Articles by Kevin Johnson - Page 669

Jauqo III-X is a bassist that plays by his own rules. After coming up in a household filled the sounds of jazz and Motown, Jauqo picked up bass as a teenager and never looked back. “My interest in Bass grew into—for lack of a better word—an obsession,” he shared on his website. “If it was anything Bass-related, I wanted to...

Earlier this year, Steve Swallow released a new album featuring a revised lineup of his quintet to include organ, guitar, bass, sax and drums. “I had in mind a small band but one with interesting textural possibilities, a diversity and variety of sound,” Swallow said of his new lineup. “The knee-jerk reaction to a band with electric bass, electric guitar...

Electro-Harmonix has expanded their Next Step series of pedals to the bass realm with the Crying Bass Wah/Fuzz. Similar to other Next Step effects, the pedal features no moving parts and uses a motion sensor to translate movement. The pedal’s fuzz circuit adds distortion and harmonics to the signal and helps accentuate the wah effect. The pedal also has a...

David Pastorius adds some serious fire to Tech N9ne’s song “Questions” by riffing off of rapper’s lyrical rhythm as well as throwing in his own freestyle licks. The bassist brings his incredible technique and creativity together to dish out some really cool lines and add a new dimension to the track.

Paul McCartney has returned with his first album of all new material in six years, appropriately entitled New. While the title track actually carries Macca’s classic sound, the 71-year old bassist’s latest effort features textures and songs that are both familiar and foreign to his signature style. McCartney worked with four producers – Mark Ronson, Paul Epworth, Giles Martin and...

Rock supergroup The Dead Daisies has announced that Darryl Jones will be joining their ranks for an upcoming UK tour. The renowned bassist, who also plays for The Rolling Stones, will be filling in for regular bassist Marco Mendoza who will be performing with Thin-Lizzy spinoff The Black Star Riders. The rest of current Dead Daisies lineup includes former INXS...

Moog has unveiled the Minifooger family of effects pedals designed for use with bass and electric guitar. The compact stompboxes are housed in cast aluminum enclosures and feature completely analog signal paths, true bypass, optional battery power, and an expression input for adjusting parameters on the fly. Each of the pedals is designed and hand assembled in North Carolina. Moog...

Megadeth has announced the Super Collider Tour in support of their album of the same name released earlier this year. The trek starts on November 23rd at Myth Live in St. Paul, Minnesota, then heads east through Pennsylvania, down to Florida, and across the South. It ends December 19th in Reno, Nevada. David Ellefson will also be making some special...

“Blackbird” by The Beatles may be one of the most covered songs ever written, but Cody Wright of the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra puts an awesome spin on it with his unique bass arrangement. Switching between tapping, fingerstyle and picking, Wright’s mesmerizing version was captured during his performance at the Asheville Music Hall in Asheville, North Carolina on September 26, 2013....

The surge of jazz fusion in the ’70s produced some incredible music, especially the work of the virtuosic Brecker Brothers. Led by trumpeter Randy Brecker and saxophonist Michael Brecker, their self-titled debut blew listeners away with an electric sound that melded genres and spawned the classic track “Some Skunk Funk.” “When the band started back in the day, the original...

Fender has rolled out two new basses as part of their Vintage Hot Rod series, an American-made lineup that the company describes as incorporating the best of old and new features. The Fender Vintage Hot Rod ’60s Precision Bass and ’70s Jazz Bass riff on classic designs while adding new features like a 7.25″-12″ compound-radius fingerboards, new neck profiles, and...

Eventide and Danish company Cioks have teamed up to release the PowerFactor 2, a power supply that can run up to four Eventide pedals as well as up to four other pedals. It has eight regulated, isolated DC outlets – four rated at 400mA, two rated at 200mA, and two rated at 100mA – all of which are protected from...