For whatever reason these bass projects of mine get a little wrapped up in the life/death cycle. When Buckley passed away a couple years ago, I decided to finish the P-Bass—a kind of coping mechanism to keep me busy since I didn't have walks to go on and vet visits to pay for. Now, as I start the "D-Bo," my Grandpa passes… Whether I like it or not, when I pick up these instruments I think of these people—animals, who have changed my life.*
Follow me on a brief tangent:
I took German in college hoping that some ancestral and instinctual understanding would kick in where it hadn't in my attempts to learn Spanish (I'm German on my Dad's side, as well as Welsh—Dutch and Norwegian on my Mom's). At the end of my first semester the teacher gave out awards (books) to several students; mine was the award for "The student who has shown the most improvement and may not get a B—may not even get a C" (that should give you an idea of my language skills and where I started at the beginning of that semester: uffda!). Although I think it may have been a poor translation, the title of the book, Soul of Wood has always stuck with me. There is something very soulful about wood, lumber, trees… and as I work with it more, it keeps getting wrapped up with life and death, love, people, animals, history. It's a physical connection to the intangible.
There will be a bit of Grandpa in this bass which makes me sad and happy and comforted. As the hours of sculpting the lumber go by it will be a reflection—a meditation on my time with Grandpa. He was always taking notes when he read, whether it was nonfiction, fiction, the paper, or a magazine. He was always researching. So this initial step (research and report) is perhaps something ancestral and instinctual.
*Throughout the Flattop build I was listening to Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse and within months of finishing that, Lou Reed passed. Certainly, that ties in to life and death, but I just can't say Lou Reed changed my life as profoundly.
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