Donna Maciocia | Songs and art fae a scots lass…

Heck, I’ll throw in a little cover of ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’ too.

I just adore this song completely!

Moochacha x

Good vibes! I’m alive! And writing!

I hope you are all well. Tell me your stories!

Donna
xxx

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

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