Player News - Page 37

“A childhood dream came true for me last week…” Sean Kelly told Blabbermouth.net. “I was asked to play in one of my all time favourite bands, Helix!” Kelly, frontman for Canadian glam-rock band Crash Kelly, will be the new bassist. According to Kelly, Crash Kelly will still be “going strong through 2009 as well”, despite his new obligation. Helix will...

How will you spend retirement? Oh yes, you’re enjoying huge success as the bassist for your band right now, but what will you do after you’ve corralled boatloads of money and the limelight fades? It’s a tough question, but one to which Ryc Rienks has found a solution: instrument repair. Rienks toured as bassist with The Drifters in the 1970s,before...

Roscoe Beck has been on the road with Leonard Cohen for a worldwide tour. After 98 concerts abroad, they landed stateside February 19th at the sold-out Beacon Theatre in New York City. Fans were elated to see the 74-year-old Cohen perform again after his 15-year absence from the stage. As musical director and bassist, Roscoe Beck led the touring band,...

We first caught this on the back of Bass Player magazine: “Please welcome, Mr. Victor Wooten”. Victor Wooten is the latest endorser of Hartke. Wooten used Hartke’s HyDrive cabinets and LH1000 amps during the SMV tour (with Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller), and is now using them on the Béla Fleck and Flecktones tour. Wooten explains: “There are plenty of...

Hartke Systems founder Larry Hartke decided he wanted to find great, unsigned bass players from around the world, so he published his cell phone number with a call to action. Over 5,000 players responded by sending in their CDs and web sites to him, and he’s since selected three winners. Each will receive Hartke artist equipment endorsements and industry exposure....

Jazz/rock fusion pioneers Return To Forever are back with an upcoming 2CD set and DVD. If the success of their 2008 USA and European tour is any indicator, the new album “Returns” will be well-received. Releasing on March 2nd, it will be the band’s first since 1979 with the original lineup of Stanley Clarke on bass, Chick Corea on keyboards,...

In a recent interview with The Daily Aztec, Primus bassist Les Claypool shares what we can expect to hear from him soon. His latest album, Of Fungi and Foe will be released March 17. Claypool described this venture as “kind of dark and creepy” and “a little more moody than some of the stuff I’ve done in the past.” Should...

New York-based EMI Music Publishing inked an administration deal recently to market and represent funkmaster Bootsy Collins worldwide. In case you been livin’ in an un-funki-fied state and didn’t know, baby, Collins is the funkalicious bass player of Parliament/Funkadelic fame. He originally got his start in James Brown’s backup band, and after “P-Funk” went on to form Bootsy’s Rubber Band...

Wolfgang “Wolfie” Van Halen, son of guitarist Eddie Van Halen, has big career plans, but they’re going to have to wait until he graduates high school. The teenage prodigy took a break from 11th grade to join dad’s band (when he was only 15) on their 2007 tour. He proved to be such a great fit, Eddie wanted to rush...

Korn’s bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu has written a memoir, according to a news release by the band. Got the Life: My Journey of Addiction, Faith, Recovery, and Korn is a look at Fieldy’s years as bassist of Korn, with the “extreme highes and drug-and-booze-fueledlows of the biggest heavy metal band of our era”. The book will be available on March...

Former Pavement member Mark Ibold has been playing with Sonic Youth since the “Rather Ripped” tour, and he’s set to appear on their upcoming album, in a song with the working title “That’s What We Know.” The sixteenth SA album is being produced by John Agnello, who also produced Rather Ripped. Pavement debuted in 1989, and continued playing through the...

Tony Campos (Static-X, Asesino) will be showing off his new Fernandes signature five-string bass on Friday at the NAMM show. If you’re lucky enough to know the right people, you can see him (and the bass) today at 1:30, at the Fernandes booth, 5960.