Hello from "the wet coast" (Canadian)...

What a nice forum, I'm very glad to be here. I first picked up a bass guitar around 1974, started playing out about 1976, first international tour in 1978 (toured California with high school stage band, lol...) Played electric and acoustic bass in University of Victoria jazz ensemble. First actual real regular paying gig (50s rock / country bands) about 1979... Hard rock bar band work in the 80s... Ended up in Vancouver ... did studio sessions, segued into record engineering, segued into record producing. Moved to New York and segued into computer programming during the tail end of the dot com boom. (Not sure how that happened...) In 2001, ran away and joined the circus - no, strike that....

Actually, moved to Russia for a decade and became a world famous bass guitar designer in Moscow. (True story!) Blueprinted, procured woods and parts, supervised builds and personally playtested about 400 custom instruments for custom shop clients in 44 different countries around the globe - and every state in the USA including Alaska. Did some record production, was an 'urban chamber musician' and even played some bar gigs - but not as a bassist (oops).

For those that don't already know, I'd just like to mention that Russia is full of awesome bassists, awesome people in general, and Moscow is an awesome, amazing town. Wish I lived there still, but had some misfortunes and recently crash landed in Canada, battered and broke - but not broken completely.

Starting over from scratch, and resuming my bass guitar playing habit. Probably 20 years since I did a gig "as a bassist", but a couple weeks ago I managed to get through an hour pop/jazz-rock show on Canada Day, (opening for 54-40) and it sure was nice playing a couple of bass guitars on a big stage with a good professional drummer. Definitely have to hit the woodshed and make that "bassist" activity a regular habit again... I even had to play the gig with a pick (whoops!) as it was short notice and my picking hand fingertips had no callouses. First bass gig in twenty years, AND first bass gig EVER, using a pick! (Very rarely used a pick except the odd time in the studio, as I'm a fingers guy by nature).

Oh, and am I rambling again ?? The dangers of middle age....