Taking the Bass Out on the Nightlife

It's been almost 8 months to the day since I walked into the guitar shop in Overland Park and asked an employee to help me choose a bass guitar. She was very nice, and directed me to an Ibanez electric bass, with 24 frets and a mellow-metallic blue finish. I had been feeling very oppressed by the cold midwestern winter, which had me wanting something to brighten the vibe at my bachelor pad a bit. This bass would fix it. After asking what kind of amp and cable to get, I was loading the bass into my hatchback, caseless, and took it home.

And I played Rocksmith. A lot of Rocksmith! "I played it til my fingers bled" from 'Summer of 69' finally made sense.

After I was still having fun with it 3 months later, I enrolled in bass lessons at the guitar shop with Derek. Now I had someone who would listen to me and give some feedback: a step up!

I named the bass 'Lever' while driving home from work one day: I had a mental image of it being a lever that I could switch to put me in a good mood. The Coronavirus hit shortly after, so that was useful. I bought a few video courses to hone in on drills for technique and fretboard knowledge. Now I wouldn't have to bug Derek with some of the more monotonous stuff, and could ask him more about how to make music than notes.

I started to take Lever to my Mom's to doodle around a bit on Sundays, and even played a song with her on cello for my brother and his girlfriend - my first captive audience, and it wasn't so bad. Maybe I can do this bass thing forever! At least for a year?

During a lull in the pandemic, I was trying to figure out places in Kansas City to make more friends. One night occasioned me to be wandering Westport, where I found the Saloon. It wasn't as cowboy as it might sound, but it did have a new stage for blues music. The bartender told me they had an open jam night on Tuesdays: I should come.

So I did! I obsessed somewhat over refreshing my 12-bar blues, got a fresh haircut, and sat on my couch for 2 hours ready-to-go before loading Lever into my hatchback (with a case this time) and arriving at the place. I'm many things, but 'easily laidback' isn't one of them: I was sweating some bullets in the saloon, my bottle of Modelo doing the same.

The way it works is that there is a house band, and people sign up on a sheet of paper to swap-out one of the band members for themselves. In my case, this evening's special performer was actually a bassist named Heather, so I was taking her place for three songs.

A man named Coyote Bill heads the band, and he was very gracious when I got onto the stage - I had briefly talked to him to let him know I was coming in pretty fresh. I felt quite some butterflies in my stomach, and I got a slight panicked feeling when he called out 'Shuffle in A', but I knew what that meant. On a-one-two-three-four, I fretted the note and came in on One.

I hung out on the roots of the chord for 12 bars, just to lock into the rhythm and listen to the drummer. After a round, I started incorporating fifths and fourths, and after another 8 bars I was arpeggiating the whole chords: I figured I was doing great!

But Coyote Bill kept giving me this look, and I couldn't figure out what he was trying to communicate. I double checked that, yes, I was in the right key, and I was doing an appropriate kind of rhythm. He gestured to my bass, and I finally understood: "Louder!". But my bass was at max already! I looked to the amp, but it had about two dozen different knobs on it: much more than my bass at home, and I had no clue which one to change.

Seeing my perplexed look, Coyote stopped the song. I was a bit mortified, to say the least.

Heather rushed up from the audience and adjusted the amp for me, and we started again. Much better! I was a bit rattled though, so it took a minute to get back into my groove - nonetheless, after a few minutes we finished out the shuffle. My first song bounced off a crash landing into a proper landing, it'd seem.

The next song was a more honky tonk style shuffle, in E. I'm not great at the open strings, so I hung out an octave up, which wasn't the best decision in terms of complementing Coyote's guitar, but I tried to play the low seventh to compensate a bit. I had lots of fun, although I think I might've been forcing the band to play in a major key when they had intended to be in a minor key, now that I look back. We ended that one with an impressive drum solo and I tried to follow the kick drum a bit.

And that was going to be it for me: the drummer had specifically asked before the set to be able to play a song with Heather, so they were gonna swap me out of the third song, a bit to my surprise. The drummer said something to me as I was getting of the stage: she seemed to be giving an apology, I think for punting me off the third song, but I couldn't really hear her because of the noise.It was probably a bit of a blessing: I was still a bit stage frightened and had been turned up to 11 in terms of anxiousness the whole time.

So I'll do it every week, as I'm able.