I started playing upright bass when a co-worker, racked with guilt over never returning her high school bass after graduation, gave me the contraband contrabass. It took me a couple of years to get with it but a move from Eugene, Oregon to Berkeley, California inspired me to pick it up and give it a go. I read in the local paper that the University of Berkeley was holding auditions for the jazz program and, though I wasn't enrolled as a student, I thought it would be a good experience to audition in front of somebody critical. What I didn't anticipate was getting accepted (I think they were desparate for bass players?). So I went to Berkeley for a year as a stowaway jazz student. I figured if they ever discovered the truth, I'd just tell them the story and leave gracefully. Well, they never did and the school trio I played in ended up winning a state competition (oh shit, I thought!) which resulted in winning the grand prize, a big live gig on KJAZ radio in San Francisco . When the radio announcer asked me an excrusciating series of "60 Minutes" type questions about my course of study, favorite professors, bacground, etc. everyone in the band, including my instructor, looked on with questioning faces (realizing that they knew nothing about me other than that I showed up for class). I have the whole interview on cassette tape and my nervous ad-lib responses are hilarious. I moved to New Orleans shortly after the end of the semester.
Once in New Orleans my true musical education began. I started by playing in the streets busking with the local big-mess band slowly working my way into the clubs as I learned more about the ins and outs of cajun, blues, zydeco, trad jazz, country, western swing etc. I played and recorded with some great players who taught me alot about playing music (and life) such as Butch Trivette, Little Freddie King, Eddie Bo, Irma Thomas, Norbert Slama, The Professor Longhair Band, Kermit Ruffins, Jeremy Lyons, Bobby "I Live the Blues" Lewis, Scott Kirby, Kenny Holiday, Coco Robiceaux, Ernie Cato, C.J. Chenier, Corey Harris and Lisa among others. I also began a shortlived acting career acting in a few commercials: a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial at a old plantation, the colonel cussing everytime he screwed up his lines and Miller High Life beer commercial that ran during the final four championships. After about five or six years of sweating, gigging and chasing Palmetto bugs the size of small dogs around my house, I headed for North Carolina after "discovering" Oldtime music one night at the 59th Annual Fiddlers Convention in Galax Virginia. In North Carolina I lived in Bynum, home of the chainsaw artist bon vivant Clyde Jones and formed Earl Wells and the Gushers. The move was turned out to be shortsighted (and shortlived) and I packed my stuff and moved on to Surry County which was where the echos of Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, Dix Freeman and others still ring in the humid air. There in the hotbed of Southern Oldtime music I met friends that still inspire me to musical heights, moonshine and fits of stupidity: Greg Hooven, Dave Bass, Joe Thrift, Mark Olitsky, Bill and Nancy Sluys, Jackie Spector, Andy Williams, Joe Mead, Charlie Pickford, Rebbie and the list goes on...
After living a year of isolated rural life in a blueridge cabin provided by Joe Thrift, playing dances in old barns and cinderblock ruritans, (insert John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" for ironic effect) I fled anxiety-inducing isolation to New York City and joined forces with the Howard Fishman Quartet and began a somewhat unprecedented regular gig at the Algonguin Hotel that lasted over a year. Our "audition" consisted of playing (ignored) in the lobby for the wealthy guests, tourists and hanger-ons. Norman Mailer sat in a table in front of the band looking intense, talking and gesturing with his hands. Al Hirshfield became a fan of the group and drew each band member on signed napkins. I still have at least two place setting of Algonquin inscribed silver-ware that miraculously found it's way into my basscase. In New York I had the opportunity to study with great bassist from all over the musical map: Joelle Morton, Michael Moore, William Parker and Greg Cohen. I've also had the opportunity to perform and record with a number of fine musicians including Leon Redbone for the Jim Carey movie Me, Myself and Irene (our music is playing in the background when the guy has a rubber chicken in his butt - my mother was so proud), Andy Statman, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Skip Henderson among others. I'm considering taking some night courses at Julliard but have yet to make a solid commitment. I met my current main group, Nikitov (based in Holland) doing a pickup gig at the excellent club Brooklyn bar/musicspace, Barbes. Now after great success performing in theatres all over Europe (including this years packed performance at the Concergebouw in Amsterdam) I am planning on moving in 2007 to Amsterdam so the band can finally live and work on the same continent and hopefully push into new musical territories.
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