Positive Mental Attitude

To be in anyway successful as a musician you need to be somewhat deluded to be brave enough to get up there are do it. You need to believe in what you're doing and that's really hard. You need a Positive Mental Attitude.

What I do is write a big list and work through it. It's not easy and some days my belief goes. But you need to believe. 

Anyway Bad Brains say it better than me....

Snakes on a Plane - The TV Edit - You dirty Monkey Fighter

I Have Signed To Esoteric Records

I'm very pleased to say I've signed to Esoteric Recordings and I'll be releasing a new solo album called Lucid early in 2014. Thanks for all the kind words about the announcement, I really appreciate it. 

I really like the people who run the label and they are working with some great artists including Todd Rundgren, Jack Bruce, Van Der Graaf Generator, Sanguine Hum, Steve Hackett and many more.

I've thought long and hard about this and I think it's a logical move, I can't keep up with doing everything on my own anymore with the amount of workload involved with all my other commitments. The guys at Esoteric have also helped me to get some really good gigs. 

Esoteric are an imprint of Cherry Red Records who have put out loads of stunning records over the years, including the classic Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables by The Dead Kennedys one of my favorite albums.

Thanks for all your support so far, I really appreciate it :) 

http://www.progrockmag.com/news/matt-stevens-signs-deal-with-esoteric/

A unique window of opportunity, that's what the last few years have been, blogs, podcasts, word of mouth, Celebr8,"northern prog" prog magazine,the peel, support slots, twitter,facebook, forums,CRS, Youtube, Acoustic Magazine, international stuff, UStream and much more. 

Most importantly an enthusiastic audience! 

Not sure that way of working would work again. 

Flook! Happy!

I'm going to focus on getting this recorded while Kev mixes the Fierce And The Dead record. And some interesting collaborations! 

Trojan Horse And Thumpermonkey

Off to see our friends Trojan Horse and Thumpermonkey. Both brilliant bands and lovely people. Enthusiastic audience crowd and £1.50 a can.

RESULT :)

Both brands were brilliant and we met up with lots of familiar faces and our Prog Radio friend Steve.

The Horse and the Cue.

Goodbye Fierce And The Dead

Final Fierce And The Dead gig before we take the summer off to do other stuff (I'm making a solo album, Kev and his wife Abbi are having a baby and Stu and Steve are going feral). We played at Westminster College. A proper college gig!

Kev even lectured the students before hand.

The gig went really well and the audience seemed to enjoy all 5 new songs we played. We recorded it so hopefully it'll come out at some point (at least the best played bits). Really pleased with the turn out considering it was a Tuesday and an early show (headliners finished before 9!).

Decent size crowd:

I enjoyed the support band First:

And they had a very nice Mustang 1964!!

Our first gig with the projections Kev did:

All in all it felt like one of the best we've done, we loved playing. Roll on September for more stuff :) 

My Son Playing Guitar For The First Time

Final day in the studio.

We got it done. Mostly.

We're doing one more day of overdubs but all the guitars got tracked, we went literally to the last minute.

Kev did a magnificent job of producing and engineering, so pleased with the tracks.

We used a Mesa Boogie head and the old Park 4x12 speaker and a Blackstar amp. The range of sounds was crazy.

The Mesa had 4 channels!! So much range, although I'll never be able to afford the 3 grand they cost. I am available for endorsements :) I'm not a fan of that straight Mesa rock sound but this head was so
versatile.

Steve's Pedal board:

Big Face:

Mesa head:

It had almost as many knobs round the back. (Yes, I know I've seen a lot of Carry On films too)

DL4 playing:

BEM label boss James came to see us. Top fella. We mostly ate pot noodles :) Read about James's visit here:

http://jamesablog.starjump.org/?p=2451

Then at 9pm it was all done, time to load up the van and head back to London.

I really really enjoyed it, made me realise how good the musicians in the band were to be honest. A few more overdubs but we're mostly there.