In this issue:  Dumptruck, Blue Men, and ... Pink Sweatshirts! | What Do You Look For in a Bass Player? | Chat With a Drummer | The Harmonic Minor Scales(Keys) | Angel Band | 
Walkin' Through the Jazz 'hood (Without Gettin' Lost)

Dumptruck, Blue Men, and ... Pink Sweatshirts!

by S. K. Wallace

Every bassist has a story… Bassist, composer, and Blue Man Group's New York show's Chapman Stick player Tom Shad has several. When the Bass Sessions Editor asked me to interview Tom, I had no idea what was in store. In the course of several hours, some of the more memorable things (in no particular order) the New York City-born musician told me included:

• "As an 18- or 19-year old, I called up Ornette Coleman (back when he was still in the phonebook) to ask to study jazz with him. He first said, 'No,' but when I finally convinced him… I got scared…scared off! I never showed up for the first lesson."



• "I'm writing an AC/DC-style song in honor of my nephew's 2nd birthday. He loves AC/DC… even bangs his head along with the music." [S.K.: "Party on, little Toddler-Dude!"]



• "My dad had a band saw, and when I was fourteen, I got a piece of cherry mahogany, and I built a fretless bass neck with no truss rod. I marked the fret lines and everything and fit it to my Ibanez… and so I had a fretless bass neck!" [S.K.: "Out of cherry mahogany, no less!"]



• "I played in a Bluegrass group once!" [Purportedly, it included one of Bela Fleck's contemporaries. S.K., herself, living in bluegrass country, said, "Hey, maybe we know some of the same songs." Tom: "Yeah… we played, like… that song… 'Nine-Pound Hammer.'" S.K.: "Well, alright."]



• "I actually auditioned for The Ramones… Remember when Dee Dee left? Well, it was one of those cattle calls. I went in wearing my leather jacket, 'cuz it was The Ramones! And I walk in there, and there's Johnny Ramone, and there's Marky, okay? Now, I don't know how much you are into The Ramones, but that is scary!"



• "How'd I get the Blue Man gig? Well, I was at a party and someone asked me if I could play the Chapman Stick… and I said I could. (In reality, I'd owned a Chapman Stick since 1984, but as far as being able to play it, well…) I auditioned and started training with them in 1991 and have been playing with them for the past 15 years."

There was more information than could be fit into one article or one novel, movie, A&E "Biography," or VH-1 "Behind the Music" for that matter. It was more than simply being regaled with interesting anecdotes and music highlights. Throughout, there was an undercurrent of the harsh realities that certain individuals experience while attempting to pursue a musical career: the politics, infighting, and back-stabbing among band members; how it feels to be left off an album's credits after putting heart and soul into one's playing; the challenges, betrayals, and breakups of relationships, and the physical and mental tolls of substance abuse. Ultimately, it was an almost overwhelming and heavy sense of the consequences of an individual's personal choices as well as the impact and interplay of others' decisions and actions.

Bass Style

TS: "I would say melodic because really, to me, what attracted me to certain artists and everything was not 'rhythm' but melodic ideas."

Musical Background, Education, and Influences

TS: "I was originally a woodwinds player, and I played piano for a little bit… When I was ten, I took up tenor sax, and I played woodwinds pretty seriously for about four years, and I literally went through tenor sax, alto sax, oboe, clarinet, and I really actually played each of them in an orchestra, and that sort of background really influenced my bassplaying.

"The reason I started playing bass was that I had a little band in 7^th grade, and there's just not enough sax and clarinet in Beatles music! My first bass that I owned (instead of renting) was an Ibanez Black Eagle… the ultimate 'pimp' bass! I think I bought it mainly because of the way it looked… black, with that pearl inlay-of what, the zodiac?-on the neck…

"Paul McCartney, a lot of the times, is playing his bass in a contrapuntal role, and I very much see a continuum between Bach, Paul McCartney, and Ornette Coleman--They're all just different facets of melodic expression.

"If you listen to McCartney, you hear tuba lines; you hear Bach bass lines. There's such a thrill and a logic to his playing. So, I always try to incorporate that type of stuff into my playing. I want to be, even when I'm playing bass, a melodic contributor… not necessarily just anchored to the kick drum.

"I was very lucky in the time I grew up. To give you the context, I was born in '64. So, people were already established by the time I started playing bass when I was around 13 or 14… Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, but in 1977-78, punk rock started. There were a lot of guys (and women, by the way) who were just doing things differently with bass function… because, believe me, you go just a few years back from that, generally, and you have guys with their Fender Precisions, and people told them to play with the kick drums. I mean, there are exceptions; don't get me wrong; there's James Jamerson, certainly a huge exception, and John Paul Jones… and you know, I'm sure I could name a hundred other guys. But, you know, in terms of, like, the cover bands, the bands that weren't very well-known, that were just beginning… we're talking about the 'Velvet Vest Era' [laughs] that [the bass playing with the kick drum] was what was expected, and that was still spilling over a bit when I was beginning to play bass. But, then I would hear guys like Graham Mabe from Joe Jackson's first record--the bass playing on that stuff?! It was just incredible; it's rhythmic but really melodic. Bass is just driving that thing…a huge influence for me. There's even a bass solo on the second [Joe Jackson] record, which, for punk rock or new wave or whatever you want to call it… [Shad sings the solo bass line.] Well, it could almost be a Coltrane line … or a Jimi Hendrix line… So there's a sort of universality, but I wasn't really thinking about it that way. I just loved all music.

"I had a friend I grew up with who turned me on to Parliament-Funkadelic. I always say that my two bass teachers were (from records) Paul McCartney and Bootsy Collins because here you have McCartney experimenting melodically; then there's Bootsy, and the bass line is actually being played on a Mini-Moog, and the bass itself is almost like a conga or timbala, and he was really playing around with the 'funk-ness' of bass, and it was winging against the straight rhythm. I just love Bootsy! When I was fourteen, in an interview for the local paper, I said I wanted to create a 'Funkadelicized' McCartney bass line!"

Shad credits his former summer youth camp jazz band conductor Justin DiCioccio with encouraging him to study bass formally and seriously with a private lesson teacher. [At the time of this writing, Mr. DiCioccio is Assistant Dean, Jazz Division, at the Manhattan School of Music.]

TS: "At the end of the [summer camp] season, Justin comes up to me and says, 'I really think you should study with a bass teacher,' and he gave me a list (I wish I'd kept it). But, I basically call up the first guy on the list, and it's Rick Laird! [of the Mahavishnu Orchestra] So, Rick was my bass teacher, and he is the one who turned me on to playing the Bach 'Inventions' and doing more complex things with the left hand, [note] reading…"

Shad went on to pursue further bass studies when he attended Berklee and Sarah Lawrence College.

Career Milestones

During his college years, Shad toured for the first time (in the South) and also recorded with a group called the Riff Doctors (a.k.a. various other names through the course of the band's history). He says that a reviewer compared the group's work to "very 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver' era Beatles."

TS: "The sessions were produced by Mitch Easter [REM]. I played my Spector NSX bass that was never in (full) production… I just happened to buy #006… still have it and use it… active EMG pickups, very bright, but it buzzes some. I borrowed my dad's car, a station wagon, to go down there, paid for my own hotel room, and then they had the… to leave me and the drummer off the album credits!

"At the end of college, well, before I was asked to leave, I played in this band called Children in Adult Jails; they were a psychedelic punk band… just some crazy stuff, and it was great. Technically, the drummer was not very good, but there was just something about them that I really liked. [When the original bassist left] I joined the band, and they just gave me what the bass player's share [of the band's prior income] really was! I think it was, like, twenty dollars!

"We recorded an album that never really was released as that album; we recorded an 8-track, and that was the first studio recording where I recorded a song that I'd written."

Shad said that in 1986, he responded to an ad seeking a bass player in the Boston area. After an initial interview, he was granted an audition for the band Dumptruck which was musically compared to REM by some media sources.

TS:"I literally drove up to Boston for the audition, and, by the way, the audition was actually announced on MTV's 120 Minutes which was a really big deal at that time… the only time they were actually playing decent music… with 'Downtown Julie Brown'-Ridiculous!

"I later heard that one of the other bassists who'd auditioned was Tony Maimone [Pere Ubu, Lucinda Williams]… an amazing bass player! I don't know why he didn't take the gig or they didn't pick him, but I got the gig!

"Dumptruck… this was some serious stuff! On the album, 'For the Country,' that bass line--I came up with it for the audition, and they used it [on the recording]. Guys have come up to me years later when I was performing with my Thelonious Monk cover band, realized I played for Dumptruck and said, 'Dude, you were on 'For the Country'?! That is, like, the encyclopedia of rock bass!'"

Shad went on to tour the U.S. and Europe with Dumptruck.

TS: "That was the first time of really seeing the country [U.S.] and realizing that most of the country is pretty much the same, but New York is totally different. Wow! What a perspective shift. Like, most of the country are women with short hair and with pink sweatshirts!"

Now, wait a minute! With the exception of "New York is totally different," S.K. totally DISAGREES with the rest of this comment, (and said so!) And what do pink sweatshirts have to do with anything?

TS: "Well, maybe the whole country's not fat!"

Yikes! Enough! Too much, already! S.K. is in the house, in control, out of writing space, and she says this interview is OVAH! NOW! For those of you interested in learning more about Tom Shad, he wanted to share his website: http://www.MySpace.com/TomShad1 and his e-mail address: TomShad@gmail.com. [I'm sure he'd particularly love to hear from you bass-playing sisters (and those who love them) of all persuasions… that is, provided you're not too busy chopping off your hair and sorting your pink sweatshirt drawer!]

About the author: S. K. Wallace is a freelance writer, musician, artist, and educator who plays bass and teaches violin/fiddle and guitar. Her previous articles have appeared in the August 2004, June - December 2005, and Febuary 2006 editions of Bass Sessions®. She may be contacted at SKWBassist@aol.com.

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