Bassist, Songwriter, Composer/Arranger

 
jeffrey wash

Bass Playing

Sometimes when I’m onstage playing with a band the image of a river comes to my mind.  With the sounds of generally faster moving, higher frequency instruments swirling and rushing around and above me, I imagine deeper, slower moving currents underneath - sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling and sometimes just flowing along with the gravity and momentum of the music.

I am often in the position of directing as well as playing the bass and this has heightened for me the paradoxical sensation of controlling a thing and surrendering to it at the same time.

My approach to bass playing tends to be very song oriented.  I don’t practice toward virtuosity.  Rather I strive to create strong, articulate bass lines and I push myself to maintain a high level of awareness of what’s going on around me in performance.  If the band as a whole is sounding and feeling good, if the vocalist or soloist feels supported to the degree of being able to perform his or her best, then I can usually walk offstage with a sense of having done my job well.  Of course, I enjoy stepping out for the occasional solo – who doesn’t?  However, I am not driven to be defined by it.

In no way do I mean to disparage all those players who are pushing the boundaries of bass playing and exploring it’s potential as a solo instrument.  I have enormous respect for the amount of time, talent and determination it takes to achieve virtuosity on any instrument.  Marcus Miller and Stanley Clarke come to my mind as pioneers in this way and I think a lot of what makes them such great soloists is that they are also great composers.

While I take a lot of inspiration from such players, I haven’t set out to follow that path.  If I have an extra hour in the day and I can choose to use it to work on revising a lyric or practicing “two-hand tapping” on the bass, I’ll pick up a pencil and go for the lyric… it’s just the way I’m wired.

A few of my favorite bassists: Graham Maby, Paul Chambers, Doug Stegmeyer, Dee Murray, Charlie Haden, Willie Weeks, Chris Squire, Lee Sklar, Nick Lowe, Sting, Paul McCartney, Flea, Tony Levin, Chuck Rainey…

 

Tools

I’ve gone through a lot of basses and bass rigs chasing down this thing called “ultimate tone”.  Over time I’ve come to adopt a less one dimensional approach to tone shaping – less focused on the gear, more focused on the overall sound of the music and the bass’s role in it.  To that end I have a variety of amps and speakers – Genz Benz, Aguilar, Eden, Mesa Boogie, Acoustic Image – I combine them in different ways, depending on the style of music and whether the gig is Big n Loud, Small n Intimate or somewhere in between.

I used to spend a lot of time and money buying basses, swapping out the pickups and hardware, endlessly tweaking the instruments to make them sound better.  In 1999 I flew to NYC, spent an afternoon playing basses in Roger Sadowsky’s shop and placed an order for one of my own.  6 months later I got my first Sadowsky Bass… suffice it to say, I spend a lot less time tweaking basses these days and a lot more time playing them.

 

My current basses:                                                                
Sadowsky 24 Fret 5 String Bass (NYC)
Sadowsky 24/5 Fretless Bass (NYC)
“Mutt” Fretless – Yamaha body, Warmouth Tele neck, Bartolini pickups, Bad Ass bridge…
Fender Precision Plus (modified: Duncan pickups, Bad Ass bridge, Aguilar Preamp)
Christopher’s Workshop Busetto styled Double Bass