Monterey Blues Festival 2003

bass player for LA Groove

Most guitar players can say when asked... can you play bass? Although the answer may usually be a "yes" and for a variety of honest technical reasons it would be mostly truth. It's the same difference when a guitar players is asked if he knows how to play the blues. To play the blues, most non blues guitar players believe all you need to know is the pentatonic scale and 3 chords. Technically I suppose that's true.

But the simple truth of it is, like the blues, being a bass player goes far beyond the guitar player's perception of the instrument and vice versa for that matter. In fact, the word "play" kind of sums up the difference in one word in most cases. Historically, I'm a bass player... that learned how to be a guitar player.

But alas... the true reason for this page is devoted to my bass guitars and not the etiology of bass player/guitar player origins and what road of divine madness each must suffer to be "real" this or that. I'll let the forums hash out who thinks is better than the other!

My 4 string bass pictured above, was design by luither Ken Donnell and myself in 1980 at Ken's Nevada City CA shop.