diarrheaofthekeyboard
Diarrhea of the Keyboard
Music and Depression
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Famous Last Words: I Might Be Done
As witnessed through pictures, I've bought a lot of bass gear in the time I've been in this band. I think there's 2 pedals that are the same as when we started. As I placed that last pedal on my board on Friday, a sense of completion hit me. This could really be it. Oh sure, i could always get another cabinet. But it's completely unnecessary.
Even more than gear buying/selling, I think I've reached the end of gear forums. There's just nothing for me to talk about there. I can see hanging around for the rare times people post new music. But there's just no desire to interact with these people. I mostly don't like them and the good interactions I do have are few and far between. It's always been this way but I also felt like I had things to learn. I don't think I know everything. But I know about as much as a someone can know from being "forum educated" and not have a degree in woodworking, physics, or electrical engineering.
Now part of this is medication. I had an increase last week. And for the first time this weekend, I've started to clean up a little bit. I need to clean a lot more but I'm starting to not feel stuck. That's huge for me.
And while I'm still going to Twitter and Facebook, I have removed every last political account from my feeds. It's either baseball, stupid memes, music, or stupid memes about music. Anything political that comes up gets the "show me less of this" treatment. There's no reason to make myself spiral over this stuff any longer.
I'm proclaiming a goal. I want to read one book in full before the boy's school starts in mid-August. That's like 6 weeks. Usually I stop after like 3 days and I have piles shelves of half read books. I'm gonna read something light and fun and take it from there. One book instead of trolling the internet this summer. I can do this. It's not like I don't like reading. I just need other things to read that aren't old guys arguing on the internet about why everything sucks.
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More on Influences (Moron Influences)
Yesterday I wrote about Allen Woody. Today I've been wrangling with myself about influence.
This all started yesterday morning when I took the dog for a walk. I listened to "Out Louder" by Medeski, Scofield, Martin, and Wood for about 30 seconds before I decided to listen to the first Gov't Mule record instead. Warren Haynes opens the record with "Grinnin' in Your Face" and the bass and drums come in for "Mother Earth". It's a crushing sound. I felt like I was back in college hearing it for the first time.
So I went on a mini tour of influences, talking myself through it for the past day. I only listened to about half of the first Mule record yesterday so I finished it today. Then I moved onto the self titled God Street Wine album. This evening, I listened to Mule's "Dose" record and then "A Go Go" by John Scofield with Medeski, Martin, and Wood.
The Mule records are mind-numbingly good. I've always held them in high esteem, but listening now with "bass ears" has really elevated them. Woody has more of a flatwound tone on the first album and is much brighter on the second. He's a freight train and the song is always moving and developing because he's making it go. This gives Warren and Matt (Abts, drums) the opportunity to take chances and play more freely. And as a guitarist, you don't get a bigger tone than Warren Haynes. He's up there with Jeff Beck and Slash.
God Street Wine's self titled album from 1997 is the best recorded document of the band. And yet, it's a very different GSW than the one that had become my primary influence. Being a quintet, and one where yes there's a lot of jams but it's also intricate music written by very schooled jazz head musicians, each person has a role to play. Then there's this record which falls more in line with The Black Crowes and late Beatles than it does the Steely Dan/Frank Zappa/Grateful Dead roots of the band.
So Dan Pifer's playing really hits more like Marc Perlman, bassist in The Jayhawks. He might not always play the exciting part like Woody does, and he certainly doesn't have that giant tone. Instead, it's a clinic in playing the right part, having the right tone, and serving the song.
The last album tonight was "A Go Go". I've written before about Chris Wood and how I think he's my primary influence on bass. I actually think he fits in very neatly between Woody and Dan. Even though he's playing jazz, and Scofield's guitar fills in the space of a vocalist, there's a lot of ground to cover. He finds that right tone and groove and lays it out for Medeski and Scofield to fill the space.
Next up is to mine some more influences. I've had a lot of anxiety thinking about this tonight and I think it'll be good for me to do some deep dives. Besides, May is going to be a helluva month for new records anyway. I won't have to look for them.
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Identity
Long story short, I got an amazing deal on a Guild Starfire II. My intent was to string in B. Well, I got it, played it for a few weeks, and at our most recent gig, and now it's #1. So I'm going to put my Mustang into B instead.
A long time ago, a former friend said after buying his Rickenbacker that all other instruments felt like toys. The Mustang is a great bass. It sounds great. It feels great. But the Starfire makes it a toy in comparison.
So I have a new #1 cool. My drummer said it adds another dimension to the sound compared to the Mustang. A friend who came to our show said it almost has a jazz tone to it.
Honestly, those are the best compliments I could have gotten.
I've always said that my identity on bass has been difficult to wrangle because I came to it in my 30s. I already knew who my influences on guitar were. My bass influences were kinda unknown. But over the years I've pieced it together based on not only how I play, but what I want to hear. And I do think there are inescapable influences. Paul McCartney, Carol Kaye, Geezer Butler, and Dee Dee Ramone all come to mind. Then there's my jazz influences. Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Charles Mingus, and Paul Jackson.
But there's two people I keep gravitating to and I think the Starfire as a primary instrument pulls me back in their direction, Allen Woody and Chris Wood.
Allen Woody was the founding bassist in Gov't Mule. Chris was the Wood in Medeski, Martin, and Wood. I think it's interesting the difference in their surnames is the y.
Allen had a gigantic sound. He wanted to sound like Felix Pappalardi from Mountain. It's a big, distorted, picked bass sound with lots of movement, which you need in a trio. Chris Wood can walk with the best of them. But he does it in a jazz setting and doubles on electric and upright. A lot of what he did in MMW was groove. I feel my style falls in the middle of them. I need to spend a lifetime developing their vocabularies. But the sound, groove and intent are there.
I'm writing this because I always write about my pain. It's been a long time since I wrote something here. I've been in therapy for 9 months and on Zoloft for 6. Things are hard. I spend a lot of time calming myself down. So I felt like I wanted to write about an accomplishment. I feel like that's a big change. I can go back to writing about failures next time. I have plenty of them.
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Ugh
It’s been far too long since I’ve written something here. Get ready for the brain dump.
I was laid off again at the beginning of the year. This one hurt because I saw it coming and ignored my anxiety telling me to get out. I had my reasons, and they were good reasons, but that didn’t matter in the end. I accepted a job offer to start in a couple of weeks but I’m still interviewing. If something blows me out of the water, I’ll take it. I’ve never been a company rah rah kinda person and this experience, given my success, ruined any shred of loyalty I’ve had. As the line goes, “we’re not just doing this for money. We’re doing this for a shitload of money.”
I want to talk about ignoring my anxiety. This was a big moment for me. Rationally, I know I should have left and there was a small chance I would be retained. I convinced myself it wouldn’t be that bad. That they’d get rid of everyone else before me and the colleagues in my position. I was wrong. But it wasn’t just me, it was my colleagues to. We were wrong collectively.
But I also felt like I had to do that. I had to stay as long as possible, work up to the last moment, and be let go. And that’s how it happened. I was on a call and my boss called and texted me. I told the person I was talking with I would call them back, got the news, and then called them back. I made up a story so they wouldn’t feel let down. Then I got on a Zoom call and that was it.
The important thing here is the conversation with my boss. He quelled my anxiety. I asked if there was anything I could have done differently. He said no. That I did my job to the best of my ability, was a credit to the team and the org, and that I needed to hold my head high for what I had achieved. Telling that story over the past two months has been cathartic.
It sucks getting a new job. It sucks having to prove yourself again. It sucks being back in the rat race and trying to get promoted only for the rug to be pulled out from under you. Again. It sucks that we have to beg for time off to be with our families. It sucks to know that you have to work until you die because any amount of savings will ultimately go to healthcare debt.
Having gone through all of this, I bought a new amp. It supposedly arrives tomorrow. I’m sure my wife isn’t happy about it, but it could be worse. I could have paid full price. Yay consumerism.
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My God, It’s Full Of Stars
The band has been writing on and off since this summer and now with no plans for the foreseeable future, we’re putting it all together. So far we have 6 new songs, and two of them are mine. One of those songs is “Suspended Shells”.
I wrote, and wrote about, Suspended Shells oh here nearly two years ago. I’ve played the riff a couple of times to the band and not gotten a response. Today, we actually took the next step with it. First, I played it on guitar. Showed the guitarist the nuances and he took over and I went back to the bass. I want to do it that way, because bringing both guitar and bass rigs to rehearsals and shows would be awful.
Then I went back to the bass and had a moment where I didn’t know what to play. And I realized that other than playing roots on a demo once, I’ve never actually played bass to this song. It was kinda frightening in the moment because I felt like I was expected to know exactly what I wanted to play and I had no idea (also, nobody told me this, it’s my own preconceived notion).
We played it a few times and recorded a first demo. And I’ve been having these weird perplexing feelings ever since. There’s a number of layers here.
First is acceptance. As mentioned above, I’ve been playing this "song” since we started the band and this is the first time they’ve been open to it. Most of the songs are written by the guitarist and I’ve had some input. And that’s been cool. The other song I wrote has been kind of an afterthought, but it’s in this mix. This one is something I’ve been living with for some time and it’s been a long time since I’ve played something I wrote in a band.
Second is catharsis. I kinda don’t want to play guitar on it. I mean, I will. But in addition to keeping things simple, I really want to play it on bass. I feel like I’ve focused on this instrument in bands for the past 9 years and this is only the second time I get to play something I wrote on bass. I want to develop the lines I wrote tonight and stay focused on this instrument. I feel like it’s been part of my healing process.
The third is relief. I read something today that the neutral feeling for workers in capitalism is anxiety. Did I do a good job? Will I be rewarded? What bad thing is going to happen tomorrow at work? Will I get laid off for something that I had nothing to do with? Hearing that’s not just me, that’s everyone, relieved some of my tension. Music has always been my escape from that anxiety. To have written something I really like and have it go nowhere for so long gave me compounding anxiety. Now it’s going somewhere. And I think it’s a strong song that’ll make it to our set and maybe even a recording. On that, we shall see.
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Maybe I should rename this blog Diarrhea of the Pedalboard. 😒
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