Simon Little

Hello folks,

Thought it was about time I drew your attention to this great competition, the final stages of which are imminent.

A little while ago I was approached by Hellen Bach (who works closely with the Children In Need team) and our good friend AD Chivers to be a judge in the Young Songwriters competition for Barnardos. AD had been responsible for whittling down the hundreds of entires and my job was to choose five finalists from the twenty shortlisted for the Scotland and East of England region.

I was astounded by the quality of some of the entries and it really brought home how important a competition like this really is in these times. Many of you will be aware of my Saturday night X Factor tirades on Twitter. The general public are regularly exposed to nothing more than a parade of sub-standard karaoke singers and fed the notion that this is the future of music in our country. Well let me tell you; we have a host of extraordinarily talented young musicians and songwriters right under our noses and the Barnardos Young Songwriters Competition is a great way to give these young people a voice.

It was a great honour to be involved in the judging and I was also able to contribute to the recording sessions for the final four songs at the wonderful British Grove Studios, under the direction of producer AD Chivers. I played on two tracks; Imogen Mechie’s Build My Wings and Bethan Funning’s Spaceships & Moonbeams with some great musicians including Grant Windsor, John Bleese and Ian Matthews from Kasabian.

But now it’s over to you folks…

The winner of the competition will be decided by whichever song of the final four gets the most downloads from the Young Songwriters website. 45p from each download goes directly to support Barnardos. I really do think that this is such a worthwhile cause, both as a charity and as a concept to support young musical talent. Now I don’t want to sway your votes too much, but my personal favourite is Build My Wings, and not just because I’m on it; it has hit written all over it.

You can check out the songs of all four finalists at the Young Songwriters website. Please do go have a listen and download your favourite tunes. The competition closes on 12th December and the winner with the most downloads will be announced on the 14th.

Enjoy! x

Hello folks,
Well it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve posted anything on here and I’ve been cruelly struck down with some sort of hideous virus for the last few days so I thought now would be a good moment to fill you in on what’s been going down in bass town…
It’s been an incredibly busy couple of weeks for me and I’ve been lucky enough to have played on some great gigs with some great people (and it was the London Jazz Festival! Hoorah!).
This months ‘Wall To Wall’ with Lea Delaria at Pizza Express was a hoot. We were celebrating ‘Women In Jazz’ this time with a host of female jazz musicians (including Deirdre Cartwright, Michele Drees, Alison Neele and the mighty Polly Gibbons) playing tunes written by women. It was one of the most difficult shows so far in terms of logistics and material (anyone for 15/8? No thanks…) but the show as fantastic. We had jazz DJ Helen Mayhew (check out her show on digital station The Jazz) introduce the show and the place was packed out as usual. Really looking forward to our next show there on 19th February with Norma Winstone….
We did a live spot on “In Tune” (BBC Radio 3) on the 19th again which was great fun too playing a few of the tracks that Lea’s just recorded for her live album in New York
Had two fab shows with Clare Teal down south at Salisbury Civic Hall and The Concorde Club in Eastleigh (love that place!). We’re preparing for next year’s shows now so watch this space…
Did anyone spot me on the telly last week? I was on Children In Need in the middle of the night with ‘Songbirds’. Television Centre on Children In Need night is a real experience. The place was a total frenzy of people running back and forth with clipboards and radio mics but everything ran perfectly to schedule; it was an amazing night and a real experience. I’ve found a video of our performance on YouTube and posted it at the bottom of my page if you fancy a look…
And last but by no means least, I had the great fortune to be asked to play with Beth Rowley for a show at the Festival Hall Ballroom as part of the Jazz Festival. If you haven’t heard her yet (and believe me you should…) go check out her page here on MySpace, she’s up there with my top friends. She’s a fantastic singer with some great original material and she’s got a wicked band behind her, including Mike Gorman, saxophone supremo Ben Castle and guitarist Paul Wilkinson (of Duke Special). I had a great time playing with her and we’ve got a couple more things this year so hopefully I’ll get to do some more stuff with her next year when her album comes out. Seriously keep an eye out for her, she’s gonna be huge people…
Anyway, time to sign off for now. I don’t think many people read these bloody things anyway but it does amuse me to occasionally wop something up here just in case.
Feel free to leave lots of comments, it gives me something to read in my sniffling state…
Bye for now!
Simon x

Here’s a picture from the BBC3 website from Lea’s radio session…