Hello again!

The next phase of the Panic Room adventure started by heading north to The Duchess in York, a long journey at the best of times made worse by assorted roadworks. About 7 hours later we arrived in York, admittedly briefly at the wrong venue (onyl by about 20 feet though – the stage doors are on the same little lane!). Somehow we managed to set up and soundcheck in record time and all was well.

We had two support bands tonight – Satori and Kasiuss. I regret to say I only caught the first song of Satori’s set but did get to see some of Kasiuss’ wonderfully tight and energetic set.

Due to the line up, we had to cut the set down a little so went for the uptempo approach…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn,Go, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, I Am A Cat, Elektra City, Black Noise, Sandstorms, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite

Really enjoyed York – great audience,lovely venue and a great reception. The only downside for me was the stage sound which meant I spent a lot of the set not realy hearing myself depsite being right next to my amp. I think I need to go back to York socially too – I really liked what I saw of the town and want to explore!

Finding the hotel was much easier this time (once we managed to get the receptionist to open the door!) and we only had a shortish journey to Derby the following day so managed to get a decent lie in and check out at the last possible second – bliss!

The Flowerpot in Derby is another venue we played on the last tour and was one of the real highlights so we were looking forward to it. We managed to load in early and set up at a more relaxed pace before nipping off to the local Wetherspoons for food before soundcheck. Soundcheck took a while due to various technical gremlins but eventually we got it all sorted and souding good.

No support band tonight so we were able to do a full length ( just under 2 hours-ish) set…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Endgame, Sandstorms, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, The Great Divide,, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

1st Encore: Satellite
2nd Encore : No Quarter

The Derby audience were absolutely incredible – loads of people and very, very enthusiastic. It was my favourite show of this little tour, such a great vibe! So good in fact that we resurrected our mutated version of Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter as a second encore.

And so, after a relaxed evening and morning staying with our wonderful merch people Ray and Steph, we set off for the final gig of this leg – The Marrs Bar in Worcester. Again we managed to get in early, set up at a relaxed pace, and eat before the soundcheck ( another Wetherspoons – always reliable for food while travelling as they’re pretty much all the same!).

The hospitality at the Marrs Bar is wonderful, the dressing room basically being the landlord’s flat! Well, I say it belongs to the landlord but in effect I think it’s really owned by Rufus, the black cat who lives there and seems to have missed his vocation as airport security – there is no bag that he won’t find his way into!

Unfortunately, the intro music CD decided it didn’t want to work in the venue player so had to be skipped but otherwise everything went pretty much to plan, with the set being largely the same as Derby…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Endgame, Sandstorms, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, The Great Divide,, I Am A Cat (dedicated to Rufus), Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite

The layout of the venue meant people were largely sat a distance from the stage so the gig didn’t have the atmosphere of the previous two nights but it was still well received and people seemed to enjoy it.

Overall, the tour has been a great success. It’s been lovely to see so many old friends and meet new ones – thank you to everybody who came to the gigs and made it such fun for us!!!

We’ll be busy beavering away for the next couple of weeks working on finishing the album ( which, in case I haven’t mentioned it can be pre-ordered HERE – hee hee) but then we’ll be at Limelight Theatre in Aylesbury on Oct 23 and Esquires in Bedford on Nov 13. Hope to see you there!

Take care,
Alun

Hello all, hope you’re all well. I’m sitting here slightly blearily after a fantastic run of gigs with Panic Room so thought it was time to write a quick blog about it!

We started off at The Venue in Stocksbridge near Sheffield, a great venue that we also played at last March. Due to there being a show in the afternoon, we had a late load in but everything got set up fairly quickly and soundcheck was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately the late start meant the doors weren’t opening until 9, so we headed off to the wonderful Chinese takeaway on the corner.

I should also say thank you to Val and Barry who presented us with a bottle of champagne on arrival to wish us luck with the tour – thank you!!! We really do have wonderfuly generous fans.

Support tonight came from Gaia, who also did the March gig, who were played a great powerful set and went down really well.

And then it was time for us to take to the stage. For those who were wondering, the intro music we’ve been using on the tour is the overture from Bjork’s “Dancer In The Dark” soundtrack – such a beautiful piece of music.

The setlist was…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, The Great Divide, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Firefly, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

1st Encore: Satellite
2nd Encore: Sandstorms

It was a good fun gig and also the live debut of four new songs ( Freedom, Cat, Dark Star and Satellite). The reaction to “Satellite” has been amazing on this tour, it really seems to be grabbing people ( and is of course the title track of the new CD which can be pre-ordered HERE. Ok, blatant plug over!).

It was nice to see Bryan, Livvy and Iain from Mostly Autumn too!

The most surreal part of the night came in trying to leave Stocksbridge and find our hotel. The satnav had been a little temperamental on the way up ( and renamed “Satan Nav” thanks to the bizarre gothic voice it was set to use!) but it decided that it would be fun to get us to drive in circles for a bit. To add to the situation, we were listening to Jon’s “Moog Cookbook” CD, a collection of rock classics recreated in a very cheesy daft way on vintage synths so our circular route was accompanied by Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” in the style of a Japanese cartoon. I wish we could have filmed this adventure – it would have looked and sounded like something from a Peter Sellers film!

Next stop was The Peel in Kingston upon Thames. We arrived early and slumped around the beer garden for a bit trying to wake up before loading in. Soundcheck was straight forward enough, although the fairly small Peel stage meant a bit of shifting about to allow support band Only Until to set up. I loitered at the back of the room for most of their set – really interesting instrumental rock.

Our set was a tiny bit shorter tonight…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, The Great Divide, Go, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Firefly, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite, Sandstorms

The set up meant we skipped the intro music ( as there’s nowhere to “walk on” from really and we might have looked a bit odd standing there for 3 1/2 minutes!). The set was really energetic and went really well despite some technical problems with Anne’s mike towards the end.

For the encore we had a little surprise for the audience in the shape of Roger Waters guitarist ( and Anne’s partner) Dave Kilminster who joined us for Sandstorms, leading to an amazing (and loud!) guitar duel with Paul. I noticed a few phones and camers about, so if anyone filmed it I’d love to see it.

The next gig was Swansea so we headed back overnight, a journey which would have been easier without the motorway being down to one lane and doing 10mph for a few miles ( we got back about 5.30am)

And so, after a day at home, it was time to head for Milkwood Jam, a great venue in the centre of Swansea. Tonight’s support was a brilliant solo acoustic set from Jon Owen, singer with The Last Republic. The venue was amazingly hot which meant we had great fun trying to keep the instruments in tune as they seemed to be melting!

The set was a slightly tweaked version of the previous night…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Go,The Great Divide, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Into The Fire, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite, Sandstorms

Milkwood Jam is a great venue to play and I really enjoyed having room to wander about onstage. Good to see The Reasoning out in force too, along with fans who’d travelled mad distances to attend!

Coming soon : Pt 2 featuring York, Derby and Worcester

Take care,
Alun

Hi all.

Hope you’re all enjoying Summer ( which I guess it is even though the weather suggest otherwise!). I know some of you already know, but for those who may not….

The new Panic Room album, “Satellite”, is now available for pre ordering at http://www.panicroom.org.uk/satellite.htm . You can also listen to a sampler of the rough mixes. We’re really proud of this album, so please have a listen.

We’ll also be playing a few shows in the UK over the next couple of months, which will feature music from the album that has never been performed live before as well as favourites from our first album, Visionary Position, and anything else that springs to mind We’ll be playing….

September
Friday 11th – The Venue, Stocksbridge
Saturday 12th – The Peel, Kingston upon Thames
Sunday 13th – Milkwood Jam, Swansea
Friday 18th – The Duchess, York
Saturday 19th – The Flowepot, Derby
Sunday 20th – The Marrs Bar, Worcester

October
Friday 23rd – The Limelight Theatre, Aylesbury

November
Friday 13th – Esquires, Bedford

Hopefully see you there!

I’ll also being writing a couple of blogs shortly for the bass – centric amongst you : one on the recording of the album ( prepare your anoraks for details of which bass, which pedal, etc,etc) and one ( on the Bassbook blog ) which will feature transcriptions of some of the bass riffs so you can play along!

Take care,
Alun

Hi all, hope you’re well and enjoying the occasional glimmers of Summer that pop out from behind the clouds? Apologies for the distinct lack of blogs lately, the last few months have been a little bonkers, workwise and personally, so I’ve been busy doing things but not actually blogging about them :-/ I will try and be a little more communicative!

And there will soon be lots to communicate about as the new Panic Room is recorded and will be out very soon. I should have some news on pre-ordering, and maybe a little sneak preview, very very soon!

But for now, I thought I’d share the news that I’m featured in bass site NoTreble.Com’s latest Player Spotlight. NoTreble is a fantastic resource for all things bass related so I’m really honoured to have been asked, and to be the second ever player to be featured, the first being the wonderful Evan Marien.

Take care,
Alun

Hi all. As you may know, I’ve been locked away for the last couple of weeks recording the new Panic Room album. And now I’m pleased to announce our Autumn 2009 dates…

September 11th (Friday) – THE VENUE, 650 Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, SHEFFIELD, S36 1DY http://www.thevenuestocksbridge.co.uk

September 12th (Saturday) – THE PEEL, 160 Cambridge Road, KINGSTON UPON THAMES, KT1 3HH http://www.peelmuzik.webeden.co.uk

September 13th (Sunday) – MILKWOOD JAM, 50 Plymouth Street, SWANSEA, SA1 3QQ http://www.milkwoodjam.com

September 18th (Friday) – THE DUCHESS, Stonebow House, YORK, YO1 7NP http://www.theduchessyork.co.uk

September 20th (Sunday) – MARRS BAR, 12 Pierpoint Street, WORCESTER, WR1 1TA http://www.marrsbar.co.uk

October 23rd (Friday) – LIMELIGHT THEATRE, Queens Park Arts Centre, Queens Park, AYLESBURY, HP21 7RT http://www.qpc.org

November 13th (Friday) – BEDFORD ESQUIRES, 60a Bromham Road, BEDFORD, MK40 2QG http://www.bedfordesquires.co.uk

We were originally scheduled to play The Flowerpot in Derby on Sept 5 but unfortunately have had to postpone that one. The good news is that we are working on rescheduling it ASAP!

We have a LOT of new music to play for you so look forward to seeing as many people as possible

Take care
Alun

PS More news on the new album, pre-ordering, tracklisting, etc coming very very soon – stay tuned!

Hi all. Hope you’re well?

From June 20-27, Cancer Research UK are running a fund raising event called Busking Cancer where musicians busk ( as the name suggests!) and donate the proceedings to helping cancer research. When I saw it, I decided I definitely wanted to get involved in some way, but soon realised my diary is pretty full between those dates. The only free time was Saturday night and busking in a town centre on a Saturday night is probably a pretty risky venture!!

So instead, I will be busking….from my house. At 8.30pm UK time (International times can be found HERE ), I’ll be doing a 30-45 min live solo bass webcast which you can watch at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/alunvaughan. I’ll also be recording it so don’t worry if you’re not able to see it live, you’ll still be able to watch the recording at the same website (although miss out on heckling me via Ustream’s chatroom thing!)

All I ask is that you make a donation to Busking Cancer at their Justgiving site – http://www.justgiving.com/buskingcancer2009. You can do it any time, you can even donate in advance if you really want to . When you donate, please enter “Alun Vaughan webcast” or similar in the Comments box so that we can identify the donations from this event.

I hope as many of you as possible can tune in for this, and help raise money for a really worthwhile charity.

Thanks in advance,
Alun

Hi all. Hope you’re well.

As some of you may know, last year I set up a website called Bassbook.co.uk, with the intention of publishing downloadable ebooks and other resources for bass guitar.

Well now I also have a new blog, where I’ll be posting short lessons and thoughts that don’t really fit in the scheduled books.

Incidentally, the next book will be a collection of etudes which take common technical exercises such as string crossing/skipping and chromatic passages and make them into musical pieces that are much more fun to play than a bunch of exercises. More news soon!

Take care,
Alun

Hi all, hope you’re all going have a good Easter.

Just thought I’d post a quick update about a recording I’ve just uploaded to my Reverbnation page (if you’re reading this on Myspace it’s on the player). It’s a remix of Imogen Heap’s “The Song That Never Was”, recorded as part of the charity project Twestival to raise money for clean drinking water in developing nations (more info can be found here).

There are some fantastic versions on the remix page, and it’s an honour to have taken part. If anything, mine is a bit of a cheat as I left the lead vocal exactly as it was and simply recorded a new backing

The bass track is a live take on my Cort Curbow 6 string, recorded directly into Tracktion 2 on my laptop. I then used a little of Tracktion’s built in reverb and compression and that was it. The only extra recording is the reversed harmonic swell at the beginning ( which was taken from the live take so still only one press of the record button required )

Hope you enjoy it.

Also, in case you’ve missed it, I’ve also added the improvised solo bass tune Sunset from “What I Did On My Holiday” to the player ( the album is still available for free download here).

Take care,
Alun

Hello.Hope you’re all well. Rather than relying on my frequently befuddled memory ( age, etc….), I thought I’d try and do a quick blog about last night’s Panic Room gig while it’s still reasonably fresh

Yesterday, we travelled up to The Venue in Stocksbridge, which has a Sheffield address, but was actually closer to Rotherham. We all had a slightly surreal feeling driving into Stocksbridge as it is really, really similar to a Welsh valley town – the scenery, the buildings, everything. I guess it comes from Stocksbridge having been based on industry as were the valley towns, albeit they were coal and Stocksbridge was steel. It even has a prominent rugby club – just needed some Welsh road signs to complete the illusion

The venue itself is lovely – a great hall, decent sized stage and nice backstage facilities including comfy sofas and a shower room. I also have to thank the staff for making us really welcome and generally being lovely.

Once soundcheck was done, we had a couple of hours to kill so, thanks to the detective skills of merchandise supremo Steph, we headed off to the local Chinese. With yesterday also being Comic Relief, we were joined in the Chinese by a group of people in pyjamas

Support last night came from Barnsley based Gaia who played a great set of politically charged rock songs.

And then it was our turn. We had a great time but were dogged by monitoring problems all night which made it difficult ( and deafening!) at times. I barely heard a note I played all night although several people complemented me on the bass sound through the PA and how good the sound was in general.

The set list was quite a departure from the struture we’ve generally used but seemed to work pretty well…

Yasuni, Pleading The Fifth, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Banks Of The Ohio, Endgame, Hadditfeel*, Lily*, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Firefly, Sandstorms, The Great Divide, Apocalypstick, I Wonder, No Quarter

*Anne solo. I have to quickly say how fantastic Lily was…it’s one of my favourite songs of Anne’s and it was a great version.

Or at least that was the intended set list After No Quarter we left the stage and it soon become apparent that we would be doing a second encore This was a wonderful feeling….except we didn’t really have anything to play! We debated a couple of “well, I guess we could…” options before returning to the stage and doing the only sensible thing – ask the audience if there was anything they’d like to hear again

And so it was that we did an extended version of Sandstorms which included a rare bass solo (which again I couldn’t actually hear!) and an even rarer Gavin Griffiths drum solo! If you’ve not heard Gavin with ourselves, Fish or Mostly Autumn then you should…he is a truly incredible drummer and his solo was fantastic.

It was a great, fun gig. The set, despite the risk of opening with two unrecorded new tracks, seemed to work really well and it was nice to play Firefly again as we haven’t played it live for a while.

And now, time to finish writing the next album and get recording More news on our plans for the rest of 2009 coming soon!

Take care,
Alun

Hi, hope you’re all well.

As some of you may know, I took part in this year’s RPM Challenge where you have to record an album’s worth of material in the month of February.

The resulting collection, entitled “What I Did On My Holiday” after the essays we were made to write in school after returning from school breaks, can now be heard at http://www.alunvaughan.com/free.htm

You can download the entire album (a zip file – approx 25mb) or download individual tracks from the embedded player.

You can also listen to all the tracks, read liner notes and general thoughts on the recording and read the blogs I posted on the RPM website during the process.

I hope you enjoy it, and it you do…please tell people There is no better publicity than word of mouth so please feel free to let people know

Take care,
Alun