Gerald Veasley

I remember seeing Gerald Veasley at Philadelphia’s old Zanzibar Blue club several years ago. At one point between sets I could hear someone in a back room playing incredible saxophone, apparently warming up to sit in with the bassist. It was Grover Washington, Jr.
Veasley, who had an association with Washington as well as with keyboardist and Weather Report co-founder Joe Zawinul, now has a night club named after him, Gerald Veasley’s Jazz Base at the Crowne Plaza outside of Reading, Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania bass boot camp started in 2002 and organizers have since expanded the concept to other areas. Bass Boot Camp Canada is scheduled for Ontario on July 29. And Bass Boot Camp at Sea will be held during the Capital Jazz Fest Cruise from October 23-30.
The 2010 camp in Reading culminated with a Saturday night jam—a jam I sat out on because the players were going a little funkier than this veteran of umpteen blues jams was accustomed to. I used my stage fright to start an interview with Veasley where I picked his brain for tips on better bass-playing:
BBP: Let me tell you my situation. I’ve been playing blues a lot, and actually I was really intimidated last night when it came to getting up and playing the funk music. How do you transition from one form of bass-playing to another?
Veasley: That’s a great question. I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked that question exactly like that. I would say to make that transition one of the best things you can do is immerse yourself in that style. And that’s not easy because we all have things that we really love and we have a tendency to go back to those things. But even that, if someone has like a real, say specialized focus or narrow focus on a particular style, that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you, you just explained to me that, you know, “I want to try and transition.” Well, the thing you have to do is really immerse yourself. You have to spend a lot of time with those recordings. If you’re interested in funk playing, for example, then you have to listen to people like Larry Graham, go back and listen to Parliament-Funkadelic, you know some of the real quintessential funk performances, you know, and just immerse yourself in it, just really, really listen.
BBP: In general how does someone improve their bass playing?
Veasley: Number one is the consistency, that you have to set some time aside and do it daily if you can. Doesn’t matter how long, as long as it’s consistent. If you only have a half-hour, five days a week, but it’s a focused half-hour, and it’s consistent, you’ll make a lot of progress, as opposed to every two weeks you put in three hours. That’s not going to work. The second thing you can do is get great instruction. Wherever you can, not just my camp. Victor Wooten’s Bass Nature Camp is an awesome experience with a whole other revolutionary way of teaching not just bass but creativity. And then there’s no substitute for private instruction. Find a great teacher that you have a good rapport with, that is going to challenge you and push you a little bit, nudge you, but at the same time be patient with you and inspire you.
BBP: How effective are DVD’s in learning?
Veasley: I think DVD’s are very effective because you have the ability to rewind and practice a particular concept or technique. You can learn it at your own pace. You know the missing element with DVD’s frankly is the DVD can’t hold you accountable the way a teacher can. But it’s still a great tool.
BBP: Is there anything you should keep in mind from the point-of-view of theory. I remember the class that I took with you yesterday you were talking about the four, the circle you drew?
Veasley: Oh the cycle of fourths, the cycle of fourths. The cycle of fourths is an essential tool that we can use for either practicing, or more, to understand the way that music and chord progressions move. It has just a lot of various applications. In the class yesterday I was using it as a method to really learn your neck. To reinforce knowing the notes that are on the neck of the instrument.
BBP: And what are the notes again?
Veasley: Well if you start at C, it’s C, F, B-flat, E-Flat, A-Flat, D-flat, which is also C-sharp, G-Flat, which is F-sharp, B, E, A, D and G.
BBP: And also, how important is it to know the neck in any style?
Veasley: You have to know your neck. Anthony Wellington, one of our instructors, he always says that you know you will never find a saxophone player that doesn’t know the notes on the saxophone. Or a piano player that doesn’t know the notes on a piano. But we have bass players a-plenty who don’t know the notes on their instrument. And he feels that it’s really not good at all. I think it’s very important because you won’t be able to read music without knowing the notes of an instrument. It slows down rehearsal, if you’re working with other musicians if you don’t know the notes on your instrument, and yeah, it’s very basic. But that’s not to say it’s, I mean I do understand why people don’t , because you can go so far and play music on the bass not knowing the notes. Because there’s something about the bass and the feel of the bass, the layout of the bass that makes things accessible. That you could play them, without understanding them. But the understanding is where all of the growth is.
BBP: And how important is it to be able to play the bass without looking at what you’re doing? I was watching you play yesterday and you were…
Veasley: I don’t know if it’s that important to not look, but you want to get comfortable and know your instrument so well that you don’t have to look, where it’s really second nature and it’s just a part of you. That’s the ultimate goal.
BBP: And foot-tapping. How important is that?
Veasey: Foot-tapping? Foot tapping is again is more of a—I would say less of a tool than more of a symptom. So if I see folks who can’t tap their feet in time, it only means that that’s something they should probably—slow down, work on their rhythm.
BBP: Is some kind of body movement sort of helpful in this?
Veasley: Body movement I think is great, you know. My rule of thumb about body movement is, whatever helps the music. So if body movement is going to help you become more expressive, the thing is great. But, to the other extreme, sometimes body movement can be something that doesn’t serve the music. For example, sometimes bass players will have little idiosyncrasies where they’re going to reach for a note and a shoulder goes up. And they’re not aware of it. So there’s body movement that people are aware of that are intentional and there’s body movement that’s unintentional. Some body movement is helpful and some is not helpful. So when I point out something to a player like that, like “man, your left shoulder goes up everytime you reach for that note,” they’ll say “really” and they won’t even be aware of it. But I’m saying don’t change it, be aware of it. So awareness is the key to all of this. So I encourage sometimes players to look in the mirror to start to really understand, how your body relates to the music.

Gerald Veasley's Bass Boot Camp

One day in 1999 I was out drinking with and a friend when, sort of on a drunken lark, we visited a music store and I plunked down 300 dollars for a bass guitar.
Though I had dabbled in playing the accordion and trumpet as a child, I had never before seriously tried to learn an instrument. But for some reason, at the age of 43, I was ready. I bought videos, took lessons and practiced every day. Within a year I was attending blues jams and within three years had joined a rock band.
After hitting the ten year mark at the end of 2009, I pretty much felt like a veteran.
But this March I found out how little I really knew.
Then, I traveled to Reading Pennsylvania to attend the Bass Boot camp, a weekend-long series of lectures, seminars and training on the bass guitar co-founded by and bearing the name of Philadelphia-area jazz bassist Gerald Veasley. Launched in 2002 and held each year against the backdrop of the Berks Jazz Festival, the camp gives participants the opportunity to learn from some of the premier bass talent in the world.
Though a big fan of forefront bassists like Stanley Clarke, Louis Johnson, Victor Wooten and Veasley, I had largely seen bass as a background instrument. I held that view almost literally until the morning of March 20, when I arrived at the camp and attended a class taught by Michael Manring, a one-time student of Jaco Pastorius known for his New Age work with Windham Records and his collaborations with a variety of musicians, among them acoustic guitarist Michael Hedges, improvisational guitarist Henry Kaiser, folk guitarist and banjo player John Gorka and drummer Tim Alexander.

Manring specializes in using the bass as a solo instrument, augmenting his performances with special technology such as neck pegs that allow for mid-song tuning changes and magnetic devices that permit players to stretch out notes. Before taking questions, he gave a ten minute performance that forever quashed any doubts I might have had about the bass’ potential as a solo instrument.

But more surprises were yet to come.

One reason I had come to the boot camp in the first place was to improve my slap technique. Boy did I find out that was passé! A bass player named Rob Smith taught a class on tapping, a technique in which both hands are used to fret notes.

“It’s something that looks like an extremely advanced technique, but when you break it down into an easy method, I find that even beginners can do it,” said Smith, who taught tapping as one of several midnight classes held at the boot camp. “And one of my goals is to kind of take that technique and, you know, make it as common as regular finger style, as slapping.”

A former boot camp student who became an instructor, Smith was one of several guest teachers who taught at this year’s camp. Others included Manring; Stu Hamm, known for his slapping, popping and tapping techniques and his collaborations with guitarists Steve Vai and Joe Satriani; Victor Wooten bassist Anthony Wellington and jazz bassist Adam Nitti. (Note: question and answer sessions with some of these musicians will appear in upcoming posts).
They joined a core faculty of Veasley and two members of his band: drummer Richard Waller III, who taught a “groove class”; and saxophonist Chris Farr.
“We do try to find a balance between people who are skilled at delivering information and people who are fantastic players,” Veasley said. “We really try to find both.”
Veasley said he came up with the idea for a bass boot camp after a series of workshops in Austria he gave in 2000.

“I got to see people grow and develop, you know, in a span of a few days which was really interesting and affirming…To see people make a transformation over a short period of time over a few days was something that I wanted to explore,” he said.
What finally pushed him to act on his idea was hearing of a bass camp run by Victor Wooten. “I said ‘well he’s doing exactly what I want to do,’" Veasley recalled. “That really inspired me to go for it.”
Veasley’s camp featured training in basic music and bass theory, as well as techniques such as slapping, popping and tapping. Some of those classes—such as one on tapping taught by Smith—were held at midnight!
But the highlight of the event was a Saturday evening open jam in which bass players took to the stage to play before an audience that moments before had heard a performance by Veasley’s band that had featured solos from Manring and Nitti. Undaunted by playing after professionals, the bass players came to stage mostly in groups of three, taking turns playing background and foreground.
During the jam, I noticed trumpeter Randy Brecker—in town to perform at the Berks Jazz Festival— sitting in the audience, and wondered how a horn player would feel surrounded by bass players.
Brecker, who once played on an album with Jaco Pastorius, said he was “not really” intimidated by the number of bass players in the room.
“But it’s a lot of bass,” he conceded. “A lot of bass. I don’t know how I would feel if I were up there playing.”