp for a few years now and had no major issues - the XLR routes out to front of house so they can do what they want with that signal, and then I just run into whatever bass rig is onstage and tweak the EQ appropriately for the room. The trick is finding your setting on the DI and then changing the amp settings to suit it rather than the other way round, or you end up chasing the soundman round with front of house tweaks vs your onstage tweaks... You have to have the confidence that it sounds good out front though. If you're not regularly playing through decent FoH rigs then into a poweramp or FRFR is 100% the way to go.

Some of our versions are probably closer to theirs than the album ones. I would happily do a Polysics trib but think that might be the only way to be even more niche than before.

I've briefly mentioned it on here before, but I think I've probably got a claim to most niche tribute on the board. I've been having fun with my DEVO tribute for a couple of years now; we're not regular and only average about a show a month except we tend to do them in two batches a year - one spring run and one autumn run. We're in an odd position as we tend to bomb at tribute festivals but our own shows can pull 200+ in the right town. I guess not many DEVO fans also want to be able to catch Noasis and The Killerz after our set... In musical terms we tend to go for attitude over accuracy so I scored a bunch of bootleg live sets and live footage when we were setting up so I could work on the synth sounds and arrangements. I think I listened to just about nothing else for about four months and to be honest I've only recently been able to get back into enjoying them as a band. Had to go total cold turkey except for when we played the sets!

Usually means at production cost or nearabouts. It's not a steal or anything but it's better than RRP. Companies tend not to just give out free guitars these days; it's a lot more common to borrow some kit for a tour or festival season. I think 'endorsement' would be a bit strong at the moment as I'm only a sessioneer with a band who have an arrangement with the manufacturers, but I've been using kit on long term loan from Eastwood, Hiwatt, and Ashdown. They've all been very generous for a low profile band and I've been really happy to be able to use their kit - got lucky with them really as we have personal relationships with various members of their teams that have developed into professional relationships. It does get weird seeing yourself pop up on Instagram or in their newsletters though!

When my old man was a student he used to do the folk circuit with an accordion duo plus percussion playing English trad. Now, Morris and other associated English musical forms have a long and glorious history that tends to get overshadowed somewhat by the fact the Celts wrote all the tunes you can get whizzed and roar along to, but there's a lot of landlords who see it all as the same diddly-dee nonsense so book whoever. This evening in question they were playing in a particularly low-rent Irish bar in Northern England and going down fine (by which I mean everyone was too whizzed or uncultured to notice the difference) and were looking forward to winding the set up and getting to the drinking part of the evening (my dad used to describe them as a drinking club with a musical problem) until the end of the set when the landlord comes over: "About to close up now lads, can you play the anthem for time?" This wasn't in the plan but was a regular request back then so they decide on a key and off they go into God Save Brenda. Three bars in there's an almighty clatter as all the pints go down on the tables and as one the entire room is stood up glaring daggers. Landlord comes storming back up to the stage: "Not that shite, the bloody Anthem!" Cue muttered and frantic discussion on how to busk Amhran na bhFiann arr. for two accordions and sphincter whistle; in the end they meekly admitted defeat and made a sharp exit stage left. He wasn't sure how much of it was genuine and how much of it was just a setup to get a full night of free music with extra entertainment at the expense of the daft folkie students, but he wasn't about to test out any working theories...

They have a ridiculously good setup - I've been dying to know so will get on this when I get home. Always seem to maintain incredible separation and clarity while making sure it still has some power at the micro-volumes they must be playing at.

With the other team I usually play with it's art galleries, second-hand bookshops, vegan cafes, and early nights. With these guys I suspect it will be endless motorway miles, sushi, early morning radio interviews, and trying to cultivate inner peace because there certainly won't be any outer. Different strokes! We've got a week away in February that will be the main stress test run but we've already done a few mini tours and a bunch of festivals so I'm not expecting any nasty surprises. I'm just going to pick up a cheap laptop and a kindle so I can try and catch up on a bunch of reading.

We'll be covering approx 6000 road miles in just over four weeks and there will be a huge amount of downtime apart from the twenty minutes a day we're onstage so I was planning to take a laptop and do some writing anyway, but I'll keep a gig diary of sorts on here if anyone would be interested in the more performance-related aspects of that kind of show.

Up until March last year 200 was a decent turnout for me. As I mentioned, it's all got extremely busy extremely quickly...

No mate, not me on any of the proper video releases. The newer live stuff I'm either on guitar and keys or bass, depending on the lineup. It's not the sort of genre I would generally be playing either but I've known them a long time and they're a pretty great live act, even if I do say so myself. We played to about 10k at Isle of Wight and 14k at a christmas show for Capital FM, but I'm looking forward to doing some properly big shows!

I'll save you the trouble! I'm just playing session for them at the moment so only my band in a technical sense, but if it means I get to play Wembley then I'm not complaining about not being in a video or two. https://youtu.be/3SAAgrOXf-E