Anti-Racist Instrumental Music - Thoughts On Grace And Gratitude

Back around the time of the 2004 European Elections, I was utterly incensed by the appearance of UKIP - the UK Independence Party. 

Their figurehead was the patently ridiculous Robert Killroy-Silk - a man who actually had a past in real politics, but having been sacked from his various TV and newspaper roles for being an ill-thought-out racist loon, he turned his hand to the plight of the White And Wealthy - a whole load of aging British overwhelmingly-white millionaires blaming the world's poorest people for all their imagined problems. 

I blogged about it extensively - a lot about UKIP, and a bit about the BNP who at the time were less mainstream than now in their profile (though their neo-fascist intentions and policies haven't changed a bit).

But I was also in the process of making a record, and my thinking about the state of play with the ungrateful bastards in UKIP changed the course of the record. I realised that ranting about what arse-holes they were/are was only part of the picture, and that recognising what was wrong and being the opposite was also a big part of being the change you want to see happen. 

So, given that they were so ungrateful for all that they had - I set about making a record themed on all the things in life I was grateful for. And called it Grace And Gratitude - Grace being 'unmerited favour' - of all the things in my own life I was grateful for, I realised that I - like the UKIP dickheads - hadn't earned any of them. 

The track list for the most part speaks for itself, and when listening to the album again on a train through Holland last weekend (I hadn't listened to it in a couple of years) I once again felt those same feelings. Overwhelming Gratitude for what I had, and a desire to see that sense of Grace/Serendipity/Luck permeate the political arena in the UK, where we vote knowing that we're SO lucky, and we owe it to the poor both here and abroad to vote with them in mind. 

Here's the album - it's lots of people's favourite of mine - have a listen, feel free to download it and pay anything - any amount you see fit, what you can afford, what you think it's worth. Enjoy it, pass it onto your friends:

http://music.stevelawson.net/album/grace-and-gratitude">Grace And Gratitude by Steve Lawson http://music.stevelawson.net/album/grace-and-gratitude">Grace And Gratitude by Steve Lawson

Steve and Lobelia Live In Nebraska EP now on Bandcamp!

Yay! Finally, thanks to the great help of Kevin Quickle, I've managed to get the Live In Nebraska EP up to bandcamp for proper magic high res download. 

This is very exciting - every time we've pressed CDs of this, they've sold out in just 2 or 3 gigs - so much so that we didn't even have a copy to rip to put up on Bandcamp (Bandcamp requires CD-quality WAVs, not the high-res MP3s I had that were for sale in my old online shop...) 

So here it is - it's one of the musical things I'm most proud of that I've done, and captures just how well we were playing on that US tour really well. It's a great recording, thanks to us actually playing the show in a recording studio - Power Base Studios in Wisner, Nebraska. Great job done by Dan Kane on sound. 

Here it is - listen, share it, embed any of the tracks that you particularly like in your own blog posts if you wish, and if you want to download it, pay whatever you think it's worth. 

Lobelia and I got lucky...

Every now and again music and opportunity line up. Doesn't happen often - live albums are rarely of the best night on the tour, unless the band is recording every night. Often, the tech and the tunes are on different calendars.

However, for Lobelia and I, the planets aligned when we played a house concert in Nebraska a couple of years ago - it wasn't actually in a 'house', it was in a recording studio, doubling up as a venue.

We played the best we'd ever played and got an awesome recording of it.

It's not on bandcamp yet, sadly, but will be soon - til then, here's one of the tracks on last.fm:

via last.fm

Lessons Learnt From An Aged Feline

This was an album that came free with the first 100 CD orders of Not Dancing For Chicken, 7 years ago... it's been available on Last.fm for a while, but at pretty low resolution...

here's the high res version, for streaming or download - enjoy!