Lee Jones is a young Nu-Jazz/Americana guitarist and composer - this is his road blog...
Awesome film directed by Cameron Crowe, becoming one of my favourites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla_Sky
Based on the Spanish film/story, Abre Los Ojos (Open your Eyes)
Busy Summer gigging and finishing up album. Great to see the Aristocrats at the reunion gig in July. We performed at Bristol's Bordeaux Quay on the Harbourside. Doing a few gigs with function band VIP around the midlands - lots of funky guitar work to keep me going....also re-united with sax legend Pete Parkinson earlier this month for a couple of shows. I will be returning to college september to do some more part-time teaching and gearing up for the biggest push yet with the new album throughout 2011.
The new album is nearly complete. The plan is to get "Swish" and the new release re-distributed digitally into itunes, spotify, amazon, etc as well as some physical distribtion methods and through this site.
This past week, I've had the priviledge of working on a track with US jazz-fusion guitar legend Larry Coryell which is really coming together well. I've also been doing further gigs, including a show with the Ben Markland quintet at Stratford Jazz and the Newcastle-under-Lyme jazz festival with my trio.
We've also had a very successful session with one of our resident keyboard players Alex Steele (aka 'The Man of Steele'). Drum tracks have also been sent in demo form which we've now approved; we'll be finalising this over the next few weeks.
Elsewhere, College is nearly finished for the summer and we look forward to what the 2010/11 academic year will bring.
Some new videos from the Kidderminster college jazz workshop the other week. We're planning some more of these over the coming months.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnkgoxuyw-4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVB6UoCNUxs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBasoloXsfg
Just got back from a day of rehearsing with the Aristocrats in Bristol for our reunion gig in July. Great to see them again!
An upcoming week of college activities, a studio session with keyboard player Alex Steele, in the office and off to see Fairport Convention on Friday...
Fantastic gig at Scarborough Jazz club last night - everyone was incredibly warm to us. Stay tuned for photo and further live gig updates....got to see the sea too!!!
Busy April, gigs at Stratford and Scarborough Jazz clubs. Gang show was great fun as always. We had a cast of over 120 this year and performed to a cumulative audience of around 1,500 throughout the week. I would also highly reccomend the backstage chocolate cake!
Preparing promo material for the new album which will mark a significant upgrade in both the quality of the studio and live product. We're recording with some fantastic musicians this year including Jean Toussaint (Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers), Ric Sanders (Fairport Convention), Troy Miller (Mark Ronson/Amy Winehouse), Zoltan Dekany, Larry Coryell and Alex Steele amongst many others.
Back to college and private teaching after the Easter break until the Summer too. Stay tuned for the new look website and further news on the upcoming release.
L.
A joke from Dave E working in gang show last week....
A guy is walking down a street and goes past a pet shop. In the window he see's this amazing parrot with the most astonishing singing voice. He can sing Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, Opera, show tunes, pop, world music, you name it. So the guy goes into the shop and says to the shopkeeper:
"hey, how much for the parrot in the window?"
"oooh, £300" replies the shop keeper
"I'll take it!" he says.
"But you've got to take this parrot as well with it" the shopkeeper says pointing to the parrot in the cage next to it with red eyes, a fag in it's mouth, feathers falling out, flat out on it's back"
"Why on earth would I want that one?!" exclaimed the man
To which the shopkeeper replies "Well, that's the arranger!!!"
17/02/10 - "Halfway House" featured on Gordon Wedderburn's "Jazz Moods", Generation Radio London, UK.
We have some exciting sessions coming up with US saxophonist Jean Toussaint, Bassist Zoltan Dekany and Fairport Convention's Ric Sanders on vioiln...
In addition, I'm also working on the 2010 gig itenary and preparing for gang show in April....plus teaching and writing more toones of course...
