Lost Organ Unit Live at Brighton Oxjam 2014

Recorded at The Verdict Brighton on 18th October. I was playing a 1951 Gibson ES175, P90 PUP and Fender Vibrolux Custom Reverb.

SMITHVILLE: French Spice (rehearsal recording)

SMITHVILLE Live in Lewes!

Barracuda live at The Hare & Hounds Worthing, 25th October 2011

Barracuda is an organ trio featuring Simon Robinson on Hammond, Tony Shepherd on drums and myself on guitar. We played our debut on Tuesday at Worthing's Hare & Hounds. We really appreciated having such a warm and attentive audience.

Here are most of the tracks. Pretty guitar-heavy but they give a sense of how the trio works together.

The organisers do a great job of promoting local jazz and deserve all the support they can get. You can get an up-to-date gig listing here: http://worthingjazz.org.uk/index.php?page=events

Photographs of Smithville at the The Brighton Bandstand

Thanks to Paul Statter for these great photos. More info here.

Live at the Snowdrop, Lewes, 20th September

It was an enjoyable gig at the Snowdrop on Monday where I was playing in the classic organ trio format with Terry Seabrook (organ) and Dominic O'Meehgan (drums). Terry comp'ed in the classic organ style of the likes of Brother Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff with his soloing style being more reminiscent of the modern jazz stylings of Larry Young (as witnessed on the fantastic Unity album). Dominic combined the fire and energy of Art Blakey with the polyrhythmic dexterity of Tony Williams.

I recorded the gig on a little Edirol digital recorder. The tracks below are just a representative selection from the set.

John Harris Trio,"You would be so nice to come home to"(Cole Porter).

Recorded at The Basement, 02/06/10 by Niall Burke.

ERSATZ: Alex Wood Hall, Norfolk St, Cambridge (early 1980)

Photos courtesy of Suzanne Mcdonald-Walker

John Harris, (DJ) Harvey Bassett, Adrian Tierney-Jones, Hugh Ashton

Adrian (foreground), John (background)

Link to previous ERSATZ post

Kineojazz presents Claire Martin, 2nd June, The Basement

Following on from the success of the Joe Lee Wilson/Remember April event, we have organised a gig with Claire Martin. Claire lives in Brighton but has an international reputation as one of the finest jazz singers of her generation. For this gig she has a great band consisting on Jim Mullen (guitar), Laurence Cottle (bass) and Ian Thomas (drums). Here is the flyer for the gig:

[Click to enlarge)

Claire will be supported by my own Trio featuring Keith Baxter (Fender bass) and Tony Kenyon (drums), with guest singers Jon Gilhooly and Ela Southgate.

Tickets from The Dome Box Office (01273 709709). Full details of the gig here: http://www.kineojazz.com/ - the site includes links to photos of the Joe Lee Wilson/Remember April gig.

Reflections on Joe Lee Wilson at The Basement

[Photo by Emily Harris]

Thursday's gig with Joe Lee was a great success. We knew the pressure was on when the tickets sold out almost a week before leaving many people ticketless and, presumably, disappointed. However, from the moment Ela's band Remember April went on we would tell that the evening was going to be special.

Having played with Joe Lee a few weeks' earlier, he had clearly gained in strength and confidence in the couple of weeks spent in Paris, which included gigs with the New York band Spirit of Life.

Terry Seabrook and I had had a chance to run through a set with Joe Lee but the gig was the first time we had played with the fantastic rhythm section of Steve Watts (bass) and Martin France (drums). Like Terry, Steve has toured often with Joe Lee over years, and Joe Lee was very happy to be surrounded by such familiar faces. For my own part, it was the best band I had ever played with!

With fifty years of gigging behind him, Joe Lee knows how to the attention of an audience and he won them over from the moment he stepped on the stage. Though looking a bit frail, he has a big soulful voice and he chose material that was very accessible including standards (Violets For Your Furs), gospel (May The Good Lord Bless and Keep You) and hard bop classics (Song For My Father).

Following the gig I had lots of feedback from people who may not typically go to a jazz gig - "beautiful", "excellent", "enjoyable", "life affirming", "a great gig". This was testament to the hard work promoting and preparing for the gig by Steve Rayson of Kineo, Ela, Terry Seabrook, Jill Wilson (Joe Lee's wife), the staff of The Basement and, of course, Joe Lee Wilson.

The next Kineojazz gig is Claire Martin on 2nd June supported by the JH Trio plus guests. Tickets (£15) available from The Dome - better get in there early!

Phoenix Gallery Brighton - Dream Home "Housewarming Party" 23rd April

A "Housewarming Party" for an exhibition at The Phoenix Gallery on the theme of Dream Home has had artist & vocalist Jonathan Gilhooly, bassist Keith Baxter and myself scurrying around looking for off-beat tunes to perform. We have a growing list including: Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home a Heartache; Robert Johnson's Come on in my Kitchen; Tom Waits' What's He Doing in There; and standards such as A Cottage For Sale, You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To and On The Street Where You Live from My Fair Lady. For the time being we've decided against The England World Cup Squad 1970  hit - Back Home, but then again . . .

The Housewarming Party is on the 23rd April and you can "meet the artists, explore the house and experience a number of impromptu performances throughout the evening."

More info on the Phoenix Gallery Website. The image above is from Gary Barber.

April 24 - June 6. 2010

Late opening: Fri 14, Sat 15 & Sun 16 May until 9 pm  Apr 24 - Jun 6, 2010 

Daily opening: Tue - Sun 1 am - 5pm

ERSATZ: Smile in Shadow

Not jazz exactly, but . . .

Formed in 1977, ERSATZ was a notable Cambridge punk band whose contemporaries included The Soft Boys, The Waves, The Zeds and The Sinix. From 1979 to 1982 the final (and probably best) incarnation played regularly at The Midland Tavern off Mill Road, a haven for punks and rastas. Influences on the band were diverse - Kraftwerk/Krautrock, Brian Eno/Roxy Music, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Doors, John Coltrane, free jazz, Parliament/Funkadelic, The Pop Group and The Clash. The sound was dense and intense and we referred to it as The Ersatz Wall of Sound - somewhere between John Coltrane's later period and Phil Spector. I joined in 1979 and this 1980 single on the band's Leisure Sounds label catches something of the full-on, liberating, swirling quality of the live sound, which we achieved through throwing cymbals downstairs, layering feedback from guitar and bass and generally improvising in Cambridge's Spaceward Studios.

The single was pretty well received by the music press (Single of the Week in Sounds). John Peel played it on his UK and BBC World Service shows and took time to come to Cambridge to join us for tea at Hugh's flat. We felt like a gang for while and the music got tighter, funkier and spacier. Inevitably we drifted apart musically before shooting off in diverging directions.

At the time of the recording, brilliant tearaway drummer Harvey Bassett was 15. He went on to become a DJ legend at the Ministry of Sound as DJ Harvey and now lives in Hawaii and performs in LA, NYC, Miami etc. as Harvey's Sarcastic Disco. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Adrian Tierney Jones went on to become Assistant Production Editor of the NME and is now an acclaimed beer writer. Bass, synth and keyboard player Hugh Ashton emigrated to Japan where he works as a journalist and novelist. I played guitar, went on to work on an early "world music" project called Somewhere In The Office with the likes of guitarist Mark Graham, drummer Tony Shepherd, jazz saxophonist Kevin Flanagan and bass-playing satirist Chris Morris before leaving the country, thus avoiding much of the 1980s.

The Leisure Sounds label also released CDs and cassettes by the likes of The Dogma Cats and Boo Hewerdine (of The Bible).

Here are reasonable quality MP3s of the A and B sides.

A: Smile in Shadow


B: House of Cards

Jeff Howlett Trio stretching out on Blue Monk

The Round Georges, November 2009.

Live Recording: Oscar Pettiford's Blues in The Closet

A duo piece with myself and Keith Baxter (Fender bass) recorded on a gig with Ela Southgate (vocals) at the Round Georges in November 2009. The quality of the recording is terrible and features accompanying toe-tapping from my right foot, placed rather too close to the mic.

Five Years At Fitz

Plenty of familiar faces down Fitz last night for a celebration of Three Plus One's five years at the venue. Five years must make it one of the longest running in Brighton (Steve Thompson at The Sussex Yeoman made it to four and a half). The evening started with a set by ERM (Ela Southgate and Rachel Day on vocals, Matt Wall on 7-string guitar). Lovely harmony vocals and some nice original tunes managed to calm the typically rowdy early evening crowd. We played a set of the usual and then guitarist Piers Clark joined Keith Baxter (bass), Matt and me for some Parisienne-style swing. Piers has a wonderful sense of time - even if he won't play a lick later than 1939! Master chef Freddie (of Terre a Terre) made a delicious strawberry birthday gateaux, with a piece for everyone in the pub and the band played on for another set. I never forget it's a privilege to have a regular weekly gig, and just hope that Fitzherberts manages to survive the creeping gentrification of the area.