MATTHEW NORTH MUSIC

 I have literally seen the worst documentary on music that I have ever seen. And I mostly only watch music related TV.  “My name is Ottilie” Presented by a singer called Dana Masters whom I have to say I have never heard of.  Now there has never been a Docco about Ottilie before, and there has only been a couple that have been made about Chris Barber. The best being a Radio 2 Docco a few years ago.  The opening gabit of the whole thing was that that Ottilie was an unknown Blues singer. Firstly in her heyday she was more of a Jazz singer than a blues singer but I won’t split hairs about that. The point made that she was unknown couldn’t have been further from the truth. She was the singer in the biggest jazz band in the UK at the time. She sold a LOT of records both with the Barber band, and many solo releases. Though they were mostly Barber bands records where she took the title. Es the Paterson Girl Eps. She did make a couple solo records the album on Marmalade real...

Recent live acoustic shows Well this week I played a couple last minute acoustic shows. The first was on Thursday at the Picture house in Exeter, this was due to the one we had booked on the 18th was cancelled as there is a comedy gig happening there that night. There was some good acts on, most notably my mate Chris Woods whom I’ve mentioned before. Myself and Niall performed 5 Tracks, Fortunes Light, Jessica, To Behold, Home Too Soon and Tomorrow. I was very happy with how we played, I think in some ways it’s the best acoustic show thus far, not perfect by any means by getting there, this was also pointed out boy a few of the regulars that came to my Exeter gigs. Then last night, I played a few songs on my own at an acoustic night in a pub called the Tamar Inn in a place called Calstock, now to get there the satellite navigation took us all over the place, down tiny little lanes up hills, and eventually we found the place, though there was hardly anywhere to park! I did just 3 songs,...

Oxjam Exeter 25th October 2009 So I was asked to perform at the Oxjam Oxfam benefit gig in Exeter, this is where 6 venues are open for live music with a roving ticket for just a fiver with all monies going to Oxfam. I was playing at Cooling’s wine bar on the same bill as the legendary Frank Turner. The set I performed was similar to what I have been doing acoustically recently however I was asked to do an encore and I just repeated Fortunes Light again. The set Fortunes Light Each And Every Way New song untitled Jessica The Widow’s Blame Friends Forever Stranger To None Home Too Soon Fortunes Light The Venue was nice and the PA good, though not having any form of monitor made it very hard. Thanks to Sue for taking the photo.

So tonight, I had another first. Thursday 27th August 2009 In 17 years as a professional musician, the one thing that I have never done is walked into a venue on my own with a guitar, got up on stage performed songs then got off stage. Tonight I did it. The Junction is a reasonable sized pub on the end of Mutely Plane in Plymouth. They have it decked out with various album covers, most of which are LPs that I own, the nerves thing is what I’m doing these sort of gigs for because I don’t want to start performing with the band and start crapping myself on stage. Anyhow I felt reasonably confident on stage tonight, there wasn’t a soul in there who knew me or knew who All Living Fear were, in a way that was a good thing. I did Each and Every Way, The Widow’s Blame and Jessica, I didn’t have my loop pedal so there was no looping to do solos, to be honest I was glad. I also did the gig standing up and to be honest I prefer that and it was good to have a mic rather than totally acoustic thoug...

Waterman's show 24th August 2009 + Session 26th August 2009 On Monday evening I performed 2 songs at the Waterman’s Pub Folk Club in Richmond Surrey. Both were new songs that I’m still working on, the second of which is one of the ones that I have recorded with Roger doing a Moog solo, stripped down it sounds pretty good too, some of the other musicians in the pub were joining in giving it a different dimension and texture. Last night band practice turned into a bit of a recording session, I dug out a drum beat and keyboard riff that I had on the machine and stretched it out to about 14 minutes, I then plugged in Niall and myself to separate channels, one of the beauties of an 8 in 8 out sound port is being able to assign things, so we weren’t hearing ourselves feeding back. Anyhow, we recorded 3 passes of us jamming, and from it I got the ideas for the whole song. Its all there needs extracting and re recording properly, but will end up a decent tune. In other news, here is a peda...

All Living Fear Exeter Picturehouse 13th August 2009 Ok last night, well this was a really strange chain of events. We get there nice and early, they moved the stage area around at the picturehouse and now its in a much better position. Didn’t take long to set up, there were 4 acts, and as always the line up order bare no resemblance to what was on the poster. While we were setting up my pal Roger O’Donnell turned up I played half a bar of a Cure song to see his reaction haha! The sound check was fine, I had also found out that Les Paul had passed away, so thought about playing a bit of The World is waiting for The Sunrise. Anyhow, out of the blue my other half turned up this was the surprise of the evening as she wasn’t due to be coming down, then Simon Hinkler from the Mission rolled in if you had said to me in 1992 when I started the band that I would be having members of the Cure and The Mission turning up at a gig Id never have believed you in a million years. So as for the gig it...

Blogger is Back Yes after 3 years I have decided to start using this Blog again mostly for my music related posts.

A sunday afternoon recording session The weekend proved interesting, I received a new composition from my friend Roger O’Donnell to take a listen to. It was a nice piece with some of his trademark string and piano sounds, and a really nice sounding cello. After listening to the track Me and Lee-Anne thought we would ‘Cure it up’ a bit to see what it sounded like. The first thing that I did was work out the tempo and it worked out to be 80 bpm. We then added some drums for the second section to give it a beat, then Lee-Anne wrote a nice bass line in the style of Simon Gallup. I then added some acoustic guitar to give it some more flow and then added some fake Baritone guitar, this was done by re tuning the A string on my strat to a G and then adding some delay and flanger from my Lexicon wile playing the string with the plectrum as close to the bridge as possible you get that sound. To finish off Lee-Anne added a high end bass melody. There job done, I sent it back to Roger whom seamed ...