Groove Podcast - Page 6

Is there a better way to celebrate the one year anniversary of Groove – The No Treble Podcast than to dive into the amazingly, unconventional and beautiful playing of Stuart Hamm? Back in the late eighties, I made the mistake of thinking that Hamm was a full-on rocker, due to his work with Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Frank Gambale....

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...

The Music Lesson is a book that will forever change you. Not because it was written by one of the world’s greatest bass players, but because the message is core to living a life worth celebrating. Music is all over Victor Wooten. He was bathed in it from the womb (that’s not a clever play on words, just ask him)....

Lamb of God was one of the headliners at this year’s three-day hard music festival known as Heavy Montreal. Bassist John Campbell was willing and able to sit down in the blazing sun to talk about everything from why he used to play with only three strings on his bass, to the sad situation that found his singer Randy Blythe...

If we’re going to refer to the late/great John Entwistle as “The Ox,” we should probably start referring to Steve Lawson as “The Octopus.” When you listen to his music (and yes, this is music… not just someone playing the bass), it seems unreasonable that what comes out of his instrument is the work of two hands on a bass...

Mark Egan has a very specific sound. Whether it’s from co-founding the jazz fusion band, Elements, or being a part of the Pat Metheny Group… or from the Gil Evans Orchestra to his work with Sting, Joan Osborne, Cyndi Lauper or Art Garfunkel. The smooth, fretless electric bass sound is unmistakably his. Egan spent a significant amount of time honing...

How is it that someone can be this in touch with their musicianship and instrument? Michael Manring is one of the most talented musicians that our world has ever seen. He’s not just a bass player of the highest order, he is someone who approaches music with all of his senses and sensibilities. Manring is so good, that he makes...

Juan Alderete doesn’t remember me. Fair ball. The last time I saw him, he had long hair, tight jeans and was playing bass for a hard rock band called The Scream back in the early nineties. That band is most notable because frontman, John Corabi, later went on to replace Vince Neil in Motley Crue. Back then, Juan was known...

From a commercial standpoint, Gary Willis is mostly known as the co-founder of Tribal Tech (the jazz fusion band that includes Scott Henderson). The life of a jazz musician is never easy… no matter how much hype and excitement there is surrounding your band (and, Gary had plenty of that with Tribal Tech). Like most bass players, Gary has paid...

“Who is that bass player with the long beard?” That was my initial reaction when I first saw the video for Phil Collins’ smash hit, “Sussudio”, in 1985. I did not know Leland Sklar’s pedigree as a bass player before that (and, what happened after is a journey of impressive artists and songs that continues to expand to this day...

There is a memorable scene in the Modern Electric Bass instructional video from 1986, when Jerry Jemmott asks Jaco Pastorius who really influenced the development of his playing style. Without missing a beat, Pastorius starts riffing on some of Jemmott’s classic funk bass lines. He talks about how he would listen to the radio, and try to emulate the sounds...

Robert Trujillo is known to millions of people – all over the world – as Metallica’s bass player. Fans of Metallica know Trujillo as the guy who replaced Jason Newsted in 2003. Both Trujillo and Newsted had tough boots to fill after original Metallica bassist, Cliff Burton, was killed in a tour bus accident in 1986. Prior to Metallica, Trujillo...