Groove – Episode #11: Alain Caron
When I was growing up – and was a young and impressionable musician – every bass player wanted to be Jaco Pastorius (that’s not true, the rockers wanted to be Billy Sheehan). These virtuosos seemed unreachable. There was no Internet. There was no Twitter. No Skype. All we knew about these icons was what we heard on vinyl, cassettes and then CDs. All we read about them was the occasional article in a music magazine. The players we got to know were, primarily, the local ones. They’re the ones that had the buzz.
Where I’m from, it was Alain Caron. At the time (mid-eighties), his bass playing was legendary as a member of Uzeb. The hard-driving jazz fusion trio was like the Rush of jazz, and their performances were the stuff of legend. Fellow bass players would pay a premium to take lessons from Caron and the mythology grew from there.
The youngest of 11 children, Alain started playing the bass at 11 years old. He attended Berklee College of Music, and after Uzeb disbanded in the early nineties, Caron has been on a musical whirlwind with solo albums, appearing with fellow musical luminaries, tours, master classes and more. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Caron at his home studio just outside of Montreal to discuss his drive of creativity. Enjoy the conversation…
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Groove - The No Treble Podcast’s theme music written and performed by Aaron Gibson.
Merci pour cette entrevue ! Alain Caron mérite vraiment d’être reconnu, c’est un maitre de la basse et une grande inspiration
Merci, Charles! It was a pleasure to hang out with Alain… total legend… total gentleman!
Love the podcasts Mitch, thanks for the share!
Thanks, Mike… I’m truly loving this experience and thankful to Corey and Kevin for allowing me the honor. Keep on listening, we have some amazing episodes and guests coming up!
Great interview with a great bass player… Alain Caron, a real one!
It was a true pleasure spending time with Alain. I’m working on taking him to a hockey game soon :)
This is such a wonderfully intimate interview with a truly great musician! Thank you so much for sharing this with us, Mitch!
I appreciate the feedback, Billy. Doing this No Treble podcast for close to a year now has been a true labor of love!
Groovy, and judging from your discourse, I know you must be a huge fan as well! Incidentally, I had the absolute pleasure of seeing the maestro perform over here in Shanghai, at the MusikMesse exhibition last month. Alain comes across as such a humble chap, and I have to confess that I couldn’t resist a smartphone clip of him on stage. Enjoy! :-) https://www.facebook.com/beebebop/videos/vb.669881482/10153263535321483/?type=2&theater
Yes! Love this! Thanks for sharing!
Great interview! Love the occasional cat mew lol.
LOL… I am a big fan of ambient noise background in podcasts. I know most people like the clean/studio vibe. I love conversations “in the wild!”. Thanks for listening!
Alain is my main inspiration as far as bass is concerned. Thanks so much for this interview.