The Deep Cabaret Story
Whilst our blog/category/real-world gives you the lowdown on our Real World recording experience we thought it might be interesting for people picking up on the current version of Deep Cabaret to know something about the history of the project.
Here Steve Lewis aka Deep Cabaret helicopters out:
Here Steve Lewis aka Deep Cabaret helicopters out:
I can't remember when or where, but it was an open mic sort of night and Pete Moser was in charge. He was curating the offers into a coherent sequence. He came over to me and said "The light stuff comes first so I've put you in the deep cabaret part after. OK?" And I thought, Deep Cabaret. I'm having that.
I saved it in my pocket for a while but when Manchester Jazz Festival commissioned my 'Top Ten Sex Tips' project in 2005 I knew this was the moment to unleash Deep Cabaret. I put together an eight-piece band built on the foundation of me, Sam Dale on guitar and Ben McCabe on drums (we'd been messing around for a while as 'Irregardless') and added the magnificent Jon Thorne on double bass with a front line of Graham Clark on violin, Chris Bridges on trombone and the multi-purpose Paddy Steer on pedal steel guitar. Mike Butler wrote in City Life, "Steve Lewis a singer who can err towards wilful eccentricity, was stunning with a first-rate, left-leaning group. He offered profound philosophical insights gleaned from texts by Jung, Wittgenstein, Don DeLilo and the label of a bottle of disinfectant. The band created a productive tension between clashing elements…violin vs trombone, pedal steel guitar vs surf guitar and so on…and it was wonderful." |
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And so, the Deep Cabaret mould was cast. Top Ten Sex Tips got played 2-3 times more, but this version was very much a one-off. The same could be said of various Deep Cabaret Vox projects: voice - based improvised music shows, the most grandiose of which was 2007's Flocking: An Improvatorio with string quartet and accousmaticians.
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After this Deep Cabaret became my brand. Big bands, solo, songs, improv. If I was driving it, it was Deep Cabaret. About 2009 I got enthusiastic about African pop again and formed Orchestre DC Dansette. Only the consignenti knew what DC meant! This band fulfilled a dream that had begun watching Remmy Ongala playing in Morecambe Railway Station during 1989 WOMAD with 3 electric guitars. Ben McCabe and Sam Dale remained foundational with Dave Shooter on bass and Paul Graves on guitar and a horn section with Chris Bridges, Pete Moser and Joanna Mangona.
Orchestre DC Dansette was a lot of fun, playing “giddy grooves and twice-baked truths” at festivals around the North. I hit my stride in choosing writing to set. 'Deepest Fear', a firm audience fave, came from Nelson Mandela's famous speech quoting Marianne Williamson. But my proudest moment is probably setting a extract from Wittgenstein's 'Logico Tractatus Philosophicus' to a Kenyan benga groove! |
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In 2010 an extraordinary encounter on the Isle of Bute with a dozen pipe bands gathered in one practise field, each playing a different tune simultaneously changed my musical life. I became as obsessed with drones as I already was with riffs. I brought Paul Sherwood's hurdy-gurdy together with Matt Robinson's bass clarinet and found an outlet for the more downbeat side of my music that had never fitted into the Orchestre DC Dansette pad. So, in 2011 Deep Cabaret 3 began to get out and about.
For a short period, I was running two bands. It was good but very, very tiring. I dreamt of finding a way to combine them but there were too many people involved. I already seemed to be spending too much time organising and managing people - never my strong point. Around 2013 I brought both projects to a close and gave Deep Cabaret a bit of a break. |
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All this was the mulch out of which grew the 'new' Deep Cabaret. I never stop writing and, inevitably I began to want to perform again. I have no illusions about myself as a musician. I'm very creative but I'm technically poor and not very versatile. I do what I do well, but no-one is going to ask me to play guitar in their band. If I want to play, I'm going to have to make it happen. So, I contacted Ben McCabe, as ever, then Matt Robinson and Paul Sherwood from DC3. Next, despite promising myself I'd never go bigger than a quartet again, Maja Bugge's classical cello. And when I heard an overtone singer had hit town in the form of Jayson Stilwell........Well!!!!"
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