Music Arcades: Steve Lawson: Behind Every Word

Early last year I noticed that, among the people who'd registered as "fans" of The Book on Facebook, was a bloke called Steve Lawson. People of such taste and discernment were, I guess, relatively thin on the ground at the time, so I snooped around quietly, and established he was a bass player, based in London. He had his own Facebook page, and I thought it would be churlish not to return the favour, so I became a fan of his. I hadn't actually listened to any of his music at that point, but I saw that lots of it was available to listen to on-demand at Last.fm and resolved to iron out that anomaly "later".

Weeks passed. Then one Thursday, just over a year ago, I registered my intent to attend the Social Media Cafe (a.k.a. Tuttle Club) the next day, and spotted that Steve Lawson was going to be there too. Hurriedly I scuttled off to Last.fm and had a quick listen. At the event, Steve was with his then-fiancée-now-wife Lobelia, handing out free copies of a CD EP they'd done together. I asked if he'd got a hard copy of The Book, and when he said he hadn't (aha, you too!), I gave him one. It was then that he reached into his bag again and insisted that, if I was going to offer a whole book, I should also accept a full-length CD: Behind Every Word. This could have escalated into an arms race of gift giving, but happily that was averted by my having just the one offering in my arsenal, which was now spent.

You have to mind your Ps and Qs with Steve. He lives the stuff that I only talk about, and Lord knows (literally) how he keeps up with it all. I gave Behind Every Word another spin recently, and Steve noticed this from the trace my listening left on Last.fm and tweeted about it (boy, does Steve love Twitter!). Whether I tell him or not — and I probably will, just to keep the initiative — he'll find and read this before the day is out. Hi, Steve!

Anyway, it turns out I probably had heard Steve's music before I became a Facebook fan: tracks from this album were played on Late Junction years ago, but I didn't register the name at the time. It's ideal music for Late Junction — not what you might expect from a solo bass player, and certainly with none of the hubris of Stanley Clarke — but inhabiting the interstices (ahem) between jazz and ambient, sort of like Eberhard Weber but much more English.

My mistake is that I tend to listen to Steve's music at the computer while working, and it can slip too easily through the cracks in my attention. I should listen more away from my desk: when I've done that with another album (my favourite) of his, it takes on new dimensions. And also he's not able to track me then. Here's Steve playing the title track from this CD.

Buy direct from Steve