As I told you last week in my preliminary report, I traveled to Nashville to deliver several new amplifeirs to Belmont University's Bass Department. Eden is proud to sponsor this wonderful music school and its head Low Guy: Bassist, educator and Eden endorser, Roy Vogt. You already know about the first part of the week, so let's pick up on Wednesday.

Endorser (and good friend) Abe White and I spent the day with Roy and several of his students, conducting an experiment of sorts. Roy managed to borrow a camera from another department and we set up in one of the larger rooms in the guitar and bass teaching rooms. Then, we turned on the camera for about four hours, only stopping it to change DVDs.

We began with Abe and his friend Matthew Brugess. Abe is the bassist, and Matthew the drummer and percussionist, for Amanda Williams, a well-established songwriter who will soon be releasing her own debut. Matthew brought his percussion kit, which included a 16" custom kick drum, djembe, side snare drum with custom goat skinhead, various cymbals and percussion, and a really cool shaker rig that Matthew strapped to his leg.

The duo began by comping a few grooves together. These short pieces provided the foundation of our discussion of creating interesting grooves. I don't want to give too much away, because we may actually use some of this video (more on that later). Suffice to say that the conversation centered on the proper use of space and the art of listening (on several levels). Even after almost forty years on this instrument, Abe gave me a fresh insight to consider - and be motivated by.

We got almost an hour of our discussion on disc, and then brought Roy up to play with Matthew. Again, the playing was mainly a way to prepare for our talk. Now, for those who may not know, Roy has played everything from Punk and Metal to be-bop. He's also extremely well-versed in theory, slap, tap, harmonics, soloing, composition and more. In fact, I'm convinced that Roy is the one of the most under-rated bassists and educators of our day.

Talking with Roy about bass is like talking to Hawking about the nature of the universe. No matter how much you know, you're bound to learn something new. The only problem is that Roy can skip lightly from one complex concept to another with ease. I sometimes had to back him up and get him to translate into English. <chuckle>

Finally, I got an opportunity to play for a few minutes with Matthew. Listening back to it, I can see (ok, hear) that Matthew was using the same concepts Abe discussed when crafting his part. It was a perfect close to the day - bringing it all back to the basics with which we began.

Belmont's Roy Vogt and Jeff Kirk pose with
Special Projects Coordinator Lane Baldwin and a bevy of Eden/Nemesis gear.

Every week has a Monday. The thing is, this week, for me, Monday came on Thursday. This was the day I was to meet the head of the entire Commercial Music department, Jeff Kirk, and do a quick photo shoot with him and the Bass majors. Let's not relive the whole ordeal. Suffice to say that, less than ten minutes before meeting Mr. Kirk, I got absolutely drenched by the rain that had rolled in for the day. I haven't worn a suit and tie much since I took this gig, but I still know how to do it -- French cuffs and cuff links, stick pin, the whole nine yards. You know what? It doesn't look nearly as good after a good dunking. Thankfully, I was able to squeeze most of the excess away, and improve things somewhat. It didn't hurt that Jeff had also been surprised by a short deluge earlier in the day.

The photo op went quickly, and we went right back to taping. We began with my presentation to the students. I touched on several facets of the music business and our place in it, but the one thing Roy asked me to focus on was endorsements. (You can find eveyrthing you need to know about my views on this by doing a quick search of our forum.)

Next up was Steve Cook, another endorser you should recognize. Steve writes our Band101 column every month. He also plays with Nashville's new hotshot, Trent Thomlinson. Abe and I caught Trent's show the night before and invited Steve to come down. Not only did he accept, he brought his guitarist with him: none other than Jeff Cease, formerly of the Black Crowes. Again, I don't want to give anything away but, if nothing else, I've got to figure out a way to post a clip of Steve's final demonstration. Everyone there laughed raucously as soon as he pulled it. . . and we didn't stop laughing for quite a while. Unfortunately, Steve and Jeff couldn't stick around too long, as they left the next day for a short run of gigs. Be that as it may, the time the spent with us was an excellent addition to our video project and we appreciate their willingness to squeeze us into a very hectic schedule.

The final video segment of the day consisted of Yours Truly presenting the DC112XLT. This combo (with D112XLT extension speaker) is Belmont's newest stage rig. We also brought two Nemesis Silver Series N10S combos and an N12S. We even brought a pair of E5 studio monitors so they could hear the bass properly during recording and mix-down.

Later in the evening, the Bass Ensemble performed in concert. It was pretty cool to see all those Eden and Nemesis amps on one stage. The ensemble did an excellent job and sounded great. And yes, we've got video of this, too. We just don't know yet if it will be decent enough to post.

Belmont's Bass Majors post with Roy, Jeff, Lane, and a few Eden endorsers.
We're still trying to put names with each face, but we do know
that's Abe White between Jeff and Lane, and Steve Cook all the way to the right.

The next morning, I gathered everything and headed back home. It was an exhausting week, but absolutely a ton of fun. Thanks again to all who helped make it a success: Roy, Steve, Matthew Burgess, Amanda Williams, Jeff Cease, and all of the bass students at Belmont. And very special thanks to Abe for letting me use his condo and ferried me all over town for the entire week.

The next phase of the video project will be to asses the files we have and use them to craft our vision of the "real" videos. We hope to soon begin production on video presentations of many of our products. if we're lucky, we'll also get some great performance and educational video to inspire you and help you be a better musician. That's going to have to wait a day or two, however. You see, I'm currently up in Mundelein. There's a bunch of amps to test, meetings and discussions about future travel for training and Meet & Greets to be had, and a bunch of other things to accomplish in the next 36 hours.

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