The Loose Connections Recommender #2

On Ambient Pedal Steel, Spring Grain & The Last Bohemians

#1:

I’m crazy about pedal steel. The dreamy achy wooziness of it just gets me right where it hurts so good. For as long as I can remember, producing an instrumental album of ambient psychedelic pedal steel music has been hovering around on my mental to-do list, somewhere around #207.

So I was thrilled to discover that Luke Schneider has already done it! His new album is called ‘It Is Solved By Walking’ and it’s out on Third Man Records, one of my top 5 favourite record labels. I tested it out its heavy peace inducing capabilities yesterday afternoon after getting home from an intense day at work and in need of a quick nap.

I lay down, put this album on and next minute I was awakening from a kind of trance and felt amazing. Try it out!

I would still like to produce my own kind of dreamy pedal-steel aural flower garden someday, with the incredible steel player Russ Pahl, who played on my Nashville-made album ‘Lovers Dreamers Fighters’ in 2017 (see track below, full of all my favourite faces) and is such a psychedelic cool cat. My imaginary album has more melodic hints of Hawaiian sunsets and country rain. But I have some other things to do first, so please go enjoy drifting away with the wonderful Luke Schneider.

#2:

Another thing I am absolutely crazy for, is deeply original and well thought out artist merch. When I read a couple of days ago, that Robert Forster has come out with his own brand of muesli called ‘Spring Grain’ I was gobsmacked by its perfection. This is peak primo cool merch genius. For those unfamiliar, the muesli riffs on the title of Go-Betweens song ‘Spring Rain’.

Mr Forster waxed lyrical about it on his Facebook page “Here it is. It’s happened. After years of preparation and final months of manufacture, Spring Grain, the organic signature Robert Forster Muesli is now on the market…”. In the comments section (I love the Comments sections, they are always full of strange gold…) another musician stated “I remember after we played a gig as your backing band in Glasgow once ...your excitement after being paid...the excitement wasn't the fact you had £££s in your hands it was the thrill in your voice when you stated 'I can go out and buy some expensive muesli now'.” Unfortunately despite my rock’n’roll detective skills, I can’t find a way to actually purchase this very great muesli yet, but maybe the thrill of the hunt is part of the charm.

I am especially obsessed with merch at the moment because I have a very exciting tour announcement coming up and I am currently dreaming in merch. It’s not easy to come up with the essential mix of making something covetable, unique, affordable for the customer but financially viable for the artist, lightweight and small (for touring purposes). Please send me genius ideas.

#3.

My final recommendation for today is the fantastic podcast series and complete treasure trove ‘The Last Bohemians’, an interview series launched by UK journalist and presenter Kate Hutchinson for International Women's Day in 2019. She is such a warm and lovely conversationalist, and draws out such intimate, vivid reflections from her fabulous array of subjects. A few of my favourite episodes are with Gloria Hendry (Bond’s first Black love interest, Playboy bunny and Blaxploitation star - and all round fascinating and inspiring person), P.P Arnold (legendary soul singer, former Ikette, survivor) and groundbreaking erotic, feminist surrealist artist Penny Slinger.

Penny Slinger, A Difficult Position (An Exorcism) (1970-77).

About the podcast:

The Last Bohemians is the award-winning audio series that meets female firebrands and controversial outsiders in arts and culture. From subversive musicians and rock'n'roll groupies to groundbreaking artists and game-changing style icons, these are women who have lived life on the edge and still refuse to play by the rules. The result is a vivid and impressionistic podcast that showcases the stories of older creative women at a time when they are still underrepresented in the media at large.

I love this article in The Independent about why Kate was inspired to create the podcast: “It’s powerful to hear older women talk about sex, lust, loneliness, and how art and creativity can pull you through. It’s also thrilling to hear them be shocking and saucy. International Women’s Day just gone is always awash with people championing inspirational women, and rightly so, but I also want to celebrate that they can be challenging, weird, leftfield, messy and outspoken. You don’t just have to be a good rebel girl. Where are the wild women, the outsiders – those who have, as the Financial Times put it, “existed outside of the roles that society had carved out for them”? And those who have proved that these personas are not just the preserve of men?”

Hear, hear!

If this is the kind of content you love too, you might like to consider supporting the docoseries I’m in the early stages of developing about trailblazing female rebels over at Documentary Australia.

I’ll leave you with this sublime original version of ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’ by the magnificent P.P. Arnold (written by Cat Stevens) - not hard to see where Rod Stewart got his inspiration from is it?

I hope you find something to love here - please share the love around if you do and please send me your wildest and your most sensible merch suggestions.

Til next time x