Jaco Pastorius Archives - Page 13

New York’s Iridium Jazz Club has announced Jacofest, a four-night concert event honoring the late, great Jaco Pastorius. Bassists Victor Bailey and T.M. Stevens will be performing with many of Jaco’s former bandmates and colleagues, including trumpeters Miles Evans and Lew Soloff, saxophonists Alex Foster and Butch Thomas, trombonist David Bargeron, keyboardists Gil Goldstein and Delmar Brown, guitarist Billy “Spaceman”...

We frequently see bassist Christian McBride playing the upright, but can he ever play on the bass guitar. Check out this video of McBride taking a solo during a live performance of the Jaco Pastorius tune “Havona”, with the Christan McBride Band. McBride has three bass guitars that he currently uses: first a Pensa 4-string fretless maple neck, an Atelier...

For years, Jaco Pastorius‘s “Slang” solo on Joni Mitchell’s Shadows & Light DVD has been a wildly popular clip. Turns out, we’ve only heard part of it. Obviously, someone in the editing room decided to cut Jaco’s solo down for the DVD. Thankfully, we can now hear the complete solo, including parts of “Chromatic Fantasy”. The solo was recorded live...

New York City jazz bassist Joe Martin has released his second CD, Not By Chance, on Anzic records. Not By Chance features eight original compositions by Martin, and a Jaco Pastorius tribute, and includes Brad Mehldau on piano, saxophonist Chris Potter (also on bass clarinet) and Marcus Gilmore on drums. “Three of my favorite musicians. They not only possess powerful...

Alessio Tori, aka ato71, has quite a few bass playalong videos on his channel, and they’re all killer. Here’s Alessio taking on one of the biggies… Jaco’s killer line from Joni Mitchell’s live Shadows & Light performance of “In France They Kiss on Main Street”. Alessio shares, “Maybe I dared too much but this is such a fantastic line… I...

Bassist Kilian Duarte sent us a note, sharing his version of the Jaco Pastorius tune, “Portrait of Tracy”. Kilian asked us for feedback… post in the comments below.

Bireli Lagrene, known for his guitar playing, can apparently lay down a mean Jaco Pastorius-style groove on bass too. Bireli obviously picked up a few pointers while touring with Jaco in the 80s. Or, as Jaco would say, “I know where I stole every note!”

Today’s featured video shows off the skills of bassist Matt Bissonette. In this clip, Matt takes a solo break on his fretless, during the 2002 Joe Satriani Strange Beautiful Music Tour in The Netherlands. You can definitely hear a Jaco influence toward the end of the solo, but with a nice twist.

We recently got our hands on Go For It, the latest release by bassist Frans Vollink and his trio, One Spirit. One Spirit is a high powered jazz/fusion trio and brain-child of Vollink and drummer Sebastiaan Cornelissen, with Flying Dutchman guitarist Richard Hallenbeek joining as a new permanent member. Go For It released in April, 2009, and features guest appearances...

Singer and bassist Jack Bruce was made a Doctor of Letters by Glasgow Caledonian University. Bruce is 66 years old and a founding member of the band Cream with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. Bruce was quoted saying: “I dropped out and became a professional musician when I was very young, I just wanted to get on with it really...

As we celebrate Independence Day today in the U.S., we decided to look around for videos of Jaco Pastorius performing his landmark arrangement of “America The Beautiful”, aka “Amerika”. Along the way, we discovered this gem by bassist Neftali López: Have a safe and happy Fourth!

Check out Tom Kennedy taking care of business on “The Chicken”, a song most people think was written by Jaco Pastorius. (It was written by Pee Wee Ellis, a member of James Brown’s band, though Jaco made it famous). Holy smokes!