TrevorR

Before @cetera jumps in… Big Horizon were fantastic at Pizza Express Live - Holborn in London last night. A lovely evening of Yacht Rock, 70s West Coast pop tinged music. These guys are absolutely top of their game (which explains why the spend most of their time backing megastars on tour). Great set, great playing and what a fabulous voice Iain Hornal has! They did a couple of Jeff Lynne’s tunes (an obscure ELO one - Four Little Diamonds, and Handle With Care by The Traveling Willburys). As Jeff Lynne’s backing band for the last 10 years, they paid tribute to him and the unfortunate way the tour ended with him being too unwell to continue to his big Hyde Park retirement gig. Wonderful evening! Lee Pomeroy was a highlight, of course but watching him mangles my brain because all the strings and fingers are in the wrong place. Fab to see Gary PB and Costas there too!

I guess that I’ve been a bit derelict in my duty of keeping y’all up to date with how things are going on the worship team… well, I guess I’m now officially on the worship rotation, playing two evening services a month - the first and last. It’s with two different worship leaders with quite different styles. One leads from the grand piano while the other brings his own Nord keyboard to lead from. They both choose a nice range of choruses, drawing from more contemporary stuff but some oldies and oldies, which is great. The “cult of the new” in worship gets kinda tiring and there are many fantastic songs which were written ages ago. I like the mix. It’s our local(ish) Anglican church and the evening services is more of a modern format with just the band leading worship. Morning is a family-based service, again with a worship band and the traditional, organ-led hymnal stuff is done at a 9AM traditional service. The bands are similar - leader on keys/piano, a couple of singers, bass, drums acoustic guitar and occasional other instruments - in particular a saxophonist. All a really nice bunch. There are a couple of other leaders but I think they mostly play the morning family services. It’s hard for us to get to those as we’re ferrying our teenage boy to and from his theatre classes on a Sunday morning. The set list for the 26th October was as follows: Start 1. I could sing of your love forever (F) 2. Firm Foundation (He Won’t) (C) 3. Hallelujah (Be High and Lifted Up) (Eb) Response Song 4. New Wine (C) Communion Songs 5. Trust in God E 6. Only By Grace C End 7. The Potter's Hand G 8. Living for Your Glory C The following week, 2nd, it was… Start Break Every Chain Bless God Waymaker Response song I Will Offer Up My Life Salt & Light End Give Us Your Courage Worthy Really looking forward to getting to know everyone better (musically and personally) as I play with them more. Nice to have found a new spiritual home where we feel at ease.

Two separate Jams this last week. A bass player chum has started a monthly Country Jam in Staines which is very convenient for me. It was their second one last Thursday and so I brought my bass along. Got to play quite a few songs - 5 I think - as there was only me and Chloe who were there. Another bass player who had arranged to play couldn’t come along so I got a couple of his. Fortunately they have a broad definition of “country” which embraces Americana and stretches as far as 70s Fleetwood Mac so it’s not all tassels and stetsons… Though I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t a few who come along suitably attired. The songs I played included Tulsa Time (a blend of Pistol Anni and JJ Cale in style), a Teddy Thompson tune, a rootsy version of “You’re Still the One” and a Chris Stapleton song. Nice atmosphere so I think that it’s going to be a regular one. Last night was our regular Monday Night Jam in Woking - this time a blues focused night (in the loosest terms, of course). I ended up playing on three songs (She Does It Right - Dr Feelgood, me singing on that one too; Julie London’s jazzy version of Blue Moon and Rory Gallagher’s Bad Penny). I also got asked to sing Fire by Jimi Hendrix (that’s blues, right?) which was a lot of fun. She Does It Right was a lot of fun. I’ve wanted to do some Feelgoods stuff for ages and this seemed like a good opportunity. Bad Penny suffered from typical jam night issues. The singer seemed to be singing a different version of the tune, different meter/tempo, or maybe a different song (a perennial problem with that singer) - which would have been fine but the guitar player stuck rigidly to the chords sheet he had written down rather than listening to the singer and adapting to what he was singing. I needed to go over and say “He’s still doing the verse again!” and help guide him through. It was still fun to play though. Love that song as it was one of my late brother’s faves. And can I just say how much I LOOOOOVE my Sandberg. Such a nice bass to play. ❤️ Our next “theme night” is our Christmas one so I have about a month to hatch my dastardly plan - a Christmas version of… WAR PIGS!!!! God bless The Barenaked Ladies.

…sounds like a particularly saucy euphemism! 🫢😳😲

Sorry all, some last minute stuff has come up which means that I won’t be able to be there tomorrow. Have a fun day, all. So sad to miss it.

Fantastic - that’s going to be epic. Love PSB. Enjoy (like you’re not going to! 🙄🤦‍♂️🤣)

Preach it Brother! 👍 No desire to guy any of my basses either!

Nice! And Jodi Linscott on percussion if I’m not very much mistaken!

I’ve not had my Sandberg tweaked since I got it in January so a set up for it would be great. I’ll bring some new strings for it. @NancyJohnson also happy for it to go in the blind shoot out.

He had several (surprise surprise). A friend of mine now owns John’s Wal JG bass - which he bought at the original Entwistle Guitar Collection auction.

Seen a lot of folks complaining on various forums that Ticketmaster did their dynamic pricing trick with the tickets for the US gigs, so they were booking and the prices of the tickets in their baskets kept going up and up in front of their eyes…

Don’t want to be a prophet of doom, but just a warning that there are extensive engineering works on the local railway lines on the 9th. It will be replacement buses running on the Reading - Waterloo and Guildford-Reading/Ascot lines. So plan extra time if you’re coming that way, or see if you can arrange a lift. ☹️ https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/engineering-works/staines-reading-woking-and-ascot-guildford-20251109/

Vincent - Don McLean

By the way, Worship Together’s website is a good resource. With a free membership account there are loads of chord charts available for a load of worship songs including in ChordPro format…

I’ve got the old bought OnSong app and love it! Have used it extensively over the years. However, I hate the idea of subscription software so have never “upgraded”.But I’ve noticed that certain functions have started to fall away for it. You used to be able to search for songs generally on the web and that’s stopped working recently. But like orders I’ve got a large library which I’ve built up over the years and also just create my own files using the internal editor.Which is t so hard when you get the hang of it. There are a few ChordPro / pdf compatible apps out there and many are free so not a bad idea to check them out.

So I’m now officially on the worship team rota at our church - which is so great. Looks like it’ll be once a month for the evening service, plus some ad hoc fill ins. Right now that really suits me right now. It’s also good that the regular band has a really good drummer who is a joy to play with (the previous two times I was asked to play he was on). So that’s a result. It was a lovely communion service this evening with an absolutely cracking set of songs. The running order was: To open: 1. Gonna Trust in God, in E (CCLI 2737744) 2. Here for You, in F (CCLI 5925649) 3. Better is One Day, in D (CCLI 1097451) Response songs: 4. I Will Offer Up My Life, in D (CCLI 1083764) Communion: 5. Trust in God, in E (CCLI 7206001) 6. Goodness of God, in A (CCLI 7117726) To Finish: 7. Lord I Lift Your Name on High, in E (CCLI 117947) 8. This is Amazing Grace, in E (CCLI 6333821) It was really great fun to play and all the team are great folks. With a female pianist and vocalist leading there were lots of songs in keys different from the recording but they were easy enough to change and worked fine. When we started rehearsing “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” bashed out a piano riff and asked, “Trevor, could you start with this?” So I said, “Ah, we’re going full ‘Steve Miller Band’ are we?” to which she grinned. So that song began on bass and drums with the bass riff from “The Joker” 🃏🤣 Next time she wants to do a tune which fits with the bass line from “You Can Call Me Al”!!! Played my lovely Sandberg VM4 through the house Warwick amp. Sounded great. Can’t wait for next time!

Last Friday we went to see Nerina Pallot at The Exchange, Twickenham. For this solo tour she’s playing at smaller (250-500 seater) venues which are in towns less frequented by bands and artists. Given her set up was a piano and an acoustic and an electric guitar, the intimate venue worked well with a capacity 300 folks there. She’s such a good singer songwriter and we’ve been following her for the last 20-plus years. Can’t wait to see her again next year when she’s playing the Royal Albert Hall as a big 25th anniversary celebration gig.

Also have a chat to Steve at Catswhisker… they make great pickups and are very amenable to tweaks. https://www.catswhiskerpickups.co.uk

It’ll get you in the end…! I succumbed to this one I saw in Wunjos back in January (after realising that the lead time on a near identical custom order - blue burst like your configuration - would be about 18-24 months). Don’t regret it for a moment. Love this bass.

Don’t laugh… that’s exactly how luthier Rob Armstrong came to design his “Baby Guitars”… he mucked up a case order and decided to build something to fit the mandolin cases that arrived.

Monday was a first one back after the summer break so it expected it to be a busy one but there weren’t many bass players there this week - which was a nice bonus. Also a number of the regular singers weren’t there either. Meant that I got to play quite a few times. Bass on Love Shack, Hey Joe, Smoke on the Water (yes really!) and It’s Probably Me by Sting. The lack of male singers meant that I also got roped in to do lead vocals on Bohemian Like You and Long Train Running - I pity the audience, I really do! It was a nice way to blow off the cobwebs after the summer break and a treat to be able to play on so many of the tunes!

That’s the write up on the Sweetwater page in the US. They really have gone to town on what (for me at least) is an overpriced, “meh” bass at best. Even Jackson’s own webpage text (while its a bit groan-worthy) isn’t half as cringy! https://uk.jacksonguitars.com/products/pro-plus-limited-edition-pure-metal-concert-bass-cb1a?variant=43871163645986

It tends to pop up in December as there’re are still 3 months of temptation add good/bad decisions to go…

Every time I see Ian playing I go straight to the Mayo Clinic website and start planning a hand or talent transplant!!! 👍🤔🤣 As with all Ian’s videos incredibly interesting, engaging and insightful. Those bass lines don’t leave any places to hide and just show what a talented and skilled player he is!

@Lozz196 I would like to make it clear that I entirely hold you to blame with all this enthusing about how great your SL is to play, and how good it sounds… so with the years advancing and all my long term basses being heavy (if wonderful) lumps I’ve been eyeing up Sandberg SLs given how much I love my new VM4. I think your posts were what finally pushed me over the edge. So there was a rather nice TT SL in Blackburst on the Musicstore (AKA DV247 or Digital Village if you’re old) and I’ve pulled the trigger on it. Should be here around April next year or hopefully a bit sooner. I had been looking at the red sunburst one on Thomann, which is very pretty, but being a VM4 that seemed a bit redundant. The bass should look a bit like the following but with ordinary pickups rather than Delanos. Can’t wait… Of course this means I ought to get rid of one of my other boat anchor basses. I suspect the time may be right to realise the capital in my Mk1 Wal Custom since I’ve just not been using it in the last year or so. Gulp. Still, that will pay for the Sandberg and also bolster the retirement fund!