Going Beyond Borders
Blurry images are a good thing in this case – privacy is important here.
What an extra-ordinary evening!
Music really does have the power to destroy barriers. At the invitation of Beyond Borders Totnes Bev and I went over to our nearest seaside town where a large number of refugees are incarcerated, stored, retained, kept, awaiting processing for citizenship of the UK.
This is lifted directly from Beyond Borders: “Plymouth is a Home Office ‘dispersal’ city, where asylum seekers and refugees are allocated temporary accommodation while their applications are processed – this can take years. BBT&D have been able to channel a range of local support through official Plymouth refugee and asylum seeker organisations and to some individuals.
Through local events and initiatives, we build awareness about the realities asylum seekers and refugees face.”
We (took ages to) setup (!) and played for about an hour and a half. The reception was as warm as the searing room temperature with dancing breaking out throughout the large knackered hotel reception area. We had a set-list of sorts, but it seemed mean to break the up-tempo mood and pretty much abandoned it in favour of lively up-beat music. The response from everyone was slightly overwhelming.
It’s impossible to know, for us anyway, what these refugees have been through and what they’ve lost to the point where they are plonked into an inhospitable hotel with a security team on reception. They have 8 pounds pocket money a week and are not allowed to earn any cash elsewhere. They are fed with extremely basic food in a holiday seaside town that probably isn’t the most welcoming overall.
So having the opportunity to bring some life to otherwise quiet evenings was an honour for us. As we packed up, we were engulfed by joy, happyness and more selfies than we could count. There was hugging and the humanity was overflowing.
Sincere thanks go to Jill Lewis and the Beyond Borders team for enabling the event and for all the truly fantastic work they are doing.
Secrets of how it’s done!
The tagline on our website and promo materials boast ‘electronics’ as part of the mix so now having acquired a new floor pedal, seems an appropriate time to explain what that actually means…
We are very keen to perform our songs live as fully as possible and a major aspect of this is looping which plays a big part in the arrangements for Jazzient. Our music usually features multiple parts and previously we have used two separate 3 phrase loopers, the excellent Boss RC-300s.
We have one each and these are tethered together with a midi cable to keep them in time with each other.
But now, after a long wait, we have received the very latest unit from Boss – the RC-600 and it is set to help us expand our live abilities much (much) further. Now, we don’t need two separate units because this has six phrases! It can also separate our instruments into their own channels and the sound quality of the machine has leaped up into gorgeous full clarity too.
(Nerd alert – this is the technical stuff)
The RC-600 is a simply amazing machine with seemingly limitless possibilities. I have been getting to grips with programming some of our songs into it. This might sound strange because there’s no music being recorded at this stage. What happens here is defining things like the time signatures and which loop will do what funky things they need to do in the song.
For example our song ‘The Seashell Waltz’ is in 3/4 time and the first thing to record after a shaker (2 bars on loop 4) is a guitar fingerpicking part in 8 bars- so loop 1 is setup accordingly. The 2nd thing is a C# bass pulse which only needs 2 bars on loop 2 for speed. Bev plays the lead Sax and the song is underway with the main theme. After some floating soprano sax soloing comes a choral voice part – loop number 3 has 4 bars and vocal harmonies are layered over each other. Once in place a slicing effect cuts the vocals up into crotchets and Bev loops a unison sax note onto loop number 6 which then get sliced into semi-quavers making the rhythms bounce off each other. Loop 1 is shut off and gracefully fades out – then come some free soloing and huge pad guitar sounds using the guitar synthesizer. Finally these crazy parts fade out and we’re back to the original guitar arpeggio and play out with the simple theme.
Setting up the new Boss RC-600 has been quite a learning curve and there’s plenty more to get to grips with but I have to congratulate the manufacturers on creating such an impressive device that underneath its pretty exterior is a very powerful monster!
Now it’s back to the manuals and the wonderfully helpful musicians on FaceBook and get all our other songs organised.
Phew- the gig went ahead!
We were asked to put together a concert as a partial fundraiser for the truly lovely St Mary’s Church in Totnes and there have been several bumps in the road, with each attempt thwarted by the damn plague. Finally – on a cold Saturday night of December 2021 we pulled together the gypsy jazz quartet, Boulevard Combo, ourselves and the incredibly dry and hilarious Matt Harvey who hosted the event. 
Man it was cold – checkout the white hot water bottle at my feet! the Boulevards kicked things off with a lot of Django style and Matt got away with subject matter not normally associated with a holy space making it all the more intensely funny. We were honored to have a go at performing some improvisation behind a couple of Matts’ poems before our finishing set of totally new music.
With the Omicron varient threatening we were concerned about safety but the Church is a very large space (seating 300) and there were about 100 people in all with plenty of air and mostly masked up so it felt fine. The sound quality was amazing and even though it’s a very reflective space, the bass was tight and Bevs saxes sounded fabulous. We even had a bar in church!
It felt risky debuting nearly an hour of previously unheard music but it seemed to pay off and the response was fantastic as well as a lot of spontaneous dancing throughout the isles.
The event raised some cash for the Trust and we thank them for the opportunity to play in such a beautiful space.
With a bit of luck 2022 will allow a lot more of the same…
We even got a review from Totnes Journalist John Anderson as below:
Witty Words and Wonderful Music Warm the Crowd at St Mary’s Totnes
St Mary’s Totnes was alive last night with the sounds of wonderful music, witty poetry and a crowd of about 80 people, many of whom ended up dancing in the aisles.
It was a “Christmas in the Air” evening and the line-up of entertainers provided a fascinating look at just some of the creative forces that are present in the greater Totnes area.
First up was a quartet called “Boulevard Combo”, a tight little group that displayed a mastery of music ranging from Django Rheinhardt to Klezmer to American classics such as Honeysuckle Rose and Autumn Leaves. Whoever set the line up for the evening was clever by putting Boulevard Combo first. Their music engaged with the audience and put everyone in a good frame for what was to come. And what was to come was Matt Harvey, the poet who has both a local and national following and for good reason. His ability to shoe horn witty rhymes with topical issues proved a great way to spend a cold Winter evening. We were entertained with musings on the characteristics of a baby, the special place whales occupy in the environment and the use of poetry to attract new entrants to the sperm bank donor community. Matt was hitting all the spots with the audience and they returned their affection most nobly.
Rounding out the evening in a most appropriate manner was Jazzient, a popular local duo made up of Bev Knowlden on saxophone and Peter Shearn on guitar. They had actually made a background appearance providing some atmospheric music in support of Matt Harvey.
When it came to take centre stage themselves they made full use of it. Embracing a genre, I would call “new age retro” they played some stunningly beautiful music that was both melodic and quite rhythmic. On a chilly night two weeks before Christmas they had the crowd up and dancing.
It was simply a great night and the next time this line up comes your way I would strongly suggest you make an effort to see them.
The event was put on in support of the Totnes Heritage Trust.
Change is good (?)
Looping is fun.
But it’s a tool of the trade, not a ‘thing’ of it’s own. A few years back it was enough to make you go ‘ooh’, but that was because it was new. Now though, it’s relatively old and the ‘ooh’ factor is gone.
Good.
So is it still good? Well yes, it is. However, the listening ear get’s bored easily and one danger of being a looping musician is getting too deep into your own groove and wanting to explore every nuance of a sound whilst forgetting the listener might have long switched off! Looping can lock you in on a repeat that appeals and sometimes, the right thing to do is to use that frame of reference to play in. A little like sailing a boat into a lovely lagoon, stopping for a while to explore it before sailing on to a new location. The trick is to know the time has come to move on.
Having played with our style for a while now, we’ve made a concious decision to move away from pre-made drum loops. Not exclusively, but in general because they are too restrictive. We have a vague rule now that created musical phrases must be destroyed once used for a useful period of time, forcing the improvised creations to evolve in new directions. The listener may or may not be aware that the soundscape has mutated from a minute or two before although it is likely the mood remains.
Who knows where these musical journeys will take us? We certainly don’t!
Side benefits
One of the great side effects of playing live music is the places that you go to play. One of the finest places we’ve encountered is the Totnes Cinema.
Lovingly regenerating a new picturehouse where an original cinema – the Romany Cinema – once existed and closed in the 1960’s. It since became the Library which departed in 2015 leaving an empty shell awaiting it’s re-birth as a community project.
It is currently still being built and dedicated to showing great films – not currently being projected in original 35mm film. Will and Jane who started this whole project seem to be your well connected film industry types and much of the equipment was filched from Channel 4 Films when they closed something or other! Apparently the super comfy seats on the balcony came from the viewing room and have therefore accommodated the arses of many a film heart-throb. (I’ve definitely sat where Tom Cruise sat because I felt a very weird, scientologically speaking).
It is quite a thrill to be asked to play in the hour prior to the screening of movies and the spot is perfect for our gentle ambience while the audience filter in and gather about getting drinks and fancy cocktails from the huge bar underneath the big screen.
We have added a few movie themes to our repertoire – which seems to fit the occasion well and hopefully we can continue to help enhance the atmosphere of our favourite picture theatre.
What are we up to?
Bev and Me have been toying with these ambient music ideas for several years now. It’s about time we acted upon them. We are both in the band Shadow Factory and enjoy ourselves hugely within the Jazz/Rock framework. But we also want to investigate a more relaxed, chilled style. A playing of music where soundscapes are generated without agenda, other than to just ‘be’.
As a form of explanation,
I have been a follower of ambient music since the 1970’s and fell asleep to Frippertronics, Satie, Tangerine Dream, Bill Nelson and others many many times. The requirement to pay absolute attention is removed and the opportunity to rest or to follow one’s own thoughts take over. The rough live sample tracks currently on our home page are slightly ‘lively’ but we are trying to sell ourselves after all. We sat down and played to a zoom hand recorder and just played a few tracks – so it should give an idea of what we sound like.
Future Music
There will be more to come and three or four properly recorded songs are nearly ready at which point we will make them available to download from this new site.