Player News - Page 6

The Experience Hendrix tour is gearing up for a new year, and they’ve added bassist Bootsy Collins to the mix. Bootsy joins the tour for eight dates. Bassist Billy Cox, the only surviving member of both the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsys, once again is part of the tour, handling the other dates. Bootsy is no stranger to...

Former Deftones bassist Chi Cheng is showing further signs of recovery since a November 2008 car accident left him in a coma. A new video of Cheng shows him lifting his leg on request, which is a good sign of improvement, especially considering he’s been incapacitated for over three years. While the video shows a step in the right direction,...

Set your DVRs! Victor Wooten will be sitting in with The Roots on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show tonight (12:35am Eastern/11:35pm Central) on NBC. In other Vic-related news, the original Flecktones have announced a new set of U.S. dates for their 2012 World Tour: March 1, 2012: University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI March 2, 2012: North Shore...

2012 is shaping up to be a busy year for punk rock icon Mike Watt, with the and the announcement that fIREHOSE will be reuniting in April. The group, which was formed by Watt and fellow Minutemen member George Hurley after frontman D. Boon’s death, hasn’t played together since 1994. The band has revealed two weeks of dates, including a...

Last week, we broke the story that Jimmy Haslip was taking a year off from the Yellowjackets and would be replaced by Felix Pastorius. We just found out why. Haslip will be joining guitarist Allan Holdsworth on the guitarist’s new tour, with Virgil Donati on drums and forming Holdsworth’s “new power jazz-rock trio”. The initial tour dates have been announced...

Jeff Berlin will be following up his 2010 release, High Standards with the ironically titled album, Low Standards. Besides the pun, the moniker comes as the group will feature Richard Drexler on upright bass as well as piano. Rounding out the trio is drummer Mike Clark, who spent time playing for Herbie Hancock in the Headhunters. “I prepared for it...

A Medical and Well Health Fund has been set up for bass legend Chuck Rainey, who suffered a major stroke last year. Though his family is hopeful for a full recovery, Rainey has not been able to work during his treatment. As his medical bills increase, his income has decreased, according to the message on the donation site. Rainey’s impressive...

After some debate over the location, former Grateful Dead and current Furthur bassist Phil Lesh will be opening up a restaurant and performance venue called Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, California. The dining portion of the new venue will open in February with the “intimate” performance hall to begin shows soon there after. Though his original plan was to launch...

Esperanza Spalding is coming off of a monster year, which started in February 2011 when the bassist became the first jazz musician in decades to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist (and, much to our pure joy, beating out Justin Bieber for the honor). That award was for Spalding’s 2010 release, Chamber Music Society, which reached number 1...

Paul McCartney‘s songwriting is legendary, but the inspiration for those compositions was never widely known. That’s about to change in February, when the former Beatle releases his newest album, Kisses on the Bottom, one that takes the bassist in new musical directions while keeping an eye on the past. Kisses on the Bottom is focused on jazz standards, or as...

Guns N’ Roses bassist Tommy Stinson says the follow-up to Chinese Democracy should come “much quicker” than its predecessor, which was a project 15 years in the making before it was released in 2008. “You know, I just see us making a record much quicker, because, in hindsight, a lot of what happened with Chinese Democracy, we could get around...

In 1975, bassist Mark Evans joined AC/DC, Australia’s hardest working rock band, when he was just 19 years old. Over the next few years, the band recorded four best-selling albums and the band shot up the ranks to headlining, world-tour super-stardom. Evans, who held down the low end for the band between March 1975 and June 1977, has authored a...