MonoNeon, aka Dywane Thomas Jr., came up learning the bass from his father in Memphis, Tennessee, but for some reason, he decided to flip his dad’s 4-string bass around and play it with the string order inverted—E string closest to the ground and the G on top. That’s how MonoNeon still plays today, coming up through a rich, inspiring gauntlet of family and community traditions. “I guess my whole style came from just being around my grandma at an early age,” says Thomas.His path has led him to collaborate with dozens of artists, including Nas, Ne-Yo, Mac Miller, and even Prince, and MonoNeon’s solo output is dizzying—trying to count up his solo releases isn’t an easy feat. Premier Guitar’s Chris Kies caught up with the bassist before his show at Nashville’s Exit/In, where he got the scoop on his signature 5-string, Ampeg rig, and simple stomp layout, as well as some choice stories about influences, his brain-melting playing style, and how Prince changed his rig.
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Orange You Glad to See Me?
This Fender MonoNeon Jazz Bass V was created after a rep messaged Thomas on Instagram to set up the signature model, over which Thomas had complete creative control. Naturally, the bass is finished in neon yellow urethane with a neon orange headstock and pickguard, and the roasted maple neck has a 10"–14" compound radius. It’s loaded with custom-wound Fireball 5-string Bass humbuckers and an active, 18V preamp complete with 3-band EQ controls. Thomas’ own has been spruced up with some custom tape jobs, too. All of MonoNeon's connections are handled by Sorry Cables.
Fade to Black
MonoNeon’s Ampeg SVT stack isn’t a choice of passion. “That’s what they had for me, so I just plugged in,” he says. “That’s what I have on my rider. As long as it has good headroom and the cones don’t break up, I’m cool.”
Box Art
MonoNeon’s bass isn’t the only piece of kit treated to custom color jobs. Almost all of his stomps have been zhuzhed up with his eye-popping palette.
Thomas had used a pitch-shifting DigiTech Whammy for a while, but after working with Paisley Park royalty, the pedal became a bigger part of his playing. “When I started playing with Prince, he put the Whammy on my pedalboard,” Thomas explains. “After he passed, I realized how special that moment was.”
Alongside the Whammy, MonoNeon runs a Fairfield Circuitry Randy’s Revenge (for any time he wants to “feel weird”), a literal Fart Pedal (in case the ring mod isn’t weird enough, we guess), and a JAM Pedals Red Muck covers fuzz and dirt needs. A CIOKS SOL powers the whole affair.
Eric Deaton - Oxford Mississippi
“It’s all about the one,” says Eric Deaton. “You’ve got your one-chord drone, so it’s just a groove and very funky—like James Brown’s bass players.”
Photo by Chris Johnson
Eric Deaton got his break one night when trance-blues patriarch Junior Kimbrough’s bassist didn’t show up at Junior’s juke joint, in the rolling hills outside of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Deaton was already a regular guest there, on guitar, but after he subbed on 4-string that evening, he became a staple of the low end for members of the region’s revered Kimbrough and Burnside musical families, and many other Magnolia State blues and roots players. In fact, if you’ve spent time in the bars and blues festivals of the middle and deeper South, and you haven’t seen the longhaired, cheerful Deaton bobbing to the beat, you probably had your eyes closed.
Schooled by the Kimbroughs and Burnsides, Deaton’s specialty is the rumbling, loping, snake-charmer’s pulse of north Mississippi hill country, where a subgenre of blues that lays bare the style’s deepest African roots has taken hold for generations. “It’s all about the one,” he explains. “You’ve got your one-chord drone, so it’s just a groove and very funky—like James Brown’s bass players. People talk about how hypnotic it is, and that’s true. Playing it, you feel yourself lifting off a little bit. It takes you to a whole ’nother level. It’s psychedelic!”
While Deaton, who also fronts his own band on guitar, has been a fixture on that circuit almost since he arrived from Raleigh, North Carolina, in the early ’90s with a powerful yearning to play the blues in the land where it began, his profile has risen sharply over the past three years. Major-league raw-and-dirty blues fan Dan Auerbach drafted Deaton for a host of productions, including Jimmy “Duck” Holmes’ Grammy-nominated Cypress Grove, Hank Williams, Jr.’s Rich White Honky Blues, two albums by Robert Finley, and the Black Keys’ Delta Kream. Auerbach also brought Deaton to play bass on the Keys’ 2022 world tour, and special dates to promote his Easy Eye Sound label’s 2023 blues compilation, Tell Everybody.
“I’d never been in front of an audience of that size prior to that, so it was just an amazing experience, to see how a big tour like that is put together and all,” says Deaton, who plays a Blues King PJ made by St. Blues in Memphis. “And musically, it’s been a lot of fun because I am playing the same basslines I’ve been playing since I was 18, but doing that in arenas and Red Rocks and places like that. Because Dan and Pat [Carney, Black Keys drummer] made me a featured artist on the Delta Kream record, we got to share in a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album, too.”
— Ted DrozdowskiDezron Douglas - New York, New York
“To be honest with you, I'm never worried about taking a solo. You know, that's really not my job.,” says Dezron Douglas
Photo by Andrew Blackstein
Dezron Douglas is acutely aware of what he needs to do on any given night. Whether he’s playing challenging modern jazz with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane at Birdland or he’s deep in a spacey horn-fueled funk jam at Red Rocks with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, the vibration, according to Douglas, is the same. “Too many bass players are thinking about soloing. And you can hear that when they’re playing,” he Douglas shortly before a recent Birdland hit with Coltrane (who he has been working with for 20 years). “To be honest with you, I’m never worried about taking a solo. You know, that’s not my job.”
Douglas’ style is rooted in jazz, but not bound by it. He was mentored in college by legendary saxophonist Jackie McLean and was taught that real music education needs to happen outside of the classroom. “Jackie let me out of school for my first tour ever,” remembers Douglas. That tour was with guitarist Johnnie Marshall and it was a brutal eight-week run through the chitlin circuit. Young Dezron was ready to solo and show his new employer what he could do. “I took a solo. The crowd was clapping and whatnot. And then for the next week and a half, he didn't give me another solo,” laughs Douglas. It was a tough lesson, but taught Douglas that his role needed to be supportive above all else.
Douglas has released a string of solo albums since 2012, led his own quartet at the Village Vanguard, and developed as a composer. His latest album, Atalaya, is a deep portrait of an artist who has not only an original voice on his instrument, but in his tunes. That is increasingly rare in today’s jazz scene, where there’s a trend to value obsessive technicality over melody and groove.
In 2021, after the death of bassist Tony Markellis, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio chose Douglas to join his solo band. “Tony and Trey had a report for 30 years,” says Douglas. “And, you know, you can't recreate that. All you can do is learn the material, pay homage, and create something different of your own.” Douglas’ intrinsic versatility has been a perfect fit with Anastasio’s soul-funk outfit. “With Trey, I get to be myself,” he says.
—Jason Shadrick
Paul Bryan - Los Angeles, California
“With the bass, you’re the bus driver, musically,” Paul Bryan explains. “It’s natural to keep your eye on the ball in terms of rhythm, harmony, arrangement, dynamics … developing spaces at the core of all of those things.”
Paul Bryan’s new album, Western Electric, is a journey through melody and groove in service of a futuristic jazz-rock sound that references classic jazz, dub, and post-rock. Bryan’s groovy and lyrical electric bass welds musical elements, intertwining with drummer Jay Bellerose, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and overdubbed synths, all often generously dosed with effects. Each sound is in service of a bigger picture—the kind of cohesive vision he seems to bring to each project.
“With the bass, you’re the bus driver, musically,” Bryan explains. “It’s natural to keep your eye on the ball in terms of rhythm, harmony, arrangement, dynamics … developing spaces at the core of all of those things.” And he does so on a wide variety of projects. Over the course of his career, Bryan’s played bass on recordings by many artists, including Norah Jones and Mavis Staples, and is in Aimee Mann’s band in addition to having produced five of her albums. He’s also a member of the Los Angeles creative-music scene, where he’s active as a player, engineer, and producer.
As much as Western Electric is a product of that fertile scene—which also includes Johnson and Bellerose—it’s so clearly from Bryan’s brain. The Fender Jazz and Jag player is an obvious record head, citing Jo Jones and Milt Hinton’s Percussion and Bass and Sonny Rollins’Way Out West as references—both of which sound nothing like Bryan’s record to a casual listener. But the concept is clear, foregrounding the relationship of his melodic, effects-heavy playing and Bellerose’s deep grooves.
And beyond the playing, Bryan approaches the album’s sonic details like a dub master: “Once you've heard something for 20 seconds, your brain goes, ‘Okay, I know what that is.’ So, I’ll do some cool reverb trick or add some cool low-end thump. I’m always trying to reset the table throughout the song.”
—Nick Millevoi
Sébastien Provençal - Montreal Quebec
“It’s all about notes duration, my intentions behind the notes, the tones, and being blessed to play in a band with my best friends, who are amazing musicians,” says Sébastien Provençal.
Photo by Vincent Gravel
It was pouring rain when Population II took the stage in Montreal’s Parc La Fontaine on June 23. The hometown trio were headlining a progressive celebration for Québec independence on the eve of St.-Jean-Baptiste Day—the Francophone Canadian province’s equivalent of the Fourth of July. A couple hundred people splashed around in the swampy grass to catch the band’s free set, and it was immediately evident why: Population II are one of the most exciting Canadian bands of the decade.
In a trio, all members are especially responsible for the band’s success or failure, but that feels particularly true for Population II, whose daring arrangements and sonic explorations dart between post-punk, jazz, garage, new wave, psych- and prog-rock, and more. Twenty-nine-year-old bassist Sébastien Provençal, sporting a 1968 Fender Telecaster Bass routed through a playground of pedals into a 1972 Hiwatt DR201 and blasted out an Ampeg 8x10, establishes and carries arrangements forward while vocalist/drummer Pierre-Luc Gratton and guitarist/organist Tristan Lacombe thrash and spark around him. Amid the storm in Parc La Fontaine, the combination was euphoric.
Provençal’s opening bass line on “R.B.,” off of this year’s EP Serpent Échelle, is an instant classic, perfectly setting the tone for the song’s mad ramble. The riff is elastic and fluid, but it’s also martial and commanding. This is the heart of Provençal’s playing: It’s playful and exploratory, but executed with such authority and precision that it feels industrial, ruthless. See also his introductory synth-bass gambit on “Orlando,” the stunning opener from their 2023 LP, Électrons libres, du québec. Provençal’s tones often mutate and morph between movements within single songs—it’s clear he puts a ton of thought into not just his arrangements, but the textures they’re presented with. “It’s all about notes duration, my intentions behind the notes, the tones, and being blessed to play in a band with my best friends, who are amazing musicians,” Provençal says. “With this in mind, my style is intentionally bold with a strong sense of vulnerability.”
Provençal’s top influences also offer a vivid picture of his style. Bootsy Collins and Aston “Family Man” Barrett knock up against punk Mike Watt, Can’s Holger Czukay, Yes’ Chris Squire, synth-rock pioneer Simeon Coxe, jazz-prog wizard Hugh Hopper, and Miles Davis’ fusion specialist Michael Henderson (“The best to ever do it on the electric bass,” says Provençal). Excellent bassists have been making smart, challenging weirdo art with their instrument for decades, carving out new meanings of the word “bassist,” but I’m grateful that I get to hear Sébastien Provençal do it here in Montreal, pushing music and this province, and this country, to weirder, cooler places.
— Luke Ottenhof
Bassist Sebastian Steinberg’s credits range from deep-cut avant-jazz to the highest levels of pop stardom.
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.”
