Tony Levin Announces Solo Album, “Bringing It Down To The Bass”
It’s a big year for Tony Levin. He’s gearing up for the highly anticipated BEAT tour, but he’s also just announced that he’s releasing a solo album next month, too.
Bringing It Down to the Bass marks the bass icon’s seventh solo album and his first since 2007. It’s described as a musical autobiography that draws themes from his life. Levin, who has performed and recorded with a myriad of artists, blends a wide variety of genres on the album including prog, jazz, thrash, classical, and “a whiff of barbershop quartet.”
The album has been in the works for some time, but Levin’s heavy touring schedule prevented him from getting around to it. Eventually he blocked off time between tours with Peter Gabriel, the Stick Men, and the Levin Brothers. The bass features prominently into his compositions.
“I had pieces very much in the prog-rock vein and I had pieces that were based on the bass,” Levin says, “and somewhere around the middle of the record I made the difficult decision to toss the prog stuff – well, not toss it exactly, save it for another album – and the more I focused, I chose the kind of pieces that had to me a sense of unity to it in that it’s about the bass. Not songs with singing about the bass, but each song is either based on a bass riff or a bass technique that I then invited some great rhythm sections to play on.
“My basses do each sound different. I wanted to write at least one piece with the funk fingers and I did that fingernail way of playing that I featured on one piece, and hammer-on technique on that first piece, ‘Bringing It Down to the Bass.’ I used to use that a long time ago and I hadn’t used lately since I got the Stick, which is designed to play with the hammer-on technique. That’s also a piece that has a rocking, really hot rhythm section with Manu Katche, from Peter’s band on drums. Also, maybe two or three times in the piece it breaks down and stops to just the bass playing different riffs and then Dominic Miller, from Sting’s band, comes in and solos and Alex Foster solos on sax.”
Aside from Miller, Katche and Foster, Bringing It Down To The Bass is brimming with amazing guest artists. Levin also called on Robert Fripp, Vinnie Colaiuta, Mike Portnoy, Jerry Marotta, Steve Hunter, Earl Slick, Joe Caro, Steve Gadd, David Torn, Pete Levin, and more.
Bringing It Down To The Bass will be out on September 13th on double vinyl, CD, Blu-ray and streaming. It’s available for pre-order now through Bandcamp.
In his time with No Treble, Kevin has met hundreds of amazing bassists and interviewed icons like Jack Casady, Victor Wooten, Les Claypool, Marcus Miller, and more. He's a gigging bassist performing jazz in Northern Virginia and bluegrass with The Plate Scrapers up and down the East Coast. Kevin appreciates all genres of music, from R&B to metal and everything in between. Connect with Kevin on Facebook and check his performance schedule on his website.
