Impropod Podcast

Ep28 Camden chaos, & the great train robbery - Jeff Bacon

Luke 00:00:07 Welcome to the impropod Pod podcast. My guest today is Jeff Bacon, all the way from Barcelona. How are you doing, Jeff?

Jeff 00:00:15 Good. Thank you. Luke.

Luke 00:00:17 What is it you do? If you could describe yourself a bit?

Jeff 00:00:20 Sure. I help business people to understand music and music. People to understand business or to do better business. So I'm a business development specialist for the music industry and specifically music tech. And I try and help companies that have built something that can help independent creators, or anyone in the independent music sector to have a better experience, consumers included, and try and connect those disparate worlds of kind of art and commerce where they should be connected.

Luke 00:00:50 Hey. All right, so I'm going to play a piece of music, and I want you to tell me what it makes you think of. So don't overanalyze it too much. Just like any kind of thoughts that come into your mind. All right. And it's all completely improvised. So I haven't thought about it at all.

Luke 00:02:03 So what do you think of that?

Jeff 00:02:04 Beautiful. It put me in mind of those long, epic intros to a classic jazz funk tune. Maybe like a Minnie Riperton when she was doing stuff with the jazz band that had, like, kind of orchestral movements behind it as well, or even an Isley Brothers track. Highways of My Life, for instance, starts just like that, with the refrain and opening elaborate intro, and then it kicks in to the main groove. And there was a point where you started doing that. As I was thinking it as well, there was like a groove coming in. I could hear the beat about to drop.

Luke 00:02:38 Yeah, you're really into that sort of music on you?

Jeff 00:02:39 Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Big hip hop, head and hip hop led me back to looking through inlay cards and trying to understand who who is media reporting that's been sampled here? Who is George Clinton? Who is Lou Donaldson? And yeah, that kind of stuff especially does it for me, that kind of 70s jazz, funk soul with orchestration, Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, all that kind of thing.

Luke 00:03:08 So you have for telling me a story of some kind.

Jeff 00:03:10 Yeah, I've worn many different hats in music, and one thing I did in my mid to late 20s was try and get some work experience in music. One of the things that came my way was working as day to day manager of a band called the Alabama three. That is the band that did Woke Up This Morning, the theme song to The Sopranos, which was sampled by NAS for Got Yourself a Gun and super interesting bunch of cats, maybe ten people in the band at any one time, and they would describe themselves for people who aren't familiar as acid house, country and western blues band, basically. So before it ever had the idea of mixing those genres, you had these guys who dressed and look like a country and western band, but their music is like 90s electronic music with blues guitars and harmonica and all that over the top. As part of my job, I would be trying to find opportunities for them, for press, that kind of thing.

Jeff 00:04:11 And they, based out of a venue in Brixton in London called jam, shout out to the Brixton Jam crew, where they have studios, and it's where the band would convene before a tour started and rehearse and all that kind of stuff. And there was a band playing there one night, very much cut from the same cloth as the Alabama three, and I got talking to, I think it was their drummer who actually revealed, yeah, we are very much inspired by them. We love Americana, but we're also we're Brits and we love electronic music, so we are doing our own spin on that. And in fact, this guy was a producer at BBC radio and he would love to have the band. Come on the show. Okay, great. Let's make that happen. So after months of back and forth, I eventually arranged for the the acoustic version of the band. It plays a four piece and they would go in and be interviewed and play a live session on BBC radio six. Great.

Jeff 00:05:08 You know exactly what you want to be doing for a band you're working with. And for the people paying me, it's good for them to see me making stuff like that happen. The day before, I was speaking with the radio producer in question. He basically said, the DJ whose show it is, you're going to Larry Lamb, who was a former model turned TV presenter, radio host, like pretty big deal in the UK in that context, quite famous. So apparently this guy really doesn't like the Alabama three, and I don't have much more information to go on other than that, I don't know if he has a vitriolic, pro-active hatred of the band or whatever. I have no idea the scale of his dislike or anything. I just knew that apparently he's not a fan of the band, so now I have to pass this information on to the band. Or do I spent like 48 hours thinking about who do I tell in the band? Do I tell them, how do I manage this? In the sleepless night I was having in the run up to this day happening, it occurred to me, wait a minute.

Jeff 00:06:10 Basically, Larry Lamb, his father, is a guy called George Lamb, and George Lamb at the time was appearing on EastEnders, the British soap opera. But George Lamb had also previously done many fine films and TV shows, and one of them was a film in the 80s called Buster, which starred Phil Collins and was about the Great Train Robbery. George Lamb, the DJ's father, played one of the main characters, Bruce Reynolds, one of the Great Train Robbers. Now, I mentioned earlier that one of the foursome, the Alabama three acoustic set up, it was a guy called Nick and his name was Nick Reynolds. So this little nugget of information drops in the middle of the night while I can't sleep. And I'm thinking about how do I fix this situation? So we're in the cab on the way to BBC radio House, and I say, guys, something I need to tell you. We're going to meet Larry Land. I've seen him off the telly. Yeah, yeah. That guy.

Jeff 00:07:07 Apparently, he's not really a fan of your band. Cue lots of histrionics and. jeez, this guy. What kind of manager are you? The kerfuffle and the furore dies down a bit. And then I point out. But, Nick. Am I not right in thinking that this guy played your dad in the movie Buster? And Nick's eyes lit up and you went, oh, wait a minute, little Georgie. Are we going to meet little Georgie? I used to babysit for this guy when he was a kid. Oh, really? That puts a different complexion on things. Long story short, we get to the radio studio, Larry is padding around barefoot, greeting people. And he's professional and civil and hi everyone. And you wouldn't necessarily know he's not a fan of the band or doesn't like these guys for whatever reason, whatever it might be. But at the very earliest opportunity I went, and Larry, this is Nick. I do believe your father played his father in the film. Buster and George's face cracked.

Jeff 00:08:05 All of a sudden he realized he was looking at his, you know, babysitter from 25 years earlier. And it was all hugs and oh, gee, I didn't know you were in this band. And all of a sudden the complexion of the whole interview changed and they did a great session, the magic of the music industry and what a small world we all live in.

Luke 00:08:24 And unexpected connections as well. Yeah. How would you describe their music? Alabama three. You said that it's quite a mix of genres, right?

Jeff 00:08:34 Yeah. The song they're most famous for the Woke Up this morning, Get Yourself a Gun is a perfect example. It's like a throbbing house bassline, but with gospel vocals. The a lead singer who's hugely influenced by Johnny Cash. And artists of that ilk. He's a Welshman, but when he sings, he could be from Memphis. Deep gravelly voice, very soulful music, very message driven, very sociopolitical in their leanings and their lyrics.

Luke 00:09:02 I'm going to try and get a flavour of that sound, and I'm just literally just pulling this out of the air, right.

Luke 00:09:06 And then I'm going to go for they realise this guy doesn't like them, and then this unexpected connection kind of thing. Musically, I can't really be more specific than that. Yeah, it's tricky actually.

Jeff 00:10:59 Got the kind of jazzy but slightly western, opening gambit to that. I have a bit of a background in sync as well. You develop a habit of putting pictures to music in your head and replaying the whole scenario as you were playing that it was very evocative, a sense of foreboding, because even when I'd made this connection for the band and they felt better about it, we could have walked in there and this guy going, oh yeah, my dad played your dad. He thought he was an idiot or whatever. As it stands, the Great Train Robbers, for better or for worse, are viewed as a kind of like Robin Hood in his. They're like folk heroes. And luckily that translated, yeah, the sense of foreboding you develop there into the realization that, hey, we're all friends here, and actually, we're going to have a great time for the next couple of hours.

Jeff 00:11:43 But you captured that.

Luke 00:11:44 Well, the fun is hard to if when you have a certain genre in mind, especially a kind of bluesy site hint of Americana, that to be able to develop it in terms of the narrative of the story.

Jeff 00:11:55 Yeah. What what bluesy and Americana means, Billy Bragg said, Americana is what middle class people call country and western, I've always found quite amusing. I think you had a bit of New Orleans flavor I heard in there, whereas I would say Alabama three are more kind of Appalachian, a little bit more cowboy vibe, honky tonk piano. A little more like that. Yeah. I'd imagine that with some thumping acid techno bassline.

Luke 00:12:33 So you telling me another story?

Jeff 00:12:34 Then I was thinking back to my first band's first gig in London. We were called Rio Tinto Bon Tempo, which we both got better at, coming up with names for things since then. It was A56 piece jazz, funk hip hop band and very kind of acid jazz type jazz funk. So slap bass and a guy playing a Hammond organ in a very kind of.

Jeff 00:12:58 And Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff type way, quite kind of jaunty 90s hip hop vibe and just me rapping on my own. We were up against a band called Mind the Jap in the final, who were a Japanese punk band who were amazing, and then another band from Redding, whose name Escapes Me, were actually already signed to an indie label and my band, Rio Tinto Bon Tempo. We won the competition. One of the best moments of my life. Local hero status. We won some money. We won recording time in a proper studio in Redding, which was owned by the bassist from Mongo, Jerry. We got a gig at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, drove down to London from reading. You've got a map in your mates reading the map from the passenger seat. I had what at the time was an 18 year old Vauxhall Astra estate that overheat quite often and would just blow up for random reasons. So it took us all day to get to the Jazz Cafe, but we got there in time.

Jeff 00:13:54 It was our pseudo manager who would book this for us. We turn up at the Jazz Cafe, pull up outside, start unloading our gear, start walking into the venue and I think it's around this time I noticed that there's a blackboard outside with the band names on it, and our band name isn't on there, and the guys that have just walked some gearing have just come out with a confused look on their face like, yeah, these guys don't know we're coming are what? We went and got a copy of Time Out because we knew we were listed in Time Out. We had to go into the venue, find the promoter and show him the Time Out listing to prove that we were meant to be there on that evening because they weren't expecting us. They hadn't accounted for us to have a sound check, and there was no agreement with changing one band between the other. Can I use your kick and your snare, or can I use. We just use my breaker balls as a drummer. So we had to make all of those agreements anyway.

Jeff 00:14:46 We played the gig. We didn't embarrass ourselves, but it was a chastening experience because, and I figure every artist goes through this. In my head, I'm visualizing and trying to manifest. I guess this idea of when you walk out on stage, the crowd's going to go nuts. They're going to love the first song. We're going to play that new song, and quite often it doesn't go like that. You turn it up, promoter doesn't know you coming. Only five people have come. Your name is wrong on the Ticketmaster tickets. Your name is wrong on the marquee. You've got two mics, but only one of them works and the DJ's forgotten the needles. It's, for his best acts. All of that stuff is part and parcel of it, and it's partly why I think I'm able to to relate to artists and create music creators when I'm working on the industry side. Most of us on the industry side have been artists at one time or another, but I think a lot of people really forget the realities of that sometimes.

Luke 00:15:41 It's like a Blues Brothers situation.

Jeff 00:15:44 It was it had that vibe to it, which also you get a kick out of, you feel like you're in a real band when stuff like that happens.

Luke 00:15:51 So you're kind of sound. You said like keyboard player had a Jimmy Smith. Yeah.

Jeff 00:15:56 Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff. Funky chords, super funky jazzy keys were definitely core to what we were doing.

Luke 00:16:03 Okay, so then you've got the recording session and the journey might make a bit of thing about that. There's car that's overheating and then the venue, the confusion. But it was all right in the end.

Jeff 00:18:13 You definitely captured the kind of the Rio Tinto Bond tempo vibe with the opening bars there, when there was a kind of discordant breakdown, which for me felt like the reality check of I'm not headlining the Jazz Cafe to adoring fans.

Jeff 00:18:26 So yeah.

Jeff 00:18:28 I'm an annoyance that the promoter didn't expect to have tonight, but we can bring it back around and enjoy ourselves.

Luke 00:18:40 So what did you get out of this podcast?

Jeff 00:18:43 It's always nice to chat to you, Luke, obviously, and I love improvisation in music generally making music a unique experience for a listener every time is such a cool thing.

Jeff 00:18:54 Somebody who's identifies as a kind of hip hop vocalist but isn't much of a freestyler. Just hearing you interpret and play has been fantastic, and also an exercise in thinking about syncing music and visuals. Slash stories, slash emotions and feelings. I think that's just really good to make your brain do those exercises, especially in my line of work.

Luke 00:19:19 Cheers, Jeff. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. It's been very insightful. Thanks for having me. Join us next week for another episode of Improv Pod. Thanks for listening.