Simon Little

Hello folks,

As many of you know I spent last week up in Glasgow with the Maggie Reilly band. We played two shows at the Tron Theatre on Friday and Saturday as part of the first ever Limelight Festival.

Limelight is Scotland’s first professional music production company run by people with impairments and the UK’s leading producer of high quality inclusive music. The company specialises in raising the profile of disabled artists in the mainstream music and theatre industries. It was set up originally in 1989 as Sounds of Progress by Gordon Dougal (who plays keyboards and guitar with Maggie) with the main aim to bring professional musicians with impairments into the mainstream. Gordon stated in an interview with the Herald Scotland

“part of that challenge is to do with getting the mainstream to look beyond their prejudices and preconceptions about performers with disabilities. That’s why, when we changed the name to Limelight and decided to have a music festival as a launch event, we wanted our artists playing alongside mainstream names, proving to audiences – and to themselves – that they have the talent, the professionalism, the high performance standards to be out there.”

We spent Wednesday and Thursday rehearsing in Glasgow and then played on the Friday and Saturday. This time we had Tony Soave from The Silencers on drums alongside the usual lineup of myself, Davie Dunsmuir, Stuart MacKillop and Gordon. We also had a couple of special guests from previous lineups; on Friday we were joined by guitarist Morph and Saturday featured Brian McNeill.

These were to be the first UK shows Maggie has played for almost twenty years. Mainly she tours around Europe; more recently concentrating on Germany and Scandinavia. We added a few of the old Cado Belle songs to the set including Airport Shutdown, Got To Love and Stone’s Throw From Nowhere. Both nights were recorded and Saturday’s show was filmed so hopefully I’ll have some footage to show you sometime in the near future when it’s been edited. There is talk of a possible live album but I guess it all depends on what the recordings came out like…

Hopefully these shows will be the beginning of Maggie’s return to UK touring. I’m hoping we’ll actually play in London so people I know will actually see me play with Maggie!! Both nights at the Tron were a resounding success and I’m looking forward to getting back on the road..

Incidentally, the one place I have to go whenever in Glasgow is the fantastic Trans-Europe Cafe behind the Tron. They do the best breakfast anywhere and I highly recommend you check it out next time you’re in the general vicinity… I went there three days on the trot and it kept me going through the long days of hanging about 🙂

Until next time…

The time has come…

It’s all well and good me babbling on about my new project with Steve Alexander Little Alex, but what does the music sound like? I hear you ask… Well hopefully now we can give you some idea.

We’ve been spending a lot of time jamming out new ideas and recording our efforts at Chez Alexander and we had one rather successful live session at Terminal Studios. I’ve been getting used to my new Line 6 setup and programming a whole new sparkly range of sounds, whilst Steve has been torturing his thumbs on the kalimba (see the bottom of the page!) and getting to grips with his brand new Maschine.

At our last writing session we recorded one track of live bass that we quite liked as it stood. So Steve took it away and programmed some drums with the Maschine…

Ladies and gentlemen; here is the first sneak preview of things to come:

The Littlest Alex by simonlittlebass

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Remember you can sign up to the mailing list at Reverbnation and ‘Like’ us on Facebook (that sounds so naff, but that’s what they call it nowadays). Feel free to leave your comments here on the blog; in fact you can even click on specific bits of the track and comment in time with the music. Oh yes indeed folks; it’s all very technical here.

I’ll leave you to ponder the forthcoming joys that Little Alex has in store for you. And just for a laugh, here’s the video I shot of Steve hammering away on the kalimba from the same writing session. Just watch the concentration on his face…

Until next time 🙂

Hello folks,

Firstly, just to let you know that calling out from my solo album Mandala is today’s featured free MP3 download on Allaboutjazz.com, so make sure you pop over there and grab yourself some free music if you don’t have the album yet. There’s a great selection of past free tracks archived on the site too so it’s well worth a visit.

Many of you will probably have noticed that over the last few days I have been beavering away setting up a bunch of pages and profiles for my new band Little Alex. This is a collaboration with Steve Alexander in which we combine the live looping of my solo project with live drums and percussion from Steve. I though it was about time I posted something here on the blog to let you know where we’re at right now.

We’ve been on Twitter for quite some time now with both myself and Steve posting. Incidentally, Steve also has his own Twitter account now so do go say Hi when you get a chance (his username is @SteveADrums). Over the last couple of days I have also started up a profile on Reverbnation which is home to our mailing list if you want to keep up to date with progress. We’ve already had a fair few people ‘like’ the Facebook page, which has been great. Last night, and only for the sake of completeness, I gritted my teeth and put together the world’s most half-arsed MySpace page. If you feel the need to visit that one, please bear in mind that I can barely get my head around it’s out-dated and glitchy interface; but at least we have the username 🙂

We’ve been busy writing new material and recording various demos at Little Alex HQ. Unfortunately we have nothing to play you at this stage because we’ve yet to play together in a proper studio with all our gear. So far Steve has been playing sampled drums in the studio due to space and noise (!) restrictions. We’re looking at having our first fully live rehearsal next week…

Now for the geek stuff. You have been warned…

My live looping rig has expended somewhat with the addition of a Pod X3 Pro and FBV shortboard thanks to the lovely folks at Line 6. I’ve hooked this up with the old faithful Lexicon MPX G2 in the effects loop which has given me access to some seriously scary sounds. The Pod feeds directly into the Looperlative LP1 which goes straight into the desk for recording. For live playing I managed to get my hands on Cass Lewis’ old touring Warwick ProTube IX which has a stereo effects loop and dual DI outputs. I’m finding that it’s becoming increasingly important to keep the bass in stereo to get the full effect from some of the more spacier sounds I now have access to.

And Steve has been working on a brand new drum setup for the Little Alex project. It’s a much smaller kit with some more esoteric cymbals so we can have access to some really interesting colours and textures. He’s also looking at adding some toys into the mix too; kalimba and baby glockenspiel should be the next additions. We’re trying to keep electronics and samplers out of the drum rig at this stage to simplify our on stage setup, but we haven’t ruled it out entirely for the future. Here’s a little blurry shot taken by Steve this week to show the kit’s latest incarnation..

Anyway. Didn’t intend for this post to be so long! Hopefully next time I blog about the band we’ll have something to play you. We’re working towards putting together an EP to release later this year. We’re hoping to play a slot at the Limelight Music Festival at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow next month, as we will both be up there for the week working on another project. Watch this space (or one of our other many spaces) for announcements of upcoming dates.

Until then..