On April 22nd I’ll be playing in a three duos gig at Servant Jazz Quarters, Dalston. There will be sets from Colin Webster (saxophones) and Graham Dunning (turntable, mixer and dubplates), Ti/om (Tom Ward on woodwinds and Tim Fairhall on bass), and then Anton and I will do one as Ripsaw Catfish. I’ve made a poster with a leafy kaleidoscope, in case you need a bit more persuasion to attend:
After a quiet January (playing-wise at least…I wasn’t short on admin), things are about to kick off in a flurry of Spring activity, so I thought it was time for an update.
LUME re-starts on February 6th, and will be running weekly at our new venue Long White Cloud in Hoxton. The full programme for Feb/March is over on our website for your perusal, but I will say here that the first gig is a real treat. We’ve got our good friends Corey Mwamba and Martin Pyne pitching up with their vibraphones, electronics and assorted bits and bobs for a duo gig. I’ll be joining them on bari sax in the second set, but don’t let that put you off. It should be a lovely evening of improvising and settling into our new home.
Next up is a bunch of gigs with Ripsaw Catfish, my new duo with the ace guitarist Anton Hunter. The music is mostly improvised, but with some elements that we’ve composed too, and we’ve been making our way around the rehearsal rooms of the London and Manchester areas working on it. Much tea has been consumed, the world set to rights, so now we’re going to embark upon what could be called a mini-tour. Hear the results at these places:
11th February: Fizzle, The Lamp Tavern, Birmingham (with Bruce Coates & Trevor Lines)
26th March: Freedom Principle, Manchester (with Trio Riot)
27th March: LUME, Long White Cloud, London (with Steve Beresford and Julie Kjaer)
6th April: One Note Sunday, ArtsmithLIVE, Derby (early gig: 6.30pm)
Hope to see you out there somewhere!
The last Quad gig of the year has happened, and the last LUME of the year is tonight, so now it’s *really* time to start sorting out what’s going on next year. Lots of things are up in the air, and some things are half-organised or very nearly organised, but I recently put the first actually-confirmed thing in my diary: Ripsaw Catfish will be playing at Corey Mwamba’s gig One Note Sunday in Derby, in April.
I really like One Note Sunday and I wrote about it before when we played there with the sax quartet. If you are in the Midlands and free on April 6th, come and check us out doing a bari sax/guitar duo thing. The night is also on FB and Twitter. How’s that for advance notice?
More on everything else soon once I have something to say!
Well, after neglecting this site for a few months I thought it was probably time to write a new post! I’ve also given things a bit of a spring clean around here and changed the colours, so it’s kind of masquerading as a new website.
In a couple of weeks it will be that time of year once again: London Jazz Festival week. Last year Quadraceratops got a last-minute gig supporting Get The Blessing at the Jazz Cafe, so I was keen to get something in the diary for 2013 too. As a lot of my time so far this year has been spent working on LUME and Collisions, it seemed fitting for that something to happen at a gig I’m involved in running myself, and happily Dee and I managed to get LUME into the festival programme! We are putting on a double bill of our own bands, and although it’s not quite the last gig of the year, it feels like a nice way to celebrate getting the gig off the ground. Do come and join us on Thursday 21st November for what promises to be a lovely gig. Dee is bringing her excellent band Entropi, and I’ll be bringing the Quad. I’ll also have special guests Henry Spencer, Jason Simpson and ‘Dave O’Keys’ (aka Dave O’Bass!) joining us for the Quad set, which will be fun! The gig is listed on the LJF site, and of course you can also check our LUME website for details.
I’m hoping that 2014 will be the year of a Quadraceratops studio album, so there’s a lot of organising to be done. Much more to come on that topic soon: at the moment it’s mainly just me sending emails! We did manage to attempt an impromptu photo shoot at our Union Chapel Bar gig, of which this is probably the best shot…some good pouts going on at least;)
Finally, I’m also working on a new project which I’ll be posting more about later: a duo with Anton Hunter on guitar and me on bari called ‘Ripsaw Catfish’. It’s a lot of fun and quite noisy. So far we’re touring the rehearsal rooms of London and Manchester, with some actual gigs coming up soon…
That’s probably about it for now. See you at Hundred Crows Rising for the Quad gig, if you can make it!