Bass Magazine – Issue 2 by Bass Magazine

Jump Head

MARK HOPPUS JOHN PATITUCCI JULIE SLICK BEN KENNEY STU BROOKS GRAHAM MABY MAI LEISZ ABBY TRAVIS

GEAR REVIEWS

SCOTT MULVAHILL

THOMASTIK-INFELD SPIROCORE STRINGS BACKBEAT RUMBLE PACK WAYNE JONES AUDIO WJBA2 1000

DUFF McKAGAN

ELRICK ICON SERIES BASSES

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ARTIST:

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Contents Features

Gear Reviews:

10. Mai Leisz

The Estonian bass phenom releases a new album with her fusion band MaiGroup and hits the road with David Crosby. By Jon D’Auria

18. Scott Mulvahill

Young gun upright bassist and vocalist, Scott Mulvahill, is turning heads with his masterful playing and beautiful voice on his debut album. By Chris Jisi

32. Abby Travis

As one half of the rocking duo Sumo Princess, Abby Travis uses wild frequencies and big lines on their latest record. By Vicky Warwick

38. Graham Maby

After 45 years of playing together, Graham Maby and Joe Jackson just keep getting better with age, as is proven with their latest collaboration. By Chris Jisi

46. Stu Brooks

On their first album in eight years, Dub Trio is back with a new sound packed full of deep grooves and even heavier riffs. By Jon D’Auria

56. Julie Slick

Between splitting time on the road with Adrian Belew and her bass duo EchoTest, Julie Slick is proving just how much bassists can shred. By Jon D’Auria

66. Duff McKagan

102. Thomastik-Infeld Spirocore Strings 104. BackBeat Rumble Pack 106. Wayne Jones Audio WJBA2 1000

The rock icon behind Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver is stepping out on his own with a personal new solo album and a new line of signature basses. By Freddy Villano

108. Elrick Icon Series Basses

80. Mark Hoppus

113. Jazz Concepts

The face of punk-pop opens up and dishes on his two new albums with Blink-182 and his new duo project, Simple Creatures. By Jon D’Auria

90. John Patitucci

Master of upright and six-string bass John Patitucci unleashes a new album that shows both sides of his swing. By Chris Jisi

Lessons Deep Swing By John Goldsby

117. The Inquirer Reamping Rocks! By Jonathan Herrera

118. Beginner Bass Base

Note Names Part 1: Ascending Groove By Patrick Pfeiffer

122. Partners

Jack Casady & Alembic By Jim Roberts

Departments 4. From the Editor 6. 10 Questions With Ben Kenney 8. Spins, Streams & Downloads

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From the Editor Sophomore Stretch

Bass Family,

countless interviews we’ve done over the years, a frequently dropped piece of knowledge that artists impart to us is: “You have your whole life to create your first album, but the second you release it, the clock starts ticking for your follow-up.” We couldn’t agree with that more now that we’re here with our second issue. Launching this new magazine has been schooling us on a daily basis, as we find ourselves taking on new roles that aren’t necessarily bass- or journalism-related. We’re way more comfortable talking shop in interviews, digging into the latest gear, and cranking out editorial content, but we’ve been loving the new freedom that we’ve found in doing this on our own, and we love hand-picking the content that we’re delivering to you. Speaking of which, another thing that always comes up in interviews are the players who have influenced each artist the most,

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and more times than we can count, the name Duff McKagan has made those lists. Having played in one of the most iconic rock bands, mixed with his big personality and memorable bass lines, Duff has inspired a large number of young musicians to pick up a bass and get to rocking. It’s wild now to hear him reflect on his storied career and what’s piquing his interests currently in both bass and life. Another legend who often makes those lists is upright and 6-string electric great John Patitucci, who discusses his brand new solo album with us. We also catch up with poppunk veteran Mark Hoppus, Ben Kenney, Graham Maby, Stu Brooks, Julie Slick, Mai Leisz, Abby Travis, and more. We’re thrilled to bring you reviews, lessons, insight, and transcriptions from our brilliant team of columnists who have been doing it for over three decades. So dig in and enjoy issue two. And as always, hit me up at jon@bassmagazine.com to give us feedback and let us know your thoughts on the magazine. We truly are listening and want to know how we can bring you the ultimate bass experience in our digital pages. We’re so appreciative of all of the emails and messages with your responses so far. Hell, an actual prince from Nigeria even emailed us — but that was about some money-wiring thing, and I won’t get into that here. Anyways, enjoy! And cheers to the future of bass!

Jon D’Auria Editor-In-Chief

Volume 1, ISSUE 2 |

bassmagazine.com

Editor-In-Chief JON D’AURIA Senior Editor CHRIS JISI Editor-At-Large E.E. BRADMAN General Manager TIM HILL Copy Editor KARL CORYAT Art Director PAUL HAGGARD CONTRIBUTORS Ed Friedland Jim Roberts Jonathan Herrera Freddy Villano John Goldsby Rod Taylor Patrick Pfeiffer Bill Leigh Stevie Glasgow Vicky Warwick Patrick Wong FOR AD INQUIRES CONTACT:

tim@bassmagazine.com ALL OTHER INQUIRIES CONTACT:

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with

A 1

What music have you been listening to lately? I just came across the album Of Violence by the band Town Portal. It reminds me of some of the music I was exposed to in the late ’90s. It’s an instrumental trio, and they’re a little bit of Tortoise, a little bit of Shellac, and a whole bunch of their own thing.

Ben Kenney

fter catching the spotlight playing bass and guitar for legendary hip-hoppers the Roots in the early 2000s, Ben Kenney has been holding down the low end for alt-rockers Incubus for the last 16 years. Additionally, he sings and plays all of the instruments on each of his slamming five solo albums, and, in short, is

an all-around musical force of nature. Currently, he’s gearing up to hit the road with Incubus for a summer tour, and he’s working on yet another solo masterpiece. When he’s not busy with those, he’s either kicking it with his dog, Carl, or hitting the asphalt on his motorcycle. Luckily for us, he took a break from his busy schedule to answer our 10 questions.

What’s one element of your playing that you’ve been working on lately? I need to work on improvising melodies. It’s the most challenging thing. I saw John Scofield live recently, and he always blows my mind with his ability to speak through melody. I would love to be able to create on the spot like that.

What’s the best concert you’ve ever attended? “Best” is a hard title to award, but one of my favorites was Big Wreck at the North Star Bar in Philly. There were only 20 people there, but they ripped like they were headlining a sold-out arena. That was important for me to see, having been in bands that played to mostly empty rooms.

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If you could have lunch with any bass player today, alive or dead, who would it be? Frank Bello. He’s rad to talk to. He’s seen the music business completely change a dozen times. And he’s in Anthrax — by far my favorite of the Big Four.

If you could sub for a bass player in any band, who would it be? Phil Lynott. If anyone wants to start a Thin Lizzy cover band, hit me up. I want to play those songs onstage so badly.

ANDY KEILEN

10 Questions

What was your first bass? I learned to play on an Ibanez Soundgear SR1000. Such a badass bass. It has EMGs and a very thin neck. I ended up stripping the trussrod on it.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given about playing bass? Turn down. When possible, let the PA do the heavy lifting. Bass frequencies can really cause a traffic jam in the mix. When it’s just the right volume, everything on earth is beautiful.

What the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you during a gig? I’ve played every wrong note there is twice, but beyond that, I haven’t had many embarrassing moments. I tripped and fell a few times, but that really isn’t embarrassing.

What are four items that you absolutely need to have on the road with you? My Kindle, my camera, noise-cancelling headphones, and decent moisturizer. Anything beyond that is a luxury. Actually, all four of those things are luxuries, so there’s that.

If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing? I would be frustrated somewhere. I don’t have the mind for anything else. Some might even argue that I don’t have the mind for music. I just know I feel best while traveling and playing shows, and I don’t ever want it to end.

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Spins, Streams & Downloads By Jon D’Auria, Chris Jisi & E.E. Bradman

pocket provides the backbone and essence of the experience. Just try to listen to “The World Is Rated X,” “You’re the Man,” and “Woman of the World” without bobbing your head. –Jon D’Auria

Marvin Gaye

Billy Mohler

You’re the Man [Motown] Flying high off the widespread success of his triumphant 1971 album What’s Going On [Motown], prolific soul genius Marvin Gaye hit the studio to record the greatly anticipated follow-up record, You’re the Man. However, subsequent disputes between the singer and his label led to the album being shelved, which prompted Gaye to return to the studio to unleash perhaps his greatest effort, Let’s Get It On [1973, Motown]. Luckily for us, 48 years later, You’re the Man has been dusted off, remastered, and released — and let us tell you, it was well worth the wait. The album features the infinitely funky bass playing of Michael Henderson, aside from an alternate version of the title track that contains the playing of the legend himself, James Jamerson, which is just as grooving and bouncy as you’d imagine it to be. This jam-packed soul compilation contains all of the vocal mastery that solidified Gaye as an icon, but in true Motown fashion, Henderson’s relentless

Focus [Make] After finding success as a rock and pop bassist, producer, and songwriter with Macy Gray, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Limp Bizkit, and Steven Tyler, Billy Mohler returns to his roots. That would be playing jazz on acoustic bass, born of growing up with Kneebody drummer Nate Wood, graduating from Berklee, and playing with the masters upon his acceptance into the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz. On his organic, no-chordal-instrument debut — featuring Wood, Kneebody trumpeter Shane Endsley, and Human Feel saxophonist Chris Speed — Mohler provides a deep, woody, rhythmic backbone on his eight post-bop originals. “Deconstruction” and “Van’s Jam” pivot on propulsive ostinatos and angular unison horn melodies. “Wolf Moon” is a stark, Chet Baker-intoned ballad rife with mood swings and guide tones. Wood stretches in 7/4 on the kinetic, clarinet-delivered “Visible Light.” And the closing “Coin” is a horn meditation afloat on bowed pedal tones rich in overtones. –Chris Jisi

Anderson .Paak Ventura [Aftermath] Hip-hop and R&B singer and drummer Anderson .Paak released his album, Oxnard, earlier this year and has just dropped the second record from those sessions, Ventura. The former featured more of a modern hip-hop vibe, while the latter unveils the throwback soulful side of .Paak’s songwriting. Anderson’s longtime bassist, Kelsey Gonzalez, lays down most of the silky lines, although producer and multi-instrumentalist Jarius Mozee contributes deep synth work on the more modern tracks. Gonzalez steps out and lays down some dirty slapping on “Chosen One,” but he keeps his playing in the realm of vintage R&B on “Come Home” and “Make It Better.” From start to finish, this album is an all-out party of good vibes with booming bass and stellar production. –Jon D’Auria

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Jump Head

Selena Gomez (although this is my fave). Mercereau closes out the party with a smoking performance on “Lingerie” that begins with the tone knob all the way off and graduates to a gnarly synth eruption and back again. Dig how skipping the bass on the verses makes the choruses pop harder. Pay attention, cover-band warriors: You’ll probably be playing at least one of these tunes at your next gig. –E.E. Bradman

Lizzo Cuz I Love You [Nice Life/Atlantic] If you’re like most of us, your first slurp of Lizzo was probably “Juice,” the banger with a throwback groove and picture-perfect bass by Leon Bridges/Mike Posner collaborator Nate Mercereau. The good news is that the fun doesn’t stop there: The funky blues and vocal harmonies on “Crybaby,” boasting more tasteful Mercereau low end, remind this listener of that other famous Minnesota native, as does the opening guitar riff of “Tempo.” These flavors are timeless, though — the good feelings triggered by Oak Felder’s melodic subwoofer magic (“Like a Girl,” “Soulmate,” “Better in Color,” “Tempo”) and team X Ambassadors’ minimalist 808 rumble (“Jerome,” “Heaven Help Me”) were just as in vogue in 1980s Miami as they are today. The album’s first bass guitar makes its appearance on “Exactly How I Feel,” and it’s no surprise that producer Mike Sabath is also credited with bass lines for Drake and

basses into its D drone/G harmonic minor tonality. Elsewhere, Moore gets his fretless on for the reggae-fied “Fearless” and the catchy “Magnetic,” mines vintage Japanese yacht rock on “Happy Girl,” and goes gradually techno for the closing “Spritual.” –Chris Jisi

Spaza

Joseph Patrick Moore Nevada Sun [Blue Canoe] Over the course of his dozen solo discs, doubler Joseph Patrick Moore has proven himself a master of blending bass colors to create fresh, original swaths of sound. On Nevada Sun, in addition to his basses, he draws from his skills as a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer, for a true do-ityourself outing — with splashy results. The title-track opener is a swung-funk urban soundscape pivoting on precision slapping, with a contrasting suburban bridge. “Iraqi Peace” packs appropriately spiced layers of plucked and bowed

[Mushroom Hour Half Hour] This slice of earthy avant-garde improv by a group of Johannesburg musicians gets its name from South Africa’s informal spaza shops, and its sturdy foundation comes from upright bassist Ariel Zamonsky, an Argentinian who moved to Pretoria to study jazz. Steeped in ritual music, electronic textures, and experimental flavors, these first-time collaborators are irreverent enough to masterfully mix all three; Zamonsky — present, tasteful, and focused — soulfully grounds the primitive/futuristic blend of vocals, trombone, percussion, and electric violin. Magical and spiritual but never oppressive, Spaza’s debut captures the spirit of a ceremony at the crossroads of the everyday and the mystical. –E.E. Bradman

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NCE

MaiGroup, David Crosby

From a tiny village in Estonia to the big stages of America, Mai Leisz’s musical metamorphosis has led her to play alongside David Crosby, Jackson Browne, and her own jazz-fusion band, MaiGroup

A TIME

UPON By Jon D’Auria | Photo by Anna Webber

hen it comes to backstories, Mai Leisz’s reads more like a fairytale than it does a musician bio. Add in a storybook romance straight out of a Hollywood movie and a surreal supporting cast, and that’s her life in a nutshell. Born in the tiny village of Leisi, Estonia, with a population of 200, Leisz was sheltered from popular music due to regulations from the post-Soviet regime of the time. When she started playing the bass at 16 she was exposed to jazz through her music teacher’s guidance. As she gained more access to American jazz and pop music, Mai found tremendous influence in the playing of Jaco Pastorius, Gary Willis, Jimmy Johnson, Carol Kaye, and her first bass teacher Raul Vaigla. After moving away to Sweden to continue

her bass studies, her bass was her only solace, until the moment that changed everything. It was a day in June 2015 when everything was going wrong for Mai, as she took the wrong metro on her way to busk in the streets of Stockholm with her friend Doug Seegers, then wandered down the wrong road and ended up in an unfamiliar place. When she finally pulled out her bass to start playing, it started to rain. During those 10 minutes, someone who would play a significant role later in her life walked by and heard her soulful bass playing. The man turned out to be renowned multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz (Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, John Mayer), who was in town performing with Jackson Browne. Mai was invited to sit in with Jackson’s band the next day, whose bass chair was being occupied by Bob Glaub.

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Mai Leisz

She obliged and excitedly made her way to the sold-out venue for the most important performance of her life. “I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe where I was, and I had to focus so hard on making sure I knew the chords and all of the changes — but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Greg, and I kept checking to see if he was staring at me, too. He was.” Greg played on MaiGroup’s second album You [2015] and gave a copy to David Crosby, telling him he would love the bass player. A couple of weeks later Mai got an email from Crosby who asked if she would like to play on his upcoming album, Sky Trails [2017, BMG], which led to her becoming his touring bass player. As Mai and Greg were falling deeply in love, Mai took another leap of faith, packed her things and headed to America. It was there that she met and sat in with such music icons as Joan Baez, David Foster, and Seal. In her downtime from touring with Crosby, Leisz was able to focus on her own band, MaiGroup, which just released its latest album, Metamorphosis. The beautiful jazz-fusion-meetssinger–songwriter record features a slew of famous collaborators along with Mai’s lyrical fretless playing and smooth lines. Her ethereal soloing on “Monarch,” “Gregory,” and “Metamorphosis” shows just how heavy of a player the once small-town girl has become. And like every good story full of ups and downs, unexpected twists, conflict, and peril, Mai has emerged a new person, and her tale is one to surely continue on happily ever after.

hat was your musical upbringing like being raised in a small, remote village? I was born in 1988 when Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union, before we became re-independent in 1991, but the echoes of the Soviet influence were still lingering. When I grew up I didn’t have access to music like Joni Mitchell or Weather Report or anything like that. I wish I had grown up with good music, but I didn’t. Luckily, I was very blessed with my teachers who started feeding me the right music. My first jazz teacher, Tiit

L I ST E N MaiGroup, Metamorphosis [2019] GEAR Bass 1965 Fender Precision, 1981 Ibanez Musician, 1966 Kay Kraftsman, Estonian J-style bass, 1975 Rickenbacker 4001, Fodera Emperor J Classic Rig EBS Session 30 Classic Combo, EBS Neoline 410, EBS TD660, EBS Reidmar 750, TC Electronic BG250-208 Effects TC Electronic Flashback Delay and Hall Of Fame Reverb, EBS Multicomp Compressor and UniChorus Strings La Bella Deep Talkin’ Flatwounds 760FX (.039–.096)

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Paulus, was a legendary jazz musician. When he was young he got access to American jazz by tuning his radio to AM frequencies in the middle of the night so he could hear all of the best musicians over broken radio signals. Jazz was forbidden in our country at that time, so he started transcribing everything he heard. Years later he started teaching it to his students, and that’s how I learned it. By the time I picked up the bass, I was already in love with jazz. What made you choose bass? I played classical violin from an early age, and Tiit asked me to back up one of his guitar students for a performance. Then he put together a band called 2+2=5 and had us doing old jazz arrangements. When the bass player left the band to continue his studies at a university, I impulsively said that I was going to play the bass. I figured, how hard could it be? As soon as I picked up a bass, it was like love from first touch. I was wondering where it had been all my life. How did moving to Sweden at age 21 further your playing? At first, like all of the changes in life, it was painful. First I moved to Skurup, Sweden and that wasn’t easy at all. I had no friends, I felt really alone and that I was so much worse than all the other musicians at school. Feeling like an outsider is part of what made me work so hard: instead of hanging out and drinking beer, I was playing for ten hours a day, and I would fall asleep with my bass in my arms and then wake up and keep practicing. Then I moved to Stockholm and it was the same thing all over again. I had no friends, no money, just my bass. It was hard being an immigrant and a woman. But I was working so hard that my music started speaking for itself, and people started hearing about me. What was it like moving to L.A. and playing regularly with musical legends? Even after the endless hours of working hard for my dreams and playing all the shows with many great artists in Sweden, being in the company of your heroes and

Mai Leisz

being treated so well and warmly by them is just unbelievable. It’s so inspiring seeing what beautiful spirits these people are. They play music because they love music, not for fame and fortune. That’s something that connects us all, no matter your age, where you’re from, your gender, or the color of your skin; it doesn’t matter. It’s always about creating music.

What is it like playing with David Crosby? Croz has been a life-changing force for me. When I moved to L.A. I spent five days at his house with him and his family, and David and I wrote music, including “Here It’s Almost Sunset.” He was super supportive of my writing and loved my fretless tone. That was when he offered me the gig. Touring with him has been a dream come true, because the day I met

Mai Leisz onstage with David Crosby

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Mai Leisz

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Mai Leisz

Greg and Jackson in Stockholm, I told them I wanted to go to L.A. because people I had always wanted to play with were out there. They asked me who, and I told them David Crosby and Steve Gadd. I had no idea that they were all best friends, so they laughed, and before I knew it, it was happening. What was the writing process like for MaiGroup’s new album, Metamorphosis? There are a few different ways that I write. There is a side of me that writes songs with the blood of my heart, and they’re so personal and emotional. For example, there’s a duet like that featuring Bill Frisell called “Gregory.” Then there’s a ballad featuring Charles Lloyd that was written with that passion as well. There are some songs on there, however, that came from ideas that I had written in my composition courses. There you’re taught to write music for deadlines; you can’t have your emotions involved, and you can’t wait for your muse to strike. I had an assignment where I had to write a song with only three notes and employ the “use-reuse” technique. Eventually I started loving that process and knew I wanted to record that song. I named it “Planted, Not Buried.” You also reworked “Here It’s Almost Sunset,” which you had written with David Crosby. It’s very different from the version Croz had on his record. I wanted to do my own take on it with my band, so I sent the bass tracks to my drummer and guitarist and told them, “fusion it up, guys.” They sent back their parts, and they were just great. Greg and I recorded some additional stuff on it, including background vocals to the new vocal that Croz sang, and then the legendary Jim Scott mixed it. I’m so happy with how it turned out. How is this album different from your previous records? Everything is different. The album is called Metamorphosis, which is about all of the big changes in my life. Going from a girl to a woman, moving from a tiny village to Los Angeles, going from a music student to a world-touring musician, going from unhappy to happy, etc. It would have been much cheaper to go to Sweden to make the record

with my band there, but I figured that I live in the United States now and I wanted to do it here, so I flew all of my bandmates out. Someone told me it’s like bringing sand to the beach, because there are already so many amazing musicians in L.A. But this connection with my band is so beautiful and so rare, and I didn’t want to let that go. We recorded everything in Groove Masters Studio, which is an amazing place to work, and you can hear that in the quality of the recording. You’ve been working with MaiGroup for almost ten years now. How did you form? It was in 2010 during my first year in Sweden when I was pretty depressed. We were playing crazy jazz compositions in school and I started doubting myself, like, who am I? Why am I doing this? Who am I doing this for? I was lost. Eventually it got to a point where I realized I had to stop crying and having a self-pity party and do something about it. That’s when I formed MaiGroup, which included the best players I could find there. I started writing music, and it turned out to be one of the best things in my life. Do you approach fretless differently than fretted basses? The fretless bass sounds so moving; as Croz says, my fretless bass can make a grown man cry. You can have a little more of a melodic approach, because when you play longer notes you can alter the tone with vibrato and your natural touch. But I must admit that I’m a bit of a rebel, and on the song “Planted, Not Buried,” I actually used my ’75 Rickenbacker bass. The jazz police will try to call me out and say that a Rickenbacker bass shouldn’t be used in jazz, but for that song it was a perfect instrument and that’s what matters. How does bass resonate with your personality? I chose the bass because I’m pretty shy by nature and I never liked being the center of attention. Being a bass player and supporting those people who are in the spotlight is the perfect role for me. However, it means so much to me when the audience and the people I work with appreciate my playing. If people hear my playing and it moves them then my purpose is fulfilled. l

Mai Leisz

MAI TRAILS

ai Leisz relies on a number of basses to achieve the artful blending of styles on Metamorphosis, with each choice key to the song’s sonic and musical flavor. Example 1 sketches the haunting main riff from Mai Leisz’s “Here It’s Almost Sunset,” featuring David Crosby on vocals. To record her part, Mai used a 1965 Fender Precision strung with La Bella Deep Talkin’ Bass Flats (.039–.096) through an EBS Classic Session 30 combo, as well tracking a DI signal. “The tuning is actually D–A–D–A,” she explains. “Since Croz is famous for his weird tunings, I tried something different for the first time as well. I wrote it at his house in like 10 minutes and played it to Croz and his wife and they loved it. Croz told me to finish it and I made a demo right before I flew back. The next thing I know is that he sent me the mastered record with his vocals on it. Amazing!” (The track initially appeared on Crosby’s 2017 album Sky Trails, though everything was re-recorded for Leisz’s solo album.) Harmonically, the

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ANNA WEBBER

By Stevie Glasgow

repeated four-bar riff is grounded by a low-D pedal point and pivots around the strong Lydian vibe in bar 2, where the G# and Bn tones strongly imply a full-voiced E chord over the low, open-string D. (Tip: To ensure the downbeat sixteenth rests in bars 2–4 are clearly heard, try muting the ringing open A-string with the middle finger of your left hand.) Dig also how Mai sounds the melody in the 5/4 bar using a deft combination of plucked notes, slides and pull-offs. Ex. 2 evokes the bridge-like interlude found 0:49 into “Planted Not Buried,” for which Mai used a Rickenbacker 4001. “I can’t remember the strings, but they might have been D’Addario lights,” she adds. On the nature of this one-off section, she notes, “I just wanted something different, a build up to a solo, an unexpected, unpredictable part.” Observe the use of sequence, which gives each two-bar-long phrase added cohesion, and the way the 9th of the minor-9th chords morphs into an implied major 7th tone as the root note moves up a minor third to the re-

Ex. 1

E/D

Em7/D

G/D

A 3

= 66

3 A D A D

9 7

0000

11 9

0000

14 12

0000

19 19 19 19 17 17 17 19 19 19 19 17 17 17

17 16 16 16 14 14 12 12 10 12 14 12 10

14 12 14 12

Ex. 2 (Dmaj7)

Bm9

= 122

Ex. 3

4 5

= 60

17 17 19 20

7 10

15 17 19

(Dmaj7)

Bm9

15 17

H H

(Gmaj7)

Em9

4 5

G7(sus4)

7 10

15 13

12 13 15

Bm9

PO PO

15 13 12

(Gmaj7)

Em9

12 13 15 16 17 19 20

15 17

17 15

Ab Cm

20 19 17 15 17

19 18 20

lated major chord on beat three of each bar (e.g. the C# of Bm9 becomes the major 7th of Dmaj7 in bars 1 and 3). Mai says the rising lines at the end of bars 1 and 3, were “probably just casual slides,” though note how these slides are clean and rhythmic enough that the ear clearly discerns triplet-sixteenths. Ex. 3 traces the first half of Leisz’s evocative fretless solo in “Gregory,” starting at 1:58. Mai reports that she played the “onetake improvisation” on a 1981 Ibanez Musician fretless strung with extra-light La Bella Deep Talkin’ Bass Flats (039–.096) plugged into an Ampeg SB-12, with an additional sig-

17 18

15 17

PO PO

151312

15 12 13 15

12 13 15 171820

17 19 20 22 22 24 22 24

nal going direct to the board. A study in nuanced articulation and diatonic melodicism, the solo brims with a multitude of subtle hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides that add expression to the part. “That’s just a natural part of my style,” says Leisz. “I play more by instincts, without analyzing too much what it is that I’m doing.” Points of interest include the hip double-stop slide in bar 6, and the way Mai balances each four-bar section with a slowly rising line, notably the climactic high Gn on the downbeat of bar 9, which gives rise to a gratifying, phrase-ending Abmaj7 chord. l

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VERTICAL VOICE

SCOTT MULVAHILL REIMAGINES THE SINGER– SONGWRITER NARRATIVE

It’s

the Sunday night of the return of Game of Thrones, and the weather is on-andoff rain, but inside Rockwood Music Hall in New York City’s East Village, an enthusiastic crowd is hanging on Scott Mulvahill’s every note. That’s the effect the Nashville-based Mulvahill has been having on listeners both through his YouTube videos — including his NPR Tiny Desk concert — and on this first national tour of his, in support of his dazzling, dozen-track debut, Himalayas. Sure, a singer–songwriter who accompanies himself on acoustic bass is novel. But the credit for said devotion goes to his evocative, from-the-heart songs, reach-for-it vocals, and crafty, fill-in-the-band bass lines (Nashville guitarist/vocalist Zach Torres is providing additional support on this run). Like all great artists, Mulvahill makes what he does look easy and natural. In truth, there’s a litany of endlessly practiced, precision moves to coordinate the plucks, string and body slaps, counterlines, and vocals that go into songs like the poignant “Fighting for the Wrong Side” and “The Lord Is Coming,” the playful “Top of the Stairs,” the uplifting “Begin Againers” (see complete transcription on page 29, and the sweeping, bowed title track. Add to that the conflict and confusion of loving intricate instrumental music and singer–songwriters equally in his

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Scott Mulvahill

SEAN FISHER

developing years, and having to parlay that into his own artistic vision in the current, crazy musical climate — and indeed, there’s more to Mulvahill than meets the eye and ear. Born on July 7, 1988 in Friendswood, Texas, Mulvahill recalls dancing with his parents and brother to oldies on the radio as a favorite early musical memory. When the boys hit their teens, they were asked if they wanted to play guitar. Remembering a friend who had a bass at summer camp, a 14-year-old Scott replied, “How about a bass?” His folks got him an Ibanez Soundgear, and he “devoured it,” buying method books and writing tabs for songs he learned. Seeing his interest, his parents sent him to nearby Houston guitar/bass teacher Charlie Lair. He recalls, “Charlie was great; he pushed all of his students to take

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it to the limit. We would play together and have competitions, and he’d rotate us in the church band. Charlie took me through rock and metal to jazz, where he’d have me learn Miles Davis’ trumpet solos from Kind of Blue [1959, Columbia] on bass. He introduced me to my to two main influences, Jaco and Victor Wooten.” Lair also encouraged Mulvahill to learn upright bass, which he began at age 15, adding the influences of Scott LaFaro, Eddie Gomez, Stanley Clarke, John Patitucci, and Brian Bromberg. The other key part of Mulvahill’s musical development occurred on a warm summer day. “It was my turn to get on the riding mover and mow the lawn, and I had found my folks’ copy of Paul Simon’s Graceland [1986, Warner Bros.]. I put it on my Sony Walk-

Scott Mulvahill

man, and I freaked out and almost crashed! The lyrics were so impactful, not to mention Bakithi Kumalo’s genius bass lines.” Mulvahill had discovered his second love, and it had nothing to do with the bass: singer– songwriters like Simon, James Taylor, and Bob Dylan. He joined the choir in his senior year of high school to get his singing together, and he started writing songs on guitar. “Artists like Civil Wars, the White Stripes, and Glenn Hansard, who scored the Broadway show Once, were big, so that’s the style of songs I wrote.” With college upon him, Mulvahill considered the top music schools and realized the prestigious University of North Texas was in his home state. He successfully auditioned on bass, stayed four years, and along the way met Snarky Puppy’s Michael League, who got him a church gig with keyboard legend Bernard Wright. The stint not only worked wonders for his groove, it enabled him to save money for his next stop, after graduation.

hat led you to move to Nashville? After college, I was contemplating Nashville, New York, and L.A. I visited a friend of a friend in Nashville and stayed with him for a week, and it felt right in my gut. I knew the town had great songwriters on top of great musicians, so that tilted the scales a bit. I moved there soon after, in 2010, and I lucked into a great living situation through a drummer from North Texas; I eventually bought the house, and I still live in it. At first I did local jams and gigs, just trying to meet as many people as possible, and that led to tours with Chris August and Ben Rector. It helped that I played upright, which fewer bassists there did. I introduced myself to [Nashville upright studio ace] Byron House and sent him a video I made of me playing Charlie Daniels’ “Billy the Kid” on guitar, electric bass, and arco upright, and we became friends. I’d go over to his place to jam with him and his son, Truman, a drummer. One day I went over, and he said, “I don’t know if you’re interested, but would you like to play with Ricky Skaggs?”

He had sent Ricky my video, and that got me an audition. I knew nothing about bluegrass, but I got a list of tunes to learn, was hired, and spent five years in Ricky’s band, which really developed my voice on upright. What are the main challenges of bluegrass bass? Where to begin? The first is the time feel; the music is very on top of the beat, in general. From there, it’s subtleties that are never spoken about, like, the chorus is at one tempo, and then for the mandolin solo, it will jump ten clicks! Fortunately, Ricky — a world-class player and historic part of the genre with 15 Grammys — lays it down so hard you don’t have a choice but to go with him. Second, there are no count-offs on songs; instead, they have what they call kicks [an instrumental lick from the song]. So you have to know the banjo kick on beat three of the fourth bar of the phrase in order to know when to come in. And you better know the tempo, because you’ll be lucky to catch a foot tap. Usually bluegrass players count in cut time, but if you were going by quarter-notes, a lot of the songs are in the 350 bpm range. Fortunately, it’s mostly a two feel on bass. Last, there’s rarely a drummer in bluegrass, so the time falls on you. You’re standing just behind the front line, all in a row, but you’d better not fall behind the tempo. Ricky was very gracious through my first year of blunders, until I felt I had a good grasp on the gig. Eventually, you got a feature with Ricky. We were on tour with Bruce Hornsby as our guest artist, and he did a version of Jimmy Martin’s traditional bluegrass tune “20/20 Vision,” which he had recorded with Charlie Haden on Charlie’s album Rambling Boy [2008, Decca]. Bruce would feature my playing in a long intro, and audiences liked it because it was a nice departure from all of the fast tunes. After the tour, one of our featured musicians left the band, which meant a slot had opened, and I got the nerve to ask Ricky if we could do the tune with me as the featured singer. I don’t think he even knew I sang, but he said yes. That was a pivotal point for me, because it showed me that the

L I ST E N Himalayas [2018, West Sterling Music]; H.E.R., I Used to Know Her: Part 2 [2018, RCA] GEAR Basses 1950 Kay acoustic bass with a Frenchstyle bow (“It was once a 5-string, but Nashville luthier Randy Hunt restored it with a new 4-string neck that attaches with a bolt, so I can travel with it in two cases”); 1973 Fender Precision with old, unknown flatwounds Strings Pirastro Evah Pirazzi Orchestral medium set Live setup Shure SM98A and Fishman Full Circle Upright Bass Pickup into Avalon U5 DI, through venue monitors; Mesa-Boogie M-Pulse 600 Subway and Powerhouse 2x12 cabinet for electric bass Recording Himalayas “On my Kay bass, we used Sony C-800G and AEA R84 mics up close, an AEA R88 stereo ribbon mic further away for room sound, my Fishman DI, and a Blue Bottle mic for vocals.”

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Scott Mulvahill

KEONI KEUR

concept of bass and voice worked, it made me step up as a vocalist around other great singers, and it gave me the confidence to be a frontman. So I felt I had to include a version of it on my record. Bruce Hornsby also played a role in your songwriting. I had been writing songs, and Ricky got hired to play an Americana music cruise, again with Bruce as our guest. I asked him if I could pick his brain about songwriting, and he had me come to his cabin. I’ll never forget, I got there and he was practicing Schoenberg on his keyboard. So I played him some of my songs, and he said, “Your voice sounds good, your playing is good, and the songs are fine. There’s just nothing interesting about them.” It was difficult in the moment, but it was exactly what I wanted to hear, his honest assessment. He was very encouraging, explaining, “You’re very talented, you have all

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of these skills, but you’re just emulating stuff. Don’t settle; find the real you — what only you can offer.” Not long after, I wrote “Fighting for the Wrong Side,” my first song for the album, and I sent it to Bruce, and he was so excited, replying, “You fucking did it, man!” What led you to make the album, and what was your was concept? It was the desire and need to do my own thing, which is why I left Ricky’s band after five years. What can I do with this instrument? What can I offer to the world that no one else can? Every artist has to ask themselves that. My answer was combining my bass playing, singing, and songwriting, while embracing all of my musical influences. I purposely kept the concept simple — mainly my bass and vocals, with some background vocals and a few contributions by other musicians — so I would have room to evolve. Also, the chord progressions I use are fairly basic,

Jump Head

Scott Mulvahill

but I try to sneak in little harmony nuggets such as passing chords, melodic lines in counterpoint to my vocal, and non-root tones. “Fighting for the Wrong Side” indeed establishes your music and lyric approach. I wrote the main riff on a cello I have at the house to mess around on. Later I adapted it for bass, and I fleshed out the song and lyric. To me, the acoustic bass is a very impressionistic instrument; you’re never really in tune, and unlike the piano, you’re giving the impression of something rather than laying it all out. Here, I’m hinting at the chord progression, but most of the time it’s single notes. You can guess at the harmony, but it’s not actually there. There’s a power in that approach. When I played the song for Bruce, he said liked the sparse style of the song: the writing of the bass part, the melody, and the lyric, and how they don’t give you the whole picture at any point. That suits me on the lyric side, too, as I’m more of a discreet-meaning type of writer. I’d get comments about the song, interpreting it in different ways, some accusing me of being anti-military. But the song is actually about a relationship. I like having that sense of mystery about a lyric, and leaving space for the listener to interpret it. I’ve found what I connect with in my songs is rarely what someone else connects with. So I just try to make it as truthful and compelling as I can. “The Lord Is Coming” has had a far reach. I wrote the song with two friends, Alanna Boudreau and Gabi Wilson, at a 2016 songwriting retreat in Vermont. We each released versions on our albums. In the meantime, Gabi, who is known as H.E.R., won two Grammys last year, including Best R&B Album. Gabi’s version is on her latest EP, I Used to Know Her: Part 2, and I’m playing bass on the track. I also play on Alanna’s version. So, the song has opened a lot of doors for me. Lauren Daigle, who has emerged from the Christian music scene to become a mainstream star, heard me play the tune at a Nashville event and invited me to perform it on tour with her last year. “Indefensible” has a confessional quality.

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Yeah, it’s one of the most raw lyrics I’ve written. It’s about the mistakes we make and almost make, and how if you spend so much time at the edge, is there much difference between the two? In the last verse, the protagonist doesn’t do the deed, not because of moral character but because he was a coward. I wrote a fair amount of the song and then realized it was about me! So, I guess the song is a confessional. I kept the track to just bass and vocals so there was nothing to hide behind, and so you could feel the pain in the lyrics. A friend of mine pointed out that the whole album has a theme of facing fear. That mirrors my life, which has been all about breaking out on my own as a solo artist. I guess I’m heeding my own message. This was also the only track where I recorded the bass and vocal separately; I prefer to record them live together. It results in a less perfect performance, but it makes an emotional difference. You can her some of the bleed and a bit of phasing at times, but it sounds more three-dimensional. Which brings up singing and playing. Any tips? It’s difficult, no doubt, but I encourage it because it’s fun. The only way I could do it at first was to slow everything to a crawl, even figuring out which words land on which notes. I had “Fighting for the Wrong Side” mapped and gridded in 16th-notes, measure by measure. Learning both parts separately is always a good method. Think rhythmically — the rhythm of your words and the rhythm of the bass line; try speaking the words to the bass line before singing them. And before you start, visualize what you want the end result to sound like. A key part of your sound is hitting the bass percussively. That came about from looking for new textures to add in my solo performances. I had worked up a cover of “Wake Me Up” [by the late Avicii, 2013], and it needed percussion for a sense of movement, so I tried hitting the body of the bass. The challenge is I have to orchestrate which hand I’m going to use, how and where I’m going to hit it, and

Jump Head

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Scott Mulvahill

SEAN FISHER

how to get back to the strings for the bass line. I’ve developed different moves, and I try to be dynamic. I’ll hit the body of the bass with my fist for a kick drum or cajón sound, the shoulder or the fingerboard for a snare sound, the sides for a knocking sound, and for dynamics, I’ll use two fingers for a lighter touch. The upright lends itself well to interpreting Ladysmith Black Mambazo vocal melodies on your cover of Paul Simon’s “Homeless.” I moved the key up from F# to A, to sit better on the bass. That was recorded in Vermont in a less sophisticated setting, with two mics, and I love the sound I got. I also have 12 people doing background vocals. I do a show where I cover the entire Graceland album. You break out the bow for “Himalayas.” I’ve got a long way to go with my bowing, but I’ve gotten better at it from having a fiddle in the house. One of the challenges is you can get hamstrung if you’re bowing in the wrong direction, so you have to pick spots where you play double down or upstrokes to make a passage work. I wrote that song in the

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mountains of Colorado while on tour with Ricky, and the music flowed from the lyrics. My original intent was to arrange it for a band because of the lyrics’ epic scope, but then I realized it should be a solo piece. I used a bow to give it an ascending feel, and I discovered I could play octaves using harmonics with the bow. There are three overdubbed, bowed parts in the intro, the bridge, and the ending. Between the bowed passages and the percussive hits on the body, I was discovering new techniques to make it all work. It’s everything I can do on the bass, so I play it last in my sets. How do you see your art evolving? Well, as I mentioned, I purposely kept the canvas fairly blank on this record so I would have room to grow and develop my vision. I have a lot of ideas going forward about how to keep the core of my sound while dressing it up in various ways, through different textures. I’d like to try adding some MIDI controllers to my upright. I feel like I’ve just begun exploring on my musical journey. l

Jump Head

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Transcription

Scott Mulvahill’s “Begin Againers”

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gree of vibrato; this is not notated, so listen to the track to gauge that. Letter A is the first verse, in which the main riff continues; B is the second verse. Dig the section’s last measure, with the G chord sliding to the A chord. “I liked the idea of having the bluesy-sounding G chord in a song that’s in E, and later I realized it’s reminiscent of the tonality in ‘Change the World,’ written by one of my favorite bassists and composers, Tommy Sims.” For the first chorus, at letter C, Mulvahill continues his use of 10ths and 5ths as he introduces new chords. Key to the section is the dramatic pause in bars 40–41. “I cut the track to a click, but I stopped it there so I could take my time coming back in.” For the third verse at letter D, Mulvahill unleashes a sick fill in bars 48–49. “I wanted to add some new color to the repetitive part.” Check out his unorthodox use of an open G on beat four of bar 49, on the last note of the triplet, to facilitate scooping into the G# on the downbeat of 50. Letter E is the second chorus, this time featuring a longer pause than the previous chorus, in bars 67–68. F is the outro, boasting one more killer stepout in bar 76 (a cool, bluesy E lick over the A chord). Finally, Mulvahill elongates the last I–IV phrase in bar 80, resulting in a descending top line with a gorgeous voice-leading (dig the F# major chord in 82) that resolves on the closing E chord. Mulvahill advises, “The feel is fairly laid back. It may help to think of the bass line as two parts intertwined. The lower part locks

SEAN FISHER

an album that craftily normalizes the rare concept of a singer–songwriter accompanying himself solely on acoustic bass, perhaps no song feels more natural than “Begin Againers.” With its powerful, bluesy subhook and relaxed vocal melody, the piece has the warm, familiar, resonating quality of a beloved traditional song. Call it a folkloric bass anthem. Offers Mulvahill, “I wrote the lyrics during a flight, and a few months later while on tour, I started playing the main bass riff. I added backing vocals during the recording to give it another rhythmic component. The song is about redemption and having the ability and the grace to forgive yourself or others — something that seems to be missing in our culture right now.” The track begins with Mulvahill’s slide into a four-bar intro consisting of the song’s main two-bar phrase repeated twice; note his use of the open E and A to keep the sense of a bass and a melody line happening at the same time. Some performance notes: Notated only in the intro, but present throughout most of the track, is Mulvahill’s percussive backbeats on two and four, where he takes the flattened fingers on his right (plucking) hand and hits all four strings against the fingerboard, while muting the strings with his left (fretting) hand. This is shown via the ghosted low E’s in bars 1–4. “The hits are just before I’m going to play the next note, so it’s all in one motion.” Additionally, for all of the sustained, upper notes (generally the notes above the staff), he applies some de-

Scott Mulvahill

down the one and three, and the upper line has all the upbeat accents and pushes. They answer each other, which creates the overall

time feel. I recommend learning and singing the vocal to get the full experience of performing the song.”

“Begin Againers” By Scott Mulvahill | Transcribed by Chris Jisi & Scott Mulvahill | Used By Permission A

Med. blues

= 86

(Right-hand fingerboard slap) S

4 0

7 0

(2)

4 0

0 1

6 0

7 0

B E

6 0 A

(Right-hand slaps continue)

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Scott Mulvahill

D A

F#m

6 0

4 2

3 2

4 0

8 7

6 0

1 2 4 7

(8) 8 7

1 2 4 7

6 0

11 12

1 2 4 7

4 0

4 0 2

9 0

9 7

3 4

0 0

9 11

11 0 11 0

D A

13 14 13 16 13

6 0

1 2 4 7

G A

7 0

G F#m E

7 0

9 0

11 0 11 0

1 2 4 7

7 0

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6 0

7 0

6 0

1 2 4 7

Scott Mulvahill

D A

F#m

G F#m

8 7

6 0

1 2 4 7

E/G#

(0) 4

4 3

6 0

4 0

4 0 2

9 0

1 2 4 7

13 11 10 9

2 2

0 E

11 0 11 0

D A

0 0

Asus

1 2 4 7

G A

9 0

11 0 11 0

1 2 4 7

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Sumo Princess

SUMOSTRENGTH RIFFS After holding the bass chair with the Go Go’s, Cher, the Bangles, Beck, and many others, Abby Travis’ new original project Sumo Princess brings her to center stage By Vicky Warwick |

Photo by John Stapleton

ot many musicians get to say they shared the stage with a major band like Spinal Tap before they had even graduated from music school, but it takes a free spirit with a certain amount of grit, fearlessness, and a fairy costume to wind up in those situations. These traits have helped Abby Travis land gigs with Beck, Elastica, the Go-Go’s, the Bangles, Eagles Of Death Metal, and Cher. Her rock & roll attitude is real, her bass lines solid, and her Ampeg 8x10 loud — and she’d really prefer if you didn’t ask her to

turn down. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Abby has been playing rock shows since she was a teen. Citing her bass-playing influences as Geezer Butler, Verdine White, John Paul Jones, and Paul McCartney, she’s honed her craft listening to the best. Aside from being a much-called-upon session player, she’s also released four albums of her own material, and is set to unleash her newest project to the world, Sumo Princess. Formed as a knee-jerk reaction to “hearing the same stupid plug-ins and overly quantized, hyper auto-tuned, compressed

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KATHY FLYNN

Abby Travis

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Abby Travis

shit,” she joined forces with drummer Gene Trautmann (Queens Of The Stone Age, Eagles Of Death Metal) to offer an alternative: music with a huge sense of fun that has clearly come from the space between the pits of their stomachs and the bottom of their boots. The duo’s album, When an Electric Storm, features a heavily effected bass sound and delivers satisfying riffs and drum solos. The only reactionary option as a listener is to nod your head to this rhythm section, which is strong enough to be a stand-alone band.

ow did you first start playing bass? I was asked to join a band called the Lovedolls by the guitarist, Kim, when I was 15. She was dating my brother at the time, and the combination of her liking the way I dressed and the fact I’d made her tunafish sandwiches at the house was enough for her to ask me to join. She said, “I’ll teach you how to play bass — just don’t tell the drummer you’ve never played before.” I did have a piano teacher when I was a kid who told me I should play the bass because I would always do a lot of movement with my left hand. I think that’s probably being Beatles-damaged; I love Paul McCartney so much. I lucked out because the Lovedolls were an offshoot of these cult movies that were made by Dave Markey, and we actually had gigs. Before music, I was a rebellious kid, but my parents let me go on tour because they could see I was practicing all the time and working hard at something. Did you make a conscious effort to be a session player, or was the goal to just be playing music in any way? I had this epiphany one day while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in my ’64½ Mustang — for Californians, cars are important — and thought, “If I really apply myself, I can be as good as anyone else.” When I graduated music school I consciously started taking auditions, and I had a couple of friends in the work-for-hire world who would recommend me. I think being able to sing and play at the same time was helpful. What were your first big tours?

I first toured with Vanessa Paradis, who was huge in France. After that, I auditioned for Beck. I got to do some great shows with him; playing Reading Festival was definitely a tick on the checklist. I’m not great at remembering shows, but I remember how exciting it was, especially to see that many people all jumping around. Beck was a good artist to work with, too. Out of all the people I’ve worked for, I found him to be the most in it for the right reasons. He was coming from a place of trying to create really good work and was interested in his craft. He wasn’t in it to be a pop star. I have a lot of admiration for him. Halfway through that tour with Beck, Elastica needed a bass player, so I joined them, too, and was doing double-duty touring with both acts. I finished working with Beck and ended up staying with Elastica because they were so much fun. How was it working with Cher? It’s like working for Santa Claus! She’s an icon. That woman has an unbelievable work ethic. You’ve found yourself working alongside a lot of comedy in music. How did you end up working with Andy Kaufman’s character Tony Clifton and Spinal Tap? I met this guy at a bar one night, and he was looking for a music director for Tony Clifton’s show. It was a regular gig at the Comedy Store, which is a legendary place on Sunset Boulevard that used to be named Ciro’s, and Frank Sinatra would perform there. It was also my first proper musical-director gig, which is hilarious. My proudest contribution to his show was the addition of Judas Priest’s “Living After Midnight” to the setlist, in which Tony performed wearing ass-less chaps. I wound up in the same room as Spinal Tap because they were heading out on tour and were holding drummer auditions. It was a bit of a publicity stunt, since their drummers were always dying in the movie [This Is Spinal Tap]. At the time I was attending music school, and my boyfriend was a drummer, so I said, “Okay, you’ve gotta teach me.” I showed up to the audition wearing a

L I ST E N Sumo Princess, When an Electric Storm [Educational Recordings] GEAR Basses Yamaha BB2000, Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay, 1973 Fender Precision Rig Ampeg SVT-VR 8x10 Effects Death By Audio Fuzzwar, Boss Bass Synthesizer, Roland RE-201 Space Echo, DigiTech Guitar Whammy Pedal, Red Panda Raster, Electro-Harmonix Flanger Hoax Phaser, POG and Mel 9 Tape Replay Machine

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Abby Travis

fairy costume and in character as [in a Nigel Tufnel-esque British accent] “Promethia Pendragon” and I was from a village outside of Stonehenge … I had a whole schtick. I made them laugh, and although they were rooting for me, I didn’t make the cut as a drummer. However, when I explained I was a bass player, they said “You’ll have to join us on ‘Big Bottom’!” So, they got me up at a show during the tour to play that song with them. They also had me up there dancing around as a fairy at some other shows. It was hilarious. I’m proud of that to this day. As a hired musician, have you had the most fun on tours that you naturally slotted into? Absolutely. I feel they’re the ones that I play the best on, too. Some musicians are able to think that all music is equal, and that’s a wonderful personality, particularly for doing hired-gun work. I’m actually more opinionated — I think some stuff sucks, but I absolutely love other stuff, and I don’t have much of a poker face. In some situations that has helped me; when it is a good fit I can understand what the band really wants, and I can fulfill a role more like a band member. Eagles Of Death Metal were an example of that. I felt I could totally be myself with them. Since you’re the only harmonic instrument in your new project, Sumo Princess, has your role as a bass player changed? I’m getting to go beyond the traditional role. [The bass is] now just another thing that makes noise; what noises can I make with it? I was always envious of the painting that guitar players get to do with pedals. That’s something I’m indulging in with Sumo Princess. Were you conscious of wanting to make the band a two-piece? I was, for several reasons. I wanted the freedom to experiment with the sonic landscape. Also, it’s just so hard to keep a band together; I thought if it’s only two people, it should be easier and also more affordable to tour. I will admit part of the inspiration came to me one day when I was reading Rolling Stone magazine on my friend’s toilet. I saw an article about Royal Blood, so I looked them up on YouTube and thought, “Oh my God,

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what a brilliant idea — why didn’t I think of that?” I purposely didn’t listen to much of their music after that because I didn’t want to be too influenced. Did you and Gene develop the songs together, or did you have them fully formed beforehand? It depends on the song. Some were written from pure jamming; then there were others that I brought in and said, “Here’s a song.” I’m really enjoying writing through improvisation; there’s something super-freeing about it. There’s also a lot of improvisation in our live show. We never do the same set twice. We’re about to go on tour with the Meat Puppets, and I’m excited to see how our set develops. If there’s a technical problem, or if I make a mistake, it could turn into a brand new song. I like to joke that chaos is the third member of the band. When you listen to a Jimmy Page solo, part of the thrill is thinking, “Is he gonna land that?” That’s what I like about rock & roll. That sense of risk is more compelling than hearing live music that sounds exactly the same as it did on the radio. I love how varied the songs are across the record. What were you listening to that helped inspire the tracks? The main riff in “Kali Ma” was definitely very Lemmy-inspired. I wrote “You Will Rise” after I went and saw one of my favorite songwriters, Richard Ashcroft from the Verve. He just lets his songs sing themselves. It’s so effortless; the melody does all the work. I wanted to write a song like that. With “You Will Rise” I had experimented with some more melodic bass lines, but soon I realized that playing the simple, bone-head thing sounded better. That’s the other thing that’s funny about Sumo Princess; there are times that I can shred, and I do, particularly in the solos — but oftentimes, playing the stupidest, simplest straight eighths still sounds better. Sometimes I would say to Gene, “Can you play that more like a caveman? Like someone with two turkey legs banging on rocks?” What would be your advice to players wanting to embark on the session world?

Abby Travis

It’s important to say yes a lot. Even if you don’t want the gig or you get the gig, it’s really good to go to the audition and try out, because you end up meeting musicians who’ll put you forward for other gigs. Being open to opportunities, doing the work, and showing up on time is important, too. There’s also a certain amount of keeping your mouth shut and making sure you don’t get involved with someone else’s drama. There’s times when I just say, “Oh, man, I’ve gotta go check my stuff” and then bail, which helps get me out of any political rants or situations. It’s a great blanket statement — it’s completely meaningless, but it sounds like you’re leaving to

do something important! Another piece of advice is to make the music that you want to make. Don’t chase the dragon of whatever you think is going to get you money or make you popular. Make music that’s meaningful to you. Then it has a chance of being meaningful to other people. l Sumo Princess’ When an Electric Storm was released on May 8, with a record release party scheduled on May 26 at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles. See Sumo Princess’ website for a full list of upcoming tour dates with the Meat Puppets. [http://sumoprincessband.com/]

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

FOOL’S GOLD

Graham Maby supplies Joe Jackson with soul, substance & style

By Chris Jisi

there a longer-running, more symbiotic relationship between bassist and singer– songwriter than the 45-year teaming of Graham Maby with Joe Jackson? The pair first got together in 1974 to cut three singles in the quartet Arms & Legs, a misfire that led Jackson to come roaring back as a solo artist and eventually cut his punk-edged, debut smash, Look Sharp! [1979, A&M]. On the bottom, the Gosport, England-born Maby — who had a “lightning-bolt moment” when he bought an Eko bass at age 16 and immersed himself in the ostinatos of Paul McCartney, Jack Bruce, John Paul Jones, and Roger Glover — got a featured role, thanks to Jackson’s insistence that there would be no guitar solos in the band. Maby laughs, “I was young and exuberant, and trying to fill up every inch of space!” Jackson saw the bigger picture: a bassist with

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“extraordinary ears, a tasteful, fluid style, and a spot-on rhythmic sense,” who played “every note with conviction,” as he related in his 1999 autobiography, A Cure for Gravity [Anchor]. The partnership has endured many musical twists and turns brought on by Jackson’s broad range of musical influences and stunning creativity. The result is such classics sides as Jumpin’ Jive [1981, A&M], Night and Day [1982, A&M], Body and Soul [1984, A&M], and Rain [2008, Rykodisc]. Refocusing on songwriting after recent excursions through classical and jazz, Jackson issued a double album of song gems with 2015’s Fast Forward [Work Song]. Now he’s back with eight more exquisite, timely meditations on the modern condition on Fool [2019, Ear Music], vividly brought to life by his crack quartet with Maby, guitarist Teddy Kumpel, and drummer Doug Yowell. We checked in

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Graham Maby

Maby onstage with Joe Jackson on The Tonight Show

with Graham at his New York-area home just before the February launch of Jackson’s 40th anniversary tour to get the lowdown on the record’s creation.

understand the road played a role in the record coming together. That’s right. Joe had the idea to learn all of the new songs and play them on tour last summer, and then go right into the studio at the end of the tour and record them, like we used to do in the early days. We actually played three songs — “Fabulously Absolute,” “Dave,” and “Strange Land” — on tour in the summer of 2017. Last summer’s tour ended in Boise, Idaho, and Joe said, “There must be a good studio around here.” We found the Tonic Room and got it all done in a week because we were so familiar with the material. We cut live, with Joe on electric piano, and then he overdubbed his final vocals and acoustic piano back in New York. I don’t think we did more than three takes for any song, and a couple were first takes. Joe always seems to write with his band in mind. Yes, I think Joe is inspired by a concept. When he first hired Doug and Teddy three

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years ago for the tour in support of Fast Forward [2015, Work Song], and the band coalesced quickly, I could just see the cogs turning in his mind that he was going to write for this lineup. That’s what he does. He wrote Volume 4 [2003, Rykodisc] with me, [drummer] Dave Houghton, and [guitarist] Gary Sanford in mind, and when Gary left he started thinking of the trio format, with me and [drummer] Gary Burke; and then he wrote Rain [2008, Rykodisc] around the trio with me and Dave. Learning songs usually starts with demos from Joe? It does. Joe makes terrific demos with good synth bass sounds, synth guitar parts, and programmed drums that feel very natural. He really knows the ranges and capabilities of the instruments. I actually told him they were too good and that he should make them shittier, and he told me he’s going to work on that! What I try to do is move on from the demo quickly so that I can make the bass part my own and not be too influenced by what Joe played, aside from the portions that need to be played verbatim. Sometimes he’ll provide chord charts with a bit of notation, but I prefer to memorize the songs. As

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Graham Maby

L I ST E N Joe Jackson, Fool [2019, Ear Music] GEAR Basses ’88 Spector NS-5, 2019 Spector NS-5, ’66 Fender Jazz Bass, ’90s Lakland Joe Osborn, Mark Hatcher custom acoustic bass guitar, 2017 Hofner Beatle Bass Strings D’Addario XL Coated Nickel EXP170-5 (.045, .065, .080, .100, .130); Rotosound RS88LD Tru Bass Black Nylon (.065, .075, .100, .115) Amps Wayne Jones Audio WJBP Stereo Valve Bass Guitar Preamp, two WJ1x10 Stereo/Mono Bass Cabinets Effects Electro-Harmonix Big Muff π Distortion Other Herco Flex .75 picks, Future Sonics in-ears, Spectraflex Braided Cables, Snark tuner Recording Fool “I played my ’88 Spector NS-5, recorded both direct and through my mic’d Wayne Jones stage rig.”

always with Joe, if he wants something specific, he’ll say so. Otherwise he gives me the freedom to interpret his parts, and I assume his silence means that what I’m playing is working for him. “Big Black Cloud” is a dark opener. That’s the darkest track for sure, where we all connect with our inner demon [laughs]. The bass line is pretty simple. My favorite part is in the outro, where the bass is exposed and the piano line comes in, and my bass note clashes with the harmony for a quick moment of dissonance. [Around 5:08, the bass plays an Eb as part of a Bb/Eb chord against E and F notes on the piano that are part of a C chord.] “Fabulously Absolute” is a burner that brings to mind Joe’s punk-era days. Yeah, I decided to use a pick because it has that throwback sound, except for the unison riff in the bridge [see music sidebar, page 44], which I found easier to play with my fingers. The original demo was a half-step up, which meant the bridge was in Ab instead of G. Joe asked how it was to play, and I said it would be much easier a half-step down. He thought about it and said it would be easier to sing, as well, so he brought it down. The guy who really would have nailed the bridge is Joe Dart. I’m a big fan of his playing. “Dave” has a classic Joe sound and tasty step-outs from you. He was on the fence about that song, but we all liked it. The key is the tempo. It has to be almost lethargic to make the song work, so we ended up cutting to a click track. There were spaces in the transitions where it felt natural to step out, which I did more of as the track went on, and especially in the outro. “Strange Land” is a compelling ballad, both lyrically and harmonically. It’s a classic song about alienation. The bass line is Joe’s; the octave-jumping made me think of Colin Greenwood’s bass line on “Nude,” from Radiohead’s In Rainbows [2007, XL]. I love that whole album, and I think Colin is a great bass player. Joe actually changed the bass line because he wanted me to sustain the lower notes in the octaves,

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which he didn’t do on the demo. “Friend Better” channels Steely Dan overall and Paul McCartney on the bottom. It definitely has a Steely Dan vibe, and in the chorus I had the freedom to fill. The thought of McCartney playing melodically up high was certainly in my mind. I hadn’t planned anything, but I figured we were in the studio, so if I messed up I could go back and fix it. That was the advantage of having played the songs on tour; some ideas had formed. “Fool” has a lot of different influences and a bass solo. That was the most challenging song. Joe loves all of those styles — salsa, horas, Middle Eastern music. Fortunately I’m more comfortable playing tumbaos now then when Joe first unleashed that music on me for Night and Day. As for the solo [see music sidebar], there was quite a good one on the demo, but Joe told me to play whatever I wanted. I figured out how long it needed to be, and I composed it in my mind beforehand. I’m not the kind of player who can just wing it; I think I had my “written” solo down in two takes. My favorite part of the track is the outro groove, where Joe got the idea to have me double the cuíca drum part, and I decided to double the melody for the final six notes. “32 Kisses” features an interesting feel and your second bass solo. Joe played that solo on the demo, and he wanted it as is, so it’s more of a written part or melody. I enjoyed interpreting it on bass. The feel comes from the piano chords anticipating the downbeats by an eighth-note. I played the root on both the “and” of four and on the downbeat, which can give it a bit of a turned-around feel until your ear locks in on where the one is. Joe’s original bridge was in 4/4, and he re-wrote it in 3/4; I played the first half up an octave for dramatic effect. “Alchemy” has an elegant, cocktail-lounge vibe, with your cha-cha-style groove. I love that song. The demo had an upright bass sample, so I muted my strings with my palm and plucked with my thumb, to capture that sound. I thought about putting

Graham Maby

foam under the bridge, which I’ve done, but I felt more in control of the notes using just my hands. The cha-cha feel was on the demo, and it was tempting to fill the holes, but I tried to stay true to the style until the outro — there, I stretched out a little with syncopation and some passing notes. It’s one of my favorite parts of our show because I don’t have any background vocals to sing, so I can lean back

on my stool and focus on the part. You’ll be touring extensively in 2019 for Joe’s 40th Anniversary Tour. It’s the longest one we’ve done in years, and many of the shows are already sold out. We rehearsed a lot of songs from Joe’s career, including some I haven’t played in quite a while, but I can’t give any titles away. It’s going to be fun for us and for the audiences. l

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

Graham Maby

STEPPIN’ OUT

he has from day one, Graham Maby leaves his indelible musical signature on Joe Jackson’s Fool, from forceful grooves and tasteful subhooks to expressive fills and melodic solo step-outs. Example 1 shows the unison bridge riff played with guitarist Teddy Kumpel on “Fabulously Absolute,” at 2:17. Check out Maby’s judicious use of open strings in the first measure to navigate the bebop-tinged line, before moving up in positions. He reveals, “Live, I’ve been playing a low open A instead of the A on the 7th fret, in bar 3.” Example 2 contains the final three measures of Maby’s solo on “Fool,” at 3:34, in which he plays off the chordal shapes of Ebmaj7 (EbG-D), D7 (D, F#, C), and Cm7 (C, Eb, Bb) in the first two bars — while keeping in mind the tune’s G harmonic minor tonality in bar 3 (save for the Fn passing note). He allows, “Joe said he liked the idea of having some upper-register bass chords, so I played around with some chords arpeggio-style.”

Ex. 1 Bright punk rock

= 172

Ex. 2 Salsa rock

Ebmaj7

Cm7

= 94

1512

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1312

1210

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Dub Trio, Griz, Matisyahu

THE SHAPE OF BASS TO COME

Bassist, musical director, and producer extraordinaire Stu Brooks unleashes thunderous new albums with Dub Trio and Griz and discusses what it’s like playing in the Saturday Night Live Band By Jon D’Auria |

“R

Photographs by William Felch

egardless of what style of music we’re playing, I always try to be aggressively low in frequency. We want our sound to be an aural experience, but also a physical one. Whether it’s dub, punk, or metal, I try to swing the bass like a telephone pole.” For a man known for dropping dirty, towering frequencies in a multitude of heavy genres, you’d never know it from Stu Brooks’ mellow demeanor as he strolls the sidewalks of Los Angeles in route to a yoga class while discussing his playing. Having recently transplanted

from his longtime New York residence to the West Coast, the Canadian-born bass player and producer is as calm as they come, which is quite contrary to the intensely heavy music of his band, Dub Trio, which just released their fifth studio album after an eight-year gap since their previous effort. But Brooks hasn’t been simply working on his asanas and meditating in the lull since then. The 40-year-old journeyman has kept busy recording, musical directing, and playing alongside electronic funk artist Griz, jazz drummer Mark Guiliana, Matisyahu, Peeping Tom, Kanye West, Dr. John, Pretty Lights, and 50 Cent; he also occupied the

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Stu Brooks

L I ST E N Dub Trio, The Shape of Dub to Come [New Damage] GEAR Bass Alleva-Copollo LG4, Olinto 4-string, Moollon J-Classic IV, Atelier Z 4-string Rig Two Aguilar 751s, Aguilar 700, three Aguilar DB 412s Effects 3LeafAudio Octabvre, MKII and Vulcan XL, Bananana Matryoshka, Meris Ottobit, Panda Audio Future Impact, DOD Meatbox, EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Reaper and Hummingbird, Solid Gold Funkzilla, Red Panda Bit Map and Tensor, Recovery Effects Sound Destruction Device, Aguilar Agro and TLC Compression, Dunlop/MXR Volume Pedal and Carbon Copy, MOOG MF-101 Low Pass Filter, DigiTech Bass Whammy Pedal, Eventide H9 Harmonizer Strings La Bella 0760M Deep Talkin’ Bass Flatwounds, 1954 Original (.052–.110), La Bella RX-S4C Bass RX Stainless C (.045–105) Keybass Minimoog Model D, Roland System 8 bass chair for the Saturday Night Live Band and is heading up an all-star set at the 2019 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Additionally, he’s been working on a custom signature bass with Alleva-Coppolo that is able to cop his deep dub lows and his aggressive midrange attack. His obsession with tone is evident on every project he lays his bass down for — and no album proves this more than Dub Trio’s newest. Titled The Shape of Dub to Come (as a nod to 1998’s The Shape of Punk to Come by post-hardcore pioneers Refused), Brooks, drummer Joe Tomino, and guitarist Dave Holmes deliver a mash-up of slow-burning metal riffs and introspective dub grooves. Evolving from heavy to mellow vibes as the album progresses, the record welcomes guest collaborators with vocal cameos from fellow bassists Meshell Ndgeocello, Troy Sanders of Mastodon, and Buzz Osborne of the Melvins. Tracks like “Half Hidden,” “Forget My Name,” and “World of Inconvenience” display Brooks’ filthy tone, use of dynamics, and command of his technique, all attributes honed by his countless hours both behind the mixing board and on the other side of it. Brooks articulates his thoughts

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about the album recording process, the importance of technique, and the role of bass in a trio with great clarity as he saunters the busy streets of L.A. You’d never guess from his mild-mannered poise the kind of monstrous frequencies he unleashes when he picks up his bass.

hat caused the lag between Dub Trio records? We were out on the road a lot backing other artists. Between Matisyahu and Peeping Tom, we were out on the road nine months of the year for a while. And then Dave and Joe both moved out of New York. When we finally got down to writing and recording, we had to approach things differently. How did the writing process go? It was definitely a gradual process where we’d come up with ideas individually and then send them to each other via email. A few times Dave and I would get together in my studio and hash out some things, and then we’d send them to Joe and he’d play to them. It wasn’t until we had maybe ten sketches that we finally all met up to work on them together. It was just a week before our studio session when we first played all of these songs as a band. It was crazy for us to write and record songs without testing them out in front of audiences like we had always done. But as soon as we got in a rehearsal room together, it was as if no time had passed whatsoever. We’re brothers and we always just click. How involved were you with the writing? A lot of the material stems from Dave’s riffs, and then I extrapolate and interpret my bass parts. I write a lot of the verse riffs where the dub stuff is happening. It’s pretty balanced collaboratively. Some things are mathematically composed, and other things come from improvising on variations of the main riff. How did you go about tracking the songs? Each song was recorded a little differently. We did a lot of pre-production beforehand and used that as a road map. We tracked guitars and bass in my studio with programmed drums initially. Once we got to Studio G,

nailing the drums was our first priority. We hoped for the best for the bass, but I knew I could always re-track anything I needed to. There was a lot of comping [compositing], where we’d do two takes and find the best parts of each and then edit them and do overdubs after that. Songs like “Needles” and “Computery” were done at my home studio. We did eight days of tracking sessions and knocked out the whole album. We always do our records very quickly and try not to overdo or overthink anything. We try to preserve the magic of the moment and use as many first takes as we can. Not only did you cover a Meshell Ndegeocello song, “Forget My Name,” but you also had her sing on it. Was playing her bass parts nerve-racking? It was funny because I remember the moment being in the studio behind the board and actually saying, “Okay, let’s erase Meshell’s bass line so I can track it.” I mean, come on, that’s pretty surreal. I was a little

nervous about it, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to like it, but we flipped it from its original Afrobeat feel to make it a one-drop dub. I mimicked her line but altered it into my style to work as a dub track. Luckily, she was really happy with it. What was it like working with Troy Sanders? We sent him a couple of instrumental tunes, and he picked “Fought the Line” and brought it to his studio in Atlanta and tracked vocals to it. He’s such an amazing person whom we love so much, and we felt so honored that he’d do that track with us. I was genuinely moved by his lyrics, and he definitely poured out his heart into that song. That’s all you can ask for when you collaborate with someone. That’s a nasty bass riff in the verse of “Bad Comrade.” That was my response to a riff we were playing with. That verse part just came out when we were cycling on it — that’s what my

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Stu Brooks

Dub Trio: Holmes, Tomino, and Brooks

instincts told me to do. I use a pick with distortion on roundwound strings for the first bar and then quickly switch to fingerstyle with flatwound strings. There are a lot of subtle little improvisational parts to that song where I’m working off what Joe and Dave are doing. I wanted to capture an 808 style [music inspired by the Roland TR-808 drum machine] with some movement in there. What do you like most about playing in a trio? I’ve always felt that a trio sounds bigger than a quartet because there is more opportunity for space, and space creates a larger dynamic within the music. When we add peo-

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ple to play with us, we find that the mix gets smaller. You always have to find a balance. It gives the bass a much greater role within the music, too, because I can explore more and not step on any toes. Your playing technique changes pretty frequently. My technique is definitely dynamic; I change up my right hand quite a bit. When we play dub I play very softly, almost on the neck, to get that super-low, rich tone. Occasionally, I play 12 frets above where my left hand is fretting to try to get a synth sound out of it. Depending on what effects I’m using, such as a lowpass filter, I’ll dig in harder

Stu Brooks

depending on how the amp and effects are working, even if it’s a dub line. In those instances I’ll raise my right fingers about two inches off the string and will pound them down to strike each note. I do almost all of my muting with my left hand. That’s where I dampen my strings and really control the note duration. A lot of that is in the moment and how I’m reacting to the sound of the room, the stage, the monitors, and everything. We bass players can control so much with just our touch. You and drummer Joe Tomino have been working together for 20 years now. What do you love about playing with him? We’re an extension of each other at this point. Oddly enough, people think we’re twins. I don’t see it at all, but when we’re on the road, at least once a day people ask us if we are. We’ve even started to walk the same and stand with the same posture. There’s a lot of intuition between us that has developed from playing and spending so much time together. We really don’t have to verbally communicate when it comes to music anymore. We both seem to know what the other is go-

ing to do and what the other is thinking. You two even live-sample each other’s parts during shows. How does that work? Joe has an effects stand next to his drums where he’ll pop on delays and reverbs and distortions onto himself that go through an effects feed into the house mains. I also have a Shure SM58 mic that comes from his snare, and I run that into a volume pedal that goes through a synth, delay, and reverb on my chain. I open up the volume pedal to activate the mic, and then I’m able to dub him out while I’m playing bass. Before the song I’ll get the settings that I want, and sometimes I’ll grab a bar of what he’s doing or sometimes it’s just a one-shot of his snare and I’ll even smash a spring reverb box to get that aggressive King Tubby dub sound. We always use that as a key to our improvisation. It helps us expand our grooves and have a cool dialog of back-and-forth conversation. It allows us to interact even more with each other within the music. What’s it like being the musical director for Griz? I started working with Griz in 2017 when

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Stu Brooks

I produced a record of his, and then he wanted to put together a live band and rearrange his music for a 15-piece setup. One stipulation was that he wanted no sends and no playback, so my job was to put all of that together. At first I thought it would be easy, but it ended up being a huge task. There are a lot of sounds to manage for that music, so being the bass player, I use my super-deluxe pedalboard with everything on it to get any tone that I need. I have to emulate some crazy bass lines that have about 20 automated parameters. When I first heard the stuff, it was a little overwhelming, because it is dubstep with so much going on that was hard to emulate. I was able to find the main DNA of the bass parts and replicate those live while keeping them as simple as possible. It’s super fun because I have to do really futuristic stuff and also very vintage-sounding parts. What was it like holding down the bass chair for Saturday Night Live last November? It was a thrill to cover for James Genus on such a huge show. My wife worked on SNL doing sound for a while, and I have some friends in the band, so there are a lot of familiar people when I walk in the building. I took comfort in that. Everyone was so welcoming and great to be around. It couldn’t have gone better; it was a huge opportunity that I’m so thankful for. How did you prepare for it? I knew that the audition was coming, and I knew sight-reading would be involved, so I prepared by reading through R&B and funk and playing a lot of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and Tower Of Power charts. Eventually the call came, and I was given the set list about a month in advance. I had to pull from stuff I was studying 20 years ago at Berklee before I went off track and started Dub Trio. I probably played the theme song a hundred times before I played it with the band. I went in and did the audition with Lenny Pickett, the bandleader, in his office; he had me read and play through a couple of tunes. At the end, he looked at me and said, “Well, you’re not a non-reader,” which I took as a compliment coming from

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Stu Brooks

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Jump Head

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Stu Brooks

Brooks performing in Saturday Night Live’s Studio 8H

him. The next day I got a call from him saying that Kanye West made a last-second change and wanted a live band on the show, and he asked me to come in because James was already away with Herbie Hancock. I went in, and my first time on the SNL stage was with Kanye. That really helped me get comfortable in that space. How has being a producer and engineer changed your mindset as a bass player? I learn something every time I record something new. I’m finding that nowadays I like adding bass to songs last, and I’m realizing that I can get more mileage out of the bass with simplicity and by focusing on tone rather than more activity on the fretboard. I’m really enjoying the freedom of having my own recording studio and saving the time for sound design and making interesting new sounds. That does affect the way that I approach bass, by stepping into the producer brain when I’m on the other side of the glass.

It’s easier for me now to hear which takes are good and what will work best for the song. Getting the right tone while you’re tracking will save you a lot of time in the long run. Being an engineer has honed that for me. Why did you choose the bass as your musical outlet? I love being supportive, and I don’t necessarily like to shine too bright or outshine other people. I like helping other people excel, and bass is a very supportive instrument that achieves that. As I’ve developed my own sound I’ve realized the power that the bass has and how important it is in modern music. It’s a very physical instrument. I might be in the back, but I’m definitely affecting you both physically and sonically. We move the music. At the same time, you are controlling the harmony and rhythm — no other instrument has that much influence over the song. Is that biased? Are we biased in that? No? Okay, good. l

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EchoTest, Adrian Belew Power Trio, Crimson ProjeKCt

THE REBIRTH OF

SLICK Master bass shredder Julie Slick discusses her latest album with her low-end duo EchoTest, what it’s like playing with Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, and why thinking is evil By Jon D’Auria |

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Photos by Avraham Bank

ou can be a shredder all you want and play a thousand notes a minute, but it won’t mean anything if you can’t play the foundational role, too. As musicians and artists we should be always be thinking outside of the box and breaking rules, but we definitely have a responsibility to serve the song and the people we’re playing with.” Those wise words are easy for Julie Slick to say, as she has clearly mastered both of those skill sets and proven so with her time playing with the Adrian Belew Power Trio, Crimson Project,

and her bass duo EchoTest. Holding down the foundation is a principal concept for us bass players, but when we say that Slick can shred, we mean that Slick can really shred — even to the degree that she didn’t bat an eye in taking on the intense bass work of legends like Tony Levin and Les Claypool in trading licks with Belew, or locking in alongside drummer Danny Carey of Tool during select live trio shows. Julie has always been a highly competitive person who enjoys a good challenge, which is why the odd-time-signature, fast, and complex bass lines that she conveys are al-

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Julie Slick

L I ST E N EchoTest, Daughter of Ocean [2019] GEAR Bass Lakland 55-64, Lakland Decade 6 (with Roland GK-3 MIDI Pickup), Lakland Bob Glaub 44-64 Rig Aguilar Tone Hammer 500, two Aguilar SL 112s Pedals Roland VB-99, Pigtronix Philosopher’s Tone, Mantic Vitriol Distortion, Eventide PitchFactor Harmonizer and H9 with Barn3 OX9 Switch, DigiTech Luxe Polyphonic Detuner, Pigtronix Infinity Looper Strings D’Addario ProSteel Rounds Picks Planet Waves

most second nature at this point. To step even further out of the box, she’s become known as a major innovator with pedals and effects, as her unconventional frequencies shift from riff to riff whether she’s playing her Lakland 44-64 basses or her Decade 6, which is equipped with an onboard MIDI controller to add to her array of sonic options. Playing alongside a pedal guru such as Belew is the perfect platform for her to hone her wild sounds — but her true playground for experimentation comes from her own band, EchoTest. Alongside fellow bassist Marco Machera and contributors Alessandro Inolti on drums and singer Jennifer Founds, the group has just released its latest album, Daughter of Ocean, whose nine songs form one vast movement of music that weaves thematic crescendos with ominous and dark undertones. The interplay of Slick and Machera is highly rhythmic throughout, often finding peaks in melodic moments like “Sleep” and “Tiger Races.” Like everything Julie touches, the album is as enjoyable, wildly impressive, and unconventional as it gets. Once you think you’ve started to pinpoint where the music is headed, you quickly realize you’ve been deceived — and much like Julie’s regular travel itinerary, the journey just keeps progressing. That’s another thing you should know about Julie: She is a nomad, and not in the sense of a college student studying abroad or casual world traveler, like a lot of touring musicians. She truly is a wandering explorer, a constant gypsy. In the course of the three months that we spoke leading up to this story, she was seemingly on a new continent every week. In one conversation she was preparing for the release of EchoTest’s new album in Italy with Marco, the next she was in Berlin playing shows, and the next she was on a rock & roll cruise ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Though she was born and raised in Philadelphia, the 33-yearold virtuoso has been traveling the world her entire life looking for her next adventure and next destination to explore — which explains a lot, given that her musical odyssey has always mimicked that same trajectory.

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t’s rare to find a bass duo. What do you like about playing in that format? I had always worked with other guitar players or drummers my whole life, especially with my brother being the amazing drummer that he is, so I didn’t expect to gel so well with another bass player. But Marco and I like a lot of the same music, and we both come from the same school of musical influences — Adrian Belew, Talk Talk, Pink Floyd — and we approach the bass in a very non-traditional way. I never want to be pigeonholed with my role of what the bass is supposed to do or what it’s supposed to sound like, and Marco approaches things the same way. Bass is just a vehicle for us to convey our musical expression. He knew that I used a lot of pedals and that I have a MIDI pickup on my bass, so he wanted to approach it more in a prepared way and go the more analog route. I quickly realized that the sonic space he takes up is very percussive and he utilizes the low B a lot, so it made sense for me to use my Lakland Decade 6, which I call the Slick Six. I’m able to make that bass sound different because of the MIDI pickup and the Roland VB-99 [sound module], so I’m able to make it not sound like a bass. And then I end up processing it through these Eventide Harmonizer pedals that allow me to jump up and below two octaves, depending on what I want from it. You must be met with constant miscon ceptions about your Lakland Decade 6 being a guitar and not a bass. I call it my “hard-to-play bass, easy-toplay guitar.” It feels different when you pick it up, and if you pick up a guitar and then pick up one of those, you’ll feel the differences immediately. Obviously the scale is different, as it’s taller than a guitar, the strings are much thicker, and the frets are farther spaced. It’s really comfortable under my hands, but it is way different from a 4- or 5-string, so I can’t shred on it like I can on one of those because everything is so close together and I dig in really hard when I play those other instruments. I have to play it completely differently. And I run it through all of those processors, so I have to be careful about how expressive I

Julie Slick

am because if you bend a note it could sound very bad — or it could sound very good, depending on what you’re going for. What was the process like for Daughter of Ocean? It was a long one; it definitely feels like I gave birth to a daughter. It actually start-

ed out as my third solo album, and I’ve had this theme and this concept since 2012, when I first moved out to L.A. from Philly for the one year that I lived there. I started writing the album’s first bass track way back then, so that just goes to show you how long this has been in the works. I always had the idea

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Julie Slick

that it would be a concept album that was one big piece of music. I’m a fan of full-length albums; I’m not one to just release a bunch of singles and EPs. Then I met Marco in 2014 in Italy, when I posted on Facebook that I wanted to play some shows in Europe after the Crimson ProjeKCt tour was over, and he reached out that we could play some shows together in Tuscany — and it was a magical moment when we started playing together. I never intended to start a band with him, but it just clicked. We popped out our first album out quickly, and then we rebranded ourselves as EchoTest, and we put out two more albums under that name. I had this album on

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the shelf the whole time, and once our previous album [From Two Balconies] came out, I felt like we had filled out enough creative space and it was time to work on this. How did you go about writing, once you finally decided to embark on the project? A lot of times, I write the first half of songs and hit a wall and send them to Marco, and then he finishes them. I often write the really aggressive parts, and Marco writes the pretty stuff. I was grateful because we needed some nice songs with vocals, and Marco came through with the final songs that balanced it out; otherwise I think it would’ve been a little difficult for most people to get into. That helped bring it a little closer to the mainstream aesthetic. We never overthink things; we just go what we feel and what comes from our hearts — that’s why we’re called EchoTest, because that refers to an echocardiogram [ultrasound imaging of the heart], not to sound too cheesy. How is your playing different on Daughter of Ocean compared to your previous album? I wrote From Two Balconies with vocals in mind for the songs. When I linked up with Marco, I kind of forced that music onto him, and we completed all of it. I wanted to make things more palatable and easily acceptable for more listeners. I was inspired by Tina Weymouth for that album, as I was playing with a Talking Heads tribute at the time, and the way she writes is just so groovy and her bass lines really don’t change much throughout the songs. I mean, “Once in a Lifetime” is just two notes on bass that never change. “Supercell” was my ode to a Talking Heads song, where my lines don’t shift much until the ending, when it explodes. It was a bit of a darker album because of what we were going through at the time, and you can hear that in the music. What do you love about playing with Marco Machera? His strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa; we have a yin–yang relationship. We play to each other’s strengths, but in very different ways. Even with tone and register,

Julie Slick

we are usually on opposite ends of the spectrum to really fill it all out. I love the way he thinks and writes music. Every time I have an idea and send it over to him, I can never guess what he’s going to do with it, but when I get it back from him, it’s like Christmas morning for me. I’m always just so excited to hear it, and I’m never disappointed. We both love [director] David Lynch, and we put in the credits that the record’s sound design is inspired by his work. It’s not an album that you can put on in the background or shuffle through the songs to fully appreciate it; it’s meant to be an experience, and both of us put so much into making it that way. I just love the way his little Italian brain works. Actually, that sounds mean; put that he has a brilliant Italian brain [laughs]. Tell us about your playing technique. It’s really about whatever services the song. I learned how to play with a pick first at the School of Rock from a guitar player, and at my first lesson he asked me if I preferred a pick or fingers; I was 12 years old, so I felt most comfortable playing with a pick. I tried to play guitar at first, but I struggled with barre chords, so I quickly switched the bass, but still felt comfortable with a pick. Then I went kind of backwards from what a lot of players do and I learned all of the other techniques after that. I played with a punk band in England when I was 19, and that’s what helped me become a “shredder,” because it wasn’t necessarily about how many notes I was playing with my left hand, but I had to be really fast with my right. So I gained that facility that way. I use pretty thin picks; I hold it so it’s on its side and the tip isn’t what’s hitting the string, because it would break instantly. That’s how I can get really fast movement. You use picks and a whole slew of techniques with Adrian Belew. When I joined Adrian’s band, I had to learn all of these Les Claypool bass lines — and I definitely don’t have Les’ hands, so I needed a pick to pull all of that off. I also had to play Tony Levin’s bass parts, which he used his “Funk Fingers” for [sticks that attach to

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the fingers and strike the strings percussively]. I suck with those, so I had to really up my technique to match that sound, and I also had to get my slap chops up to hit Les’ parts that he wrote with that technique. I never wanted to just be a poor copy of those players, so I had to figure out how to pull all of that off authentically. It’s something I’ve really enjoyed doing. Now I just try to do it and not think about it. I always like to say that I try not to think too much because I think thinking is evil [laughs]. You’re known for your heavy use of pedals. What do you love about effects on bass? I’ve been fascinated by sound ever since I was a little kid. I think my love of recording and capturing sounds started with the movie Home Alone and the little Talk Boy recorder that Kevin uses in it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I’ve been recording on cassettes and things ever since I was five years old. It took me to the age of 11 to find the bass, so before that, I would tinker around with different things like a little Yamaha monophonic synth, and I would mess around with my dad’s guitar and his flanger pedal and delays. When I started playing bass it was natural for me to jump right into pedals. It became my tool for my expression, so it never felt like I was breaking any rules or anything. How has playing with an effects wizard like Adrian influenced your use of them? I’ve been a huge fan of Adrian since I was 13 and saw him on a VHS tape and discovered his work with King Crimson. I’ll never forget putting in the cassette and listening to “Frame By Frame” and getting goosebumps. Six years later I was playing in his band, which is just insane. I like to think that working with him was getting my doctorate. I don’t know if it’s through osmosis or playing with him for so long or troubleshooting his rig, but I learned from him how effects can be used. When I got the Eventide PitchFactor, it became a new ballgame. Being able to access all these frequencies that I couldn’t access with my hands opened a whole new world for me. Outside of pedals, what is your ideal clean

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Julie Slick

bass tone? I love P-Bass tone with lots of midrange and compression. My biggest three influences are Jack Bruce, Chris Squire, and John Entwistle, may they all rest in peace; they all had that very aggressive growling tone that cut through everything. I actually played a Rickenbacker before I started playing with Adrian, but when I started learning the material I had to have a lot of versatility in being able to slap things and being able to tap things like on “Elephant Talk,” and the Rickenbacker wasn’t versatile for all of that. I had always wanted a Fender Precision but with a Jazz neck so I could shred, so I tried out a Lakland P-style bass in San Francisco, and it was so buttery and perfect for me. I had to have it. I reached out to Dan Lakin — this was back when he still owned the company — and luckily he was a big fan of Adrian’s and wanted to work with me. I’ve been playing Lakland basses since 2008. I love everything they make. How did you first land the gig with Adrian? A lot of it was being in the right place and right time, but it also took a lot of work to get there. It all started through the School of Rock. I was one of the original students in the first class in Philly. There was no brickand-mortar school at that time; it was actually just like the movie, which came out after all of that. The girl in the movie [portrayed by actress Rebecca Brown] was pretty much based on me. We knew there was something special with the school, and it started blowing up before the movie was ever made. It got the attention of Adrian, and he came out to one of the shows that was for Les Paul’s birthday at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. After that he agreed to tour with the All Star School of Rock band, and in 2006, the owner and creator of the school, Paul Green, called me and told me that my brother and I could play with Adrian if we made it up to New York to sit in on a gig, so my parents drove us up and we played with him and it was amazing, and I thought that was it. Two months later my Motorola flip phone kept ringing — it was Paul, saying that my brother and I were going

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to audition to be in Adrian’s band. We flew down to Nashville and clicked immediately with Adrian and knocked out the rehearsal in one day, and after one run-through of the set, he looked at us and said we killed it. It was a risky move for him to bring in two kids to his band, but he said that we breathed fresh life into his music. And I’ve been playing with him ever since. You also get to work with Tony Levin. What’s that like? It’s a dream. I still pinch myself all the time. We would play together in Crimson ProjeKCt and trade lines and grooves, and it was amazing to actually feel how he feels everything and articulates everything. I mean, he’s a true master, so it was unbelievable to work with him like that. It made me such a better bass player to see how he played. Even after 100 shows with that band, it was surreal to me. Do you feel pressure to perfectly replicate the lines of Levin and Claypool when you play their parts? There are times when I can mimic them really well if I’m playing their iconic lines and the songs needs them. But because those lines are coming from my hands and through my experiences, they just come out the way that I play them. Otherwise, I’d have to be thinking, and like I said, thinking is evil. How did you first start playing bass? I was 11 when I first picked up a bass, after struggling with guitar, and I’ll never forget looking over at a fretless Gibson Ripper that was in my dad’s collection — I saw that it had four strings, and I gravitated right toward it. I was a shy kid, so I figured I could play one note at a time and nobody would notice me, which is hilarious now, given what I do. My dad was excited that I wanted to play it, and he showed me some Jack Bruce and John Entwistle bass lines, and then he played me some Stanley Clarke music, and I just started crying when I heard it. I was floored; I thought I would never be that good. How have you evolved since then? Somewhere along the way, when I was 22 or 23 and getting more confident, having had

Julie Slick

the gig with Adrian for three years, I naturally became more extroverted. I became more comfortable onstage, and I started moving around more. Sharing the stage with people like Adrian, Tony, and [Tool drummer] Danny Carey brought me out of my shell. And also, the audience does it for me. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very dif-

ferent playing for a standing room versus a seated audience; I feed off their energy and reciprocate it. I definitely think that I play more flamboyantly now because of that. Confidence is key. But thinking is not? Exactly. l

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Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, Walking Papers, Duff McKagan’s Loaded

DUFF Mc By Freddy Villano

The rock icon steps into the spotlight with a new solo album and a new line of signature basses 66

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cKAGAN Caption

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Duff McKagan

2016, Duff McKagan played at the Grammys with the Alice Cooper-fronted supergroup the Hollywood Vampires. Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister had recently passed away, so Cooper wanted to perform “Ace of Spades” as a tribute to the venerable iron man of rock and metal. “Alice asked about playing it at the rehearsals a couple days before, ’cause I mean, Lemmy’s gone, right?” recalls McKagan. “As much as Iggy Pop or anything else, those Motörhead songs are part of my makeup, you know? So he’s singing it at the rehearsal and I’m joining in [on vocals], and he’s like, ‘Fuck, I just can’t get the cadence of this down.’ So we kept working it, and we got to the Grammy rehearsals, and he’s like, ‘Would you just sing the whole song with me?’ I’m like, ‘No problem, man.’ So that was kind of fun.” Kind of fun? To say that Duff McKagan has lived a charmed life would be a massive understatement. He’s arguably one of the most commercially successful and stylistically identifiable bass players in the history of rock & roll. He grasped the brass ring as a 21-year-old with his then-fledgling L.A.based band, Guns N’ Roses in the late ’80s and has seemingly never let go. GNR’s debut album, Appetite for Destruction [1987, Geffen] topped the Billboard 200 and became the best-selling debut album of all time. It is the 11th all-time best-selling album in the U.S. and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Appetite spawned numerous hit songs, among them “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City,” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the latter featuring one of the most recognized bass motifs in the annals of popular music. McKagan’s Gallien-Krueger-driven, pick-wielding tone and nuanced rhythmic and melodic sensibility quickly became a signature of the GNR sound. They followed up Appetite with Use Your Illusion I and II [1991, Geffen], both of which were certified seven times platinum by the RIAA — but in-

GEAR Basses Fender Duff McKagan Deluxe Precision Bass, Fender Jazz Bass Special (made in Japan), Fender Aerodyne Jazz Bass Amps Gallien-Krueger MB800, Fender Super Bassman Strings Rotosound RS66LD Longscale Swing 66 (.045, .065, .080, .105) Picks Dunlop 418P Tortex Standard .73mm (yellow) Effects Ibanez CS9 Stereo Chorus Accessories Shure UHF-R Wireless, Radial JX44 Air Control Guitar Signal Manager, Radial JR-5 Remote Footswitch, T-Rex Fuel Tank Power Supply HEAR HIM ON Tenderness, Duff McKagan (2019) MORE ONLINE CHECK IT OUT

Watch Duff McKagan demo his new Fender Deluxe Signature Precision Bass.

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Duff McKagan

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Duff McKagan

ternal strife was driving the band apart. McKagan was the last original member to leave in August 1997 (aside from lead singer Axl Rose, who continued to helm the GNR moniker). In 2002, McKagan formed Velvet Revolver with his former GNR bandmates Slash (guitar) and Matt Sorum (drums), along with ex-Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland. Again, he grasped the brass ring, earning a 2005 Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance for the single “Slither” from Velvet Revolver’s debut album, Contraband [2004, RCA], which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Weiland left to rejoin STP in 2008, and Velvet Revolver, after failing to land a suitable replacement, became inactive. But that hardly slowed McKagan down. In between such high-profile records, performances, and projects, the Seattle native launched several of his own projects, including Loaded, 10 Minute Warning (a

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reformation of his childhood band, featuring Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard), and Walking Papers. He briefly joined Jane’s Addiction in 2010 and has more recently toured with such all-star acts as Kings Of Chaos and the aforementioned Hollywood Vampires. Though he began appearing with GNR again, off and on, since 2010 — the most high-profile performance being their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 — he didn’t officially rejoin until 2016, alongside his longtime cohort, Slash (guitar) and Axl Rose (vocals). Oh, and he’s also written a couple of New York Times Bestsellers, including his autobiography, It’s So Easy (And Other Lies) and How to Be a Man: (and other illusions). Since McKagan rejoined in 2016, GNR’s Not in This Lifetime Tour has grossed over $500 million, making it the second-highest-grossing concert tour of all time. But that

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Duff McKagan

is little cause for McKagan to rest on such laurels. In fact, it seems to have instigated a period of prolific creativity. He’s currently promoting a new signature bass from Fender, as well as his soon-to-be-released solo album, Tenderness, which was produced by Shooter Jennings (son of Waylon Jennings). Tenderness, recorded at Station House studios in Echo Park, California, is a pleasantly surprising musical nod toward classic soul and country, featuring McKagan on lead vocals, acoustic guitar, and of course, bass, and reflecting his personal experiences traveling the globe over two and a half years on the road with GNR. “We’re becoming divided at a time when we need each other most,” he says, referring to his observations of the current socio-political zeitgeist. “Homelessness and drug addiction are avoidable in this country if we come together and get private and public cogs turning together in a positive direction,” he proclaims as an example of just one of the issues he’s attempting to tackle on Tenderness. “As a father, I must say and do something, while I’m able to.” We checked in with McKagan while he was promoting both the album and the bass, from Fender’s offices in Corona, California. He was affable, humble, and forthcoming as the conversation touched on topics including his personal growth as a bassist, the GNR reunion, and naturally, his new solo album.

ow involved were you with the develop ment of your signature bass, from start to finish? Is it based on the white Fender Jazz Special with the black headstock? I was involved in that first one that came out whenever that was, 2005 — that’s the one you are referring to. In 2009 I started taking a bunch of bass lessons, and one of the teachers I studied with was Reggie Hamilton, who plays on basically every R&B session there is out there [Seal, Babyface, Queen Latifah, to name a few.] He lives near my house in L.A., and I’ve gotten to know him over the years — super nice guy. I approached him to give me lessons, and he was like, “Oh, man. I couldn’t show you anything.” I’m like, “Yes,

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you could!” He’s so humble. He taught me a bunch. But the thing is … he sent me one of his basses, a Fender Reggie Hamilton Signature Jazz. I was on the road with Velvet Revolver and got it in England. I was like, “I got this surprise package from Reggie” — very sweet. And it had a drop-D tuning thing [Hipshot Xtender] on it, and it was modified with my pickup configuration [P/J], so it sounded like my bass. So, how did that morph into your signature bass? Flash-forward a couple years and I started playing with these guys in Seattle: Jeff Angell, Barrett Martin, and Ben Anderson, in this band the Walking Papers, which kept my chops up, let me tell you. Barrett Martin is this kind of stunning, John Bonham-ish drummer. He played in the Screaming Trees. His drumming is based in Senegalese rhythms, and he’s gone to Senegal and studied with the masters. And so, the bass and drums were like this super post-punk, huge driving force in this band, and it had a lot of drop-D tunings, so I got that Reggie Hamilton bass out, and that’s the one I played every gig. It became my workhorse. Fender saw me playing this thing a bunch — this was before Guns even got back together — and they approached me about doing a second signature model based on that bass. I still wanted it to sound like my Jazz Special, but it really doesn’t [laughs]. It has a bit more output for whatever reason; maybe it’s because of the pickguard. But it’s not because of the pickups or that it’s active or anything. So, did they take your bass and try to replicate it? Or did they just make modifications to the Reggie Hamilton bass based on your preferences? They might have at some point [borrowed it to replicate]. They know what they’re doing. The thing is that Reggie Hamilton’s modded bass has an active switch on it, which I have never used, so we took that out. You don’t strike me as an active-pickup kind of guy. I never even understood active basses. To me, they sound really abrasive and clinky.

Duff McKagan

And some people swear by ’em, and I’m not discounting that. Maybe if you know how to use that, that’s wonderful; I’m not that guy. It’s all about context, right? I think it is, yeah. My context is James Jamerson and Paul Simonon and John Paul Jones. And none of those guys used active electronics. [Ed. Note: John Paul Jones used active electronics in his Alembic basses.] Having gone from playing with GNR and then Velvet Revolver, to taking lessons with Reggie Hamilton and playing in Walking Papers, and then going back to GNR, did you reflect differently on your GNR bass lines with all of this new information at your disposal? Wonderful question. Oh my God, yes it did. And, something I never did in the early days with Guns, I play with my fingers on my right hand on songs like “Estranged” and “November Rain.” So, yeah, approaching the Guns stuff now, I play maybe a third of the set with my fingers.

That’s certainly a change in character. I think I get more feeling out of songs like “Estranged” and “November Rain.” I play a couple of the Chinese Democracy songs with my fingers too. It expanded my approach, and the sounds at my disposal, by going back and forth [between fingers and pick]. On some of the slower songs, I have more control playing with my fingers, and that’s something I wanted to learn how to do when I took lessons with Reggie Hamilton, and then John Humphries [Musicians Institute] and Scott Shriner [Weezer]. Since playing with a pick has kind of been your forte, where does your style/technique come from? That comes from playing guitar and bass in punk-rock bands — downstrokes. Now I two-way stroke. I’ll always attribute downstrokes to Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone. They are the architects of that style. But I grew out of that — not that that’s

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Duff McKagan

anything you should strive to grow out of; that’s a great place to be, playing downstrokes like those guys. Slash and I still hold pride in being able to downstroke super-fast. But I have learned over the years to downand-upstroke in a consistent way, and the thing about being a bass player is the consistency of your sound. What do you think about the age-old adage, “less is more”? I think, more and more, I’ve learned where not to play. As you grow as a bass player, the good ones that I listen to, it’s all about the space they leave. And I kind of knew that from the beginning. In Guns, I knew I didn’t always have to play over the drums [fills], but if I did do a line with the drums, it better be perfect and something fucking cool. I always say, “If you do a fill, make sure it’s a statement. Don’t just do it because it’s the end of four bars.” I think that’s the difference between a bar band and a real band.

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The rhythm section makes a big difference. It’s how they play with each other and the space they leave for everything else. There are times to get aggressive and the rhythm section has to take over. But you have to know when those times are, and that only comes from playing a lot and just figuring it out. Whatever band you’re in, however that band is made up, figure out your power plays and stick to them — let the vocal be the vocal when it’s time for the vocal. And let the guitar be the guitar when it’s time for the guitar. As a bassist, you’ve got to be consistent. Has playing with different drummers affected your approach to the GNR catalog? Yes. Frank [Ferrer, current GNR drummer] is a big, solid drummer. He’s got some real nice pocket, but every drummer is so different. Some of them don’t play with a click ever, and some play with a click always, and some just use a click for tempo at the beginning or somewhere in the middle of the song. Frank uses a click in really cool plac-

Duff McKagan

es. Like, we’ll have to slow down for a bridge, and sometimes you’ll feel the song really pull back, because you get excited when you’re playing, and sometimes you speed shit up. And he’ll be like a marshal — he’ll marshal that and really pull us back. How long did it take you guys to gel in rehearsal? It wasn’t instantaneous. We rehearsed six days a week for three months. And I’m talking six- and eight-hour rehearsals. First, we had to learn how to play all of those songs together, because Richard Fortus [guitar] was there, too. And we brought in Melissa Reese, who is awesome — not only what she does with her keys, but she’s an opera singer and a jazz singer, so her backup vocals are incredible, and she’s got perfect pitch. So, you’ve got me and Slash, you’ve got Richard, you have Frank, Dizzy [Reed, keyboards], who we’re used to playing with, and then Melissa. So how did you make all that gel? We worked really hard, and a lot of that

was Frank and I working on how we played together, and how we ended up playing the songs a certain way. We had to change some of it, because he played off the tapes of the previous drummer and was inventing new ways to play the songs. We were like, “Frank, let’s just go to the original way these songs were played.” He’s such a fuckin’ nice guy, and super down with whatever you want to try. And he’s just got a big ol’ pocket, and he hits his drums in the right places, which is something that drummers should learn how to do. You don’t have to bang the shit out of drums to have pocket. Dave Grohl [Nirvana, Foo Fighters] looks like he’s banging the shit out of drums, but he’s just playing those drum heads in the right places. I was a drummer, so I’m really aware of what a drummer’s thinking…or I try to be, I should say. When you were rehearsing, and listening back to the earlier GNR recordings, were you like, “Hey man, that kid wrote some pretty cool bass lines”?

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Duff McKagan

Even before we went into rehearsal, I was in my basement for a month, five days a week, and I would spend so much time down there, because I didn’t want to show up at rehearsals not knowing my shit. Slash was doing the same thing. We were texting each other like, “Fuck [laughs]!” I don’t sit around my house listening to Guns N’ Roses records — like, ever. When we made Appetite, I didn’t sit at my house and listen to the record. We were out playing. We played those songs a million times before we made that record, but I never revisited the stuff, ever, until we were like, “Okay, we’re gonna do this [reunion].” Do you recall your immediate reaction to the material upon hearing it for the first time in a while? It’s pretty good shit [laughs]. I remember how hard we worked as a band [back then]. I mean, that band, back in the Appetite days, when we were playing clubs, we

BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 2 ; bassmagazine.com

would rehearse twice a day. And sometimes it would be just a bass and drums rehearsal, and then the band would come in and we’d rehearse with the whole band. We rehearsed every fucking day, and we made sure all the parts were what they were. And the same with Use Your Illusion I and II. Man, we rehearsed the fuck out of it, and we were really, really thoughtful about all of that stuff, and so, yeah, in December 2015, I was just down in the basement, rediscovering all that stuff, and there were moments where I’m like, “Oh shit, we played the exact right things there.” I couldn’t think of anything better to play. I was on it as this 21-year-old kid [laughs]. I’ve been listening to your new record, Tenderness. It is such a different tone and approach from you as a bass player, I almost didn’t think it was you. Yeah, that’s me [laughs]. I rolled off the tone for this record. I rolled the tone com-

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bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

Duff McKagan

pletely off. The instrumentation is so much more subdued. And I didn’t play through my regular amp setup, either. What did you use? I used a Fender Super Bassman head through a single 12" speaker cab, and I rolled off the tone. I played basically the whole record with my fingers. We recorded the basic tracks with me playing acoustic guitar and singing the songs, and we’d record three songs in a day, and those were mostly in one or two takes. Shooter’s band is so good. You have to feel those songs. I think if you overplay any of that stuff, you’re going to lose the feel. There’s a sparseness that’s evocative of another era of music. It reminds me of old Rolling Stones or Iggy Pop, filtered through the lens of your own experience. Thanks. When I brought the songs to Shooter, I went up to his house and it was just me and him — him on the piano, me on guitar. Our intent was to keep it like that. It was such a cool sound for all the songs, just those two instruments, but then he suggested, “Let’s use my band. I bet these guys could kill this stuff.” And Jamie Douglass, the drummer, plays very sparse and really precise. So, did you overdub bass afterwards, in the in the control room? Yeah. The whole band was in the room watching me play bass. You better be fucking good, you know? But I knew the songs and I had an idea of what I would play on bass, so I would just sit in the chair and roll the tone off — most of those bass lines are first take. What are you most striving for when tracking bass lines? You want the mood of the song. You can’t overthink your parts. I had ideas, just little signature parts that I had, like the beginning of “Tenderness,” where I play the chord things. I figured that out in my head. I’m like, “There’s got to be something that speaks out.” Or “Cold Outside” — there’s a beginning bass line that’s a Jane’s Addiction-ish type of thing. The tune that most stood out to me was “Don’t Look Behind You.” There’s some brilliant

BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 2 ; bassmagazine.com

bass playing on that. We knew it was going to be the last song on the record, and I was like, “Let’s bring in everything.” So, we got the Waters, the gospel singing group. And we brought in my brother Matt with the Suicide Horn Section. We threw everything at it. And I knew, because we were going that big, that I could really start building the bass lines at the end. I knew that it was a major key, so just go off in major, but stay within the realm of the song. It’s tasty, and it reminds me of John Paul Jones or James Jamerson — channeling that ’60s or ’70s vibe, especially with the rolled-off tone. The rolled-off tone, and Jamie, the drummer. Every drummer I play with, I learn a lot about rhythm. And you will, if you play with good drummers. I liked doing the basic tracks with Jamie, to play guitar, sing a scratch vocal, and observe what he was doing. I was in this little walled-off booth with a window playing along with his basic tracks, so I’d just sit there and watch Jamie, and I’d build what I was going to play on bass just by doing the basics. And I’d be like, “Oh, I know what I’m gonna play there.” What did Shooter bring to the record, as producer? Shooter’s amazing. He’s an actual producer. He’ll be in the room, he’ll talk to his band, he’ll tell ’em what he thinks they should play — “You do this, you back off here. You come in slow here,” and all of this, like an old-school producer. That guy understands music, and he understands where I was coming from. He knew the lyrics of the songs, so he wanted the music to all reflect the contents of the lyrics. Do you write on bass? Or do you mostly write on acoustic guitar? I write on acoustic guitar, mainly. Sometimes when I warm up for gigs, I’ll come up with some bass line from playing scales, or I’ll write some riffs that have gone on to be a song, but I feel a little limited writing a song on bass. You can come up with kick-ass riffs, but they’re not necessarily gonna become a song. What are you using for amps, live, these days?

Duff McKagan

I use the Fender Super Bassman, and I still use my Gallien-Krueger. I blend the two sounds, so I have the grind, which I used with the Walking Papers. The bass had to take up so much more space in the Walking Papers, and right at that point, Fender had come out with that head. So, I got that instead of using a SansAmp or something in between. I hate using anything in between my bass and the amp; it’s just one more thing that can fuck up. But I don’t need that grind all the time for Guns at all. That would totally change my sound, so I blend that grind with my classic GK sound, and it becomes just a bit wider. It has that same “thing” that you recognize me sounding like. Did it touring over the last few years with Kings Of Chaos and the Hollywood Vampires pose any particular challenges? That was the first time in my life I played covers. I always played my own stuff. So, I had to go to the woodshed, to the basement,

man, because I’m playing Deep Purple songs with Glenn Hughes singing, and he was the bass player, right? So, I had to know the songs better than him. I was like, “I’ve gotta play it better than Glenn Hughes.” Because I don’t want to show up and have him going, “Oh fuck, dude, really?” [Laughs.] It was so good for my bass playing, learning all that stuff note-for-note. And I think my point is, learning other people’s songs opened up my scope of what I know about bass playing. Playing Aerosmith tunes … I emailed Tom Hamilton and I said, “Man, without you, this band just wasn’t a band.” His bass lines are so good. They’re integral to the songs. He’s very underrated. I give him a lot of credit. I put him there with John Paul Jones. Those guys, they’re from all that Duck Dunn and James Jamerson stuff, and then they took it to the next level. l

Victor Wooten plays bass all over the world, and while on tour he has the opportunity to play through every rig imaginable. But night after night Victor chooses Hartke amps and cabs.

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

H R A M K Blink-182, Simple Creatures

BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 2 ; bassmagazine.com

HOPP K US What’s My Age Again?

IN WORKING ON A FOLLOW-UP TO BLINK-182’S MOST SUCCESSFUL ALBUM AND SPLITTING TIME WITH HIS NEW HIT DUO, SIMPLE CREATURES, HOPPUS IS FEELING JUST AS SPRY AS HE DID 25 YEARS AGO By Jon D’Auria |

Photographs by Robert Ortiz

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Mark Hoppus

L I ST E N Simple Creatures, Strange Love [EP, BMG] GEAR Bass Fender Jaguar Basses with Precision necks Rig Kemper Strings Ernie Ball Super Slink Pink Picks Dunlop Tortex .60mm Straps Richter Straps

emember that massively popular music video that took over MTV in 1999, featuring Blink-182 running naked through the streets of Los Angeles while onlookers gawked in dismay? Well, the aptly titled track behind that video, “What’s My Age Again,” couldn’t be more appropriate now, as 20 years later Mark Hoppus and Blink-182 are still just as relevant, in-demand, and somehow as ageless as they were in that breakout moment. Maybe there’s some kind of fountain of youth in playing pop-punk anthems over the span of almost three decades, but whatever it is, Hoppus hasn’t lost even a bit of his youthful appearance and demeanor or any degree of vertical in his acrobatic stage jumps in all of those years. And even now at age 47, Hoppus is not only still piloting his beloved outfit Blink, he’s also at the helm of Simple Creatures, his new viral duo with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth. While Hoppus has become a legitimate celebrity and a household name thanks to his work as a producer, his various clothing lines, a podcast, a television show, and his usual public appearances and on-screen cameos, he’s still predominantly known for one thing, and that’s his work in Blink. They’re now more popular than ever thanks to their 2016 chart-topping, Grammy-nominated album, California [BMG]. After the 2015 departure of founding guitarist and singer Tom DeLonge, the band welcomed frontman Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio, and the results of their new lineup and subsequent album found Blink selling out tours and performing on arena stages like none they had ever played before. And now the band has embarked on their seventh album, which Hoppus claims is more reflective and aggressive than their previous effort, as drummer Travis Barker and the rest of the trio are more energized than they have been in years. But currently, half of the seemingly unlimited energy stores that Hoppus possesses are being focused on Simple Creatures, which just released its debut EP, Strange

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Love. The duo’s music melds modern touches of rock with new wave elements and an overall synth-pop sound that finds both vocalists sharing time on the mic. The album’s first single, “Drug,” became a widespread hit thanks to the extremely catchy hook work of Hoppus. And while the production and vocals dominate on the EP, Hoppus’ usual driving lines and midrange growl lead the way on songs like “Adrenaline” and “Strange Love.” Regardless of which band he’s center-stage with, Hoppus’ wild picking, big sound, and even bolder presence seem to get only more vibrant and magnetic over time.

ow did Simple Creatures first form? When I came back from the California tour cycle with Blink, I got home and I got bored and then I got really depressed and I found myself in a weird, dark place. My wife and my manager asked what was going on, and then told me to get up and get in the studio and do something so I wasn’t just moping around everywhere. My idea initially was that I was going to do an album with a bunch of my friends from other bands, and the first person I called was Alex [Gaskarth]. He and I had talked for years about working on a project, writing some songs, or forming a production team or something, so he came in and we started writing and it just felt different and strange, but really cool at the same time. After four or five songs we realized that maybe this was its own thing. Things just clicked right away for you two? Actually, the first song we worked on together, we got through two thirds of it, and we just stopped because it was bad. Like, really bad. It was a mediocre pop-punk song that wasn’t right and it was an early indication of what we didn’t want to do. Did you have an idea of what you wanted the sound to be like from that point? The one thing we were certain of is that we didn’t want this to be a watered-down version of our other bands. I never want a listener to hear Simple Creatures and wonder why it wasn’t a Blink-182 song or an All Time Low song. As a fan of music, if a musician breaks

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bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

Mark Hoppus

away from their band to write some new music on their own and it sounds like their band, it’s a big disappointment to me. Like, why wouldn’t you do this with the band you’ve been working with for the past decade? How did you approach writing for this project differently than your writing with Blink? Anybody can pick up an instrument and start a song from bass to guitar or whatever, but one of the things I really wanted to get away from with this project was starting out songs with an acoustic guitar. After writing songs for 30 years that way, I find myself falling into the same patterns and using the same strumming pattern, or similar chord progressions and picking styles. I knew if I could get away from that, I could start from

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a new place. Did you write primarily on bass for Simple Creatures? A few of the songs started out on bass, and a few started off with a drumbeat or a keyboard line. There’s a song called “Lucy” that we wrote in the studio that starts off with bass; our producer and Alex were having a conversation and they both stopped and asked me what I was playing, and I had no idea because I was just noodling around. I went back to it, and we ran that line through an Electro-Harmonix Bass Microsynth to make it sound all weird, and we plugged that direct into the computer and built the song around that. Your tone is much different than on anything

Mark Hoppus

you’ve done prior. From a bass standpoint, I didn’t use any of my traditional sounds at all. The tones that I bring to Blink I didn’t bring to these sessions as a bass player. We didn’t use any processing outside of the computer. I just went DI straight into the computer, and we’d alter it there instead of finding a tone through pedals and my rig. That was a lot of fun and really different. Not to get off on a tangent, but nowadays there are so many rad, boutique pedal manufactures that are doing fascinating stuff that give players the chance to achieve sounds easily that they couldn’t get before. It’s great. Did plugging straight into a computer instead of a big 8x10 cabinet change how you approached your writing? At the core it’s really still about finding a great hook and a great melody over some cool music more than it is the actual process. It’s just how you get to that place that is different now. You can make it sound strange and different and very modern. It’s so crazy; we used to go into studios to record an album, and you’d spend four or five days just getting

drum sounds. It’s not like that anymore. In a way I miss the nostalgia of recall sheets for the outboard gear, and trying to get that perfect kick sound for hours on end, but those days are gone. Now with Pro Tools and plug ins, it’s really all about the songwriting. Songs are written, recorded, distributed, and consumed very quickly now. In a lot of ways it’s really exciting and fun now because there’s such a low barrier of entry for musicians. You can record songs on your laptop now that are 80% as good as professional studio recordings. Now it’s really about your personal taste and your chops as a songwriter, and it’s less about having access to an expensive studio. That’s a great verse bass line in “Adrenaline” where you match your picking to your vocal cadence. That song was written with our friend Dylan Baulad, who plays in a band called Flor. We went to his house and Alex was noodling around on his guitar, and he came up with an idea that we brought to my studio here, and we just built it out with the idea that it would be a modern take on an ’80s dance song with some aggression. The vocals kind of came out

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Mark Hoppus

at that cadence along with my bass part, and it seemed to fit. We used my bass and Dylan’s guitar, and we programmed everything else in the studio at my place. Dylan does things really quick, as he grew up learning recording techniques from YouTube. Which goes back to the topic of the new modern ways of making music. It’s so damn different now. With Blink we were just in Henson Studios recording our album, and it has such a crazy history — from “We Are the World” to Fleetwood Mac to every classic band you can think of. It’s strange to go back and forth between two recording situations where in a huge studio you have a full board, amazing tracking room, assistant engineers, runners, and the entire studio system, and then you go back to recording in some guy’s living room tracking everything to his laptop on his coffee table while standing next to his sofa. Do you prefer one way to the other? I like both. I’m very fortunate that I get to record in studios with crazy histories and such amazing equipment, but it really goes back to the point that it’s all about the song itself. If it’s a great song it doesn’t matter if it’s recorded on a [Shure] SM57 or a 251 [large diaphragm] mic. Speaking of the Blink recording process, how is the new album coming along? It’s going great. We have so much momentum right now. Yesterday we were in the studio, today we were in the studio, and I’ll be there tomorrow. We’re all so excited for the new music, and we all genuinely want to be in there working on it. We’re like kids where we can’t wait to get into the next session. We’re full steam ahead. What’s the new music sounding like so far? If you think of California as the “going back to the beginnings of Blink” like Enema of the State [1999, MCA], then this is more similar to going back to our self-titled record [2003, Geffen]. It’s a lot more experimental, it’s a lot darker, it’s edgier and really out there. Blink members have always had projects on the outside, but Blink is the priority for everybody. During time off, Travis does a

lot of production work or hits the road with Transplants, but then he brings those experiences and new talents back to Blink. So when he works with hip-hop artists, he’ll come back in the studio and use 808s and effect vocals with the new methods he learned. Everything always comes back to Blink. It’ll always be our home base. Was the band nervous about your fans’ reception to replacing founding member Tom DeLonge with Matt Skiba? Yes, very. But I believed in the album that we made, and I believed in the music we were making. When we were recording California, it felt like the old days of Blink-182 when everybody was pumped, everyone had a singularity of purpose, and everybody was firing on all cylinders. But Blink has had a lot of incarnations. We had lots of band drama in the last era, and we brought in a new band member. We had been one thing for nearly 20 years, and all of a sudden we’re missing one of our singers and guitar player. Matt stepped into a situation that was potentially very difficult, but I think he did an amazing job of coming into an established band and making it his own. He made it his own voice, but he was entirely respectful to the full history of Blink-182 and what Tom brought to the project since day one, and it just connected. It works for the fans as much as it works for the band in every possible way. How heavily involved is Matt in the songwriting? Is he as prominent as Tom was? Matt has a huge hand in the writing, but it’s more than just our three parts because we’ve been working with other songwriters and collaborators on this record. Yesterday we were in the studio with Pharell [Williams]. He brings an amazing talent set to whatever he does, because he’s a god in music and attacks the song in a very different way. We also brought in John Feldmann [Goldfinger], who approaches songs from much different angles. It’s been really interesting working with other people. I’ve never been precious with my ideas, where I think somebody else having a take on them diminishes them in any way. I love when people take my ideas to a totally dif-

BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 2 ; bassmagazine.com

Mark Hoppus

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

Mark Hoppus

ferent place that I would never get to on my own. On this record, Travis is much more involved in the melodies and chord changes and song structures. When he joined the band, he was the piece that Blink-182 was missing in the beginning, and now he’s taking his role to a whole other level. Especially on this record, he’ll come in with a keyboard part or chord structure that we build into a song. How is it playing with Travis as a rhythm section after all these years? First of all, it’s amazing — always has been and always will be. But it’s funny; any time that I present an idea with a drum pattern in it of any kind, Travis is very respectful and listens to it and nods his head, and then he goes to his drum kit and does something entirely different. Travis has the amazing ability to know what is going to work and what isn’t going to work for a song, and when he holds fast to something, his instincts are usually totally correct. Why did you switch from your Fender signature bass — a Jazz body with Precision pickups — to your new Jaguar basses? Jaguars have a little more midrange aggression that sounds so cool, and they fit better with Blink’s music live, so I started moving more toward that sound. It’s exciting right now being a stringed-instrument player with all of the technologies and devices out there that make it so fun. The soundscapes that you have at your fingertips are amazing. It’s almost like discovering a new color. You’ve always been known for your strong midrange tone. What else do you look for in your bass sound? I love a full and defined low end that isn’t too farty or floppy. I like a tight low end and a thump in the mids and upper mids that gives a little aggression and distortion. And I like a very clear top end — nothing too clanky. I’m always trying to find a tone that will cut through, and being a bass player in a threepiece band, I’ve always had to approach my playing almost as a rhythm guitar player as well, so I need my tone to cover a lot of ground. Being in a four-piece band, especially live or with multiple guitarists, a bass play-

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er can really lay the foundation of the rhythm section — but being in a trio, I have to combine rhythm guitar and bass, and lock in with Travis, too. I love that. I like what the bass player does in a band. I’ve never wanted to be a lead guitarist, and I feel like what the bass does in music is what I do in bands: kind of the moderator, someone who connects things and takes an element from over here and something from over there and ties them all together. It fits my personality. Between Simple Creatures and Blink, you seem to prefer playing in trios or duos. What do you like about that freedom as a bass player? I love that I always get to do whatever it is that I want. I sing on songs that I want to sing on; if I come up with a cool bass line, we can feature that in a song; and if a song doesn’t call for a bass feature, then I’m happy to lay the foundation. I kind of get to do whatever I want at all times as a bass player, musician, and vocalist. I get the best of all worlds. I’ve been very spoiled. And the rad thing about Blink is that it’s three members who are all individually known. There’s no one who knows me who doesn’t know Travis or Matt, or knew Tom. Blink is cool because fans have a favorite member and we all have our own identities and our own place in the band. Blink has become a multi-generational band, where we have people coming out to our shows and it’s the first concert they’ve ever gone to, and there are people who have been watching us since the late ‘90s. There were parents with kids, kids in groups, and older brothers bringing their younger sisters to the shows, and it’s just awesome. How has your playing evolved since you first started playing? When we first started off, I just wanted to play as fast and as loud as possible. I think in the past ten years we’ve spent a lot more time trying to play well. In the early days we’d play loud, we’d play fast, we’d jump around and try to put on the best show possible, but now we spend a lot of time trying to make a great set and play as well as we can. I still have a lot, lot, lot to learn as a bass player, and I continue to try to practice to get better. I think

Mark Hoppus

I’ve probably matured more as a songwriter than as a bass player. But I love playing bass and I love how I learned how to play bass. My technique is terrible. But I make it work. You haven’t changed your technique at all over the years? Not really. I grew up learning how to play by jamming along with songs by the Cure, Bad Religion, and the Descendants, and that’s where I got my foundation and how I cut my teeth, so that’s still kind of how I approach my playing. I find myself paying more attention to what Travis is doing with the kick. That’s what I’m trying to lock in with. I focus on how what he does with the kick translates to what I’m doing with the bass and what the vocal part is doing. If I learn any more or get any better, it might not sound like me. You’ve done a rare thing as a bass player, becoming a celebrity and a household name. I don’t feel like that on any level at all. I feel like a very lucky guy in a band that works really hard and stays true to ourselves, and

other than that, I don’t know how we’ve been doing it for over 20 years. I don’t know how after band dramas and breakups and reforming and members leaving, we’re still selling out the venues we’re playing. It’s all a huge blessing to me. I don’t know exactly how we got here other than writing the best music that we can and working really hard at it. But I’m a husband, a dad, and a bandmate, and none of them really let me get away with feeling like a celebrity. That’s just fine by me. What the best advice you’d give a young bass player? Just go do it. If you want to be a great bass player, a great songwriter, a good engineer, just go do it. Practice what you love, learn from people around you, and keep your head up. From day one, the people who make it are the people who just go make it happen for themselves. The bands that fall off might have talent, but they don’t put in the work. Talent gets you halfway there, but hard work gets you all the way there. l

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IN NER IN VOC ATI H ON

John Patitucci

Journeys To The Core Of His Sound & Spirit On Soul Of The Bass

By Chris Jisi

aving a strong sense of history and a forward-minded vision have always been John Patitucci’s two greatest strengths. His penchant for unshakable, authentic, band-driving grooves on acoustic and electric bass — which have made him the go-to choice for Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Michael Brecker, Herbie Hancock, and countless others — can

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 2 ; BASS MAGAZINE

John Patitucci

be traced to his fervor for such feel-first fanatics as Ray Brown, Jimmy Garrison, Paul Chambers, James Jamerson, and Willie Weeks. Likewise, his way-ahead-of-the-pack pronouncements on the 6-string bass guitar, particularly as a soloing and chordal voice, are rooted in his passion for John Coltrane and Wes Montgomery. This dual-minded focus is once again on display on the 59-year-old’s latest outing, Soul of the Bass. Patitucci’s premise was to join the ranks of the major jazz acoustic bassists who have recorded unaccompanied solo albums, and indeed, the melodic, concise, beautifully captured acoustic-bass pieces that dominate the 13-track disc make this his most intimate and revealing recording to date. But with an eye to the future and his ever-present determination to have the bass guitar L I ST E N Soul of the Bass (2019, Three Faces); Yotam Silberstein, Future Memories (2019, Jazz & People); Wayne Shorter, Emanon (2018, Blue Note); Paul Simon, In the Blue Light (2018, Sony Legacy) GEAR Basses Yamaha prototype #1 (large) semi-hollow signature 6-string; Yamaha prototype #2 (smaller) semi-hollow signature 6-string; Yamaha TRBJP2 signature 6-string (red, 35” scale); ’90s Yamaha TRB protoytpe piccolo 6-string; ’90s Yamaha prototype active 5-string with flatwounds Acoustic basses 1859 Gagliano; 2015 Trevor Davis copy of the Gagliano (used on Soul of the Bass); circa-70-year-old Pöllmann; Thomas Martin (solo bass with a C extension); Bisch and Daniel Navea Vera French-style bows; Gage Lifeline pickup, DPA 4021 clip-on mic Strings On 6-strings: D’Addario ENR71-6 Half Rounds on C (.028 or .030), EXL165SL Nickel Wounds on G, D, A, E, and B (.045, .065, .085, .105, .130); on 5-string: ECD82 Chromes Flat Wounds (.050, .070, .085, .105, .130); on acoustics: Pirastro Evah Pirazzi and Olivs Amps Aguilar Tone Hammer 350, 500, 700, or DB 751 head; SL 112 and GS 410 cabinets Effects Strymon blueSky Reverberator, T.C. Electronic Flashback Delay/ Looper, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG Polyphonic Octave Generator, Grace Design FELiX Instrument Preamp/Blender Recording Soul of the Bass Miked Tone Hammer 500 and SL 112, and direct (via REDDI) for electric basses; for acoustic bass, Neumann U 67 mic and RCA ribbon mics Other Vovox cables, Mooradian cases

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accepted and embraced in jazz, Patitucci includes a captivating 6-string interpretation of the Allemande from Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 5,” as an R&B throwdown with drummer Nate Smith that boasts overdubbed bass guitars in a nod to the instrument’s history, a 6-string-and-vocal track with his daughters, and boundary-pushing chamber writing via his cello/bass choir, featuring his wife, cellist Sachi Patitucci. We spoke with Patitucci amid a whirlwind of gigs and his teaching travels for Berklee and Artist Works to discuss his 15th studio album.

hat was the impetus for the record? Toward the end of my college days, in 1979, I bought Dave Holland’s solo album Emerald Tears [1979, ECM]. I was captivated by the idea of a solo acoustic bass recording, but I guess I knew instinctively I would have to wait until I was quite a bit older to attempt my own. Soul of the Bass came out of pondering the concept for years and decades. On recent tours I’ve been playing acoustic-bass improvisations in my hotel rooms and recording them on my phone. I deliberately left them short so the melodic aspect would be strong. I would think melodically, like I do when I solo, and try to find a little hook. From there I’d present the idea, develop it, and get out of the way. A good example is the title track, which has an almost AABA song form that you could write lyrics to. Some of the other acoustic bass improvisations were done at the Bunker Studios in Brooklyn, where I recorded the album. You’ve cited Wayne Shorter’s influence on this approach. It’s something I’ve learned from playing with him all of these years. He has a concept of improvising from nothing, sort of in zero gravity, or what [pianist] Danilo Perez dubbed “comprovising” — composing while improvising. In a group setting it’s special, because you’re doing it with the input of the other band members and composing together. Doing it while playing alone is quite a challenge. The key is to create building blocks of music that listeners can connect to: a theme,

John Patitucci

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John Patitucci

a harmony, a rhythmic phrase. Sometimes my improvisations would have a sense of a melody and a bass line happening simultaneously, like on “Earth Tones,” which uses open strings and 10ths. What led you to include your 6-string? Both basses are my voices. Plus, my “big 6” Yamaha semi-hollowbody has a special tone; it’s very organic and acoustic-sounding. It really blends well with my acoustic bass, which I’m doing some of on the record. I also wanted a sonic and musical departure to give the listener contrast from the sound of the solo acoustic bass. A huge debt of thanks goes to my co-producer, John Davis, who built and runs the Bunker Studios. John is an ex-student of mine and a great bassist who plays in Jojo Myers’ band Nerve, among others. He did an unbelievable job of capturing the sound of my acoustic bass, as well as my 6-string. He knows my playing and my music, so I was able to bounce ideas off him and experiment. He came up with some terrific concepts that enhanced the record musically and sonically. How did you come up with the title and the cover art? The title is a sequel to my 1991 album, Heart of the Bass [Stretch]. That record presented the bass in orchestral and group settings. Soul of the Bass is the contrasting bookend, intimate and minimalist. And because my playing is so exposed, the title applied. The album cover is a photo of a lone acacia tree in Kenya, Africa. It’s a fitting symbol, because the acacia is the most durable of trees, able to survive all kinds of weather and climate, and it also replenishes the soil. The connection for me is that the soul of a bass is in the wood. The wood evokes the spiritual sound of the player. And the instrument lives on, long after the player is gone, ready to reflect the soul of the next owner. You have two versions of “Seeds of Change.” When I improvised the melody on acoustic bass for the first version, I realized it had a powerful, declarative force; I could hear Tony Williams’ incendiary drumming on it. I

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fell into that long rhythmic phrase in 7/4 between the melody. That’s my favorite kind of odd-meter writing, when you come up with something naturally and then listen back and try to count it, and you go, Wait, that’s not in 4/4! Afterward, that groove was stuck in my head, so I decided to reprise it with Nate Smith on drums, and me adding chordal shapes and solong on my 6-string. You always visit the blues on your records; here it’s “Morning Train.” The blues — particularly early blues — and gospel are two huge influences of mine. Brian Blade turned me on to this spiritual by Mississippi Fred McDowell, and I was blown away. It’s just him on vocals and dobro, playing what’s basically a one-chord song, and stretching the time the way early blues artists often did. I thought it would lend itself well to acoustic bass, with the ability to slide around the notes like a vocalist or slide guitar, and the instrument has such a vocal quality that it worked out well. The lyrics are about going to heaven. How did you put together “The Call”? My concept was to have a funky track with Nate Smith on drums that also incorporated linear counterpoint to embody the ethic of classic R&B rhythm sections like James Brown’s band, where all the parts fit together to create the groove. In addition, it’s a nod to the history of the electric bass, with finger-funk, slapping, chords, and soloing. I used a number of basses that John [Davis] and I had at his studio to get different sounds. I came up with the main bass line first and then the subsequent parts, and I put them in a score in [notation software] Finale. Then I added some improvisation, including the dueling solos that almost sound like two people playing off each other. Let’s talk about your bowing on “Mystery of the Soul.” That’s a spiritual meditation that came from a studio improvisation. I used the bow to try to bring out the personal and vulnerable nature of the piece. I was going for the split-harmonics sound that saxophonists are

John Patitucci

known for. One way I did that was by lightly fingering a C on the G string and slowly sliding back toward the nut, while bowing ponticello — up near the bridge — which gives you a glassier kind of sound. I got lucky and found some overtones that almost sound like a wood flute. I’ve been working on the technique live over the years with Wayne; he

loves when I use it. But this is the first time I’ve done it on a recording. I also played the melody in natural harmonics up on the fingerboard, John [Davis] looped some other harmonics I played, and I added a 6-string part with delay, all to enchance the track’s mystical sound and feel. “Elvin” has an interesting shape and tonality.

Patitucci onstage with Chick Corea

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John Patitucci

This was another on-the-road improvisation; the swinging melody line reminded me of a tempo that Elvin Jones absolutely owns. The intervallic shape of the melody and the implied tonality is very Coltrane-like. It happened to be the harmonic color I had in my head at the time, and it’s something that Wayne uses, too. Basically, when you have an A13b9 sound, you can play off eight different triads: F# major and minor, A major and minor, C major and minor, and Eb major and minor. I think this is the only place on the record where I play walking bass, albeit briefly. What led you to cover Allemande from Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 5”? I came up at a time when bassists were practicing the Bach Cello Suites, which I did, as well. Listening to cello versions along the way, I discovered that my favorite recordings were by Jordi Savall, who plays them on a viola da gamba, a predecessor to the cello with six strings and frets on the lower half of the neck. Savall captures the true improvisational spirit of Baroque musicians. I transcribed some of his ornaments from “Cello Suite No. 5,” and I thought it would lend itself to the 6-string, where it lays well on the fingerboard and it would be easier to play chords. I interpreted some of his ornaments and added some of my own in the performance. “Sarab” features your daughters and some ear-bending harmony. My daughter Gracie, a singer–songwriter whose stage name is greisun, has the innate ability to sing stacked clusters; her pitch and her ears are very good. So I wanted to do a track together. I gave her an open chord [D-A-C] on my 6-string as a guide tone, and it ended up being more interactive, and we improvised off each other. She sings all kind of intervals against D — major and minor 3rds, the flatted 9th, which adds a Middle-Eastern flavor; “sarab” means mirage in Arabic. Then we added my daughter Bella, because she has a natural vocal blend with her sister. “Trust” includes interesting pull-offs on acoustic bass. That was an improvisation I did the first

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day I got in the studio. As I’d been doing, I’d play, and if I found a little hook, I’d develop it. This melody, which has a groove and harmonics at the end, is what came out. As for the pull-offs, I had never tried them to that extent on my records. They just happened in the moment, and I was lucky they came out clearly, because you’re not dealing with a high percentage of success when you have the action as high as I do on the upright. They’re influenced by my bass guitar playing, but also having the guitar and the oud in mind. What’s behind your concept for the cello/ bass choir featured on “Truth”? The genesis was a bass choir I recorded for “Two Worlds” on Sketchbook [1990, GRP], for Michael Brecker to blow over. Then a wrote “Nocturne” for [cellist] Dave Eggar’s album Angelic Embrace [2002, Domo], which was for one bass, five cellos, and piano. The first time I employed the cello/bass choir on one of my albums was on “Scenes From an Opera” for Remembrance [2009, Concord]. I wrote “Truth” on a piano at Berklee before a class, and I thought it could work for the cello/bass choir format, which here is four cello parts and four bass parts. I’ve always loved writing for strings, and the low-string-choir concept lets me explore a unique sonic and harmonic approach. What has it been like reuniting with Chick Corea to play Akoustic and Elektric Band music in recent years? I feel like we’ve all grown in our conception of the music. For example, Dave Weckl came into the trio tour last summer with a completely different mindset, playing a bebop kit with special cymbals he had made. And Chick is always evolving; that’s what makes him so special. I’ve worked on my upright sound a lot since the original band. Being in such a dymanic ensemble with Wayne, Brian Blade, and Danilo Perez over the past 20 years has led me to experiment with mics to get a more acoustic sound. And playing with Danilo and Brian has reshaped my harmonic and rhythmic language a great deal, following them around and learning how to play odd meters but with grooves based on

John Patitucci

claves. Really, since moving back to New York City 23 years ago, I’ve had a tremendous growth spurt from being challenged by playing so many different styles with so many artists. It feels great to bring that back to Chick’s music, old and new. You also played on Paul Simon’s latest album, In the Blue Light. That was very rewarding and a lot of fun. The pianist Sullivan Fortner was doing arrangements for the record and he recommended me, Joe Lovano, and Jack DeJohnette for the song “Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy.” Paul loved how the track came out, so he called me in to do four more. I got to work with Steve Gadd, Bill Frisell, and Paul’s late guitarist Vincent Nguini, and I recommended Nate Smith for a tune called “One Man’s Calling Is Another Man’s Floor.” The song is kind of a half shuffle in the style of a Willie Dixon Chess track. Paul is an encyclopedia of blues history, and I really enjoyed his dedication to high-level artistry. We got to spend

some time shaping my part and picking the right instrument. Paul ended up liking my flatwound-strung Yamaha 5-string. We’ve stayed in touch, and I hope I’ll get to make some more music with him. What’s ahead in 2019? I’m doing collaborations with the Harlem String Quartet at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and a solo recital at the International Society of Bassists Convention in Indiana. I did an album launch show in New York City, and I’d like to do some more of those in support of this record. I also want to book some gigs for my guitar quartet [with Adam Rogers, Steve Carndenas, and Brian Blade or Nate Smith] — people seem to respond to that band. And in January 2020 I’ll be debuting my symphonic piece, “Hypocrisy,” at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, which will feature me, Brian, and Danilo playing with the orchestra. Tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain is playing his own concerto, and we may get to play something together. l

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John Patitucci

From Bach To Funk By Chris Jisi

ohn Patitucci has many windows into the Soul of the Bass, from rubato and swinging solo acoustic-bass meditations to classical and classic funk forays on the bass guitar. Example 1 shows the main sixbar acoustic-bass theme of the title track, played rubato. “I think of saxophone-like expression when playing these solo pieces,” he notes. Ex. 2 shows the first four measures of “Seeds of Change,” a solo acoustic-bass piece

that gets revisited later on the album with drummer Nate Smith. “The challenge for me was playing the A to E groove transition between the melodies [bars 3–4], remaining consistent with the notes and the groove over the shifting meter, and getting the E’s to speak because they go by quickly.” Ex. 3 has two sections of the multitrack bass-guitar opus “The Call.” The first four measures show the main ostinato. “That’s sort of an Arabic funk

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groove meets my Bay Area influences of Rocco Prestia, Paul Jackson, and Larry Graham.” Listen to how Patitucci subtly varies the note attacks and durations. The second four bars show the second part to enter (at 0:16), consisting of chordal clusters in a threeagainst-four polyrhythm to the first groove. Although recorded on 6-string, it can also be played on a two-octave 4-string, as shown here. “There’s really no set harmony for the clusters or the

John Patitucci

Ex. 1 1.

Rubato

0 4 7

7 11 11

5 7

7 4

4 2 2

Ex. 2 = 96

0 2

2 4

Ex. 3 = 125

(First time only)

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 0

0 0 2

3 5 2 3 0

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

0 0 0

3 0

0 0 2

3 5 2 3 0

0 0 0

19 16 18

22 19 21

24 21 23

22 19 21

19 16 18

22 19 21

24 21 23

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22 19 21

John Patitucci

piece; I’m blowing freely, with D dominant as a general key center.” Finally, Ex. 4 is from the actual score Patitucci used to play the Allemande from

Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 5.” Shown is the A section of the piece’s AABB form, with John’s added inflections (such as the trills) in the style of cel-

Ex. 4

Allemande in Dminor

Score

Double Bass

? b œ. œœ J

D.B.

Œ œ œ ? b 44 R .. œ œœ

D.B.

œ œœœœœ. œ œ. #œ œ Œ Œ

j œ

œœ

œ œ œ œ œ Aœ. œ. œ œ

Ÿ Aœ. œ œ œ nœ œ œ #œ œ œ œ# œ œ . A œ . . Aœ œ aœ ‰ Œ Ó

Ÿ ? b Nœ. œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ ‰ Œ Ó J -----------7 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ Ÿ œ #œ. ? b A œœ

œ œ œ œ A œ œœ œ

-----------

œœ œ œ # œ œ œ œ . œ œ . œ œ #œ

œ œ œ œ Nœ

œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ bœ. œ

-------

œ œ œ œ œ œœ 10 œ œ œ œ œ ? b œ œœœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ r-----------œ

D.B.

J.S. Bach w/ Jordi Savall inflections

from Cello suite #5

D.B.

list Jordi Savall. Listen to the track to hear his other time and note interpretations, as Patitucci plays each section with subtle differences.

j œ

œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ.

----------------

- Ÿ ? b œœ œœœœŒœ . œ# œœ œJ Œœ . œœ œœ

-------------Ÿ œ n œ œ # œ œ # œœ œ œ N œ Ÿ # œ a œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ n œ œ. œ T Ÿ 1 œ j . . œ œ œ 16 œ œ œ œ n œ œ n œ œ œ . œ. œ œ œ œ N œ œ œ #œ a œ N œœ œ ?b ˙ ≈ # œ . œ . R .. Ó 13

D.B.

. œ # œœ œ œ œ œ œ a œŸ. A œ œ . œ. œ œ œ œ Ÿ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. ? b #œ œ #œ. œ ≈ R œ œ œ #œ. œ. œ

D.B.

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Gear Review

Thomastik-Infeld

SPIROCORE STRINGS (WEICH GAUGE) By Ed Friedland EVERY UPRIGHT BASSIST HAS A string drawer, a repository where the physical remains of experiments, seemingly good ideas, and broken dreams lie waiting for that fateful day they might get a second chance. Mine is filled with sets I hoped would be “gut-like” or “slap-friendly,” “good for bowing” or “pizz-specific” — whatever goal I was chasing at the time. These days, I have one specific goal: to provide a thick, traditional thump on my Azola/Ampeg Baby Bass. I need to support a nine-piece ensemble with a tone that works for Latin, traditional country, swing, or R&B. For one year, I’ve played a set of nylon-coated strings, with good results. They are gentle on the right hand, have a similar diameter as well as some of the warm and fuzzy attack of gut, and offer sustain if you work it. But, the Baby Bass is its own beast. No matter what string you put on it, that pickup turns the response into boom, boom, boom, and that’s a good thing in my opinion. But after a year, curiosity got the best of me, and I started looking for options. I asked my friend Carlitos Del Puerto — one of the baddest cats out there and a multiple Baby Bass owner — what string he recommended, and the answer was: “You gotta

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use Spiros, man!” Thomastik-Infeld Spirocores, a.k.a. Spiros, are a legendary string in the double bass world. One of the earliest successful examples of steel-core strings for double bass, they are perhaps the single most popular string for players of jazz, country, rockabilly, and in many cases, classical. Spiros are available in several gauges: Stark (heavy), Mittel (medium), Weich (light), and Solo (designed to be tuned up one whole-step, but when tuned to standard pitch become a super lightgauge string). They are a true industry standard in a very fickle market. I used Spiros for most of my formative years on the bass, and they have always been a favorite — and yet, I haven’t played them in at least 25 years! What is it that leads us away from the known, in search of something better? (If not for this urge, there would only be one electric bass in the world, a Fender Precision, strung with flatwounds. Wait, I’m talking myself out of this already!) My point is, while we enjoy the consistency and reliability of a proven standard, musicians and artists in general have a natural curiosity that sets them on chases for more of “this,” or less of “that.” Often, we find something that fills a partic-

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ular need for a while, always knowing in the back of our minds that the standard we are deviating from is still there if we need to go back to it. And so, 25 years later, I’ve fallen back in love with Spiros. Returning to the standard that I developed my chops on is an interesting physical experience. Playing them again, I remember the feel, the pull, and the biting attack that often led me to overplay other strings when trying to replicate it. Using a flexible multi-wire spiral core with a chrome-steel outer wrap, the Thomastik-Infeld Spirocore provides a solid pitch reference, stability in different environments, as much sustain as you need, and a great variety of attacks. The string responds quickly to your demands and transmits even the subtlest nuance very audibly; you can’t hide anything with Spirocores! I realized this right away, as I’ve spent many years cultivating the “controlled slop” of rootsy, traditional Americana, honky tonk, and rockabilly over my classically trained jazz background. After years of thumping away, I was suddenly facing a string that reproduced everything I do with great clarity — and frankly, it required an adjustment. The first thing I realized is any

left-hand pull-offs were immediately telegraphed; tonal variations of attack were profound and easily accessible with changes in pressure, angle, and location along the string length. I could approach the string up the neck where the note is full and warm, and still get a pronounced bump on the front of the note, or I could drop the right hand to the end of the fingerboard and get tight, jackhammer precision with growl and depth. The Spiros make a huge difference in how I hear myself; it’s a faster, more direct response, and the end result is I play more in tune. Everyone from the trumpet player to the FOH engineer remarked on the difference, and the next paragraph summarizes why I think they are working for me. My tone goal is to provide a warm, traditional upright-bass thump at very high volume levels. If you took

a bass setup to provide that sound acoustically, you would deal with the realities of amplifying a giant resonating sound chamber on a stage where levels can hit 112dB (as measured from the monitor board). Once you got the sound to that level, the necessary dampening of the instrument, combined with the natural tendency of gut strings to be indistinct and decay quickly, produces a tone that can be very tricky to mix out of the big speakers. In essence, the sound I want to hear out of my amp does not necessarily work for the overall mix in the high-volume realm. As I mentioned, the Ampeg Baby Bass (mine is an Azola-built reissue from the ’90s) is a thump machine. Even with its relatively solid construction and surprising string sustain, the Baby Bass pickup turns a smooth road into a bumpy ride, which is exactly why it

has long been the bass of choice for salsa players. It’s essentially a bass drum with pitch control. When I put nylon-coated strings on the bass, I liked what I heard — the tone was round and warm, and they felt good under my hands. But when I switched to the Spiros, I noticed a pronounced increase in the focus of the attack. You could compare it to cutting a channel with a V-shaped chisel vs. a U-shaped one: The notes had more “point” to them, and filtered through the “sieve of woof” that is the Baby Bass, it translated into just the right balance of distinctness and wool. The string does exactly what I tell it to do, giving me a level of control over my sound I wasn’t getting before. Now I know why virtually every Baby Bass player I’ve asked answered my question the same way: “Get some Spiros, man!” l

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Gear Review

BackBeat

RUMBLE PACK By Jon D’Auria

WITHOUT FAIL, EVERY YEAR AT THE Winter NAMM Show, there are a few hot new items released into the bass world that players continuously buzz about before the word-of-mouth hype makes its way around the entire Anaheim Convention Center and reaches ad nauseam extremes. At this year’s show, one of those items came in the form of the BackBeat Rumble Pack. After the 17th bassist asked me if I had heard about it, I figured it was time to do my due diligence and check out what all of the raving was about. A quick Google search proved that the buzz had already caught onto the internet, and the humble Kick Starter campaign that BB creator Yerko Sepulveda created to raise $25,000 had rapidly ex-

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ceeded that figure and hit just under $130,000 upon its conclusion. If that wasn’t enough proof of the validity of this new item, BB’s official website features greats like Victor Wooten and Billy Sheehan touting the rumble pack, which further piqued my interest. Being a player in a duo outfit with a multi-instrumentalist/singer that predominantly plays in mid-size venues at lower volumes, I immediately understood the potential for this device — so I hit up Yerko right away. A few days later, the BackBeat arrived at my door, and within minutes I had it attached to my bass strap and was ravenously testing it out. However, minutes turned into an hour, and that turned into

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90 minutes, and before I knew it, I was late for an important call. That’s probably a common story for users of the BB, because this baby is highly addictive. Responsive to the intimate touch of every single note — from tightly plucked staccato notes, to fast mid-range runs, to deep, booming strokes of the low B string — the BB responds to every tiny nuance of your playing and sends deep vibrations through your back that resonate through your entire body. With more time on my hands, I tested it out with a range of basses including a Precision 4-string, a Jazz 5-string, a shortscale hollowbody, and an acoustic bass. The BackBeat reacted to each instrument the same, regardless of active or passive elec-

SPECS BACKBEAT RUMBLE PACK STREET $300 PROS Responsive to every note, enhances low-volume performances, helps you feel the pocket, great for in-ear users CONS Highly addictive; once you’ve tried it, you don’t want to play without one BOTTOM LINE While we’re always skeptical to say that a single piece of gear will make you a better bassist, this stellar innovation will certainly aid you in your quest for better feel, a deeper pocket, and more mindful volume restraint.

tronics. The large control knobs are easy to access from behind, so you don’t need to be a flexible yogi to adjust them, and whether it’s dialed in at low or high levels, the box does its job superbly. Another great feature of the BB is its headphone output, which allows you to practice in quiet places; it also features an aux input so you can plug in your cell phone or other device to play along with tracks. The sound quality is fantastic on both features, and the vibrations from the pack make you feel like you’re hooked up to a massive cabinet, without waking your neighbors at 3:00 AM. The final test was to use the BackBeat for gigs, and luckily that week I had four lined up in a row. For the first three shows, something astonishing happened — even beyond me feeling every note with clarity and having the perception that I was rocking out with a full stack on a big stage. That magical phenomenon came in the form of my singer asking me to turn up. Me, the bass player? Being asked to turn up? Surely you jest. I mean, I’m not a frequency hog

by any means, although I like to feel what I’m playing as much as the next player, but this was truly a milestone. I was smitten with the newfound power granted to me from the BackBeat. The fourth gig, however, took a bad turn, as I had forgotten to charge the unit and was left without it. Like a junkie craving a fix, I was salty and felt at a loss without the aid of the vibrational assistance. While there are other vibration-device options for bass players in the form of platforms and vests, the BackBeat is by far the most compact, affordable, and accurate option in the game. I can’t say enough good things about it. In fact, within a week, I was on the phone with any bass friend who would listen, telling them to cop one for themselves. Just like that, I had converted into the very NAMM gossip that I addressed earlier, but this product is worth the hype. As a journalist, I try to stay away from hyperbole as much as I can — but between you and me, I would gladly confide that this item has benefitted my playing in profound ways. l

SPECS CONSTRUCTION Cast aluminum CONTROLS On/off, headphone volume, rumble intensity INPUTS Signal input, true-bypass signal output, 1/8" headphone output, aux input, DC charge jack BATTERY 3–5 hours of sustained performance CONTACT getbackbeat.com

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Gear Review

Wayne Jones

AUDIO WJBA & WJBA2 AMPLIFIERS By Jonathan Herrera

IN MY JANUARY 2018 BASS PLAYER review of the Wayne Jones Audio WJBPII preamp and WJ 2x10 passive cab, I described the gear as expensive and eclectic, but also among the best out there. I finished the review with the editorial equivalent of a cliffhanger: “Wayne also has a head in the works — stay tuned for a review.” Little did I know then that the follow-up review I promised would appear in an entirely publication, but nevertheless, I’m happy to deliver with this month’s review of the

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WJBA and WJBA2 heads. The design brief for the WJBA was simple: Start with the two-channel hi-fi hybrid preamp that is the WJBPII and mate it to a super-powerful Class D/SMPS power section. The WJBA delivers up to 2,000 watts with its stereo 1,000-watt power section. The WJBA2 is a one-channel variant with a mono 1,000-watt power section in the form of a bridgeable 2x 500-watt power amp. Given that the WJBA and WJBA2 feature the same circuit as

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the WJBPII I’ve already reviewed, a quick recap of the preamp is in order. The WJBPII is an unusually feature-packed preamp that features two discrete signal paths, making it ideal for those who use two basses on a gig, double on synth and bass, or use an upright with a pair of pickups or a pickup and a mic (there’s even a phantom-powered XLR jack on hand for powering a condenser mic). Additionally there are balanced outputs, extensive I/O capabilities, a builtin compressor, and footswitchable

SPECS muting. One would be hard-pressed to name a feature the preamp design lacks, and thus the WJBA and WJBA2 heads deserve the same plaudits. Additionally, the multi-hued LEDs indicating input gain and output level make it easy to govern gain staging, essential on a head with so many EQ and compression options. The construction of the Wayne Jones Audio heads is competent and clean, with a mixture of surface-mount and through-hole components dominating the large preamp, power supply, and amplifier circuit boards. A single generic Chinese-made 12AX7 is present in the WJBA2, while a pair are offered in the two-channel WJBA. A plethora of opamps look to be handling gain and other voltage-amplification duties throughout the circuit. As I pointed out in my review of the WJBPII, I don’t think the front-panel text is as clear as it could and should be, especially because the numerous features and filters are all accessed with identical knobs. That said, it’s likely something a player would adjust to after spending time with the heads. DOWN UNDER SOUND I tested the Wayne Jones Audio amps with a variety of cabinets, including a passive Wayne Jones 2x10, a Barefaced Big Baby II 1x12, and a Bergantino HT322 2x10 + 1x12 cabinet. As I have had the heads for a while, I was able to use them on a number of gigs and in my studio. Overall, the WJBA and WJBA2

deliver exactly what they were designed to do, adding a lighting-fast, phenomenally loud power amp to the successful WJBPII preamp design. As I noted in my review of the preamp, the overall tone is on the dry and clinical side, despite the presence of a 12AX7 tube in the preamp. Those more compelled by the grit and dirt of, say, an Ampeg SVT pushed hard ought to look elsewhere — but the rest of you, particularly if you want sharp, precise, and fast transient response, would be well served to check out one of the Wayne Jones Audio heads. The EQ is effective and thorough, and the abundant I/O proved useful in a number of tricky in-studio situations. As a frequent bass/synth doubler, I am always appreciative of heads like the WJBA, which make easy the often-confounding task of amplifying both sources at the same time through a single amp. What used to be a rare luxury is now the norm, with 1,000-wattplus Class D/SMPS heads dominating the market. It’s refreshing to see a unique take on the design — especially one from a designer who already has an excellent reputation for hifi sound thanks to his universally beloved cabs. If you can manage to find a Wayne Jones Audio amp (hint: it won’t be at your local Guitar Center), it’d be well worth your time. Moreover, Wayne Jones himself is affable and responsive, and I know he will work hard to get one in your hands. Drop him a line. l

WAYNE JONES AUDIO WJBA & WJBA2 STREET WJBA, $1,600; WJBA2, $1,000 PROS Feature-packed layout; abundant EQ; two-channel WJBA superb for doublers CONS Front-panel layout and text could be clearer

TECH SPECS POWER RATING WJBA, 2x 1,000 watts (4Ω or 8Ω load); WJBA2, 1,000 watts (4Ω or 8Ω load) INPUT IMPEDANCE Approx. 1MΩ TONE CONTROLS bass, low mid, mid, high mid, treble, high treble (all –20dB, +15dB) XLR DI OUTPUT differential opamp-driven balanced output with ground-lift, pre/post switch, and level control POWER AMP TOPOLOGY Class D POWER SUPPLY Switchmode INPUT/OUTPUT ¼" instrument (both); XLR/¼" mic/instrument input (WJBA); 1/8" aux input; balanced (XLR) and unbalanced (¼") master output jacks, ¼" headphone output; ¼" FX send/return SPEAKER JACKS SpeakOn MADE IN China CONTACT waynejonesaudio.com

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Gear Review Elrick

GOLD SERIES ICON BASSES By Ed Friedland

ROB ELRICK HAS EARNED A reputation as one of the top custom bass builders in the world, building hand-carved treasures that satisfy a highly discerning clientele. His original designs incorporate years of examining the shortcomings of traditional instrument designs, and coming up with his own balance of radical and familiar. I’ve had the chance to review several of his instruments, and I’ve played countless others during my years teaching at the long-gone Bass Emporium in Austin, Texas. I’ve always felt his boutique creations are not only superbly crafted, but they have a “practical” tone — meaning something I would actually want to use on a gig. Granted, my personal taste runs to the ordinary (read: old Fender), but many of us know what it’s like to pick up a beautiful custom bass, only to plug it in and start asking, what type of legs would convert it into the best coffee table? Elricks are suitable for framing, but also provide

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the meat and gristle that stodgy traditionalists crave. There comes the time in every custom builder’s career when someone suggests, “Hey, why don’t you try building a Fender?” And looking around, it seems most of them have added a FSO (Fender-Shaped Object) to their product line at one time or another. It’s always interesting to see how various luthiers approach this. Some build a direct copy, but produced with a standard of materials and workmanship unachievable in the mass-produced world. Others seek to improve upon the inherent inefficiencies in the physical, sonic, or cosmetic realms, and others still — as I feel Elrick has done — incorporate their own build esthetic, design, and knowledge of the materials to produce something that “sounds” like a Fender, but is still distinctly their own creation. The Gold Series Icon Bass is essentially “Elrick’s P Bass,” but it’s also a “P-Bass’ El-

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rick.” Two samples were sent: a “P” with a burled maple top and swampash body ($3,475 street), and a “PJ” with quilted-maple top and alder body ($3,775 street). Due to my road schedule, my time with the instruments was brief, but they both received a healthy dose of attention in Johnny’s Basement (see video). I was immediately impressed by the low weight of the P model. I guessed it to be eight pounds, but the Elrick site has this particular bass listed at a gravity-defying 6.85 pounds! To those who claim there is no more lightweight swamp ash available — there is, you simply have to pay for it. The rounded-C neck profile and 1.625" nut width reminded me of home, although the slightly flatter 12"-radius fingerboard was a noticeable difference under the hand. The bird’s-eye maple board is glued to a three-piece quartersawn, bolt-on maple neck (graphite-free), with the Elrick industrial-strength headstock

SPECS GOLD SERIES ICON BASSES STREET $3,825-$3,925 CONSTRUCTION Bolt-on BODY Alder TOP Quilted Maple FINISH Hand Rubbed Oil NECK 3-piece Quarter-Sawn Maple Neck FINGERBOARD Morado FRETS 24 + Zero Fret NUT Bone BRIDGE Black Elrick Bridger By Hipshot TUNERS Black Hipshot Ultra-light SCALE LENGTH 34" PICKUPS Bartolini Pickups WEIGHT 7.67 lbs CONTROLS Passive Volume, Volume, Tone Controls STRAP LOCK Dunlop

MADE IN U.S.A. CONTACT elrick..com

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Elrick Gold Series Icon basses

joint at the top end. The neck is lively and responsive, undoubtedly influencing the Icon’s quick, snappy attack. The “heelless” neck joint gives you easy access to the 21st fret, and the stability of five asymmetrically positioned countersunk bolts creates an airtight coupling between body and neck. The Bartolini P pickup is in the classic “correct” position for this genus — I measure the center of each coil at 28” from the nut for the bass coil, and 29" for the treble coil. Understanding this as the most basic requirement of the P tone, Elrick has used this configuration before, but in a soapbar case that was easily swapped for other types of pickup. Committing to the split-coil pickup was a conscious decision: It sets up a sonic expectation that Elrick chose to meet head on. The hardware is Ultra-Light Hipshot tuners and a Hipshot-built Elrick bridge that incorporates elements from both their A and B-style models. Elrick’s build quality is impeccable; his work is on par with (or surpasses) the biggest names in the custom luthiery world. But his lowkey nature, and his insistence on building each instrument by himself — hand-carved with chisels and draw knives, without pinrouters or CNC machines — has kept his output lower than some of his peers that employ a staff of builders, or use at least 20th-century methods of guitar building. I jest with Mr. Elrick, but in truth, it is his dogged adherence to the most hands-on methods that impart his instruments with a spark, as well as some serious bragging rights. The test P-J followed the same form factor as the P, but it had a healthy slab of alder for the body, topped with a trance-inducing quilted-maple top. The fingerboard was Santos rosewood, a.k.a. pau ferro,

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Gear Review

Jump Head

and to my ear it imparted the midrange bark I expected. Whether it was the placebo effect, or well-established characteristics being what they are, the combination of the alder body and rosewood fingerboard gave the bass a warmer presence than the ash/ maple bass, with a perceived bump in the lower midrange. Of course, this comparison only lasted as long as the bridge-positioned Bartolini J pickup was out of the equation — dialing in that puppy changed things significantly. The P-J configuration is often touted as “the best of both worlds,” and while there is no reason it couldn’t be, it rarely is. As this modification traces its roots back to the hazy days of the ’70s, when our impaired judgment led us to believe we could improve our ’60s P-Basses by cutting a J pickup into the bridge position,

modern iterations of this concept are often damned from the get-go. One of the potential issues is the natural blend between the two pickups. The P is typically louder and produces a broader frequency range, while the J is more focused due to its position, and can sound nasal and weak in comparison. But there are a few PJ sets on the market that have been carefully designed with this in mind (shout out to Aguilar and EMG) — and with Elrick’s input, Bartolini has matched the two nicely. The P–J mix turned the Icon into something more like how it felt, a high-end race horse. Blending in high-frequency content and focus from the bridge J pickup, I heard something distinctly modern and un-Fender-like. It reminded me of Victor Wooten’s signature Fodera tone (also a PJ): thick, bright,

spanky, with lots of punch. Rolling back to a bridge-dominant blend, the much-loved “Jaco” bubble emerges from the Icon. It’s what you want — tight, crisp, and articulate, this pickup will cut your solo through the mix, or get nasty AF with a pick and a fuzz box. What I noticed playing both Elricks was how my hands have adapted to the relative sluggishness of the Fender Precision Bass, especially strung with flatwounds. Even the finest examples of the species exhibit a degree of built-in compression and delayed attack that, in fact, are part of the P-Bass sound and appeal to players. Elrick knows this stuff, so it was his intention to “bake in” some of that with his design. The degree to which he succeeds is subjective, but for my gnarly old chops, I found it a chal-

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Elrick Gold Series Icon basses

lenge to play cleanly. Seriously, after playing roots Americana for ten years on flatwounds, I’ve developed a “controlled slop” approach that the Elrick seemed to reject. The bass is fast, accurate, and clean, and to quote the song “None of the Above” by my favorite quirky ’80s power-pop band, the Bears, “All these things, I am not.” I’ve experienced this phenomenon before with other high-end custom basses. It’s not a fault of the bass; it’s an example of how mastering materials and methods can produce superior results. I’d like to believe I’m capable of rising to the challenge of the Elrick’s responsiveness, but it wasn’t going to happen that afternoon. While I was ill-equipped to take advantage of its readiness, the Elrick Icon responds quickly and evenly, with a seemingly

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limitless dynamic range that would make a tapper or hyper-space slapper swoon. So, did Rob Elrick succeed in his attempt at the P-Bass? It doesn’t look like a P-Bass, and it doesn’t respond like one, but it does have the texture, the punch, and the thump. It will stand up to a drummer with an authoritative bark, and in the right hands the tone will get asses shaking. With a set of flatwounds on it, you could take it to a blues gig and the blind piano player won’t know the difference. But the Icon exploits a dynamic range that the humble Precision could never dream of. If you lean toward modern styles and techniques, the Icon might be the way in to the groovy world of the P-Bass. Maybe you love the tone but find yourself mired in “Fender molasses”

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when you play a Precision. The Fender’s innate qualities work for some people, but the world of custom bass building exists for those who never felt satisfied by the stock world. The Elrick Icon bridges these two worlds, but it can’t escape its privileged upbringing. Lovingly hand-carved by Rob Elrick, the bass never endured the birth trauma of heavy machinery, or the test-tube-like experience of being born of a CNC machine. It was brought into this world through the hands of a highly-skilled craftsman who knows his woods, and has built high-pedigree instruments for decades. No, the Elrick Icons don’t capture the compressed, crappy, draggy response of the Precision. But for a high-toned, fancy-assed, custom-built work of art, they sure get close. l

Jazz Concepts | By John Goldsby

Deep Swing Wilbur Ware’s Lullaby

ome music is impressive in its complexity, but shallow in substance. With an insane amount of content pouring through the interwebs from all corners of the globe, I find myself asking questions when I listen: Is the music deep? Does it convey substance? I often hear the musical equivalent of a bodybuilder pumped on steroids, or a dog that somehow learned to ride a skateboard. But the music that I really dig is deep. I’m drawn to musicians who can tell a story — either with a lot of chops, or with a minimum of technique. Although I love brilliant technique, I’m especially conscious of players who reach the listener with limited chops. Wilbur Ware was such a player. A stalwart of the scene in the ’50s and ’60s, Ware played with the giants of jazz: Johnny Griffin, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Clifford Jordan.

Ware didn’t have a polished technical approach, compared to the bravado styles of Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, Red Mitchell, or the young upstart Scott LaFaro. Ware told his story with an economy of notes. Ware was self-taught. His playing was jagged and visceral, and not easily analyzed by the cookie-cutter standards of modern jazz education and criticism. Jazz educators have a hard time reconciling the rough edges that players like Ware display. Although jazz education attempts to codify the aching humanness and artistic achievement of brilliant musicians, the tools of description, notation, and teaching often fall short. The best way to learn to swing — to play deep, inthe-pocket jazz — is to listen to and emulate great, swinging players. Ware always swings; his playing feels in the moment, dangerous, alive, and compelling.

CO N N E C T CHECK IT OUT

Prolific writer, historian, and bassist Bill Crow penned his thoughts about Wilbur Ware back in 1959.

From Sonny Rollins’ legendary album A Night at the Village Vanguard [1957, Blue Note], here’s Wilbur Ware’s swinging bass line on the tune “Striver’s Row,” based on the chord progression of Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation.” CHECK IT OUT

Recorded at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, this five-hour oral-history interview with Wilbur Ware provides an intimate look into the life of the legendary bassist. CHECK IT OUT

CHECK IT OUT

Check out Wilbur Ware’s bass-melody rendition of “Lullaby of the Leaves,” from the album The Chicago Sound.

Always on the lookout for treasures in the deep end, John Goldsby mines the entire spectrum of bass greatness — from swing and bebop masters to modern internet sensations. Check out his new video lesson series at DiscoverDoubleBass.com and johngoldsby.com.

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Jazz Concepts

In his essay on Wilbur Ware, pianist Ethan Iverson talks about how he digs Ware and bassist Jimmy Garrison much more than the elegant and technically advanced playing of Ray Brown [“Do the Math,” January 17, 2013]. Iverson writes, “Almost all of those bassists who I love best in Afro-American jazz have that kind of dark, at times downright unsettling flame … the highest expression of my cherished rogue sensibility is Wilbur Ware and Jimmy Garrison. Perhaps I’m wrong, but my firm impression is those that I think of as ‘conservative’ New York jazz players don’t admire Ware or Garrison as much as they should. I should go up to Smoke more often, though, and find out for sure: Maybe I’d get an earful about how Wilbur Ware was

so much more of a badass than Ray Brown.” Ware provides the perfect foundation for soloists in the bop and post-bop style of jazz, and during his short career, he fueled several of the greatest jazz records of the era (see discography). I find it challenging to pinpoint the exact techniques that give Ware his compelling rhythmic feel. How does he deliver that deep swing feeling? It’s easier to talk about what players play than how they play. What is the key takeaway from Ware’s playing? The articulations and rhythmic placement of his notes define Ware’s style. Ware played with a profoundly swinging feeling; his music is deep. Let’s look at a solo excursion by Wilbur Ware on the standard “Lullaby of the Leaves”

Ex. 1 Deep swing

Bass melody @ 0:10

= 100

G7/Db

G7b9b13

Ab7

Dm7b5

Cm7

G7b9b13

4 5

7 6

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Cm7

7 6

6 3

5 4

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Dm7b5

lay back

Ab7#11

Cm7

Fm7

7 5

Bb7

Fm7

Cm7

Ab7

7 7

Ab7#11

5 6

Jazz Concepts

[Ex. 1, from The Chicago Sound, Johnny Griffin and Wilbur Ware, 1957, Riverside]. Ware’s rhythmic phrasing makes the solo-bass statement of the melody feel good. He uses a wide range of articulations to breathe life into a relatively simple melodic paraphrasing of the original melody. In a 1959 article in The Jazz Review, bassist Bill Crow writes about Ware’s playing on The Chicago Sound: “Wilbur often deliberately uses what bass players refer to as a ‘short sound’; that is, he uses rests between consecutive notes of a phrase rather than trying for the legato, ‘long sound’ preferred by most jazz bassists. He uses the long sound when it will enhance his line but isn’t at all one-way about it.” Ware takes liberties with the original melody, implies chord substitutions, and plays his own interpretation of “Lullaby of the Leaves.” Because there is no chordal instrument on this track, Ware is free to wander and swagger harmonically. He places accents

Dm7b5

4 3 2

1 3

6 5

(5)

2 5

Dm7b5

Fm7

3 3 2 2 1 1

6 3

Even eighth notes — double-time walking feel

5 4 3 2

Ab7#11

Cmaj7

Pickup measure After four bars of saxophone introduction, Ware thumps into the melody on the downbeat of the next bar. Bar 1 Notice how Ware uses long and short articulations on the quarter-note melody. A dot over the note indicates a short, staccato note; a line over the note indicates that

G7b13

Cmaj7

just so — adding long and short notes, often laying far back on the time. He pushes and pulls the beat, creating a “feels so good” vibe that defines the Afro-American swing experience from this era of jazz. The best way to incorporate Ware’s style of deep swing into your own playing is to listen and learn. Listen to the track several times, get the music in your ear, and then begin to analyze and emulate Ware’s sound. Let’s take a bar-by-bar look at the first chorus of “Lullaby of the Leaves.” (Bar 1 starts at the first double-bar; don’t count the pickup measure in the bar numbers.)

5 6 6

Cm7

5 3 3

4 5

Cm7

6 5 3

6 5

G7b9b13

Ab7

G7/Db

6 5 3

7 5

1 4

5 5

Ab7

Bb7

To bass solo

12 12

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The Suite Spot

the note is held for full value. Bar 2 Ware always uses the open G string to aid in the shift to the high Eb. The notes in this bar feel connected, as indicated by the slur line — to be played without separation between the notes. Bar 4 The last three eighth-notes in bar 4 are played with a laid-back feeling. Ware has an uncanny ability to make these phrases sit in just the right way to create deep swing. Bar 6 Usually, a pianist would play a G7 chord with alterations in this bar. Ware plays a low Db — a tritone substitution of G7 — to lead the ear back into the C minor sound. Bar 9 The second A section repeats the melody. Note how Ware uses the short notes on beats one and three to give forward motion to the phrase. Bar 10 Ware obviously likes a smooth articulation of this phrase, which he plays the same in bars 2 and 26. Bar 11 The triplet figures on beats three and four are typical Ware phrases. Bar 12 The Bb on beat three offers a surprising harmonic twist on the sound of the Fm7 chord. Bar 13 The triplet figure on beat one sounds like a tap-dance move. The figure is rhythmically backwards from the usual trip-

let figure, like what he plays on beat two of the bar. On beat four, we hear the backwards triplet again. Bar 17 The B section, or bridge of the form, finds Ware staying in the low register of the bass. The note C is the 3rd of the Ab7(#11) chord — but we don’t really notice the harmonic structure because of the lack of a chordal instrument. Ware is all about delivering the melody with a hip rhythmic phrasing. Notice the short note on beat four. Bar 18 The dotted-eighth/16th-note pattern on beat one gives a slight variation to the triplet swing feeling that Ware has been using. Bar 19 Ware implies some alternate harmonies that lead into the G7 in bar 20. Note the feeling of the 16th/dotted-eighth pattern — like a boxer popping out left jabs. Bar 21 Compare the phrasing of the melody here to bar 17. The slight rhythmic variations keep the line fresh. Bars 23–24 The even eighth-notes in this passage imply double-time walking. Bar 25 Compare the similar phrasing of the melody in bars 1, 9, and 23. Bars 31–32 Ware ends the melody chorus with a descending turnaround. Note the accents on the upbeats: one-and and threeand of the bar. l

Swing: Wilbur Ware on Record As a leader The Chicago Sound [Wilbur Ware, Riverside, 1957]; Super Bass [Wilbur Ware, WWI/CD Baby, 2012]. As a sideman Zoot! [Zoot Sims, Riverside, 1956]; Monk’s Music [Thelonious Monk, Riverside, 1957]; Jenkins, Jordan and Timmons [Clifford Jordan, Prestige, 1957]; Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane [Thelonious Monk, Riverside, 1957]; Dial “S” for Sonny [Sonny Clark, Blue Note, 1957]; A Night at the Village Vanguard [Sonny Rollins, Blue Note, 1957]; Mulligan Meets Monk [Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, Riverside, 1957]; Remembering [Grant Green, Blue Note, 1961]; The Gift [Charles Moffett, Savoy, 1969]; For Losers [Archie Shepp, Impulse, 1969]; The Complete Clifford Jordan Strata-East Sessions [Clifford Jordan, Mosaic].

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Jump Head

The Inquirer | By Jonathan Herrera

Reamping Rocks!

I’ve oft-lamented in the past, when it comes to the priorities of the average recording engineer, bass is often near the bottom. The reasons are practical: Unlike drums, piano, and other acoustic instruments, bass is easily recorded with a direct box (DI), eliminating the need for a microphone. Even our closest instrumental cousin, the electric guitar, is almost always recorded via a miked amplifier, due largely to the integral role of the amp. As a studio owner and engineer myself, I know well how much time and energy is dedicated to carefully choosing and placing microphones and constantly checking for unwanted noises and artifacts. This all occurs before the additional (and significant) complexities of choosing the appropriate mic preamp, making corrective EQ and compression adjustments, and ensuring suitable gain staging. Given all that, plus the fact that a bass amp is cranking out low frequencies that are nearly impossible to completely isolate, it’s obvious why the average bass player merely gets a DI and about ten minutes of attention. Our tendency to get the short shrift is a bummer for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that even a great DI on its best day cannot sound anything like an amp. While some styles, songs, and players don’t necessarily benefit from the additional color amps can provide, the ultra-clean, PA-like frequency response of a DI is also potentially lifeless and dull on its own. For this reason, I’ve become a major fan of reamping over the past several years. It mitigates many of the obstacles outlined above, and it can empower bass players in new and inspiring ways. Reamping begins with a dry signal recorded with a DI. Remember, a DI is designed to convert the instrument-level signal from a bass to a balanced mic-level signal. In doing so, bass becomes easily integrated into the typical recording signal flow, wherein micro-

phones are connected to preamps that boost their signals to line level for recording to a computer or tape. In essence, a DI “tricks” a mic preamp into treating the bass signal like it’s coming from a mic. Once the bass is recorded this way, its amplitude on the recording media is nominally at line level — much hotter than the original output of the bass. A reamp box takes this recorded line-level signal (from the recording system’s line output) and converts it back down to instrument level. A reamp is essentially a DI in reverse. The purpose of a reamp box is to re-record a bass performance through a different signal chain than was used on the original session, at some point after the fact. Anything that the instrument-level signal is plugged into doesn’t somehow discern that the track was recorded at an earlier time. Our reamp eliminates all of the problems that make us an afterthought on tracking sessions: The engineer needn’t be concerned about bleed into other mics or feel pressured to focus on the band’s more complex challenges. Attention can be paid to refining the bass sound, and the added sonic dimension of a miked amp can be blended with the direct track to produce the final product. Reamping also encourages experimentation, as it’s easy to try out effects and other outboard gear. The next time an engineer insists that you just use a DI on a session, see if there might be time available later on to do a reamp session. Bring your favorite amp (I’m particularly fond of using gritty tube amps here, like my Sunn 200L or an Ampeg B-15) and a bunch of effects, and encourage the engineer to experiment with different mics and mic placement. There are few more deflating moments than listening back to a mix and feeling that your tone wasn’t adequately captured. Reamping is often your best opportunity to make sure that doesn’t happen, and is one of the most fun things you can do in a studio. l

Bass Magazine Contributing Editor Jonathan Herrera is Bass Player’s former Editor-in-Chief. An accomplished player, Jonathan has been a full-time musician and producer since 2010. His latest endeavor is Bay Area recording studio Dime Studios. Catch up with him at jonherrera.com and at thedimestudios.com.

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Jump Head

Beginner Bass Base | By Patrick Pfeiffer

Note Names, Part 1: Ascending Groove

Patrick is a professional bassist, bass educator, clinician, composer and author, having published several classic bass books, among them Bass Guitar for Dummies, Bass Guitar Exercises For Dummies, Improve Your Groove: The Ultimate Guide For Bass and Daily Grooves for Bass.

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magine you’re stretched out on a little rowboat, a gentle breeze playing with your hair, waves lazily lapping against the wooden hull, and you’re just enjoying the moment … and then, suddenly it hits you! While you’ve been letting your mind drift, your little boat has done some drifting of its own, and now you’re out on a vast ocean with no land in sight and no idea in which direction to venture. The only thing that looks vaguely familiar is the grey fin that keeps patiently circling. This is the feeling you get when you’re playing your favorite song, really losing yourself in the music, and then, after a particularly brazen move, you realize you have no idea where you are on the fingerboard. You’re utterly lost, with no note name in sight — and you have that vision of the circling fin. Which brings us to this month’s column, which is about finding your way among the notes on your fingerboard. Bassists enjoy a certain mobility, since the same note appears in several different places on the board. For example, on a 4-string bass, the G of the open G string can also be played on the 5th fret of the D string, the 10th fret of the A string, and the 15th fret of the E string. That’s quite a selection. The deciding factor regarding which G to play depends on which notes follow. You wouldn’t want to play a G triad starting with the root on the 15th fret of the E string, followed by the B (the 3rd of the triad) way down the neck on the 4th fret of the G string, and then finish off by playing the D (the 5th

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of the triad) back up on the 12th fret of the D string. The far more sensible way to execute this same triad is to play the G on the 5th fret of the D string, followed by the B on the 4th fret of the G string, and finally the D on the 7th fret of the G string. All the notes are in close proximity; you don’t even have to shift your hand. When it comes to playing a groove, you want to group your notes close together, as well, so as to reach all of them with ease and with a minimum of motion. If you compose your groove in such a cluster, doesn’t this mean all you have to worry about is where to place the root of the groove, since all your other notes are nearby? Yes, indeed! Therefore, in order to practice finding the names of the notes on the fingerboard, wouldn’t it be more interesting and efficient to use a groove for the task? Absolutely! Example 1 serves as your master sheet for identifying all the notes (pitches) on basses that have 4, 5, or 6 strings, and up to 24 frets (although most basses have 20 frets). The 12 notes are, in chromatic order: C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, and B. To speed up your learning process for finding all the different notes on the board, let me give you a few tricks: • Finding the same note an octave higher (in close proximity): Two strings + two frets. If you’re playing a note on a low string, you can find its octave two strings above and two frets higher up on the

Beginner Bass Base

Ex. 1

3 8

3 8 13

5 10 15 20

17 22

10 10 15 20

22 22

0 5 10 15 20

12 17 22

2 7

4 9

4 9 14

6 11 16 21

18 23

11 11 16 21

23 23

1 6 11 16 21

13 18 23

4 9 14 4 9 14 19 4 4 9 14 19

11 16 21 11

16 16 21

16 6 11 16 21

0 5 10

0 5 10 15

7 12 17 22

19 24

12 12 17 22

24 24

2 7 12 17 22

14 19 24

12 17 22 12

0 5 10 15

17 17 22

3 8

5 5 10 15 20

3 8

0 5 10 15 20

18 23

17 7 12 17 22

13 18 23

4 9

6 6 11 16 21

18 18 23

4 9

1 6 11 16 21

fingerboard. For example, when you play the C on the 3rd fret of the A string, your closest C is two strings higher (on the G string) and two frets higher (on the 5th fret). Try placing your index finger on the 3rd fret of the A string; your ring finger will reach the 5th fret on the G string. Both notes are C, but an octave apart. You can do this anywhere on the board as long as you have two strings and two frets above your starting note. â&#x20AC;˘ Finding the same note an octave lower (in close proximity): Two strings + two frets. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re playing a note on a high string, then your octave is two strings below and two frets down the neck from that note. For example, play C on the 10th fret of the D string. Your closest C is two strings lower

1 6 11

1 6 11 16

8 13 18 23

13 13 18 23

3 8 13 18 23

15 20

1 6 11 16

19 24

8 13 18 23

2 7 12

0 5

2 7 12 17

0 5

2 7 12 17

9 14 19 24

14 14 19 24

4 9 14 19 24

16 21

0 5

2 7 12 17

14 19 24

0 5 10

7 7 12 17 22

19 19 24

0 5 10

2 7 12 17 22

9 14 19 24

1 6

3 8 13 18

1 6

3 8 13 18

10 15 20

15 15 20

5 10 15 20

17 22

1 6

3 8 13 18

15 20

1 6 11

8 8 13 18 23

20 20

1 6 11

3 8 13 18 23

3 8 13

0 10 15 20

2 7

4 9 14 19

16 21

2 7 12

9 9 14 19 24

21 21

2 7 12

4 9 14 19 24

22 0

11 16 21

(on the E string) and two frets lower (on the 8th fret). Try placing your pinkie on the 10th fret of the D string; your middle finger reaches the 8th fret on the E string. Both notes are C, an octave apart. You can do this anywhere on the board, as long as you have two strings and two frets below your starting note. â&#x20AC;˘ Finding the same note an octave higher on a higher, adjacent string: Two hand spans. Place your index finger on a note and line up your other fingers, one per fret, along the same string. Now shift your hand so that your index finger lands one fret above where your pinkie had been, and line up all your fingers again. Then, cross over to the next highest string. Your pinkie is now on the same note you started on, but an

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Beginner Bass Base

octave higher. For example, play C on the 3rd fret of the A string with your index finger, and place the middle, ring, and pinkie fingers on the frets along the same string. The index finger is on the 3rd fret, the middle finger is on the 4th, the ring finger is on the 5th, and the pinkie is on the 6th fret. Next, shift your hand up the string and place your index finger on the 7th fret, one fret above where your pinkie had been. Line up all your fingers again: index finger on the 7th fret, middle finger on the 8th, ring finger on the 9th, and pinkie on the 10th. Then cross your pinkie to the next highest string, the D string, and you end up with your pinkie on C (it’s at the 10th fret of the D string). • Finding the same note (same octave) on a higher, adjacent string: Hand span + two frets. Place your pinkie on a note high on the string (it has to be on the 8th fret or higher) and line up all your other fingers, one per fret, along the same string. Shift your hand so that your index finger lands two frets below where it had been. Cross over to the next higher string. Your index finger is now on the same note that you started on. For example, play C on the 10th fret of the D string with your pinkie, and place your ring finger, middle finger, the index finger on the frets along the same string below the pinkie. You now have the pinkie on the 10th fret, the ring finger on the 9th, the middle finger on the 8th, and the index finger on the 7th fret. Next, shift your hand down the string by two frets and place your index finger on the 5th fret. Cross your index finger to the next highest string, the G string, and you end up with the index finger on the C (it’s at the 5th fret of the G string). • Finding the same note an octave higher on the same string: Octave marker and open string. One last note-finding aid is the method that uses the octave marker on your bass. At the 12th fret you can see double dots (or perhaps another sort of special marker) that identifies the octave of each open string. Starting at this point, the sequence of notes along each string repeats itself. For example, if you play the C

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on the 3rd fret of the A string, then you can find the octave C on the 3rd fret above the octave marker on the same string, the 15th fret. Naturally, all five of these devices also work in reverse. It’s a lot to remember, but don’t fret (ouch). The best way to learn all the notes on your fingerboard is to take a cool, useful groove and move it through all the possibilities. Use Ex. 1 as a reference until you get used to the notes. It shows all the locations of the different notes on the board for 4-, 5-, and 6-string basses. For Part 1 of this two-part column, the groove is ascending: The root is on the bottom of the groove, and you build the other notes on top. Example 2 shows you the groove starting with the root on the 3rd fret of the A string. Ex. 3 is the same groove starting on the 8th fret of the E string. Both positions use the same notes, even in the same octave. Ex. 4 shows the groove an octave higher, starting on the 15th fret of the A string. All these grooves start on C and use the same notes. You need a range of three strings and two frets in order to complete them. That means you can only start the groove on the E or A string of a 4-string bass, the B, E, or A string of a 5-string bass, or the B, E, A, or D string of a 6-string bass. Once you have a good handle on the groove, it’s time to put it into an effective practice routine. Remember, you need three strings to play it, therefore you can’t start on the highest two strings. To begin, play the groove in C beginning on the 3rd fret of the A string. Without interrupting the groove, look for another C to move your groove to (hang on to the first groove for as long as it takes to find that new C). You can see there is a C on the 8th fret of the E string. Shift your hand as seamlessly as possible to this new C and continue playing the groove without interruption. It’s important to play continuously while you’re finding new starting points for your groove, because that simulates a real-life situation. When you’re on the bandstand and you’re getting ready to move to a new note, you can’t just stop to figure out where you’re

Beginner Bass Base

Ex. 2

Ex. 3

5 8

10 10

Ex. 4

17 17

going. Now you’re playing your groove with the root located on the 8th fret of the E string. While playing, scan for another C to move this groove to. You find one on the 15th fret of the A string. Seamlessly shift your groove to this new position and keep playing. Once you’ve explored all the available starting pitches beginning on C, move on to F. You can start on the first fret of the E string, move to the 8th fret of the A string, and then back to the E string to the 13th fret, all while happily grooving. After F, follow up with A#/Bb, and keep going through the notes until you end at G. You now have played the groove in all 12 keys and in all available positions — congratulations! This is quite a serious workout. You may want to spread it over the course of several days or even a week (at two pitches per day, it takes six days to play all 12 keys). I promise you, the results are truly amazing, and provide a whole new world of possibilities that will allow your bass playing to reach an entirely new level of mastery. Next month’s column is all about the other direction of the groove, the descending line. Try to control your excitement — I know this is a real clef-hanger! Until then, love, light, and low frequencies to you! l

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Partners | By Jim Roberts

Jack Casady & Alembic

Jim Roberts was the first full-time editor of Bass Player and also served as the magazine’s publisher and group publisher. He is the author of How the Fender Bass Changed the World and American Basses: An Illustrated History & Player’s Guide (both published by Backbeat Books/ Hal Leonard).

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fter Leo Fender introduced the Precision Bass in 1951, other instrument makers saw the potential of the electric bass guitar and jumped into the market. Gibson introduced its Electric Bass (later known as the EB-1); Danelectro rolled out its Short Horn and Long Horn models; and, in 1957, Rickenbacker offered its Model 4000, the first neck-through-body bass. By the time Paul McCartney arrived in the U.S. in 1964 with his Hofner 500/1, there were many different electric basses available. One popular model in the late ’60s was the Guild Starfire Bass, a semi-hollow 4-string available in one- and two-pickup versions. It became the preferred bass of two notable San Francisco musicians, Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead and Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane. Both liked the sound of the Hagstrom Bi-Sonic pickups but felt the stock electronics left something to be desired. Modifications were in order, and they turned to a group of technical wizards in the Bay Area. The mastermind of the operation was Augustus Owsley Stanley (a.k.a. Bear). He modified basses used by both Lesh and Casady by installing switchable capacitors and brought in Ron Wickersham, an innovative designer and modifier of electronic gear, to continue the work. Wickersham initiated a major upgrade in tone by putting active electronics in the Guild basses. “The circuit chosen was a Darlington-connected monolithic circuit, the CA3018,” he explained in my book American Basses. “The results were amazing. The pickups’ [frequency] response went up more than

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three octaves, and the clarity this brought to the fingering skills of the musicians revealed the true character of the music.” The team started by Owsley grew to include Bob Matthews, a recording engineer, and Rick Turner, who had experience as a musician (bass and guitar), sound mixer, and luthier. In 1970 they incorporated their operation under the name Alembic and soon began work on their first ground-up instrument project, a new bass for Casady that became known as Alembic #1. Whose idea was it? Did Casady ask the Alembic team to build an instrument, or did they suggest it to him? “It’s hard to say,” reports Turner. “We all saw each other frequently, and Jack knew that I was making pickups and starting to build stuff.” Casady also isn’t sure, but says that “the natural evolution was making the whole instrument from scratch, so that’s what I wanted to do.” However the project began, Alembic #1 became the instrument that changed the bass-building world, combining innovative design, high-end materials, and unheard-of electronic sophistication. Casady says he wanted a scale length that was “a little longer than the short scale [of the Guild] but not quite as long as the full 34" scale, so we compromised on a 32" scale.” Although the basic design was neck-through, Casady asked for a semi-hollow body, which turned out to be a good idea on both sonic and practical grounds. “The body halves were solid zebrawood,” says Turner, “and they were heavy. So I carved them out, to accommodate the electronics but also to lose some of the excess

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CO N N E C T CHECK IT OUT

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Alembic Basses CHECK IT OUT

Rick Turner Guitars

JIM MEAD

poundage.” The body sections were topped with pieces of bird’s-eye maple. The ebony fingerboard had elaborate abalone and silver designs — “I got carried away with the aesthetics,” says Turner — and featured tiny red LEDs as position markers. When it came to the electronics, “what I wanted it to be was a platform to experiment,” says Casady. To facilitate that, he asked for pickups that were interchangeable and mounted on brass rails, so they could slide to different locations. “There were some challenges to doing that,” says Wickersham. “I had to use microwave connectors and small-diameter Teflon coax cable, because that was slippery and would slide where normal shielded wires would jam.” The onboard circuits, which featured superfilters and other high-end components, were also interchangeable. “The concept was that the electronics would be modular, like the channel strips in a recording console,” says Turner, “so you could pop them out and put in different flavors of preamp and EQ.” When the work was finished, Casady immediately began to use Alembic #1, and it was his main bass for about three years. He went back several times for tweaks, including different circuits and changes to the controls. Wickersham remembers, “For a lot of people, what Jack asked for would not have been improvements, but it was what he was seeking. It’s harder to play an instrument that reveals just what you’re doing with your fingers, rather than being voiced to sound pleasant on its own.” After an unfortunate incident when the bass was dropped and had to be repaired, Casady stopped using it, feeling that the sound had changed. It had a complicated history after that, moving among different owners and receiving different electronics and new body plates made from purpleheart. It is now back in Turner’s hands for restoration, with the goal of making it look as close to its original appearance as possible. After that, it will probably be placed in a museum exhibit. When Alembic #1 was delivered in 1972, the price tag was $4,000 — about $24,000 today. Every aspect of the instrument, from

its appearance to its electronics to that price tag, was astounding at the time. It represented the second major milestone in electric bass design and construction, after the Fender Precision Bass. This collaboration between a great player and great team of builders yielded an instrument that paved the way for a new generation of electric basses, ones with striking aesthetics and superior expressive possibilities, an evolutionary process that continues to this day. l

Jack Casady playing his Alembic bass, California, 1972.

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Bass Magazine – Issue 2

Articles inside

The Inquirer: Reamping Rocks!

Review: Thomastik-Infeld Spirocore Strings

Review: Elrick Gold Series Icon Basses

Review: Wayne Jones Audio WJBA & WJBA2 Amplifiers

Review: BackBeat Rumble Pack

John Patitucci: Inner Invocation

Mark Hoppus: What's My Age Again?

Duff McKagan: Cover Story

Julie Slick: The Rebirth of Slick

Stu Brooks: The Shape of Bass to Come

Graham Maby: Fool's Gold

Abby Travis: Sumo-Strength Riffs

Scott Mulhavill: Vertical Voice

Mai Leisz: Once Upon A Time

10 Questions With Ben Kenney