A Life Playing Music

I've been pretty fortunate that for the last twenty four years I've been involved with playing music. I can't really imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't picked up a bass when I was 11 years of age. (It wasn't really a bass, mind. It was a piece of shit Japanese guitar that my brother re-strung with Ernie Ball bass strings. But...at least it sounded like a bass!) A fairly large chunk of my circle of friends, now more than ever, are a direct result of my involvement in music. As the trite advertising slogan says, "It's the gift that keeps on giving!" (Ugh....)

I took up bass at the behest of my guitar-playing brother, who said to me at the time, "Take up bass, you'll always have a gig." He was right. My addendum to that is not only that bass players are hard to find, but good bass players are even harder to find. At the time when I took up the instrument, my hometown on Long Island was rife with guitar players. Everyone played guitar. It's not that there wasn't anyone who played bass, it was that for every ten to fifteen guitar players, there was maybe one bass player in the bunch. And it was questionable whether they were good or not. Coming from a pretty musical family with two musically accomplished older siblings, it was a pretty natural progression for me to follow in their footsteps. My mother also played piano, albeit in a halting manner that had more to do with a lack of practice than a lack of talent, and my father was a jazz drummer at one point in his life who still strummed on the guitar and sang from time to time when he came home from a hard day's work in the ad industry. (One of my more distinct childhood memories was listening to him play the harmonica 'round the campfire. A family friend once came camping with us with his son and dog in tow. His poodle Sammy would yelp interminably at the sound of the harmonica. I don't recall it stopping my father from playing.)

And so here it is, two and a half decades later, and I'm still playing bass in clubs, still spending too much money on instruments and gear, still practicing bass (and now, due to unforseen utilitarian circumstances, 12-string guitar and bass pedals), and still meeting people, befriending people, and having more laughs and good discussions with everyone and anyone involved in music in some way. There was a gap between the time I graduated college and started playing in a group again (which spanned about eight or nine years) where I did nothing musically. No gigs at all, no participation in groups, etc. Actually, I did one gig as a favor to someone, but that was it. But I barely picked up any instrument for a long time. Looking back now, it was probably the most unhappy, barren time of my life. Conversely, I've been heavily involved in musical composition, recording, gigging, and just plain playing for the last five years. There have been several highs and lows life-wise in that time period, and I can't imagine how low the lows would've been had it not been for playing music during the low moments, those inevitable ruts that everyone goes through, but very few know how to get out of. A few times I almost "took the left ramp" in adolescence; music brought me back. In the end, what a tremendously fortuitous phenomenon it was and is that I happened to be born into a musical family, managed to become a competent musician, and managed to meet the people that I now know and can call friends as a result of my participation in the "song of life". Even the non-musician friends that I've made are a direct result of some form of mutual musical appreciation. Now what would really be cool is if I could make a buck doing it. (Don't all chuckle at once.)

Good shit, man.