adabassist

[adabassist]

SKATING AWAY ON THE FRETLINES OF A NEW DAY

I expect that there’s not a single electric bassist out there who can’t remember the first time they got to play a fretless bass. The difference in the sonic, visual, tactile, even the emotional experience - it leaves an impression on almost every player, whether they pursue the instrument or not. It’s really as close to the human voice as a bass is gonna get. It’s a truly seductive instrument; it’s even downright sexy. If Kathleen Turner played bass, I’d bet you a dollar she’d play a fretless.

The passion I developed for this instrument consumed me; once I discovered the fretless bass, fretted basses became boring, limiting, and they just felt plain weird. I had a fretless with me everywhere I went, every gig, every studio date, every rehearsal, every trip out of town. I even took it on dates; hey, you never know, right?

My introduction to the instrument was anything but unique: my high school band teacher suggested that I get an album called Heavy Weather by a jazz fusion band called Weather Report. Upon hearing the opening track, “Birdland”, I immediately recognized the sound I was hearing as a bass, but it sounded like what that bassist was doing was impossible! As far as I knew, without a whammy bar, there was no way to make those harmonic notes move and slide like that… so I brought the cassette to my teacher and played the intro for him, and asked him how they were doing that… he said, “Well, isn’t Jaco Pastorius the king of the fretless bass?”

I said, “King of the what? And who’s Jaco?”

What followed was a desperate attempt to get my hands on a fretless, even just to try it; none of the music stores around had them (living in a flyover state with the nearest metropolis over an hour away has its disadvantages), nobody I knew had one or even knew anybody else who had one, and when I finally found an upstart guitar company who made a stock affordable fretless, my folks wouldn’t get it for me because, not being terribly musically inclined, they couldn’t understand why I would need a 2nd bass.

At this point my teacher moved away, and I found a new teacher at the music store the next town over. And HE happened to have a fretless bass, and he let me borrow it that summer while he was on vacation. He dropped it off on his way out of town, pretty close to midnight. I took it down into the basement and pulled it out and was all set to plug it in when I heard, “DON’T TURN THAT AMPLIFIER ON, YOUR SISTER IS SLEEPING!”

Jeez, not anymore I bet, Mom. “Okay, okay, I won’t turn it on…”

But there I sat, on my barstool in the basement, bass strapped over my shoulder, just plucking the strings and sliding my fingers up and down the fingerboard. For a good half an hour. If I had smoked, I would have needed a cigarette afterwards. (I told you it was sexy.)

The next morning I realized how amazingly difficult it was to play that bass in tune. No lines, hardly any useful reference points. Very difficult to figure out where I was on the bass. But the tone it created, and my desire to make more tones like that, superseded any concern about how much practice this was going to take. I finally got my very own fretless - a Rickenbacker 4001 - and really began concentrating on mastering it (much to the detriment of my grades in school).

One of my favorite things about the fretless bass is that the tone really lends itself to lyrical melodies. The instrument takes on qualities of the human voice in the middle to upper registers. And I found myself learning horn parts to jazz tunes as well as more traditional bass lines like those from my favorite rock bands, which ended up serving me really well down the road.

Another favorite thing is the fact that many fretless basses used to be fretted basses, and the slots leftover from said frets being removed usually get filled in with material of a contrasting color to the surrounding wood. These are known as “fret lines”, and if used correctly, they can greatly enhance one’s ability to play notes in tune. They are also the subject of great controversy among we bass nerds, as there are those who feel it’s “cheating” somehow. For my money, I’m on Team Fretlines.

So I practiced and practiced, and even went to music school for a year after high school, and came home and kept practicing. One thing led to another, and less than a year after I returned, I found myself auditioning for a band in the area that had already been signed to a small local record label, and was getting some pretty big gigs around the country, and needed a true fretless bassist, as opposed to a bassist who trots out a fretless as a novelty on stage for one song. Unbelievably, I landed the gig. Of course the REAL work was just beginning, but I was blessed with a really fast and accurate ear, and they decided to give me a shot.

I soon realized how green I really was compared to true professional musicians, and I had to make a concerted effort to keep up, but after a lot of hard work, not only did I learn to behave as a pro, but I really sharpened my ear and its relationship to my fingers… I was developing the ability to create a phrase in my head, and play it on my first attempt. (This is a big deal for musicians; imagine not being able to say much to anyone unless you practice it over and over, and you’ll have an idea of how most musicians approach music.)

Several years later (same band), I get a call from my keyboard player, who wants me to come in to the band studio the next morning before rehearsal (we recorded at one band member’s house, and practiced at another’s in the same neighborhood) so I can put down a bass melody for a demo of a song he’s writing for the next album.

I show up with my bass at 8am (yeech!), and we start discussing the song: “I need you to double that melody with the cheesy synth-sax sound. The song goes through the same chord progression 3 times, and the melody occurs during the 1st and the 3rd pass.”

“Got it. What happens during the 2nd pass? Should I just take a solo over the chords?”

“No, I’m going to have my sax player friend replace the synth melody, and he’s going to do a solo, so just leave it empty.”

Plugged in, got signal and levels. I was taught the melody - beautiful, and not too complicated. Cool little chord progression with a twist. He hit the record button, and I played the melody I had just learned along with the track.

As I played the final note, preparing to rest for the next 32 bars, he dropped a bomb in my lap: “Why don’t you just throw down a solo here anyway.”

This was exactly ZERO WARNING, for a song I had heard for the first time about 10 minutes prior. It’s like being thrown an enormous water balloon at 94 mph and being expected to catch it.

That’s when my brain became my best friend.

My ears said to my brain: here’s what should come next. tell the fingers to make this happen…

My brain said: i can do that! fingers, do this, this, and this, and then this.

And the phrase I thought would sound great instantly came out of the studio speakers.

I didn’t have time to be shocked; my ears were ready for the next phrase, giving orders to my brain, which meted them out. This happened at least a dozen times in a row, right up until the melody was supposed to re-enter. And my ears, having connected a long series of invisible dots over the last 60 seconds or so, even properly glued the last phrase to the beginning of the melody. It was like a factory assembly line: my frontal cortex had an idea, my ears refined it and made sure it fit the chords, the frontal cortex figured out where those notes had to be on the fingerboard, the motor cortex took those plans and sent the signals down to my fingers. And each set of “orders” took less time than the blink of an eye.

I peeked up after I got to the “safe zone” of the out melody (which I already knew), and my keyboard player’s jaw was on his chest. I had to remind myself to concentrate; after all, I was still recording.

When I finished, he hit the stop button, turned to me, and said, “How did you do THAT??”

I didn’t quite understand, so he rewound the tape and played back what I had just recorded.

And I was treated to a sonic representation of the way my brain and ears operate when they’re in top form. I had no memory of playing the actual solo (and I still don’t); it was a true transcendental experience. Yet, as I listened back to the track, I KNEW every note I was about to hear as if I had been waiting my entire life to play that solo. It was like a perfectly written story that practically told itself. 25 years later and I still know it by heart; haven’t thought of a single thing I’d do different. It was a complete stream-of-consciousness expression, in fretless bass solo form. I’ve never had another experience like it since.

We both kind of sat there for a few seconds after the song ended, and he finally said, “I don’t care what anyone else says; for my money, this song’s done. Let’s show this to the band at rehearsal.”

So we took it along and played it for everyone else. Everyone loved it, but the bandleader said, “I know that was an amazing solo, but there’s already too much fretless on the upcoming record. I think the solo should be sax instead. I hope you understand.”

And I did understand, even if it was a bit of a bummer. Oh well, at least I had a copy of my solo on cassette tape for posterity.

Sax player showed up a few days later, on a day when I wasn’t there, to play the melody and do a solo, but there was a problem - he had been sent the same demo tape that I had, with my solo on it, and it was influencing his improv in a way that didn’t really suit the sax. He finally said, “I need to skip the solo. The melody is fine, no problem, but I keep veering off course during the solo because I hear the bass solo in my head so strongly.”

So the bandleader calls me and tells me what happened, and that he’s decided that HE will play an electric jazz guitar solo over the chord changes (he did this regularly in the group, and to great effect). Okay, great. Curious as to what I’ll hear in two days when it’s done.

Two days later I get another phone call: “I can’t do it. I keep playing stuff that works great on the guitar, and it fits the changes nicely, but the phrases just sound disconnected, I keep hearing your solo in my head, and I can’t seem to fix it. Would you mind if I transcribed your fretless solo and played it on the jazz guitar?”

“Feel free, it’d be an honor,” I said. Good thing FaceTime wasn’t a thing back then, because I’m sure I was smirking.

The next day I arrived at the studio to record another song for the new record, where I find the bandleader standing outside shaking his head.

“Did you finish the solo? How’d it go?”

“Yep. And I hate it.”

“What happened?”

“I spent over an hour last night transcribing your part. And I just spent another hour recording it. You know what it sounds like?”

I had an answer ready, but I wasn’t about to say it out loud if I didn’t have to. I figured I’d let him say it instead, which he did:

“It sounds like a bunch of great fretless bass licks, played on the wrong instrument. I think we should just use your original bass solo.”

Now that’s taking the long way around to come to the right decision.

When I look back on that moment, I find it amazing that I don’t remember coming up with the phrases, and I certainly don’t remember anything happening that pulled me out of that “mode” I was in; the solo all but wrote itself, and I was simply the conduit. But I remember my bandmate’s reaction.

Since then, I have tried to conjure that mojo dozens of times, with varying degrees of success, but never quite to that level. But it showed me what was possible within the realm of performance. All those scales and exercises and hours upon hours of practice were paid off in that one instance of musical epiphany and pure expression. It was enough to ensure I’ll die a happy man.

[adabassist]

NOT EXACTLY THE SUMMER OF ‘69, BUT I WAS NEVER AS COOL AS BRYAN ADAMS ANYWAY

Recently someone asked me how I ended up a bass player. I forget what I told them, but it was short, sweet, and long on understatement. The real answer is a lot more complicated.

My earliest memory is from before I was 2 (yep, 2 - believe it or don’t), sitting at the 70-year-old upright piano we got for free from a garage sale down the street, pounding on the low keys, because they made this GLORIOUSLY ENORMOUS SOUND… To this day, I cannot recall ever hearing an upright piano where the notes were as big sounding, although I’m sure my small ears had a skewed sensory experience compared to later years.

We (I have an older sister and brother) would play a musical piano game called “Thunderstorm”, where we would try to recreate the thunder (lower 1/3 of the keyboard), lightning (middle 1/3), and rain (higher 1/3) associated with a big storm (our parents were thrilled). I remember trying to pound on the higher keys in desperation, wondering why they lacked a powerful sound no matter how hard I hit them. I began to see the notes played in terms of size, with the lowest notes “appearing” to be largest in my mind’s eye.

Before long, I could hear how certain notes sounded good together - just octaves and fifths at first, then other “hip” intervals like a minor 7th (though I had no name for that interval in my head - I just liked the sound). I even wrote a song called “Dun” somewhere along the line, played with the index finger on each hand; left hand stayed on G (same pitch as a G string on a bass), and right hand moved between D, E, and F. “Dun” got its name because I played it so often that my siblings would mock me by singing that song back to me: “DUN DUN DU-DUN DUN DU-DU-DU-DUN DUN….”

You could say that my fate was sealed.

I would regularly sit down at the piano and play whatever my heart desired. Back then I had never taken piano lessons, and had no idea how to read or even what was “proper” to be played on a piano. I just figured stuff out when I felt like it, and otherwise just had fun learning the sonic relationships between the keys. But I thought I was pretty good anyway. I even used to make “tickets” for the family (markers, scissors, and construction paper) and make them “attend my concerts” from time to time. Let’s just say I wasn’t a big hit.

I auditioned for the school talent show in 1st grade, figuring I was a shoo-in, regardless of what my family thought (lousy philistines). I got through to the 2nd audition, and upon completion, the music teacher said, “That’s not what you played for the first audition. Can you play that song?” I said no, because everything I play is all off the top of my head. I didn’t make the talent show, and I remember thinking how “rinky-dink” the songs were by the people who did get to perform…

Somewhere along the line, I learned the names of the notes, and even found out that I could do a neat trick: if my sister played a note on the piano, I could name it - every time. I was so good at it that she was sure I was cheating or peeking, so I was marched into the next room to continue the game. This of course changed nothing; I had discovered that I could simply name the notes upon hearing them. I didn’t know what perfect pitch was, but I had it. When my cousin - well-recognized at his school for being a talented violinist - came to visit, and couldn’t do the same trick as I could, he got more than a little annoyed. But that’s the nature of perfect pitch; you can develop it to a degree, but largely, you either got it or you don’t.

I was about nine when I found a harmonica in a box in our garage, brand-new, no idea what it was doing there. I began to play with it and discovered that the same scale I played on the piano was also recognizable on a harmonica! I had never played another instrument before, and I was enthralled. After a while I got the idea that I could play the harmonica and the piano at the same time, so I went into the living room with the harmonica and sat down at the piano. Blew a C chord on the harp, and played a C note on the piano.

YUCK. That sounded AWFUL.

I couldn’t understand it - the harmonica was clearly marked “C” (this might be what gave me the idea to try them together). But the “C” on the harmonica didn’t sound good at ALL with the “C” on the piano.

Turns out the piano was tuned exactly one half-step flat. Possibly because it had spent most of its life in the salty air near the San Francisco Bay, and the soundboard had rotted just enough that it couldn’t keep strings at tension or pitch anymore. Tuning it so it at least played in tune with itself was a logical decision.

But it forever skewed my sense of what a “C” actually sounded like in my head. To this day, I refer to my condition as “IMPERFECT pitch”.

I did figure out that if I played a Db scale on the piano, it worked well with the harmonica, but it was too difficult to wrap my brain and hands around all of that when the piano was ten feet from the front door, and comings and goings were a constant distraction. So the harmonica went the way of the bread machine you got as a gift sometime around the turn of the 21st century: stashed away in a box, likely never again to see the light of day.

Not long after that, my mother asked me if I’d like to take piano lessons. Just out of the blue. I don’t even remember why she asked, or how she knew the person I was to take lessons from, but I thought it was a brilliant idea! A little structure, a little edification, learning to read and play actual songs instead of the meandering stuff I already knew how to do. Great! I’m sure I was one of the very few kids in my town who was excited about piano lessons. But I enjoyed them, and there’s no doubt they helped me many years down the road, as any professional musician who took piano lessons as a kid can attest to.

One day I was visiting a friend, who had been gifted an old nylon string guitar. He didn’t play it, keep it in tune, or want much of anything to do with it, really. I started messing around with it, and I realized that the frets were the same 1/2 steps I played on the piano! As long as I accounted for the “black keys” by jumping 2 frets instead of 1, I could play a major scale on any single string, no matter how it was tuned or not-tuned. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to tune a guitar; just seeing the relationship between frets and 1/2 steps was enough to make me see notes in a whole new light.

When I was trusted enough to ride my bike downtown (about 3.5 miles from home on roads with sketchy bike lanes), I began renting instruments for a month at a time to see if I could make them sound good. Woodwinds, mostly - clarinet, flute, alto sax. There was that same major scale, easy to play in one key, difficult to figure out in others, plus the weird keys weren’t logical - if I wanted a note to be sharp or flat, I had to press some random key that seemingly had nothing to do with the order of notes. It made no sense to me, I had no idea what I was doing, and at the end of the month, I traded it in for another instrument. This cycle of “lather, rinse, repeat” went on for several months until one day when my brother arrived home with a bass, a guitar, and a big amp.

The sound coming out of his bedroom was INCREDIBLE. Warm yet exciting, like a smoldering fire with a little bit more residual energy than is safe. I was totally enthralled - here was an instrument that I could see made sense already, sounded fabulous, and vaguely reminded me of the lowest notes on the upright piano. I said, “THAT’S what I wanna play!” But my mom said NO - she was not going to have her sons fighting over the same instrument, especially because we already fought over everything else. My brother chose bass first; I got to play the guitar instead.

Playing guitar was pretty cool, actually - it was a cheap japanese red Flying V knockoff, difficult to wield, barely stayed in tune, but it was COOL. A little distortion, a little reverb (only used sparingly because I hated hearing my mistakes echo), and I had a good time. I had my little practice area in the basement next to my brother’s bedroom, and I played an awful lot. But to be honest, it always felt a little… weak. Like trying to throw a cotton ball. Yes, you could get angry and loud, but there was something missing. And every so often, I’d get the urge to sneak into my brother’s room and play his new bass (the first was apparently just a rental) when he wasn’t around. And every so often, I’d get caught, and I’d get “scared straight” for a month or two (my brother was built like a Sherman tank, and I looked more like Chunk with long hair). But the urge would always return, and the cycle would repeat itself. Until one fateful day…

I was in 8th grade, and I took the bus to school. My brother went to the high school half a mile away, so he was always home first. So when I walked in the front door, I could hear his bass booming through the ductwork like always, and like always, that made me want to play my guitar. So, like always, I dumped my school bag, full of assignments that would be ignored until morning like always, by the door and headed for the basement.

I never noticed that the bass notes stopped at some point; all I remember is descending the short staircase that led to the lower level, making a sharp U-turn as I prepared to go down into the basement, and jumping back out of the way because A BASS was flying through the air, up the stairs, right at me. I was fast enough to avoid it, and it hit the floor HARD in front of me. I immediately peeked around the door jamb down the stairs, and saw my brother stomping towards his bedroom door.

So I called down: “Hey - do you want this bass anymore?”

My brother hollered “NOOOOOOO!” and slammed his bedroom door behind him.

I looked back at the bass, and thought, Great!  So I grabbed it and ran downstairs, plugged it into my guitar amp (quietly, I knew better), and for the first time in recorded history, played a bass in my house with something tantamount to permission.

And it was GLORIOUS. Bottom end! Like the piano upstairs, but BIGGER! Notes made sense, I could find my way around because I’d played guitar, and the stuff I’d been trying to play on those other instruments - piano, guitar, clarinet, sax, flute, recorder, even the harmonica - was much better suited for the electric bass, and I finally GOT that. Here was the sound I’d heard in my head for 10 years married to the notes I wanted to play for 10 years, and my fingers were causing it to happen.

And somewhere in that 23-minute span, I remember feeling - not hearing, feeling - a Voice in my head, and it spoke to me with absolute clarity: you remember this moment, because this is what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.

I say 23 minutes because I always got home at 3:20, it took about 2 minutes to shed my coat and bag and head downstairs, and my practice area clock said 3:45 when my brother tore open his door and came around the corner, snarling, “GIMME MY BASS BACK.” And so I did. But the wheels had been set in motion; 23 minutes of bass playing versus years of piano, guitar, and everything else… there was no contest.

So I talked things over with my mom (and mentioned in passing what my brother had done with his beautiful new bass), and that Christmas there was a wonderful new Ibanez Roadstar II bass and a Fender Bassman 20 amp. Within a week I had nickel-sized blisters on 7 different fingertips, and that wasn’t enough to get me to slow down. They started calling me Froggy Fingers when I went back to school after Christmas break. I didn’t care. I finally had to take a scissors to my blisters because callouses were forming over the top of them, the swelling wouldn’t go down, they didn’t hurt at all, and I could barely pick things up because my fingertips were so deformed. But away I went on the bass, spending 6-7 hours every night playing in my corner of the basement (and watching my already piss-poor grades get even worse - I graduated with an academic GPA of 1.6).

This was my solace; this was my everything. All the other things that had gone wrong or were currently going wrong in my life mattered a lot less once I had a bass to play. Maybe that’s why I played so much. There wasn’t much else going on for me to be excited about at that time in my life, and playing music - playing a BASS - gave me an outlet for my passion, my frustration, my energy, my creativity, and created a drive to improve and be really good at something for a change. And I knew it was going to happen because It Made Sense. It still does. Nearly 4 decades later, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

[adabassist]

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

After over 15 years of dealing with the symptoms of a neurological auto-immune disease, you start to wonder if you’ve seen all the various permutations of the day-to-day things that get in your way.  At the completion of this performance, I can safely say the answer is a big fat NO… although the “disability” didn’t come in a form associated with MS this time.

These days, when I gig out, I gotta have help. That’s just all there is to it. I warn everyone I perform with that I am not self-sufficient; to my utter amazement, nobody has refused to help or even complained. I am always very grateful for these wonderful people, whether bandmates, fans, or SWMBO (who does it a lot and even revels in directing traffic to a large extent).

When SWMBO doesn’t tag along, I have to tell people what I need help with: what’s coming out of the van, where it goes, who’s willing to park my van if a space isn’t convenient, here’s what I need out of which bag, what assistance I need getting on/off stage, where things go when they go back in the van, etc.

All of which is easy to do - unless you have LARYNGITIS.

I happen to be prone to this mostly-just-annoying condition for some reason. I think this bout made it an even dozen for me. I even used to keep a “Flintstones Magic-Slate” around - where you would write on the wax paper with a plastic “pen”, lift the paper, and the writing would vanish - for just such occasions. I used to get it every other year for quite some time, and then it quit showing up. Until the day before a certain gig in the local metropolis…

I had been rehearsing with a group that played Dominican music — bachatas, merengue, etc. —  and I didn’t even know there was such a thing a year ago. Through the various contacts I’ve made with the salsa bands I’ve been working with, I ended up being the only “non-Caribbean” musician in a group that was doing a tribute to Antony Santos. Easy stuff if you grew up listening and playing it; very difficult to sound authentic if you didn’t. Our first gig was opening for a Dominican artist at a big club about 70 miles away. There were going to be about 500-600 people in the audience, so it was a pretty big deal.

The night before the show, my voice drops an octave and a half. I have a good time imitating Darth Vader and Lurch from The Addams Family.

Wake up the next morning and my voice is GONE. Nothing.

So I warn the band members via text: I will require extra consideration at the gig because I have no voice. A few jokes made at my expense, sure, fine, whatever.

What’s making this even more difficult is that a Winter Storm Warning went into effect at 4 pm, and they’re expecting about 8” of snow.  Great.

So my mind begins taking stock of the situation:  no voice, unfamiliar club, long drive through dangerous snowy conditions, Friday night traffic. Hoo boy. This oughta be fun.

I had texted the bandleader earlier in the day asking what the odds were that weather might cancel this show. He replied that the only way this show would be cancelled is if the end of the world came that afternoon. Uh-huh.

So I leave early, expecting the worst. 

First 40 miles of the trip were fine; just barely damp roads, and hardly anyone out there. I’m guessing the storm scared most of the drivers off. Those that were willing to brave the freeway were scared enough of the left lane for some reason that I made pretty good time to that point.

By then the snow was starting to stick and collect, and I’m officially glad I left early. The last 30 miles of the trip take an hour and a half, including 25 minutes for the last 3 miles on surface roads. I’m starting to get annoyed at myself, thinking that no one is going to show up for this performance in a big snowstorm, regardless of what the bandleader said earlier, and I’ve risked life and limb for nothing.

I arrive on time - hooray! Amazing! However, nobody else managed to make it by the time I arrived. (How does the guy who had the farthest to go get there FIRST?) I drive to the back of the venue to find the sketchiest loading ramp I’ve ever seen, and to make matters worse, the snow hadn’t been shoveled or dealt with in any way. And so, with no assistance, I go and park in the HC spot up front, and wait. And wait some more.

Bandleader was right - the main parking lot was full, and overflow was nearly full as well. I watch everyone in their finest concert-going clothes — short dresses and high heels, partially covered by ski parkas — pass my van as I continue to wait.

After 40 minutes, a band member shows up! Hooray! He gets stuff out of my van, and I get my rollator (rolling walker) out and follow. I am given instructions to “go in and go straight back to the stage”. Before I could get better details, he was off. So I follow as best I can.

Got to the front door, and am waved over by the ticket guy who gave me a wristband. After a once-over by security I’m sent through to the dance floor. The bandleader wasn’t exaggerating; there’s got to be nearly 1000 people in here. It's a sea of Latinos! Latinos who apparently have never seen a rolling walker before, too, judging by their reaction. Or maybe their expressions said “I wonder if this gringo is in the right place”…

Now I'm left to guess what "straight back" means. Stage left or stage right?  I pick stage right, and 200 feet later I see the guitarist, who happens to be the only non-english speaking member of the group. I sit, shake his hand, and wait.

And wait.

So I check my phone to see if there are any updates. The bandleader is stuck in the snow on his way to the venue.  The band member who grabbed my gear is looking for me; apparently I should have picked stage left instead of right, as there is a barricade in front of the stage right steps, and I can't convince anyone to move it (I picked a very inconvenient time to lose my voice). The guitarist is just happy to wait and do nothing until someone gets his attention in spanish.

The other band member finally finds us (I guess he doesn't know what "stage right" means!) and leads us through the mass of humanity on the dance floor to the stage stairs on the other side. Stairs are a bit treacherous, but traversable (stairs are NEVER good, but there are always ways up and down even if your leg doesn’t work).

My gear is onstage waiting for me. I find my chair, sit down, plug in, have my case/etc. moved offstage, tune up, and wait.

And wait...

The soundman comes by and tells me I've plugged into the wrong DI box, and gets me set up and running through the amp. It's pretty quiet though, and the chair was placed in such a way that there's NO way I can reach the knobs to turn up. So I signal to a bandmate to help, who says he'll be right back.

So I wait some more... 10+ minutes later, he shows up again and helps me out.

Keep in mind that communication for me involved getting as close to someone's ear as possible and "shouting" to be heard. I've seen more ears close up in the last 24 hours than I want to for a while.

After what I'm sure is another 15 minutes, everyone else has arrived, set up, and been soundchecked, and we begin (30 minutes late). Very receptive crowd. Lots of folks dancing. Band sounds good, everyone is paying attention, I only made a few mistakes, and the bandleader later said that I did an amazing job. Very pleased, considering this is a totally new style of music for me!

So we finish our 8-song set, I take my bass off, unplug, and watch everyone leave the stage....

....and wait.

All this waiting because I’m sitting on a chair, my walker has been moved to the wings, and I have no voice with which to holler for help. So I can’t move or talk. I literally have to wait for someone to take pity on me, as woe-is-me as that sounds.

Finally someone comes and gets my walker, bass case, etc., and I get stuff put away and make my way towards stage left where the stairs are. A band member follows with my bass and cords bag.

I get to the stairs, someone takes the walker and parks it at the bottom, and as I begin my descent, a series of women (groupies?) try to pass me going UP the stairs - like one every 10 seconds - wanting to talk to someone from our band or the one following us. It was a bit of a confused shouting match between those who wanted up and those who were trying to help me down to explain that they need to WAIT or they were going to knock me over.

One bandmate kept saying, "Take your time, you got this, don't let them rush you." That was really helpful, just to know that someone is watching and advocating for you when you’re unable to do that for yourself (one of the many amazing things about SWMBO, for that matter).

Once I was safely down the stairs, I made my way to the back entrance w/ aforementioned loading ramp, blessedly very near the stage stairs. A band member took my bass, bag, and keys, and pulled my van around back for me. I knew the loading ramp was in no better shape than when I arrived, but I was willing to take my chances because the crowd was much larger and rowdier than when I went in. But I began to regret that decision as I made my way down what had to be a 25% grade with a rollator whose handbrakes needed to be adjusted. It took well over 5 minutes to get me about 45 feet.

Made it down a very snowy ramp, through some "plow drifts", and finally to the van. Thanked everyone profusely (if silently!), got in, and sent a message to SWMBO that I was headed home.

Surface roads might have been WORSE on the way home.  Thankfully I'm very experienced in snow driving — even with my convoluted method for operating a motor vehicle — and didn't hit anything, get hit by anyone, or panic at all. Enough gas in the car, no deadlines, slow and steady wins the race, made it home in one piece.

The show must, and did, go on!

[adabassist]

BREAKFAST AT EPIPHANY’S

I get an awful lot of sympathy.

I'm never seen without either my rollator or my powerchair, except maybe in the shower (yes, I went there, but you did first, and shame on you for that), and any sort of assistance apparatus always elicits a few "poor thing" glances from time to time. Don't think for a second that I don't ever use this to my advantage; pity, much more than flattery, will get you everywhere.

Occasionally the topic of my disability comes up in conversation. I don't mind, really; I know people are curious, I'm happy to educate people about my condition, and I don't find it the least bit rude if someone says, "So how come you're in a wheelchair?" Kids can be the funniest; not long ago a very young girl saw me rolling around outside the building with my feet unclad, gasped, and said: "You're not wearing any shoes!" To which I replied, "Yes, but it's not like I'm going to step on something, now, is it?" Her jaw dropped, she stared at me for what seemed like an hour, and then she ran off to find her mom without another word.

The more candid and open conversationalists will often say something to the effect of "I just can't imagine having to deal with what you go through every day," or even "I was diagnosed with fill-in-the-blank a few years back, and it's tough, but it's nothing compared with your struggle I'm sure". I have my replies distilled down into easy-to-digest soundbites and homespun homilies for the sake of brevity in conversation (I get to be verbose here, in my blog; lucky you); there's "Everyone has a handicap; mine's just more obvious than most", or "Don't let my struggles make yours seem less significant; if I have a $10 bill and you have a five spot, my ten doesn't make your five worth any less than it was before", and my old favorite, intoned to those who want to know how in the world someone in my position manages everyday tasks: "You just do it however you do it."

For instance, I've learned to do a lot of things left-handed - a feat I was sure was impossible 10 short years ago. I now use a fork and spoon, a computer mouse, a toothbrush, toilet tissue, and my smartphone and TV remote entirely southpaw now, and I've also begun to use a pen that way.  I even use my left thumb for the space bar sometimes. Other things have changed as well, such as always having to sit to use the restroom regardless of the particulars of the task at hand, and of course, needing to use a pick instead of plucking the strings with my fingers.

This last point is the topic of this blog.

There is still (and always will be, I'm afraid) a part of me that loathes using a pick when I play my bass. I MISS using my fingers; I miss the tone, sound, feel (tactile as well as musical), and convenience. And so I have spent countless hours looking for the most "fingers-like" picks in terms of tone - hours that could have been spent practicing instead.

I also spend a lot of time beating myself up over the fact that I have to use a pick.

This weekend I was asked to play in a large church in the local metropolis.  This was my third time up on that stage, and many of the churchgoers are now accustomed to occasionally seeing the guy zooming around on his powerchair with a bass balanced on his feet. Between sermons, I was chatting with a very nice woman about my issues, and at one point she said, "I just don't know how you do it - I don't know WHAT I'd do if I were in your situation!"

I replied with a version of what I've said several dozen times over the last decade:  You find a way to get done what you need to get done if you want to get it done badly enough.  And how you get it done isn't nearly as important as following the Nike principle: Just Do It.  And when you do it, you "do it however you do it."  Method takes a back seat to accomplishment and achievement, as it should almost all the time. Pollyanna would approve for sure.

Not long after I began the drive home, I recalled the conversation, and hoped that I'd imparted some words of wisdom that she found useful.

Instead, I felt a Voice inside me (not the first time this has happened, oh no) that said:  take your own advice and apply it to how you play your bass these days.

WHAT!?  But… NO!  That picking-bassist nonsense is… well, just that:  NONSENSE!  I know these days I have to do it that way, but C'MON, God!  We both know I'd chuck those picks in a heartbeat if I had my fingers back.  It's INFERIOR, I tell You!  

do it anyway. your words are wise; now it's time to put your money where your mouth is.  show 'em.  heck, show yourself while you're at it.

Oh, MAAAAANNNN… You're not telling me I'm never ever going to get my fingers back, are You?

i said no such thing, but that's beside the point.  you strive to inspire as an instructor; now you can inspire as an artist with a disability.

But nobody's going to take me seriously when they find out I'm a pick player!…..

bobby vega… cody wright… chris squire…

Yeah, but THOSE guys are…

carol kaye… justin chancellor… tommy shannon…

Well, sure, but -

paul mccartney…  graham maby… jason newsted…

Okay, okay, I guess I get the -

matt freeman… anthony jackson…

OKAY OKAY OKAY!  JEEZU -

watch it!

Oops…  sorry about that.

no worries, i saw it coming.

Well, thanks. Ummm… should I pray about this, do You think?

you mean this isn't direct enough communication for you? do what you feel led to do, but i already know what you're going to do about your bass playing.

Yeah… good point. Thanks for that.

hey, i'm here to help…

And so, the process of reconciling my physical and musical experiences has begun.  It's time to own the fact that even though there are things I can't do anymore, there are NEW things I can do BECAUSE I use a pick. It's time to focus on my pick-using bass heroes and learn to emulate them as best I can, so that I can filter all of that through my bass-playing self and become ME all over again, but with a new twist. It's time to bring a new sound into the bass tone library, for me as well as for those who hear me play. And it's time to get off my own @$$, both figuratively AND literally. I will wield a pick with pride, stop longing for what I can't do anymore, and learn NEW things that I CAN do with what I have. After all, the music is still inside me, and it must be unleashed upon the world… regardless of the method.

And thanks, God, for letting me STILL be a bass player.

[adabassist]

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND UNTIL HIS WHEELS BREAK DOWN

Mobility issues stink.

That sentence deserves to be its very own paragraph. No embellishment is necessary to the meaning and truth of the above statement, nor could said embellishment be even remotely beneficial.  Although it could be argued that for someone with MS who's trying to live an independent life as a self-employed musician, the level of "stink" increases exponentially in regards to those issues.

As someone whose right leg quit on him years ago, I have a few different ways that I get around: I have my powerchair, powerful and nimble but can be a pain to deal with when traveling if there's no way to transport the chair in and out of vehicles; I have my scooter, nice for traveling because it breaks down into 5 easily packed pieces, but isn't very fast and doesn't turn around sharp corners well; finally, there's the rollator, much easier to travel with, easy for someone to carry up/down stairs for me when that's the only option, and excellent for stretching/exercise/creative maneuvers to get me up and down stairs, but very limited in distance before I have to stop and rest.

The combination of the three mean that I have various ways to achieve the things I need to get done during the course of my day. And if one (or even two) of them break down at a given point, well, I still have options.

When all three fail at the same time, it's incredibly depressing.

This is the situation I find myself in as I sit at the computer this evening. Mostly anyway.

It all began with the powerchair:  A few weeks ago I had noticed that it was starting to make some funny noises on the left side (there are two "drive wheels", one on each side, and each has its own motor). I happened to be taking the chair to Denver for a performance, and so I had my "chair tech" - a very nice man we’ll call “Bob” who has created a cottage business buying, selling, and repairing chairs and scooters - meet me at the venue so he could have a look and give it a test drive. He put the chair through its paces in the parking lot, made notes, said he was going to have to do some research on the matter and get back to me.  I used the chair that evening with no problems.

Over the next two weeks, the chair started acting up more and more often: one side or the other would partially or completely fail, and the chair would do slow circles forwards or backwards while a gear spun, desperate for purchase of its counterpart. Eventually a loud "clunk" would be heard and the gear would catch, and the chair would operate normally. So it wasn't my imagination; something was clearly wrong and in need of attention.

In light of this situation, it was suggested by SWMBO that I take the scooter out for a spin to ensure that it was functioning well before Bob took the powerchair home to work his magic. However, upon attempting to get the scooter going, I had found that the battery compartment had failed, and wasn't getting power to the scooter. Oh, goody; something else for Bob to fix.

If you're keeping score, that's one non-functional scooter and one semi-functional powerchair. It gets better….

When Bob and I finally made phone contact, he said he had business in my neck of the woods the following week, and that he would give me a call to set up a time when his schedule became clearer. He also said he'd bring up a spare battery compartment so I'd have something to get the scooter going.  Very good; I would look forward to his call. Meanwhile, the instances of the powerchair's one-sided failure were increasing.

I had a doctor visit scheduled for late Friday afternoon, which is about 10 miles from my regular Friday gig.  The building is situated in such a way that there are exactly zero close parking spots, so we're looking at 120 feet of walking (very close to my limit, depending on the day). Thankfully, I was feeling good that day. My naturpath is a brilliant, caring, honest man, and there really are none like him in the state; he's worth the drive as well as the walk.

After I get done with the doc, I stand up and pull the rollator in front of me and take a step, and something didn't feel right. Three more steps, and plop! - the frame had broken off where the leg attaches to the rest of the unit, and the part of the frame still attached to the wheel was now dragging on the ground.  For those of you who have broken aluminum bicycle frames (ow! Sucks to be you), you already know what I am about to say: This is unfixable, and the apparatus has ceased to be useful as a rollator.  I'm thinking this is the end of my day; as this is my only means of bodily transport, I'm hosed. Someone will have to push me to my van in a rolling office chair or something, I'll drive home with a huge black cloud over my head, I'll have to call a sub for the gig, and I'll have to have SWMBO meet me at the van when I get home with… er… SOMETHING that will get me into the house. Defeat begins to ooze out of my pores…

While I mentally scramble to put together a mobility contingency plan, Doc comes up behind me, and says, "Wow, that's not good. Hey, we got this freebie rollator over here that someone donated, you wanna use it?"

I COULD HAVE CRIED. "Holy cow, Doc, you sure?" "Oh yeah, it's just been sitting in the way for a few months. Take it!"

This is what a good friend of mine would simply call a "God thing". And I have no issues with that categorization whatsoever.

The rollator isn't sized well for a man of my proportions (5'11", 1/8 ton), it's wiggly and rickety, the brakes have a strange habit of only functioning when locked, so it behaves like an old-style walker with the "skid skis" on the back and teeny wheels on the front, and it's just on the useable side of dangerous.  It's also infinitely better than the alternative, which would be trying to get by with the broken rollator. I will make it to the gig, and into the restaurant, and survive. (And get paid!) Huzzah! Praise God!

One of the other downsides to this particular unit, however, is that it requires twice the energy for me to get around on it, and by the end of the evening, I am spent. I did manage to get my gear inside and back out to the van with no assistance, which is no mean feat when you have to balance everything on the seat of the rollator and treat it like it's the world's most poorly designed shopping cart.

I drive home and pull out the loaner rollator, head towards the front door of my condo, and my 15 year old cat comes wandering down the breezeway towards me. The sound of the loaner (which for some unknown reason softly rings like a bell when it moves) makes him stop and run away before he hears my voice well enough to trust that it's really me. Cats…

I get inside and safely transfer to the powerchair. Success! But now I have yet another broken unit to contend with. And there was a fair bit of custom work done on the brake system so that I'd be able to use it without the brakes failing after a week (the only under-engineered aspect of this model). The good news is that SWMBO purchased two of these particular units at the same time, and so it just needs to have the custom stuff transferred to the new unit. Now all I have to do is contact my "rollator tech" (a friend who builds and repairs bicycles), get him the pieces, and he can put Humpty Dumpty 2.0 back together again.

And wouldn't you know, contacting him ALSO turned into a fiasco with a newly-failed piece of equipment. ("But wait! There's MORE…")

Called, left message, realized that I had called a business number that was out of service, contacted his fiancée on Facebook and left a message there. Great. Guy calls me the next day and leaves a message while I'm teaching a lesson. I return his call using my cell phone (no landline for years - it's the 21st century, don'tcha know), and I get to leave my own message.  However…

…when I go to hang up the call, the screen fails to come back on so I can press the red hang up button on the touch screen. No response to buttons, pressing the screen, talking to it, shaking it and threatening to throw it across the room, nothing. I hear the voicemail asking "Are you still there?" repeatedly, and it can't hear me or let me hang up the call.  AAUGH!….

After putting it on the charger and waiting over an hour, eventually the screen returned, and allowed me to do a hard reset, so the phone is working fine again.  And I'm sure many of you have had to deal with smartphone failure before, but for me, the notion of possibly being stuck with no way to get around and/or communicate with the outside world is rather scary and depressing. I'm sure it's analogous to elderly folks being told they can't drive their cars anymore. Yes, I have a less-than-ideal-but-functioning rollator, and my power chair hasn't officially failed yet, but it's enough to make me consider very hard what I would have to do and how I would contact people in an emergency.

Not that I really WANT to talk to you plebeians, but one must do what one must do for survival. (Can you say "holier-than-thou introvert"? Yeah, sure you can…)

It took a while to get things - HA! - rolling in the right direction, but one by one, things got fixed. Two refurb motors for the chair which allow it to max out at 10mph (!), new battery for the scooter, and old brakes on new rollator. And the phone has only had one slight hiccup since the previous incident. Let's hope this latest epidemic has officially run its course… otherwise I'd be stuck in a chair in front of the computer doing…. something….

[adabassist]

A DAY IN THE GIG LIFE

I have a regular weekly gig at a really nice restaurant an hour away from here. When we began ("we" = a piano player and myself), we were playing 3 nights a week; a few years ago it went down to two, and now it's a single Friday night for me.  While I do like having the freedom to go do things with SWMBO (google it) on my now-free evenings, I also miss the larger paycheck - and, well, I LIKE my job, so ultimately I'd rather be playing than not playing. But I have opportunities to play elsewhere now, so it's not so bad.  Having played with my pianist (hereafter referred to as "gig spouse", or GS) over 1400 times on that same stage, you'd think I'd be sick of it. And you'd be ri…. uh, well, no, not rea… uh, well, it's complicated.

The following is a blow-by-blow depiction of a typical Friday afternoon and evening:

Sometime around noon, I consider which bass I want to play that evening. I have several - dozens, actually - but I require a 5- or 6-string fretted bass for this gig, and I have 3 that meet those requirements. I also make sure that my trusty bass-playing chair - a $35 tall fold-up job from Bed Bath & Beyond - is in the van, ensuring that I will have something I can get onto and off of, and be able to play my bass while sitting on it (chairs with arms are impossible to use for guitarists), as well as my bag of cables and effect pedals. I get the van loaded up (don't forget the bass, dude!), and then I'm free until about 3:30.

This is a classy joint, so it's nice slacks for me, and an ironed shirt (not by me or SWMBO, though - I have my gig clothes picked up and delivered pressed). Now, buttons are evil as far as I'm concerned. I almost never wear them if I don't have to, because trying to fiddle with tiny objects with a nearly-numb right hand is more punishment than challenge. Takes me a good 20 minutes to don shirt, pants, and shoes, partially because I'm also dressing my right leg, a body part that doesn't move by itself anymore (or if it DOES move, it moves the opposite direction that I want at any given time). Putting on pants is like trying to dress an uncooperative mannequin.

I take the rollator to the gig; since I get the best parking spot in the lot, it's a whole sixty feet from van to stage, and said stage is elevated about 10 inches, the powerchair would be pointless. Once I'm dressed, I park the chair in the front room, pull the rollator in front of me, push myself up to standing position, and head out to the van. Amazingly enough, it's approximately 9 minutes from bedroom to driver's seat, something that throws off my schedule more often than I'd care to admit.

Most folks in a similar situation to me would have electronic controls for their vehicle.  Well, I don't.  You see, the state requires you to pay $400 to take a course to prove that you're capable of running a vehicle with HC controls. Then you have to pay $800+ to purchase them, plus installation.  Well, state, I got news for you: I played video games throughout my childhood. I will have zero problems with these controls you want me to use. Can I skip the class? No? Fine, then, I'll manage without, thank you very much…

Driving post-DX involved some retraining and reassignment for my 3 functioning limbs. My right leg is no longer part of Team Getaround, although it still tags along for moral support.  Once I've stowed my rollator behind the driver's seat and shoved my body into place, my right leg gets to rest until I arrive at said destination. My left foot has been trained to use the brake, my right HAND holds a forearm crutch which pushes on the gas pedal, and my left hand holds a knob mounted at 10:00 on the steering wheel, like you’d see on a city bus.  I've gotten very good at reaching over and moving the gear lever with my left hand when necessary (i.e., backing up) and returning to the wheel.  When I'm on the freeway, cruise control is my friend, and is truly the only "electronic control" I need. I've driven this way since sometime in '09, and have never caused an accident or gotten a ticket in that time span. Interestingly, MS has made me a MUCH better driver, supporting the notion that you don't drive with your hands and feet, but your eyes, ears, and brain.

The gig starts at 6:30, so I try to leave the house by 4; Friday afternoon traffic means it will take me twice as long to get there as it would otherwise. Depending on the traffic reports, I have something on the order of 3 dozen shortcuts I can take to get to the gig on time.  It's like Marc Cohn singing 29 Ways, tryin' to get to his baby's door.

Once I'm finally parked at the gig (HC spot, feet from the front door, like a rockstar), I pry myself out of the driver's seat, stand up (carefully!), remove my rollator, and balance my bass, chair, and effects bag on top of it; then I push my way inside.  Most of the time, the valet on duty knows me, and will often offer to help and hold the door open.  Then it's through the foyer and into the lounge, where I remove each item from the rollator and toss it onstage, lift the rollator onto the stage, then use the piano to push myself up and onto the stage. Onstage, I have an amp, a line to the mixing board, a microphone, and a stand for my bass waiting for me. Setup is 5 minutes max…. UNLESS…

….unless the waitstaff or the players who were there the night before left things in the way or moved things out of place. Often there's a folding chair or a large barstool where I set up, and I have to ask for help getting it out of the way. Or someone will have moved the amp to where it's nearly impossible to reach, and moving it back requires a fair bit of contortion (which uses energy that could have been saved for playing bass - google "spoon theory" sometime). It's one more reminder of the fact that I am limited in my ability to do certain things, and frankly, it's never welcome, no matter what my mood. It's often a bad omen too: cables and batteries seem to fail more on nights where my space has been “temporarily repurposed”.

The gig itself is simple, and I've actually developed a technique specifically for certain songs we play in the duo:  I've learned to use my right thumb as a guitar pick, growing out the nail so I get a good attack with both downstroke and upstroke. If I'm careful, and I employ my index finger for popping certain notes on the upbeat, I can elicit what sounds a lot like a drum kit and bass playing in perfect sync. This gives certain songs more of a full band rock feel, and can cover more musical space without having to have a 3rd person on the gig to split the pot with.  I don't do this on every song - I use various picks for others - but it's been very useful to have around.

Sometimes, however, for whatever reason (too hot, too spent, can't breathe, etc.), I have a very hard time playing and/or singing. Breathing issues make singing (usually backup, but sometimes lead) quite difficult, but I've gotten through gigs with laryngitis before. When my body turns traitor, however, fine motor control is the first to go; this means that my right hand, already quite compromised, is unable to hold onto a pick well and unable to be consistent with my thumb on the strings. If it gets bad enough, I have to resort to my "careersaver" pick, that has a loop that goes around my finger and is impossible to drop. It's less than ideal, but it sounds okay, and it indeed gets me through the gig. Once again, however, the necessity of needing a "crutch" is rather depressing… some nights I just can't get over myself, and I fail to remember that I'm still playing bass at a gig instead of lying in bed in the fetal position waiting to die. Even though this is old news, I don't like it, and never will.

My gig spouse is quite the social butterfly, and knows 90% of the waitstaff as well as nearly half of the clientele.  I'm much more of an introvert; usually I'm content to sit in the foyer and phone-surf during breaks, but sometimes I'll be invited to have a seat and visit with some of GS's friends/acquaintances. In these cases, it's a very rare person who isn't gracious, accommodating, and willing to offer assistance should I need it; pushing the rollator around gets people's attention, let's face it, but I'm grateful that I rarely get those people who look away quickly and/or admonish their children not to stare. I sometimes wonder if they'd behave the same way towards me if I wasn't GS's bass player, but I guess I'll never know.

Sometimes, having MS comes in handy:  one evening GS and I were visiting people at a nearby table, and one woman in the group apparently had way too many cosmopolitans and insisted on discussing underwear. She loudly demanded to know which of the men at the table preferred boxers over briefs. Each man was accosted in turn, being forced to defend their choice in undergarments while everyone else muttered to each other about how drunk the woman was. Finally, she came to me, stuck her finger in my face, and said, "Okay: boxers, or briefs?"

I smirked, narrowed my eyes, and replied, "Depends."

It was incredible: her expression went from depends on what? to oh, THOSE depends! to oh my god I'm so embarrassed to that's the funniest thing I've ever heard to I'm definitely going to hell for laughing at this man in the space of 3 seconds. The entire table got deathly quiet, then someone snorted, and you'd have thought a bomb went off as everyone busted a gut at the same time. I was sure I had ruptured an internal organ trying to keep it in. Ah, sweet pain….

For the record, I don't wear Depends, but I do keep a stock of Poise pads for men just in case I expect to have a really bad day. Better safe than sorry, you know.

After the third and final set, it's a quick pack-up-and-get-out-of-Dodge for me, as I rarely feel the need to hang around; I have an hour's drive ahead of me and want to get home before the sleepies kick in. I've learned how to put everything away and push it to the edge of the stage, so I can place the rollator down on the main level, get myself there as well, and then start loading gear up for the trip back to the van. You learn to count pieces you bring in, and count them again on the way out before you start moving (not just at the gig, but every time I move); for me, I have the "big 4", which means wallet, phone, keys, and mobility apparatus (either rollator or powerchair), and then I have the "small gig 3" which means bass, chair, and effects bag. Diligently counting the items I should have with me all but ensures that I'll never have to retrace my steps looking for something I forgot. This is a big deal when every step means a push-up, and you're on limited energy.

The drive home usually includes an egg & cheese burrito (protein is brain food!) and a Powerade from Del Taco or Sonic, as well as listening to a radio program called Coast To Coast, where some of the strangest people get interviewed for our entertainment. Good to have something to keep me awake on the drive home, where I usually arrive about half past midnight.

So there it is, folks; that's how someone who can't walk properly gets to, from, and through a performance.  It's still worth it; there's nothing I'd rather do for a living than play or teach bass lessons. As long as this is as tedious as it gets, I suppose I'll continue to soldier on. Still beats Disability.

[adabassist]

Take two; they’re small...

MY BLOG RE-BOOT

So after several years (and several people who were secretly reading my OLD blog had asked where it had gone), I have finally decided to renew my efforts. Partially because typing gives my right hand the exercise needed to keep those digits moving as much as possible for as long as possible, but also because I feel that there's an interesting tale to be told regarding my life as 1) a professional bassist and instructor and 2) a man in my mid 40s with Multiple Sclerosis (SPMS for those who are curious).  And so the decision was made to litter cyberspace with more blather that hardly anybody else will ever read. You're welcome. Consider yourself warned.

I was diagnosed in late '06, and since then I have had to contend with new physical challenges as they pertain to living my life, as well as playing my instrument at a high professional level.  Over the last 9 years I have dealt with severe muscle spasms, heat sensitivity, fatigue, double vision, numbness, cognitive issues, lost the use of my right leg, and partial use of my right hand, diaphragm, and sphincter (you WERE warned, remember?) to varying degrees and periods of time. Short distances can be traversed by use of a rolling walker (know in the biz as a "rollator"), but for me anything much farther than 150 feet requires a powerchair. My current ride is called a Quickie Pulse 6, and I've had it modified to fit my height and allow for ease of playing my bass. I have a chair lift built into the back of my van to get the chair in & out when necessary.

And if all of this sounds horrible to you and your eyes are filling up with tears, you can knock it off right now; the truth is that EVERYONE is handicapped in some way, and that my handicap simply happens to be more obvious than most. Just look at Peyton Manning; great athlete, talented tactician on the field, but then he walks to the sideline and takes off his helmet, and you see that awful red mark. Poor bloke….

I live less than a quarter mile from a shopping center where I can get groceries, do my banking, get my oil changed, have printing and shipping done, get a great espresso drink, have a whiskey or a pint, and even get a pedicure when I want (and I DO want…. always feels good to get the little piggies done)… and all without getting into the van. It's terribly convenient. Somehow I had the good sense to buy this place shortly after my DX (that's shorthand for "diagnosis"), and I've been here nearly 9 years.

As far as my bass playing goes, things have been rough.  By God's grace, my fretting (left) hand is completely unaffected by the short circuitry in my head; otherwise, bass playing would have ceased long ago and I'd be a greeter at Walmart. On the other hand (see what I did there?), plucking strings is very slow, and lacks dexterity and power in a useful form.  So I have been forced to abandon the use of my fingertips in traditional bass playing technique in favor of….. ulp!…. PICKS.

Yep, that's right; guitar picks.  Go ahead; give me your best bass pick joke. I've heard 'em all:  wanna-be guitarist, too lazy to have learned to play correctly, obvious sign of a stupid and mediocre musician, yeah, yeah, whatever.  Much as I hate to admit it, though, there's a sliver of validity to one thing the haters say: picks just don't sound like fingers.  They're edgy and scrape-y sounding, they have more attack and less roundness to the tone, and they're rather limiting compared to what a skilled fingerstyle bassist can achieve (Victor Wooten and Michael Manring, et al).

So I have been on a quest: to find picks that sound as much like fingers as possible, and that allow me to play nimbly. I must have spent close to a thousand dollars over the last few years trying new picks. I have picks made of nylon, delrin, steer horn, rubber, felt, plastic, biodegradable plastic, graphite, leather, faux tortoiseshell, brass, copper, some thinner than 1mm, some as thick as 6mm, and some that have a loop that goes around your finger - I even have one that hangs by a hinge from a strange apparatus that fits into your hand just so. And there ARE some decent picks for bassists out there.  A short list of what I like includes Mick's Picks, Phat-Tone, V-Picks, and the Jim Dunlop 208. I've even created what I call The Careersaver out of an Orbit Gravity Pick, a Planet Waves Adjustable Insert Pick, and a JD Tortex Wedge (click here).

These picks give me a variety of sounds that I like, from warm and tubby to bright and aggressive. And I'm grateful that new products keep coming out that give me more options for tones. But the truth is: I MISS MY RIGHT HAND. Picks are great, but it's just not the same… they physically come between the player and the instrument. If my right hand was healed tomorrow, and I never had to use a pick again, I'd be crying tears of joy for a month and a half at least. You can have my leg, I don't care; heck, take 'em both if you want, but if I got my right hand and arm back in return, I'd forever claim that I got the better end of the deal.

Much of my bass playing career has been as a "hired gun" - a musician who can show up to a gig for an artist and nail it with little-to-no rehearsal.  And that usually means setting aside the creativity and individuality, and Doing My Job - playing my parts with a familiar, easily accessible sound and feel so the artist is comfortable with the music onstage.  Fingers, unfortunately, are part of that familiar sound…

Thus, my decision to reboot the blog has been made… with the focus on what someone like me has to go through to continue doing the only thing he loves doing, and the only thing he's good at, and the only real job he's ever known besides waiting tables.  Lots of people struggle with what they want to do versus what they're able to do. For me, however, the "what I'm able to do" part keeps changing, and the list is inevitably going to shrink as I progress through this stupid disease. The gauntlet has been thrown; like so many others I've picked up over the last decade, I will meet this challenge one way or another.