Bandleading on bass offers a unique challenge. Here’s how one player rises to the occasion.
Bassists are natural leaders, both rhythmically and harmonically, but filling the foundational function doesn’t always lend itself to becoming an actual bandleader or solo artist. For most of us, that’s just fine. We’re perfectly happy holding it down and creatively keeping things together. (Of course there are plenty of exceptions: Stanley Clarke, Les Claypool, Meshell Ndegeocello, Thundercat, and Victor Wooten, to name a few.)
But for those who do envision themselves centerstage, making the shift to leader requires a new way of thinking. To get some perspective, I wanted to talk to a bassist with recent experience transitioning to being in charge. I immediately thought of Big New York.
I met Big New York nearly 20 years ago at Bass Player LIVE!, back when Bass Playermagazine held its annual event in Manhattan, before moving it to Hollywood from 2008 to its final act in 2017. Christian de Mesones told me people only started calling him Big New York after he moved to Virginia, where his stature and distinctive accent stuck out. “In New York, there’s about a million guys who look and sound like me,” he laughs. It turns out that he lived in my sorta-hometown of Woodbridge, Virginia, where he recently retired after nearly two decades driving school buses.
Following his late ’70s graduation from the Bass Institute of Technology, Christian played in dozens of bands over the years. Then, ten years ago—with his wife’s firm encouragement—he decided to start leading his own project. Though he grew up listening to hard rock and heavy metal—kids loved it when he played AC/DC and Black Sabbath on his bus—his own sound blends soul and jazz with Latin feels. After steadily releasing singles and holding high-profile performances with special guests, Christian released his debut album in 2020, They Call Me Big New York. The following year, his track “Hispanica (Instrumental),” featuring legendary pianist Bob James, climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Smooth Jazz Airplay charts. This spring he released his sophomore album, You Only Live Twice.
As a leader, Big New York is a composer, an arranger, a marketer, a strategist, a people manager, and a showman—all while still being a bass player. Here’s what he says about these different aspects:
On whether being a leader means always playing the lead: “I’ve always been writing music, from the day I first picked up the bass. I write everything on the bass—melodies, grooves, and chordal structures. I do almost all my writing on my Alembic Epic, but I don’t feel like everything I write has to be played on bass. There are only a few songs where I’m playing the lead melody on bass. If you’re coming into the market brand new, you can’t focus only on yourself or even be the best musician in your band. Believe it or not, the narcissism shows.”
On the critical importance of low end: “If you play lead bass, you have to have another bass player backing you because without it, the music drops. I don’t like that. That’s why I hire a keyboard player that doubles on bass. He keeps his bass nearby for when I play lead.”“I try to make that connection with the audience so they’re with us all the way.”
On having a leadership personality: “You’re taking care of so much—the payroll, the bills, and so many things. So you’ve got to deal with people in a way that they don’t take any energy from you. You may not want to hear someone say, ‘Sorry, my car broke down,’ or ‘My dog ate my homework,’ but that’s what you’re going to get, even from the best musicians on the planet. It’s up to you to bite your tongue, not flip out, and just say everything’s going to be alright. You’ve gotta have backup players, so if one horn player is gone for the gig, you can still do the show. You’ve always got to think of a way to not lose your cool, but it can be hard when it’s your money on the line.”
On showmanship: “When it comes to the dynamics of the show, I know where the lows should be, where the highs should be, where the climax should be. I create it; that’s part of the job. I usually put the bass-led songs near the end. On a recent show I brought in Bill Dickens and Al Caldwell as bass guests, and after the show they paid me a great compliment. They said they really loved watching me leading the band and communicating with the audience. I try to make that connection with the audience so they’re with us all the way.”
On the biggest challenge to being an artist and a bandleader: “The fight to stay relevant. I’m mature enough to realize if I get my few minutes of fame, someone else should get theirs. But when it happens once, you are hoping it’s going to come around again for you. You don’t want to fade away.”Throughout his over-30-year career, Keith Urban has been known more as a songwriter than a guitarist. Here, he shares about his new release, High, and sheds light on all that went into the path that led him to becoming one of today’s most celebrated country artists.
There are superstars of country and rock, chart-toppers, and guitar heroes. Then there’s Keith Urban. His two dozen No. 1 singles and boatloads of awards may not eclipse George Strait or Garth Brooks, but he’s steadily transcending the notion of what it means to be a country star.
He’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards, four American Music Awards, and racked up BMI Country Awards for 25 different singles.
He’s been a judge on American Idol and The Voice. In conjunction with Yamaha, he has his own brand of affordably priced Urban guitars and amps, and he has posted beginner guitar lessons on YouTube. His 2014 Academy of Country Music Award-winning video for “Highways Don’t Care” featured Tim McGraw and Keith’s former opening act, Taylor Swift. Add his marriage to fellow Aussie, the actress Nicole Kidman, and he’s seen enough red carpet to cover a football field.
Significantly, his four Grammys were all for Country Male Vocal Performance. A constant refrain among newcomers is, “and he’s a really good guitar player,” as if by surprise or an afterthought. Especially onstage, his chops are in full force. There are country elements, to be sure, but rock, blues, and pop influences like Mark Knopfler are front and center.
Unafraid to push the envelope, 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 mixed drum machines, processed vocals, and a duet with Pink with his “ganjo”—an instrument constructed of a 6-string guitar neck on a banjo body—and even a didgeridoo. It, too, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and climbed to No. 7 on the pop chart.
His new release, High, is more down-to-earth, but is not without a few wrinkles. He employs an EBow on “Messed Up As Me” and, on “Wildfire,” makes use of a sequencerreminiscent of ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Background vocals in “Straight Lines” imitate a horn section, and this time out he duets on “Go Home W U” with rising country star Lainey Wilson. The video for “Heart Like a Hometown” is full of home movies and family photos of a young Urban dwarfed by even a 3/4-size Suzuki nylon-string.
Born Keith Urbahn (his surname’s original spelling) in New Zealand, his family moved to Queensland, Australia, when he was 2. He took up guitar at 6, two years after receiving his beloved ukulele. He released his self-titled debut album in 1991 for the Australian-only market, and moved to Nashville two years later. It wasn’t until ’97 that he put out a group effort, fronting the Ranch, and another self-titled album marked his American debut as a leader, in ’99. It eventually went platinum—a pattern that’s become almost routine.
The 57-year-old’s celebrity and wealth were hard-earned and certainly a far cry from his humble beginnings. “Australia is a very working-class country, certainly when I was growing up, and I definitely come from working-class parents,” he details. “My dad loved all the American country artists, like Johnny Cash, Haggard, Waylon. He didn’t play professionally, but before he got married he played drums in a band, and my grandfather and uncles all played instruments.
One of Urban’s biggest influences as a young guitar player was Mark Knopfler, but he was also mesmerized by lesser-known session musicians such as Albert Lee, Ian Bairnson, Reggie Young, and Ray Flacke. Here, he’s playing a 1950 Broadcaster once owned by Waylon Jennings that was a gift from Nicole Kidman, his wife.
“For me, it was a mix of that and Top 40 radio, which at the time was much more diverse than it is now. You would just hear way more genres, and Australia itself had its own, what they call Aussie pub rock—very blue-collar, hard-driving music for the testosterone-fueled teenager. Grimy, sweaty, kind of raw themes.”
A memorable event happened when he was 7. “My dad got tickets for the whole family to see Johnny Cash. He even bought us little Western shirts and bolo ties. It was amazing.”
But the ukulele he was gifted a few years earlier, at the age of 4, became a constant companion. “I think to some degree it was my version of the stuffed animal, something that was mine, and I felt safe with it. My dad said I would strum it in time to all the songs on the radio, and he told my mom, ‘He’s got rhythm. I wonder what a good age is for him to learn chords.’ My mom and dad ran a little corner store, and a lady named Sue McCarthy asked if she could put an ad in the window offering guitar lessons. They said, ‘If you teach our kid for free, we’ll put your ad in the window.’”
Yet, guitar didn’t come without problems. “With the guitar, my fingers hurt like hell,” he laughs, “and I started conveniently leaving the house whenever the guitar teacher would show up. Typical kid. I don’t wanna learn, I just wanna be able to do it. It didn’t feel like any fun. My dad called me in and went, ‘What the hell? The teacher comes here for lessons. What’s the problem?’ I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. He just said, ‘Okay, then don’t do it.’ Kind of reverse psychology, right? So I just stayed with it and persevered. Once I learned a few chords, it was the same feeling when any of us learn how to be moving on a bike with two wheels and nobody holding us up. That’s what those first chords felt like in my hands.”
Keith Urban's Gear
Urban has 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA Awards, and four Grammys to his name—the last of which are all for Best Country Male Vocal Performance.
Guitars
For touring:
- Maton Diesel Special
- Maton EBG808TE Tommy Emmanuel Signature
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior, TV yellow
- 1959 Gibson ES-345 (with Varitone turned into a master volume)
- Fender 40th Anniversary Tele, “Clarence”
- Two first-generation Fender Eric Clapton Stratocasters (One is black with DiMarzio Area ’67 pickups, standard tuning. The other is pewter gray, loaded with Fralin “real ’54” pickups, tuned down a half-step.)
- John Bolin Telecaster (has a Babicz bridge with a single humbucker and a single volume control. Standard tuning.)
- PRS Paul’s Guitar (with two of their narrowfield humbuckers. Standard tuning.)
- Yamaha Keith Urban Acoustic Guitar (with EMG ACS soundhole pickups)
- Deering “ganjo”
Amps
- Mid-’60s black-panel Fender Showman (modified by Chris Miller, with oversized transformers to power 6550 tubes; 130 watts)
- 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special (built with reverb included)
- Two Pacific Woodworks 1x12 ported cabinets (Both are loaded with EV BlackLabel Zakk Wylde signature speakers and can handle 300 watts each.)
Effects
- Two Boss SD-1W Waza Craft Super Overdrives with different settings
- Mr. Black SuperMoon Chrome
- FXengineering RAF Mirage Compressor
- Ibanez TS9 with Tamura Mod
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
- J. Rockett Audio .45 Caliber Overdrive
- Pro Co RAT 2
- Radial Engineering JX44 (for guitar distribution)
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx XL+ (for acoustic guitars)
- Two Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III (one for electric guitar, one for bass)
- Bricasti Design Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor
- RJM Effect Gizmo (for pedal loops)
(Note: All delays, reverb, chorus, etc. is done post amp. The signal is captured with microphones first then processed by Axe-Fx and other gear.)
- Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049; electric)
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012–.053; acoustics)
- D’Addario EJ16, for ganjo (.012–.053; much thicker than a typical banjo strings)
- D’Addario 1.0 mm signature picks
He vividly remembers the first song he was able to play after “corny songs like ‘Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.’” He recalls, “There was a song I loved by the Stylistics, ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New.’ My guitar teacher brought in the sheet music, so not only did I have the words, but above them were the chords. I strummed the first chord, and went, [sings E to Am] ‘My love,’ and then minor, ‘I'll never find the words, my,’ back to the original chord, ‘love.’ Even now, I get covered in chills thinking what it felt like to sing and put that chord sequence together.”
After the nylon-string Suzuki, he got his first electric at 9. “It was an Ibanez copy of a Telecaster Custom—the classic dark walnut with the mother-of-pearl pickguard. My first Fender was a Stratocaster. I wanted one so badly. I’d just discovered Mark Knopfler, and I only wanted a red Strat, because that’s what Knopfler had. And he had a red Strat because of Hank Marvin. All roads lead to Hank!”
He clarifies, “Remember a short-lived run of guitar that Fender did around 1980–’81, simply called ‘the Strat’? I got talked into buying one of those, and the thing weighed a ton. Ridiculously heavy. But I was just smitten when it arrived. ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the first thing I played on it. ‘Oh my god! I sound a bit like Mark.’”
“Messed Up As Me” has some licks reminiscent of Knopfler. “I think he influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player. ‘Tunnel of Love,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ ‘Telegraph Road,’ the first Dire Straits album, and Communique. I was spellbound by Mark’s touch, tone, and melodic choice every time.”
Other influences are more obscure. “There were lots of session guitar players whose solos I was loving, but had no clue who they were,” he explains. “A good example was Ian Bairnson in the Scottish band Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. It was only in the last handful of years that I stumbled upon him and did a deep dive, and realized he played the solo on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Eye in the Sky’ by Alan Parsons, ‘It’s Magic’ and ‘January’ by Pilot—all these songs that spoke to me growing up. I also feel like a lot of local-band guitar players are inspirations—they certainly were to me. They didn’t have a name, the band wasn’t famous, but when you’re 12 or 13, watching Barry Clough and guys in cover bands, it’s, ‘Man, I wish I could play like that.’”
On High, Urban keeps things song-oriented, playing short and economical solos.
In terms of country guitarists, he nods, “Again, a lot of session players whose names I didn’t know, like Reggie Young. The first names I think would be Albert Lee and Ray Flacke, whose chicken pickin’ stuff on the Ricky Skaggs records became a big influence. ‘How is he doing that?’”
Flacke played a role in a humorous juxtaposition. “I camped out to see Iron Maiden,” Urban recounts. “They’d just put out Number of the Beast, and I was a big fan. I was 15, so my hormones were raging. I’d been playing country since I was 6, 7, 8 years old. But this new heavy metal thing is totally speaking to me. So I joined a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror, just as their guitar player. At the same time, I also discovered Ricky Skaggs and Highways and Heartaches. What is this chicken pickin’ thing? One night I was in the metal band, doing a Judas Priest song or Saxon. They threw me a solo, and through my red Strat, plugged into a Marshall stack that belonged to the lead singer, I shredded this high-distortion, chicken pickin’ solo. The lead singer looked at me like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I got fired from the band.”
Although at 15 he “floated around different kinds of music and bands,” when he was 21 he saw John Mellencamp. “He’d just put out Lonesome Jubilee. I’d been in bands covering ‘Hurts So Good,' ‘Jack & Diane,’ and all the early shit. This record had fiddle and mandolin and acoustic guitars, wall of electrics, drums—the most amazing fusion of things. I saw that concert, and this epiphany happened so profoundly. I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. That’s what John did. I’m not gonna think about genre; I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’
“Of course, getting to Nashville with that recipe wasn’t going to fly in 1993,” he laughs. “Took me another seven-plus years to really start getting some traction in that town.”
Urban’s main amp today is a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, which used to belong to John Mayer. He also owns a bass amp that Alexander Dumble built for himself.
Photo by Jim Summaria
When it comes to “crossover” in country music, one thinks of Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton’s more commercial singles like “Two Doors Down.” Regarding the often polarizing subject and, indeed, what constitutes country music, it’s obvious that Urban has thought a lot—and probably been asked a lot—about the syndrome. The Speed of Now Part 1 blurs so many lines, it makes Shania Twain sound like Mother Maybelle Carter. Well, almost.
“I can’t speak for any other artists, but to me, it’s always organic,” he begins. “Anybody that’s ever seen me play live would notice that I cover a huge stylistic field of music, incorporating my influences, from country, Top 40, rock, pop, soft rock, bluegrass, real country. That’s how you get songs like ‘Kiss a Girl’—maybe more ’70s influence than anything else.”
“I think [Mark Knopfler] influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player.”
Citing ’50s producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who moved the genre from hillbilly to the more sophisticated countrypolitan, Keith argues, “In the history of country music, this is exactly the same as it has always been. Patsy Cline doing ‘Walking After Midnight’ or ‘Crazy’; it ain’t Bob Wills. It ain’t Hank Williams. It’s a new sound, drawing on pop elements. That’s the 1950s, and it has never changed. I’ve always seen country like a lung, that expands outwards because it embraces new sounds, new artists, new fusions, to find a bigger audience. Then it feels, ‘We’ve lost our way. Holy crap, I don’t even know who we are,’ and it shrinks back down again. Because a purist in the traditional sense comes along, whether it be Ricky Skaggs or Randy Travis. The only thing that I think has changed is there’s portals now for everything, which didn’t used to exist. There isn’t one central control area that would yell at everybody, ‘You’ve got to bring it back to the center.’ I don’t know that we have that center anymore.”
Stating his position regarding the current crop of talent, he reflects, “To someone who says, ‘That’s not country music,’ I always go, “‘It’s not your country music; it’s somebody else’s country music.’ I don’t believe anybody has a right to say something’s not anything. It’s been amazing watching this generation actually say, ‘Can we get back to a bit of purity? Can we get real guitars and real storytelling?’ So you’ve seen the explosion of Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who are way purer than the previous generation of country music.”
Seen performing here in 2003, Urban is celebrated mostly for his songwriting, but is also an excellent guitarist.
Photo by Steve Trager/Frank White Photo Agency
As for the actual recording process, he notes, “This always shocks people, but ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson is all drum machine. I write songs on acoustic guitar and drum machine, or drum machine and banjo. Of course, you go into the studio and replace that with a drummer. But my very first official single, in 1999, was ‘It’s a Love Thing,’ and it literally opens with a drum loop and an acoustic guitar riff. Then the drummer comes in. But the loop never goes away, and you hear it crystal clear. I haven’t changed much about that approach.”
On the road, Urban utilizes different electrics “almost always because of different pickups—single-coil, humbucker, P-90. And then one that’s tuned down a half-step for a few songs in half-keys. Tele, Strat, Les Paul, a couple of others for color. I’ve got a John Bolin guitar that I love—the feel of it. It’s a Tele design with just one PAF, one volume knob, no tone control. It’s very light, beautifully balanced—every string, every fret, all the way up the neck. It doesn’t have a lot of tonal character of its own, so it lets my fingers do the coloring. You can feel the fingerprints of Billy Gibbons on this guitar. It’s very Billy.”
“I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’”
Addressing his role as the collector, “or acquirer,” as he says, some pieces have quite a history. “I haven’t gone out specifically thinking, ‘I’m missing this from the collection.’ I feel really lucky to have a couple of very special guitars. I got Waylon Jennings’ guitar in an auction. It was one he had all through the ’70s, wrapped in the leather and the whole thing. In the ’80s, he gave it to Reggie Young, who owned it for 25 years or so and eventually put it up for auction. My wife wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I was trying to bid on it, and she made sure that I couldn’t get registered! When it arrived, I discovered it’s a 1950 Broadcaster—which is insane. I had no idea. I just wanted it because I’m a massive Waylon fan, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that guitar disappearing overseas under somebody’s bed, when it should be played.
“I also have a 1951 Nocaster, which used to belong to Tom Keifer in Cinderella. It’s the best Telecaster I’ve ever played, hands down. It has the loudest, most ferocious pickup, and the wood is amazing.”
YouTube
Urban plays a Gibson SG here at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Wait until the end to see him show off his shred abilities.
Other favorites include “a first-year Strat, ’54, that I love, and a ’58 goldtop. I also own a ’58 ’burst, but prefer the goldtop; it’s just a bit more spanky and lively. I feel abundantly blessed with the guitars I’ve been able to own and play. And I think every guitar should be played, literally. There’s no guitar that’s too precious to be played.”
Speaking of precious, there are also a few Dumble amps that elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” “Around 2008, John Mayer had a few of them, and he wanted to part with this particular Overdrive Special head. When he told me the price, I said, ‘That sounds ludicrous.’ He said, ‘How much is your most expensive guitar?’ It was three times the value of the amp. He said, ‘So that’s one guitar. What amp are you plugging all these expensive guitars into?’ I was like, ‘Sold. I guess when you look at it that way.’ It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
“It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
Keith also developed a relationship with the late Alexander Dumble. “We emailed back and forth, a lot of just life stuff and the beautifully eccentric stuff he was known for. His vocabulary was as interesting as his tubes and harmonic understanding. My one regret is that he invited me out to the ranch many times, and I was never able to go. Right now, my main amp is an Overdrive Reverb that also used to belong to John when he was doing the John Mayer Trio. I got it years later. And I have an Odyssey, which was Alexander’s personal bass amp that he built for himself. I sent all the details to him, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my amp.’”
The gearhead in Keith doesn’t even mind minutiae like picks and strings. “I’ve never held picks with the pointy bit hitting the string. I have custom picks that D’Addario makes for me. They have little grippy ridges like on Dunlops and Hercos, but I have that section just placed in one corner. I can use a little bit of it on the string, or I can flip it over. During the pandemic, I decided to go down a couple of string gauges. I was getting comfortable on .009s, and I thought, ‘Great. I’ve lightened up my playing.’ Then the very first gig, I was bending the crap out of them. So I went to .010s, except for a couple of guitars that are .011s.”
As with his best albums, High is song-oriented; thus, solos are short and economical. “Growing up, I listened to songs where the guitar was just in support of that song,” he reasons. “If the song needs a two-bar break, and then you want to hear the next vocal section, that’s what it needs. If it sounds like it needs a longer guitar section, then that’s what it needs. There’s even a track called ‘Love Is Hard’ that doesn’t have any solo. It’s the first thing I’ve ever recorded in my life where I literally don’t play one instrument. Eren Cannata co-wrote it [with Shane McAnally and Justin Tranter], and I really loved the demo with him playing all the instruments. I loved it so much I just went with his acoustic guitar. I’m that much in service of the song.”
The low-end groove-master—who’s worked with Soul Coughing, Fiona Apple, and Iron & Wine—shares some doses of wisdom.
Umpty-ump years ago, at the beginning of my music magazine career, I conducted my first ever interview. It was with bassist Sebastian Steinberg of Soul Coughing, and I was excited to be talking to half of the rhythm section powerhouse behind this avant-rock, sounds-like-nothing-else quartet.
Think weird samples, colliding harmonies, and half-sung boho poetry, all over some seriously sick grooves, with Steinberg driving the bus to Beelzebub with his thick upright tone and funky feel.
“In the middle of every groove, there’s the stupid part,” he told me then, drawing my attention to, as an example, the steady high-hat part in Sly & the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” If a groove makes your head nod, he said, “there’s something absolutely idiotic weaving its way down the middle.” As a bass player, he cautioned: “Sometimes you’re it.”
This idea stuck with me over the years, so I thought I’d see what Sebastian was up to. I caught him at a good time. After three well-received albums in the ’90s, Soul Coughing went their separate ways, and Steinberg went on to play both upright and electric with a variety of artists, including several that he describes as “fearlessly original.” That’s him on Fiona Apple’s acclaimed pandemic release, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, as well as singer-songwriter Iron & Wine’s latest album, Light Verse. This summer he’s touring Europe in a trio with drummer Matt Chamberlain and pianist Diana Krall (who didn’t want to play with “jazz guys”), and in the fall, he’s hitting the road with a reunited Soul Coughing.
I asked what it was about his approach that appeals to certain artists. “I like to play songs,” he answered. “But I have a musical curiosity and I can throw in my own ideas. My hands tend to be the smartest part of my body, so I can follow where the music leads.”
Steinberg says Fiona Apple’s 2020 record, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, “surpasses anything I’ve ever been involved in.”
Interestingly, when Sebastian started working at different points with Apple, Iron & Wine, and Krall, all three artists asked him not to listen to their previous albums. They wanted to create something new, current, and genuine, rather than, as Sebastian puts it, “trying to do stuff that’s already happened.”
“I’m not the bass player for everyone, which I’m really delighted to discover,” Steinberg continued. “But I’ve been sort of working out that there is a place for me. I’ve always been drawn to music that tends to ruffle feathers rather than smooth them. I gravitate towards people who are really strong individual thinkers, sometimes very much at the cost of their convenience, comfort, and public opinion. But the music is real. When musicians are real with each other, they’re as real as it gets.”
Sebastian describes the making of Fetch the Bolt Cutters as this kind of very real, exceptional experience. “It surpasses anything I’ve ever been involved in, including Soul Coughing,” he says. “I haven’t made an album so true, where nothing like this music has existed before, since Soul Coughing’s first album,” he said, referring to 1994’s Ruby Vroom. “Both albums were alive, unfettered, and truly unexplored territory.”
Fiona put the band together in 2016, inviting Steinberg, drummer Amy Aileen Wood, and multi-instrumentalist David Garza. “The four of us would go to the house, stomp around, sing in a chant she’d made up, and literally play like children or birds. After a while, songs began appearing. By the time we started going into the studio, we’d developed a level of trust and intimacy with each other, because we’d been playing in this non-specific but very personal way together. It's the most powerful band I’ve ever been in.”
“There are so many ways to approach music that transcend what the instrument was built to do. But you should know what it was built to do, because that’s a great job. It’s the best seat in the house.”
Sebastian notes that you do have to balance this kind of boldness with musical functionality. “Bass is a function, not an instrument,” he says. “There are so many ways to approach music that transcend what the instrument was built to do. But you should know what it was built to do, because that’s a great job. It’s the best seat in the house.”
So how does one go about getting real? “It’s about getting out of the way of whatever niceties musicians tend to inflict on each other,” he says. “You have to overcome fear and let the truth speak. Find the music and play it. Don’t bring your ego into it, but don’t let somebody scare you off from the music. And if you believe in what you’re doing, stick to it.”
A note of clarification
Last month’s column was about playing style, with Funkadelic bassist Billy Bass Nelson as an example. However, the magazine was already off to the printer when I finally connected with Nelson after several attempts. He told me that he did not play with a pick on Fred Wesley’s “Half A Man,” but often used his fingernails to get a similar attack. He also suggested two other songs that exemplify his style: Parlet’s 1978 track “Love Amnesia,” and the Temptations’ 1975 single “Shakey Ground.”
When columnist Bill Leigh played bass behind trombonist Fred Wesley, he got an up-close look at how P-Funk bassists helped define a sound.
Most of us are continually working to broaden our bass skills, from fretboard familiarity and technical mastery to specific musical competencies, like bass-line construction and development, walking, and soloing. Along the way, we may try to incorporate the tone and techniques of specific bassists into our playing, sometimes while learning their parts from songs they played on.
In so doing, we gather influences from here and there which gradually become part of our own individual style. All art borrows from what’s come before, and that’s certainly true when it comes to incorporating ingredients from other players into our personal playing approach.
Many of us, though, with practical concerns in mind, value versatility over developing a personal style. We work to enlarge our skill set, so we can have more opportunities to play. In our quest to be broadly knowledgeable and prepared for anything, we may not even think of ourselves as having a notable style. Marcus Miller has a style, we think. Players like Flea, Joe Dart, Steve Harris—those players have a style.
But having a personal playing style is like handwriting. You may write the same words as countless others, and maybe they even convey the same meaning. However, the flair with which you produce them is unmistakably yours, no matter how many different kinds of things you write. And the musical parallel is true whether you spend most of your time playing covers or coming up with original bass lines of your own. Maybe you have a tendency toward a certain kind of phrasing, or you lean toward shorter, punchier notes. Maybe you have a penchant for the pentatonic when soloing, or you instead opt for upper extensions and altered notes. The factors that make up your style might be much more subtle, but in aggregate you can tell when it’s you on a recording—and when it’s not. You can’t help it: You’re unique.
Courtesy of Billy Bass Nelson
And you can—and perhaps should—have it both ways. You can strive to be a versatile, flexible player and still cultivate a personal style. The trick is in being aware of the elements that define your playing personality, and yet not letting your understanding of them limit your playing choices. As double bassist and composer Edgar Meyer once said, “Having a strong style is like having a big rut.”
“George Clinton described Billy’s style as having ‘the Motown flavor with the aggressive rock attitude.’”
One of the best ways to grasp the concept of individual bass style is to listen to bands that have had more than one bass player. I once had the opportunity to play behind legendary P-Funk and James Brown trombonist Fred Wesley—a musician with a pretty strong style of his own. I had to learn several tunes, and was particularly struck by the bass on “Half a Man,” from Fred Wesley & the Horny Horns’ 1979 album, Say Blow by Blow Backwards. A growling string slide opens the track, followed by a couple of clipped root notes, another swoop, and an alternating eighth-note lick that eventually ladders its way back down to the tonic. I was intrigued. It didn’t sound at all like Bootsy Collins, whose swinging 16th-note rhythms with Parliament I was more familiar with. It wasn’t like the jazzier funk of Rodney “Skeet” Curtis, and it was more raw and bluesy than funkateer Cordell “Boogie” Mosson’s work.
So at soundcheck, when I finally had the opportunity to meet Fred Wesley, one of the first things I asked him was who was that bassist? “Oh, that’s Billy’s bass,” he replied, referring to original Funkadelic bassist “Billy Bass” Nelson. It was Nelson who played the understated groove of “Can You Get to That” and the bluesy unison lick from “Hit It and Quit It,” both from Funkadelic’s classic 1971 album, Maggot Brain. But there’s nothing understated about his prominent part on “Half a Man,” which features swift chromatic runs through the chorus changes. George Clinton described Billy’s style as having “the Motown flavor with the aggressive rock attitude.”
I encourage you to explore the different playing personalities of the P-Funk pantheon as a primer in the potential of a personal style. To guide your journey, I recommend following along in Jimmy Leslie’s “Bassists of P-Funk” chapter in The Funky Bass Book, which is available on Amazon.
So, how do you balance versatility and cultivating a style? The key is in not settling. Always be listening, learning, and practicing as a means of expanding your bass playing vocabulary. Challenge your assumptions about yourself and your playing. Try new things. Play with different people. And remember that you don’t have to try to be unique and original; you simply are.
As bass players, let’s slow down for a moment and think about what makes every note so special.
As bass players, we spend most of our time building lines and phrases one note at a time, each one followed by the next—or by strategically placed silence. The notes we play don’t live in a vacuum, though; they define the shifting harmony in the context of the other instruments, establish the rhythmic pulse with the drummer, and work together with other notes to create the emotional heft and physical feel of the music.
Breaking things down is often a useful thought exercise, whether it’s further subdividing the beat to better understand the groove, or analyzing how a classic walking bass part follows a chord progression. So let’s break it all the way down. Let’s consider a single note.
We don’t often think of a note on its own. Instead, we play songs and practice scales and phrases; we create bass lines and grooves and countermelodies. All of these are about how multiple notes fit together to form a musical statement. So what about a single note? What is it, really? Here are a few ways of looking at it.
A note is an indivisible sonic morsel, an audible event that occurs at a specific point in time.
A note is a molecule of music, the smallest fundamental unit that can take part in the chemical reaction that is musical creation and performance. It’s made up of such atomic elements as pitch, timbre, duration, and dynamic shape. Its precise placement in time is an essential attribute.
A note is a vibration, set off by fingers striking strings, or a pick stroke, thumb thump, or finger pluck. Multiplied by infinite dynamic and expressive variations, these different approaches to initiating vibration comprise a palette of artistic choices used to paint a musical moment. That moment becomes more meaningful in the context of the other events occuring in that particular slice of time—the vertical view—as well as what comes before and after—the horizontal view.
“Fortunately, our brains are well equipped for both processing tremendous amounts of data and using it to make countless, practically instantaneous decisions.”
The attack is just the beginning; a note also has a middle and an end. The shape of the note over time is the middle—short or long, loud or soft, perhaps pitch bend or vibrato. And where you place the end of the note can also be a crucial groove maneuver. Does the note sustain and eventually fade? Is it right up against the next note in a connected phrase? Do you stop it right when the snare drum hits on 2 and 4, creating an audible yet transient void that helps unify the bass and drum rhythms?
For each note we play, we make a range of decisions: Where to start and when to stop it, what pitch and in which register, which scale degree or chord tone of the currently happening harmony, where we’re coming from and where we’re going. Then there’s where on the instrument we attack the strings and how that affects the tone, from an articulate bridge sound, to a rounder, tubbier tone moving toward the neck.
The multitude of choices embodied in each note all affect what’s going on in the larger musical environment. Fortunately, our brains are well equipped for both processing tremendous amounts of data and using it to make countless, practically instantaneous decisions. We may not think about one note at a time; we might, for example, think about the dynamic shape of a phrase rather than each individual note. But behind the scenes, our brain is doing it all at both the macro and micro level.
That’s one reason playing music is such a good brain workout. Years of practice, knowledge, and experience are coded into our synapses, along with motor memory, a refined and sensitive ear, and an understanding of harmony.
And that’s why the most important ingredient in creating and expressing a note is you. You’re the one making those split-second choices about which pitch to play at each instant, and with what kind of attack, dynamics, and feel. Your entire life bears on these choices, from all the music that has influenced you, to how you’ve chosen to practice, to your relationship with the material you’re playing today. Even your personality or how you feel are a part of it. Are you feeling solid and confident or timid and tentative? Are you generous and supportive of others onstage and off? Do you have something to prove? There are many factors you could consider. Most of them are specific to you.
You get to decide how the music comes through you. You are the one choosing the properties of each musical molecule in the chemical compound. It is you and your interactions with your musical partners that catalyze these reactions to create something new, unique, and beautiful. And that is something worth taking note of.