• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Bands & Projects
    • Marty Willson-Piper
    • Marty & Olivia
    • Noctorum
    • MOAT
    • Atlantæum Flood
    • Anekdoten
      • How I Joined Anekdoten
    • The Church
      • Sleeve Notes
    • All About Eve
  • Discography
  • Gear
  • Talking
  • Lyrics
    • SOLO ALBUMS
      • In Reflection
      • Art Attack
      • Rhyme
      • Spirit Level
      • Hanging Out In Heaven
      • Nightjar
    • NOCTORUM
      • Sparks Lane
      • Offer The Light
      • Honey Mink Forever
      • The Afterlife
    • MOAT
      • Moat
      • Poison Stream
    • Seeing Stars
  • Sleeve Notes
    • Of Skins And Heart
    • The Blurred Crusade
    • Seance
    • Heyday
    • Starfish
    • Gold Afternoon Fix
    • Priest = Aura
  • Bandcamp

Marty Willson-Piper

The official home of Marty Willson-Piper

  • News
  • Blog
  • Shows
  • Songwriting & Guitar Guidance
  • In Deep Music Archive
  • Contact

Apr 05 2020

TO WHERE I AM NOW

Every day I drink copious cups of Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea with a spoonful of honey. I know, Tension Tamer, bit of a silly name, but that blend of herbs and that sweet spoonful is the day’s repeating treat. Sundays are generally mega session days for me and the kettle is constantly boiling. I guess there’s a lot of boiling kettles at the moment with everyone at home and consequently I’ve been getting a lot of enquiries about the sessions as people now have more time. (The boxes of tea have been emptying fast.) It’s probably hard to imagine how it works unless you’ve done so if you want to try it out, remember the first preliminary chat is free as we discuss how I may be able to help. It doesn’t matter if you play guitar well or are a beginner and it’s not just about playing guitar, it’s also about writing songs, the creative process and as much as my experience covers. I don’t do theory, scales, Van Halen covers or stick to the hour. At some point you will be hearing the album we are making with the original sessioneer Jed from Minneapolis. The results will speak for themselves, I single Jed out because it is a musical project that started with a Skype call and will soon (world survival notwithstanding) become a record. I’m sure that other releases will follow and for those that are just trying to improve their guitar playing, it’s baby steps. You don’t need to be a hot guitarist to write great songs. There’s a lot to all this creative stuff but a virtuoso skill set is not necessary. You need what every single person has, your uniqueness and direction, that’s it.

 
Today I was in Sydney, NSW with Tony, Orlando, Florida with Brian, Minneapolis, Minnesota with the other Brian and Wappinger Falls, New York with Doug. I’m getting around and I’ve been thinking about the travel bug and being locked in all the time and how people must be suffering acute cabin fever, Netflix overload and guilty overstocked toilet paper anxiety. What must prison be like? Before all this went down, I was talking to a stranger at Simeon’s Citroen. I didn’t catch his name but he had never left England. He’s not the first person I have met who’s never left their own country. I simply can’t imagine it. (A friend in Australia has never seen snow fall.) When I was living and working in and around Liverpool, my biggest ambition was to travel outside England. I admit living up North with working parents it took me 19 years to do it, but I did see a lot of Wales as a kid.

My first trip outside England’s borders was with my friend Lesley to the grape picking region in Perpignan (a whole story in itself). I was fascinated by the feeling of being in another land, it was an absolute fantasy world. Words coming out of people’s mouths that I couldn’t understand, cars with steering wheels on the wrong side and driving on the wrong side of the road, different food, different clothes, different demeanour and in the South of France a different climate. I won’t be going into too much detail about all these years of travelling I was just thinking about where I got the desire. My theory is that I got it from my childhood stamp album. Decades ago I inherited my grandfather’s and my father’s family’s stamp collections and as a kid continued collecting. There were these companies that sent you little oblong books of stamps from all over the world, they were called ‘approvals’. You could pick the stamps you wanted out, send them a postal order for the ones you wanted to keep and return the ones you didn’t want. There were beautiful big colourful stamps from exotic places like Malawi and stamps that were different shapes, triangular or long. I remember China had some huge colourful red stamps depicting a happy life with Mao Tse Tung. But it wasn’t just the look of the stamps from different countries or the fun of collecting them. I inherited a stamp album (long since lost) that above every page stated the country, the capital city and the square miles (it might have also stated the population but I can’t quite remember that). My imagination would run wild thinking about all these fascinating cities in all these magical countries. What could be better than going there and meeting the inhabitants? All the excitement those stamps have caused in my life.

Music today took me to some great guitarists and singers. I didn’t really know where to start, but Florida Brian had mentioned Richard Thompson today during the sesh, so that’s who I went for. I picked out his last album, 13 Rivers from 2018. When we talk about unique, we just listen to Richard Thompson play the guitar. There’s no one like him and I love his approach, his tone and the chances he takes. He bends strings in patterns and shapes that are from another place. I’ve met him a couple of times or more and he’s always really nice. I played with him as support in San Francisco one night and he asked me for my autograph! Ha ha! I nearly fell off my 12 string, it was for his daughter Muna. He’s made so many great albums and his voice is unmistakable. I’ve seen him live many times and will always take the opportunity to see him live. Sometimes he has a band, sometimes he’s solo, but he’s always happening.

After that as there’s no traffic out there, I listened to John Barleycorn Must Die from 1970. At this point Traffic had become a three piece with Dave Mason gone and the band seemingly over. Steve Winwood joined short-lived supergroup Blind Faith. So the session was originally intended to be a Steve Winwood solo album but joined by Chris Wood on flute and sax and Jim Capaldi on drums and vocals with Winwood on lead vocals, keys, piano and guitars, it was decided to call it Traffic. It was their highest charting album till then and was probably the impetus to continue for four more years. I saw them once at Universal amphitheatre in LA when they released one more album, Far From Home, in 1994 (they had split in 1974). It was dedicated to Chris Wood, who had died in 1983 at the age of 39.

Next came For Earth Below (1975) by Robin Trower, his third album featuring ex Stone The Crow’s James Dewar on bass and vocal and ex Gypsy drummer Bill Lordan. I saw Trower live around this time at Liverpool Stadium, I remember it was sold out. I still buy his albums and his last one Coming Closer To The Day (2019) was great, especially sonically.

This led me to the second Gypsy album, In The Garden (1971), inspired by the appearance of ‘Sweet William’ Lordan as he is credited. After Gypsy and before Robin Trower, Lordan went on to play for a short time with Sly And The Family Stone and appears on Small Talk (1974) and on one track on High On You (1975). But who were Gypsy? Gypsy were from Minneapolis and made four albums and I only have this one, if anyone spots their other three out there, let me know. Sweet William gets an upbeat drum solo on the record, but they have an organ-heavy sound and a good singer, with songs that typify the era. Whatever happened to singer guitarists Enrico Rosenblum and James C. Johnson? Keyboard player James Owl Walsh had his own version of the band. Bass player Wille Weeks and percussionist Joe Lala became well-known session players, Weeks with David Bowie (on Young Americans but not on Fame or Across The Universe, that was Emir Ksasan), George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, and a million more. Lala played with Stephen Stills, Dan Fogelberg, Joe Walsh, Jackson Browne, Barbra Streisand on Guilty, Dionne Warwick on Heartbreaker, Rod Stewart, and more. He was also a voice actor, he died in 2014.

Records and stamps led me here and in celebration of the Chinese stamps I mentioned earlier, here’s Mao Tse Tung Kiss from Honey Mink Forever:

 

Mao Tse Tung Kiss

In the West they’ve got religion
Blood and fear, distorted vision
They can’t see whe’re all the same
And all extremes mean

Pain across the Peking sunset baby
A sight you don’t wanna miss
I didn’t see it in your eyes
A complete surprise
When you threw me your
Mao Tse Tung kiss

In the East there’s population
But they’re not waiting for salvation
Integration or one nation
Another situation for a corporation

It’s all a theory
You can’t carve it in stone
Punching in the dark
Scared to be alone
Scattered in the dust
Of the great unknown

Was it on the Great Wall of China baby
That you came up with this
I didn’t see it in your eyes
A complete surprise
When you hit me with your
Mao Tse Tung kiss

If it’s China or Carolina baby
Just remember this
You can’t convince
2000 years of sins
With one Mao Tse Tung kiss

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – Honey Mink Forever (2011)

Written by Marty Willson-Piper · Categorized: Blog

Missing

This is my stolen 1965 Rickenbacker 12-string, serial number EB157. If there's any chance of this guitar coming back to me before I go to meet my maker, then that would be wonderful. Please contact me if you have any information.

11209512_1669022976719710_7288437867089763325_n

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

  • spotify
  • facebook
  • instagram
  • youtube

Liking the blog?

Tour Dates

Instagram

Thanks to The Wernickis for a little glimpse into Thanks to The Wernickis for a little glimpse into their new New Mexico listening space 🌵 #nightjar #schoolkidsrecords
Redeyed lad of the lowlands 🎵 📷 @oliviaelek Redeyed lad of the lowlands 🎵

📷 @oliviaelektra 

#danelectro #danelectrobass #redeyerecords #pleasantrylane #pleasantrylanestudio
You usually don’t spend the day in the studio an You usually don’t spend the day in the studio and the night at a gig but if you put the studio next to the gig then there’s a greater chance. So @salimnourallah did just that, he put the gig and the studio next to each other and made it possible for me to spend the day recording and the evening playing live 🎵

📷 @drewliophoto 

#galacticheadquarters #happinessarecordlabel #pleasantrylanestudio #salimnourallah #oliviawillsonpiper
TO WHERE I AM NOW A visit in the studio today fro TO WHERE I AM NOW

A visit in the studio today from old mate Mark Burgess from The Chameleons who has been hanging in Texas recently. I was thinking about the two of us growing up in the northwest of England and all these years later finding ourselves in such an unlikely spot together. We fixed a few issues in the universe and I carried on recording some guitars until Mark had to leave. Mark had played at the Galactic Headquarters next to the studio this year as Olivia and I had four years ago and this reminded me to remind myself to remind everyone to remind their friends that we will be playing there with Salim on Saturday, New Year’s Eve, for the ultimate in intimate performance. You can get tickets here (follow link below).

CONTINUE READING: https://martywillson-piper.com/2022/12/to-where-i-am-now-1045

KEEP IN TOUCH: https://linktr.ee/mwillsonpiper

📷 @salimnourallah 

#markburgess #thechameleons #chameleonsvox #pleasantrylanestudio #happinessarecordlabel #martywillsonpiper #oliviawillsonpiper #moatband
📷 @argirgirl 📷 @argirgirl
TO WHERE I AM NOW Sadness manifested in a buildin TO WHERE I AM NOW

Sadness manifested in a building, today we went to visit Paisley Park. Prince built Paisley Park in Chanhassen, about twenty minutes southwest of Minneapolis. It opened in 1987 and he recorded his later albums there. Apart from Prince, REM also recorded and mixed Out Of Time there, recording Kate Pearson’s vocal on Shiny Happy People vocal. Madonna had Prince play guitar on three songs from Like A Prayer and the two co-wrote Love Song, finishing it remotely due to Madonna not being able to stand the cold weather and the rather desolate location of the studio. Of course, there are things around but it’s not in the city and it’s not in the countryside, it’s in a suburb, no distractions, just what Prince wanted.

CONTINUE READING: https://martywillson-piper.com/2022/12/to-where-i-am-now-1032

KEEP IN TOUCH: https://linktr.ee/mwillsonpiper

📷 @argirgirl 

#paisleypark #prince
Marty & Pablo! 📷 Rod MacQuarrie Marty & Pablo!

📷 Rod MacQuarrie
At last, a proper door stop. 📷 @judgeschamber At last, a proper door stop.

📷 @judgeschamber 

#grammysitting 👵
🌵 Texas Acoustic Dates 🌵 31 December - DALL 🌵 Texas Acoustic Dates 🌵

31 December - DALLAS
7 January - CELINA
12 January - HOUSTON
14 January - AUSTIN
15 January - SAN ANTONIO

With @salimnourallah and @joereyesmusic

More info here: https://mailchi.mp/e47ede06acd6/texas-acoustic-dates
Load More… Follow on Instagram

Mailing List

In Deep Music Archive

Songwriting & Guitar Guidance with Marty Willson-Piper
ORDER HERE

"These are awesome sessions that I highly recommend for guitar players of all levels. Very informative, frank discussions on everything related to guitar and music in general. Definitely a must for anyone pursuing songwriting."
(Stephen G., VA, USA)

"Marty knows how to bypass scales and get to the heart of feel and timing. His musical knowledge spans multiple cultures and genres. Perhaps most importantly, Marty is a cool dude. I highly recommend his guitar guidance." (Jed B., MN, USA)

"Ok, so you’re sitting in your home and Marty is across the world but is actually right here teaching you how to play guitar and write songs. He is a delight to talk to and he is your teacher, meaning he wants to see you get something out of his lessons. You know he’s paying attention and wants to steer you in the right direction. I am so grateful and humbled that he offers his time in this manner. This is an amazing opportunity for anyone who admires anything from his enormous body of work. How often do you get to learn from somebody that inspired you in the first place? Amazing." (Ann S., CA, USA)

Missing

This is my stolen 1965 Rickenbacker 12-string, serial number EB157. If there’s any chance of this guitar coming back to me before I go to meet my maker, then that would be wonderful. Please contact me if you have any information.

11209512_1669022976719710_7288437867089763325_n

MARTY WILLSON-PIPER © 2023 - Front Page Images by Hajo Müller