Jump Head

ABRAHAM LABORIEL
EL MAESTRO!

LEE ROCKER REVIEWED

MICHAEL LE AGUE MXR’S DYNA
NIKKI MONNINGER COMP
JACK CASADY STRANDBERG’S
SCOT T SHRINER PROG BASS
NICOLE ROW PJB’S BIGHE AD
ANTHONY JACKSON & FODERA b a s s m a g a z i n e . c o m ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 1
PRO HA-2
ARTIST:

Jump Head

MADE TO
PERFORM
INSPE CTOR :

MODE L:
PICKU PS:
NECK :
SERIE S:

COLO R:
TUNE RS:
FRETS :

INTRODUCING THE AMERICAN PERFORMER SERIES

FEATURING ALL-NEW YOSEMITE ™ PICKUPS, HANDCRAFTED IN CORONA, CALIFORNIA

2 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

©2019 Fender Musicial Instruments Corporation. FENDER, FENDER in script, PRECISION BASS, and the distinctive headstock commonly found on Fender Guitars and Basses are registered trademarks of FMIC. Yosemite is a trademark of FMIC. All rights reserved.
 Contents
Features Gear Reviews

96. MXR M282 Dyna Comp

Bass Compressor
By Rod Taylor

98. Strandberg
Boden Prog 5-string
By Jonathan Herrera

102. Phil Jones Bass

Bighead Pro HA-2
By Jon D’Auria

10. Nicole Row 42. Michael League Columns

From Miley Cyrus to Panic! At The Disco, League takes a break from his world
Nicole Row takes on every big gig with a travels to focus on his musical explo- 104. Jazz Concepts
sense of poise and rationality. ration on Snarky Puppy’s latest album, Make The Drummer Sound Good!
By Jon D’Auria Immigrance. By Chris Jisi By John Goldsby

18. Bakithi’s African Bass
In the first installment of our new series,
South African bass icon Bakithi Kumalo
sits down with Cameroonian phenom
Armand Sabal-Lecco.
By Chris Jisi
24. Rev Jones
Hard-rocking Rev Jones is known for his
work with Michael Schenker and Steel-
heart, but has finally debuted a solo
album of his own.
By Freddy Villano
28. Nikki Monninger
From her love of Gibson Thunderbirds
to Silversun Pickups’ triumphant new
album, Nikki Monninger dishes on all
things bass. By Jon D’Auria
36. Scott Shriner
Delivering two new records at once,
Weezer has kept good on their prom-
ise of dropping an album a year, while
bassist Scott Shriner has kept good on
delivering only the finest tone. By Jon
D’Auria
52. Abraham Laboriel 110. Beginner Bass Base
In the first of a two-part series, we cel- Note Names Part 2: Descending Groove
ebrate the life and career of one of the By Patrick Pfeiffer
most recorded and influential bassists of
all time. By E. E. Bradman 113. The Inquirer
Life Lessons From Steve
80. Lee Rocker By Jonathan Herrera
Rockabilly icons Stray Cats celebrate
40 years of jumping and jiving with a 114. Partners
new album, as Lee Rocker reflects on a Anthony Jackson & Fodera Guitars
lifetime of slapping the double bass. By By Jim Roberts
Chris Jisi
Departments
86. Jack Casady
The legendary player behind Jefferson
Airplane and Hot Tuna revisits his illus- 4. From the Editor
trious career on his 75th birthday.
By Jim Roberts 6. 10 Questions With Anna
Sentina
8. Spins, Streams & Down-
loads

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 3

From the Editor
Honest Abe
Bass Family,
I
t’s no secret that the music world is full
of remarkable, eccentric characters with
bold personalities. That tends to come
with the territory of being an artist. But
sometimes you come across unique souls
who are so comfortable in their own bones
that the immense levels of energy and good
vibes they naturally emit seems to rub off on
you from just being around them. Players like
Flea and Bootsy Collins come to mind — but
I’ve never encountered a presence like Abra-
ham Laboriel. Every time that I’ve been lucky
enough to watch him perform, hear him
speak, or even just simply sit in a room with
him, I’ve genuinely felt like I was in the pres-
ence of an enlightened being who has it all
figured out.
We’ve had the privilege of hosting Abra-
ham at many bass events in years past, and
even more than his insane slapping, tap-
ping, strumming, and grooving, it was the lit-
4 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
tle moments from him that impacted us the
most. From seeing him tear up while reflect-
ing on how beautiful the key of Eb major is, to
hearing one of his countless stories that are
always as hilarious as they are awe-inspiring,
it was all pure gold. One of my favorite stories
was about when he and his drummer son Abe
Jr. were taking a lunch break at a fast food
joint during a full day of recording sessions.
They were eating their burgers when a song
came on the radio that caught Abe Sr.’s ear.
It was Hanson’s “MMMBop.” Abe turned to
his son and said, “This song is so damn an-
noying, but man, does it groove.” His son put
down his food and looked him dead in the eye
and said, “Dad, it grooves because that’s us
playing on there.”
Finally, major props go to our Edi-
tor-At-Large, E.E. Bradman, for taking on
this mountain of a story. I can’t tell you the
amount of work he put into this article — from
going down to L.A. to hang with Abraham
and his family, to making a massive Spotify
playlist of his songs, to creating a chronolog-
ical timeline of his life, to putting his heart
and soul into every word. I hope you all en-
joy it as much as I do. And that goes for the
whole magazine front to back. We’ve learned
so much from all the artists in these pages.
As always, drop me a line with your thoughts
and feedback at jon@bassmagazine.com, and
dig in and enjoy. Cheers to the future of bass!
Jon D’Auria
Editor-In-Chief
Volume 1, Issue 3 | 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:

jon@bassmagazine.com
chris@bassmagazine.com
elton@bassmagazine.com

All Images, Articles, and Content

©2019 Bass Magazine, LLC

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 5


10 Questions
with Anna Sentina
S
ince 2012, Anna Sentina has been
a viral online sensation thanks to
her deep playing and her serious
chops. Being a classically trained
pianist from age eight, Anna
picked up the bass at 14 and immediate-
ly started touring with bands of all genres,
including gigs with America’s Got Talent
artists Emil and Dariel, along with Candle-
COURTESY ANNA SENTINA / GRUV GEAR
box’s Kevin Martin. She is a proud endors-
er of Kiesel basses, DR Strings, Boss, Gruv
Gear, and Roland instruments. She’s been
featured in Esquire and Sports Illustrated,
and she’s even teamed up with Converse for
its Rubber Tracks Sample Library project.
Anna took a break from her busy studio,
touring, and filming schedule to answer our
10 Questions.

1 2 3 4 5
What was your What music have What’s one What is the first What’s the best
first bass? you been listening element of your concert you ever concert you’ve
An Ibanez to lately? playing that attended? ever attended?
Soundgear 4-string. I’m really digging you most want to Jon Bon Jovi, at the This is such a hard
It was a gift from the new 1975 release improve? Staples Center. I question for me, but
my mom. I don’t A Brief Inquiry When I wasn’t in honestly remember I’m going to have to
play it anymore, but Into Online Rela- the studio as much it like it was yester- go with Iron Maid-
the memories with tionships. Rüfüs Du and was playing day, even though I en at the San Man-
that bass will always Sol’s new album out significantly was super young. uel Amphitheater in
be precious to me. Solace has been on more often, I start- The venue was 2010. I was in high
repeat for me since ed learning how to packed and the au- school. It was a trek
it came out last year, improvise and come dience knew pretty to get there, but
and the same with up with cool licks much every lyric to man, was it worth
Mumford & Sons’ and lines on the every song he sang. it.
Delta. Foo Fight- spot. I want to get It was epic.
ers and Odesza are back to that place
always at the top of musically.
my Spotify queue,
two of my absolute
favorites.

6 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

6 7
If you could have
lunch with any
bass player today,
alive or dead, who
would it be?
Right now it would
have to be Bootsy
Collins. I’ve al-
ways been a fan and
admire the moti-
vational words he
extends to not just
artists, but every-
one. Another player
I would love to have
lunch with is Flea.
He’s always all over
the place and really
seems to have the
“balance is key” as-
pect of life down.
Capturing
Capturingthe
theMagic…
Magic…
Handmade in the USA
8 9 10
If you could sub . What’s the best .What’s the most .If you weren’t
for a bass player advice you’ve embarrassing thing a bass player,
in any band, who ever been given that’s happened to what would
would it be? about playing bass? you during a gig? you be doing?
Tim Commerford Let loose, and have I was playing in one of I would be a vet-
with Rage Against fun. So simple, yet my first metal bands erinarian or some
The Machine! Ab- something most several years ago. We sort of conserva-
solutely. They’ve people seem to were really into the tion biologist. I’m
always been one of forget most of the entertainment/per- actually getting my
my favorite bands, time. formance aspect of degree in molecular
and I would be so playing live and wore cell biology this year
excited to play with wireless systems to and definitely plan
them. Tim’s bass every show. Long on doing something
lines are epic, to say story short, I ended with it, hopefully
the least, and the up ripping my wire- helping some ani-
energy of the band less cable out, and mals if I can! l
is insane. performed the rest
of the song without
bass. There were a lot
of people watching. It
was awkward.
one one
pickup
pickup
at aattime
a time
lollarpickups.com 206.463.9838 P-Bass
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 7
Spins, Streams & Downloads
Esperanza Spalding
12 Little Spells [Concord]
Created on a writing retreat in
Italy, and recorded and initially
released over 12 days on social
media in 2018, Esperanza Spal-
ding’s sixth solo album is yet
another highly original work
for the seemingly boundless,
ever-growing artist. The dozen
songs are inspired by different
parts of the body “as an explo-
ration of the healing powers of
art,” and as soundscapes they
range from avant-garde and art
rock to contempo R&B and cas-
cades of lush jazz harmony. The
core sound from her previous
record, Emily’s D+Evolution, is in
place, via the kinetic drumming
of Justin Tyson and the dirty/
clean electric guitar of Mat-
thew Stevens. Presumably with
the intent of having a band for
the social media roll-out, Espe-
ranza shares bass duties with
Brooklyn-by-way-of-Houston
doubler Burniss Travis, and she
also credits Stevens and New
Orleans saxophonist/multi-in-
strumentalist Morgan Guerin
with electric bass contributions
(although they aren’t identified
specifically). Many of the bass
highpoints sound like Spalding,
8 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
perhaps on her custom fret-
less Simon Propert South Paw
5-string, such as the octave-in-
fused ostinato on the gorgeous
title track, the percolating pulse
on “You Have to Dance,” the
slippery, savvy accompaniment
on “Dancing the Animal,” and
the stretching on the Wayne
Shorter-esque outro of “Ways
Together.” Elsewhere, her effort-
less, soaring vocals and pen-
chant for potent counterpoint
between melody and bass lines
make this unmistakably Esperan-
za, no matter the new terrain.
—Chris Jisi
Tycho
Weather [Ninja Tune]
Multi-instrumentalist and pur-
veyor of ambient, downtem-
po vibes Scott Hansen has
just released his fifth studio
album, Weather, under his
better-known moniker Tycho.
His laid-back, lo-fi-meets-hi-fi
sound has reached new heights
on his latest effort, and his bass
work is more pronounced than
it was on his previous records.
Taking a more organic approach
this time around, Hansen stays
true to his electric bass roots
and lays down tight lines on
“Japan,” “Easy,” and the rest of
the eight-track LP. A perfect
album for a late-night stroll or
after-party hang, Hansen un-
derstands the important role
of bass in trip-hop music, and
he respectfully represents it
on this mellow journey. —Jon
D’Auria
Chick Corea & The
Spanish Heart Band
Antidote [Concord Jazz]
Chick Corea revisits the Lat-
in and flamenco sound of
his classic sides My Spanish
Heart and Touchstone with a
powerful, impeccably select-
ed eight-piece unit, anchored
and accelerated by Carlitos
Del Puerto and drummer (and
Roy Haynes grandson) Marcus
Gilmore. The title track pro-
vides a salsa-fied launch, with
the crisp horns of trumpeter
Michael Rodriguez, trombonist
Steve Davis, and saxophonist/
flutist Jorge Pardo, the great
Ruben Blades’ impassioned
vocals, and Del Puerto’s bold,
Baby Bass tumbao. Elsewhere,
Carlitos provides conversation-
al support on his Fodera 5 for
the flamenco-intoned “Yellow
Nimbus — Part 2.” A deftly re-

imagined “Armando’s Rhumba”
finds Del Puerto comfortably
in the Stanley Clarke role on
acoustic bass, adding a Cu-
ban sensibility. Finally, for the
Middle-Eastern-flavored, Paco
DeLucia-penned “Zyriab,” Car-
litos imparts a rhythmically and
tonally astute solo on upright.
—Chris Jisi
The Dirty Diamond
From the Stars
[thedirtydiamond.com]
Session ace Derek Frank stays
busy thanks to his steady world
tours with Gwen Stefani and
Shania Twain — but when he’s
back home in Los Angeles,
he focuses on his own band,
the Dirty Diamond. Their new
album is a powerful rock exhi-
bition that showcases each of
the band members’ talents, and
for Frank, that means digging
into big riffs and laying down
strong grooves every chance
he gets. Every song features
multiple standout bass mo-
ments that catch your ear with
either a deep pocket breakout
or a catchy run. If you’re a fan
of rocking, and we know you
are, dig into this album. —Jon
D’Auria
Charnett Moffett
Bright New Day
[Motéma Music]
Veteran doubler and solo art-
ist Charnett Moffett goes all
electric on his latest, uplifting
effort (his 14th as frontman),
plucking his fretless Moon.
Joined by guitarist/vocalist Jana
Herzen, violinist Scott Tixier,
drummer Mark Whitfield Jr.,
and keyboardist Brian Jack-
son, Moffett handles a wide
range of roles with a variety
of sounds over eight tracks
of his trademark sing-song
meditations and hypnotic,
Eastern-tinged mantras. This in-
cludes driving “Free the Slaves”
with hard plucks and slaps,
dropping his E string down to
D for the harmonics-infused,
rubato rumination “Waterfalls,”
and filling the straightahead
burner “Netting” with fleet-fin-
gered melody-doubling, ef-
fects-laden solos, and fierce
walking. —Chris Jisi
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 9
Jump Head
David Pastorius
Radio Gold [David Pastorius]
It’s hard to figure out exact-
ly where to begin in describ-
ing the latest eclectic album
from bassist David Pastorius,
but David himself has no issue
knowing where to begin, as
the opening track “Rojas” kicks
off with a musical uppercut
that ignites things with a bang.
Displaying all of his prowess
and his love of a diversity of
musical genres, Pastorius takes
listeners on a voyage that ex-
plores avant-garde jazz, rock,
funk, and soul. With layers of
slapped, tapped, and fleet-fin-
gered bass, the album shifts
from burners like “The Chase”
and “Candlebox” to laid-back
tracks like “Nikoa,” “Got It
Good,” and “Fake News.” —Jon
D’Auria  l
Panic! At The Disco

NICOLE ROW
Don’t Panic
By Jon D’Auria | Photo courtesy of Fender

10 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 O
n December 27, 2018, Panic! At The
Disco’s longtime bass player, Dallon
Weekes, announced he was leaving
the band to pursue his own musi-
cal interests. With a pending tour on the books
and a busy year ahead, Panic frontman Brandon
Urie knew he had to act fast in finding his next
bassist. It was around this time that Nicole Row
had been playing with Miley Cyrus on a stretch
of performances after gaining notoriety for her
work with Fat Joe, Ty Dollar Sign, Dallas Aus-
tin, Remy Ma, and Troye Sivan. She received
a call from Panic’s manager, who asked her to
join. Before she knew it, she was heading over to
meet the band — and her Instagram profile be-
gan blowing up with a new swarm of followers
when the news broke that she landed the chair.
With only two weeks to learn a diverse cat-
alogue of music that spanned six albums over a
14-year period, Row immediately got to wood-
shedding in an effort to master the bass lines
and vocal harmonies that she would soon be per-
forming to big audiences all over the world. Her
background in jazz and her years of playing elec-
tric, upright, and synth bass aided her efforts,
and she was soon on the road and infusing her-

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 11

 Nicole Row
COURTESY FENDER
self into Panic’s bold, theatric performances.
To aid her sound, Row enlisted Fender’s Cus-
tom Shop to create a 30-inch short-scale Jazz
Bass 5-string that would deliver the booming
tone she loved, paired with the playability of
the smaller fingerboard. Thanks to her experi-
ence performing on Saturday Night Live, The
Tonight Show, Billboard Music Awards, and
other marquee events and big bills, she mas-
terfully took on the task.
How did you learn Panic’s challenging catalogue
so quickly?
I had only a couple of weeks to learn all
of the material before jumping on the tour,
and I didn’t know specifically which songs
we would be playing for the shows, so I sat
down and started with all of the hits. I be-
12 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
gan with the bass parts and then had to work
through learning all of the vocal parts, too.
I used the album recordings and went with
all of the highest harmonies I could [sing],
and then I threw the vocals on top of the
bass parts. Panic’s music can be really tricky
to match the singing with the playing at the
same time.
Has it always been natural for you to sing
and play?
I’m not going to say it was ever easy, be-
cause that would be a lie. I feel like anybody
who starts to sing and play will say that it’s
difficult, unless you’re someone like Larry
Graham. There were no instruments in my
house as a kid, so I started off singing. That
was the only thing I knew to do. So thank-
fully I don’t have to think about how to sing

when I’m playing bass. But doing both of
those things at once is definitely a challenge.
To make it fun for myself, I like to think that
it’s like playing drums. You have to separate
parts of your body and divide your mind and
you have to stack the grooves. It becomes fun
when you get it down.
Do you feel any pressure to replicate the
presence and playing of Dallon Weekes?
I’ve learned that when people ask you
to play with them, they want your authentic
self, and the only thing you can do is really
be yourself. You can’t try to replicate any-
thing anyone else is doing, because you’re
not them. The first questions I had for the
band were whether they wanted me to rep-
licate the sounds from the album and wheth-
er they wanted me to play with a pick, which
isn’t my preferred method of playing, as it’s
not my first language on bass. They kind of
laughed and said that they love my playing
and my tone and they want me to have fun
and do what I like. They said it’s not a gig,
WE WENT TO
GREAT LENGTHS
TO CREATE THE
RIGHT STRING.
Nicole Row
it’s a band, and I should approach it like that.
When I first joined, Dallon reached out and
sent me the nicest message congratulating
me. He’s a great guy and I really like his play-
ing. But I’m trying to approach this band as
myself as a player.
How are you able to infuse some of yourself
into the lines?
I’m playing the songs as they are on the
album for a specific reason, because the peo-
ple who come to these shows are diehard fans
and they know the songs front to back. I want
the audience to enjoy the show, so I’m stick-
ing to the script pretty closely. However, we’re
playing live versions of the songs that have a
lot of different touches differentiating them a
bit from the album work, and we always play
off each other. My touch can change night to
night in feeding off the crowds. I might hit
harder or phrase something differently, so
it’s a bit of a mix.
How do you approach playing upright and
synth bass differently?
GHS short scale bass strings are
more than just smaller versions of
traditional strings. After extensive
player input and research, the
result is a 32.75” winding length
that fits more short scale basses
than any other string brand.
Read our story at
www.ghsstrings.com/strings/bass
STRINGS
P LAY WITH THE BE ST ™
g h sstri n g s.com
SUPER STEELS PROGRESSIVES BASSICS BASS BOOMERS
Evan Marien ROUND CORE BASS BOOMERS PRESSUREWOUNDS
Photo by Eric Silvergold BALANCED NICKELS BRITE FLATS PRECISION FLATS
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 13
Nicole Row
GEAR When I’m playing upright, I look at it
Bass Fender Custom more similarly to singing. There are no frets,
Shop short-scale Jazz so there’s a lot more freedom. You’re always
Bass 5-string, Fend- going to be different than everyone else on
er American Profes- upright; people will hear notes slightly sharp-
sional Precision and er or more flat than the next person. You can
Jazz Basses, American articulate things differently. I don’t really
Elite Precision and take any of the same playing principles from
Jazz Basses, American electric to upright; it just wouldn’t sound the
Original Precision and same. As for keybass, usually the lines that
Jazz Basses, Mustang require that instrument are more open and
PJ, American Original sparse, so I try to give the songs exactly what
’70s Jazz Bass, Marcus they need.
Miller Signature Jazz Tell us about your custom short-scale
Bass; Holbein ¾-size Jazz Bass 5-string. What do you love about the
upright shorter scale?  plus modern Jazz bass tone, that would be
Rig EICH T-1000, EICH It all started when I got my hands on
T-500, EICH 212M Fender’s short-scale Mustang Bass. But there’s
Effects Boss OC3 something about a 5-string’s punch that really
Octave, Darkglass comes across in the music and cuts through,
Vintage Micro-tubes, and in the world of Fender, there weren’t any
Aguilar Fuzzistor short-scale 5-strings. Dennis [Galuszka] at
Bass Fuzz, Tech 21 the Custom Shop was nervous about making
SansAmp DI this instrument because it was a new thing for
Strings Ernie Ball Me- Fender. I knew I needed that room between
diums the neck pick up and the neck because I slap,
so I had to have that area for my thumb to hit.
Little things like that went into it and made it
ultimately great for the overall design. I got
everything that I have in my American Elite
bass, but in a smaller package that fits me just
perfectly. When I play my other regular scale
basses I’ve learned to develop a technique of
these tiny little jumps when I’m playing chro-
matic notes. I jump to get to just the right spot
and this smaller bass gets rid of that. And stu-
pid things, like when I have to tune my bass,
I always have to pull my bass closer to reach
the tuning pegs because I’m a small person.
With this bass that isn’t an issue anymore. I
was overwhelmed by how perfectly this bass
came out.
Describe your playing technique.
I feel like bass players only think about
that all of the time. It‘s our lifelong journey.
In my head, I feel like most all of my person-
al tone comes form my hands. If you give the
same bass to a bunch of different players it’s
always going to sound different depending on
14 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
who is playing it. My original way of living was
that I believed in playing one bass and you cre-
ate a bond with that bass with your tone and
touch. There’s something really great about
having one instrument that you meld with.
My original bass was a Fender Marcus Miller
Signature Jazz and it still just feels like home
when I pick it up. I need the low B string for
Panic, but when I get home it’s just magical
when I play it. I set up all of the basses with
really low action so that they’re sensitive to my
touch, and it gives me more possibilities when
it comes to dynamics.
What is your ideal bass tone?
If I could have vintage Precision tone
my ideal sound. I don’t like just one thing, so
I wish I could have both. I love to play funk,
R&B, soul, Motown, and rock, so I want my
tone to be authentic in all of those genres.
You come from a jazz foundation as your
background. How does that influence you as a
player overall?
Jazz is a huge part of my musical iden-
tity. It allows me to be open to improvising
and take on anything that’s thrown at me.
It makes everything easier to apply in any
genre. I’m so grateful that I got my start in
jazz because it has had a huge part in helping
me become the player that I am now.
Before Panic, you played with Miley Cyrus.
What was that gig like for you?
That was a really fun gig to play bass on.
I came in expecting to play what I heard on
the radio and assumed that I would be play-
ing synth bass primarily. But she was in ev-
ery single rehearsal with us musical directing
everything and she would tell us exactly how
she wanted things and she’d come up with
musical changes on the fly. I had never had
rehearsals like that with an artist, and es-
pecially not one of her caliber. She’s a real-
ly amazing musician and I feel like a lot of
people don’t know that about her. She’s very
much about doing your thing and being your-
self, but also nailing the lines.
You’ve played on some big stages with some
big names. What are the keys to approaching
huge gigs like those?

You can’t overthink it. When you walk
out there you have to be prepared and know
what you have to do, but there are so many
factors that go into that. Your sound is go-
ing to be different everywhere you play, and
you’re not going to have the same vibe from
venue to venue. And in big arenas the sound
won’t be as booming from the stage perspec-
tive. You’re wearing in-ears and you have to
really focus on what everyone else is doing.
When you walk out there you have to let all
of that go and just focus on the music and fo-
cus on having a good time. Always remem-
ber that all of those people are there to have
a good time and because they love the mu-
sic, so you should always try to relax and ease
into that moment.
When did you start playing bass?
I was actually older than I wish I had
been. I didn’t start playing bass until I was
17, and it was a foggy time for me as I was
getting in a lot of trouble back then. I didn’t
really grow up with any instruments, but my
older brother got a drum set and it made me
want to play drums, but my brother said no
way. I had all these friends who were mu-
sicians, so I picked up a bass at some point
Nicole Row
and it came naturally and I realized that all
of the music that I liked was bass-orient-
ed. I didn’t even think about the fact that
I wanted to be a bass player, it just kind of
happened. I started playing with people in
garages and jamming with as many people
as I could. I learned all of my favorite songs
and at the time I wasn’t playing music in
school, so I didn’t really think about how I
was going to do this as a lifestyle. I didn’t
plan ahead – I just started doing it. Kids
usually don’t know what they’re going to do
or a have a life plan, and if you tell people
you’re going to play music they’re like, good
luck with that. But I made it happen and it
happened pretty quickly.
Who are your biggest bass influences? 
When I was really young I was obsessed
with Sublime. Eric Wilson is such a great bass
player and I was a diehard fan of his. Once I
turned 18 and I made my move out to LA I got
really into funk music and then got really into
Larry Graham, Marcus Miller, Nate Phillips,
and all those players. Then I transitioned into
Motown. It’s a pretty standard progression
for us bass players. Then I got into fusion and
eventually into John Paul Jones. I love how
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 15
COURTESY FENDER
Nicole Row
he approached a rock band and how he incor-
porated the blues into his lines.
What’s your best advice you’d give to
another player?
There’s a local bass player who is a big in-
spiration to me, named Frank Abraham, and
we were talking about getting up on stage for
open jam sessions and he told me that you
just have to put yourself in all of those situ-
ations and let yourself be scared. Once you
do it, all that fear goes away and you’ll grow
16 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
so much and take so many things from expe-
riences that might make you uncomfortable
or terrified at first. The only way you’ll learn
is by doing it. Don’t stress about it, keep do-
ing what you love, and those gigs will come.
And that’s exactly what I did. I put myself in
different situations, I scared the shit out of
myself, I got up and played with musicians I
couldn’t hang with, and he was right, those
gigs came. l
CLF Research
L-2000
Bakithi Kumalo’s African Bass
ARMAND
SABAL-LECCO
Play Your Story
By Chris Jisi | Photo by Marchand Films
B
akithi Kumalo was the first Afri-
can bass player to reach promi-
nence in the U.S. and worldwide,
through his stunning fretless work
on Paul Simon’s landmark album Graceland
[1986, Warner Bros.]. In subsequent years,
Kumalo has been a tireless supporter and
promoter of his fellow African bassists, lead-
ing to this Bass Magazine conversation series
in which Bakithi chats with his peers. First
up is Armand Sabal-Lecco, whom Kumalo
credits as the second African bass player to
follow him to the U.S. and the world stage,
via Paul Simon’s album The Rhythm of the
Saints [1990, Warner Bros.]. Since then,
Sabal-Lecco has made his mark as a bassist
and composer with such artists as Stanley
Clarke, John Patitucci, the Brecker Broth-
18 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
ers, Peter Gabriel, Herbie Hancock, Stewart
Copeland, Al DiMeola, and Sir George Mar-
tin. Armand also formed Mass Mental with
Robert Trujillo and has his own band, Posi-
tive Army.
Armand, where were you born, and what was
some of the first music you heard?
ARMAND SABAL-LECCO I was born in
Ebolowa, Cameroon, in Central Africa. As far
back as I can remember, I was hearing both
local music and music from the outside world.
At a very young age I became interested in
the traditional music from all of the towns in
the region. Cameroon has 400 different dia-
lects, and each dialect can carry at least three
distinct styles of music. Pygmy music from
the east forest of Cameroon particularly blew
 bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 19
Armand Sabal-Lecco
my mind, and still does; it’s some of the most
complex music I’ve ever heard. In Cameroon
back then, after the 1 PM news on the nation-
al radio station, they would play tradition-
al music from remote villages discovered by
anthropologists, from 2 PM to 5 PM. On the
other hand, you would hear jazz, classical,
and Western popular music on the radio, on
records, or in movies. Yaoundé, where I grew
up, is a big city with people from many dif-
ferent origins, so you’re exposed to and learn
about a lot of styles of music.
BAKITHI KUMALO In South Africa, the ra-
dio and record stores were controlled by the
system, so we were only hearing music from
Europe and the U.S. If you wanted to hear
traditional music, you had to go out to the
townships in Zululand. What instrument did
you start on, and how did you get to bass?
ASL I tried guitar first, but my first seri-
ous instrument was drums. I was into Billy
Cobham and Mike Clark from Herbie Han-
cock’s band, as well as the traditional mu-
sic I was studying. But I only dabbled a bit
in bass, because Cameroon is very bass-cen-
tric. My older brother, Roger Sabal-Lecco,
and Vicky Edimo — who was from the Doua-
la side of Cameroon, where I believe Richard
Bona grew up and where Etienne Mbappé is
from — were the two players at the helm of a
bass-heavy movement in the ’70s that mixed
Afro-pop with virtuoso bass playing. They
created a sort of Afro jazz–soul, an all-inclu-
sive world gumbo! That was my first major
bass influence. Anyway, I was still playing
drums and began noticing that by the time I
packed up my kit after shows, everyone else
in the band had left with all the girls. So I de-
cided to move to bass permanently!
What was your first bass?
ASL I didn’t get my own bass until I was
living in Paris. I did what Bakithi did and
went to the music stores to practice. I’d say,
“Can I see that Fender?” And they’d say, “Are
you interested in buying it?” And I’d say, “Of
course” — but I didn’t have a dime in my
pocket! I’d come in and “try” all the basses
while I practiced, but I was scratching them
20 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
up. Finally, they caught on and tossed me
out. Then someone gave me an Italian ’60s
Eko bass, which I somehow managed to pull
a sound out of. Later, when I got into Jaco, I
forked the frets out. My first good bass was
an ’80s Ibanez Roadstar with a single hum-
bucker pickup.
BK That happened to me. My music store
had a line of fretted basses and a fretless on
the end that no one played. I’d go in and prac-
tice on a fretted bass, and when no one was
looking I’d pick up the next one. Finally, they
said, “You come in here all the time and play
all the basses, but you don’t buy anything.
Go play the fretless.” Eventually I bought
it [his fretless Washburn that he played on
Graceland] because it was cheap. I’d take it
on gigs and the band would say, “Something
is wrong —the tuning is bad!” Or, “That’s for
jazz, not our music.” Then I went to Zimba-
bwe and Zululand for a couple of years and
figured out that this instrument was my voice.
Who else beyond your brother and Vicky
Edimo were among your bass influences?
ASL Two other great bassists from Cam-
eroon: Alhadji Touré, an excellent makos-
sa player, and Dikoto Mandengue, who had
a totally different, more sober style. Anoth-
er favorite was Atebass from the bikutsi band
Les Tétes Brulées. From abroad, there are so
many, but the first shock was Stanley Clarke
— I’d never heard such a clear sound and
such phenomenal playing — and then, Jaco
was huge for me. Also Cachao, Aston “Family
Man” Barrett, Paul Jackson, Larry Graham,
Anthony Jackson, Louis Johnson, Abraham
Laboriel, and of course, James Jamerson; his
playing is a master class in architecture. But
it’s funny; when I was a drummer I listened
mainly to bass players. Once I became a bass
player, I listened mainly to drummers. The
master Senegalese drummer Doudou N’diaye
Rose is a very important influence, but the
meat of my rhythmic concept is Pygmy and
bantú spiritual music from the east and south
jungles of Cameroon.
The two of you first met for Paul Simon’s
The Rhythm of the Saints album. What was

your impression of each other?
ASL I first heard Bakithi on Graceland,
and I was blown away. His playing made so
much sense; it was the glue that held every-
thing together, but also the icing on top. That
was my introduction to that style of South
African bass. Bakithi was storytelling — he
was playing where he was from. It was all
about emotion, so when he plays he disap-
pears in the music, and in that context, when
you disappear in the music, that’s when you
are great. Therefore, when I finally met him
I couldn’t simply say, “Show me this or that
lick.” It would be like him showing me that
his pants were blue; it’s completely out of the
context of his whole story and why he played
the lick.
BK It was the same for me. When I first
met Armand and heard him play, I was
floored. I thought, This is the other Africa
that I’ve never seen or heard before. First, it
was his rhythmic approach, and then also his
notes — they came in places you didn’t expect
them!
“Spirit Voices” and “Born at the Right Time”
are the two Saints tracks you’re both on.
ASL We were never actually in the studio
together. Those two tracks were the result of
Paul’s editing choices. Paul was moving for-
ward with new rhythms he’d heard in Brazil,
but in seeking the origins of that music, he
discovered it linked to music from Cameroon.
Paul had met the late guitarist Vincent Ngui-
ni, who was from Obala, Cameroon, through
Hugh Masekela in 1987, and he put him in
charge of the Saints sessions. Vincent was the
one who brought me in. During a lot of the
sessions, Vincent and I would sing the Cam-
eroonian traditional patterns to the Brazilian
percussionists, who would play them on their
instruments in their style, which really com-
pleted the circle.
Bakithi, the subsequent Saints tour was
pretty much your only extended time not being
in Paul’s band.
BK It was a transition period for me, but
it made sense because with Vincent and Ar-
mand speaking the same musical language,
it allowed them to more easily provide what
Jump Head
Paul was looking for. Graceland was over,
and while it was a great album, The Rhythm
of the Saints was musically deeper.
Armand, you had to play a lot of Bakithi’s
bass lines on the tour.
ASL Yes, and I couldn’t wait to play
them! I had some different basses, but I had
to get a good fretless for the songs Bakithi
really sang on. L I ST E N
BK I was way in the back for the [1991] Bakithi Kumalo After
Central Park concert, and I heard you, and I All These Years [2016,
wanted to come closer to see what your were J&D Music]; Paul
doing! You and Steve Gadd and the percus- Simon, Stranger to
sionists sounded unbelievable. You were Stranger [2016, Con-
playing the parts from the Graceland album cord]
but using your own completely different ap-
proach. It was like, if you had recorded the
songs originally, this is what you would have
played. And then when I came back in the
band, I had to learn that approach! Paul said,
“You’ve played these songs the same way for
a while now — why don’t you listen to what
Armand did and apply some of that.” Which
was great. It was something fresh for me to Armand Sabal-
do, and it gave the songs new life. Lecco Bunny Brunel
How would you two describe the & Friends, Bass Ball
characteristics of African bass playing? [2017, Brunel Music];
ASL I’m glad you said “African.” I always Jaco (Soundtrack)
refer to it as Africa as a whole, because it’s [2015, Iron Horse En-
the same heartbeat everywhere, and the bor- tertainment/Mass
ders are simply the scars of recent history. Al- Mental]
though the differences are largely promoted,
the natural and common approach is quite GEAR
similar throughout the continent’s various Bakithi Kumalo
cultures. Sure, there are different styles and Brubaker and War-
specificities according to regions and coun- rior bass guitars, NS
tries, just as there are different musical styles Design double bass,
in regions and states here in America. Overall, Kala U-Bass; La Bella
though, I would start by saying that African strings; PJB amps,
bass is very melodic. Melody has a prominent Asterope cables
role. Unconfined to the lowest notes, it punc- Armand Sabal-Lecco
tuates the whole arrangement and convers- ’79 Music Man Sabre,
es with the singer while keeping the dancer ’74 Fender Jazz Bass,
turned on. This is because the bass isn’t the ’70 Alembic Series II,
only thing holding it down and keeping the ’80 Alembic piccolo
pulse — the percussion does that, the guitar bass; Dunlop strings;
does that. In African music, the bottom is up Ampeg amps
and means much more than the top. So the
bass, being more free, gets to move around.
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 21
Armand Sabal-Lecco
BK I think a big reason the bass is melod-
ic is because it’s coming from the voices, the
singing. When I got it together on fretless, I
was thinking like Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
The root is sung by the voices, so the bass can
double that, but it’s also free to find its own
space. Like Armand said, the bottom means
more than the top. African audiences listen
to the bass and can sing the line the bass is
playing.
How about on the rhythm side?
BK Rhythm is the other key component.
In addition to the traditional drumming, I
think some of it comes from the languages,
which all have a lot of rhythm — like Zulu,
which has a clicking sound in their vocabu-
lary. There’s a side of African bass that’s like
a tuned drum or a bass kalimba, with short,
muted notes playing traditional patterns.
ASL Exactly — African bass ranges from
very melodic to very rhythmic, sometimes in
the same song, sometimes in the same fig-
ure. I think this is because to the African ear,
rhythms are melodies and vice versa.
BK One other factor in African bass is
the lack of a formal music education, like
learning Western theory. I learned my in-
strument on the street, by listening. So when
I played, it wasn’t as much about the notes
and the chords as it was the sound and feel.
Maybe I’m hearing an accordion or kalimba
in my head, and here is how I’m feeling the
music.
ASL African bass players are raw but so-
phisticated at the same time. Many don’t
know by name what a 7/8 is, yet that’s what
they’ve been playing all day. They turn out to
be more interested in playing than analyzing.
Armand, how would you describe your bass
concept?
ASL For me, the bass is like a grand pia-
no or a big band. I don’t even think of it as a
bass. I have the whole big band in my head,
and I accentuate what I need to accentuate
on the fingerboard. I’m the conductor, and I
call on different parts of the orchestra based
on the needs of the music I’m playing. I was
also fortunate that when I came here and got
to collaborate with jazz artists like Stanley
22 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
Clarke, Don Grusin, Michael Brecker, or Her-
bie Hancock, they allowed me to write and
arrange for their ensembles. That enabled me
to paint a much better picture than I could
have painted just on bass.
BK Did you apply your concept of learn-
ing music from its roots when you came to
the States?
ASL I did, but my career started in Europe
way before the States; I like to have a good un-
derstanding of where a style came from and
where it went. From there, I would adapt that
to my approach, which is what African musi-
cians do. Understanding the intimate origins
of what I play allows me to mix the ingredi-
ents in the kitchen rather than at the table. I’ve
gotten to play rock, funk, jazz, country, blues,
folk, and I dig it all. If it has human emotion
in it, I can relate. I don’t have boxes for styles.
What’s also cool is the ethnic spin that creeps
up on the music we play. For example, the oth-
er day I heard Rod Stewart’s “Hot Legs” [Foot
Loose & Fancy Free, 1977, Warner Bros.],
which is Carmine Appice playing straight rock
drums and Phil Chen playing with a reggae
feel on bass, and the groove is just phenom-
enal — fat and round. So whether it’s a Chi-
nese-Jamaican bass player with Rod Stewart
or you or me with Paul and the other artists
we’ve played with, we’re all contributing to the
American book of bass, and that’s a deep hon-
or and a full circle.
What’s the biggest lesson you learned here?
ASL It’s like what Bakithi was saying. A
guy like Paul doesn’t care about what cir-
cus technique or stellar harmonic knowl-
edge you have. He’s not interested in “chess
on a track.” He wants you to make him feel
something, make a connection; that’s all he
cares about. I got my theory and my reading
together, and I then I realized the higher the
tier, the simpler and more natural things be-
come. That shocked me on my journey. Peo-
ple like Paul or Ringo Starr or Peter Gabriel
just want you to express yourself and move
them emotionally. They want to hear your
life; they want you to tell your story. So if
Bakithi or I go in and try to tell Stanley’s or
Marcus’ story, well, they could have called

those guys. They called you instead, because
they wanted you and how you hear their mu-
sic. It’s all about being yourself and telling
your true and unique story.
BK That’s when the music gets deeper and
goes beyond the page. But music is changing
now, because there are shortcuts. You can go
to YouTube and slow things down, so there’s
less creativity and more imitation. You end
up playing from memory instead of in the
moment. To become a top player, you have
to do more than just play well — you have to
create musical bass lines in the studio, and be
able to create on the fly, live. It’s a constant
state of listening, reacting, and creating.
ASL You’re right; there’s a new gener-
ation of bassists who fall in love with You-
Tube and then come here and go to music
schools where the same formatted curric-
ulum is drilled into everyone. Well, to me,
what’s important is that if a player came all
the way from Africa or even all the way from
Mars to improve his or herself, they come
Armand Sabal-Lecco
with a story. It would be enriching to lean in
and explore that and help it blossom, rath-
er than delete and reboot. Often, a rigorous
school background emphasizes playing what
you learned, while African music emphasizes
playing what you feel. It makes you express
your own feelings within the context.
What is upcoming for you?
ASL I’m working on another solo record
with Positive Army, which is coming along
great. I’m doing some writing for Triangle,
the band with Senri Kawaguchi and Philippe
Saisse, and also writing for Stanley [Clarke]
and for Bunny Brunel’s next all-star bass al-
bum. And Mass Mental is working on some
music for an animated film project.
BK Thank you for chatting with us today,
Armand.
ASL You were the first to shine bright
with African bass on this side of the world,
and you remain an inspiration. It’s my honor
to be the first bassist interviewed in this im-
portant series. l
Mountain, Michael Schenker Group, Steelheart
REV JONES
Practice Makes Better …
Playing Makes Perfect
By Freddy Villano | Photo by Brian K. Denton
R
ev Jones’ riff-blasting, face-melt-
ing virtuosity is on full display on
Bakwash, his long-awaited debut
solo album. Songs like “New Drug,”
“Bakwash,” “Long Legged Lady,” and “Can-
dy” feature ample amounts of the pyrotechnic
tapping skills and over-the-fretboard-finger-
ing he’s famous for. But the 49-year-old Okla-
homa native does not deploy these “tricks”
for spectacle alone. Actually, it’s all in service
of his seemingly effortless musicality, which
is quite possibly his most astounding trait.
Live, Jones is a dynamic performer,
both visually and sonically. Whether with
’70s guitar hero Michael Schenker in the
Michael Schenker Group (MSG), or classic
rock icon Leslie West and recent iterations
of Mountain, or ’80s hair-metal stalwarts
Steelheart, his seemingly endless array of
licks, fills, and musical motifs — while cer-
tainly attention-grabbing — never seem out
of context with the songs. There’s an old ad-
age that says less is more, but Jones seems
to throw such conventional wisdom out the
window by successfully employing a “more
is more” approach. On Bakwash his play-
ing is tasty, melodic, and deep, even if it is
flashy and a bit over the top. What’s perhaps
most compelling about Bakwash, however,
is that Jones’ seemingly off-the-cuff impro-
visational skills translate really well to the
recorded format.
We talked to Jones in his hometown of
Oklahoma City to talk about what went into
24 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
the making of his debut and how he devel-
oped his unique approach to playing bass.
Did you record Bakwash with a band in the
studio, or did you file-share via the internet?
Bakwash was recorded in three different
studios, two rehearsal rooms, two bedrooms,
and a garage [laughs]. All of the parts were
recorded at different times in different states,
and there remain a few bass and vocal tracks
that were recorded on the early demos, which
were basically meant to be scratch tracks, but
I found no reason to replace them. I applaud
[guitarist and mixing engineer] Jim Dofka
for managing all these tracks and somehow
making it all sound uniform.
How did you go about creating the
framework of the tunes for others to cut their
tracks?
I recorded all the bass, vocals, keys, and
some guitars first; then I sent it to Dofka to
record the guitars and solos; then we sent it
to Jeff [Martin] to record the drums. I know
it seems weird to do the drums last, but it
gave Jeff an advantage: He knew exactly what
was going on with each instrument and the
vocals, at all times. It created the ability to
throw in odd-ball drum fills without affecting
anyone else’s part.
At what point did you write your bass parts?
What’s weird is I usually write my bass
parts last, even though I hear them the whole
time in my head. I just don’t commit to any-
thing right away, because it often happens
 bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 25
BRIAN K. DENTON PHOTOGRAPHY
Rev Jones

26 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com


that I’ll be recording the bass track and a new
bass line will pop in my head, and then an-
other one, and another one, and before you
know it I’ve changed the part to make the
song better.
How did you track your bass?
I split my signal in half with a Radial ABY
box to two Phil Jones Bass amps, one clean
and one distorted. I leave the EQ flat, but I
cut 630Hz out; on basses, 630Hz sounds
farty. I usually don’t mic my cabs. I just run
a direct signal from each head. I feel that I
have more control over my sound using DI
lines than I would moving mics around until
it sounds right.
What are you using to get such killer distor­
tion, and how do you employ it so effectively in
the mix?
I actually have the same overdrive sound
at all times; it just seems to jump out more
on certain parts or blend back on other parts.
I use a Maxon ST-9PRO+ Super Tube Pro
[overdrive] that has a cool bass boost switch.
The amp EQ is exactly the same on both clean
and dirty, and the levels are even in the mix.
The real secret is making sure that they are
both in phase. If they’re out of phase, the
sound is very different and most people won’t
notice until its mixed — the bass just seems to
keep disappearing. So, always make sure they
are in phase. When you flip the phase-reverse
switch, the bass sound will get louder if they
were out of phase.
Live, you seem to incorporate a lot of
improvisation into your bass lines.
If I do a bass solo live, it is improvised,
with the exception of how it starts and how it
ends. If I’m playing with Steelheart or MSG,
I still do some improvising throughout the
show, mostly bass fills and maybe a bass
line here and there. But if I’m playing with
Leslie West and Mountain, I am improvis-
ing the whole time — I never play the songs
the same. It might sound similar because I
play similar things that fit over the parts,
but whatever pops in my mind gets played.
Improvising live not only helps build up sec-
ond-nature skills, it [improvising] also ben-
efits from those skills.
Rev Jones
What are your thoughts on warming up
pre-gig?
I do not warm up on bass before a show.
If you are at home running scales and pat-
terns, that’s great, and it is okay to warm up
a little bit before you play a show — but I’ve
seen so many people who warm up way too
much. Running scales is not the same as play-
ing a bass line. Practice makes better, playing
makes perfect. l
L I ST E N
Rev Jones, Bakwash [http://revjones.bigcartel.com/]
GEAR
Basses Dean Custom Rev Cadillac 4- and 6-strings, (all 4-strings) Dean
Cadillac w/Kahler tremolo, Dean Custom ML, Dean Demonator, Dean Hol-
lywood Z, Dean Pace Contra electric upright, Dean Pace electric upright,
Dean acoustic bass, Dean Espana classical guitar (6-string), Warr Guitars
Custom 12-string Touch Bass (fretted/fretless hybrid)
Rig Phil Jones Bass D-600, D-400 and D-200 Digital Bass Amps, Phil Jones
Bass 8B & PB-300 cabs
Effects Maxon VJR-9 Vintage Jet Riser, Maxon CS-9 Pro Stereo Chorus, Max-
on Overdrive ST-9PRO+ Super Tube, Maxon AD-9 Pro Analog Delay, Maxon
DB10 Dual Booster, Maxon BD10 Hybrid Bass Driver, TWA WR-3 Wah Rock-
er, Emma Electronic Okto Nøjs, Godlyke Power-All PA-9D 9V Digital Power
Supply Kit, HAO BL-1 Bass Liner, Radial Bones Twin City A-B-Y Amp Switch-
er, Rocktron Banshee talk box
Strings Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky Nickel Wound (.045–.105), Ernie Ball Hybrid
Slinky Nickel Wound (.032–.130), Ernie Ball Flat Wound (.045–.105)
Picks IntuneGP GrippX Standard (1.0mm)
Bass accessories Kahler bass fixed bridges, Kahler bass tremolos, DMT pick-
ups, Bartolini pickups, Lace USAB Ultra Slim acoustic bass pickups
Additional accessories Sennheiser EW 300 IEM G2 in-ears, Ultimate Ears
UE-10 in-ears, Sennheiser EW 172 G4 wireless system, Sennheiser e935 car-
dioid mic, Sennheiser e835 cardioid mic
CO N N E C T
Visit Rev online.
CHECK IT OUT
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 27
Silversun Pickups

PICKUP
ARTIST
Nikki Monninger powers Silversun
Pickups’ latest album with big riffs
and even bigger tones sculpted by
acclaimed producer Butch Vig
By Jon D’Auria

A
fter almost 20 years of anchoring
alternative-rock powerhouse Sil-
versun Pickups, a whole lot has
changed for Nikki Monninger. In
that span the band has released five critical-
ly acclaimed albums, they’ve traded intimate
venues for large headlining bills, they’ve
been nominated for Grammy Awards, and
for Monninger personally, she now has two
eight-year-old twin girls. But what hasn’t
changed is her massive role in the band’s
driving, anthemic music or her use of her be-
loved Gibson Thunderbird bass, which she’s
played since day one. And like the classic
muscle car that bears the same name, Nik-
ki’s prefers to put the pedal to the metal and
gun it at full speed. “It Doesn’t Matter Why,”

28 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 29
Nikki Monninger
the first single from Silversun’s fifth studio
album, Widow’s Weeds, exemplifies exactly
that with Monninger’s speedy pick work and
her melodic steering of the band.
Helmed by Nirvana/Smashing Pump-
kins/Muse producer Butch Vig, founder of
Garbage, the album cops a darker and more
reflective feel than previous Silversun re-
cords, as it propels from fast-paced riffs
that take the listener on a ride, to deep, or-
chestrated tracks that shift the vibe inward.
Known for her creative bass work and love of
musical motifs and cyclic lines, Monninger
exhibits her expansion as a player with broad
strokes of tonal dynamics, thanks in part to
Vig’s willingness to experiment in the stu-
30 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
dio and convey the sounds she’s always been
chasing. But tone aside, Monninger currently
finds herself in a state of elation with her new-
est material, her band, and her family. While
constant change can be a good thing, some
good things don’t always have to change.
When we chatted during the recording sessions
for your previous two albums, 2012’s Neck of
the Woods and 2015’s Better Nature, you were
heavily into funk bassists from the ’70s. What
was influencing your playing this time around?
I was listening to a lot of ’80s new wave
music like Duran Duran, Tears For Fears,
and Joy Division. Something about that
sound really hit me recently, and I got deep
 bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 31
Nikki Monninger
into the bass players from those bands. I like
to pull from any influence I can, from classi-
cal to rock to even movie scores, which Brian
[Aubert, singer/guitarist] is really into. When
we talk about writing our songs, he uses a lot
of vocabulary from scoring and sound design.
That’s why we like to utilize strings in our
L I ST E N music and make things thematic. But things
Silversun Pickups, don’t have to be musical to inspire you mu-
Widow’s Weeds [New sically. It can be art or nature or movies that
Machine] drive you to create.
What was it like for you to work with Butch
GEAR Vig?
Bass Gibson Thunder- Butch is so easygoing, and he makes ev-
bird, Epiphone El Cap- eryone feel so comfortable, that it’s really easy
itan IV Acoustic Bass to open up when you’re in the studio with
Rig Ampeg SVT-CL him. You can fully trust him and explore fur-
head, SVT 8x10 cab- ther. For the first week, we went to his house
inet to do pre-production at his home studio.
Pedals Zvex Woolly We recorded four songs with him, and then
Mammoth Bass Fuzz, he had to take a break to tour with Garbage,
Boss ODB-3 Over- which turned out great because that allowed
drive, Electro-Harmo- us to have a chance to breathe and write new
nix Bass Micro Synth, songs. I always get so nervous about record-
Fulltone Bass-Drive ing, because I sense the finality of it — that
Mosfet, Aguilar TLC once it comes out commercially, it’s like that
Compressor, Dark- forever. I try to shift that nervousness toward
Glass Vintage Deluxe putting in the effort of doing my best work
Strings Ernie Ball possible and being proud of what I record.
Roundwound .045– Butch is the perfect catalyst for that because
.105 he’s so supportive and encouraging and he
Other Roland SPD-SX creates a safe space for you to project what
Sampler, Suzuki Om- you’re really trying to express.
nichord OM-27 Butch has produced so many albums and
has captured some iconic bass tones. Did you
try anything new in working with him?
On the song “Simpatico,” I used my fin-
gers instead of a pick. I typically only use a
pick, but I felt like that song needed a fin-
gerstyle tone, and I’m a newbie at that, so it
was definitely a challenge. It ended up getting
more of a dub sound because of that. The last
song, “Chameleon,” has my favorite bass tone
that I’ve ever captured in the studio. I wanted
something really aggressive and chaotic, but
I wanted to keep the low end, which is a dif-
ficult thing to mix — and he did exactly what
I asked of him. He pulled it off precisely how
I heard it in my head. The best part of work-
32 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
ing with Butch is that he always asks each one
of us individually what we want our part to
sound like. He’s in a band, so he values in-
dividual players and what they bring to the
group and add to the sum of the whole, so we
always knew he was listening to each of us.
You get a very different bass tone on “Bag
of Bones” and “Songbirds.” Did you use your
acoustic bass for those?
Believe it or not, I actually used my
Thunderbird on the whole album. For those
two songs we went for a Peter Hook/Joy Di-
vision type of sound, which we achieved in
the mix. I was really happy with how those
came out from a tone standpoint. It’s nice to
explore, but I always make sure that my bass
always carries a lot of low end. I don’t use a
lot of pedals live anymore, because I want my
sound to have the big body. If I go for differ-
ent sounds, I try to manipulate them with my
hands on my bass. To me, the first respon-
sibility of bass is to stay true to the deep-
er foundation, unless there’s a specific tone
you’re going for on a particular song that re-
quires some chaos.
“It Doesn’t Matter Why” has a super-catchy
and driving bass line.
I knew when we were writing that song
that the bass needed to keep moving in an al-
most robotic way, or like a train. I love repet-
itive playing, and I knew the bass’ role in that
song was to push everything else around me
up and drive the beat. I added in some tran-
sition notes to those parts, and Butch raised
them in the mix, and I’m really happy with
how that came out.
A great element of your playing is your use
of repetitive, thematic bass lines and ostinatos,
like in “Growing Old Is Getting Old.” Is that your
M.O. in writing?
I love that song so much. We always
get excited when one player plays one riff
through a whole song — maybe even just
three notes — and then when they switch it
up and add even just one more note, it chang-
es everything. There’s beauty in that simplic-
ity, and a little change in that driving motion
can shift everything. Same thing with drum-
mers; if they play the same beat over and over

and then throw in one hi-hat fill, it can shift
the whole course of the song.
You’re doing a lot of singing on the new
material, per usual. Has this batch of songs been
challenging in juggling both duties?
I’m still a hesitant singer, but Butch made
it easy to try things vocally. It really helped
my confidence levels. I like being in there
Nikki Monninger
when Brian records his parts so that I can
think of harmonies in that moment. Brian
and I have a special bond between our voices
when we sing together, and he’s always sup-
portive of my singing. You have to feel safe to
sing, and it’s important to feel comfortable in
that space to do that. I’m lucky to have a band
that likes my singing, because I’m not a tradi-
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 33
Nikki Monninger
Silversun Pickups: tional singer; I don’t have a rock & roll voice,
(L–R) Christopher but it somehow works in our band.
Guanlao, Joe Lester, This is your fifth studio album. How has
Nikki Monninger, your playing developed in that span?
Brian Aubert When we first started the band, I had bare-
ly been playing bass. Brian and I were room-
mates and he was playing guitar, so I picked
up the bass, and now here we are. I’ve learned
so much in that 20-year span, but I still feel
like there’s so much room for growth. I always
want to learn more, but I think that I’ve added
to my knowledge with every album. The bass
in our music doesn’t have to show off; it needs
to make its own path, but it doesn’t need to
take the spotlight. I try to dance around Bri-
an’s voice as much as I can. I always try to
move with his vocals and what he’s singing.
You’re still rocking the Thunderbird after all
these years. How much is that bass part of your
musical voice?
When I first playing started I used a Pre-
cision, but I was never quite happy with my
tone with it. That bass ended up getting sto-
len early on, and I had always wanted to try
a Thunderbird, and I immediately fell in love
and it felt like home. Now when I play other
basses it feels so different. I even stand a cer-
tain way with my Thunderbird. If I’m holding
a different bass, I feel awkward because the
balance is different, and I do think that I ma-
34 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
nipulate the strings in a certain way strictly
based off the T-Bird. Companies often offer
me their basses, but I politely decline because
I have my bass and my sound. Should I be
trying other basses?
Nah, you’ve become well known for your
T-Bird sound.
Okay, I’ll check back next album.
What have you been working on in your
personal practice?
I get nervous playing live, so I like to prac-
tice the songs a million times before we hit
the road. Right now that’s the mode I’ve been
in. My twin girls wake me up at 6 AM, and
then I sit on the edge of the bed and play my
bass for about an hour before I have to get go-
ing. But pretty soon my daughters won’t want
anything to do with me, so I have to enjoy it
now. It can be hard juggling being a mom and
being in a band, so I’m trying to savor all of
those moments when I do get to be with my
girls and also get a chance to practice.
Do you think either of them will want to
follow in your footsteps and pick up the bass?
This morning they were both singing one
of our new songs, “Freakazoid,” in the bath-
tub together, so I guess there’s a chance. It
was really adorable. But to them it doesn’t
matter that I’m in a rock band. To them I’m
just Mom, and that’s fine with me. l
 Jump Head

The Elrick Expat NJS Bass

• zero-fret ngerboard
• “heel-less” body design
• Bartolini jazz coil pickups
• Bartolini 3-band pre-amp
• active/passive preamp operation
• switchable mid-frequency control
• Elrick / Hipshot hardware
• Elrick hardshell case included
• 4 & 5-string models available

Check out Daric Bennett’s Bass Lessons

https://daricbennett.com

www.elrick.com | 512-873-8043

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 35

Jump Head

36 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

Weezer
SCOTT
SHRINER
Can’t Knock The Hustle
By Jon D’Auria | Photo by Karl Koch
IT
started as a suggestion in a tweet
from a 14-year-old fan in Ohio.
Perhaps it was a joke, or maybe
she was serious, but she polite-
ly asked Weezer to cover the song “Africa”
by Toto. Weezer drummer Patrick Wilson
responded to that tweet, and shortly after-
ward, a video emerged of the band granting
her wish and playing the beloved 1982 hit.
Before long, that video ignited the social me-
dia fronts and went viral, where it now stands
at over 9.5 million views on YouTube, while
the track reached #1 on the Billboard Alter-
native chart. A new wave of millennial fans
on college campuses and in high school hall-
ways fell in love with that tune, thanks to its
resurrection by one of the most popular al-
ternative-rock bands of the past three de-
cades. So, being the intrepid musicians that
they are, Weezer decided to put out a whole
album of covers from the ’80s and ’90s, and
thus sparked the band’s Teal Album.
For Scott Shriner, this was nothing new —
he grew up playing in cover bands his whole
life and earned his chops from riffing along
with John Entwistle, Chris Squire, and John
Paul Jones. Shriner stepped up to the chal-
lenge and kicked out bass-heavy versions of
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 37
“Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, “Paranoid”
by Black Sabbath, and “Everybody Wants to
Rule the World” by Tears For Fears. But for
the prolific Weezer, one album in 2019 wasn’t
enough, so the band went back into the studio
and released a full LP of originals only three
months later, which they dubbed the Black
Album. The record departs from the sounds
of 2017’s Pacific Daydream with bigger, more
pronounced tones, and even a heavy hand of
synth bass provided by Shriner, along with
some seriously fun 4-string lines in the songs
“Living in L.A.,” “Too Many Thoughts in My
Head,” and “The Prince Who Wanted Every-
thing.” Spending hours on end kicking out
bass ideas with producer Dave Sitek, Shriner
made sure that every line on the album hit its
mark, and the result is a mixed bag of styles
that display his unique approach.
To fuel that approach, Scott used a wide
selection from his impressive collection of
basses and amps that he’s been hunting down
through his 18 years of being in Weezer and
beyond. And when we say impressive, we
mean it — we could write a whole feature on
his vintage gear alone. Shriner was selective in
his tone choices, for both albums even using
multiple basses and amp configurations with-
Scott Shriner
in individual songs. For a relentless tone junk-
ie who has a competitive side in raising his
own bar, this meticulous process paid off in
the end. If you don’t believe us, catch Weezer
on their current tour, where they’re kicking
out classic hits, covers, and new tunes from
their massive 300-song show catalog. And in
case it’s not obvious, Scott will be the one clad
L I ST E N in a slick outfit, belting harmonies and playing
Weezer, Teal Album one of his gorgeous vintage basses in front of a
and Black Album towering stack of classic cabinets.
[Crush Music]
What sparked Weezer’s jolt of productivity?
GEAR Starting with the White Album [2016],
Bass (on current tour) we figured out a system where we can keep
1959 Fender Preci- kicking out albums every year. Rivers [Cuo-
sion Bass, 1960 Fender mo, frontman] had two folders of songs; one
Precision, 1965 Fender was to go toward the White Album and the
Jazz Bass, 1962 Fender other to a Black Album, and he was think-
Precision ing that the black stuff was going to be a lot
Rig 1973 Marshall darker and he was going to swear all over
Super Bass Head, Hi- it. That didn’t really end up being the fi-
Watt 200-watt head, nal product, but it’s different-sounding, for
Sun Model-T head, sure. Then the covers album came up and we
Emperor 4x12 guitar just jumped on it.
cabinet & ported 8x10 Did a single tweet from a fan really lead to
bass cabinet creating the Teal Album?
Pedals MXR Phase Pretty much. We put out the “Africa” cover
100, Wren and Cuff for fun, and our manager suggested doing a full
Tri Pie ’70, Dwarf- cover album after that. Since I grew up playing
craft Baby Thundaa, in cover bands, for a long time I was better at
Guyatone WR2 Wha learning other people’s stuff than creating my
Rocker, Endangered own music; I’m not recommending other play-
Audio Research ers to do that, but that’s how I learned bass. I’ve
AD4096 met musicians who cannot learn other people’s
Strings Ernie Ball songs, and I totally respect that, but I came
Slinky Mediums from a world where you had to be able to play a
(.045–.105) lot of styles to survive. So doing a covers album
Synths Moog Taurus was very natural for me.
3, Minimoog Voyager, How did you go about choosing the songs?
Dave Smith Instru- We all kicked in ten songs that we wanted
ments Prophet-6 to do. The funny thing about Weezer is that if
the four of us ever made a Venn diagram where
we all name what music we’re into, our circles
would never really cross [laughs]. If you were
in the room when we were bringing our ideas
to the table, you’d wonder how these guys are
even in a band together. Somehow we man-
aged to come up with that list, and we were
38 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
all excited about doing Tear For Fears and all
of that — but when Rivers brought in [TLC’s]
“No Scrubs,” we all kind of rolled our eyes at
him. Then when I sat down and started play-
ing it, it clicked and I realized that this song is
rad and the bass line I was playing was dope
and how is this happening? Then I got really
excited about it. I don’t know if anyone likes it
or not, but I think it’s bumping.
How did you dial in your tone differently on
each song to capture the right vibe?
For a lot of it I used my ’65 Precision
where I bypass the tone and volume pot and
I’m wired straight to the pickup through an
SVT rig and a Kemper [amp modeler] with a
Sun Model T modeled in it. I have so many
amps, but I stuck with that. A lot of my heads
and cabs are profiled in the Kemper. I played
like four different basses on that album — my
Jazz Bass with flatwounds, my Rickenbacker,
my ’62 Precision, which is my staple, and my
’65 Jazz. I had to figure out what worked best
for each song; some songs needed different
elements from the verses to choruses, so I’d
use different basses within a song.
How much fun was it playing the iconic
“Billie Jean” bass line?
That song is no joke. It’s a relentless line
to keep playing and keep even the whole way.
I’m not going to act like it took me just a sec-
ond to learn that and be able to pull it off — it
took me a minute to get it all down and ready
to record. It took a lot of concentration. Af-
ter tracking it for a couple of hours, I was
strained, because it’s a lot of handwork. Then
I had to go play it live and sing harmonies on
it. I actually wanted to hear more synth bass
on that track, but we blended the keybass
with the electric bass.
What was the writing process like for the
Black Album?
Our process has definitely changed over
the years. We’re all free to send the producer
we’re working with song ideas, and then they
go through all of them and pick songs and de-
cide what would make a cohesive album. This
time around, that producer was Dave Sitek
[TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Little
Dragon]. Then we all go in separately and re-
THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION
OF MARKBASS EXPERIENCE!
18 YEARS OF TONE HISTORY
FEATURED ON A JEWEL
THAT’S READY TO SATISFY
ANY BASS PLAYER

REAL DI BOX LIMITER CONTROL TUBE PREAMP

The BALANCED DI OUT with a dedicated Choose from a modern reaction or old The Little Mark Vintage features a Tube
transformer is optimized to give pure, full, rich, generation limiter setting and everything Preamp, to get rich and warm tone full
linear sound on all frequencies. in between. of harmonics.

NEW EQ SETTING/ GOLD LINE TOP MUTE AND ON/OFF EQ

3-WAY SWITCH FEATURES Footswitchable MUTE is a very useful
New freq setting with a balanced tone that Gold plated circuits and top quality feature and you can turn EQ on and off
easily cuts in the mix, plus a 3-WAY switch selected components providing the purest remotely as well.
(FLAT/CUT/OLD). and cleanest sound you can imagine.

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 39

Scott Shriner

KARL KOCH

cord our parts. On the Black Album we didn’t and I’d have to just hop right in and play bass
really see each other at all in the studio. A lot all day. Dave is a bass player, too, so I real-
of times I’d go in to track, and it would be ly trusted him and his ideas. We’d put a sec-
the first time I’d hear the song in [that] state, tion on loop, and I’d try a bunch of different

40 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com


approaches until he started freaking out, and
then we knew we had something. If he wasn’t
saying anything or moving, chances are I
wasn’t doing anything for him, so it became
a game for me of how I could blow that guy’s
mind for each song.
How did you approach your sound?
Over the years I’ve realized that a lot of
the time I was more in the guitar range of
things, with the amount of the midrange I
have on my bass. That sounds awesome when
the bass is isolated and on its own, but then
when it’s put in the mix, it kind of messed
with the guitar parts. I learned that it served
the band much better if I stuck more on the
low side of things. Now I know I have to real-
ly stick to my role and supply that depth. We
already have two guitar players in the band.
I grew up listening to Chris Squire and John
Entwistle and I’ve always loved treble attack,
but sometimes in this band, it’s better if I stay
out of that range. As an example, on a song
like “High as a Kite,” I approached that with
more of a dub sound.
The Black Album features a lot of synth
bass parts. What led to you taking that route?
The evenness and thickness of the synth
is so different from an electric, and when I’m
going for a legato sound to destroy the Earth
with, Minimoogs are great and powerful for
that. It’s way less expressive for me, because
I’m not a great keyboard player, but it real-
ly packs a punch with low end. Some of my
bass friends always tell me about pedals that
will make my bass sound like a synth, but
if I want my bass to sound like a synth, I’ll
play a synth. Some people are just more of
the mind that they need to evolve the instru-
ment to keeps kids involved, but the sound of
an acoustic kick drum and a Fender bass will
never go away.
You use some cool note placement on “The
Prince Who Wanted Everything.”
Dave and I worked on that line a lot to-
gether, listening to what the guitars were do-
ing and going in another direction altogether.
It’s kind of a hokey swing feel that goes along
with everyone else. It’s not something I
would have played ten or 15 years ago, but I’ll
Scott Shriner
give Dave some of the credit for helping me
find that and being open-minded to try new
things and evolve my playing. I love this band
because it gives me the opportunity to grow
and do my thing. I get set in my ways and pat-
terns and do what’s comfortable for me, but
I’m super happy to be challenged and learn
something new and not have an ego about it.
What have you been practicing lately?
I went through a heavy James Brown pe-
riod, which to me is like going to bass boot
camp. It taught me why the one is so import-
ant, why having such a fat sound is import-
ant, and how to play the same thing for three
minutes with no fills or extra notes. I learned
so much from that stuff. And then when I
need a break from that and I need to get my
grind on, I’ll play some Yes to kick my butt.
Squire’s lines are such workouts and they’re
great to play with to get your chops up.
Weezer plays long shows that pull from a
huge catalog. What is that like for you?
Heading out on our current tour, Rivers
sent us a master list of 300 songs and asked
if we were cool playing all of them. I wrote
back and said that I’d play any song on that
list with a few hours notice. Again, that’s kind
of the competitive side to me where I love a
challenge, and if someone is asking to me a
duel, then bring it on. It’s exciting to have so
many songs because it keeps the shows en-
gaging. And the songs are so good that all I
have to do is help the audience enjoy them-
selves and support Rivers in his show. My job
is pretty clear.
How does it feel to have solidified your
place in the music and legacy of Weezer?
It wasn’t luck or anything. I didn’t know
any of those guys, and they auditioned 20
or 30 bass players, a lot of whom were their
friends, so I earned my place in this band and
I take that very seriously. I’m just so grate-
ful and proud. It’s how I would imagine get-
ting made into a mafia family would be. I’m
a made man now. I’m a full member of this
band, and it’s not like nobody can kill me or
anything, but I feel like I’ve cemented my
place in this legacy. I’d be lying if I didn’t say
that it’s pretty fucking great. l
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 41
MUSICAL
MIGRATION
Michael League Channels
His Travels & Growth Into
Snarky Puppy’s Vibrant Latest,
Immigrance
By Chris Jisi
TO
the benefit of our ears,
Michael League has
not been content to
remain inside the cozy
kennel of Snarky Puppy, the Grammy-win-
ning, groove-rooted, 12-piece instrumental
band he founded and leads — widely rec-
ognized as the best of its breed. Instead,
League has been a most willing collabo-
rator, producing, composing, and play-
ing bass, guitar, and percussion with the
likes of David Crosby, Becca Stevens, and
Lucy Woodward; creating another kick-
ass band, the Delta-Creole-African mashup
Bokanté; and starting his own internation-
ally focused record label, GroundUP Music
— with its own annual festival, no less. And
that’s all in between forays to foreign lands
to learn exotic instruments and traditional
music and culture.
A bonus to League unleashing his
multi-talents and intrinsic curiosity is, of
course, that he brings his gained wisdom
back to the Snarky Puppy doghouse. That’s
especially apparent on the band’s latest, Im-
migrance. The eight-track disc (with three
bonus tracks and three extended tracks to
come throughout 2019) has a hefty world
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 43
music infusion, a lean and hard-driving
sound, and Puppy’s trademark ability to
absorb the influence of classic sounds and
players, run it through their filter, and re-
spectfully create something original.
A military brat born at Long Beach Na-
val Hospital in California on April 24, 1984,
League moved with his family to Montgom-
ery, Alabama at age seven. Three years lat-
er, they settled in northern Virginia, where
Michael — who had tried drums and violin
— settled on guitar, at 13. Turned on to jazz
by his older brother, a drummer, League
started his own jazz–funk group in high
school. At 17, he was asked to fill a void and
play bass in the school’s senior jazz band.
He remembers, “I was reluctant. They had
a Fender Squier with old strings, so I took
it home, and that first night I fell totally
in love with it.” He also began puttering
around on the school’s upright, while gath-
ering the influences of James Jamerson,
Jaco, John Paul Jones, Bootsy Collins, Ray
Brown, and Dave Holland.
League’s next stop was bass major at
the esteemed University of North Texas
music department. In his freshman year,
he formed Snarky Puppy, calling upon nine
Michael League
of his classmates and grabbing a discard-
ed name from his brother’s Irish band. “I
was writing instrumental music that was an
amalgamation of my listening list at the time:
Pat Metheny, Avishai Cohen, Astor Piazzolla,
Modereko, Brazilian music, Afrobeat, clas-
sic R&B and funk, Björk, and Radiohead.”
League booked a gig in the basement of a piz-
L I ST E N za place in Denton, Texas, drawing 30 peo-
Snarky Puppy, Immi- ple. Eleven albums and countless miles later,
grance [2019, Ground- Michael made his Texas return to cut Immi-
UP], Culcha Vulcha grance.
[2016, GroundUP];
David Crosby, Here What was the spark that led to this record?
If You Listen [2018, It was simply that we wanted to play new
BMG]; Bokanté & the songs; it had been three years since [the al-
Metropole Orkest, bum] Culcha Vulcha. We’ve had interesting
What Heat [2018, experiences since then, with the band play-
Real World]; Bokanté, ing in some new places. Also, with everyone
Strange Circles [2017, in the band leading and composing for their
GroundUP]; Derek own groups now, we felt it was a good time
Smalls, Smalls Change to put all of that knowledge in one place. We
[2017, BMG] have eight different composers on the album;
of the eight songs on the [initial] album re-
GEAR lease, I wrote four, and there’s one each from
Basses 1959 Fender four other writers. We’re moving in the di-
Precision (all original, rection of having multiple composers con-
maple fingerboard); tribute pieces, because everyone knows what
Alleva-Coppolo LG5 the band is now. To record, we returned to
Classic, Moog Model Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, where we cut
B synth Culcha Vulcha, having had such a great time
Strings Dunlop Flat- there. They have a huge tracking room, lots of
wounds (.045–.105) analog gear, incredible cooks — I still dream
Rig Michael League of their huevos rancheros — and we knew
Signature Markbass what the space was capable of. We cut live as
Casa head and Classic a band and added some overdubs.
Casa 108 cabinet How did the title reference to immigration
Effects MXR Vintage come about?
Bass Octave, MXR It actually came as an observation about
Carbon Copy Delay, the music after I mixed it all. It became clear
MXR Bass Octave that the songs were coming from a lot of dif-
Deluxe, MXR Phase ferent places and styles around the world,
90, MXR Volume X as we have done since our first record. But
Mini Pedal; 3Leaf Au- even with an Amercian funk-ish tune like
dio Octabvre MK II, “Bad Kids in the Back” — which is an homage
Earthquaker Dispatch to [Jamaica, Queens keyboardist] Bernard
Master, Earthquaker Wright, who was our mentor and teacher
Spatial Delivery when we started out — we didn’t discover
Bernard until we were in our 20s. So learning
44 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
about him was like learning about Moroccan
music, in a way. All music is foreign to us at
one point. No one is born playing music, you
have to learn, one artist at a time.
In the broader sense, the album title is
maybe a jab at the rampant racism, nation-
alism, and xenophobia that has become re-
cently empowered in politics. To me, it’s all
about our perspective on identity. There are
those who feel strongly that they are the own-
ers of a certain place, or the essence of a cer-
tain place. But we all come from somewhere
else, if we just look behind us a little. We’re
all the product of immigration, and learning
about music is a beautiful way of tracking and
charting that journey.
There’s a more raw, kinetic sound to the
record.
I think after making Culcha Vulcha,
which is very much a studio record, we were
itching to write the kind of music that would
be fun to play live. Personally, I was trying
to write with a more aggressive edge, and I
think a lot of the guys brought in music like
that — darker and heavier. As time has gone
on, it seems like the band enjoys grooving
more, and we’re writing pieces that are cen-
tered around how it feels to play, versus how
excited people get to hear something virtuo-
sic. I think our desire to have less bombast
and more subtlety and depth in the writing
comes through here.
The opener, “Chonks,” establishes that
concept.
Exactly — a funky, dirty, feels-good, fun-
to-play song. I wrote it at a soundcheck in
Germany while messing around on Clavinet.
[Drummer] Larnell [Lewis] joined in, and I
recorded it on my phone. A week before the
album session, I turned it into a tune, add-
ing the melodies and harmonies, the chorus,
and the outro section. There are little ele-
ments that make it a Puppy tune for me: the
rhythmic identity of the chorus, the rhythmi-
cally intricate melodies with the horns, and
the weird, moving contrapuntal accompani-
ment when the melodies enter on the verses.
Then we have the Hendrix/Band Of Gypsys
type of riff in the outro. I used my workhorse
 the new
Fullerton Deluxe
basses

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 45

Michael League
CO N N E C T ’59 Fender P-Bass, which is on almost every
track.
CHECK IT OUT
“Bigly Strictness” mixes techno and indie
Check out the “Bad rock, with a cool outro groove.
Kids to the Back” It’s kind of rock in the verses and hip-
official video. hop/swung funk in the choruses. It’s the
piece I had the most doubts about, and then
CHECK IT OUT
we played it and it felt great. I used a pick and
Watch “Xavi” two different octave pedals at different mo-
performed live. ments, which is a fun approach for me, and
Shaun [Martin] doubles me on Moog bass.
The groove at the end is something I learned
when I went to Turkey for six weeks in 2017
to study percussion. The rhythm is called
the “Funky Arap,” from the virtuoso Turk-
ish doholla [an Arabic bass drum] player Mi-
sirli Ahmet. He invented a whole library of
grooves, and this one is a variation on arap,
one of the most common grooves in the Mid-
dle East. We’re playing it pretty much note
for note, but in half time. I thought it would
be good for grounding the solo section at the
end. Our three percussionists are playing
daf [a large Kurdish frame drum], bendir [a
North Africa frame drum], and darkbuka [a
goblet-shaped drum] here.
“Xavi” has a Middle Eastern flavor and a
groove in three that feels like four.
The song is inspired by Gnawa, Berber,
and popular music from Morocco, and it’s
specifically based on a common groove/style
in Morocco called chaabi, which indeed is in
3/4 but is generally felt in a fast 12/8. I tried
to write a tune that playfully mixes the way
you can feel the pulse, so some sections feel
more like three and others feel like four. Mo-
roccan music doesn’t have a lot of chords, so
when you put in modern harmony, that in-
stantly takes it to a different space. But I tried
to respect the traditions, using the Gnawa
mserah rhythm in the krakeb [a large, iron,
castinet-like instrument], and a variation on
a typical Gnawa percussion call and ending,
as well as some typical Berber vocal phrases
migrated to the flutes near the end. The most
important aspect for me was that the song be
funky and driving. The chaabi groove at that
tempo feels like the music is gliding along.
46 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
I used my ’59 P-Bass, which is doubled by a
Moog Model B synth in the choruses.
The band sounds super tight playing the
syncopated lines on the Bernard Wright tribute
“Bad Kids to the Back.”
Those lines work because as a band, we
all know and agree on how we want the subdi-
visions to feel. It was written by Justin Stan-
ton, who plays trumpet and keyboards for
us. Justin is a terrific, conceptual composer.
Here, it’s, “What can you do with this specif-
ic kind of the funk?” Harmonically the piece
moves around a lot, and the melody starts in
the horns and moves over to the guitar and
bass. We also have all three drummers trad-
ing solos; it’s the only time we’ve ever done
that. I played my ’59 P-Bass, and Justin takes
over in the choruses on a Moog Model B.
“Even Us” poignantly captures the plight of
many modern-day immigrants.
I started writing that in Turkey, in 2017,
after I’d been playing oud for just a week or
two. [Ed. note: The oud is an 11-string gui-
tar-like instrument, ranging from the bot-
tom B string of a baritone guitar to the D
below a guitar’s open E string on top.] When
you first play an instrument you don’t fully
understand yet, you end up stumbling upon
ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
That’s how I came up with the opening pro-
gression and the B-section accompaniment,
which then sat on my phone for two years.
On a 45-minute flight from Dallas to El Paso
to come to the studio, I busted out the phone
memo and wrote the melody and solo sec-
tion, and we recorded it. The song has a lot
of what I learned from studying with my mu-
sician friends in Turkey, but it also has in-
fluence from Argentinian composer Astor
Piazzolla, heard through Zach Brock’s violin.
For the bass, I thought about playing upright
or an acoustic bass guitar, but there’s some-
thing about the B string on a 5-string bass.
Like, when the very first bass note enters, the
low D, that’s the most important note in the
song to me. I needed the sound of a 5-string
with J/J pickups, so I played my Aleva-Cop-
pollo 5. Sometimes what I need in the low
Michael League
end is that specific.
Why does Snarky Puppy prefer to be an
instrumental band?
It’s very egalitarian; you can play in Ja-
pan, Poland, or Saudi Arabia, and people will
understand the music equally. I mean, they’ll
understand according to their musical famil-
iarity and biases, but without lyrics, no one
has an advantage in understanding the mu-
sic’s message. I think instrumental music is
beautiful in that way. Plus, there are so many
possibilities: Who’s playing the melody?
Who’s playing the groove? There isn’t a con-
stant emphasis on a singer. It’s funny — as a
listener, I’m not an instrumental-music guy;
95 percent of what I listen to is vocal music.
But maybe that’s why I have so much fun
with the challenge of an instrumental band.
Why have you never done a bass feature on
any of the band’s recordings?
I just don’t hear music that way. The bass
is almost always the groove and the foun-
dation in my head. I don’t think about my-
self when I’m writing a piece and I get to the
bass line. My thinking is, “What’s going to be
the best thing to play for the song?” And the
answer to that question has never been, “A
bass feature!” [Laughs.] But I love hearing
features by players like Marcus [Miller] or
Victor [Wooten], or Richard Bona, because
that’s a part of their personality. I also love
the groove side of their playing, which is of-
ten less noticed but equally inspiring. They
have the ability to create these great features,
and I just don’t have it. It has never occurred
to me to write something like that. Maybe I
will at some point, if I hear it. Once I hear it,
I’ll write it.
A lot of artists cite the “Snarky Puppy
model” for getting their music out there. Have
you heard that?
I hear that a lot, but I couldn’t tell you
what it is, because I’ve been at the center of
doing it and it’s the only way I’ve ever known.
I’d have an idea and we’d try it; if it didn’t
work, we didn’t do it again. I suppose the ele-
ments could include going on tour for a long
time, making videos in the studio, using so-
cial media versus trying to get a record label
48 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
to do it all for you, trying to create your own
path instead of conforming yourself to a spe-
cific, pre-established scene, and giving away
some music for free in order to make people
willing to buy it. For the latter, we thought, if
the music we’re creating is good, let’s make it
accessible to as many people as possible, and
we’ll draw them into our world. Once they’re
in, we can make money other ways, through
concert tickets and merchandising. I suppose
that particular scenario has been happening
in some form for a century. I feel like every-
one is doing all of the above now, and proba-
bly were before us, as well. But if we inspired
anyone or were among the first to use some of
those methods, I’m glad we provided a path-
way for others.
Let’s talk about new artists that you
like. I imagine your radar isn’t up for young,
instrumental, jazz-influenced groove bands.
I hear enough of us! Although, there
are good ones out there. It may seem obvi-
ous, but I’m a huge fan of everyone on our
GroundUp label roster. I encourage every-
one to check them out. More and more, I’m
drawn to bands that are using folkloric mu-
sic as a foundation upon which to be inno-
vative, like La Perla, from Colombia, who
played our festival. It’s four women from Bo-
gota who sing and play gaita [a long, vertical
flute-like instrument] and percussion; they
sound folkloric, but most of their music is
original. Or, C4 Trio from Venezuela — three
cuatro players who are masters of their tra-
ditional music, but they’re writing unbeliev-
able tunes, and they put on one of the best
shows I’ve ever seen. I like working with art-
ists from other parts of the world who have
a solid knowledge of where they came from
but are not content to stay there. David Cros-
by is like that, as well. He comes from the
singer–songwriter tradition, but he’s down
to get weird and push boundaries, as we did
on his latest record [Here If You Listen, 2018,
BMG].
With many young artists from the States,
there doesn’t seem to be as strong a connection
to the music that preceded them.
That’s a concern right now, for sure. In-
creasingly, young musicians here are trying
to do something new and innovative, which is
both healthy and essential to the evolution of
music — and an integral part of the American
music tradition — but many don’t have a tru-
ly solid foundation upon which to build. Let’s
say you’re trying to innovate in funk-based
music. If you were put onstage with P-Funk,
would you hold your own and sound good?
These days, you have social-media stars who
have never played a gig or done a tour. There’s
so much pressure to brand yourself and mar-
ket yourself as unique that many people are
more focused on that than taking care of busi-
ness in a musical way: learning exactly what
the greats played, or seeking them out and
playing with them, in that master/apprentice
way. Of course, my perspective is based on
the way that I came up: music all day, every
day; practicing; lessons; in the van listening;
setting up the gear of players better than us;
playing in an endless array of bars and clubs;
and having veteran musicians or bandleaders
kick my ass — figuratively, in most cases. You
should always be searching for your voice
and trying to draw out what’s unique about
yourself. But an absolutely essential part of
that process is, ironically, getting inside of
the heads and hands of the masters, and gen-
uinely embracing being taught. It opens you
up to new ideas and perspectives that unlock
your own hidden potential. When this is used
as the foundation for creating your own mu-
sic, actual innovation is possible.
Your schedule is always jam-packed. Dare I
ask?
Snarky Puppy is going to tour for this
record through December. Next year will be will be ready or what the direction it will go
a big one for my other band, Bokanté. We’ll in, but I’ve begun the process, which is ex-
have new music coming out; I’m producing citing for me. It will be nice to sing again,
solo albums by [Bokanté vocalist] Malika Ti- which I really only get the chance to do with
rolien and Peruvian legend Susana Baca, as David Crosby. What’s most inspiring for me
well as upcoming albums with Malian ngo- right now is practicing and learning new in-
ni [a West African string instrument] mas- struments, like the gimbri [a three-stringed
ter Bassekou Kouyate, Portugese fado singer Moroccan lute], doholla, krakeb, davul [a
Gisela João, Indian singer and flutist Vari- double-headed Turkish drum played with
jashree Venugopal, and my good friends Bec- a stick and a mallet], daf, and cajon. I’m in
ca Stevens & Secret Trio. I’m also starting to danger of slipping further down my little
write for a solo record; I don’t know when it wannabe-multi-instrumentalist hole! l

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 49

Michael League

PLUCKING PILGRIMAGE
M
ichael League’s ’59 Fend-
er Precision is a world
traveler on Immigrance,
drawing from influences that in-
clude North Africa, Turkey, Argen-
tina, and New York City’s Jamaica,
Queens. Example 1 shows the open-
ing two-bar bass groove of “Coven,”
written by Puppy guitarist Chris
McQueen. Dig the detail Michael
gives to note length throughout, his
greasy, horizontal vibrato in bar 1,
and how both factors give the 7/4
groove a sense of pocket.
Ex. 2 shows the three differ-
ent bass lines League plays during
the solo sections on his composi-
tion “Xavi,” based on the chaabi
groove in Moroccan music, which
is in three but is felt in four. Let-
ter A opens the tune and contin-
ues in the first solo section (guitar
and violin). Nail the downbeats
as you drive the pulse along. Let-
ter B enters at 3:41, for Bobby
Sparks’ synth solo. Here, the em-
phasis is shifted as League lays off
the downbeat. Note durations are
again key, and he hard-plucks the
G–A at the end of the phrase. Let-
ter C takes its changes from a horn
melody just prior to Chris Lau-
rence’s piano solo at 7:05. League’s
groove here especially brings out
the slower four feel against the
three pulse. In your mind, count
the lower notes as quarter-notes
starting, on the first low D of bar 1.
The next low D would be beat two
of the four feel. The first Bb in the
2nd measure would be beat three,
and the last Bb would be beat four.
Finally, Ex. 3a and 3b are from
“Bad Kids to the Back,” trumpeter/
keyboardist Justin Stanton’s piece
in tribute to Puppy mentor Ber-
nard Wright. The tune is built on a
syncopated rhythm-section unison
line in the verse that gives way to
a more settled chorus groove. Fol-
lowing that, the melody moves to
a bass-and-guitar unison line (at
1:25), shown in Ex. 3a. A variation
of the line continues through the
ensuing tenor sax solo. Go to school
on Michael’s note durations and the
slurred lines via pull-offs and ham-
mers. The first two measures of Ex.
3b have a new bass-and-guitar uni-
son melody that enters at 3:11. The
second two measures show a re-
duced version of the line that runs
through the ensuing drum solo.
Although no chord symbols are
shown, both examples are in an F
blues tonality. Focus on phrasing
with the guitar line in the swung-
16th feel.

Ex. 1
Med. world funk
G#m
= 130

9
4 2 9 11 9 11 9 11 4 2 2 4 6 2 4 2 4
4 4

50 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 Michael League

Ex. 2
Moroccan funk
Am6 Am7
= 120 A B

H H H
5 5 5 5
4 5 4 5
0 0 3 5 5 7 5 3 3 5 5 7 5 3 3 5 5 7 5 3

Dm11 Bbmaj13 Am7

8 C

H H
7 7
3 5 8 8 7 7
3 5 5 7 5 5
6 6 5 5

D7 F6 Bbmaj13 Am7 D7
16

7 7 10 10 7 7
8 8 7 7
5 5 8 8 5 5
6 6 5 5

Ex. 3a

Swung funk
3
= 108 3

PO PO H H PO
10 875
6 9 10 9 8 6 68 6 78 6 7 6 6
8 6 8 8 8 85 6 8 6

Ex. 3b
Swung funk
= 108

6 6 8 6 6 8 6
8 8 6 5 4 3 2 1 8
9 7

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 51

 iel
m The
Soundtrack
A ha

bor
of Our
Lives
r a
La
b

By E. E. Bradman / Photo by Phil Farnsworth

IN
a speech first published
after his death in 2008,
the influential American
writer David Foster Wal-
lace told a parable about
two young fish who meet an older fish swim-
ming the other way. The older fish nods at
them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the
water?” The young fish swim on for a bit, and
eventually, one of them looks over at the oth-
er and goes, “What the hell is water?”
Wallace was referring to the deep-seated
belief, “hard-wired into our boards at birth,”
that each of us is the center of the universe.
But the celebrated writer, who was fond of
Pink Floyd, Alanis Morissette, the Flaming
Lips, and ’80s music, could easily have been
talking about a body of work so ubiquitous in
American pop culture that we’ve barely no-
ticed its creator.

52 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 Jump Head

Caption

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 53

Abraham Laboriel
Over the course of his 48-year career,
Abraham Laboriel has brought his heart,
ears, and hands to over 4,000 recording ses-
sions, combining a studio ninja’s intense
focus with a full-body style that includes
energetic strumming and slapping, flurries
of four-finger flamenco technique, bluesy
bends, bold trills, as well as delicious swoops
and slides that cover the entire fretboard.
Rhythmic, soulful, complex, and playful, his
bass lines convey an excitement that can be
hard to contain: Indeed, Laboriel has been
known to let the spirit move him in the stu-
dio, prompting his fellow musicians to ask,
“Abraham, why are you dancing? There are
no cameras here!”
In conversation, Laboriel is a generous
listener who laughs easily. He exudes wis-
dom and gratitude, and his tendency to get
choked-up — which happens often when
he talks about his sons Mateo and Abra-
ham Jr., both highly accomplished musi-
cians — is right in line with his intuitive,
impassioned playing style. In a town like
L.A., which has refined the art of false mod-
esty, Laboriel’s warmly humble manner,
perhaps enhanced by his Christian values,
certainly stands out. But make no mistake:
Abraham is a virtuoso you’ve heard before,
even if you didn’t know it.
If you were anywhere near a television in
the past five decades, you’ve caught Laboriel
on the themes to CHiPs, What’s Happening!!,
Starsky & Hutch, Cheers, Knots Landing,
Amen, Moonlighting, Melrose Place, Will &
Grace, Ugly Betty, and Bernie Mac. That was
also him adding special sauce to #1 hits like
Leo Sayer’s “You Make Me Feel Like Danc-
ing,” getting nasty on Jimmy Smith’s “Give
Up the Booty,” and helping Quincy Jones, Al
Jarreau, Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton, Dave
Grusin, David Benoit, Herb Alpert, Bennie
Maupin, Joe Farrell, John Klemmer, and the
Crusaders create a new style of sophisticated,
jazz-tinged pop music. (Laboriel’s contribu-
tions were so undeniable that the Record-
ing Academy gave him its MVP award in the
bass category four years in a row, eventually
granting him emeritus status so other bass-
54 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
ists could have a chance to win.) When he
wasn’t putting the bottom underneath icon-
ic songs like Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath
My Wings” and Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” or
contributing to the soundtracks of Terms of
Endearment, The Color Purple, My Cous-
in Vinnie, Four Weddings and a Funeral,
and There’s Something About Mary, Labori-
el brought the joyful fusion grooves of his
band Koinonia to sell-out crowds in Scandi-
navia and Western Europe. But the pop jug-
gernauts are what sealed Abraham’s legacy.
What would Lionel Richie’s string of hits —
“All Night Long,” “Say You, Say Me,” “Penny
Lover,” “Truly,” and “Dancing on the Ceiling”
— be without that Laboriel magic? His mas-
sive output means that at any given moment,
someone somewhere is almost surely listen-
ing to one of his bass lines.
The past two decades have found Labori-
el laying it down for Michael McDonald, Luis
Miguel, George Benson, Larry Carlton, and
Lee Ritenour; making crucial beauty with
Paul Simon; appearing on albums by country
stars Allison Krauss, LeAnn Rimes, and Clint
Black; and working with artists as dissimi-
lar as Ray Charles, Ziggy Marley, Andy Sum-
mers, Les Paul, Natalie Cole, Christopher
Cross, and His Majesty Bhumibol Adulya-
dej, the former monarch of Thailand. On his
own, Laboriel has continued to perform with
his lifelong friends, including Justo Almar-
io, Greg Mathieson, Vinnie Colaiuta, Michael
Landau, Bill Maxwell, Alex Acuña, and Paul
Jackson Jr., as captured on Laboriel Mathie-
son (2001), Live in Switzerland (2005), and
a couple discs of shows at L.A.’s famed Baked
Potato. And in Hollywood, Laboriel’s friend-
ship with acclaimed director Michael Giac-
chino has brought him work on TV shows
like Lost and Alias and juggernauts such as
Jurassic World, Rogue One, and Mission:
Impossible III. Thanks to his work on Frozen
— as well as Giacchino-directed smashes like
Coco, Inside Out, the Incredibles movies, Ra-
tatouille, and Zootopia — Laboriel is making
magic for a whole new generation.
This, then, is our celebration of the life
and career of Abraham Laboriel, right in time
 Abraham laboriel

for his 72nd birthday, in July. We met at the His son Mateo — a composer, producer, re-
home he has owned for more than 20 years cording engineer, and multi-instrumentalist
in Tarzana, deep in the San Fernando Valley. — chimed in.

COURTESY KALA BRAND MUSIC CO.

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 55

Abraham Laboriel
Mexico
As
origin stories go, Abraham
Laboriel’s is as epic and in-
spiring as any Hollywood he-
ro’s journey.
Back in the 17th century, West Africans
whose slave ship ran aground managed to
swim to the Caribbean island of St. Vincent,
where they mixed with Carib Indians, creat-
ing a vibrant blend and a unique culture. In
the late 18th century, the British exiled these
“black Caribs” — also known as Garifuna — to
Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras,
where Abraham’s father, Juan José Laboriel,
was born in 1906.
The senior Laboriel, already a seasoned
musician when he arrived in Mexico City in
56 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
COURTESY ABRAHAM LABORIEL
the 1930s, would eventually become one of
the country’s most respected composers, lyri-
cists, and actors, appearing in nearly 30 films
between 1938 and 1972. He and his children
share the same strong Garifuna features, en-
ergetic presence, and million-watt smiles;
watching Juan José Laboriel melt a bad guy’s
heart by singing “Quiéreme Mucho” in the
1965 film Alma Llanera is a window into the
power of the family’s strong genes. Labori-
el’s mother, Francisca Lopéz de Laboriel, was
an actress, and the four children — Juan Jr.,
Abraham, Ela, and Francis — followed suit.
By the late ’50s, Ela and Francis had begun
their careers as actresses and singers, and
Juan Jr., rechristened Johnny Laboriel, had
become the lead singer of one of Mexico’s Juan José Laboriel
first rock & roll bands.
Abraham, born in the summer of 1947,
was musical from day one. “My father gave
me my first guitar lesson when I was six,” he
remembers, leaning over to pick up an old
acoustic that belonged to Laboriel senior.
“The first thing I learned was a D chord, and

COURTESY ABRAHAM LABORIEL

he taught me to play with [the ring finger] be-
cause I had lost the tip of my [index] finger
in an accident.” Although he temporarily quit
guitar, frustrated by his injury, it would even-
tually contribute to his unusual style.
By age ten, Abraham was playing gui-
tar by ear, internalizing the wide variety of
American music (“everything from Lambert,
Hendricks & Ross doing vocal arrangements
of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, to Buck
Owens & the Buckaroos”), that came from
the U.S. “My brother became the most im-
portant rock & roll singer in Mexico. All the
publishing companies from the United States
would ask him to consider recording their
songs in Spanish, and anything that he didn’t
like he would give to me.” Abraham, who be-
came his brother Johnny’s arranger, was also
making waves with a band called Los Quatros
Traviesos (“the Four Naughty Boys”), and his
sisters kept him busy, too: teenage Abraham
was in Fanny & the Lollipops with Francis,
who recorded Motown covers; in 1969, Ela,
known for her versions of Platters and Su-

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 57

Abraham Laboriel

COURTESY LYN LABORIEL

COURTESY LYN LABORIEL

(top left) Abraham premes hits, had Abraham lead a recording
and Johnny session that boasted unusual arrangements
Laboriel. — including two basses or two drummers on
(top right): Abraham some tracks — of soul, bossa nova hits, and
and Ela Laboriel. ballads. On his own, Abraham attained no-
toriety with teenage rockers Los Profetas,
who recorded an LP with Capitol in 1967 Although primarily a guitarist, Abra-
and scored hits with “Ya, Ya, Ya’” and “Lupe ham felt the pull of the low end right from
Against the Red Baron.” the beginning, and his attempt to capture
the essence of bass, guitar, and drum parts
contributed to his rhythmic, melodic, and
COURTESY LYN LABORIEL

harmonic approach. “After my first lesson,

I knew the function of the bass. And I ab-
solutely fell in love with James Jamerson. I
played Motown and rhythm & blues in bands,
and although I was a guitarist, I would teach
the bass player his parts.”
At his parents’ insistence, Abraham
spent two painful years studying aeronautics
and not playing music. Eventually, he made
a deal: If music didn’t work out after a year,
he’d return to engineering. He abandoned
plans to study at Mexico’s National School of
Music the moment he learned that a compo-
sition degree would take 11 years to complete.
But when a teacher at his Boston Conserva-
tory audition suggested that he might like
Berklee’s non-classical curriculum better,
Abraham took a chance.

The Laboriel core, from left: Johnny, Fran-

cesca, Ela, Juan José, Abraham, and Francis.
Courtesy Lyn Laboriel

58 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

OPEN A
AND CREATE THE FUTUTRE OF MUSIC.
MIXING YOUR LOVE FOR MUSIC WITH YOUR BUSINESS
IS EASIER THAN EVER AT SCHOOL OF ROCK. BE RE- CONTACT US TO LEARN MORE.
SPONSIBLE FOR CHANGING THE LIVES OF CHILDREN
THROUGH MUSIC EDUCATION. OWN A SCHOOL OF
866-957-6685
ROCK FRANCHISE TODAY. FRANCHISING.SCHOOLOFROCK.COM

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE59
Abraham Laboriel
All the Doors Began to Open
L
Abe with his Goya aboriel auditioned and was accepted
bass at Berklee into Berklee in 1968. His major was
composition, and initially, he played
guitar. A year before he graduated, howev-
er, Abraham began to play bass. Buying his
first 4-string from a fellow student led to re-
cording with vibraphonist and future Berklee
dean Gary Burton, and after graduation,
Abraham hit the road with Johnny Mathis
and Henry Mancini, who was pivotal in help-
ing him transition to Los Angeles. We asked
about his first few years on the scene, playing
fretless, and the impact of his singular tone.
How did you end up buying your first bass?
There was a Greek musician who needed
to sell his bass and go back home, so in 1971,
60 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
COURTESY LYN LABORIEL
I paid $400 for his Goya. It was a very un-
usual bass; it had a small neck and a high E
natural. For my small hands, it was perfect. I
was completely at home, and suddenly all the
doors began to open: Students began to hire
me for gigs and recordings, I learned how to
read bass clef, and my teachers allowed me
to have play bass in my ensembles. But I had
to continue to declare guitar as my main in-
strument, because the Board of Education
did not recognize electric bass as a legitimate
instrument.
You were still a student when you recorded
The New Quartet with Gary Burton, right?
Yes. That was my first recording session in
the United States. I was still at Berklee, and in
 Abraham Laboriel

the same studio where we recorded with Gary Laboriel in

Burton, we did “Avenging Annie” with Andy Cleveland
Pratt [for Pratt’s 1973 self-titled album]. (left) and with
How did you make the move to L.A.? Abraham Jr.
When I asked Henry Mancini about get-
ting into the studio scene, he said a very pow-
erful thing: “Abraham, there is nothing I can

COURTESY LYN LABORIEL

do for you. Only your peers can help you, and
doing [Mancini’s Symphonic Soul record in
L.A.] will give you an opportunity to meet
some of the local people.” Then he blew my
mind! Doing those sessions introduced me
to Joe Sample, Lee Ritenour, Harvey Mason, Even though you love Jameson, there’s no
Dennis Budimir, Artie Kane on B3, and Emil Jamerson tone on those old recordings.
Richards on percussion — all of whom told I was playing the Goya, which is all I could
me there was lots of work in Los Angeles. I afford, and in those days, I was using Roto-
had to wait a year for my wife to finish her sounds, so there was a built-in brightness.
internship in Cleveland, so when I came back How did other musicians react to the Goya?
to L.A. a year later, they all had bass players They made fun of me for having a bass
they loved. Lee had Anthony Jackson; Har- with buttons I had to push. They would say,
vey had Louis Johnson; Joe had Pops Pop- “Man, don’t bring your Sears & Roebuck bass
well; and everybody else had Chuck Rainey. here. Look at the name on the part — it says,
Everyone said, “A year ago, there was room, ‘Fender bass.’ Buy a Fender!” [Laughs.] It
but now we are all happy with our bass play- was difficult for me to get accepted, because
ers.” So, I had to wait two more years before for the first four years, all I had was the Goya.
the doors opened in L.A. Wow. No love for the Goya?
What was your first session after you moved Jay Graydon once told me,” Abraham,
to town in 1976? all of us studio musicians design our sound
Jimmy Smith’s Sit on It, with Her- to blend with one another. Get a Fender bass
bie Hancock on piano and Lenny White on so that we don’t have to keep trying to fig-
drums, produced by Alan Silvestri and Eu- ure out how to blend with you. The engineers
gene McDaniels.
Your sight-reading must have been in tip-
top shape.
Speaking in very raw terms, I still think
that I am a very poor sight-reader, but mu-
sic has always been very much in my heart.
When I started to make records in the United
States, I discovered that the musicians would
spend sometimes an hour on one song, so
that by the time the song had been played 30
times, I could equate whatever was on paper
with whatever I was playing.
Even in those early days, one can hear the
COURTESY LYN LABORIEL

seeds of the same tone that you have today.

I have many different basses, but Ma-
teo says, “Obviously, it doesn’t matter which
bass you play — you have a touch that comes
through no matter what.”

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 61

Abraham Laboriel
Chart Attack:
25 Classic Abe Performances
1. Leo Sayer, “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”
2. James Ingram, “Just Once”
3. Herb Alpert, “Rise”
4. George Benson, “Give Me the Night”
5. Chaka Khan, “And the Melody Still Lingers On”
6. Jeffrey Osborne, “On the Wings of Love”
7. Dolly Parton, “9 to 5”
8. Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes, “(Love Lifts Us) Up Where We
Belong”
9. Quincy Jones, “Turn on the Action”
10. Elton John & Dionne Warwick, “That’s What Friends Are For”
11. Bette Midler, “Wind Beneath My Wings”
12. Hanson, “MMMBop”
13. Big Mountain, “Baby I Love Your Way”
14. Sheena Easton, “Strut”
15. Al Jarreau, “We’re in This Love Together”
16. Lionel Richie, “All Night Long”
17. DeBarge, “Rhythm of the Night”
18. Johnny Mathis (featuring Deniece Williams), “Love Won’t Let
Me Wait”
19. Julio Iglesias, “Me Va, Me Va”
20. Idina Manzel, “Let It Go” (from the Frozen soundtrack)
21. Donald Fagen, “New Frontier”
22. Dr. John, “Accentuate the Positive”
23. Madonna, “I’m Going Bananas”
24. Michael Jackson, “Gone Too Soon”
25. Paul Simon, “Father and Daughter”
are going nuts trying to figure out how to
make it sound like a Fender!” Engineers told
me, “You know, no matter what we did, we
couldn’t make it sound like a Fender, so we
had to leave it alone. It sounds different, but
it’s you, and everybody is happy.”
Sometimes I hear how engineers added low
end to fatten up your tone. Did that bother you?
Not at all. When I first came to town,
Earth, Wind & Fire’s engineers told me that
they had Verdine [White] play with tone that
was as thin and high-end as possible because
62 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
they could always add bottom.
But if it was already fat to start with . . .
Then they couldn’t take it off, and they’d
have to bring down the bass volume because
it wouldn’t sit well with the rest of the band.
If an engineer wants to fatten it up because
it helps the mix, that’s okay. That was an im-
portant conversation.
Did you prefer thinner tone, though?
To be honest, in those days I was not
thinking about tone. I was so focused on
making the music as beautiful as I could —
and defying the fact that the Goya was a very
simple instrument, as opposed to a Fender,
which had all this reputation and weight. My
Goya bass is what I used to record “Carmel”
with Joe Sample and “French Roast” with Lee
Ritenour. They are both iconic, and they both
feature the Goya.
Nowadays, you’re known for your Wyn,
Kala, and Yamaha basses. In your New Bass
Concepts video from 1990, you introduced us
to your Ernie Ball Earthwood acoustic bass, the
upright you played on The Color Purple, your
Valley Arts 4- and 8-strings, your 4- and 5-string
Yamahas, and your Tyler basses.
I still play the Tylers! James Tyler was the
premiere repairman for all the instruments
of the studio musicians. Dean Parks, Mike
Landau … we would all bring our instruments
to him. Pretty soon, he started to make his
own instruments based on the knowledge he
had accumulated from repairing everybody
else’s. The electronics that he puts in his in-
struments are very special. They’re great for
the studio. Engineers really like the preamps
Tyler uses.
Some of your lines sound as if you played
fretless, too.
Many people think that I am a fretless
player because I do a lot of glissando.
You did play an actual fretless on Paul
Simon’s “The Teacher,” though.
Yes. That’s a fretless Yamaha acoustic.
I also played fretless with Kirk Whalum on
“The Promise.” I am a very insecure fretless
player, so when Bob James told me that that
bass line touched his spirit deeply, it was in-
credible.
 Jump Head

In a Musician, Out an Artist!

Led by Dean of Instruction
and renowned bassist
Dr. Jeff Denson, the CJC faculty
has established a successful
track record, year after year,
of transforming musicians into artists!

Double and electric bassists study styles

and techniques of the master bassists
in both private lesson and ensemble
formats, focusing on a variety of styles,
including jazz, Afro-Caribbean,
Brazilian/South American, Indian,
funk, reggae, neo soul
and others.

Bassists attending CJC

are afforded numerous
opportunities to
perform on and
off campus in
the traditionally
jazz-centric
San Francisco
Bay Area.

We invite you to
apply now for CJC’s
Bachelor of Music or
Associate of Arts in
Jazz Studies degree
programs.

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE

cjc.edu
63
Abraham Laboriel
Studio King
A
braham Laboriel has been celebrat-
ed as one of the most prolific stu-
dio bassists in history, and thanks
to online sources like discogs.com and allmu-
sic.com, it is now possible to get a glimpse of
Laboriel’s superhuman output, which is so
staggering that Abraham himself admits there
are more than a few sessions he can’t remem-
ber. We asked him about a handful of artists
who inspired some of his best-known work.
Henry Mancini, Symphonic Soul (1975)
Michael Giacchino, The Incredibles
(2004); Ratatouille (2007); Coco (2017)
“When we started to record Symphonic
Soul, I would play a few bars, stop, play a few
64 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
COURTESY LYN LABORIEL
more, and stop again. Henry asked me what I
was doing, and I told him I was taking a solo.
‘But why are you starting and stopping?’ ‘I’m
giving the click room — I’m exchanging ideas,’
I told him. And he said, ‘No, Abraham, no-
body’s going to hear the click. That’s just for
us.’ I did not know,” says Laboriel, laughing.
“Henry also told me, ‘Don’t play what’s
on the paper, Abraham. I can get anybody
to do that. I want you to play who you are.’
And that’s what Giacchino has been saying to
me. He writes difficult music, and when I told
him I might have to overdub, Giacchino said,
‘Abraham, Mancini told you: If we wanted
what was on the player, we could call anyone.
Please — ignore the paper. Play you.’ Incredi-

bles, Ratatouille, Coco — all that stuff is a re-
sult of me being encouraged to just play me.”
Al Jarreau, Look to the Rainbow
(1977); Breakin’ Away (1981); Jarreau
(1983); Heart’s Horizon (1988)
“I had never met Al Jarreau, but I rec-
ognized him when he walked into Donte’s to
see Greg Mathieson’s band one night in 1977.
I was playing with Greg, and afterwards, Al
asked me if I come do an audition. I’m always
grateful and very moved when I think about
it, because Greg had invited Al Jarreau to
hear me play, knowing that if he liked me, I
was going to disappear for a while.
“At the audition, with Joe Correro on
drums, Tom Canning on keyboard, and Lynn
Blessing on vibes, we tried a few songs, and
then they asked me to come to Europe for
six weeks to do a live album. It wasn’t until
we finished the album that they told me they
had fired the bass player they’d originally
contracted on the gig. I asked them why, and
they said, ‘We fired him because at the audi-
tion, you were the first bass player who was
able to play with intensity even at low vol-
umes.’ They’d never seen that before.
“Besides, Corerro and I got along so well
musically — people could build anything they
wanted on top of what Joe and I were doing.
He was from Memphis, and he had a thing that
reminded me of [drummer] Zigaboo Model-
iste from the Meters. I said, ‘Man, I’m home.’”
The Crusaders, Rhapsody and Blues
(1980); Ghetto Blaster (1984)
“They called me two weeks before the au-
dition. They rented a room at SIR, and when
I walked in, there was Wilton [Felder], Stix
[Hooper], and Joe [Sample]. They told me,
‘We want to do an album that has Latin col-
ors, so we want to see if we can relate to you
musically.’ It was beautiful. We jammed, and
within half an hour, they told me to come to
the studio.”
Why did Laboriel and Wilton Felder split
credits on some of the great sessions for sing-
er Randy Crawford? “Because she was [the
Crusaders’] artist, but Wilton really loved my
Abraham Laboriel
playing, and he very much wanted to be part
of what was happening. He was a phenome-
nal bass player, so he was playing just to be
part of it.”
Donald Fagen, The Nightfly (1980)
“Jeff Porcaro, who recommended me to
Donald Fagen, picked me up and drove me to
the studio for the ‘New Frontier’ session. We
arrive, I plug in, and they say, ‘Abraham, give
us a few seconds — we’re working on some-
thing.’ On this one song, they had Michael
Omartian, Victor Feldman, David Foster, and
David Paich, and Donald is saying to the en-
gineer, ‘Let me hear David Paich’s right hand
with Victor Feldman’s left hand. Okay, now
let me hear Michael Omartian’s left hand and
David Page’s right hand,’ and they are doing
all these juxtapositions. I tell myself that I
just might be there all day.
“Eventually, they play the song for me, and
I start playing. They ask if I can come up with
anything else. I do something different, and
they say, ‘Yes! Let’s do that for the whole song.’
When I finish, they tell me it sounds monoto-
nous. I could not believe it [laughs]. So, pret-
ty soon I played [what would become the final
part], and they said, ‘Let’s record that!’ We did
it in three and a half hours. Jeff told me he had
never seen them do anything that fast.”
Laboriel says that one bass player was
just as nitpicky as the Steely Dan crew. “An-
thony Jackson was even more perfectionist
than they were,” he says, laughing. “Steve
COURTESY RANDY FULLMER
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 65
Abraham Laboriel
Gadd told me he had to threaten Anthony
to within an inch of his life because Anthony
was constantly asking for a pencil, and any-
thing that Donald would say, Anthony would
write it on his part.”
Ella Fitzgerald, Ella Abraça Jobim
(1981)
“That was a very special day, and I was su-
per concentrated. Alex [Acuña], Henry Trotter
on keyboards, and me. We were the founda-
tion, and Toots [Thielemans], Joe Pass, Clark
Terry, and Zoot Sims were arriving separately
to do their parts. At that time, Ella was legally
blind, so they had huge cue cards, and she was
reading the words while singing. It blows your
mind, doesn’t it? That was a whole other cali-
ber of understanding music.”
Chaka Khan, What Cha’ Gonna Do for
100% Abe
Laboriel is frequently one of several session bassists on an album,
but these are all Abe from start to finish:
Al Jarreau, Breakin’ Away and Look to the Rainbow
Lee Ritenour, Feel the Night
Larry Carlton, Larry Carlton
The Zawinul Syndicate, Immigrants
Luis Bonilla Latin Jazz All Stars, Pasos Gigantos
Bobby King, Bobby King
Café Quijano, La Taberna del Buda
The Winans, Introducing and Tomorrow
Andy Summers, Earth and Sky
2nd Chapter of Acts, Mansion Builder
All tracks mentioned are on Spotify
Search for “Abraham Laboriel on Bass” or click the link below
CHECK IT OUT
Search for “Abraham Laboriel Hits & Classics”
or click the link below
CHECK IT OUT
66 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
Me (1981)
“‘And the Melody Still Lingers On (Night
in Tunisia)’ is a very important recording, be-
cause they used a sample of Charlie Parker
and then overdubbed Dizzy Gillespie to re-
produce what they had done 60 years before.
That alone was historic — and then they had
Herbie Hancock and Greg Phillinganes, who
is absurdly talented.
“Arif Mardin put it together at the last min-
ute with Casey Scheuerell on drums and me on
bass. Robbie Buchanan, Greg, and Arif were
working on the arrangement when we walked
in, and that whole thing was born in front of us.
It was very elaborate, and Chaka just concen-
trated and killed it. She is a genius.”
The Zawinul Syndicate, Immigrants
(1984)
“Recording Immigrants was another
proud moment. It was also scary because Joe
Zawinul is a different kind of cat: He had all
the music professionally copied, and when he
passed the parts around, everything looked
perfect; it was perfectly conceived. We start
running it, and anytime somebody would
make a mistake, Joe would say, ‘Okay, stop —
in this bar, forget what’s on the paper. Every-
body write down that mistake, because that’s
how we’re going to play it.’ The music was very
nice to look at for a few bars, and then there’d
be ten corrections. But I’m proud of what I did
on ‘Shadow and Light’ because Joe left my bass
part completely the way I played it.”
Paul Simon, Surprise (2006); You’re
the One (2011)
“Paul sent me the music for ‘The Teacher’
ahead of time, so when I went to his apartment
in New York, which is where he records, I had
done my homework. At first, I was playing a
very complex bass line, but Paul said, ‘Abra-
ham, can you simplify this? I don’t feel wor-
thy of being on a record with that bass line.’
[Laughs.] The final line is not a pattern; I just
freely decided to play, and he kept it. I love
Bakithi Kumalo’s playing with all my heart,
and it was Steve Gadd on drums, so it was re-
ally special to get together with Paul.”
 bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 67
Abraham Laboriel
Louis & Quincy
P
erhaps the easiest way to get a han-
dle on Abraham Laboriel’s huge body
of work is to consider groups of col-
laborators as branches of a tree. One
limb would be the many Japanese artists he
has played with, including Hiroko Nakamu-
ra, Mari Nakamoto, Izumi Kobayashi, Yumi
Matsutoya, Junko Ohashi, Keiko Matsui,
and Yutaka Okukura, whose “Love Light”
featured Abraham on bass; Laboriel has
also done a dozen albums with Akira Jim-
bo. Another branch might be the GRP family
— musicians like Dave Grusin, David Beno-
it, Gary Burton, Diane Schuur, Ernie Watts,
and Al Jarreau — with whom Laboriel sowed
the seeds of what we now call smooth jazz.
68 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
JON D’AURIA
The Crusaders crew, a separate but relat-
ed bough, is headed by Joe Sample, Randy
Crawford, and Wilton Felder. Abraham’s ex-
tensive gospel/contemporary Christian work
would be another, as would his lengthy list
of Latin connections, featuring icons like
Julio Iglesias, Gilberto Gil, Rubén Blades
Blades, Shakira, Ricky Martin, and Luis Mi-
guel. Laboriel’s dozens of TV and soundtrack
credits over the past four decades, which in-
cludes keepers (48 Hrs., Absence of Malice,
Beaches, Deadpool, Forrest Gump, Mission:
Impossible, Ordinary People) and clunkers
(Police Academy: Mission to Moscow), mer-
its its own offshoot. And the mighty Quincy
Jones, under whose umbrella Laboriel col-
laborated with James Ingram, Patty Austin,
Jeffrey Osbourne, George Duke, George Ben-
son, Louis Johnson, and Stevie Wonder, is
one of the stoutest branches of them all.
What was your relationship with Louis Johnson?
Louis and I loved and respected each oth-
er. When he played with drummer Bill Max-
well at the beginning of his career, Bill told
me, “Abraham, I’ve never played with a mu-
sician who could wear me out like Louis can.”
Later, Louis invited me to be part of his series
of bass instructional videos, which is how Be-
ginning Funk Bass was born. He was a trou-
bled spirit, but I was always so moved by the
caliber of his gift.
Mateo Laboriel Wasn’t there a song that
Quincy asked you to teach Louis?
Abraham Laboriel “Betcha Wouldn’t Hurt
song on the album, but Louis cannot read,
and I know this is a difficult bass line. Will
you please come and record it so that he can
learn it?” That touched me, because Quincy
was not playing games. I said, “I’ll be there.”
I recorded it for Louis, who made the final re-
cording.
When you guys honored Louis at Bass
Player LIVE! 2014, I played “Betcha Wouldn’t
Hurt Me” and told the story, and it was real-
ly touching. Greg Phillinganes said he nev-
er knew that Quincy had asked me to teach
Louis that bass line, and I told him it was im-
portant for people to know that we are not in
competition with each other — we are a com-
munity of people that support and love each
other. l

PHIL FARNSWORTH
Me.” Stevie Wonder taught me the bass line,
and Quincy asked me to show it to Louis.
How did that happen?
Carlos Vega and I were recording for
George Benson with Quincy and Bruce Swed-
ien, and Quincy asked us to stay because Ste-
vie was coming to demo a song for The Dude;
Quincy figured that hearing it with a rhythm
section would give him a better sense of how
the song would fit the record. Many hours
later, Stevie shows up with an entourage —
and no song. He was hoping to arrive, apolo-
gize to Quincy, and then go out and socialize,
right? But Quincy tells him that Carlos and NEXT ISSUE
I are there to play the songs with him, so he Read part two of our
sits at the piano. interview with Abra-
He starts playing and singing, and it was ham Laboriel, which
beautiful! Quincy says, “That’s great!” And will run in issue 4,
Stevie says, “No, that’s not for you.” [Laughs.] to learn about his
Quincy was recording while Stevie basically favorite drummers,
made a demo for himself. When Stevie was the secret of the
done, he sat down and said, “Abraham, play shuffle, how his faith
this [sings a long and complex rhythmic fig- affects his musician-
ure].” It was hard! He’s improvising the song ship, wisdom he pass-
on the spot, and he says, “You can keep this es on to students, and
one, Quincy.” That’s what became “Betcha his career as a solo
Wouldn’t Hurt Me.” artist—plus, get a
A few days later, Quincy calls me and front seat at a recent
says, “Abraham, you know I’ve always been L.A. gig with an all-
honest with you. I want Louis to play the star quartet.

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 69

Abraham Laboriel Transcription
FRIENDSHIP’S
“WATERWINGS”
Abraham Laboriel’s Soaring Bass Anthem
By Stevie Glasgow
A
braham Laboriel was a revelation
upon his arrival on the thriving
Los Angeles session scene in the
mid ’70s. As the first studio bass
player to bring an international perspective
to his grooves, Laboriel introduced an array
of innovative techniques, including flamenco
strums and slaps; spirited slides, trills, and
whoops; and two-handed fingerboard for-
ays that pushed the limits of bass coordina-
tion. But dead ahead lay the track that would
challenge even a man of Abraham’s creative
means. “Waterwings,” written by keyboard-
ist Don Grusin for the studio supergroup
Friendship, appears on the band’s only stu-
dio album, the eponymously titled Friend-
ship [1979, Elektra]. It’s a standout among
a career of standout tracks because it pret-
ty much includes all of Laboriel’s signature
moves, as well as a killer vocal component.
Oh, it also involves a made-up language by
Abraham. We got an inside look at the piece
from the man himself, and from Don Grusin.
By the time Friendship coalesced in the
late 1970s, the group’s members were already
long-term musical amigos. “In those days,
there was a lot of studio work, and we played
together all the time and became friends,” ex-
plains Laboriel. “We also used to play clubs
like the Baked Potato, and pretty soon some-
body asked [guitarist] Lee Ritenour to put to-
gether a band, rather than just release more
albums under his own name.” In addition
to Laboriel and Ritenour, Friendship com-
prised drummer Alex Acuña, saxophonist Er-
nie Watts, percussionist Steve Forman, and
Grusin (brother of composer/pianist Dave
70 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
Grusin) on keyboards.
“Waterwings” was tracked at Dream-
breaker Studios in San Fernando, California,
with engineer Don Murray at the controls.
Laboriel used a Yamaha BB-2000 strung
with medium-gauge La Bella roundwounds,
plugged into a miked Acoustic 300 amp. Mur-
ray also ran a direct line into the board. The
track was recorded live with isolation rooms
for the percussion and sax, while the guitar
and bass amps were baffled. “We’d always
play together to have as much of a realistic
feel as possible,” allows Abraham. “There was
no click track, so we were really concentrat-
ing hard to make sure the tempo and the feel
of the music were strong.”
The song unfolds with Ernie Watts’s so-
prano sax sounding a mellifluous repeated
motif in E major, as the keys and percussion
offer gentle support (letter A). Abraham joins
the proceedings at bar 9, with a rising line
that grounds the harmony through to bar 18.
At letter B, Laboriel advances a scin-
tillating bass-and-vocal unison that ex-
tends through C. He recounts: “We were
rehearsing and performing one day when
Don Grusin said, ‘Abraham, do you mind if
I write something for you — a song with a
written-out bass line?’ Then maybe a week or
so later, he showed up with ‘Waterwings.’ I
was like, ‘What? Do you really expect me to
play this?’” Laboriel laughs. Of the scat-like
vocals, he says: “Don asked me to come up
with some syllables that went with the mel-
ody — you know, like a nonsense language.
I was overwhelmed; I wasn’t sure I could
do it. But I applied myself, and little by lit-

Don Grusin On “Waterwings” & Abraham Laboriel
H
ow did you get to know Abraham? cause that was the weekly jam session back then. We
I had moved to Los Angeles, and Abe had
moved to L.A. from Boston, and we’d drive
together to the [San Fernando] Valley to rehearse for
gigs we were playing at a jazz club called Donte’s. It
took forever to drive there in those days, so we had
long conversations, and I learned so much about him
and his family. It was a great time, and we immediately
became friends.
How did the Friendship band come together?
We all used to work together, different guys that
were all part of the same family, and at least once a
week, Mondays or Tuesdays, we’d get together at the
Baked Potato in the Valley,
which was kind of like a rec-
reation room. We’d all play
and bring our songs and try
them out for the first time.
It was a lovely time, and you
learned how to make things
work in a club.
Can you recall your writing
process for “Waterwings”?
I had a house in Ocean
Park that had visual connection to the water, and I
was sitting at the Fender Rhodes looking out at the
Pacific Ocean, and the main melody slowly came to
me. Abraham and Alex Acuna and I invented this lan-
guage for the melody, called “Poridatalla,” which be-
came the fake lyrics of the melody line. It was just a
musical way of expressing the sensibility of the song.
We’d been hanging around with Brazilians a lot, and
part of the equation was the internationality of the
music. I brought out the song, and everybody felt
comfortable with it. I remember that we rehearsed it
some; it was a community effort for sure.
What do you remember about recording “Water­
wings”?
I think the recording was basically spontaneous.
There were cues when somebody was running out
of solo ideas [laughs], and then we’d all look at each
other and we knew to go on to the next thing. We had
probably honed the song at the Baked Potato, be-
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 71
Abraham Laboriel Transcription
tracked it all together, and then we made repairs. I
wouldn’t suggest it was like a perfect delicacy at first
[laughs], but it was an easy kind of thing to fix. When
you have [engineer] Don Murray — the cream of the
crop — it’s not a big hassle. Abe might have a better
memory of the recording session than I do; he’s still a
lot younger than I am [laughs].
How do you rate Abraham as a bass player?
Abe is beyond a good bassist. His musicianship
supersedes most people that I know. He’s a sublime
musician and understands music from any quarter,
all over the world. The fact that he plays some jazz or
Latin music is one thing, but
he also speaks some Italian,
French, Portuguese, Spanish,
English … he’s just so versed
in the cultural communities
of the world. He’s a reign-
ing master of music in all of
its parts. I think more than
bass, he’s a master musician.
He just happened to be like,
“Well, I think I’ll just pick up
the bass and make this thing work.” And he does.
What are you up to these days?
I recently finished a project with Abraham,
Harvey Mason, Paul Jackson Jr., Ernie Watts, and
a Japanese friend of mine, Minoru Mukaiya [for-
mer keyboardist of jazz-fusion group Casiopea].
We recorded a CD in Los Angeles called The Games
—East Meets West 2018 [JVC, 2018], and we did
three concerts last fall in Fukuoka, Osaka, and To-
kyo, with a Japanese horn section. We had such a
good time; it was great fun. I’ve also just recorded
an EP called Populism Dystopia with Filippo Gae-
tani, an Italian friend of mine, which is available
on Spotify. I’m also working on a project dedicated
to friends who have passed on, mostly in the music
business. It’s not a requiem by any means, but it’s
a tribute record, and I’ve been working with a doz-
en artists. That will probably come out next year
sometime.
Abraham Laboriel Transcription
tle it started to come together, and maybe
a week later I was able to play and sing it.
Most people think it was totally spontaneous,
but the music and the syllables were com-
pletely written out — although by the time
of the recording, I was doing it from mem-
ory.” (Laboriel overdubbed the vocals after
the bass part.) Abraham — known for his gui-
tar-like, multi-fingered plucking technique
— reports that after recording the album, he
subsequently began playing sections B and C
an octave higher. “It’s much harder to nav-
igate the fingerings [in the lower octave]. I
never again played it where written.” Built
around two eight-bar-long repeating sec-
tions, the melodies of sections B and C are
rich in chord-defining triads. But there is also
much in the way of stressed upper-extension
harmony, helping to create tension and inter-
est. for example: the flatted 9th (Cn) over the
dominant-functioning B chord in bars 19–
20; the downbeat 11th and 9th, respectively,
over the Em chord that carries through bars
21–22; and the An (9th) over the Gm chord in
the back end of bar 23. Dig also how Laboriel
uses subtle slides to embellish his part, such
as during the first three bars of section B.
The band kicks in fully at D — an upbeat
Latin-tinged section — with a new sax theme
from Watts (bars 51–58), subsequently har-
monized by Ritenour upon its restatement.
D I S CO N C E RT I N G Here, Abraham opts for simple root-notes
DISCS on beats two and four, enlivened by fin-
ger-popped fills in bars 54 and 62. The Lat-
Take care! Don’t in vibe continues throughout Grusin’s piano
confuse Friendship’s solo (letters E–F), during which Laboriel
self-titled 1979 studio conjures a series of supportive ideas and ap-
album with Lee Rite- proaches. Highlights here include the sub-
nour’s 1978 direct- tle introduction of ghost-notes from bar 87
to-disc long-player (as Watts introduces a sweet countermelo-
for JVC, also titled dy over Grusin’s ever-intensifying rhythms)
Friendship. Both al- and the playful scooped notes from bars 99 to
bums feature almost 106. “That section was just a bit of fun, to cre-
identical lineups — ate a Brazilian feeling,” says Abraham. “I was
including Abraham thinking of the sound of the cuíca [Brazilian
Laboriel — but they friction drum].” Dig also his use of short rests
sport completely dif- and the Afro-Cuban-inspired beat-four an-
ferent collections of ticipation of the changing downbeat chords
songs. throughout section F.
72 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
The group drops the volume at G, as
Laboriel launches into a killer solo that in-
corporates his innate melodicism and several
trademark techniques. “Basically, at Berklee
[College of Music] I was taught to think in
terms of chord scales in relationship to devel-
oping a solo … but the ‘Waterwings’ solo was
totally spontaneous. I just started to play,
and if it sounded good and felt good, we kept
it. We maybe ran the track three times and
then put the solo together afterwards, so it
was a composite.” Observe how the melodic
arc of bars 127–­130 subtly reflects the pre-
vious four bars. “I came up with a melody,
and it just worked, you know,” he says, sing-
ing the 16th-based figure in bars 123–124.
“Then I did it down a whole-step [from bar
127]. That way, instead of being a solo that
meanders or is really scholastically correct,
it became a little melody that people can re-
member.” Note also how Laboriel punctuates
the first half of his solo with spirited trills.
(Trill tip: Try using a single finger to oscillate
rapidly between the frets, and don’t pay scru-
pulous adherence to the written notes; Abra-
ham’s trills often loosely engird the principal
note from above and below to produce that
characteristic “zing.”) “Those little trills and
scoops are very much part of my personali-
ty and way of expressing things. I’m partic-
ularly grateful that it’s consonant and that
people like it.” The last eight measures of the
solo can be broken down into two contrasting
groups of four (139–142 and 143–146). “That
approach was inspired by a conversation I
had with [pianist] Joe Sample. He said that
his favorite music has questions and answers,
so inside a solo, you build a conversation and
a dialogue.” Of the tricky-to-finger octaves in
bars 139–142 he says, “I don’t have a consis-
tent right-hand technique, but the first note
is always the thumb, then an octave higher
would be either the second or third finger. I
just play with whatever finger is available.”
The percussive strums that follow are an-
other Abraham trademark. “The strums are
done with everything except the thumb. But
the thumb plays the low notes.”
Letter H echoes C — note how Labori-
 Abraham Laboriel Transcription

el plays the melody up an octave for the lat- ally special because I’d never played any-
ter half of the section — while letter I revisits thing quite that involved before. The band
material from D, leading to a brief pit-stop gave me the permission and authority to
over a C#m11 chord (bars 178–181) before a turn it into my own thing, and I became pas-
neat segue into Ernie Watts’ song-opening sionate about it. I slowly began to realize
sax theme at J, which is transformed into an how much beauty Don Grusin had built into
extended outro. Here, Abraham fleshes out the song. I haven’t played it in a long time,
his earlier part with syncopated phrases (bars although I did a performance in Switzerland
191 and 195), short flurries of 16ths (bars 201 with Vinnie Colaiuta, Paul Jackson Jr., and
and 205), and a couple of celebratory high-E Tom Brooks [available on Abe Laboriel &
“whoops” (bars 198 and 202). “Going to the Friends Live in Switzerland, 2004, Worship
high E like that had become one of my favor- Alliance]. Also, Don invites me to occasional
ite things to do. Most basses only went to Eb.” jazz festivals in Colorado, and we perform it
Laboriel reflects: “‘Waterwings’ was re- together then.”

Waterwings
By Don Grusin | Transcribed by Stevie Glasgow
1. 2.
B/E Aadd9 B B
= ca. 132 A Aadd9/E E Eadd9/G# F#/A# C#dim/B C#dim/B B7(b9)

0 4 5 6 7 7

B7#9b9#5 Em11 Em7 F#m7

19 B B13(b9)sus 3

9 9 9 10 7 9 10 9 7 7
8 9 10 9 10 9 10 7 9 10 7
7 10 11 7 10 7 0 2

Gm9 A13(b9) Dmaj9 Ab13(b5)

23 3

5 6 5
5 7 8 7 8 8 7 5 4 7 4 4 3 4 6 6 8 8
5 8 7 4 7 5 6
3 6 5 5 4

Am11 Ab6/9 Gmaj13(#11) Db13(b5)

35 C

S S S

5 7 8 9 7 5 7 8 6 4 5 6 7 5 4 6 6 5 5 3 3
7 7 6 5 5 4 4

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 73

Abraham Laboriel Transcription

39
F#m11 B7#9b9#5 Emaj13(b5) Bb13(b5)

4 6 7 4 2 1 6 5 6 8 6 5
4 7 3 2 3 6 7 9 7 8 8
1 0 7 9 7 6

Eb7#9#5
Am9 D7alt Gmaj7 Db13(#11) F#m11 C9sus B9sus D13(b5)
51 D

P H T T
4 6
0 5 5 4 4 4 3 0 2 2 5 6
5 5 5 3 3 3 0 2

57
Emaj7 Bb13(b5) Am9 D7alt Gmaj7 Db13(#11)

PH
T
4 6
7 5 5 5 4 4 4
0 0 6 6 6 5 5 5 3 3 3 0

Eb7#9#5
F#m11 C9sus B9sus D13(b5) Emaj7 Bb13(b5) B9sus B13(b9) Eb/E
63 E

T
T P

8
3 2 2 5 6 7 2 2 2 2 7
2 0 7 6 6 6 2 2 2 0 6 6

70
Emaj7 D9sus F#/G Gmaj7 B9sus

S S H
7 3 4
7 4 5 3 4
7 9 7 5 6 7 5 5 4 5 2 2
0 7 5 5 3 3 2

B13(b9) Eb/E Emaj7 D9sus F#/G

76

6 5 4
0 0 0 2 2 2 5
2 2 2 2 2 5 5 5 5 4 4
0 5 5 5 2 3

74 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 Abraham Laboriel Transcription

Gmaj7 B9sus B13(b9) Eb/E Emaj7 D9sus

82

5 7 0 5 2 2
5 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 0 5 5 5 5
3 2 2 2 2 0 0 5 5 5 5 5 5 2 2

89
F#/G Gmaj7 B9sus B13(b9) Eb/E Emaj7

5 5 5 5 6
5 5 5 5 5 2 2 2 2 6 7 7 7
3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 6 6 7

D9sus F#/G Gmaj7 B9sus

95

S
9 9 7
7 7 0 0 7 5 7 6 0 5 4 2 0
5 0 5 5 5 5 3 2 2 9
5 7 8 3 2 7 7

B13(b9) Eb/E Emaj7 D9sus F#/G

100

9 9 9 7
11 9 9 9 7 0 0 0 7 6
0 9 0 7 7 7 5 5 0 6 6
7 6 7 7 5 0 3

Gmaj7 F9sus Gmaj7

106 F

0 5 0 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 3
5 5 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 3
5

111
F9sus Gmaj7 F9sus

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 3
1 3 3 1

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 75

Abraham Laboriel Transcription

116
Gmaj7 F9sus

3 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 3 5
3 5 5 5 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 5 5
1 3 3 1 1

B13(b9)sus B7#9b9#5

121
Gmaj7 G

H PO PO S PO

16 16 14 16 (17) 16 14 16 16 17 16 14 16 14 12
5 5 5 5 5 16 16 14
5 5 5 5 2
3 3

Em11 Em7 F#m7 Gm9

125 loco

H PO H
S S
12 14 12 13 12 14 14 16 14 12 14 12 13 14 14 14 14 14 12 12 14 15
12 14 14 14
0 2 0 3

A13(b9) Dmaj9 Ab13(b5) B13(b9)sus

128
3

H PO PO
PO S S
12 14 14 15 14 12 14 12 11 12 11 12 11 12 14 0 14 15 14 16
14 14 12 10 13 0 14 16 16
11 14

B7#9b9#5 Em11
Em7 F#m7 Gm9
132 loco

H H S S PO PO
S S H H H H
H
16 17 1416 16 18 16 14 16 14 3 5 5 7 5 3 5 3
16 16 16 1412 12 14 12 121412 12 13 3 5 5 5
1214 3 5
0 2 0

A13(b9) Dmaj9 Ab13(b5)

B13(b9)sus
136

S S S S S
3 4 4 4 4 4
5 3 6 7 6 6 4 4
4 4 6 7 5 4 6 7 6 5 2 2 2 2 2
5 6 5

76 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 Abraham Laboriel Transcription

B7#9b9#5 Em11 Em7 F#m7

140

4 4 4 4 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9
2 2 2 2 2 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
0 2

Gm9 A13(b9) Dmaj9 Ab13(b5)

143

7 7 7 7 7 7
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 5 5 5 5 5 5 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Db13(b5)
Am11 Ab6/9 Gmaj13(#11) F#m11 B7#9b9#5 Emaj13(b5) Bb13(b5)
147 H

S
5 7 8 9
7 6 4 2
4 3 3 2 1 0 6 6

Am11 Ab6/9 Gmaj13(#11) Db13(b5)

155

S S
12 14 15 16 14 12 15 13 11 12 13 14 12 11 13 13 12 12 10 10
14 14 13 12 12 11 11

F#m11 B7#9b9#5 Emaj13(b5) Bb13(b5)

159

11 13 14 11 11 13 12 13 15 13 12
11 14 14 13 11 1314 14 15 15
15 14 15 14 14 13
13 12

Eb7#9#5
Am9 D7alt Gmaj7 Db13(#11) F#m11 C9sus B9sus D13(b5)
163 I

0 0 0 0 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 5 6
3 3 3 0 1 2

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 77

Abraham Laboriel Transcription

169
Emaj7 Bb13(b5) Am9 D7alt Gmaj7 Db13(#11)

P
H T
4 6
7 1 1 5 5 4 4
0 0 2 3 5 5 (5) 3 (3) 3 0

C9sus Eb7#9#5
F#m11 B9sus D13(b5) Emaj7 C#m11
175 J

3 3 0 2 2 5 6 7 7 6 4
2 7 0

B/E Aadd9 B B/E Aadd9 B

186
Aadd9/E E Esus9/G# F#/A# C#dim/B Aadd9/E E Esus9/G# F#/A# C#dim/B

5 7 6
0 4 5 6 7 7 0 0 2 3 4 5 5 6 7 7 7

B/E Aadd9
B/E Aadd9 B Aadd9/E E Eadd9/G# F#/A#
194
Aadd9/E E Eadd9/G# F#/A# C#dim/B

21
7 4 6
0 0 0 2 3 4 5 6 6 6 7 7 0 0 2 3 4 5 6 6

B B/E Aadd9 C#dim/B

C#dimB Aadd9/E E Eadd9/G# F#/A# B B/E
201
Aadd9/E

21
4 4 6 6 4 4 6 6
7 7 7 0 0 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 7 0

E Aadd9 C#dim/B
207
Eadd9/G# F#/A# B rit.

4 5 6 7 7

78 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 Jump Head

High Powered, High End Bass Cabinets, Stereo Valve Pre-Amps, Amplifiers, Studio Monitors
W J B A 2 0 0 0 Wa t t A m p W J B A 2 1 0 0 0 Wa t t A m p
Ready for stadiums and the largest of club and stage gigs. Specifically 1000 watts (in bridge mode) into 4 or 8 Ohms. Packaged with similar features
designed for touring and back line requirements. and controls of the WJBPII Bass Pre-Amp (single channel 6 band EQ)

“This is the best bass amp that I’ve ever played thru! OMG this new head is
absolutely insane, I’m blown away. This technology is light years ahead of everyone.
Thank you thank you thank you.” ~ Derrick Ray (Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige)

“The amp is AMAZING! It sounds so good!” ~ André Bowman (Usher, Lady Gaga,
Will I Am, Black Eyed Peas)

W J B P St e r e o Va l v e B a s s P r e - A m p W J 2 × 1 0 Pa s s i v e 7 0 0 Wa t t B a s s C a b i n e t
5 Band EQ, Input Gain for both Passive & Active basses, Optical 700 Watt @8 Ohms, Compact, High End,
Compressor, Built in Tuner. Crystal Clear, Full Range 2×10 Bass Cabinet
(40 Hz – 20 KHz & does the job of a 4×10).
W J 1 × 1 0 St e r e o / M o n o
Bass Cabinets J o n e s - S c a n l o n St u d i o M o n i t o r s
500 Watt a side, 4 ohm cabinets that are used as a pair With state of the art DSP, High Powered,
in stereo or parallel mono. Bi-Amped, stunning Frequency
Response, incredible Phase & Time
Alignment.

“I first used these speakers with the

Rolling Stones, there is no more
demanding a situation for a speaker than
reproducing a Stones tracking session
at volume. They have the detail and
accuracy for low volume mixing and
also the power to rock the house with
musicality.” ~ Krishan Sharma (engineer -
Rolling Stones)

W J B P I I Tw i n C h a n n e l P r e - A m p
WJBPII Twin Channel Bass Pre-Amp, featuring the option of
phantom power on the second channel.

“I’ve done many tours in my 40 Years of playing bass guitar.

I’ve never Experienced a pre-amp like the Wayne Jones, that
gives me studio dynamics live on Stage. Simply Incredible.”
~ Kevin Walker (WILL.I.AM, Kanye West, Prince, Justin Timberlake...)

“Clean, clear and detailed and all the tube warmth you could
ever need.” ~ Marcus Miller

W J 2 × 1 0 Pow e r e d C a b i n e t
1000 Watt Compact, Portable High End, High Powered,
Crystal Clear, Full Range 2×10 Bass Cabinet
(40 Hz – 20 KHz & does the job of a 4×10)

w ww .w ayn ejonesa udio. com www. facebo o k.co m/WayneJo nesAudio @waynejo ne s a u di o

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 79

 A Feline
Lee Rocker Returns
With Stray Cats

S
tray no more. Lee Rocker, guitarist Brian Setzer, and drum-
mer Slim Jim Phantom — collectively rockabilly’s pick of
the litter known as Stray Cats — are back and sharper
than ever. Some 40 years after they formed in the
Long Island town of Massapequa, New York, and 26 years
since their previous record, the Cats have clawed their
way back with 40. Although it marks said anniversary
and delivers the trio’s rockabilly revival staples, with
songs about cat-fightin’ gals, bad-boy rebels, and su-
percharged cars, the 12-track platter also explores
new harmonic and rhythmic terrain. No doubt it’s
the result of the three being years more proficient
and curious on their axes, and more comfortable in
their musical creativity.
The 57-year-old Rocker remains undersung
outside of the realm of dedicated upright slappers
who have followed in his propulsive path. In the ’80s,
he helped make the acoustic bass popular again in an era
of bright-toned, active bass guitars and keyboard-bass-laden

By Chris Jisi

80 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

 bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 81
Lee Rocker
synthpop. And the Cats certainly had a jump
on the current wave of rootsy, acoustic-in-
strument-driven supergroups ranging from
the Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons to
the Mavericks (the latter anchored by Bass
Magazine contributor Ed Friedland).
Since the Cats’ initial breakup in 1985,
following smash hits like “Rock This Town”
L I ST E N and “Stray Cat Strut” and millions of records
Stray Cats, 40 [2019, sold, Rocker has remained true to his art.
Surfdog] He formed Phantom, Rocker & Slick (with
guitarist Earl Slick), leading to two records
GEAR and the MTV hit “Men Without Shame.” His
Basses Kolstein Lee 14 rockabilly-infused solo albums include
Rocker Busetto Trav- one departure in 2011’s The Cover Sessions
el Bass, Kolstien Lee [UpRight], on which he reimagined songs
Rocker ¾ Model Tux- by the Beatles, Allman Brothers, and Elton
edo Bass, two King John in a minimalist, Americana style. He
Doublebasses (with has performed with Carl Perkins, George
gut and steel strings) Harrison, Ringo Starr, Keith Richards, Wil-
Strings Efrano gut lie Nelson, Leon Russell, the Ramones, and
strings, Jargar medium Scotty Moore, and he briefly joined the cast
steel strings of the 2011 Broadway hit Million Dollar
Pickups Planet Wing Quartet, playing the role of bassist Clayton
Amp Ampeg SVT-CL Perkins (brother of Carl). And there was a
head with SVT-810E steady stream of Cats reunions, resulting in
cabinet, Ampeg Heri- four more albums in the late ’80s and early
tage B-15N ’90s, tours in 2004, 2007, and 2008, and a
single show in 2009 for Setzer’s 50th birth-
CO N N E C T day. Apparently, even while the cat’s away,
Watch Stray Cats re- these Cats will play.
cording “Rock It Off”
in the studio. What was the path to this record?
In the summer of 2018, for the first time
CHECK IT OUT
in about nine years, we decided to do four
shows — two in California, one in Las Ve-
gas, and one in Chicago. We met up, got on-
stage, and it just rocked. The chemistry was
there, the band sounded better than ever,
and there were audiences of 20,000 peo-
ple singing every word. So I said, “Man, it’s
time. We should be doing this again.” That
led to us talking about how we were coming
up on our 40th anniversary, and how it had
been 25 years since we’d done an album.
And by October 2018 we were in Blackbird
Studio in Nashville tracking the record.
You cut the record live.
That was the plan, because the impetus
82 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
for the album was the four concerts. We’re
at our best as a band when we play live,
so that’s how we recorded: all in the same
room, standing shoulder to shoulder and
playing at concert volume, and we didn’t
have to use headphones. We were trying
to capture what it is we do onstage. There
were little two-foot-tall walls between us,
and some ceiling carpets were hung to re-
duce some of the bouncing and bleeding.
We did a few overdubs later, and obvious-
ly there was post-production with delays
and reverbs, but for us, the studio is not the
fourth instrument, as it is for some bands.
With the Cats, you don’t want to overpro-
duce and overthink it. This album very much
reminds me of our first record [Stray Cats,
1981, Arista], which came out only in Europe,
with Dave Edmonds producing.
How did recording that way affect the
music?
It enabled us to look at each other and
hear each other with the intensity and focus
of playing onstage. We’re a rock band, but in
a way, we operate like a jazz band. The songs
are never played the same way twice. Every-
thing is a conversation between us. If I fin-
ish a chorus a certain way, Brian and Jim will
hear it and answer me. Or if Jim plays an ac-
cent, we’ll all jump on it. Playing with that
kind of spontaneity and fluidity is a blast.
Who wrote the songs?
I wrote and sang lead on “When Noth-
ing’s Going Right,” and Brian wrote and sang
the other 11. But we all have a lot of input in
our parts and the arrangements; they sort of
evolve as we go. We were sending back and
forth working demos before we got to the stu-
dio. We had 17 or 18 songs, and we whittled
them down to the 12 that best fit the album.
How do you come up with parts for new
songs?
I listen to the song and try to provide what’s
needed, and then everyone works off that.
There’s very little discussion over our parts; we
just play what we think works and try to put our
stamp on it. Occasionally, someone will say,
Hey, can you try this or that. What I love about
the Cats is the vast amount of sonic and musical
 Lee Rocker

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 83

Lee Rocker
space I get to occupy, with no other instrument
down there in my domain; I get to stake out the
low end. For inspiration, I still go back to my
biggest influence, Willie Dixon. When you lis-
ten closely, his parts are always a little different
from what you think they are, and that’s what
I tried to do on this record. A great example is
Willie’s part on Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Del-
ilah” [Chess single, 1958]. I was fortunate to see
him play when I was a teenager.
What basses did you use?
I played three different instruments.
Two are King Doublebasses made by Jason
Burns, who went on to start Blast Cult. The
third is my signature Kolstein Busetto Trav-
el Bass, which has a slightly thinner, tear-
drop-shaped body, a full-size neck, and a
carved top — I used that only on the blues
tune “That’s Messed Up.” The two Kings are
set up differently: One has steel strings, EMG
active pickups under the strings, and a piezo
pickup behind the fingerboard. It has a heavy
low end with a lot of sustain, and that was
my sound from the early days; it’s on tracks
like “Rock This Town,” “Runaway Boys,” and
“Rumble in Brighton.” When I started out,
there was no good, established way of ampli-
fying an upright bass for a rock band. I ba-
sically nailed an electric bass pickup to the
bottom of the fingerboard, which gave me
low end and volume without feedback. Soon
after, I added a piezo pickup to run through
a second channel, to get some finger and slap
sound — but the early piezos were feedback
machines! Over the years they have vastly
improved, with great tone that doesn’t col-
or the instrument’s sound, and no feedback.
The other King I used has gut strings and a
piezo pickup, for a much more traditional
sound. There’s a nice attack and a natural de-
cay. I use the gut-string King for slap-heavy
tunes like “Rock It Off,” “I’ve Got Love If You
Want It,” and “Mean Pickin Mama.”
How were the basses recorded?
I always have a blend of three or four
sources. At Blackbird we took a direct signal
from the pickups, which meant two signals
on the steel-string King; we miked my Am-
peg SVT rig, which was on its side, horizon-
84 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
tally; and we had a high-quality tube mic by
the ƒ-hole and the bridge. If I’d been record-
ing in an isolation booth, I would have added
a mic about three feet away for room sound.
Vance Powell, our engineer, did a great job
capturing my bass tones.
Perhaps more so than on your previous
records, there are songs that extend beyond
traditional rockabillly, like “Cry Danger.”
The casual fan sometimes puts us in a
rockabilly box, but the band is very diverse,
especially for a trio. For this album we fo-
cused on trying to show our musical growth.
“Danger” is a cool track built on Brian’s
George Harrison-esque, backwards “Day
Tripper” riff. I used my steel-string King to
provide a big foundation, and I came up with
a two-bar pattern that worked [basically two
half-notes followed by four quarter-notes].
“I Attract Trouble” has elements of camp
and humor often present in Cats songs, and a
cool half-step motif.
Right. That has a campy vibe, and mu-
sically it’s sort of a nod to the Cramps and
punk psychobilly. I used the steel-string King
to lock it down. We’re actually a pretty fun-
ny group of guys to be around, so we like to
have that element on our albums. We wanted
to make a fun, cool, feel-good, rockin’ record
that could take the listener away from all of
the craziness going on in the world right now.
The instrumental “Desperado” summons
the Ventures and the late Dick Dale, as it
continually modulates upward.
There’s a considerable surf element to
that track; it’s a tricky tune that we worked
on for a couple of hours. It took me some time
to sort out what I wanted to play and how.
I’m not slapping — it’s traditional plucking
on my steel-string King. Afterward, my tech
said, “I can’t believe it!” I had pitted the fin-
gerboard and there was sawdust on the floor.
I was playing so hard for so long on the steel
strings that we needed to get the board sand-
ed and refinished!
“Devil Train” sounds like a slap tour de
force, with its galloping groove and spaghetti-
western coloring.
For sure, that was a major workout. Bri-

an said, “This song is all about the bass.” I’m
pretty much playing the galloping figure [an
eighth-note and two 16th-notes] for the en-
tire track; that’s the engine that drives it.
I used my gut-string King. It’s a little remi-
niscent of a song we did called “Gina” [from
Blast Off!, 1989, EMI], but this is darker, in
a minor key.
How did your song, “When Nothing’s Going
Right,” come together?
I wrote it specifically for the album. It’s
not full-on rockabilly. I had been listening
to Rockpile, Dave Edmunds’ old band with
Nick Lowe, so the song has a rockabilly fla-
vor, but it also crosses into early-’60s rock a
bit. I used my gut-string King, and the bass
line is a set pattern as opposed to just walk-
ing through the changes. I also like the coun-
terpoint between Brian and me; he came up
with a different guitar part for each verse. I
brought in another song called “Doughouse
Shuffle” that didn’t make it onto the album.
I’m going to record it with my band and re-
Learn more
Lee Rocker
lease it this summer. As for the Cats, we’ll
tour in support of this record for the rest of
the year, and while we’re out there, we’ll dis-
cuss potential plans for 2020.
How have you grown as a bassist and musi-
cian since the early Cats days?
My goal, like all musicians, is to steadily
improve and increase my musical vocabulary.
I’ll discover something new and I’ll think to
myself, Damn, really? After 45 years of play-
ing the upright bass, you just figured that
out? And it’s not just me — the whole band is
better now than ever before. I love how we’ve
all grown while retaining what makes us who
we are. I remember when we opened for the
Rolling Stones in 1981. We did the first stadi-
um show, and we were standing together in
the middle of the stage, as we still do. After-
wards, Mick Jagger came back to see us, and
he said, “It sounds great, but you have a giant
stage — use it!” l
1200 WATTS OF UNPRECEDENTED SL AM
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 85
 Jack
Casady A CAREER
RETROSPECTIVE &
APPRECIATION
By Jim Roberts

IN
1969, the well-respected music critic Ralph J. Gleason inter-
viewed 25-year-old Jack Casady for his book The Jefferson Air-
plane and the San Francisco Sound. In his introduction to the
Q&A, Gleason wrote: “For one who gets such a huge, driving sound from the
bass, he is a smallish man, habitually concealed behind huge suede coats,
dark glasses, and ponchos. But there is nothing shy about the way he plays
or talks. He considers what he says carefully, his mind works uniquely and
provocatively, and he knows what he is about.”
Fifty years later, as he celebrates his 75th birthday, Jack Casady still
knows what he is about — which is playing great bass, often with his long-
time musical partner, guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, in Hot Tuna, the band they
formed as a sideline to the Airplane in 1969. The lengthy collaboration be-
tween the two goes back even further than that, to their boyhood days in
Washington, D.C. They began to play together when Casady was still in ju-
nior high and Kaukonen, three years older, in high school. “It is interesting
that Jack and myself became partners in crime,” writes Kaukonen in his au-
tobiography, Been So Long. “He was younger than me in a time when that
meant something. Our slight age difference meant nothing to our friendship.
Music called to both of us and we answered it.”
Casady’s musical career began when he was 12 years old and discovered

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 87

Jack Casady
his father’s Washburn guitar in the attic. “Af-
ter my parents heard me playing it,” he re-
calls, “they said, ‘If he wants to play it, we’ll
get him some lessons.’ That started me off.” By
the time he was 15, Casady was playing in local
clubs, using a fake ID to pass for 18, the legal
drinking age at the time. He worked with Kau-
konen on some of those gigs, playing lead on
his ’58 Telecaster — “I wish I had that guitar
today,” he says — while Kaukonen sang and
played rhythm on his acoustic guitar.
“My opportunity to play bass came when
I filled in for a guy who was playing a Fender
Precision Bass,” Jack says. “This was in 1960,
when I was 16. Danny Gatton and I were bud-
dies. He was a year younger than me and a
wunderkind on guitar. That summer, a job
opened up, three or four weeks in a club —
this golden opportunity to work every night
— and his bass player got sick. Danny asked
me to fill in. I’d never played bass, but he
said, ‘Jack, how hard can it be? It’s only got
four strings.’ So there it began.”
Casady took to bass immediately — “I
loved the sonic area” — but struggled with the
neck on the P-Bass. He addressed that prob-
lem by going to Chuck Levin’s Music Center
in Washington and ordering a Jazz Bass, a
new Fender model that had just come on the
market. “My hands are not very big, and the
neck was more narrow. Also, it had two pick-
ups, which gives you more tonal variations.”
Jack was soon getting calls for gigs as both a
guitarist and bassist, “and my work quota ex-
panded exponentially.”
After graduating from high school, Casa-
dy went to Florida, where he played both rock
& roll gigs and cocktail-lounge jazz. After six
months, he returned to D.C., where he was
teaching guitar and taking college courses
when he got a call from Kaukonen in Califor-
nia. “That was in 1965,” Casady says. “I was
invited to come out and join the just-formed
Jefferson Airplane.” Unfortunately, just be-
fore he headed west, his Jazz Bass was sto-
len. “So when I went to San Francisco, I didn’t
have a bass. I borrowed basses until I bought
a new Jazz Bass. It was different from the
’60; Fender had dropped the concentric pots.
88 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
It had a single volume and two tones, and at GEAR
first I didn’t like it as much. After a couple of Basses Epiphone Jack
months, I decided I wanted to get more low Casady Signature
end, so I had a Precision pickup added, butted Model (various ver-
right up against the neck. That’s the one I used sions, including the
to record the first three [Airplane] albums.” Limited Edition 20th
The first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Anniversary Mod-
Off, was released in September 1966; it fea- el); Ribbecke “Diana”
tured vocalist Signe Anderson along with acoustic bass guitar
Casady, Kaukonen, vocalist Marty Balin, gui- Strings Epiphone,
tarist Paul Kantner, and drummer Skip Spen- Dean Markley Blue
ce. By the time the second album, Surrealistic Steels (.045–.105);
Pillow, was released in February 1967, Grace Ribbecke, Rotosound
Slick had replaced Anderson — bringing with stainless steel, extra
her two songs from her previous band, the long scale, custom set
Great Society: “White Rabbit” and “Somebody (.050–.110)
to Love.” Spence was also gone, replaced by Amplifiers Epiphone,
Spencer Dryden. That “classic” lineup of the Aguilar DB 680 tube
Jefferson Airplane recorded the third album, preamp and DB 728
After Bathing at Baxter’s, which was released tube power amp with
at the end of 1967. Aguilar GS 410 cab-
inet with four 10s +
“I’d
never heard a bass like tweeter, plus Versa-
that,” said Grace Slick, re- tone Pan-O-Flex with
calling her first impression Ernie Ball VP JR vol-
of Casady’s playing. “Jack had this roaring, ume pedal; Ribbecke,
growling thing that would start at the bot- DPA microphone to
tom and twine all the way up.” (The quote is house system and
in Jeff Tamarkin’s liner notes for the box set Alessandro “Basset
Jefferson Airplane Loves You.) Where did Hound” head with
that “roaring, growling thing” come from? Aguilar DB 285 JC
Not from listening to other rock bass play- cabinet (“Little Jack”)
ers. “Rock & roll was pretty bad and all,” the with two 8’s and one
young Casady told Ralph Gleason. “I didn’t 6.5 midrange driver
like any of it.” Although he had been play- Effects None
ing Buddy Holly songs and other early rock
tunes with Kaukonen in his D.C. days, Casa-
dy preferred classical music and jazz. “All my
heroes were stand-up bass players,” he says,
citing such jazz greats as Charles Mingus and
Scott LaFaro. “The only guy that I heard do-
ing something different [on electric bass] was
in James Brown’s band, when I saw him play
in the late ’50s, using a Fender bass.” Given
the time period, that bassist was probably
Bernard Odum. (“Later,” Casady told Antho-
ny Jackson and Chris Jisi in a 1993 Bass Play-
er interview, “I admired many of my peers
— Phil Lesh, of course, John Entwistle, Paul

McCartney, and Jack Bruce, who appealed
to me because he was also playing melodies
with a vengeance.”)
The jazz influence can be heard in Jack’s
early work with the Airplane, where he often
played long, fluid runs that “twined all the
way up” rather than sticking to root-5 lines
or basic blues patterns. “I was always chas-
ing the jazz bass players. That’s why I think,
later on, I drifted into the hollowbody bass,
because I liked that tone.” The instrument
that he “drifted into” was a short-scale Guild
Starfire Bass II, which he began to use in
late 1967. “I liked to use a more melodic ap-
proach, and that more open and acoustic-like
sound with the Guild gave me the opportuni-
ty to develop in that direction.”
As much as he liked the Guild, Casady
felt the electronics could be better. He con-
nected with Augustus Owsley Stanley (a.k.a.
Bear) from the Grateful Dead’s technical-sup-
port crew, and the experiments began. The
new circuitry Owsley installed included a res-
Jack Casady
onance filter and emitter-followers to lower
pickup impedance; this modified Guild was
Casady’s main instrument in 1968 and most of
1969 — until, shortly after the Airplane played
at Woodstock, it was stolen. He immediately
bought another Starfire Bass and sent it to Ron
Wickersham, another member of the group of
technical experts were who were working with
the San Francisco bands. Wickersham installed
an updated, active version of the new circuits. It
was this bass that Jack played on the first Hot
Tuna album, recorded in late 1969.
The second key component in the Casa-
dy sound was the Versatone Pan-O-Flex, a
35-watt tube amplifier with a unique design.
Designed by G. Robert Hall, the amp has two
channels, one for bass and one for treble, and
the two outputs are mixed into a single 12-
inch speaker. “We were recording at Sunset
in late ’67,” recalls Casady, “and Carol Kaye
was using that [amp] in an adjacent studio.
[Producer] Al Schmitt’s brother, Richie, who
was the second engineer on a lot of our ses-
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 89
Jack Casady
sions, told me about the amp. He said, ‘Lis-
ten, there’s this little amp that’s got a 12-inch
speaker in it, and it sounds gorgeous.’ Of
course, Carol was using it at low volume, with
a Fender bass and a pick and a whole differ-
ent approach than I had; I was using my fin-
gers and a hollowbody bass. But I found out
that when I cranked that amp up, I could
get grit and sustain out of it — really nice,
smooth, full harmonic sustain.”
The combination of the modified bass
and the unusual amp came together on the
fourth Airplane album, Crown of Creation,
released in September 1968. On that LP, as
Dan Schwartz wrote in a sidebar to the Jack-
son/Jisi Bass Player interview, in 1993, “Jack
is a dominating force. The Guild-overdriv-
ing-the-Versatone sound is omnipresent.”
Onstage, Casady miked the Versatone and
controlled it with a volume pedal, using it like
an effect. His main rig at the time was a system
with Fender Showman heads as preamps for
McIntosh tube power amps driving “two cabi-
nets with two 15s or an 18 or twin 12s, or what-
ever we put together in combinations.”
While the Airplane was on tour in 1968,
Jack joined Jimi Hendrix in the studio for a jam
that was released as the 15-minute track “Voo-
doo Chile” on the album Electric Ladyland.
Casady had met Hendrix at the Monterey Pop
festival, and he says the recording of that track
was something of a chance encounter. “When
Jimi was recording Electric Ladyland,” he told
Jackson and Jisi in the Bass Player interview,
“we came through New York, and a bunch of
musicians, including Steve Winwood, went
down to see him. Around 4 AM, Jimi decid-
ed we should do some playing — fortunately,
I had my Guild with me. He broke out a blues
tune that we ran through three or four times
and then recorded.”
The tremendous sound that Casady got
from his late-’60s gear can be heard to full ef-
fect on Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the live
Airplane album cut at the Fillmores, East and
West, late in 1968. In a 1992 “Classic Revisit-
ed” review in Bass Player, I praised the “raw
power” of Casady’s sound on the album and
stated that five cuts should be required lis-
90 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
tening for all bass players: “3/5’s of a Mile in CO N N E C T
Ten Seconds,” “It’s No Secret,” “Other Side of
CHECK IT OUT
This Life,” “Plastic Fantastic Lover,” and (es-
pecially) “Somebody to Love.” Summing up, I jackcasady.com
wrote that “Casady roars through these tunes
like an express train, driving the rhythm with
CHECK IT OUT
chromatic runs, punching out accents, climb-
ing and pushing and scrambling until he cli- jeffersonairplane.com
maxes with thunderous chords. He doesn’t
solo, because there’s no point — the songs are
CHECK IT OUT
really just extended bass solos with the rest of
the band hanging on for the ride.” hottuna.com
Chris Jisi transcribed the bass line from
the live version of “Somebody to Love” in a
CHECK IT OUT
2011 issue of Bass Player. Jack offered this
commentary: “When we originally learned Epiphone
and recorded ‘Somebody to Love,’ I felt it
needed some continuous movement to add a
CHECK IT OUT
sense of aggression, excitement, and flow. So
we kind of reversed roles; instead of me lay- www.ribbecke.com
ing a consistent pattern beneath lead guitar
lines, I would move through the changes with
CHECK IT OUT
a constantly evolving, connecting walking
bass line against Spencer’s furious backbeat aguilaramp.com
and Jorma’s accented fills. For the live album
we wanted to show the kind of energy we
CHECK IT OUT
were getting at concerts that the whole San
Francisco scene was built around; we were alessandro-products.
using the songs to expand our awareness on com
our instruments, and ‘Somebody’ was no ex-
ception.” The live album captured the Jef-
CHECK IT OUT
ferson Airplane “in absolutely top form,” as
Kaukonen wrote in his autobiography, and Deanmarkley.com
Casady’s bass playing was the driving force.
In 1969, while they were working on
material for their next studio album, Vol-
unteers, the Airplane played a memorable
Sunday-morning set at the Woodstock festi-
val. “Nobody was prepared for what it actu-
ally ended up being,” says Casady, reflecting
on the event, which will celebrate its 50th
anniversary this year. Along with a concert,
the anniversary events will include a special Opposite: Casady
exhibit at the Bethel Woods Center for the and Jorma Kaukonen
Arts, which will include Casady’s first modi- share a Hot Tuna
fied Guild bass. In 2017, 48 years after it was moment.
stolen, Casady was able to recover the bass,
thanks to a Facebook contact. “So it will be on
display,” he says, “along with the very shirt
BARRY BERENSON
Jack Casady

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 91

Jack Casady
that I wore at Woodstock. Isn’t that great?”
IN
the early ’70s, as the various per-
sonalities in the Airplane began to
fly apart, Casady and Kaukonen
decided to use their hotel-room blues jams
as the basis for a band they called Hot Tuna.
(Rumor has it they wanted to call the band
Hot Shit, but RCA Records said no.) They
have performed with various lineups in the
ensuing years, but the core of Hot Tuna has
always been the duo that first played togeth-
er as teenagers in Washington. The band’s
eponymous debut album was recorded at
the New Orleans House in Berkeley, Cali-
fornia, in September 1969, with Kaukonen
on acoustic guitar and Casady playing his
Guild-and-Versatone rig. It’s just the two of
them, along with harmonica player Will Scar-
lett, and it remains an enduring classic. (The
CD version, released in 2012, has 18 addi-
tional tracks along with the ten that appeared
on the original vinyl LP.)
The small-group, intimate setting is
ideal for appreciating the sophistication
and subtlety of Casady’s style, as well as
his beautiful, liquid tone. It’s difficult to se-
lect outstanding tracks, as Jack plays with
consistent brilliance throughout, but my
personal favorites include the versions of
“Hesitation Blues,” “Death Don’t Have No
Mercy,” and the instrumental “Mann’s Fate”
that appeared on the original LP. “I’ve been
very fortunate to play with a fingerstyle gui-
tarist the caliber of Jorma all these years,”
said Casady in the 1993 Bass Player inter-
view, “because I’m constantly treated to in-
teresting contrapuntal lines. It frees me and
takes the bass out of the realm of a linear
instrument … Jorma’s approach allows me
to play chords, to pick up and finish phrases
he starts, and to play melodies while he pro-
vides accompaniment.” Casady cites the in-
strumental “Water Song” from Burgers, the
third Hot Tuna album, as “the best recorded
example of the melodic bass concept I’ve de-
veloped in this context.”
In 1971, Casady collaborated with the
“dream team” of technical experts that Ow-
92 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
sley had assembled in the creation of an en-
tirely new kind of bass. The builders took the
name Alembic — an operation that was, as I
wrote in my book American Basses, “more of
a concept than a company.” The key players
were Ron Wickersham and his wife, Susan;
audio engineer Bob Matthews; and musi-
cian/sound mixer/luthier Rick Turner. “I’d
hang out and give them ideas,” says Casa-
dy. They wanted to build a bass that not only
suited Jack’s playing style but was an “exper-
imental platform” — one with modular elec-
tronics that would allow them to try different
combinations of pickups and onboard cir-
cuits. “It was supposed to take only a couple
months, but it ended up taking, I don’t know,
something like 15 months to put together.”
The result was the bass known as Alem-
bic #1, a neck-through-body, medium-scale
instrument that was the first high-end elec-
tric bass. It had a body carved from exotic
woods, an elaborate inlaid fingerboard, inter-
changeable custom pickups sliding on brass
rails, and modular circuit boards, designed
by Ron Wickersham, modeled on those found
in recording consoles. It didn’t look or sound
like any electric bass that had ever been made
before. Casady began to use it in early 1972,
and it was his main bass for about three years
until it was damaged and, reportedly, did not
sound the same even after repairs. (For more
on Alembic #1, see my Partners column in
Bass Magazine issue 2.)
Casady moved on from the Alembic
to several other basses, including a Fly-
ing-V instrument built by Glenn Quann,
and basses made by Modulus Graphite and
Stars Guitars. Then, in 1985, he discov-
ered an early-’70s Gibson Les Paul Signa-
ture Bass — a long-scale, semi-hollow bass
with a single low-impedance pickup. Remi-
niscent of the Guilds Jack had used earlier,
with the acoustic properties he preferred,
the Les Paul immediately became his main
instrument. In 1997, it was the inspiration
for the Epiphone Jack Casady Signature
Bass, which has a similar configuration and
an improved pickup, designed by Casady.
Originally made in Korea and later China,

the Casady Bass has proven to be a popular
model, and in 2017 Epiphone celebrated its
20th anniversary on the market with a spe-
cial limited-edition version.
In 1996, Casady was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member
of the Jefferson Airplane. The event, per-
haps predictably, was not without controver-
sy. Grace Slick didn’t attend, and the other
band members rejected the idea of having
Joan Osborne take her place. There was a
question about who would play drums, as
Spencer Dryden was no longer an active mu-
sician; that problem was solved by having
Prairie Prince join Dryden onstage for a dou-
ble-drum setup. In the end, the band played
three songs, capped by a rousing version of
“Volunteers” — and Casady stuck around af-
terwards to join in a jam led by Arlo Guthrie
and Pete Seeger. “That was great,” Jack says.
“Pete Seeger is one of my all-time heroes.”
In 2011, Casady received a Bass Player
Lifetime Achievement Award at Bass Play-
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.
© 2019 Hartke | hartke.com | victorwooten.com
Jack Casady
er LIVE!, presented by Anthony Jackson, af-
ter which he performed with Kaukonen and
mandolinist Barry Mitterhoff. More honors
came in 2016, when the Airplane received a
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, al-
though by that time Paul Kantner, Spencer
Dryden, and Signe Anderson had died.
While Casady’s post-Airplane career has
focused on Hot Tuna, he has been featured in
a number of other settings over the years, in-
cluding a power-pop outfit called SVT and side
projects with David Crosby, Warren Zevon,
Peter Rowan, and others. He has also played
in several Airplane-spinoff projects, including
a short-lived 1989 reunion that produced an
album and tour, as well as the KBC Band (with
Marty Balin and Paul Kantner) and various
versions of Jefferson Starship. In 2003, he re-
leased a solo album, Dream Factor, that show-
cased 11 of his compositions including the bass
tour-de-force “Outside.” And a second solo al-
bum is in the works. “I’ve got about 15 songs.
It’s got some vocal bits and pieces, but it’s pri-
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 93
Jack Casady

JACK CASADY’S DISCOGRAPHY

“I can’t remember all the albums I’ve played on,” says and bootlegs. Albums he has played on and artists he
Jack Casady with a chuckle. “I’ve never tried to put has worked with are listed in the following places (and
together a discography.” By my count, there are more there are many more opportunities to see and hear his
than 50, not counting various compilations, reissues, work on YouTube):

CO N N E C T
CHECK IT OUT CHECK IT OUT CHECK IT OUT

Jefferson Airplane Wikipedia Hot Tuna Wikipedia Jackcasady.com

If you need to know where to start, here are some suggestions:

With Jefferson Airplane

Surrealistic Pillow
Crown of Creation
Bless Its Pointed Little Head
and/or the box set Jefferson Airplane
Loves You

With Hot Tuna

Hot Tuna
Live at Sweetwater, Vol. One
Keep on Truckin’: The Very Best of Hot
Tuna
Steady as She Goes

With Jimi Hendrix

Electric Ladyland

Solo album
Dream Factor

marily an instrumental album. I hope to be
able to put it out sometime this year.”
Casady’s work with Hot Tuna can be
broken down into two periods. The first be-
gan with the eponymous live album record-
ed in 1969 and included five studio albums,
the last being Hoppkorv, released in 1976.
A year later, the group broke up when Kau-
konen, as he put it in his autobiography, “just
walked away” because of personal problems.
After a brief reunion in 1983, Jack and Jor-
ma were back together again for good in
1986, touring regularly and recording a new
studio album, Pair a Dice Found, released in
1990. Another studio album, Steady as She
Goes, followed in 2011. When Tuna is not
touring, Casady retreats to his home on the
Isle of Jersey, one of the English Channel Is-
lands. “When I’m not out there playing,” he
says, “I like to do a lot of hiking and just gen-
erally keep in good health.” He also makes
regular visits to teach master classes at Kau-
konen’s Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio.
Hot Tuna continues to keep a busy tour-

94 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com


ing schedule, doing both acoustic and electric
shows, sometimes with guest artists. On the
acoustic shows, Jack features a custom acous-
tic bass guitar built for him by luthier Tom Rib-
becke and named “Diana” in honor of his late
wife, who died in 2012. “I wanted a bass where I
can sit across from Jorma playing acoustic fin-
gerpicking guitar and it will sound like a bass,
not a baritone guitar, with actual low end com-
ing out of the instrument. We worked on it for
a year and a half, and it just sounds gorgeous.”
Hot Tuna’s Spring 2019 tour includ-
ed four special acoustic shows to celebrate
Casady’s 75th birthday on April 13. At those
shows, Jack says, “I was just playing my bass
guitar and doing what I like to do … I think
that as you grow older, you’ve got more to say
and in a different way.” The tour resumed in
June, with both acoustic and electric shows
scheduled for the rest of 2019.
Jack Casady
A
nthony Jackson, in his inimitable
style, summed up his praise of Jack
Casady in the 1993 Bass Player article
by saying: “As I’ve insisted many times, the
bass guitar has few true giants — the Dick-
heads of the Month excepted — and Jack
Casady remains in the first row.” That’s still
true. While Hot Tuna may not be a hot top-
ic on social media today, Jack remains a for-
midable musical presence. His influence has
been wide. It can be heard in the bass play-
ers of succeeding generations who have ab-
sorbed his unique combination of a melodic
approach learned from jazz and the relent-
less drive of the James Brown rhythm sec-
tion, whether they are aware of it or not. As
he looks down the road, Jack Casady has no
intention of retiring or even slowing down.
“People have asked me over and over, ‘What’s
your best show?’ or ‘What’s your favorite
show?’ and it’s really the one I’m about to
play.” l
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 95
Gear Shed

MXR

M282 DYNA COMP

BASS COMPRESSOR
By Rod C. Taylor

COMPRESSION HAS LONG BEEN A get complicated dialing things in so you play, your personal attack on the
staple on bassists’ pedalboards, and that it does its job but doesn’t nega- strings, your goals with sound, and
if you know nothing else about how tively affect your tone. How you use how often you switch musical genres
compression works, you know it can compression depends on the genres within one set, to name just a few fac-

96 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com


tors. So, when it comes to this effect,
the more help the industry can give
us in quickly dialing in our sound,
the better.
MXR’s new Dyna Comp Bass
Compressor does just that. It’s based
on the MXR Dyna Comp, first pro-
duced in the 1970s, which to this day
remains a popular choice for com-
pression, either for bass or guitar.
The Dyna Comp Bass Compressor
is a bass-focused version of the re-
nowned pedal, contained in the in-
creasingly popular “mini” housing.
I’ve been impressed with the
pedals coming out of Dunlop’s MXR
Bass Innovation division; their cre-
ations are always intuitive, bass-cen-
tric in all the ways that matter, and
built to withstand real-world wear
and tear — thanks largely to the in-
put provided by bassist and pro-
ducer, Darryl Anders. As the bass
product manager at Dunlop/MXR,
Darryl stays personally involved with
the research and design that shapes
what the company produces, and my
experience with the results has been
that each is fairly intuitive, requiring
little or no pre-use instruction. With
that in mind, the day the pedal ar-
rived, I took it out of the box, slapped
some Velcro on the back, threw it
on my Pedaltrain Nano, and headed
off to a rehearsal for a singer–song-
writer gig, all without trying it out in
advance or referring to the manual.
Right away, the controls made sense
to me. Like many MXR bass pedals,
the clean control blends in the un-
affected tone to your liking; output
determines the volume, sensitivity
gives control over the sustain (which
is often why I use compression with
singer/songwriting gigs), attack lets
you choose between a slow attack
and fast attack, and the tone con-
trol tweaks the upper mids (±7dB @
SPECS
1kHz). Darryl explains that they add-
ed this last feature because compres- M282 DYNA COMP
sion pedals tend to take a bit off the BASS COMPRESSOR
top end, and they wanted to provide
an option to put it back. I added just STREET $150
a bit and found it adequate, especial- PROS All-analog, thoughtful fea-
ly while blending in the clean signal. tures, circuitry tailored for bass
In all, it took me about 90 sec- players
onds to dial in what I wanted, and then CONS None
I was back to focusing on the music. BOTTOM LINE An affordable,
This pedal makes sense fast, and that’s no-nonsense, straightforward com-
an important factor — even more so pression pedal that does a great
with compression pedals. Also of note: job without taking up much space.
The pedal is all analog, the circuitry is
tailored to bass frequencies and the SPECS
nuances of electric bass, and its dimin- Analog/digital Analog
utive size means it takes up very little Input/output ¼" jacks
space on your pedalboard. POWER SOURCE 9-volt battery or
I’ve often heard that if no one in 9-volt DC power supply (sold sep-
the band comments on your com- arately)
pression pedal, then it’s doing its job. CONTROLS clean, sensitivity, output,
Kind of like playing the bass, right? tone, attack
If we do our job well, then people MAXIMUM COMPRESSION 36dB
tend to just focus on the music. This
pedal allowed me to do that myself. Contact jimdunlop.com
I dug how it evened out the volume
and sustain of what I was playing be-
hind the artist, which included a lot
of long-held notes. Later, at home, I
dove more into it on a funk and rock
level, and it performed well there,
too. Since I am a minimalist when it
comes to bass effects (and the corre-
sponding boards on which I mount
them), this pedal’s tiny tract of real
estate is perfect.
In the end, I found the Dyna
Comp Bass Compressor to deliver on
its promise to reproduce the classic
Dyna Comp sound for bass players
in a way that fits our specific needs,
while keeping it simple. For Darryl
Anders, that’s not an accident. “I see
it as our job to support the founda-
tion of music, so in designing this
pedal, we kept the role and function
of bass front and center,” he says.
Yeah, I can get behind that. l
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 97
Gear Shed
Strandberg
BODEN PROG
5-STRING
By Jonathan Herrera
A S K T H E AV E R A G E C I T I Z E N T O
picture a bass guitar, and assuming
they know what you’re talking about,
they’ll likely imagine something
like the Fender Precision or Jazz
Bass. The incredible staying power
and ubiquity of Leo Fender’s origi-
nal designs are extraordinary when
one considers how long ago the first
Fenders were loaded onto a Ford
panel truck from a Fullerton loading
dock, Chuck Berry gleefully shout-
ing from the mono tube radio. Sure,
there have been occasional stabs at
wholesale innovation — Steinberg-
er’s très ’80s L-series new-wave rect-
angles come to mind — but most
manufacturers generally follow in
Fender’s footsteps.
There’s no arguing that the Fend-
98 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
er formula works; it is the definitive
bass for a reason. But it undeniably
has some inherent shortcomings,
even if we’ve all learned to live with
them. First, most bass guitars don’t
balance well at all. The combination
of the headstock, densely packed
with large tuning machines and the
terminal wraps of each string, and
an inadequately long upper horn of-
ten place basses’ center of gravity too
far up the neck, leaving us with necks
that dive floorward. Energy better
used for good fretting-hand tech-
nique is instead wasted holding the
neck up. Basses are also hard to trav-
el with, given their length. You might
be stunned at the machinations I’ve
employed to ensure my bass makes it
into a plane’s cabin with me, and not
underneath with the roller bags and
insufficiently credentialed emotion-
al-support dogs. Many are the times
I’ve watched my bands’ guitar play-
er breeze onto a jetway unmolested,
while I dutifully ignored the piercing
gaze of a ticket agent reaching be-
neath her desk for a gate-check tag,
the way a liquor store owner furtive-
ly reaches for the baseball bat gath-
ering dust under a carton of Camels
at the first whiff of trouble.
Further scrutiny of the Fender
formula reveals limitations of more
arguable importance. Some players
prefer the timbre and feel of a lon-
ger-than-standard scale, like 35”
or 36”, especially if they’re playing
a B-string-equipped 5-string. Yet,
when it comes to the sound and feel
 SPECS

STRANDBERG BODEN PROG

5-STRING
Pros Lightweight, portable, clear
and balanced tone, ergonomics and
balance are nearly perfect
Cons Expensive for an Indone-
sian-made bass
Bottom Line While it may not
be for everyone, the Strandberg
Boden Prog is one of the most
portable and playable basses out
there, blessed with a sweet and
musical tone.

SPECS
Street $3,095
Body Chambered swamp-ash body
Top Book-matched flame maple
Finish Brown-stain semi-gloss poly-
urethane
Neck Roasted maple w/12-ply car-
bon-fiber reinforcement
Neck joint Bolt-on
Fingerboard Ebony
Pickups Nordstrand Audio Big Rig
humbucking soapbars
Electronics Darkglass ToneCapsule
3-band EQ
Hardware Strandberg EGS Rev 2,
black
Weight 6.6 lbs

Made in Indonesia
Contact strandbergguitars.com

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 99

Strandberg
of the higher strings, those same
players often prefer the flexibility
and timbre of a shorter scale. Anoth-
er arguable limitation is the curved
profile of the bass neck. If some of
my students are any indication, the
shape makes it really hard to keep
the thumb on the back of the neck
where it mostly belongs.
All of which brings us to the bass
reviewed here, the Strandberg Boden
Prog 5-string. I belabored the points
above in order to contextualize this
undeniably weird-looking instrument
as something more than an angular art
piece. Its outré look is a consequence
of Swedish luthier Ola Strandberg’s
belief that ergonomics and playabili-
ty are among the chief necessities on
a bass. The Boden Prog is headless to
eliminate neck dive. Touring with it is
a cinch, too, since it fits in a guitar-size
gig bag. Its fanned-fret design makes
the B string long and taut and the G
gooey and bright, while the trapezoidal
neck profile ensures that your thumb
stays in a fingerboard-opposed po-
sition. So, if the Strandberg seems to
address all the conventional concerns,
why aren’t we all playing one?
Despite its high price and lux
look, the Boden Prog is built in In-
donesia. A few years ago this would
have been cause for real concern, but
the country is now among the world’s
most prolific producers of instru-
ments, due mostly to Korea-based
Cort Guitars, which operates a facto-
ry there that’s responsible for many
low- and mid-range instruments
from some of the industry’s most
iconic brands. Indonesia’s now well-
trained and skilled workers, coupled
with the precision of CNC manufac-
turing, diminishes significantly the
chance that a contemporary Indo-
nesian bass lives up to the negative
stereotypes many still hold about
Asian-built instruments. Neverthe-
100 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
less, I’m sympathetic to those who
feel that on principle, a $3K+ instru-
ment shouldn’t be built by robots in a
factory with low-wage laborers, even
if the end result is indistinguishable
from a bass with a more prestigious
pedigree.
BODACIOUS BUILD
After pulling the Boden Prog
out of its delightfully diminutive gig
bag for the first time, one is perhaps
struck with the sort of reflexive skep-
ticism that greets an office drone
eyeing the new ergonomic kneeling
chair she impulsively ordered from
SkyMall. Yeah, the blurb said it’d
be better for her body than her be-
loved Aeron, but how in the hell does
she get in the thing? I, too, was not
sold until I sat down and picked up
the Strandberg. It may look like it’s
all points, bumps, and weird angles,
but it melded itself into my body in
a way few basses ever have. On my
lap or on a strap, its headless design
and perfectly proportioned lower
bout made for exquisite balance. The
knobs are thoughtfully positioned
and close at hand, although I do not
like the placement of the volume and
blend controls. (Blend is the first in
the lower row, while the volume pot
is farther up and all the way back.)
Once the Boden Prog is in hand,
it continues to surprise. The deep
trapezoidal neck profile (think of it
like a triangle with the top lopped off)
is strange indeed. Strandberg says
the design, which is patented as the
EndurNeck, has a few benefits. First,
the flat surfaces provide a “more
restful place for the thumb.” Strand-
berg goes on, “Your hand is much
stronger when gripping something
thick than when gripping something
thin, and the EndurNeck uses this
fact in its design.” In my experience
with the Boden Prog, the EndurNeck
is sort of the fanned frets of neck pro-
files — weird looking, intimidating at
first, but after a few minutes, surpris-
ingly comfortable. Which leads me to
the next obvious idiosyncrasy: those
fanned frets. As I alluded to above,
fanned frets lengthen the scale of the
lower strings and shorten the higher
strings’ scale, ostensibly affording a
player the best of all worlds. I’ve en-
countered many fanned-fret basses,
and while I’m not personally seduced
enough by the idea to add one to my
arsenal, I do believe that the vary-
ing scale length has an audible im-
pact (especially on a 5-string), and
I’ve found that I adapt quickly when
I’m playing in the lower registers of a
fanned-fret bass. It’s only when play-
ing up high that the arrangement’s
ergonomics start to bother me. It’s
particularly difficult to play accurate
chords (like the typical one-fret mi-
nor 7 voicing) above the 14th fret.
Then again, perhaps this is a gig-pro-
tection feature, not a bug, the bass
having my best interests at heart.
The superbly constructed Strand-
berg does much to belie the aforemen-
tioned negative stereotypes around
Asian import basses. There’s abun-
dant attention to detail throughout its
construction, from the precision of its
assembly to the refined sculpting of
its many sinuous curves. Headless de-
signs typically offer cool hardware as
a matter of necessity, and the Strand-
berg doesn’t disappoint. Each string
is tuned at the body end and lies in its
own saddle structure, isolated from
the other strings. Tuning is precise
and easy, and kudos to Strandberg
for a design that doesn’t require rare
double-ball-end strings. The elec-
tronics package is as good as it gets.
Strandberg worked extensively with
Carey Nordstrand of Nordstrand Au-
dio to ensure the pickups captured
his sonic vision. They landed on the

humbucking Nordstrand Big Rig
pickups, an innovative staggered-po-
lepiece design intended to reduce the
comb-filtering that can adversely af-
fect the frequency response of con-
ventional parallel-polepiece layouts.
These superb pickups are mated to
a Darkglass Electronics ToneCapsule
preamp. Like everything else on this
bass, the preamp is a bit left-of-cen-
ter in that it doesn’t offer a tradition-
al treble control, but rather a pair of
peaking midrange filters, the high-
er of which is centered at 2.8kHz —
which is low compared to the highest
filter on a typical 3-band preamp.
BODES WELL
While I’m supposed to be an ex-
pert in these matters, there’s no deny-
ing that the hardest part of reviewing
basses is attributing my subjective
observations to some objective qual-
Ultimate
Practice
Amp
Micro-7
Lightweight (15lbs)
50 Watts
3 Band EQ
$279
ities of the bass, particularly when it
comes to tone. It’s much easier to re-
port on an instrument’s construction
and technology than it is to connect
its sound to a particular wrinkle of
its design, composition, or other fact.
The Strandberg made this especially
difficult, perhaps because of its un-
usual design.
The Boden Prog is a distinctive-
sounding bass. I’m not sure what part
of its complex cocktail made it so, but
it offers a notably full-spectrum tone
that embodies the oft-abused descrip-
tor “hi-fi.” The B string is clear and
focused, with excellent pitch defini-
tion and well-textured sparkle and
snap. The midrange is balanced, with
a slightly woody bark. Highs are pres-
ent and clear, although the Stranderg
isn’t at all a bright bass, likely due to
the voicing of the preamp’s top-most
EQ filter. String-to-string clarity and
BP-800
Lightweight (5.7lbs)
800 Watts
5 Band EQ
$799
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 101
Strandberg
separation is admirable, with chords
and densely packed arpeggios speak-
ing with lucid definition. The bass re-
sponded well to slap, although fans of
super-zingy highs may find its more
high-mid-focused personality lacking.
In summary, the Strandberg
Boden Prog is fascinating. Bass is
an instrument that has long strained
to evolve functionally, despite the
noble (and occasionally success-
ful) attempts by visionary luthiers.
Its construction quirks are well rea-
soned, even if they combine in an in-
strument that I’m not sure is for me.
That said, the Boden Prog is an excel-
lent bass for anyone who embraces
farsighted design concepts, especial-
ly if they’re also in the market for a
bass that’s as easy to travel with as
the average guitar.  l
Ultimate
Bass Head
www.PJBWorld.com
Gear Shed
Phil Jones Audio
BIGHEAD PRO HA-2
By Jon D’Auria
WHEN PHIL JONES BASS INTRODUCED
the revolutionary Bighead Pro HA-1
headphone amplifier in 2017, bass
players flocked to get their hands on
one. From touring sidemen wander-
ing the globe to up-and-coming bass-
ists in tight living spaces, there was
finally a simple solution to practicing
102 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
and tracking bass that could literally
fit in your front pocket. Thanks to the
constantly innovating mind of Phil
Jones, PJB has just released the sec-
ond incarnation of the Bighead Pro,
the new HA-2 model.
Boasting a rounded, sleeker cas-
ing design and a lightweight, half-
pound body, the external changes
to the HA-2 are obvious upon sight.
There’s also the addition of a ¼” line
out jack so it can drive another amp
or even an entire recording-stu-
dio signal chain. And because PBJ
knows that fidelity is paramount to
serious players, the new HA sup-

ports analog-to-digital conversion
with up to 96kHz sampling and 24
bits of resolution (the HA-1 topped
out at 48kHz at 16 bits), greatly im-
proving its capabilities as a tracking
interface. The rechargeable inter-
nal lithium ion battery will give you
around eight hours of life from a full
charge, which takes just under three
hours.
In putting the HA-2 to work, it
doesn’t disappoint. Plugging direct-
ly into the unit for its most rudimen-
tary use as a headphone amp, the
HA-2 produces clear tones that re-
tained the unique characteristics of
each bass that I tried. Even at higher
volumes (and through the vastly dif-
ferent sound of over-ear studio cans
versus earbuds), the signal remained
true and didn’t show any signs of dis-
tortion or frying. To test it further, I
plugged my iPhone into the aux input
to play along with a few tracks; hon-
estly, I could have just sat idly and
listened to the music coming out of
there, as the sound quality was noth-
ing short of exceptional. The sonic
fun continued in using the line out
to send the signal to different bass
amps. But one of the most useful fea-
tures of the new HA was connecting
the USB to my computer to test its
recording functions. Using both Log-
ic and GarageBand to play around, I
fattened up my signal with the Big-
head’s bass-and-treble EQ, making
my tone sound fantastic. Not being a
studio expert, my demo only covered
the basics, but I imagine a studio wiz
would have a serious field day with
this thing. Regardless, I would be
happy to use the HA-2 for any quick
recording session at my desk.
Considering how versatile and
portable this thing is, $360 is a wor-
thy price for one tool that can give
bass players access to so many pre-
mium features. There’s a surplus of
traveler basses and headphone amps
on the market these days, but none
has quite perfected plug-and-play
on the go like PBJ has. And, offer-
ing preamp and recording features
makes the HA-2 all the more valu-
able. Not only is its new look sexy, it’s
way easier than lugging an amp with
you everywhere you go.
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 103
SPECS
BIGHEAD PRO HA-2
Street $360
Pros Super compact and light-
weight, great tone clarity, power-
ful headphone output
Cons None
Bottom Line PJB improved upon
the innovative HA-1 to provide
the best portable practice tool
for bass players on the go.
SPECS
Controls Master volume, input
level gain, treble cut/boost, bass
cut/boost, on/off
Jacks 3.5mm stereo mini head-
phone, ¼” input, ¼” line out,
3.5mm stereo mini aux input
Battery Rechargeable lithium ion
(up to eight hours)
Headphone output power
300mW
Frequency response 10Hz–
40kHz
Sampling rates 44.1kHz–96kHz
(A/D), 44.1kHz–384kHz (D/A);
USB Audio Class 1 & Class 2 plus
DSD (2.822MHz & 5.644MHz)
Impedance 16Ω–64Ω
Weight 0.6 lbs
Contact pjbworld.com
l
 Jazz Concepts | By John Goldsby

Make The Drummer Sound Good!

5 Tips For A Long Career

S
ince I’m closing in on five decades as a pro-
fessional bassist, I sometimes get asked if
I have any secrets to a long, successful ca-
reer. Let’s analyze five nuggets of wisdom that
will make you “the cat” in demand.
1. Make other musicians sound good. The
first tip is simple. If the other musicians sound
good when you’re on the bandstand, they’ll
keep calling. Bandleaders will want you on
the gig — you’re the bassist who inspires the
band. Let’s get specific about what we can do
to make other musicians sound good.
When we play with a group, our attention
has to be focused on the complete sound of
the group, and simultaneously on the indi-
vidual musical voices. You have to play with
the musicians you’re sharing the stage with.
Don’t bring yourself down with sob stories
about your drummer who speeds up and the
singer who doesn’t know when to come in; ev-
ery musician has strong points, weak points,
and unusual quirks (you do, also). Those are
given factors in any group. Your role is to pull
things together and give everyone the space
and confidence to play their best.
Make the drummer sound good! When
the drummer sounds good, the band sounds
good; the music grows wings and flies. There
are a gazillion approaches to playing drums,
and your job as bassist is to groove with any
of those approaches.
Some drummers play metronomically. You
might need to show them musically that you
can play in the grid also — you support their
precise rhythmic pocket — but you’re going to
add some grease and humor, so that the rhythm
section sounds human. Other drummers might
be groove monsters, yet their time is metro-
nomically flexible. You might need to support
their groove while keeping the time stable.
Your connection with the drummer is
only the foundation. You have to be confi-

CO N N E C T
Listen to John walk the dog on the classic Bud Powell composition “Monopoly,”
CHECK IT OUT
featuring Pasquale Grasso and the WDR Big Band.
John always listens
for the sweet spot The new album from Fred Hersch, Begin Again, has just dropped. Check out Vince
CHECK IT OUT
— where and how to Mendoza’s gorgeous arranging and John’s bass line on the title track.
place a bass line to
best serve the music. Synth bass to the max! Listen to Louis Cole of Knower lay down the driving bass line
CHECK IT OUT
Check out his new on his tune “Gotta Be Another Way.”
video lesson series at
DiscoverDoubleBass. Check out John playing his Sadowsky Will Lee model 4-string (flatwounds, on
CHECK IT OUT
com and johngoldsby. passive) through a Moogerfooger with Knower on a big-band arrangement of
com. “Around.”

104 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

Ex. 1
Medium swing
E7b5 Gm6 Ebm6 F9sus4
= 192
9
2 3 2
5
14
2 1 2 2
2
dent enough in your bass playing to listen
to the sound of the whole band, while you’re
playing. What’s the singer doing? Is the key-
boardist playing harmonic substitutions? Is
the guitar player locked in with you and the
drummer? Are you listening to the soloist
and hearing what they are playing? You can
practice this by playing along with tracks that
have a great feel.
You’re floating above the band, just dig-
ging the sounds, listening to everything as
though you’re hearing a perfectly mixed live
album. This is your zone. Everyone should
feel comfortable because you are on the
bandstand, in control of the foundation, and
they hear groove and good vibes coming from
the low end.
2. Come prepared. I’ve usually got a mixed
bag of music to learn on my music stand and
in my iPad. Because of the nature of the WDR
Big Band gig that I’ve held for 25 years, I’m
constantly rehearsing and performing our
current project while simultaneously prepar-
ing for upcoming concerts. I’ve learned that
Ab13 G7#5 Cm(maj7) F9 Bmaj7 Bm6 Gbmaj7 F7 Bb7
Eb6 C7 F9 Bb7b9
5 1 4
Bb7 A7
2 3 3
1
general preparation a few weeks in advance
will provide a foundation for the detailed
practice that’s necessary right before a re-
hearsal and concert phase.
You should have the music under your
fingers and in your ears before you show up
to a rehearsal. Whether you get a file full of
pop tunes to transcribe, a cabaret show with
old, dusty charts on yellowed paper, or a
modern odd-meter big band opus, your job
is to know the music, or at least your parts,
when you arrive at the rehearsal.
In the “old” days — before arrangers and
musicians worked with computer notation
programs, MIDI files, PDFs, and cloud stor-
age — musicians just showed up at a studio
date and found hand-copied charts on their
music stands. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, I was
known as a pretty good reader, mainly be-
cause I could nail most of the notes, not get
lost, and let the music groove, even though I
was reading. I could help a band sound good,
even when we were all sight-reading.
Example 1 shows a chart that I recent-
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 105
Jazz Concepts

ly played on the Bud Powell composition
“Monopoly,” from a project with bop mas-
ter Pasquale Grasso on guitar, arranged by
Chris Byars. This is a typical big band bass
part in a traditional style of arranging: mostly
chord symbols, punctuated with a few writ-
ten lines and hits that support the ensemble.
The harmonic movement is angular, and the
main point is to lay down a solid 4/4 walking
groove. Watch the 2/4 bar in bar 15!
Composers and arrangers today are em-
boldened by the limitless possibilities avail-
able through digital audio workstations and
notation programs. I now get parts (usually
from less experienced arrangers) that were
obviously composed on a keyboard without
much thought to the bass, often using bass
lines that are just sonic placeholders for the

Ex. 2
Flowing straight eighth-notes

= 82

4 4 3 2
2
5 3 4 4

Gm7
23
3

7 5 4 2
3 2

Ex. 3
Techno jazz, straight 16ths
= 135

9 8 8 7 9 8 8
7 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 7 6 6

12 5 5 6 6 6 5
5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 4 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
2 2 2 2 2

106 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com


chart in order to hear a computer playback.
Most serious arrangers put a lot of thought
into composing a bass line. Many still use
pencil and paper in the beginning stages of
writing a score. Regardless of whether you
get bare-bones chord sheets, completely no-
tated charts, or a bunch of mp3s that you
should transcribe yourself, prepare the music
in advance, as much as you can.
I’m perpetually practicing and prepar-
ing new music. A couple of months ago, we
performed “Swing Symphony,” composed
by Wynton Marsalis, with big band and the
Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra — sym-
phonic sounds mixed with New Orleans
and modern jazz. One week later, we were
grooving with the soul-bop stylings of guitar-
ist Dave Stryker and saxophonist–arranger
Bob Mintzer. Then we moved on to a proj-
ect featuring the neo-jazz sounds of trumpet-
er Marquis Hill. We also collaborated a few
weeks ago with Maria Schneider, a visionary
of modern big band music. My parts were all
on double bass — lyrically floating grooves,
purposefully speeding up and slowing down,
moving gracefully through odd meters and
extended harmonies. The success of Maria’s
music is largely dependent on her participa-
tory conducting style and intense attention
to details during the rehearsal process. The
next project featured the young virtuoso bop
guitarist Pasquale Grasso playing the music
of Bud Powell. Last week, we performed with
Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi of the group
Knower. That project was all electric bass
(with the exception of one ballad on acous-
tic), heavy on effects. This week, we’re doing
a project with Joshua Redman, chamber or-
chestra, and composer-extraordinaire Vince
Mendoza. An album-release project with
Fred Hersch and Vince Mendoza follows im-
mediately.
Example 2 finds our Composer-in-Resi-
dence Vince Mendoza arranging the music
of pianist Fred Hersch. The new album has
just dropped: Begin Again [Fred Hersch and
the WDR Big Band, 2019, Palmetto]. Mendo-
za’s writing style encompasses the full spec-
trum of jazz and classical music. He often
Jazz Concepts
uses the bass as an ensemble texture, playing
specific contrapuntal melodies and blending
with combinations of horns. Listen to the re-
cording of “Begin Again” (see Connect) and
check out the line. My goal playing this seem-
ingly simple part was to blend seamlessly
with the horns, while creating a floating feel-
ing with drummer Hans Dekker. Note the
16-bar rest, followed by a short, yet very im-
portant phrase beginning in bar 21, followed
by a seven-bar rest, where Fred Hersch be-
gins the poignant main theme. Counting bars
and keeping the form are important aspects
of playing this type of chart.
3. Embrace all aspects of time and groove.
When I moved to New York City in the early
’80s, I fell into fast company with some great
drummers, many of whom were practicing
with the cutting-edge technologies of the day:
Dr. Beat metronomes and Roland TR-808
drum machines. Drummers were imitating
drum machines to achieve the perfect groove
and independence, with varying degrees of
musical success. Nowadays, I often see bass
parts that were composed on a notation or
MIDI-sequencer program using a keyboard.
Example 3 shows the bass line, composed by
Louis Cole, from Knower’s hit “Gotta Be An-
other Way.” This techno-goes-jazz bass line
comes from the brilliant, two-handed synth
looping that has made Cole internet-fa-
mous. To get into the music of Knower, I lis-
tened to a lot of their produced tracks, and I
watched videos of their live shows featuring
the muscular bass playing of Sam Wilkes and
— in earlier incarnations of the group — the
drum-and-bass brilliance of Tim Lefebvre.
To match the full-out synth sound, I played
my Sadowsky 4-string (in passive mode)
through a Moogerfooger lowpass filter with a
pick. The challenge with Ex. 3 is to make sure
the 16th notes are right in the pocket — espe-
cially the first 16th-note rest. I found playing
with a pick while muting with my right-hand
palm gave me the articulation that I needed
to make the rhythms pop out.
The project with Knower was a blast. My
goal was to embrace the sequenced, elec-
tronic aspect of the sound while support-
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 107
Jazz Concepts
ing Louis and his beautifully over-the-top
drumming. See Rule #1: Make the other mu-
sicians sound good!
4. Play as if a brilliant songwriter or a great
composer conceived your part. A bass part on
paper or on a screen is a visual portrayal of
what music should sound like, whether it’s
notated completely or only a chord chart. A
written piece of music is similar to a map de-
scribing how to drive from Cleveland to Akron.
You could drive quickly or slowly, recklessly or
calmly, take a scenic route, stop for coffee, or
just vamp and drive in circles for a while be-
fore you arrive in Akron. (Why did you want to
go to Akron anyway?) The map is not the actu-
al trip; it’s only a rough description of the trip.
And, your bass line shouldn’t be merely what’s
written down — it should sound like the per-
fect bass line. When you hear the composite
sound of the whole band, it will become appar-
ent what you need to play to make the compo-
sition sound perfect.
Whether I’m playing standards with no
108 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
charts on a bop gig or interpreting the writ-
ten music of top composers like Vince Men-
doza, Bob Mintzer, or Maria Schneider, I’m
listening for the sweet spot: where and how
to place the bass line to best serve the mu-
sic. Improvised lines should sound like they
are thoughtfully composed, and written lines
should flow like they are improvised.
5. Be yourself. I’m always listening to mu-
sic, especially to hear how other bassists sup-
port a band and bring out their personality
within a musical situation: Sam Jones with
Bud Powell, John Hébert with Fred Hersch;
Sam Wilkes with Knower, Tim Lefebvre with
Knower — these are all brilliant bassists with
their own sounds and concepts. I tip my hat
to all of these players, with heartfelt respect.
That said, when I play music, I want to
sound like myself. My goal is to honor the con-
cept of the original composer and performers,
and also add my personality and experience to
the mix. The most important tip for musical
growth and satisfaction? Be yourself! l
 OFTEN
IMITATED.
NEVER
DUPLICATED.
INTRODUCING

THE PLAYER SERIES PRECISION BASS ®

NEW PICKUPS. NEW COLORS. AUTHENTIC TONE.

FRANZ LYONS OF TURNSTILE

PLAYER SERIES PRECISION BASS IN BUT TERCREAM

©2019 FMIC. FENDER, FENDER in script, P BASS and the distinctive headstock commonly found
b a s s m a g a z i n e . c o m ; on Fender
I S Sguitars B A Strademarks
U Eand3basses;are registered S M ofAFender
G AMusical E Corporation.
Z I NInstruments 109
Jump Head
Beginner Bass Base | By Patrick Pfeiffer
Note Names, Part 2: Descending Groove
A
ny time someone asks you to play a
major scale, where do you start? In all
likelihood on the low root, playing the
notes in ascending order from the lowest to
the highest. Right? Same for a groove.
However, it’s just as important to be
able to start your scales and grooves at the
top, on the upper root, and structure them
from high to low. Just listen to the opening
bass line of Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” or the
Eagles’ chorus in “Hotel California,” and you
realize that these types of grooves are incred-
ibly catchy exactly because they defy expecta-
tion — they move from high to low instead of
the other way around. Which brings us to this
month’s column, the second part of the les-
son on how to find your way among the notes
on your bass neck: using a descending groove
to learn the notes.
When it comes to figuring out how to
play a particular groove, you want to group
your notes close together. You group your
notes so as to reach all of them with ease
and with a minimum of motion. It’s certainly
more fun and interesting to use a real groove
as a learning tool for finding the notes on the
Patrick is a neck, rather than scales or individual notes,
professional bassist, so that’s what we’re going to do.
bass educator, clini- Example 1, which we saw last time, serves
cian, composer and as your master sheet for identifying all the
author, having pub- notes (pitches) on basses that have four, five,
lished several classic or six strings and up to 24 frets (even though
bass books, among most basses end on the 20th fret). The 12
them Bass Guitar for notes are, in chromatic order: C, C#/Db, D,
Dummies, Bass Guitar D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, and B.
Exercises For The groove in Ex. 2 is descending. It starts
Dummies, Improve with the root on the 5th fret of the G string, on
Your Groove: The the note C. Ex. 3 is the same groove starting on
Ultimate Guide the 10th fret of the D string. Both positions use
For Bass, and Daily the same notes, even in the same octave.
Grooves for Bass. Ex. 4 shows the same groove an octave
110 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
higher, starting on the 17th fret of the G
string, while in Ex. 5, the groove starts on the
22nd fret of the D string (which is out of reach
on most basses). All of these grooves start on
C and use the same notes. You need a range
of three strings and two frets in order to com-
plete each. This means you can only start the
groove on the G or D string of a 4-string bass,
the G, D, or A string of a 5-string bass, or the
C, G, D, or A string of a 6-string bass.
Once you have a good handle on the
groove, it’s time to use it in an effective prac-
tice routine for finding all the notes on your
neck. Ex. 6 gives you the starting points for
each root of this descending groove. Re-
member, you need three strings to play it,
therefore you can’t start on the bottom two
strings. Play the first groove beginning on the
5th fret of the G string. Without interrupting
the groove, look for another C to move your
groove to (hang on for as long as it takes to
find that new C). You can see that there’s a
C on the 10th fret of the D string. Shift your
hand as seamlessly as possible to this new C
and continue playing the groove without in-
terruption. Now you’re playing your groove
with the root located on the 10th fret of the
D string. While playing, scan for another C
to move this groove to. You find one on the
17th fret of the G string. Seamlessly shift your
groove to this new position and keep playing.
Now, while continuing to play, search for yet
another C. There is one on the 22nd fret of
the D string (which, as mentioned, may be
too high for your bass).
Playing continuously while you’re finding
new starting points for your groove simulates
a real-life situation. When you’re onstage and
you’re getting ready to move to a new note, you
can’t just stop to figure out where you’re going.
Once you’ve explored all the available
 Beginner Bass Base

Ex. 1

C C# D Eb E F

5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21 10 22
10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14 3 15
3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20
8 20 9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13

10 22 11 23 12 24 13 25 14 26 15 27
10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14 3 15
3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20
8 20 9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13
1 13 2 14 3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18

0 12 1 13 2 14 3 15 4 16 5 17
5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21 10 22
10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14 3 15
3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20
8 20 9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13
1 13 2 14 3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18

F# G Ab A Bb B

11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14 3 15 4 16
4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21
9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14
2 14 3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19
11 12
16 28 5 17 29 6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21
4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21
9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14
2 14 3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19
7 19 8 20 9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24
4 16 17
6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21 10 22 11 23
11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14 3 15 4 16
4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19 8 20 9 21
9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24 1 13 2 14
2 14 3 15 4 16 5 17 6 18 7 19
7 19 8 20 9 21 10 22 11 23 0 12 24

Ex. 2 Ex. 3

5 3
5 5 3 5 10 8
3 3 10 10 8 10
8 8

Ex. 4 Ex. 5

17 15
17 17 15 17 22 20
15 15 22 22 20 22
20 20

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 111

Beginner Bass Base

Ex. 6
C F A#/Bb D#/Eb G#/Ab
5 17 10 22 3 15 8 20 13
10 22 3 15 8 20 13 6 18

10 22 15 27 8 20 13 25 18
10 22 3 15 8 20 13 6 18
3 15 8 20 13 6 18 11 23

12 24 5 17 10 22 3 15 8 20
5 17 10 22 3 15 8 20 13
10 22 3 15 8 20 13 6 18
3 15 8 20 13 6 18 11 23

C#/Db F#/Gb B E
6 18 11 23 4 16 9 21
11 23 4 16 9 21 2 14

11 23 16 28 9 21 14 26
11 23 4 16 9 21 2 14
4 16 9 21 2 14 7 19

13 6 18 11 23 4 16
6 18 11 23 4 16 9 21
11 23 4 16 9 21 2 14
4 16 9 21 2 14 7 19

A D G
2 14 7 19 12 24
7 19 12 24 5 17

7 19 12 24 17 29
7 19 12 24 5 17
12 24 5 17 10 22

9 21 2 14 7 19
2 14 7 19 12 24
7 19 12 24 5 17
12 24 5 17 10 22

starting pitches beginning on C, move on to don’t start it lower than the 2nd fret, which
F. You can start on the 3rd fret of the D string, means you can use the open string for the
move to the 10th fret of the G string, and then lower octave (as in the case of A, which starts
back to the D string at the 15th fret; and if you on the 2nd fret of the G string).
have the room, take another F all the way up This is a serious workout. Spread it
on the 22nd fret of the G string while happi- over the course of several days or even a
ly grooving along. After F, follow up with A#/ week if you like (at two pitches per day, it
Bb and just keep on going through the notes takes six days to play through all 12 keys).
until you end at G. You now have played the I promise you, the results will be amazing
groove in all 12 keys and in all available posi- and will allow you to reach an entirely new
tions. Awesome! level of mastery.
Remember that to play this groove, you Until next month, love, light, and low fre-
need a range of two frets below the root, so quencies to you! l

112 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com

The Inquirer | By Jonathan Herrera
Life Lessons From Steve
T
he best perk of being a longtime bass
journalist — better than the gear, free
concert tickets, or pre-release music
— is the regular opportunity to meet and be-
friend my heroes. Often these encounters be-
gin with a scheduled interview, which is itself
a rather miraculous chance to ask questions
unabashedly in a forum designed specifically
for that purpose. Occasionally, by some quirk
of interpersonal chemistry, these some-
times-stilted initial conversations evolve
into something more personal and friendly.
Through the repetition of this process over
many years, I’ve had the rare opportunity to
explore what lies behind’s a person’s success,
both formally and informally. From here, I
draw inspiration and wisdom that I can ap-
ply to my own life. As I said, it’s the best perk.
I was reminded of this recently during a
brief correspondence with one of my musical
heroes, Steve Swallow. Steve and I first met
in 2005, when I interviewed him for a Bass
Player feature. For me, it was memorable
for many reasons. It was early in my career
at BP, and the opportunity seemed to exem-
plify this pervasive feeling of unearned luck
I recall from those days. Once the interview
began, I was entranced by Steve’s gracious-
ness and humility — that, too, is memora-
ble. Most resonant for all involved, though,
was likely the photo-shoot portion of the day.
Back then, when I wrote a feature, I would
often shoot the accompanying pictures. I was
way into film photography, and I would lug
a Leica, Hasselblad, and all manner of gear
to my interviews, fancying myself a budding
Leibovitz. Just as we were beginning to set up
in his hotel room, his partner in life and mu-
sic, the genius Carla Bley, walked in the door.
Surveying the room, a mischievous look
came over her face. She suggested we all walk
out onto the neighboring golf course for the
shoot. Thus began one of the highlights of my
budding career: conspiring with Carla Bley to
convince Steve Swallow to do silly things with
his bass out on a golf course for an hour while
I captured it all.
Since that day, Steve and I have occasion-
ally talked. In each encounter, whether via
email or on the phone, I have continued to be
inspired by his grace, humor, and kindness.
He evinces clearly the sort of confidence that
comes with having little to prove. He is able
to clearly articulate his musical priorities and
diligently go about the hard work of executing
on them. Throughout this process, he seems
to approach the world without the sort of rav-
enous hunger for approbation and acceptance
that undermines so many musical endeavors.
The reason I relay all of the above is not
to boast about my good fortune, but rather
to relay more broadly values that our musi-
cal culture should embrace more consistent-
ly. This music thing is difficult, particularly if
you’re trying to do it professionally. There are Bass Magazine
myriad cultural and economic forces at work Contributing Editor
that are aligned to block you in every direc- Jonathan Herrera is
tion. Given that, it seems sadistic to further Bass Player’s former
complicate the journey by being difficult, un- Editor-in-Chief. An
kind, gossipy, cliquey, negative, and all the accomplished player,
other all-too-familiar unpleasant realities Jonathan has been
within our industry. If the best path to prog- a full-time musician
ress on our instruments begins with imitat- and producer since
ing the masters, why should that be limited 2010. His latest
to music? Learn from the attitude of Steve endeavor is Bay Area
Swallow and others like him. Lift others up recording studio
around you, and seek opportunities to posi- Dime Studios. Catch
tively contribute to another person’s prog- up with him at
ress. In all things, remember this lyric: “He jonherrera.com and at
ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” l thedimestudios.com.
bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 113
 Partners | By Jim Roberts
Anthony Jackson & Fodera Guitars
IN
1968, a 16-year-old musician
named Anthony Jackson had
an idea. Why not expand the
range of his bass guitar, he
thought, by adding two strings: a low B and
a high C? He called the concept a contra-
bass guitar and began to look for a builder
who could make such an instrument. Late in
1974, he found one: Carl Thompson, a New
York City luthier who had already done one
“special project” by building a piccolo bass
for Stanley Clarke. Thompson thought the
contrabass guitar was a strange idea, but he
went ahead and built the first 6-string bass
tuned BEADGC. Jackson wasn’t happy with
some aspects of the instrument, so he asked
Thompson to try again. The second attempt
never made it past the test bass stage, and
Jackson moved on to another New York City
builder, Ken Smith.
Smith built two contrabasses for Jack-
son. The woodwork was done in Smith’s
Jim Roberts was the Brooklyn shop by a young luthier named
first full-time editor Vinny Fodera. While working there one day,
of Bass Player and Vinny answered a knock at the door and met
also served as the Joey Lauricella, a bassist who had been doing
magazine’s publisher some sales work for Smith. Lauricella began
and group publisher. to help out in the shop, and the two became
He is the author of good friends. In 1983, they decided to go into
How the Fender Bass business for themselves, forming a partner-
Changed the World ship to launch Fodera Guitars.
and American Basses: Anthony Jackson was one of their first
An Illustrated History customers. In the ensuing years, Fodera has
and Player’s Guide built a series of contrabasses for him — prob-
(both published by ably the longest and most productive part-
Backbeat Books/Hal nership between a player and a builder in the
Leonard). history of the bass guitar. While both Thomp-
114 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 3 ; bassmagazine.com
son and Smith had been skeptical about Jack-
son’s concept, Vinny Fodera embraced it. “I
was quite enthusiastic about the idea,” he
says, “and I think that set the tone for our re-
lationship. Anthony appreciated that instead
of telling him how bad an idea it was, I was
eager to give it a shot.”
The first Fodera Anthony Jackson con-
trabass, a double-cutaway instrument with a
34” scale, was delivered in 1984. It was called
No. 5, because it followed the two built by
Carl Thompson and the two by Ken Smith.
Five years later, Fodera created No. 6, a sin-
gle-cutaway instrument with a 36” scale.
Since then, Fodera has built six more ver-
sions; the most recent, the Anthony Jackson
Presentation II, a.k.a. No. 12, is a Hybrid con-
trabass with a hollow body
Throughout the process of creating these
instruments, Jackson has been closely in-
volved, often spending entire days in the Fod-
era shop. “We were willing to try anything to
please him,” says Vinny. “It was a privilege to
work for him, and his ideas were quite sound.
We were curious to hear the result of them in
the instruments.” Jackson confirms the sym-
pathetic nature of the collaboration. “It went
very naturally,” he says. “There was never a
matter of them saying, ‘I don’t understand.
What are you trying to do?’ There wasn’t any
of that at all.”
The Fodera–Lauricella team provided
Jackson with an ideal working relationship.
While Vinny Fodera is a full-time luthier,
Joey Lauricella is a working bassist as well as
a builder. “It’s like I’m the hands and he’s the
ears,” says Vinny. “Joey knows what will work
 Partners

CO N N E C T
CHECK IT OUT

Fodera

CHECK IT OUT

American Basses:
An Illustrated
History and Player’s
Guide

Anthony Jackson

and what won’t work.” Lauricella says that he
has spent many hours sitting with Jackson
and evaluating instruments during their de-
velopment. “It was amazing to have that kind
of relationship with him. He valued my opin-
ion and wanted to know what I thought of his
instruments. He would say, ‘How do you feel
about it?’ I’d give him my feedback and we’d
talk about it.”
That give-and-take was vital in moving
the work ahead, with the two partners eval-
uating the input from Jackson and helping
each other decide what to do. “There was
no situation where one of them was right on
it and the other was sitting there and may-
be not really sure,” says Jackson. “I knew
what I wanted, and as time went on and I
got better at expressing it, they anticipated.
I was able to get them to understand what
I was looking for, and when I wasn’t sure,
they could put me in a frame of mind where
I was sure.”
Vinny Fodera praises Jackson as “the
world’s ultimate bass test pilot.” Hearing him
play and critique their instruments provid-
ed invaluable input for improving them. “He
was brutally honest,” he says, “but he wasn’t
emotional or biased. He has almost a scien-
tist’s demeanor, in that he’s just concerned
with quality of sound and responsiveness and
the success of the features we were striving to
create. We needed to know the truth, and he TELL ME
would give us very accurate evaluations.” A B O U T YO U R
The experience of working with Antho- BASS
ny Jackson for so many years has provided If you have
benefits to Fodera Guitars that go beyond the worked with a
building of his instruments. “With other peo- builder to create
ple where we’ve done signature models, we or customize a
turned it into the same kind of experience,” bass to suit your
says Lauricella. “That way, we could make a playing style,
true signature model rather than just put a I want to hear
name on an instrument.” Vinny Fodera sums from you. Send
up the relationship this way: “It’s been the me your story —
most difficult challenge, working for Anthony with photos, vid-
and trying to satisfy him, and yet it’s been the eo, sound files, or
greatest education. We both feel that we were other supporting
able to hone our skills more than we might material if pos-
have because of the high standards that An- sible: jim@bass-
thony has always held us to. It’s been an ex- magazine.com.
traordinary ride.” l

bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 3 ; BASS MAGAZINE 115