Bass Player August 2021

We bass players pride ourselves on being a versatile bunch of musicians, but times change in our sector of the industry just as they do everywhere else, and if you think that being a bassist in 2021 is all about getting gigs and playing live, just like it was 20 years ago, you’ve got another think coming. Today’s best-known young bass players aren’t necessarily out there playing live, even if the pandemic allowed them to do so. No, some of the biggest earners in our business are YouTubers, Instagrammers, or TikTokers, raking in millions of bucks while the rest of us complain about our low-paying local shows. It’s time we paid our respects to these visionary musicians, all of whom have harnessed the monetizing power of social media. In this…

It’s time to get voting! Bass Player magazine is running the biggest poll of our 31-year history to decide, once and for all, who the world’s greatest living (or dead) electric or upright bass player is (or was), across several relevant categories, with the results to be published in Issue 413, on sale September 7 in North America and August 20 in the UK. Will it be a rock star? Will be a jazz icon? Will it be a hot young gunslinger, or a veteran of a long-gone era? Only you can decide, with online voting opening at our social media on July 12. Visit facebook.com/bassplayermagor twitter.com/bassplayerweb before August 4 and make your choices!…

Hi, and welcome to Assume Nothing, the place where you can have an honest conversation about challenges we all face as a musician. It’s also where you can find insights from those who have been through similar situations, allowing you to feel confident and supported. I’ve been a professional bassist and multi-instrumentalist for over a decade. I play in the indie folk band Unkle Bob, who have recently got back together after a nine-year hiatus. I’m fortunate to have experienced a lot of highs throughout my career—but I’ve also seen some awkward situations, ones that I’m not alone in experiencing. One issue that resonates with colleagues of mine, mostly women, is that we spend a large amount of time talking to people who assume we don’t know what we’re doing.…

You will recall the unusual signature bass which Vulfpeck bassist Joe Dart developed with Ernie Ball a couple of years back. The limited-edition run sold out rapidly, but anyone who missed out will be pleased to hear that two all-new full- and short-scale models are on the way. We haven’t played them ourselves, but EB tell us that the new basses are equipped with lightweight ash bodies, maple necks, and streamlined control layouts. The smaller model will be limited to 50, so order one now if short scales are your slab of funk.…

Stevie Wonder, ‘I Wish’ (1976) Back in the Seventies, you could write simple bass parts and they sounded cool because no-one had written all the good lines yet. This applies in abundance to Stevie Wonder’s remarkable ‘I Wish’— up there with ‘Sir Duke’ in terms of sheer funkability, but somehow even more catchy. The great Nate Watts was responsible for this supremely cool line, and remains a hero in our world for this and many more iconic parts.…

Anthrax bassist Frank Bello has announced the publication of his autobiography, Fathers, Brothers, And Sons: Surviving Anguish, Abandonment, And Anthrax, set for release by Los Angeles publisher Rare Bird in October. Bello’s co-writer is Bass PlayerEditor Joel McIver, and the book comes with a foreword by Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. “This book has been a long time coming. Bass made me who I am!” Frank Bello Bello, bassist with the New York thrash metal band Anthrax since 1984, grew up in difficult circumstances. With an absent father and no male role model, Frank found inspiration in bass players, following their example and forging a career with Anthrax from his early teens, first as a roadie, and then as the group’s bass player. International stardom came Frank’s way by the mid-to-late…