Reader Spotlight: Wayne Myers

Meet Wayne Myers, who picked up the bass in 1985 and never looked back. We love his answer to the “superpower” question.

Wayne is this week’s No Treble reader in the spotlight (you could be next). Here’s his story…

Bio:

I’ve been an off-and-on working bassist since joining an all-kid function band at age 13 in 1985 and playing that (plus other instruments) consistently from then on in between weird gaps for university, accidentally helping make the BBC website accessible to blind people in the early 1990s, being a licensed London Underground busker (had to use guitar there, bass just doesn’t work in the tunnels) and more recently an unexpected short stint as an IT contractor for UMG stuck in a back room of Abbey Road Studios playing with computers rather than basses. Still fronting bass-led band Fit and the Conniptions and playing bass banjo in all-banjo lunacy Banjöverkill, modulo COVID.

Location:

London, UK

Years experience:

Since the age of 13 (in 1985).

Why I play the bass:

At 13, my guitarist school friend Mike was starting a band and said I could join if I took up bass. So I did. Never looked back.

Gear:

Gibson G3, Aria acoustic bass, Yamaha 5-string, Goldstone bass banjo, B&H Excelsior upright, GK combo amp, pedal board with Keeley Bassist compressor, Darkglass Alpha Omega, Palmer Herrenchor, and Electro Harmonix pog. Home studio running Ardour on Ubuntu Studio Linux.

My Influences:

Mark Sandman, Steve Lawson, Danny Thompson, Tony Levin, Steve Harris, James Jamerson, John Deacon

My bass superpower/claim to fame:

You don’t need superpowers when you’re a bassist because being a bassist is a superpower by itself. I’ve lost track of the number of bands – one or two of which you nearly heard of – I’ve invisibly held together via the magic of bass over the years, but that’s the job. As for my own band, I guess no one else can claim to have put together a bass-led guitarless folk-punk trio with a member of Andy and the Odd Socks and a member of Perkelt, but that’s just a fact, not a claim to fame. It’s possible I may have the longest-running webcomic of any currently active bassist, though.

More on the web:

Conniptions