Bass Player Buddies

I have a lot of good friends around the country who are also bass players, including one in California who is a really good friend and a great player. Most of these guys know me as a guitar player since I didn't switch to bass until a few years ago. They have asked me for playing samples several times and I have never been able to provide much.

At a recent gig our friend Tom Ravinski came out to record some video of the band. From his tapes I extracted a few clips of my bass solos for my friends so they could laugh at me. I still consider myself a rookie bass player compared to some of these guys so maybe they can give me some pointers.

I will post these one a time as I can. All of these clips are at my regular Saturday night gig with Steve Watson's trio at Weidmann's here in Meridian. They were recorded on August 31, 2007.

This first post is of my solo on Sonny Rollins' great tune, "St. Thomas" on the fretless slab. This is the cheapo Squire Jaco Bass that I've had for a few months. I am in the process of replacing the electronics and my friend Ed Pope set it up for me so it plays like a gem.

In this band, since there is no keyboard player, I usually solo on every tune. This can be monotonous after a while so I try to find things to make the bass solos more interesting to a non-jazz audience. Typically, on a tune like this I like to play freely against the tempo during the solo. Mixing up the groove with tuplets and different feels makes it much more interesting. The problem is that this is very difficult to do unless you have a solid drummer who doesn't flinch with runs of 5-tuplets and 2-beat triplets running up against the groove. Fortunately I play with one of the best drummers around: Scott Kratzer. Great job once again Scratch!