Donna Maciocia | Songs and art fae a scots lass…

Hello my good vibes. I’ve decided to name my little group of blog subscribers that because you’re all so full of them every time I post up here. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for you taking the time to get in touch in emails and comments and stuff. It really helps spur me on so thank you, thank you. In fact, the other day I wrote a list of all the things I am incredibly grateful for right now, and you guys and your ‘good vibes’ were on it. What is really cool as well, is that the day after I wrote that list, a friend in the states wrote me an email saying she had written a list of things she was grateful for on Thanksgiving and that I was on it! And then I was like, no way! I wrote a list too yesterday and you were on mine! And so we basked in our glorious moment of mutual gratefulness and appreciation. And it felt real nice. So I thought I’d tell you guys you’re on my list in the hope it makes you feel all nice and warm too. I’m only very sorry I haven’t yet replied to some of your messages because of being so busy, it’s been very touching and heartbreaking to hear about some of your own difficult times It seems I was right in my last post - 2008 has been a horrendous but powerful year for many of us. Guys, we are not alone and can do this together! *group hug*

I don’t really have time to write at length tonight… work tomorrow and all that. (Speaking of work though, I was relieved to get offered a permanent position last week. Woop! I am only temping at the mo you see) I will however do my usual and give you a brief visual glimpse of my life since last posting…

Dave and I played the glorious multimedia night Sundown in Southend-on-Sea last Sunday. It was yet again a totally brilliant/inspiring evening and I was blown away by several of the performances. One of their resident photographers took this cool pic during our set:

For the night, Dave and I reworked the tune We Believe In Something Unusual finally putting to use an old retro bit of gear Dave bought on ebay earlier this year. It’s called an Omnichord and they are well ACE. We pumped it through 2 delay pedals and our WBISU rework turned out to be well trippy:

After returning home late from a gig the other week, I told ross I’d give him a fiver if he could squeeze his entire body into the toy car in Burger king. He just didn’t quite get that last leg in though:

I made myself a homemade vocal booth earlier this week using an old wooden fold out screen thing that I bought cheap in the spring. It doesn’t look attractive at all I know, but it helps a lot to fight against the very noisy outdoors (we live very, very close to Heathrow airport):

Just a couple of pics of one of our musical spaces upstairs in ‘Fico Towers:

Don’t think you’ve seen our spiral staircase yet:

Dave and I spent much of yesterday learning christmas covers, and I stumbled across this musical treat whilst looking for inspiration through my emusic subscription, I adore it:

A friend sent me this the other day, I haven’t laughed out loud at my computer so hard in a long time (BAD LANGUAGE warning - don’t play this on loudspeaker at work!) A little bit of Stephen Fry & Jay Z:

And now to my long awaited next demo… another shameless delve into ukulele pop. I finished writing and started recording this tune in august, but only put the last of the recording to bed earlier this week. Massive thanks and kudos go to Anna Gibson who loaned me her fantastic trumpeting talents, and also to Dave Amplifico who tidied up my sloppy drum programming. Other instrumentation by yours truly: ukulele, vox, melodica, trumpet, glockenspiel and kazoo. I’m posting you both a version with and without drums, I’d be interested to know what you prefer…. cos I’m not really sure about the drums. If I’m honest, I’d love to start the whole thing again because I’d do it completely differently! But I’m going to let it free into the world as it is for now.

‘Follow The Moon (without drums)’ (8.2mb) Right-Click or Ctrl-Click Here to Download

‘Follow The Moon (with drums)’ (8.2mb) Right-Click or Ctrl-Click Here to Download

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Follow The Moon
words & music by donna maciocia
© mdm creations 2008

Holding on to histories that shape me
Reading all in hope it’ll save the day
Searching to let go and exhale free
Do it all without feeling cliche
Words and actions that make you feel real
Not a script that’s already written
A formula that scientists could have predicted

And who knows if i’ll ever see the day again
With the sand in my toes and the wind in the trees
Well I don’t really care

———————————————————

Till the next time, good vibes… Donna xxx

Updating the site got me all in the mood and I went and recorded another little ukulele ditty for y’all tonight too!

The proper version with all the bells and whistles and trumpets is almost finished…

Nighty night x

Subscribers, friends…. hello! I had such high intentions for this blog! I swore it would never end up being a series of apologetic posts groveling as to why I hadn’t been updating in such a long time… Yet it seems to have become that way. Woopsie! Those who have followed my musical progress for many years will hopefully realise how out of character this has all been for me. All I can say is that this past year for many different reasons has been the most difficult of my life so far. It seems to have been that way for a lot of people actually, or maybe its just my perspective because of what I’ve been going through personally…? It all came to a nasty head with the unexpected end of a long-term relationship almost 2 months ago. It hurt so much I can’t tell you in words, I’m sure many of you know what I’m talking about though. I don’t wish the pain of a broken heart on anyone - except, through that kind of suffering one can only become stronger and wiser. And that kind of wisdom is something only painful experience can buy, it’s sacred stuff! I have been on an emotional rollercoaster to say the least - so many tears that I did not even know I was capable of crying. And then when you think things can’t possibly get any worse, or you’re well on the way to healing, a few more blows arrive, which feel even more devastating than the first when they hit… but slowly, surely, good old time heals and the mighty power of perspective kicks in with positive effect! And boy does it feel good when you get to the place where you can look back and see the good stuff instead of the bad, with forgiveness, or when your self esteem returns and you remember how to be strong and set boundaries to look after yourself! It can just feel like it takes centuries to get there when you’re in the thick of it.

Throughout my tough times Ross and Dave (Amplifico bandmates) have been solid as a rock looking after me at home in our new pad in London. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have them around. All my friends have been incredibly supportive, I’ve been bowled over by their kindness and thoughtfulness. How I have cried and laughed with them these past couple of months! They have taught me so much, I can’t thank them enough.

A few weeks ago I became a proper 9 till 5 girl again, which I’ve surprisingly embraced with ease! I don’t feel any severe shock to the system (yet!) I’m working with people with disabilities and helping them seek employment, something totally different and new. It’s proven to be so far very challenging and at times I feel completely out my depth, but it’s incredibly humbling and refreshing to think and care about other people for the mostpart of my time rather than stewing in my own woes and heartbreak! Plus no two days are the same and I am far from being stuck at a desk all day, its a very active role. It kind of feels meant to be to be honest and I am already feeling a comforting sense of fulfillment. So although most people so far have despaired at the news of me having to do a ‘normal job’ again, I have to say I am very happy with the situation so far!

Music and art… well I have decided to take it very easy till next year. With the journey I’ve had these past 12 months or so, I have no doubt I will have plenty to write about when the creative bug kicks back in! But I’ve still got a bit of spiritual healing to do before I start putting pressure on myself in that department. In the meantime Dave and I are playing a small gig next weekend in Southend on Sea at Sundown (the night I was raving about months ago) and we (Amplifico) are throwing a private christmas concert for friends in December which should be fun. I am looking to pal up with mates to have some christmas ukulele fun in Scotland over the festive hols too. AND I have another couple of projects in the pipeline with friends, inspired by Sundown, we are looking to start a monthly night in London early next year. So watch this space!

Again, I’ll share with you some pics of my life since my last post…

Last month my trumpet playing friend Anna came over to record some parts on another of my new ukulele tunes. She took some lovely pics of our fabulous upstairs space. (That’s dave at work in his home office further down):

Moth infestation in our new flat! I caught about 80 of them in the space of like 3 or 4 weeks!  I desperately need a new trap now, I’m predicting my clothes are going to be in tatters by the end of the year:

Hey good lookin’. Halloween fancy dress shopping:

So upstairs in our new flat, with its 8 big old windows and a terrificly high ceiling - the temperature is consequently frrrrrrrreeeeeezing. There’s no point in actually switching the heating on because it’ll escape straight out the windows. We need to work out a solution really, but in the meantime this is how we dress up to watch the telly or hang out upstairs:

All i wanted after my break-up was to take a month out in some rejuvenating health retreat to get my head, body and soul together again. That just wasn’t gonna happen though… but something almost equally awesome happened. A good friend of mine phoned me one day with free train tickets to a sustainable living ‘camp’ in Devon for a long weekend. It was brilliant, just what the doctor ordered. Eating from the land, chopping wood, making a coop for roosters, building shelters, building fires, walking in the countryside, pressing fresh apple juice and making pizzas in a big outdoor clay oven! Totally amazing.

Team Rooster Coop!

Window display in Richmond. wtf???

My first trip to Greenwich and to the planetarium where we were told we are all just stardust! The views were breath taking:

My mate katy sent this to me and made me laugh so much. She said this is how she felt when she returned home to scotland after listening to me during the week after my break-up (the dude with the shrunken head). The poor girl had come down for a week’s holiday at our flat with her boyfriend Gav, and ended up having to counsel me and my heartbreak woes for a week instead:

Our new pad ‘Fico Towers is right next to a beautiful canal that apparently goes all the way to birmingham. We all went on a lovely walk one sunday:

Pumpkins for halloween!

And here’s a musical video treat if you haven’t seen it thanks to Chris Woolderink (? spelling? sorry chris if that’s wrong!)… he sent me it ages ago actually. It’s a cover I played live (earlier this year i think) of Bjork’s track ‘Who Is It?” My favourite Bjork song. It’s been picking up some positive feedback on youtube so that’s given me the courage to post it up here and share with you guys!:

Now over to you guys - I wanna hear how you all are! I hope that would be happy, healthy and definitely not heart broken or grief stricken!

take care,
love
Donna xxx

Long time no speak. In my absence I have been up to all the usual arty and musicy stuff, surfing life’s ups and downs, and taking a sabbatical from all things computery and internety. Getting back to the earth and all that!

I’m on the train traveling back to London from Scotland after a 10 day trip (at least I started writing this post then). It was my first visit there in months and months, and I’m kinda sad to be returning to London so soon. I had such a good time with all my friends I didn’t realise quite how much i had missed them till I was hanging out with them again. Life in London is a very different bag to my life in Scotland. I came over all nostalgic walking around Edinburgh (despite the wind and rain) remembering when I first arrived in the city to live in 2004. I knew very few people except my band who already lived there, and when I left edinburgh in 2007 I could barely walk to the shop for a pint of milk without bumping into someone I knew. Edinburgh’s cosy and small like that. A couple of nights on my trip i just wandered around edinburgh on my own, soaking up the fringe festival atmosphere, and both nights i ended up bumping into different old friends and having the best kooky spontaneous nights out. Although, somewhat worrying that I bumped into a bunch of my mates walking out of a graveyard with bottles of Buckfast in hand… an unexpected return to my rebellious teenage years in Fife! That’s scotland fir yeh.

I played two shows during my trip. And in a bid to escape from the norm and bring a bit of sunshine to scotland’s dreary weather, I played both shows entirely on ukulele! It was cool, made me feel more free spirited on stage. I’ve been growing quite tired of being stuck at a piano at gigs. Plus the vibe of the tunes I’ve been writing on ukulele seem to leave much more room for onstage spontaneity. The shows were very rough round the edges because of minimal practice beforehand (with trumpet player, cellist and Dave on cajon), but I totally loved them even more for that very reason. It just felt more earthy.

Sadly, probably like most of you right now, I am very skinto so i didnt really get the chance to see any Fringe shows. Gawd but there were tonnes I would’ve loved to catch. I did get handed free tickets on the street for a strange russian physical theatre thing, which was kinda ok i guess…

Back in London, things are a changin’. After a long break from ‘Fico business, Dave, Ross and I are all finally moving in together next week. We found a pretty amazing flat with a massive octagonal room where we can leave all the music gear up permanently and rehearse. This room also has awesome 360 degree views of the local area. We couldn’t believe it when we found it, it felt meant to be. And next weekend we’re playing the Hydro Connect Festival in Scotland - Radio 1 just contacted us to say we’ve been chosen to have our set recorded, with some of the tunes being played on air next week!

Here’s a little delve through my phone and camera photos from the past few months….

So when I was in Edinburgh, to save money we rehearsed in the meadows for our shows (when it didn’t rain)…

And when we felt we were good enough we stuck my ukulele case out:

And earned enough for a round at the pub after! Yeehaw:

My friend Azadeh was playing the Secret Garden Party Festival in Cambridge and kindly got me on the guestlist. It was THE best festival i have ever been to, just pure magical. Definitely saving up already to go again next year. Musical highlights for me were Azadeh of course, and Gideon Conn and Officer Kicks(best live band i’ve seen in a long time, proper rock and roll) blew my socks off too. Ones to watch I tell ya! Azadeh hair flicking:

There was this adorable little wooden wendy house with a white picket fence, where you paid 50p to decorate your own fairy cake, and then ate it in the mini garden whilst drinking juice out of china teacups and saucers. Awesome!

The finished results, guess which one is mine:

In the woodland there were some of these hilarious things which cracked us up no end:

Anna, az & me at the Secret Garden Party:

Magnificent sand sculptures:

They even had a pirate ship:

Keeping to the pirate theme, when I was in Edinburgh I went on this brilliant barge trip. Our mates The Banana Sessions hired it out to play a gig. I played a few tunes too on my uke and had a jam:

Calum, Chris & Davelifico:

When I was in scotland I also went to visit my grandma and her wee dug Molly who goes pure radge whenever there’s an animal on the telly:

The farmer was milking his cows on the telly and this is what Molly does:

Me and my sis’ hung out with the fishes at the garden centre one day:

This one had proper teeth but I couldn’t snap the blighters!

Clownfishes are just too fast:

Another quirky rehearsal location. My lovely mate Shona loaned us her trendy office one night in edinburgh:

Anna learns melodica for her ‘Fico gig debut:

Hanging out in Oxford Street whilst the Pride parade marches by… some scary outfits:

And in Brighton too:

Seeing Nizlopi again in London. They still give me goosebumps after seeing them umpteen times:

Well I think that’ll about do for now. What with my lengthy internet sabbatical I’ve got a whole load of myspace, facebook and email messages to catch up on. Honestly sometimes I just wish I could just switch ‘em all off!! I’ve got a pretty jammed schedule over the next week too, Amplifico have a serious amount of rehearsing to do for our festival slot next weekend! Can’t believe we’ve not even rehearsed together in almost 5 months… I’ll keep you posted as to when the recordings will be airing on Radio 1. And I’ve learned not to make any promises as to when my next home demo will be online, let’s just say I hope soon

donna xxx

My art school buddy Till Lassmann has just sent me some cool illustrations inspired by the lyrics to the tunes I’ve been posting up here. (With the view to him perhaps one day making a music video with my other talented friend Pete!) They put a big grin on my face!

Take Leave From The City:


Rings & Fences:


Fists At The Sky:


Do make sure to see more of his cool work by clicking here. I say he needs encouragement to do more, more, more!

Song a week? Lamo!!!! I know… Drawing a day??? Well I HAVE been achieving that for the past while, tucked up in my new studio space in london! Haharr! It’s been really cool man….. i’ve consequently not been able to hang about here much though sadly… the tunes are still-a-brewing behind the scenes. I have just written another kinda cool ukulele tune that i’ll record and upload once the exhibit finishes next week. It’s called ‘Follow The Moon’. Everytime I sing it I feel like it’s got a kind of Steve Martin/Bernadette Peters in The Jerk feel to it… although I have not ripped off the chords from it like Portishead seem to have done in their new album! Rather, I’ve noticed I managed to somehow subliminally choose exactly the same chords from this classy euro-popesque number from the mid 90s. That was one of the first singles i ever bought (on cassette of course). Only the best influences make their way into my songwriting!

Note my exhibition partay (as advertised on flyer below) has changed date! It is now scheduled for Tuesday 1st July 2008 @ 7.30pm. Do come down!

The exhibit will still open on Friday 27th @ 7.30pm, we just won’t be letting our hair down properly till the tuesday evening! Opening hours are as follows:

Friday 27th June - 7.30pm till late
Saturday 28th June - 10am till 5pm
Sunday 29th June - 10am till 5pm
Monday 30th June - CLOSED
Tuesday 1st July - 10am till 5pm then closing party, 7.30pm till Late

Can’t wait to record some tunes again for you dudes! Look forward to hearing all your own news too!

love and hugs
Donna xx

ps. thanks for the sympathetic ‘hand’ enquiries the other week… annoyingly i went and totally burned my right hand fingers making Dave the drummer his lunch on the day of the gig! I had to knock myself oot eight hours later with painkillers, red wine and my hand wrapped in a bag of ice to escape the pain! I’ve never been properly burned before, it HURTS BAD! Be careful lifting cling film from food that has been cooking in the microwave for ages!
Skin has nearly finished peeling off completely and fingers back to normal! Hurrah! Exclamations galore!

Had to share this with you!

Amplifico have just been announced to play the Hydro Connect Festival in Scotland this Summer, our first festival hurrah - see the stunning line-up here.

And I am playing the BBC Club in London again next week with Dave (Amplifico) - it’s free entry so do come down! It’s such a great night, the promoter’s a hoot and my mate Azadeh (whose song Sunshine I posted here weeks ago) will be on the bill again too. So come on doon! See my live dates page for more information/links.

Must get back to work! Dx

Slightly pooping my pants about this one… less than 4 weeks to go! My work will be for sale at this exhibit and during the opening party i’m scheduled to play a few lo-fi tunes too. We’ll be serving some yummy home-made food, but i’m afraid julia and I are too poor to do a champagne reception so it’s BYOB!

Excitingly, last week I signed myself up to a 6 month lease for a space in that artist’s studio I was talking about last post… I’ve been spending quite a bit of time this past week making it my own. I’m almost there! It’s so good to now have a place to go to and make mess without worrying about spilling paint and ink on the carpets.

Well I best stop nattering and get to work! Waaaaah.
speak soon, Donna xx

Ok so I really did not expect to return home from hols to find all that lovely love in my inbox for last post’s ukulele pop song. Thanks dudes! Maybe ukulele pop is my true calling… When I uploaded it, I seriously thought it had a cheese factor so high that it might induce an onslaught of rotten tomato throwage!! So I really appreciate all your cool comments, it’s nice that you’re taking time to give me all this continuous feedback. And very interesting for me to see what tunes really strike a chord with y’all more than others…

I had SUCH a fantastic trip down the east coast. What an incredible 10 days. Jem (www.jebaloo.com) and I followed the route of the Edinburgh to London trainline (a journey we have both made many, many times), this time by car, stopping off to explore, draw & photograph eye catching places and ‘things’ you can see from the train window en route. Using her (not particularly trusty) GPS, Jem had bookmarked all these landmarks throughout a train journey she made a few weeks prior to our trip together, with the view that she’d tackle them all as a continuous photography project/holiday one day. When I showed interest in joining her she decided hell, let’s just go straight away! So we packed our bags and went for it.

With a very tight budget, accommodation had to be camping all the way. The first few days the weather was abismal and this made me, well…… grumpy. Constant rain, wind, the consequent mud and a 2-man tent (and a good dose of PMT) are not a good combination for me (or anyone surely?), especially when i had the knowledge of another 8 days of camping ahead of me. I had no desire to do any drawing and was resentful of all the super plush camper van owning holiday makers living it up next door to me! All I can say is poor Jem for having to put up with me…

Later on day 3 however the sun like totally CAME OUT!! And stayed out for the rest of our trip - the weather was just AWESOME. It ended up being like a holiday abroad. My mood swiftly turned around and camping became FUN. I looked back on my first few days cringing, and thought what an unbearable, moody teenager I’d been. I grovelled. However despite the elevated mood, the drawing/painting thing remained a slooow process…. here we were going to all these beautiful new places and Jem was frolicking around in the countryside and on the beaches with her camera getting to see everything and explore. And there i was stuck in one place, on my arse, in the blistering heat drawing and painting and only really getting one view of the places we were visiting. I wanted to be exploring and frolicking around like her! So I’m afraid I quickly dumped the sketchbooks and paints, and made use of the fact jem had a spare camera, becoming donna the photographer for the week. I hadn’t used an SLR in maybe 5 years? I’d forgotten pretty much everything. So Jem gave me lessons and then I went on to take almost 2000 photos (digital of course!) over the week, it was brill. I’d forgotten the ways of the photographer mindset, you quickly start to look at the world in a totally different way. Everything becomes a photograph, your eyes are constantly darting and scanning 360 for composition. I’m yet to shake it off since getting back… it’s just gutting to no longer have a camera on my person 24/7 to snap away at everything I see! It’s very addictive.

I realise that for most people there’s nothing more tedious than leafing through someone else’s holiday snaps, but maybe one or two of you hobby photographer types like me will enjoy the fact I have put these up here! It has honestly taken me DAYS to filter through the 2000 shots to get to this lot… and there’s still more to go through! Browse away if you wish:

Animals, Birds & Bugs

30 Photos

Jem

7 Photos

Holy Island

11 Photos

English Countryside 1

29 Photos

English Countryside 2

29 Photos

Sunsets & Night

17 Photos

Boats, Seaside & Water

6 Photos

Me and My Shadow

8 Photos

From Car Windows

13 Photos

So what’s extra cool is I have returned with an enormous library of pics of reference for drawing & painting. I am not normally a lover of working from photographs, but if I have a real connection with a place in the pictures I find it much more pleasurable to do. Otherwise I find it tricky to conjure a genuine energy in the artwork yeh know? I think you can mostly tell when artwork is done from photographs and when it’s not. I did do a few drawings on the trip though, i’ll post them up another day. I don’t want to saturate you with all this visual imagery! It’s better you savour the taste of each installment like a fine wine…

Thanks to a great friend of mine I have my very first art exhibit in London penned in the diary for next month…. and I am shitting a brick! Very nervous. But also very motivating to have an imminent deadline to work to. Tomorrow I am going to view a small artist studio for hire because I really need somewhere I can leave my materials out and make a mess. I have my fingers crossed it’ll fit the bill because I’m feeling kinda desperate for it. I tell you something, I really took for granted the space I had to create freely whilst at art school. Art school people - milk your space!

On sunday I made a wee trip to Southend on Sea to the best arts/music night I think I have actually ever been to called ‘Sundown’. It’s a couple of my friends who organise it - a jam packed schedule of poetry, comedy, short films & live music. I was so impressed. I had never experienced live poetry recitals that could take me to the goose bumpy inspirational heights that say live music or theatre can. It really opened my eyes to another world. Dockers MC was the evening’s highlight. Poets Fassbinder and MC Angel were totally engaging too (although I don’t think Angel’s myspace does her justice, its not demonstrative of what i saw on sunday night at all!) If you’re in the area, do check out Sundown - they’re really doing the arts proud.

So that night just happened to time in well with a brilliant poetry (tuition) book I’ve been reading recently by Stephen Fry ‘An ode less travelled’. For people interested learning all the ins and outs of writing poetry I highly recommend it. He’s such a gifted teacher and writer - it’s like you’re listening to him speak as opposed to reading a book. And when he tells me to go away and practice exercises throughout the book, I like actually do it…

Well that’s enough from me for now! Next song is on its way… there’s been an unusually full house here since I got back from my trip, so recording had to be postponed till peace and quiet returned.

speak soon, donna x

ps. was not very impressed with coldplay’s first single from new album, but I just bought their second one today, Viva La Vida, and absolutely love it. What say you fellow coldplay followers??