Bassic-ly me

When it comes down to it.. I owe the creation of my musical career to two people:  An old classmate/friend Chris Walsh and Jen Clement of Singing Strings . I had no inkling of desire to play the bass, let alone music.  None.  Zilch.  I wasn't really a music fan.  Though yes I did ask for a Vanilla Ice cassette tape the previous Christmas.   Ahem. Chris though....he wanted to learn the electric bass.  To play with his buddy Tarky Whitlock in a rock band. I knew nothing of the electric bass.   In order for his mother to buy him an electric bass, she convinced him to get lessons from the music teacher. I can't remember whether we were already in the class and I was oblivious before or we were just starting the class but it was grade 9 in October of 1991 and Chris told me about his mother's deal and said "hey.. you should play bass too". I was a follower. So I followed. Now this Birchwood junior high school class wasn't a class full of...

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols I'm not a big Nietzsche person or pretend that I knew that quote before googling "what would life be like without music" but... I thought it summed it up nicely.  What would life be like without music...it would be a mistake.  It sounds cliche ...but...stop ( collaborate and listen )...for a second...and really do think about it.. music doesn't exist.... BAM!   Think about your day today.  Where did music enter?  Think about the last movie you saw ..imagine it without music.  Think of the last wedding or night out at a club you were at... would people still dance?  It's an interesting thought.. why is music so intertwined with our every day life?  My answer... and even if you don't notice it or even agree with me I think I'm still right... it's wordless emotion.  Most people are historically bad at expressing themselves.  We don't talk any...

It's my birthday today. 35. More than twice 17. I'm two 17 year old lives ... And that's pretty much true. Life before 17 life after. Everything before 17 was pretty dismal. Like an old car in a PEI February I took a while to start. 17 was tough actually. That year I remember things just being hard. From October of 94 to October of 95 I went from high school to university ...had first girlfriend... First car.... Things that should have been awesome but everything felt arduous. Laborious. Not-glorious. Pretty much the only consistent in my life ....was coffee. I love coffee. It all started when I was 6. My dad was building a flat bed trailer, he didn't need, in the backyard as all normal fathers do. I was his helper. Held boards. Fetched nails. Handed him his hammer. Having a 6 year old now I understand the importance of this helper and I see in Jacob the eager helper I was. Yes I will go measure this board with the measuring tape for no explainable...

I was just asked to answer the following question for a Philosophy of music course.  Thought I'd share my answer here as well. why do you make and perform music? The beautiful and very interesting thing about music is that the answer to this question is never, ever the same.  The answer I give tonight would be different than a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago, and finally two decades ago when I first started playing music.  20 years ago I played music because someone handed me a bass at school.  I didn't choose it.  A month after that I chose to play music in an orchestra festival and was bitten with the performing/musician bug.  In these days I played music in and out of school for love - for the great feeling of doing something creative and collaborative.   When I studied music at University I played music because I had to succeed.  The focus was different. Scholastic.  There was still love but there was dissection of "why" and "how"...

I have a confession to make.  I lied when talking  on   +CBC News  about what inspired the idea to give a perfectly good electric bass away to someone. It wasn't sitting there thinking about what to give my kids for Christmas that inspired the flashback of me 20 years ago when I got my first bass.  It was a lie. What really inspired it was a beautiful sunburst 2003 American Standard +Fender Guitars  Stratocaster that I purchased on November 25th 2011.   Its story was too fresh an open wound to discuss publicly when doing the interviews.  I'm ready now. My mother died in October 2011 only four months after being diagnosed with cancer. It wasn't the best time in my life to say the least. Many things that occupied my daily stream of brainpower, previous to my mothers diagnosis, seemed to fade in priority and many things which I had forgotten about bubbled to the surface in clear picture and sound, screaming at me like bright sunshine ...

My goal was to find someone deserving for my bass .  I did.  He's happy.  I'm happy.  Awesome. I published the blog on a Friday around 5pm. Around 7pm that night I had my first response. It was Sean's mother Kerry saying "I do know someone [that could use the bass], my son Sean" and she explained why. Sean "was in band at Birchwood for a while and played the trombone but because of his heart surgeries lately he had to sadly give it up cause he couldn't hold the breath long enough to play."  Born with CHD (Congenital Heart Disease), he's made several trips to the IWK  since he was an infant. Check out a couple of really nice online versions of his story. http://www.iwkstories.com/en/story/135 http://thetinylight-ourtinylights.blogspot.com/2011/12/seans-story.html I truly didn't expect this bass giveaway to balloon like it did - both in the response from people and from the media.   Jocelyne Lloyd from the Guardian said a great ...

This time of year, a little over 20 Years ago, my life changed forever.    I'm not guaranteeing this will do the same for someone else but ...I have a perfectly good electric bass that I want to give away - for free. This is why... 20 years ago I was handed an upright bass in my grade 9 general music class in Birchwood.   I didn’t want it.  I hadn’t thought of it previously.  It just happened.  But then music entered my life. If someone told me that day that “you will become a professional musician and eventually teach upright bass at a university level”, I would have exploded with laughter in that persons face.  If someone on that same day told me “If you stick with music and study it at a university level this is where you will eventually meet your beautiful wife that you will have 3 beautiful children with”, I probably would have listened, but still not believed.  You see, I hated myself.  I had zero self ...