That is very nice of you to say, Chris, thank you. You know, when you are young and obsessed with music and playing, it is easy to go crazy all the time because you feel so much inside and you just want to get it all out. As we get older, play more notes, and learn where the notes are on the instrument, it becomes more important to say something in the notes you play. Are you hearing those notes in your head when you play them, or are you just playing as many notes as you can hopefully playing the correct notes in the chord? It takes a long time to develop your ears, hands, and musicianship to a mature level. When I go back and listen to my older recordings it freaks me out, because I hear youth and desire, vs. maturity and musicality. I hear moments of Wow that was nice, surrounded by more moments of What the heck was I thinking?
This is most likely going to rub purists the wrong way, but the absolute truth is that all of the years I have recorded contemporary jazz using the piccolo bass as one of the main voices in the music made me a much more melodic and better soloist/player on the upright bass. There is no question that the piccolo bass has helped my upright bass playing, directly. How is that you might ask? It's still a bass, it has four strings, most of mine are 34" scale length, meaning that you put your left hand in many of the same positions on the electric bass as well as the upright bass, at least with my wrong self-taught technique. Also, those of you who have seen me play live or on video know that I use the upright bass thumb position a lot on the electric bass as again I am self-taught and was more comfortable using upright bass technique on the electric bass. The result is that all of that melodic storytelling improvisation on the piccolo bass has made me a more melodic and musical upright bass player. To be honest here in this chatroom, just the fact that I was able to get through two days of live playing on 14 songs after what Covid did to me, and it turned out the way it did just blows me away. I am very proud of the album and the chemistry of the trio. We have some trio gigs coming up in the LA area in May, June, and July, and I'm looking forward to playing this music with the cats again!
