My Dutch Radio Debut

I really made the most of my day off work this week. Tamira has been asked to appear on the radio - Amsterdam FM. She asked me to come along for a little moral support and to add a second guitar to some of her songs.

We were appearing on the 'literature hour'. This meant that several authors had come along to be interviewed about their music and Tamira and I would play songs in between. We started with Randy - one of Tamira's own songs. They asked Tamira about her album etc.

Between songs we had to quietly sit and listen to the interviews. Tamira was pretty worse for wear from the night before, so I think her lasting memory of the evening will be an hour spent stifling coughs. We also played Crazy Train which we'd been practicing.

I think it went pretty well. The hosts were pretty happy.

A percussivley policed jam

We had a few firsts at our jam session this week. We had our first Didgeridoo and the police came for a a listen. Not Sting and Stewart Copeland (although if you're listening boys, you're welcome to pop in), but the boys in blue, the fuzz or the Rozzers.

Other than the police following up a noise complaint, it was a damn good night. we had a lot of new faces. Multi-instrumentalists Nate and Francisco were there from the onset and we had some cool chilled out jams with the Didgeridoo and some percussion.

Once a few more people had arrived, despite having had a dodgy throat all week, I kicked the singing off with a few of our standards:

Luckily Eoghan arrived again to taise the bar and teach a few new songs. we did a pretty good jam on 'Movin' on up' by Primal Scream:



Now that I know it, I think I'm going to steal Eoghan's idea and Fraser and I will try it at the next open mike.

Ali also showed up around this point. He's a wonderful lead guitarist, but what I didn;t know is that he prefers acoustic. Ali and Eoghan then did a version of romeo and Juliet with David:

Ali then did some great folk in DADGAD tuning:

Christoph the drummer also made his first appearace at this Jam session. We had many a good Jam at the Mine with Christoph and it was great to see him again. He was there with another new face; Pascal. Sensing some serious talent I paired them with Lorenzo and Robert and we heard some of the best music that the Jam has produced so far; assisted throughout by Nate and Francisco on percussion . Well done boys!

A usual, the CC Muziek Café lounge was pretty full too:

After this the police arrived, so Tamira's set was particularly quiet. The regulars then kept the Jam going until I unplugged things at 1:30am so that I could go home to bed before work.

Tamira and Co - 12.02.2011 - Sink or swim, Westpoort

Tamira and her band had a gig to prepare for, but at the last minute they were guitar-less, so I foolishly agreed to learn their songs on top of my already stressful workload.

The gig was at Sink or Swim which is a studio rented by one of Lorenzo's mates. It's out past Sloterdijk Station, so it was quite an adventure to get there. Lorenzo, Deen, Tamira and I cycled out there in about 20 minutes...

When we got there it was all very "anti-kraak". We went through a garage door and left our bikes in a warehouse and then climbed through a little door to get to ante-room off a small stage. When you play in the same venue weekly, it's great to have the feeling of working out how you are going to sound in a new venue. The opening band were already soundchecking, so we weaved through them to get to a kind of lounge area.

The gig was a cross between a show and a hosue party. Very loungey and relaxed. There was a small bar selling cheap beer and we all kind of mingled and prepared for our gig until it was time for us to go on.

I don't know much about the first band. Good effort - great drummer and bassist supported by two girls singing and one girl on keyboard. I missed the guitar, but it also meant that I felt quite good about not being outclassed and the little audience that was collecting would be chuffed to here some Kerchunk-a-wang...

We went on and played through our set. Amazingly it went by without any noticeable hitch, which for me was surprising considering I had never played all the songs in one go correctly before.

We came off stage just about 10 minutes before the last tram left, so I didn't get to ride the post-gig euphoria very much. I don't have any photos, but Lisa's friend Sebastian took some, so hopefully I'll get a hold of them later.

Friday afternoon practice in Melody line.

Tamira's band is without a guitarist and they have a gig on Saturday, so against my better judgement I agreed to learn a setlist of 13 songs in a matter of days. Today was our first/last proper practice before the gig. The set was as follows:

You can leave your hat on (Joe Cocker et. al.)
Somebody to love(Jefferson Airplane)
Don't speak(No Doubt)
Celebrity Skin(Hole)
Zombie(The Cranberries)
Sex on Fire(Kings of leon)
I alone(Live)
Breed(Nirvana)
Stuck in the Middle with you(Stealer's Wheel)
the Dark(Anouk)
Pretty Fly for a white Guy(The Offspring)
Tubthumping(Chumbawumba)
Song 2(Blur)
Radar Love(Golden earing)

Not a bad set. I'm still struggling with a few of them - but Lorenzo is a very good supporitng Bass Player and he's doing a great job of filling in the blanks.

new band

Practicing with Tamira´s band for a gig on Saturday. Lots of songs to learn...

Tamira's gig.

Yesterday was a pretty fun filled day. I was going to mix the recordings from the last open mike, but somehow I managed to delete all the files. It was one of those...

"Oh shit..... pooof gone...ah well... what am I going to do now?"

Tamira told me she was stressing a little about pulling her band together. No one is doing what they were told and she was worrying about that night's gig. She asked me if I would come along to her practice and give her some support. Karolina was on the way out the door to the gym, so I suggested she swap it for a bike run to Duivendrecht and back instead.

Before we left for MelodyLine - we had to finish Kenneth's birthday present. I'm racked with guilt. It just didn't make any sense to head over to Scotland for the big man's 30th, so we decided to film a sketch/birthday message for him. It was a roaring success - so maybe we're do that more often.

Anyway... it was a lovely cycle - Blue skies - but baltic cold. No matter how fast you cycled, your legs never warmed up.

When we arrived the band were already there making lots of noise. The only people I hadn't met before was the twin guitar team of Jelmer and Darren. Tamira was feeling the pressure of trying to get everyone to focus on their set-list and learn the songs. Part of me was really glad[Sorry Tamira :-)]. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that gets stressed about getting people motivated.

After a few songs I could see what her fears were. While there were plenty songs that went well, it was a big undertaking to bring together 7 people to learn 30-40 songs in a matter of weeks. Different people had different abilities more importantly different levels of effort were being put in. The main issue I could see was that Lisa and Tamira were getting frustrated with having to manage recognition of mistakes and how the group as a whole go about having to find a solution. I spent a lot of the time wondering what my bands sounded like when I was 16-17 and just starting out. We laughed and joked a lot, but we had much less patience for mistakes. We had probably got over the fear of admitting and recognising mistakes from playing in the more formal setting of a brass band.

Anyway - they were doing very well, and given time, I think it would really start to gel - but Tamira was quite rightly stressed about making it gel for the imminent gig that night. I tried to keep pretty quiet so that I wasn't interfering while at the same time letting Tamira know that I was there if they needed some advice.

We headed back and left them to it. We were babysitting Appie at night, so Karolina was going to stay behind while I headed to the gig.

I left for another cold cycle across Amsterdam at about 9:30. It was strange being in the bar and not playing or not having any stress or responsibility to set things up. I got a little worried when I realised I was about the 3rd audience member there, but it very quickly filled up and turned into one of the busiest nights that the Cafe has had.

Rene was on fine form and relishing being the superbusy barman. He was running around like a mad man all night but very successfully playing host to I guess around 60 drinkers at one time. I was avoiding the solo drinker mantel and spent most of the night trying to coax some photos out of my Camera. I think things are starting to go well.

For the band there were a few ropey moments in the first set - mainly caused by nerves and lack of preparation. From the first break onwards, they just got better and better. The audience really embraced them and as the drink flows the night really gelled. I was very impressed and proud of Tamira.

I left half way through the third set. I knew that if I stayed to the end I'd have to wait until everyone cleared up before I could leave.

I passed home via Coco's to see if Fraser was around - but it was far too packed for me to even attempt to head in...

A rare late night saturday for me - and no late night takeaway!!!

First Jam of the year

Last night was the first Jam of the year at CC Muziek Café. Devin has been holding down the fort while I was in Scotland for Christmas. From now on I expect every Thursday to be filled with the trials, tribulations and joys of hosting a Jam Session.

Devin, Deen and I had a practice the previous day before opening to run through a few things. I’m hoping these Wednesday sessions give us a chance to build a semblance of a house band, but I was a bit disappointed that it was just the three of us running through my Open Mike chords, maybe I tried to do too much on my first week back at work. The mood lifted when Marcel Gorski came in and I ran through a few old classics with him. Sadly he couldn’t be there last night.

Anyway… I was there nice and early to get things set up, and was glad when Fergus came in. I met him through Fraser at a drinking session few months back and remembered that he said he played the bass. It was good to see a new face. My on-going fear of the Jam Sessions is that it’s just me stumbling through songs, and I don’t yet have a core group of people who’s talents I know; I miss Javier, Fraser and Sandra.

Before we even had things set up, we had a band of Devin, Deen, Höskuldur, Fergus and Me. It was enough to run through a few songs and blow off the cob webs. Fergus made a great difference to our Bass-less practicing the previous night. I think we probably did Angie and Dancing in the moonlight. Pretty soon a quiet guy named James joined in with some wonderfully improvised acoustic guitar over the top of everything. We continued like this through another several songs, before I eventually was able to take a break and leave the band to a few jams.

It was sounding pretty good from off the stage. The bar was still pretty quiet but it was good to hear a jam still continuing while I wasn’t playing. Ted and Mathew were there to talk to René about making a promotional video(watch this space).

After a while I returned to the stage and we ran through some more Jammy songs now that I had a feeling for our Ad-Hoc band of the night. If memory serves me correctly we ran through Knockin on Heaven’s door, All along the watch tower and Battle of Evermore with Marco now adding some acoustic guitar. By the time I finished that lot, we also had Dave Harmonica Hulks, Geert and Robert waiting to play. The combination suggested blues was the order of the Jam, and I left them to shuffle away for a good 20 minutes.

Tamira had been chilling in the smoking area down the stairs waiting for the band to go on. I was quite jealous of the coziness down in the smoking area, while I was upstairs being paranoid that everything wasn’t running smoothly. Eventually her Bass player(Lorenzo arrived) and we put together a band to do Tubthumping, Boots and MGMT… before we returned to some blues Jams  until the end of the Jam.

All in all it was a pretty good jam. It started slowly, but eventually there was lots of happy musicians playing away who seemed to be really enjoying themselves. We still don’t have enough audience members braving the tough January weather and Winter Depressie to come out and see us, but hopefully with the number of musicians we have that will slowly come.

Below is a list of some of the songs that cropped up during the night:

Neil, Tamira and Sandra - Live @ Mollys 10th Sept.

Wednesday night after a fruitful writing session, Fraser and I decided that a celebratory pint of the black stuff(no… not Bovril) was in order. We headed down to Mollys where Matty asked if I could put a “band” together due to a last minute cancellation. At such last minute notice it turned out that both Fraser AND Eric Clapton were busy, so I put a call in to Sandra and Tamira and we agreed that Tamira would handle the first set with a little back up from me and then Sandra and I would do the rest of the night to allow Tamira to get home for work the next morning.

Friday night means little pressure to invite people, which means no posters and not a lot of Facebook action. I focused on trying to scratch together enough songs to get through 3 45 minute sets. Sandra and Tamira are both match fit due to travels and holidays that involved lots of guitar playing, but with flu’s going round and the need to pull out some crowd pleasers, I felt enough pressure to keep the adrenalin flowing.

Tamira and I started with “These boots are made for walking” as a sure fire well known song that we wouldn’t mess up:

Audio here

We then continued with Blue Suede Shoes, Sex on Fire and Blitzkrieg Bop, before play Use Somebody herself and then We introduced Sandra for a duet on Last Kiss. By this point Tamira’s cold was starting to play havoc with her voice, so we finished her stint with Randy.

Barely 30 minutes in, and one player out due to injury… I could see I was going to have to sing a lot more than I’d planned to.  I got up and sang, All along the watchtower as my goto for easy songs that I can sing. We still hadn’t had much feedback from what had become a pretty packed bar, so I took the mood down a little and did Wonderful Tonight and Wind Cries Mary, and then closed the set with Fat Bottomed Girls.

audio here

Set 1 was now out the way, but the bar was now absolutely packed and things were getting very hot and sweaty on the stage. I was beginning to feel real pressure to fill a set with crowd pleasers and not have to resort to Pearl Jam B-sides.

I started set 2 by having Sandra let her hair down a little with Yer Blues, but other than a few glances at the wonder that is Sandra, the bar still didn’t show us much love. Big Yellow taxi followed this, and then the crowd finally started to sing along when Karolina came up to play Lola with me(I never thought of Lola as that popular.) Since Karolina was on stage, we ‘knocked out’ Knockin on heaven’s door and then Sandra came and sang a version of Little Wing.

Audio here

I then let Sandra finish the set – safe in the knowledge that we only had one set to go. She managed to rouse the crowd with some Bobby McGee.

For Set three I started again……..

……….then Sandra played a little more. By this time, the bar was getting quieter, and people could hear us a little better, so we got a little self-indulgent and played a version of Seasons by Chris Cornell , before finishing the show with Thank You and We are the Champions.

All in all it was a good night and I’m happy with how it went, but without other guests to rely on it was quite stressful hoping that we’d not run out of songs and that I’d not have to inflict my singing voice on the Friday night crowd too much. 

Open Mike @ Mollys - August 2010

For the second month in a row, the Open Mike has been so busy that we’ve been turning people away from the stage. Everyone who has ever hosted the Open mike was there last night - Fraser, Sandra, Tamira and Javier. It’s just a shame that the night was such a success that we didn’t get to play more together cos I really enjoy jamming with all those guys. Fortunately we had some great talent on the stage and I got to listen for once.

 Fraser and I opened with yet more Queen(Fat Bottomed girls)

…then Tamira joined us for Boots are made for walking and Blue Suede Shoes. Craig Coe then played for his second month in a row(He must have enjoyed last month):

He did a good job of fitting in the with out vision of the Open Mike night, not only does he get extra points for continuing the Queen theme, but he managed to put together 2 impromptu pairings, firstly with Sandra on Nobodies wife by Anouk, and then with Fraser and I on Somebody to love. 

We than had some new comers: Andy and Mike from Cheshire who performed some very nice harmonies despite the ropey onstage sound:

After that Marco, Javier, Fraser and I jammed out a few songs with Mandolin, 2 guitars and Bass which was a lot of fun. For the remainder of the night; Lee Clark wowed everyone with his self penned numbers; Amsterdam “weel kent face” Cindy Peress classed up the place; Sandra showed us that a month on the road keeps your music skills at maximum potency and Fraser and Tamira fired out some gems that they had been sneakily practicing on the side.

To close the show, the extremely able Giovanni and James played us out with Fraser supporting on Bass and vocals. Thanks to everyone that came along, musicians, listeners, hecklers and drinkers alike. Does anyone have any ideas for next month? A theme? Suggested Covers?

Anatomy of a heart - Finished

After a long long weekend of listening to final mixes and
correcting last minute errors, we’ve finally finished Tamira’s CD.
It was a much more ambitious effort than Sandra’s CD’s. We
included drums, electric guitars, additional musicians and duets.
With every track I do, I get more confident and learn a little
more about the process of recording, mixing and mastering, but
since we agreed it was finished, I’ve been scared to listen in
case it’s shit. I’ll check it out in a week or so.

You can listen to the album below:

Day 9 - recording with Tamira

Tamira came round tonight with Kevin O'Donoghue, for what should hopefully be the penultimate recording session. I was quite apprehensive about Kevin coming round; he has a lot of experience in recording studios and I'm not quite sure of what his opinion was of our little set up, it turned in to a good relaxing eveing anyway. He sang some backing vocals on one of Tamira's songs and they sounded amazing. He was a phenominally quick worker... quickly learning the tracks and coming up with vocal lines for it.

Day 8 - recording with Tamira

The artwork is finalised and we're just adding the finishing touches. I'm trying to call as many of the tracks close to final as possible, but every track seems to need one or two little things rerecorded.

Day 6 - recording with Tamira - Drums!!!

Despite advice against it from almost eveyrone I mentioned it to, I decided that since Tamira can play the drums we should take a go at putting drums on at least some of the tracks. Drums are notoriously difficult to record have them sound good, but in line with the "lo-fi/let's just do what we can" nature of all my music endeavours we decided to rent a studio for 3 hours at Melody line and see what we could get out of a beaten up old drum kit. 

Tamira kept it simple didn't make any mistakes and we managed to reocrd her drumming 2 takes on 4 of the tracks.... who knows what it will sound like mixed. 

 

 

 

 

Day 5 - recording with Tamira

We continued sorting vocals and adding extra guitar parts and then took some photos for the album cover. Kenneth Clarke is going to do it again. Let's see what he comes up with. 

Day 4 - recording with Tamira

Today we tried to tackle a few of Tamira's harder songs. She's very adventurous with her songwriting and she gives herself a real challenge in the vocal melodies she writes. A capo will help with some of them but the range between the verse and the chorus on a lot of her songs will really be a bitch to get perfect in a recording.

day 3 - Recording with Tamira.

we had a pretty good session - going over lots of the songs, and adding various extra bits and pieces.

Adding Guitars to Tamira's tracks

I started recoring additional guitars for tamira songs. I start with Onverwacht bericht - her only dutch song. I want it out the way, cos I struggle to listen to the dutch singing over and over again when I'm mixing it.... then I chose Shut up and Kiss me cos I really like that one and I didn't want to sicken myself when we'd just started.

day 2 - Recording with Tamira

We re-recorded several of the original rough takes where the structure wasn't correct.

Sorting... mixing... tidying..

I had a day of sorting out audio.. the session with Tamira... the open mike... the Jam at melody line.... today I could have saved about 3 hours if I had double the RAM I had... I'm not much of a technology junkie, but if I had the room, I'd have a new computer by now.

Day 1 - recording with Tamira

Fresh off my recent recording prowess that I developed with the help of Sandra, I'm going to record Tamira. Day 1 was spent getting a rough recording of each of her songs so that I can have a listen and work out what to do with them.