Putting the Band Together

After years of playing music I have discovered that there are some things in music that no amount of lessons or talent can prepare you for.  Pop culture would have us believe that anybody with a garage and a spunky group of musician friends can put together a band and instantly jump into the world of record deals, touring and screaming girls. This could not be farther from the truth. For every band that actually gets off the ground there are ten that blow up on the launch pad. Really the best movie example of the kind of turmoil that band goes through would be The Commitments or maybe  the far less serious This Is Spinal Tap.

I would venture to guess that the average lifespan of bands that I have been in would be about a month. The problem is that there are a huge amount of factors that need to line up for a band to have any sort of staying power. There have been days when I got together with a random group of friends and write three or four songs and have absolutely great band chemistry but never play together again. Then there are other times when I’ve played with bands for months with nothing holding us together outside of the prospects of playing at the House of Blues.

Currently I have been playing with the latter. Call me a sellout, but frankly one cannot make it in the biz without connections and the kids I’m playing with are very well connected. If I have to play some bubble gum Colbie Caillat and Bruno Mars in order to actually have a paying gig for once I’m going to take it. People don’t understand that in the music world opportunity doesn’t knock very often and you have to take it when you can.

The major problem with this group hasn’t had anything to do with the music. The true challenge has been that these kids have never been in a band before. In the music world this is a huge red flag because it means either they are really inexperienced or they simply just don’t play well with others. I found that if I didn’t keep them on track practices would devolve into jamming which normally I would be cool with but when you aren’t a fan of the music and you have limited time it’s a lot harder. It also doesn’t help that they live 20 miles away and until recently lacked a drum set (meaning that I had to pack a full kit into the back of my tiny Honda Civic).

The inexperience of this group has also brought out another challenge to maintaining a band. It has been almost impossible to keep the same musicians playing with the group. In order to have a functioning group there needs to be relatively regular practices and musicians are notoriously flakey (I’ve always said that a good musician is never on time). Thanks to this we have been through a multitude of drummers, pianists and guitarists who, in some cases, have just straight up disappeared. After a year I’ve managed to finally lock in the line-up through all nature of bribes, favors and other incentives.

And I haven’t even started talking about my musical bane of my existence: the diva. I’ll have to devote all of next week to that one. Needless to say this gig better pay off.

Coachella Part 2: the Good, the Bad and the Baked

It has been two weeks to the day since I attended this music festival and there is still so much left to say about it. Its continued occupation of my consciousness has proven inescapable. I have no choice but to continue babbling on about it before I resume the blog as usual.  After having my brain melted time and time again by the heat and the outstanding performances by Radiohead, Explosions in the Sky and so many more it’s no wonder I can’t stop. Last week I gave my favorites, but this week a want to talk a bit about the things that bothered me and continue to bother me about the festival.

So it has been a while since I talked about this, but as I said back when I started this blog is about standing up for downtrodden bassists. Unfortunately there was one very talented group at Coachella who felt it was wholly necessary that the crowd never see the bassist (or the keyboardist for that matter). Even many of the rap and solo acts (like actor turned rapper Childish Gambino) had the humility to share the spotlight with their supporting musicians. The duo of Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) seemed almost completely unaware of the two supporting musicians standing only 10 feet behind them. I mean it’s not like they have a 20 piece band or something.  A simple shout out to bassist Gus Seyffert and a bit more light do a world of good when it comes to respect on stage. The real kicker was some of the guys I was camping with sincerely thought that the Black Keys played without a bassist. In their defense they might have had a few too many chemicals in their systems and the Black Keys did I superb job of hiding their bandmates. This is exactly why this blog exists.

Another thing I observed at Coachella that I found a tad bit alarming was the younger audience’s attention span/concert manners. Now it may be true that many of the artists who played over the two weekends of Coachella were or are destined to be one-hit wonders many of them had much more to offer the audience than just that one hit song. Take for example the brilliant drummer turned songwriter Gotye. I’ve been listening to his music for a bit less than a year and his upside-down Australian musical sensibilities have thoroughly impressed me. It came as no surprise to me that his song “Somebody I Used to Know” took the American charts by storm a couple months ago.

He played probably one of the best sets overall of the entire festival and gathered at least half of the Sunday Coachella crowd. About three-quarters of the way into his set he played his big hit (he hardly even had to sing it thanks to the crowd). As soon as he finished this song about 70% of the crowd left. It really irked me that all people there got out of it was that one hit song. I don’t even understand how people can enjoy a show if they are only there for one song. It takes away from the whole experience especially since throughout the rest of the set (and the sets of pretty much every other group I saw) the folks around me felt it was a great idea to blow smoke in my face or sit on their phones ignoring the actual performance. Manners people.

I guess by going on 4/20 weekend I was kind of asking for some of this stuff to happen, but I have a feeling I wouldn’t have been so bothered if that damned sun would have stopped boiling by Nordic blood. Whatever the case I would totally do it again. I don’t mind if other people want to text or get plastered instead of listen to the music, just as long as they don’t get in my way and at least acknowledge the existence of bass players.

Coachella!

Last weekend I felt inclined to trade the exceptionally temperate weather of San Diego for the hellish heat of Indio and more music in three days than any human brain could possibly process. When I wasn’t fending off heat stroke with gallons of water and an undoubtedly toxic amount of sunscreen I was knocking band after band off my musical bucket list. Despite the fact the event organizers seemed rather keen on booking all my must see bands at the exact same times I managed to at least get 20 minutes per band which is just enough to really get a feeling for them. So now without further adieu, here are some best of’,s from this monster of a music festival:

Best Bassist – This goes to Gbenga Adelekan of Metronomy. Some bassists in the know out there might be like “Who the f@#$ is that? Why didn’t Thundercat win?” too which I would respond Thundercat was a tad bit too high at his performance which was characteristically chilled out whereas Mr. Adelekan came out on stage in the 104 degree afternoon sun and took the crowd by storm. In the tradition of Metronomy’s past bassist Gabriel Stebbing he played mainly with a pick though I have to say he is a great finger style player as well and his bass lines took that classic Metronomy electro-alt-dance-funk to a whole new level live.

Best Performance – The Hives lead singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist captured the attention of every single apathetic hipster and baked bro in the entire crowd within a millisecond of stepping on to the stage. There was no looking away from this performance which featured its fair share stage dives, ninjas, spinning guitars and vocal chords pushed beyond the limits of any natural range. To give someone who has not seen The Hives in the flesh, one moment Almqvist has the entire crowd of as many as 10,000 festival goers lying on their backs and within an instant he has the crowd back on their feet jumping in almost perfect unison causing what can only be described as a man-made earthquake. At the end of their mainstage garage rock power set he jumped out into the crowd without any sort of security around him and ran all the way to the sound guy and gave him a high five. Did I mention the band pulled off all their stunts while wearing tuxes and top hats in the scorching 104 degree weather?

Most Talent – This definitely has to be split between the back to back sets of the looping innovators tUnEyArDs and Andrew Bird. Using looping pedals (for non musicians they are a compact recording device one can use to record music live and instantly play it back) these two brilliant musicians crafted entire soundscapes of choirs and orchestras with nothing but their voices and whatever instrument they could carry. In the case of Merrill Garbus of tUnEyArDs she combined these pedals with her deep raspy jazz voice and her energetic onstage drumming to build a massive full band sound out of herself a bassist and two sax players. Andrew Bird on the other hand brought the full band with him so he used the pedals in tandem with his brilliance on the violin to create a massive sounding string section by building concept upon concept. These two performances made most of the other bands look like immature teenagers trying to hammer out some semblance of music in their parents’ garage.

Best New Artist (to me at least) – I have got to give this to Annie Clark of St. Vincent. Now mind you her band did not have an actual bassist, however I know a brilliant guitarist when I see one. I had not heard a guitar tone like hers since my days as an avid White Stripes fan. Not only does she give an intense onstage performance but she also does music like nobody else with her mix of fuzzy guitars and an alien sounding ambient vocal space. It also helped that I’m a sucker for weird guitars and her funky off set Harmony guitar won my heart before the show even began. Kudos to my gal pal who dragged our group away from the Shins and to catch the start of her set.

Next week I’ll be talking about some of the issues I had with bands *cough* the Black Keys *cough* and the inhabitants of the music festival as well as some other fun and not so fun things that happened so stay tuned.

Fender: A Love Story

This week I have a bit of bass guitar history for y’all. You see without a certain little company by the name of Fender Guitars chances are I would not be blogging about music right now.

Back in 1951, shortly after the advent of electric guitars, electrical engineer Leo Fender and his employee George Fullerton got to work designing the world’s first production bass guitar: the Fender Precision Bass (P-Bass for short). This single pick-up beauty had a neck that was bolted on a slab body much like the earlier Fender Telecaster guitar.

1950's Standard P-Bass

Prior to this invention the low end of music was almost always taken care of by an upright bass (double-bass). These massive violin shaped instruments were hard to transport and very temperamental depending on the climate, not to mention the fact that playing them took years of practice. The P-Bass solved all these problems in one fell swoop. It was light-weight, not especially climate sensitive and could easily be picked up by any guitarist.

In the years that followed the electric bass guitar took the music world by storm. Fender’s major electric guitar rival, Gibson, released its own line of bass guitars with the EB-1 and the EB-0 and smaller companies like Rickenbacker and Danelectro released their own takes on the electric bass. Fender continued to rock the industry when they released the dual pick-up offset waist Jazz Bass (aka the J-Bass) and improved the P-Bass with a new “humbucking” split coil pick-up.

A classic 60's P-Bass

Nowadays Fender bass guitars are still an industry standard and undoubtedly the most common basses out there. Most bassists have at least one Fender in their collection and more often than not it is their main go-to bass for gigs, recording, jamming and practice.

Love for Fender also just so happens to be in my blood. My dad has an old 77’ American made J-Bass that is in absolutely spectacular condition with the original case and all the original hardware still intact. It is hands-down the most awesome instrument I have ever played. Even though I love finding strange off-beat and rare instruments a classic Fender bass just feels like home to me. I’ve owned 3 or 4 of them in my time as a bassist and my personal favorite is my Japanese made Aerodyne P-Bass. It has a P and J pick-up configuration, a flame maple top and a bound body that is thinner (and lighter) than most Fender basses. Unfortunately Fender discontinued the line shortly after I bought it so it’s a bit tricky to get your hands on one.

The Monk Montgomery (bass player sitting in between the two drummers in this video) is the very first professional musician to use a Fender P-Bass on tour. Just saying.

Types of Bassists (Part 2)

The Country Gentleman – This type of bass player is common throughout country, bluegrass and rockabilly. More often than not you will see them with an upright bass in hand.  Generally their style is similar to the meat and potatoes bassist, with tons of root notes and lots of driving rhythm. Often times these bassists will add a bit of flair with some walking lines, string popping (especially in rockabilly) or maybe even a bit of classical bow technique, but generally they just hold down the beat while the rest of the musicians let loose. A good example of this style of bass playing would be upright powerhouse Paul Kowert of the Punch Brothers.

The Walking Jazz Man – This species of bassist occupies a school of musical theory beyond that of the everyday pop song. You can often here them navigating between the complex chords, rhythms and melodies of jazz standards. The key to this style is the walking technique (which is akin to that of ska music). Instead of staying on one note or playing a riff these bassists will walk from chord to chord with the notes of a musical scale. A good example of this type of bassist is the jazz genius Charles Mingus

The Bass God – Jaco Pastorius. Ever heard of him? If you play bass and you haven’t heard of him give up on music and sell your instrument. He is only the greatest bassist of all time hands down. Yes James Jamerson can stop tame the soul with one finger. Yes Victor Wooten can melt your face. Yes Stanley Clarke can rearrange your anatomy.  But Jaco can turn musical water into wine.

Mr. Pastorius invented everything that is modern bass. He could play entire songs with harmonic notes that don’t even exist on a six string guitar, let alone a bass. His rapid fire technique could take on the mutually exclusive rhythmic and melodic qualities of the bass guitar at the same time. Not to mention he invented the first fretless Fender Jazz bass. He was an absolutely brilliant, until of course in 1987 when the security guards at one of his gigs beat him to death because they didn’t know who he was. And people wonder why I feel the need to write this blog.

Types of Bassists (Part 1)

In order to further my purpose of helping the world understand bassists I think it would be to my advantage to give laymen a guide to the different types of bassists out there.

The Meat and Potatoes Bassist – This is probably the most common type of bassist out there. These musicians generally stick pretty close to the root note, don’t ask too many questions and hold down the fort for the rest of the band. Generally they are the master of a few styles of music and technique though they only get fancy when required. A great example of this type would be Tom ‘Two-Tone Tommy’ Blankenship of My Morning Jacket.

The Picker – This class of bassist is probably the second most common and is made up of the youngest demographic of bassists. These musicians are often converted guitarists who have not learned to play finger-style yet or they simply prefer the pick sound to finger-style. Many older bassists often look down on these players because the pick technique is considered easy (despite the fact both Paul McCartney and Sting used this technique quite often). Personally I rather enjoy playing with a pick when I get a chance. A great example of a modern picker would be Michael Jared Followill of Kings of Leon.

The Funk Master – This class of bassist enjoys playing in a “slap n’ pop” style using their thumb and finger to bounce the strings off of the fretboard and get that signature funk sound (see the intro to Seinfeld if you don’t know what I mean). It is technically much more challenging than picking and finger-style and often takes an experienced bassist to pull off correctly. Most people have probably heard Flea play some slap bass for the Chili Peppers though is you want to hear a true master check out Victor Wooten of the Flecktones. He is probably one of the greatest bass players of all time.

Of course these are many more types of bassists but I will get to them next week with Types of Bassists Part 2.

When a Bassist Meets a Bassist

Though there may be quite a bit more bassists out there than let’s say accordion players, in comparison to guitarists, drummers, and pianists there are relatively few of us. This has led to an interesting phenomenon which occurs whenever a bassist meets another bassist.

Now bass players are generally by nature somewhat quieter than their fellow band mates and pretty used to disrespect and disregard by both musicians and laypeople so when they meet another of the same species there is an instant connection. It does not matter what type of bassist they are or how long they’ve been playing. All that matters is that they don’t have to worry about the judgment of others for once in their musical careers.

Non-bassists have no idea how refreshing it is to talk to someone from the same musical family. It is almost like meeting an old friend. Upon encountering another tamer of the low frequencies it is customary that first you have to talk about your bass collection, amplifier rig and pedals. Only once these formalities are finished you get into the real nitty-gritty. We are known to talk for hours about technique, bass icons or how they wish guitarists would stop peacocking around the stage like they musically important or something like that. And believe me; we don’t get to talk about this kind of stuff almost ever. Whatever happens in this conversation there will be a deep connection between both parties involved, even if you never meet again.

I was not consciously aware of this phenomenon until it was brought to my attention by an anecdote from Stewart Copeland’s autobiography. In this story Copeland describes events similar to what I described every single time Sting encountered another bassist. I’ve had other musicians point out the same thing.

Only a few months ago one of my friend’s bands was practicing at my house and they had brought in a new bassist who was sitting in for a show or two while theirs was away. I ran into him just they were leaving and after giving his bass a test drive we ended up talking about Les Claypool, pedals and technique for a good three hours. Bear in mind I had never met him or seen him before in my life, but were able to become almost instantaneous friends.

Until next time give Les and Stewart a listen:

Jesus Band: Apparently Not All Musicians Are Created Equal

While I am still on the subject of my formative years as a bass player I feel I am about due for another story of discrimination against bassists. You see back at my wonderful sausage fest of a Catholic high school our campus ministry department gave us a quota of “service hours” which we had to complete on a yearly basis. In order to fulfill this requirement I joined the “music ministry” group which was just a loosely organized group of musicians who put together music for the weekly church ceremony.

Now I am not a religious person put this whole Jesus band experience was probably one of my favorite parts of high school. We got to skip homeroom and show up late to all our classes after church on top of the performance experience. Most of the time we spent just dicking around and playing just barely passable versions of the new age-y worship songs the campus ministry department gave us and a few of our own additions.

Throughout my years in the group we had a few different six-string slinging student band leaders (and the occasional 12-stringer). Usually they would organize all the music and bring it with them in the morning and even if things fell apart it was all in good fun. Like the rest of us they were not always the best musicians, but that just made everything more laid back. As the last one was poised to retire at the end of my junior year I was ready to pick up the torch of band leadership.

I felt I was perfectly positioned to be the band leader. I was on good terms with the campus ministry department, plus I had seniority over all the other members. I had perfect grades; perfect attendance and I could play all the music forwards and backwards in my sleep. Unfortunately there was one factor that I overlooked: my instrument was two strings short and an octave low of a guitar.

It turns out that the administration felt the position of band leader should be passed down to the senior member of the guitar playing line of the Jesus band much like the obsolete patriarchal succession of the monarchies of old. Now I try not to judge the senior guitarist too harshly, I mean it is not like he even asked for the position, but there could not have been a worse match for band leader.

My entire senior year in Jesus band can be characterized by me hauling equipment from my house to school (thanks to the draconian ruling of the band teacher which I will discuss in a later post) at around six in the morning and setting up the drum kit, music stands and microphones alone until our fearless band leader showed up an hour late without the music. He also had this mental inability to start a song that was in the time signature 6/8 which just happens to be about 50% of all church music. To make matters worse his guitar was made of ply wood and he had a tiny amp that we nicknamed the “T-Rex” because whenever he turned it up it had a distorted signal that might be desirable in some forms of death metal.

I did everything in my power to try and convince campus ministry to let me be leader. I came early and organized all the music. I led the regular band meetings. I even brought my own guitar amp to prevent the use of the T-Rex. No matter how much I pleaded with the administration they remained adamant that a guitarist was more suited for the position. They literally told me “we just don’t think that a bassist can start songs like a guitarist can.” As the cherry on top of my enduring the weekly humiliation of bad performance after bad performance they give this guitarist twice the service hours because he had more “responsibility” as a school “leader.” It was at this point in my life I decided I needed to start standing up for my people.

The Trials and Tribulations of a Singing Bassist

Early on in my quest to start a band and woo the fairer sex I realized that bass players go unnoticed more often than not and I set out to figure out what I could do to remedy this. In my research I discovered a common factor that connected all the famous bass players (with the exception of maybe Flea): every single one of them sings. Therefore the only way I could achieve my goal was to become that rare species of singing bass player. Unfortunately for me, it did not take long to realize why singing bass players were so uncommon.

Now I’m sure everyone has seen somebody sing and play a normal guitar. I’d say 80% of singers can sing while strumming a few chords or maybe playing a bit of piano, though rarely is one seen hanging out in the low end and the melody. I thought bass is just like guitar right? This should be easy. You just play notes and sing and next thing you know you are famous right? Well it turns out playing bass and singing is akin to playing operation without looking while reciting Shakespearean verse. If you don’t believe me try it for yourself.

I attempted song after song, but it was to no avail. I figured maybe I’m just not good enough. To test my hypothesis I picked up a guitar and learned a couple chords and literally within 15 minutes I could play and sing any song consisting of the chords G, C, D and E minor which any musician would tell you is the chord progression for just about every song ever.

I was completely baffled at this point. Why couldn’t I just sing while playing music like all the guitarists out there? The answer lies in some technical music mumbo-jumbo which basically comes down to the bass part of a song counters the melody (the sung part) of the song and the brain has quite a bit of trouble doing two opposing actions at once. So now the real question is how in the world do these people do it?

Thus began my obsession. I poured over hours and hours of Geddy Lee, Paul McCartney, and Sting with a new found respect for what they were able to do. All three of them completely blew me away with their abilities. Then a girl by the name of Esperanza Spalding came in to my life. This Grammy winning jazz singer and bass player absolutely obliterated what I thought was possible in the realm of singing and bass playing.

With the divine inspiration I received from these bassists and their styles I painstakingly taught myself to play and sing. It eventually just came down to learning a song to the point it was muscle memory. After 5 or so years I could finally do it consistently. Even today after doing it for years I still find it challenging, but my bass heroes are testament that it is indeed doable.

Bass Player Origins

Before McCartney was coming together with Lennon, Harrison and Star on his trusty left-handed Hofner he was a rhythm guitarist. Before Sting was sending messages in a bottle he was playing piano with his mum. Before Flea was slappin’ the bass with the Chili Peppers he was playing jazz trumpet! Notice a pattern here? My point is bassists who started out on the low end of the musical spectrum are few and far between. It also just so happens that I am one of those few bassists who took the low road right of the bat.

See really I owe my love of the bass guitar to my dad. When I was younger he was the bassist in a country band called the Wooden Nickel. He never thought to make me or any of my brothers take music lessons like many musician parents. He instead went with the philosophy that we had to want to play music in order to learn.

This philosophy paid off when in my 12^th year of existence on this earth I had an epiphany: I like girls and girls like musicians… I should be a musician! And so my quest began to woo the fairer sex with the charm and, dare I say, swagger of an artist.

The first step was choosing my instrument. As this was an important rite of passage in my family my dad sat me down and laid out the instruments I could choose from. He was a multi-instrumentalist so I had the option of piano, guitar, banjo, drums, and of course the bass guitar. Piano was fairy boys; one third of the kids I knew played guitar; banjo was for inbred hicks and drummers have an alarming mortality rate.  Plus I was a pretty shy kid so choice was more than obvious. It also helped that my dad had a healthy collection of bass guitars to choose from.

After that fateful day I became absolutely enthralled with my 4-string wonder instrument. I promptly started a band with one of my guitar playing friends and started taking lessons at a local music shop. I realized at some point that I could substitute practicing music for doing homework without any domestic penal repercussions and voilà I was the best bass player I knew (I was also the only bass player I knew). And then there was high school, but I’ll save that story for next week. Until then checkout this amazing young bass player whom I will be talking about next week: