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29 October 2009 Yet again I'm displaying how crap I am at self promotion by taking ages to update this page...... But here I am at last. A lot's been going on in the last few months. As you can see from the listing above - the LushLife album is finally out. We had a very successful launch gig at a new venue in Camden called the Forge in September & there's a track from the album on a free CD that comes with the November issue of Word magazine. It's available now! And so is the album if you follow the link above. I'm very pleased with the way the album sounds & I love the artwork. All in all it's a great package. Christmas is coming...... LushLife, for those who haven't been reading this page regularly is a new project - a trio with me, legendary pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole & Simon Thorpe on double bass. It's a unique & special sound as the combination of vibraphone & pedal steel guitar is rarely heard in any band but never in such a small & intimate setting. To me, it's a very special album. I hope you have time to check it out & I hope you like it as much as I do! Anyway, there's a whole load more info, reviews & a link to BJ Cole's site if you follow the link above. August is usually a fairly quiet month for me but this year was an exception. I had a beautiful 11 day trip to Rimini in Italy to play some gigs with my friend Tommaso Starace on sax, Sam Gambarini on organ & Alessandro Pivi on drums who set the whole project up after a gig we'd done together at the Eagle in Rochester a year before. It was a wonderful trip. Very good music, well organized gigs, great hospitality, lovely people & as you'd expect, incredible food, hot weather & lots of ice creams. And the good thing is that it looks like Alessandro has managed to get us an album deal with a label in Milan so it should become an ongoing project. Cetainly we'll record in Italy sometime next year. I can't wait..... And after Italy I was back home for 36 hours before I travelled to Rochefort in France to play at the Rochefort en accords festival with LushLife. We were there for 4 nights & played 2 gigs together but also, part of the deal was that BJ & I were available to play with any of the other artists on at the festival who thought they might like vibes. It was great fun. The 2 LushLife sets were a big success although Simon Thorpe unfortunately wasn't able to be with us so we had London-based Scottish bass player Andy Hamill with us. We were fortunate that he was there. He was playing with his wife, singer/songwriter Rebecca Hollweg, who BJ & I both played a couple of songs with. Both BJ & I know Andy quite well so it was handy for us that he was there & he did a great job fitting into Simon's shoes..... For the second set, on the main stage, we were also joined by drummer Jeff Boudreaux who sounded great. He lives in Paris but is from New Orleans. I also played with an English singer/songwriter who I didn't know before called Rob Reynolds. A lovely guy & great singer. I played with a French singer/songwriter called Usthiax (who's next album I think I'm playing on). Very different from Rob but equally good & equally good fun to hang out with. Playing with Rebecca Hollweg was nice too. She's a lovely person, has a great voice & writes nice songs - I've known her for a few years, And then there was LadyChild. She was the only one who wanted me to play her whole set & that was great fun. She's an American living in France & she plays very rootsy blues. A beautiful voice & a lovely person. I had a great time hanging out & if all goes well I should be doing some more work with her in the future. In her set we were also joined by guitarist Gary Lucas who used to play with Captain Beefheart & co-wrote songs with Jeff Buckley. That was a treat as well. There are links on youtube to a lot of these artists (as well as LushLife) live from the festival. To have a look I think you need to search for Rochefort en accords & they should come up. I'm still working on my new funk project in Dorset when I get time. The distance doesn't make it easy...... As I mentioned before it's a new project revisiting similar ground to Vibraphonic. The line up is with Simon Mellish on drums, Guy Gardner on Fender Rhodes & Pat Davey on bass. We should be doing some more recording soon & if all goes well may have an album ready for release early next year. It may take slightly longer though...... And my other new project with top session guitarist Mitch Dalton is still up & coming. The project came about after we did a couple of gigs together & at one of them we got heckled - someone shouted "you should record an album together". After the gig we thought it was a really good idea & we're getting closer to recording the album all the time. Finding time is not always that easy for me but Mitch is one of the most in-demand session guitarists in the country (& has been for the last 25 - 30 years) & is even harder to tie down. But there's no rush - it will happen when the time is right. Mitch is a great musician & not nearly as well known as he should be but that's because he's not often that visible being in studios so much. It's a pleasure to work with him & I'm really looking forward to recording the album. The gig with Jerry Dammers & his Spatial AKA orchestra at the Madstock Festival in Victoria Park in July was a lot of fun. I think there were over 20 of us on stage. There are some great musicians involved & it's a special (as well as a spatial!) project. The band was originally formed as a tribute to Sun Ra so it's an exceptionally unusual orchestra. The band includes Denys Baptiste on tenor sax, Finn Peters on flute, Zoe Rahman on keyboards, Nathaniel Facey on alto, Patrick Illingworth on drums & many, many more. The July gig also featured the great Jamaican trombonist Rico guesting. I've been asked to join the band & there's a national tour of some quite large concert halls coming up in March. I should have confirmation that it's all going ahead in the next few days. I'm thinking about releasing my solo vibes album as well. Not sure if anyone will like it. It's not jazz - more ambient - although all the tracks were spontaneously composed. Does that make it jazz? It's improvised? But what I wanted to do was create tonal soundscapes & show what a beautiful sound the vibraphone can make so it's quite simple & spacey. It's like nothing I've done before - although there were a couple of similar tracks on my quintet album "Sentimental". But it makes it very hard to categorize. I sounded out some people in marketing who were totally baffled as to how to reach an audiience for it. Or even if there is one. I guess I've just got to go for it & see what happens..... I think that's it for the moment. I've just updated my gig page so if you want to see what I'm up to please go to Gigs. Most of what's printed below here has been there for a while but if you want some more info on the fairly recent past please have a look. I've updated a few bits too..... I was pleased with the way my last quintet album "Blue Reflections" did. It had some good reviews (see the Reviews page) & has sold quite well. It's possible to buy the CD here if you like. Just go to Buy CDs. Otherwise it's available on Amazon & in the few shops that stock British jazz CD's. Blue Reflections" was released on 18th February 2008. Below are a few sound samples of tracks from the album.. Further below are more details of the album...... If you listen to the sound samples above you'll see it's an album with lots of blues on. It includes a few new compositions & covers of "Green Jeans" by Grant Green, "Chitlins Con Carne" by Kenny Burrell, "Soul Station" by Hank Mobley & "Sugar" by Stanley Turrentine.
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There are various CD's for sale at Buy CDs including all my quintet albums & the Chevalier Brothers CD "Live & Still Jumping" that I recently acquired copies of. The album was originally recorded & released in 1985 on vinyl & the CD release includes some extra live tracks from the same time that have never been released before. Reviews of all my albums can be seen on the Reviews page - there are a lot of them. There's an interview of me at www.jazzviews.co.uk if you want to have look. An internet search will probably also take you to an interview I did for Jazz Review about 5 albums that have influenced me over the years in the February 2006 issue of Jazz Review. To hear other tracks from other albums please go to the respective pages for my Quintet , the Travis/Beaujolais Quartet & Vibraphonic . They can also be accessed on the Buy CDs page. If anyone is interested in booking the quintet or wants more information please feel free to mail me at roger@rogerbeaujolais.com. I think you may have to paste the address onto an email...... As I like it so much I've left in the Guardian review from the One Eleven Club, Sheffield. Saturday July 3 2004 by James Griffiths: "British vibraphone virtuoso Roger Beaujolais took up the vibes in his early 30s, after spending many unprofitable years as a rock drummer. He hitched a ride to popularity on the back of the mid-1990s acid jazz movement, although in recent years he has moved into more traditional jazz territory. In Sheffield he appeared with his regular quintet for an evening of pulsating, Latin-tinged hard bop. They melded danceable clave rhythms to driving Art Blakey-style funk work-outs and a generous dose of the blues. Beaujolais has a band of high-profile musicians, including the sublime Winston Clifford on drums and Mark Lockheart on saxophone. Stir Robin Aspland's spirited piano playing into the mix and you've got an extremely sophisticated backdrop for Beaujolais's astonishing technique. The show came in two distinct halves; shorter pieces first, then an extended jazz suite of rare depth and cohesion. Of the shorter pieces, Jazz Syrup best encapsulated the group's approach. Boasting a cosmopolitan swagger reminiscent of a Tubby Hayes band, it ducked and dived through a variety of double and half-time passages. Beaujolais frequently used his vibes atmospherically, lacing his cohort's solos with glowing clusters and graceful little counter-phrases. But he also turned on the heat: in full flight with two mallets in each hand, he gives the world's best vibes players a run for their money. Not bad for a failed rock tub-thumper." If you've read my biography you'll notice he was a bit liberal with the facts but as it was such a good review I forgive him..... Below are the usual things - attempts to try to make you part with money etc. so please read on..... I'm still regularly selling CD's through my site but unfortunately I've had to increase the price of the CD's. The exchange rate between £'s & $'s has meant that I was hardly making any money from the sales which didn't bother me too much until CCNow (the credit card company I use to sell them through) started taking a much larger cut from all sales. But if anyone feels like buying a CD (or two!) there are a few available through this site (all the albums from StayTuned Records + a few others including Tim Richards' Great Spirit) & it's possible to listen to a few short samples of tracks to help decide before you buy....... Unfortunately I no longer have any copies of the first Vibraphonic album (called "Vibraphonic"). To buy or listen to any of the CD's please click on the following link - Buy CDs . You can also hear samples of tracks via the pages of the relative band...... The interview I did for the Lunar Lounge website is still on their site if anyone's interested. Lunar Lounge is a club which has jazz/dance live nights at the Spitz in East London. I really enjoyed playing there one hot, sweaty evening in the summer of 2002. The interview can be found at www.lunarlounge.co.uk Below is a shameless ego boost for me - I thought I'd leave it on the site for a while. Gary Burton, the regular winner in the "Best Vibist" category of Downbeat magazine's annual jazz poll was in London in the summer of 2000 to play a week at the Pizza Express with Makoto Ozone. While there he was given a blindfold test by UK magazine "Jazz Review" that appeared in Sept 2000. It's the usual format: a musician is played tunes (usually featuring their own instrument) without being told who they're listening to. Luckily for me, amongst tracks by Lionel Hampton, Roy Ayers, Bobby Hutcherson & Mike Mainieri he was played a track from my quintet album "For Old Times". The track was "Highway One", written by Bobby Hutcherson. Not surprisingly, he didn't recognise my playing but thought it might be one of the top guys in the USA at the moment which was very flattering. Below is a copy of what he said. The "Test" was performed by Mark Gilbert. "This could be one of the newer players that I'm not real familiar with. I've heard a little bit of Stefon Harris and a little bit of Steve Nelson in recent years, but I'm not sure I would recognise their playing. I'm guessing it's one of those two guys, though there's a couple of other younger players as well. Joe Locke is another one. I would think it was one of those three, but of course it could be someone from Japan or France or something as well."
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