While on the road promoting my 3rd album ‘Good Times with Evil’ I was approached by The Web Show who happened to be filming in Thailand at the time. They interviewed me and made this short film about me being on tour.
0 From the Vaults – Interview from Thailand 2011
0 From the Vaults – Modern Life – Japan – 2011
The life on the road is full of coincidences. This one still blows my mind. 2007 and I am touring New Zealand for the 2nd time. I get booked to play the 121 Cafe in Auckland and spend the day hanging out with the awesome barman Shinya. We get on well drinking coffee and talking music and travel. Cut to 2010 and I am playing a club in Chiba, Japan. I’m chatting to this cool guy after the show who speaks great English and plays the Sitar. He mentions living in New Zealand and at the same time we realise the reality.
One year later and I am playing the same club and Shinya and I share the stage together for the 1st time. What a wonderful experience it was. We jam out an improvisation and then I segway into my (at the time) unreleased song ‘Modern Life’. Shinya skilfully follows along like a boss 🙂
0 From the Vaults: Been Smoking Too Long (2006)
Probably the oldest video of me performing solo on You Tube dating back over 15 years this is from a one my shows prior to the release of my 1st album.
Weirdly my route through this song led to me discovering the work of Nick Drake who covered the track. My take on this song is a lot closer to the version I first heard of it which was by ‘Placebo’. However one of the first recordings to come out was that of Nick Drake and eventually it came to light that the 1st recording was by his friend Robin Frederick.
Anyway cut to March 2006 and I am playing the sun out in a South London Club which is recorded and ends up on youtube. I was reminded of this song when a friend recently asked if I still played it.
0 From the Vaults – Pish – Thailand – 2011
Most of these from the vaults videos are ones that have been documented by me or by audience members and have not been online before or have been removed for whatever reason years ago and some of them are ones I’ve found through searching youtube. This video is the latter.
As a part of a 9 month tour across Asia and Australasia to promote my 3rd album ‘Good Times with Evil’ this video comes from a show in Bangkok in March of 2011.
Playing the song Pish from the same album I had the great fortune to be joined by the incredibly talented and awesomely enthusiastic Jean-David Caillouet (JD Mosaic).
I still remember this night well as we jammed and jammed for long time lost in the loops and sounds occasionally locking into a song.
0 From the Vaults – Playing Piano from Inside my Tour Van in the Middle of a Storm
I couldn’t sleep one night while touring the South Coast of England. so I switched on my Camera and played Piano for a couple of hours. This is a little snippet of a tune called The Watcher (that has not been released).
0 From the Vaults: Pish, Time & Places, Streetlight Song, Bugscope (Unreleased Song), The Opinion of Money (Unreleased Song), Alaskan Sky, Time Lost Tradition, Sleep Tight – Canterbury 2017
While touring almost constantly through 2017 I begun to piece together sounds that would eventually be recorded for ‘The Realignment Session’.
Here my entire concert was filmed by a member of the audience and I was lucky to have 2 performances of songs here that didn’t end up being used. The 2 songs from that session played here ‘Bugscope’ & ‘The Opinion of Money’ were ones not released in the end. So in a way they get their first and possibly only airing here.
0 From the Vaults – Note That Says – Live 2008.
This weeks From the Vaults takes me back to a show in one of my favourite venues. Club 85 – Hitchin.
This was a song that didn’t see a release until 2012 but was performed for years before hand. I started to choose to put a loop jam in the middle of it. This show kinda went into a bit of psychedelic place and the Director of the video Mark Garvey took it there with the visuals too.
0 From the Vaults – (Unreleased Song) Recorded Live in a Forest.
Over the last few years I have not only embraced playing piano but also busking out on the street. It has helped me through the tough times when CD/Vinyl sales dropped (with the rise of streaming) but also with the arrival of Covid and the cancellation of so many shows.
This short video is from when I was testing my busking rig out to be sure it worked and would set myself up in the forest and simply play for a few hours. I was practicing a song I’ve still not finished simply called ‘Process Song’.
0 Le Bistrot Du Marché (Acoustic Looping Rig) – Chauffailles – France
71170 Chauffailles Reserve a table to eat: 03 85 26 53 28
0 From the Vaults: Time & Places – Medellin, Colombia 2019
A more recent addition for this weeks ‘From the Vaults’ Vid.
Sharing the stage with Medellin based guitarist Manu Londo for a jam through an old tune of mine ‘Time and Places’.
The original 2006 version of the song can be heard here: https://stuartoconnor.bandcamp.com/track/time-and-places
