Organized labor has shaped the music we love, and Nashville Musicians Association president Dave Pomeroy believes musicians still need a fair deal.
“There’s always something to do in Nashville,” grins Dave Pomeroy. For Pomeroy, this is especially true. He’s the president of the Nashville Musicians Association (NMA), the city’s branch, or “local,” of the American Federation of Musicians (also known as AFM Local 257). The AFM is the largest musicians’ union in North America, representing around 70,000 music workers through more than 240 locals across the continent.
It’s no surprise that Music City’s local comes with a fair bit of history. Along with New York, Memphis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Nashville is one of the most important cities in the trajectory of not only American music, but the business that shaped that music. As the recorded music and radio industries exploded in the 1940s and ’50s, musicians found themselves in uncharted waters. Suddenly, there were new and enormous revenue streams—royalties and record sales—and musicians weren’t getting their share. Record labels were getting fat off the surplus.
So, the AFM organized the biggest music workers’ direct action in history. For nearly two years between 1942 and 1944, the AFM’s roughly 136,000 members engaged in a recording ban: They refused to produce any new recordings for the record labels until they were guaranteed a fair cut of the new profits. Some top talents like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman stood by the strikers. Others, like Frank Sinatra, scabbed, and used non-union musicians on their recordings when AFM musicians refused. (I guess that’s why it’s “My Way,” not “Our Way.”)
Dave Pomeroy & the All-Bass Orchestra: "Buckle Up"
The strikes were successful, though later challenges and divisions within the movement diminished the initial victories. Still, it showed that the collective power of organized labor could go toe-to-toe with corporations, and get what musicians are owed for the magic they create. Musicians nowadays, who are up “streaming creek” without a paddle, need as much help as they can get. “The music business doesn’t have to be a win-lose,” says Pomeroy. “It can be a win-win when everybody treats each other the right way.”
“The music business doesn’t have to be a win-lose. It can be a win-win when everybody treats each other the right way.”
Pomeroy was raised a military kid, born in Italy and later moving to England with his family in 1961. He got a head start on the Beatles, and stayed up late to watch them make their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. The Rolling Stones caught his ear just before his family uprooted to northern Virginia, where Pomeroy took piano lessons and played clarinet in the school band. But he wanted to join the school’s string orchestra, too, so he sought out an instrument. After starting out on the cello, he was promptly bumped over to bass guitar, which suited him just fine; he could dance around and sing with a bass hung across his shoulders. His parents helped him acquire a Gibson EB-2 (his hero Jack Bruce played Gibson basses, so he had to, too).
Pomeroy hung around Charlottesville—under the pretense that he was attending the University of Virginia—just long enough to meet some musicians to play with. But he skipped town again to move to London, where he lived for a year and cut his teeth in five different bands. Following a short stint in Denmark (his Hamburg, he quips), his European sabbatical was over, and it was time to get back stateside. His old friends from Charlottesville got a publishing deal in Nashville, so Pomeroy decided to give it a go. That was 46 years ago.
Pomeroy hit the road with Don Williams in 1980, and quickly learned the value of mutual respect and fair working conditions.
Rockabilly icon Sleepy LaBeef gave Pomeroy his first gig. LaBeef was a human jukebox, and would switch up sets every night. The law of the band was simple: Follow, or die. It was a crash course in ear and style training for Pomeroy. He bounced around until he landed his big break: backing up Texas country slinger Don Williams. Pomeroy played in Williams’ band for 14 years, from 1980 to 1994, and that time would shape the rest of his life. It was an incredible musical education, and it bridged him to new worlds in the music industry.
But more than those things, it was the consideration that Williams showed his musicians that changed Pomeroy’s life. “He treated us with great respect,” he explains, “and I didn’t realize for some time that that was not the norm, and that it was a lot worse for a lot of my colleagues and friends.” At 24, Pomeroy cowrote a song with Williams, and Williams promptly marched them to his label, MCA, to get the terms of the song’s production on paper.
“He treated us with great respect, and I didn’t realize for some time that that was not the norm, and that it was a lot worse for a lot of my colleagues and friends.”
Working with Williams cemented the value of that piece of paper. On Sunday, June 1, 1980, Williams and his band played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. A month later, Pomeroy’s friend called to tell him to turn his TV on. The gig had been recorded for Casey Kasem’s America’s Top 10 program, and was airing. Pomeroy was over the moon, but things got even better—a short time later, he got a $1,000 check for the airing. When it aired again, he got another $1,000.
Dave Pomeroy's Gear
Over his 46 years in Nashville, Pomeroy has worked with the biggest stars of country and folk music. Emmylou Harris, performing with Pomeroy here in December 2023, brought him along to her sessions with the Chieftains in 1992.
Photo by Mickey Dobó
Basses
- Fleishman Custom 5-string electric upright bass
- 1967 Gibson EB-2
- G&L Fretless L-2000 bass
- G&L Fretted L-2000 bass
- 1963 Fender Precision bass
Amps
- Genzler Magellan 800 Head with Genzler cabs
Effects
- Boss GT-10B
- Boss RC-50
- Boss RC-600
- SWR Mo’ Bass preamp
- Ampeg SVT preamp
- Line 6 Bass POD Pro
- Avalon U5 Class A Active Instrument DI and Preamp
- Trace Elliot V-Type preamp
- Morley wah pedal
- Morley volume pedal
Strings
- GHS Pressurewound
“I thought, ‘Holy moly, this is how this stuff works?’” remembers Pomeroy. “There were so many times that we’d find out about these things with other artists, and nobody bothered to say anything; nobody turned it into paperwork. [They would say,] ‘Oh, I didn’t know we were supposed to get paid.’ I didn’t know we were supposed to get paid, but somebody took care of it. That was just the way Don was.”
Over his years gigging in Nashville, Pomeroy would work with the most celebrated songwriters in American folk and country music, such as Earl Scruggs, Guy Clark, George Jones, Emmylou Harris, Chet Atkins, and Alison Krauss. He honed his voice on the instrument when he got an upright fretless electric bass, which he played on Keith Whitley’s 1988 record, Don’t Close Your Eyes. Pomeroy’s dramatic downward slide on “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” had his phone ringing off the hook. Harris then invited him to join her playing with the Chieftains in 1992, and told him to bring along “the bass from space.” Pomeroy’s outside-of-the-box streak continued on his performances and arrangements of his song “The Day the Bass Players Took Over the World,” and his All-Bass Orchestra.
“They basically said, ‘Hey, these are our friends, and we’re not going to screw them over … We’re going to do this right.’”
Eventually, his path curved toward the studio world, where he started to take more notice of the local union’s role in making music. In the early 2000s, Pomeroy gravitated towards a subgroup of the AFM called the Recording Musicians Association, where he revived a sense of participation and engagement in negotiations. In 2008, he ran against the NMA’s incumbent president, Harold Bradley, who had held the post for 18 years. Pomeroy won the election, and has held the seat ever since.
Pomeroy has advocated for better working conditions for artists for decades, including supporting the Fair Play Fair Pay Act in 2017, which addressed issues with terrestrial radio.
Photo courtesy of the Music First Coalition
The Nashville local has grown from the “hillbilly cousin,” Pomeroy says, into an organization that develops and implements original policy. The AFM’s single-song overdub scale came out of the NMA, and it wasn’t an easy process. There were drawn-out debates over where the pay floor should be, depending on the song. “Are we talking about ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ or are we talking about Mahler’s Symphony No. 6?” says Pomeroy. The minimum, they decided, was $100. But, instead of simply being handed a crisp Benjamin, you would sign a piece of paper alongside it. “Then you could pay into your pension for years,” says Pomeroy.
The home studio overdub scale, too, was an NMA creation. And when Dolly Parton and Jason Aldean wanted to use recorded tracks onstage as part of their shows, they went to the NMA to work out how to do it right.
“I’m nice, but I’m also very persistent. I’m a Taurus. I’m not going to let things go. We’re going to work this out.”
Parton wanted a saxophone part in one of her songs without touring with a saxophonist, and Aldean wanted to use the acoustic guitar and piano from his hit ballad with Kelly Carson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay.” So, the NMA studied a Broadway touring show’s pay rates to come up with a scale for that situation, and the performers whose recorded work was being played earned up to $12,000 extra in a year, thanks to the formula. Some artists, says Pomeroy, can scheme their way around the scales by getting their road band to rerecord the parts for less money. “But a lot of artists are willing to pay to have the good stuff,” he says.
Pomeroy explains that at the start of its golden era, Nashville’s recording music business was a little fairer toward its artists. The labels like Decca and RCA Victor were run by Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins, respectively, and even though the labels wanted to turn a profit on “hillbilly music,” Bradley and Atkins were wise enough to know that they ought to give their artists a fair deal. “They basically said, ‘Hey, these are our friends, and we’re not going to screw them over. We got to play with them Saturday night at the country club, so we’re going to do this right, and do it on a union contract,’’ Pomeroy shares.
Pomeroy’s music and union work aren’t separate—they’re both part of a single vision, where artists can create and perform with dignity.
Photo by Jim McGuire
Sometimes, the dividends for doing this “right” are immediate and obvious. But other times, like Pomeroy experienced, they might take a little while to manifest. In 1990, Mazda used Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” in a commercial for their new RX-7 car. One day, a 90-year-old man came into the NMA offices to pick up a royalties check for $2,000. He had played violin in the song’s string section. He told Pomeroy he’d been paid $57 to record his parts back in 1960. “To me, that makes it all worthwhile,” says Pomeroy.
A decent chunk of his work, says Pomeroy, falls into dealing with well-meaning people who might not have known they were shortchanging a musician, but need some reminding, all the same, to pony up. Other times, he and the AFM have to push a little harder to get musicians what they’re owed. “I chase people down,” says Pomeroy. “I’m nice, but I’m also very persistent. I’m a Taurus. I’m not going to let things go; we’re going to work this out.” Pomeroy says they’ve successfully sued for nearly a million dollars from employers who “didn’t want to do the right thing, and got to do the right thing the hard way.” Some of those people end up on Music City’s “Most Wanted”: the Nashville Musicians Association’s “Do Not Work For” list. It exists to warn both performers and the public about employers who are known to either break union contracts, or solicit union musicians to work outside a union contract.
All of this might seem separate or secondary to the actual creation and performance of music. But that belief, whether held subconsciously or expressed explicitly, is what has allowed musicians to remain overworked and underpaid for the past century, or more. If we really believe that music brings value to our lives, why shouldn’t the labor that enables its creation be supported fairly? And besides, musicians are workers like any other. If you saw a boss raking in stacks of cash while their employees struggled to make rent, you’d be pissed off, right? Well, that’s the situation a lot of music workers find themselves in these days. Pomeroy and the AFM have their work cut out for them.
But, it’s easier for Pomeroy when he sees a common ground between his music work and his union work. Sometimes, they collide, like on his song, “What Unions Did for You.” Each feeds and emboldens the other. “I have to have the creative stuff to balance out the administrative stuff,” says Pomeroy. “But in a lot of ways, the admin stuff that I do is a lot like being a bass player. You’re rushing, you’re dragging, it’s right here in the middle; let’s see if we can find that place where everybody’s gonna feel good.”
YouTube It
Dave Pomeroy bops through a solo performance of the riotous, bassman’s-rights tune “The Day the Bass Players Took Over the World” at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Ruban Nielson explains how custom collaborations with Baranik and Benson, along with a paunchy pedalboard with homemade clones, unlock a psychedelic playground in stereo.
“Gear is meant to be destroyed in the line of duty,” laughs Ruban Nielson. “I realize I prefer to see my equipment all dinged up rather than sitting perfect in my basement—that’s a dorky thing to do.”
That doesn’t mean Nielson doesn’t care about his sound. He noted in a 2015 interview with PG that he spends countless hours in his basement tinkering on breadboard circuits and swapping out components, trying to maximize a pedal for his needs. “I like the idea that instead of buying your sound, you’re building your sound,” he said.
Over the course of 14 years, five albums, and thousands of touring miles, Nielsen has been custom-fabricating his guitar voice. But as we all know, the quest is never-ending, like trying to catch the horizon. After all, isn’t it the journey, not the destination, that matters?
“I used to be too much of a savage to care about a clean boost or headroom,” says Nielson. “‘Just give me a distortion pedal already!’ But now I’m exploring the intricacies, subtleties, and nuances of guitar.”
Ahead of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s headlining performance at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, Ruban Nielson welcomed PG’s Chris Kies onstage to explore his current sonic lab. Nielson covers his two space-age guitars (and what inspired them), explains how he convinced Benson to put a Monarch inside a vintage solid-state Yamaha, and details the pedals—including a few of his own designs—that extract a kaleidoscope of moods.Brought to you by D'Addario.
Challenge Accepted: The B3-R
Since forming Unknown Mortal Orchestra in 2009, the instrument that Ruban Nielson has been linked to and inspired by is the Fender Jag-Stang. This short-scale offset was codesigned by Kurt Cobain in the early ’90s by simply taking photos of Fender’s Mustang and Jaguar, splitting them in half and pasting them together. The Jag-Stang was treated to separate production runs in the late ’90s and early 2000s before a wider release in 2021. Nielson’s friend gifted him a cherry-red model, shaping Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s first decade of music.
In 2015, Nielson told PG about its impact on his playing style and creative outlook: “When I started on the UMO stuff I pulled it out. It would never stay in tune and sounded really strange, but when I plugged it into a Blues Junior, I started to come up with completely different ideas. I tuned it a half-step down and started playing with my fingers. It was just a whole new style that emerged in the space of about two weeks after messing with this guitar. It’s a kind of imperfect creature and that’s what I like about it.”
Fast forward to a few years ago when Ruban met luthier Mike Baranik. Baranik was a longtime fan of UMO and knew of Nielson’s allegiance to the Jag-Stang, so he approached Nielson with a proposition: “I can make a guitar that will do everything that the Jag-Stang does better and more.” Nielson was intrigued, so the build began. They conversed and collaborated over several phone calls and text chains that culminated in Nielson realizing Baranik was “some kind of genius through his simple innovations that suited the way I think about music and guitar.”
The flaws of the Jag-Stang that informed Nielson’s playing style became features on the above Baranik B3-R. The biggest thing that Ruban wanted translated from the Jag-Stang to the Baranik was the slinky neck pocket that allowed for him to push the neck for emotive bends à la Bill Frisell.
Nielson explains: “When I tuned the Jag-Stang a half-step down—which I just did because Jimi Hendrix did it, and I thought if I was going to start writing some new music that this was my chance to start messing with that—that loosened the strings up. The neck was a smaller scale so it gave me the ability to do completely different things. I was able to get around the neck a lot easier.”
To make that body-neck connection even more expressive and manipulatable, Baranik constructed the trademarked Baraneck floating neck that fastens two springs to the neck joint allowing Nielson to tighten or loosen the neck as wanted. Nielson also routed out wood behind the pickups on his Jag-Stang to reduce the weight and keep it light as possible—just five pounds, nine ounces. The B3-R has a basswood body, koa neck, and ebony fretboard.
Another thing Nielson requested was an approximation of the sound of pickups found in vintage Japanese lawsuit-era instruments, which were often unique, unpotted, and unpredictable. Baranik worked his magic and, via his own alchemy, produced these potted single-coils. Other tag-team easter eggs include a custom Hawaiian print pickguard, an upcycled circuit board control panel, and custom inlays—a row of shark teeth, filled with crushed bone dust—that are a tribute to the family symbol.
All of UMO’s material is based on half-step-down tuning both of his electrics take Ernie Ball Super Slinkys (.009-.042). Nielson goes with a Shure Axient wireless pack at both his Sitar and Baranik guitars and to keep things quiet and tidy, his tech Ben Gram inserted an Electro-Harmonix Hum Eliminator and a Radial Dragster Load Correction box.
Psy-tar
Two of the songs on UMO’s fall setlist required a sitar. Nielson previously toured and recorded with a Rogue Sitar, but found it to be a nuisance to maintain on the road. He searched for a sturdier stand in and found this electric sitar star: a Jerry Jones model whose voice wholly celebrates Nielson’s love for early psych-rock, and matches its chime with rugged dependability.
Nate the Great
Nielson has plugged into all sorts of amps since 2009 when playing under UMO. The longest sidekicks include Fender combos and Orange heads. (When Ruban spoke with PG in 2015, he had a Fender Hot Rod DeVille and an Orange AD 30 head.) He notes in the Rundown that a few years back, he was “getting frustrated with his amp setup and thought he should be like one of those real guitar guys and find a boutique amp company.” After auditioning some combos, he landed on a Benson. One half of Ruban’s stereo setup is the Benson Nathan Junior that maxes out at 5W, has a single JJ 6V6 power tube, and barks with a 10" Celestion Greenback.
Benson in Yamaha's Clothing
Nielson has his feet firmly planted in both amp camps. He appreciates the beef, brawn, and chime only produced by power tubes, but he’s also attracted to the old solid-state amps that offer quirky, charmingly weird tones. Chris Benson’s shop happened to be within walking distance of Nielson’s home, so after becoming acquainted and friendly, Nielson pitched a project for Benson: Could he turn a ’70s solid-state Yamaha TA-20 into a roadworthy tube amp? Benson initially balked at the idea, and Nielson thought his plan was foiled. Three years later, Benson reached out and asked if Nielson still had the Yamaha—he did—so Benson told him to bring it by the shop, and they’d retrofit a Benson circuit into the TA-20. “My weird dream to bring this on tour was finally happening!” says Nielson.
The TA-20 is packed with Benson’s Vinny Reverb guts that includes a JJ EL84 power tube, a 12AX7 preamp tube, a 12DW7, and a JJ 6V6 power tube as a voltage regulator that goes from .25W up to a snarky six watts. The overhauled TA-20 does still have the original polystyrene parallelogram speaker. Both amps are always on, and miked up with Shure SM7Bs.
Ruban Nielson's Pedalboard
Nielson is a tonal tactician. He’s never been satisfied with stock sounds and a pedal’s inherent limitations. “If I find a pedal I like, I use it for a long time and then I try to build a clone to see if I can improve on it,” he explains. “I sit around in my basement tweaking it plugged in—on the breadboard—and changing out different components and adjusting the trim until I get everything just exactly how I want it.” So, looking down at his stomp selection you’ll notice a few nondescript devices on the beautiful Twin Peaks Woodworks pedalboard custom-built by both Nielson’s tech Ben Gram and Caspian guitarist Jonny Ashburn.
His signal hits an Effectrode PC-2A Tube Compressor (you’ll notice two on the board—one is a backup). That’s a change from our 2015 interview, when he he was using an Analog Man Bi-CompROSSor and had it at the end of his chain. (“It’s nice to have a compressor at the end of everything—especially with a phaser pedal, which has frequency spikes,” he said at the time. “It’s nice to control them.”) He enjoys how the PC-2A up front fattens his entire sound, and how it smooths and shaves off the transient tinges. The Strymon Deco has a stereo out that hits a pair of Jam RetroVibes. Both are set to have slightly different speeds and depths so that they really take that stereo signal for a journey in real time, and Dave at FOH has them panned in the PA to really amplify this effect.
One of Nielson’s creations shows up inside the gray box titled “Octave Magic,” which is based on the Foxx Tone Machine. The suede purple devil next to it is the Jam Pedals Fuzz Phrase LTD, about which Nielson says, “It’s the wooliest, most-musical Fuzz Face I’ve ever played.” Sometimes the answer to Nielson’s problems is the Benson Germanium Boost. “If something’s wrong,” he explains, “I’ll kick on that pedal and it makes everything louder and resets the gain structure.” The Gamechanger Audio Plus pedal sees a lot of action throughout the set: it helps Nielson seam the tail end of a solo and discreetly rejoin the band in rhythm mode.
The remaining pedals include a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay (a gift from Mike Baranik), a Danelectro Back Talk reverse delay, an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, and in the top-left corner, an unnamed pedal that Nielson built that is currently not in the signal. (He can’t remember if it’s a Rat or Tube Screamer clone.) Utility boxes include a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, an Electro-Harmonix Switchblade Plus channel selector, and a Lehle Little Dual II switcher.
Shop Ruban Nielson's Rig
Benson Monarch
Shure SM7B
Strymon Deco
Benson Germanium Boost
Boss DD-3 Digital Delay
Danelectro Back Talk Reverse Delay
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb
Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
Electro-Harmonix Switchblade Plus Channel Selector
Lehle Little Dual II ABY Switcher
Ernie Ball Super Slinky Strings
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DS-1 Distortion
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BD-2 Blues Driver
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Boss Limited-edition 50th-anniversary BD-2 Blues Driver Pedal
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