Slapped For The Very First Time posted an unexpected and really lovely and review of the first Wasp Summer record, Close As A Slow Dance. Thank you, Espen. “…there is a voice – both literally and musically – shining through that seems capable of winning you over with an even more distinct identity of its own come the next release.”
http://slappedfortheveryfirsttime.blogspot.no/2014/10/06102014-wasp-summer-close-as-slow-dance.html
I’ve got a bunch of gigs coming up with Wasp Summer! They’re all listed on the Concerts page. Have a look!
But this Thursday, I’m playing at Kugelbahn in Wedding with Salon Band, great Berlin musical guns-for-hire. Salon Band host a monthly event where they invite and accompany guest singers. They picked three songs from my album – Dancehall at Louse Point, I Hope You’ll Mend and No Time For Compliments Now and asked me to pick three more cover songs. I chose Randy Crawford’s jazz-pop classic One Day I’ll Fly Away (you’ll be hypnotised by Ms. Crawford’s teeth), The Motels’ simmering Total Control (a hit only in France and Australia) and 60’s stomper Tobacco Road (which I’m approaching in a Tina Turner/Small Faces kind of way).
I’ve worked on “owning” these three songs – interpreting them, rather than just singing the melody and phrasings I know so well. In singing them carefully alone and with the band, I realised they’re actually weirdly structured. I had an epiphany about my songwriting – since I was a kid, I’ve always been drawn to songs where the form is dictated by the lyrics and melody, rather than creating a perfect chord progression and constructing/cramming the story into it. Perhaps, other people’s favourites amongst the songs I have written are the classically formed ones – even rhyming patterns, even line lengths, symmetrical structure. But my favourites are the bent and winding songs, the one-eyed songs, the crooked and eccentric songs with two verses at the top, one refrain and a long outro for a tail – my strange little girls.
The three songs I chose sound straight on the surface, but have a kooky, emotional view of their subject (getting over lost love, desire, and what the Germans might call Heimathassleibe), and structures – the length of verses, where and what the bridge sections do, etc. – designed (consciously or unconsciously) to emphasise the emotion/story the writer wants to tell.
I’ve often had bandmembers and arrangers ask, “Did you know there’s half a bar of 3/4 there?” or “What a weird keychange. Did you mean to do that?” or “Did you want 10 beats in that section?” or “Can we straighten this bit out?”. To which the answers are really?, yes, yes and no. It just sounds normal to me because I “count” the song by lyrics and phrasing, not chord structure or bar numbers. Writing my charts isn’t straightforward. And the songs go how they go because that’s how they go. I don’t try to be dumb about it and I do edit my work, but if a song has an intrinsically strong melody or lyric, or keychange or structure, the only criteria are “Does it feel authentic to me?” and “Does it sound good to me?” If I play it in public, the answer is yes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me back at waspsummer@gmail.com.
Cheers,
Sam
I have strange feeling this morning. It could be too much Party, as I’ve been frantically sucking all the juice from the remaining warm weather. It could be too little sleep as I’m work on the six Berlin Music Week events I’m involved in, plus helping with Eric Eckhart’s amazing DIT: Do-It-Together project, plus rehearsals, plus trying to find time to write new songs, plus tour booking for December.
It’s those things, but it’s also the feeling I get when I’m about to achieve a goal. A kind of weightlessness and unreality mixed with a heaviness or weariness. The Hanged Man tarot card has been my guide in this recent part of my journey – a suspended state where worldly cares fall away and you have the opportunity to assess your path, hanging between heaven and earth. I’m dangling from that tree, pockets empty, hair streaming down and a small smile on my face. I’m taking in all I have achieved and all the help I’ve had to achieve these things. I’m wondering what to aim for in the future and I have some intriguing, unexpected opportunities before me.
In recording my album ‘Close as a Slow Dance’, and in the last 15 months of touring, I have succeeded in both the major goals I set when coming to Berlin. Tonight I will achieve two more goals – making Wasp Summer a band in which I play guitar and supporting people I really admire in a major music festival showcase.
Two Australian friends of mine in Berlin happen to be great musicians – Stuart Braun, a journo-rock dog and gun drummer and Simon Morrison, a writer and long-standing punk bassplayer. They’ve kindly joined me to make Wasp Summer a three piece and we’ve hammered out some semblance of unity in the last few weeks and given these six songs a band feel. To make it work, I’ve had to radically change my playing from singer-songwriter strumming to a more minimal style in this short time. Paradoxically, as the sound gets louder, I’ve had to pull my vocals back, condense them, to keep the songs powerful in this new context. But I hear what I need to do. I worried I wouldn’t know how to do this stuff. But I do.
Tonight, we debut the band at Berlin Music Week, in a showcase with some of my favourite Berlin musicians and people. I have had some press, my Sofa Salon concerts have sold out, the hard work has paid off. Tonight, I crank up the overdrive and tell six stories the best way I can with some good friends around me. This is honestly the work I live for. Making music, making events and playing live.
On the weekend, I got an email from Bernard Zuel, head music writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, saying his review of my debut album ran in Friday’s Metro. Here’s the review. It’s really nice.
CLOSE AS A SLOW DANCE (A Headful Of Bees/bandcamp.com)
Three and a half stars
An Australian in Berlin makes an album of alt. country in Italy, Switzerland and Argentina. As you do. Those oddities aside, Sam Wareing’s voice has sand in its grooves and her songs have sadness in their bones so that they are both fragile and resilient. Best of all the songs have a rolling certainty to them: they feel good and they feel right whether it is organ and violin laid on neatly, suddenly swelling backing vocals or the right tone to the acoustic guitars. Waiting has whiskey drama, Dancehall At Louse Point rides a big twang and On The Outside Of You aches. It’s more than country rock though as the powerful I Hope You’ll Mend has something of the otherworldly grandeur of Dead Can Dance. – Bernard Zuel
So every time I think that this can’t possibly work, something new comes along to tell me it can. Today, I am grateful for my gifts, my opportunities, my friends and collaborators. I am grateful that the hard work pays off in big or small ways. It’s not taking over the world, but it is making a life on my own terms. Today, every day, I have succeeded.
Thursday 6 2012
Wasp Summer + Eric Eckhart + Nina Hynes + Miss Kenichi + Ken Burke + DJ Lapkat
LOVELITE, Simplonstr. 38, Berlin-Friedrichshain. 20:00. 5€ .
Love,
Sam
Our Old Oblivion (test video 2) from WaspSummer on Vimeo.
This is the second edit. After the first edit, I recorded some new scenes, played with some extra effects (screen in screen! overlay! blur transitions! – I know I have gone overboard with the blur transitions…). I have also recorded further new material with some new characters so I will do a third edit with this new material.
I asked advice of some professional filmmakers and they have offered to take me through the process of storyboarding which will hopefully clarify both my storyline and edits.
Our Old Oblivion (test video 1) from WaspSummer on Vimeo.
After yesterday’s post, I took some test footage of my shoebox theatre using candles for backlighting and Thai ball lights and a bicycle light for front lighting. This is the 2nd edit. I’d appreciate feedback on my experiments and how to do this better.
I have written video treatments for 2.5 songs from my debut album (see sidebar to hear the tracks!) but I have no budget to have a film clip made. When I was a kid, my Dad obtained books where you cut out and glued together your own scale model cardboard theatre and Victorian house. I couldn’t bear to cut the books up, but it stayed in my mind.
When I thought about making this filmclip, Our Old Oblivion, in particular, I thought shoebox theatre format would be easy enough to do and tell the story without being ultra-literal, so I’ve made the set (a dirty, cheap motel) and my cast (the ‘I’ in the song, the ‘he’ in the song and ‘his’ ‘friends’ out of cardboard, gaffa tape, tracing paper, pencil, black card and photocopies.
What do you think? I’d love some feedback on my test clip.
If you’re reading this you’re no doubt aware I’ve just released my debut solo album, Close as a Slow Dance. I’ve decided to make videos for three songs from the album: Dancehall at Louse Point, Our Old Oblivion and On the River Road. It’s also possible I may do one for No Time For Compliments Now but the visual ideas toward that song aren’t as advanced as the others.
To keep myself occupied on long car and train journeys to gigs in Hamburg and Kiel, and a trip on a very interrupted U6 train service in Berlin, I wrote scene-by-scene treatments for Oblivion and Dancehall that should now be typed up. These include a long list of things I need, but as I have pretty much no budget, I wrote these treatments planning to use a very old technology – Shoebox Theatre.
When I was a kid, Dad obtained these two amazing books where you cut out and glued together an old-school theatre and a Victorian-era London townhouse for rich people. I couldn’t bear to cut into them but spent many hours with each building’s history and pictures. The idea has stayed with me.
The set for Oblivion is a cheap motel room. I built that first by lining a shoebox with black paper. I realise now I should just have spraypainted the inside because when I actually use an HD camera, you’ll probably see the gaffa tape holding everything together. I cut in a door and window and lined them with baking paper. It’s by no means a realistic scene with the view through the doorway being as hazy as the window but the character in the story is a virtual prisoner in there so a dream-like haze is fine.
Today, I made some characters. I did a little visual research and photocopying at the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek in Berlin and wondered if I should use a doll of some sort for the female character. I ended up tracing images I got from fashion magazines, modifying the lines and attitudes a little and gluing them onto black card. Considering I’m such a shit drawer, I’m pretty pleased with my characters.
For the male ‘lead’ and his two friends, I used a photocopy of a wonderful posed picture (below) from a book on the history of the Irish Republican conflict. It’s a photo of the incredibly well-dressed “Cairo Gang”, an infamous bunch of British detectives seconded to Dublin in 1920, where the IRA, presumably, had numbered each man for identification. Number 1 is the leading man of my video and Number 3 (who’s somehow incredibly charismatic) and Number 8 are his ‘friends’, from a lyric in the song, “There is no place, in this state, that I could go/He’s got a lot of friends who’d tell me so”.
I did spend a lot of time today attempting to figure out scale and ratios for my model, trying to work back up to an actual room and down again so I could try and make the bed and the people to something approaching scale. In the end, I just used my eyes. It may make for some slightly weird looking scenes. We’ll see.
After making all the characters I set up the laptop in front of the shoebox theatre and took some experimental footage using the little low-res cam which I will edit together just to have a look at my handiwork. It will definitely be easier to frame with an HD cam.
I definitely need to do something about the lighting but I did experiment with a chain of Thai ball lights, a bicycle light and candles. Eventually, I got a nice back lighting effect with five candles behind the shoebox reflecting off a piece of tin foil taped to my wall, while I used the ball lights and bike light for front lighting.
When I’m finished with the test video, I’ll post it here.
Tour update #3: Small but perfect house gig last night. Today is a travelling day. I go to Metz via Köln and Thionville.
Tour update #2: Made it to Duisburg!
Tour update #1: My Mitfahrgelegenheit driver didn’t show up. Waiting at Berlin Zoo for a possible ride at 10am. Concert tonight in Duisburg. Good times!
Rule 1 of touring: Do good. Wherever you go. On this run of shows, I am relying on the kindness of strangers as an independent musician and playing mainly house concerts, car sharing and couchsurfing. Be good conversation, pitch in, cook a few meals, learn a little about the host and their town.
Rule 2 of touring: Play good. Every time. It is what I have to offer. In good faith, someone has taken me up on my pitch and I try to honour that trust with a good and entertaining show.
Rule 3 of touring: Do not blow the Per Diem on cheese. My Per Diem is 10€/day. Thank god I’m not a smoker. This miniscule amount pretty much precludes museums, second hand clothes shopping, definitely record stores. Everything except morning coffee and lunch. However, I’m going to France and it’s going to be REALLY HARD not to blow the lot on good cheese and wine every day. REALLY HARD.
I’m also going to Belgium for the first time, which I’m excited about. Any country which functions for nearly two years without a government is OK by me. Here is an excellent blog post using vegetables to explain Belgium’s recent Constitutional Crisis. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to pass through both Bielefeld in Germany and the mysterious land of Luxembourg and see if they really exist.
I’m Australian so it is really so novel to travel for 10 hours and end up in A DIFFERENT COUNTRY. Amazing that simply moving over land can actually take you to places with entirely different languages and varying standards of beer making. I’m looking at you, France.
Check out my tourdates below. I’m going to be in Strasbourg for a week on writing sabbatical in between shows and I will try and stage a last-minute gig or house concert there as well. If you know anyone in the towns I’m in, please invite them to the show or ask if they also want a house concert. Email me on waspsummer [aet] gmail.com for information.
WASP SUMMER – CLOSE AS A SLOW DANCE tour May/June 2012
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The album launch last night was lovely! A full room of enthusiastic listeners at Heroes bar in Neukölln. I played well, I think. I felt ‘there’ from the first song. Bliss. And proof I’ve become a competent, if idiosyncratic, guitarist. God I love my capo and ’65 Fender Deluxe pedal. I’ll post some photos in the next few days.
Crammed into the bar’s toilet, Krista Krull from radio show Green Tea Berlin came down and did an “On the Road” interview with me before the show and recorded part of the soundcheck. Efficiently, she edited it down overnight and posted it this morning. Here it is:
And for the many people who commented on the slow-jam version of my album track ‘I’m Going Mining’, here’s a stream of the song:
Dearhearts,
I am finally here. At this moment. It feels a little like taking acid because I’ve wanted it so long that it’s become quietly surreal. It’s unimportant why it took so long, just that it’s done. I’m really happy about it.
After a year of dreaming about sounds and visual inspiration, mixing, discussing the artwork on Skype, researching online sales options and various phonecalls to the pressing plant; after failing to find out why GEMA (Germany’s APRA) wants to charge me to make my own record; after all the fun bits – recording in Italy, the photoshoot, the production notes and songwriting, my lovely rootsy songs, products of my work since 2002, are finally in shareable form. I would describe it as Alt.Country Folk and will say that it was inspired by Martha Wainwright, Neko Case, Patsy Cline and Wanda Jackson amongst others.
Tomorrow, my first solo album ‘Close as a Slow Dance’ (through A Headful of Bees) goes live into the world on CD Baby and Bandcamp with pretty digipack CDs to follow next week.
Please, have a listen to the album on Soundcloud, share with friends, buy it if you haven’t already pre-ordered (IndieGoGo funders, rejoice – they come, and with it, further gifts!). Curiously, ‘gift’ auf Deutsch means ‘poison’, but no poison here.
THANK YOUS
There are many, many people to thank for inspiring, working on or funding ‘Close as a Slow Dance’. Some to start, Mark Steiner for the connections and confidence, Henry Hugo for his production, thoughtful arrangements, contacts and generosity, Marcelo and Toto in Buenos Aires for the final sound, Mum for her good wishes, support and rent assistance, Damian Stephens (design), Jan Bechberger (photos) and Elizabeth Delfs (styling) for the lovely artwork you’re seeing, Susanne at Interdisc who shows such care for her clients’ CDs, Sascha, Dam, Justin and Darren for inspiring the songs, Michelle, Nicho, Chez, Naz and Lena – my Council of Ladies who always counsel courage, and those who, knowingly or not, gave a well-timed wise word to inspire this album – David Creese, Julitha Ryan, Sean Simmons and Bron Henderson, Andreas Lautwein, Cameron Wilson, Eric Eckhart, Matthew Barker, Ola Karlsson, Ben Revi, Jen Hval, Sean M. Whelan, Emilie Zoey Baker and Guy Dale. And the musicians who were so kind and surprised me with what the songs could be: Fabio Gallarati, Stefano Caldonazzo, Paolo Zangara, Vicki Brown, Henry Hugo, Leigh Ivin and Julitha Ryan.
SHOWS
I’m doing two album launches, a club show at Heroes in Neukölln on International Star Wars Day – Friday May the Fourth – and a special Sofa Salon house concert/birthday fest at my place on Friday 11 May. Email berlinsofasalon [aet] gmail.com for reservations.
Plus I’m doing house concerts and club gigs across Germany and France through late May and June and a whole heap of Summer gigs. If you would like to host me for a house concert, email waspsummer [aet] gmail.com. Those folk who bought Skype or House Concerts, I will be in touch in the next week or so.
Links:
Soundcloud (listen)
Bandcamp (buy)
waspsummer.com (info)
waspsummer 