Hey Matt,
I’ve always loved your playing and I even bought an ampeg SVT 3 to try and get your sound!

I was looking through some of the other posts and I saw one about T Bone Burnett. I’ve always liked his playing, and I wondered how much influence he had on parts, etc?

I do love August and Everything after, but I think your playing on the follow ups was just as creative (if not more).

Hi Josh – welcome – and I appreciate that! I do love the Ampeg stuff. T-Bone Burnett taught me how to play a bass. I had been playing for 12 or 13 years before I met him (during the “August” sessions) but I didn’t really know how to PLAY A BASS until T-Bone got hold of me. Sure I could play a million notes per second…impress a bunch of Guitar Center employees, clank the high end, rock the 5-string, dial in the battery…gurgle the fretless…but T-Bone Burnett taught me how to play a songwriters’ song on a bass. Before we started recording “August and Everything After”, he took me shopping for a vintage bass on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood and told me that he’s hoping we can find a ‘60’s hollowbody style bass guitar WITH THE ORIGINAL STRINGS ON IT. I got his point – it’s not about technology or fidelity – it’s about your talent as a bass player and the STATE OF YOUR SOUL meaning how you interpret a songwriters’ vision on your bass. He’s a raging genius, my single favorite producer in the world, a deep lake – and he made each of us dig deep within ourselves so as to “not have any ordinary moments on the whole record” – as he put it. If somebody was vamping on a bar chord, he didn’t like it. He only let me play 8th notes once on the whole record: The choruses to “A Murder of One”. Some of the guys didn’t really like it…and as a result he wasn’t asked back because it’s not comfortable to grow sometimes – but he was the one guy who made each of us a better musician. If I could afford him, I’d have him produce everything I ever play. Thank you for stopping by Josh – write any time. Matt

Matt,
Thanks! Really neat to hear about him; I always imagined he was a profoundly creative person.

I laughed when you wrote about the strings. I used to play five strings and active basses, but a couple of years ago I started playing the guitar I got in high school (a 75 precision). I only change the strings if they break, and people always ask me why my guitar’s tone is so good. I swear it’s the strings!

I have another question for you. The band I play in has a song that people in the DC area know. They always ask for it and we’ve played it for years, and I have to fight to stay interested and creative with it. What songs did you have to challenge yourself with and conversely what songs did you always look forward to playing?

Good question Josh – being in a touring rock band means having to play the same songs 4 or 5 nights per week…for years! Adam was good at getting bored and as a result he would start changing up our songs. It was a good challenge for us all to keep up with him so there wasn’t a big problem with feeling burned out on playing our music live. I didn’t look forward to “A Murder of One” because it would sometimes take 15 minutes to get through it. I would get tired of a song if it lasted too long. I can understand groups like “Yes” having 15 minute long songs but it didn’t sit well with me to do that with C. Crows. I enjoyed playing most of them actually – it was a small group which I wasn’t that excited about. There was a song from “This Desert Life” called “4 Days” and it was always laborious to play because the guys had me on lead guitar for that one and it was such a simple phrase to play…and yet Adam and a couple of guys were so attached to the original sound from the record that they wanted to duplicate it live “to perfection”...and that goal just frustrated everyone because the guitar players couldn’t dial in the exact tone…I would always hate playing that song live!