Greetings MySpacers, Biff Johnson here, newest bass player for legendary Boston based punk/rock band THIRD RAIL. I don't know how many times in the last three weeks I've heard the word legendary applied to THIRD RAIL, but in this case, it's more than a cliche because most of the legends are actually true. For example not too many bands could legitimately claim to have performed in both Boston & Honolulu or had the Ramones & Neighborhoods as opening acts. With the expected release of their first album, THIRD RAIL has recently been on the upswing once again after a hiatus of sorts. I look forward with great anticipation to performing & recording with this incarnation of THIRD RAIL & appreciate the opportunity to continue the legend.
*** My History As A Bass Player ***
Bunk Beds & Wash Tubs:
I now play 5-string bass, but it wasn't always that way. My evolution as a bassist happened one string at a time. I remember back at band camp how I used to amuse myself & annoy my cabin mates regularly by stretching a piece of rope across the posts of the bunk beds so I could play a makeshift one-string bass along with my imaginary radio. This incidentally made me imminently qualified to play washtub bass in a bluegrass stage production comedy troupe.
The Second String:
When I came back home, I restrung a discarded folk guitar with a pair of leftover Venetian blind cords. Adding the second string was a big step for me, but tuning consisted of twisting each cord until it sounded different from the other, still a far cry from a real bass, but at least it had a fretboard. At this point my background in music theory consisted of some sight training for a chorale group & a lot of helpful hints from a local guitarist who had spent a few years playing French Horn in a marching band.
Amplifiers & The Third String:
I graduated to the world of electricity & amplifiers when I was accepted as the bass player in a local garage band by playing a borrowed Tiesco guitar with only the three low strings, which I tuned down an octave into an improvised three-stringed bass. This strange sounding twangy monstrosity was usually played through amplifiers I'd made from electronic parts left out at the curb for the trash truck & speaker cabinets consisting of things like dresser drawers extracted from, you guessed it, the neighbor's trash. Luckily there was no such thing as digital recording back then, otherwise some accurate recordings of my early attempts at music might have survived 'til today.
Finally A Fourth String:
My fourth string was finally added when I acquired, in exchange for a bicycle some Halloween candy & the $35 that I had saved to eventually buy a car, an actual Fender Coronado bass that had been taken apart & was about to be scrapped. This I was able to reassemble into a functional four-stringed bass that mostly stayed in tune enough to play real songs. During this time I expanded my horizons by taking courses in electronics engineering so that I could calculate the distribution of stored energy in a three-dimensional mathematical model of vibrating strings, in case anyone wanted to pay me a living wage for such things. As I became more comfortable playing bass on everything from pop & standards to experimental originals in bands covering a wide spectrum from acid rock to acoustic jazz, I began to crave the sound of the lower notes.
Taking The Fifth:
For a while I retuned my four-stringed instrument from E down to D then eventually B. I finally added a fifth string when a New York funk session bassist fell onto times just hard enough for him to want to part with one of his many spares. That in fact was the composite body five-string which remains my primary instrument of choice to this day. I still build some of my own amps as well as perform everything from mundane repairs to exotic amp modifications as a side business.
