Archive for January 2015 - Page 7

Forty years in business is quite an accomplishment, and Pedulla Guitars is celebrating that very milestone with a limited edition collection of basses. Michael Pedulla, who started the company in 1975, has made one limited edition 40th Anniversary version of each of his bass models including the MVP, the Pentabuzz, the Rapture, the Nuance, and the Thunderbolt. The series features...

While Christian McBride is typically known for his stellar straight-ahead work, the man can get down on some funk. Here’s a crazy good clip of him in concert with the late great George Duke and drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr. at the Java Jazz festival in 2010. The trio gets into a collective consciousness to get heavy into the groove. Check...

Teenage Time Killers may be the heaviest of the heavy, when it comes to supergroup projects. Corrosion of Conformity’s bassist Mike Dean and drummer/vocalist Reed Mullin and Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe came up with the idea for the metal supergroup, which started coalescing back in 2013. The band, which includes Dave Grohl (what doesn’t?) and a host of...

Another rehearsal called for 5:30pm. If it were my band, I’d wait until 7:00 so that no one would fall victim to rush hour traffic. But it’s never my band, so, 5:30 it is. As expected, I-40 was jammed in both directions and the guitar player’s GPS took him to the wrong house. We started twenty minutes late, but considering...

I’m always pumped to get new videos from Alex Bershadsky, and his latest is a reason why. The video features fantastic playing of all kinds, not to mention nice filming. “It’s an original arrangement for the Police Classic ‘Bring on The Night’ combining double thumbing with fretless bass,” he shares. “It’s a bit different, I hope you’ll like it.”

Three months after announcing his exit from The Faceless, bassist Evan Brewer has reunited with three members from his Animosity days to form a new band called Entheos. Though the band features former Animosity drummer Navene Koperweis and guitarist Frank Costa, the members say this isn’t an Animosity reunion but rather “a completely new band with new material.” “It’s definitely...

Robert Trujillo is known to millions of people – all over the world – as Metallica’s bass player. Fans of Metallica know Trujillo as the guy who replaced Jason Newsted in 2003. Both Trujillo and Newsted had tough boots to fill after original Metallica bassist, Cliff Burton, was killed in a tour bus accident in 1986. Prior to Metallica, Trujillo...

When I was writing the In Memoriam story covering the bassists we lost in 2014, I spent some time revisiting each of their works, including original Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick. Here’s Cornick with Tull at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Their whole set was fantastic, but the band really brought it in their finale with “Nothing is...

You can still learn something new or grow as a bassist, even if you’ve developed a certain style over the course of a couple of decades with one band. At least that’s the lesson one can take from a recent admission by Anthrax bassist Frank Bello. Back in 2004, Bello left Anthrax after 20 years to play in another metal...

Q: How do I come to terms to the fact that I will never be a Damian Erskine-caliber player? How do I keep myself motivated to learn when I am always comparing my sucky playing to much better players? Why would anyone – especially another bass player – want to listen to me play? A: To a certain extent, in...

Bob Marley was one of the largest musical successes of the 20th century, but that legacy would not have been the same without bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett. Barrett, who was and still is the Wailers’ bandleader, is credited with writing much of the musical content and arrangements from that iconic music. The Wailers recently posted an alternate take of...

Sad news to report today: prolific Nashville session bassist Henry Strzelecki passed away on December 30th after being struck by a car. He was 75 years old. Henry Strzelecki was born in Birmingham, Alabama and relocated the Nashville when he was still young. He began his recording career in country music with songwriter Baker Knight on the Decca Label while...