Peter Davyduck: Stu, I'd like to
start off by saying thanks for taking time out to rap with
us here at ActiveBass. To start things off I was
wondering if you wouldn't mind giving a brief history of
your playing for those out there that may not be familiar
with your work.
Stu Hamm: I started playing bass mainly to be
in the high school jazz band where I was living in
Indiana. Then, when I was about 15, I moved to
Vermont at which point I started playing locally in clubs
and in bands around there. When I was 18, I went to
Berklee College of Music. There, I met a bunch of great
players like Steve Smith and I met Steve Vai the second
week I was in school there; also Randy Coven, Victor
Bailey, Jeff Berlin was there,…just tons of great
musicians. And I kept in touch with Steve and I ended
up moving out to California in 1981 to record the
Flexable album with him and then through that
association I signed a record deal with Relativity
Records and that’s when I first met Joe Satriani.
Subsequently, he played a track on Radio Free
Albemuth, my first solo record. And now, this
(Outbound) is my fourth solo record that’s out now and
I’m still touring with Joe and working with Steve off and
on and with some other trios. I’ve also got my own line
of basses out from Fender… and that’s what I do.
PD: What have you been up to
lately and how have you found your career path
alter (if at all) with the rise and fall of "grunge" in the
90's and now
with the global dominance of "boy-bands" and "britney
clones"?
Stu: Fortunately, my music is so far out of the
mainstream, that that stuff doesn’t bother me. I appeal
to a very selective audience. But this year, let me step
back a minute, I’ve been really busy. I started working
on my solo record in January. I took about 10 days off
from that to do this fusion trio with Steve Smith and
Frank Gambale and then went right back to recording
my solo record which I started mastering the day before
rehearsals started for Satriani’s Engines of Creation
Tour.
We did a 6-week tour of the States and we just got back
from doing a month in Europe. We’re headed down to
South America; possibly a G3 tour in the Fall and
between that I’m just doing some clinics for Hartke and
Fender. I’m also going over to Amsterdam to do a
show in Rotterdam in September and then back to
Europe in October to do some stuff for the Bass Center
in London. This has just been a super, super busy
year for Stu Hamm. And like I said, Britney Spears and I
aren’t really competing for the same audience for the
record buying public.
PD: I guess a response to the
current state of affairs with the music scene is
your new soon-to-be-released solo album "Outbound".
Is it a sort of
re-insatement for you and to kick current music in the
butt or is it just a matter of having a bunch of good
tunes that need to be shared?
Stu: I think maybe a little bit of that. I definitely
made the effort to make it be a little bit more current.
Since I did the fusion record right before I did my solo
record, I got my ya-ya’s off that way and I just wanted
this to kind of represent my life; the fact that I now live in
San Francisco, I have a new daughter…. Obviously
you’re affected by your environment and all the "beats" I
hear living in the city, it certainly affects what I play. I
wanted this record to be different than if I had just hired
a guitar player and a drummer to play the melodies like
everything else I’d done.
I worked with Chris and Greg from Youth Engine, a
production house here in the city… a funky little place
down on Market. The vibe was good and we just went
to try to capture the mood that we were all in and what
we were hearing in the environment we lived in that
time period which was March and April of the year
2000.
PD: After such groundbreaking
albums like "Radio Free Albemuth" to "Kings of
Sleep" how did you approach this new album?
Everything from compositionally
to marketability.
Stu: Compositionally, some of the songs I had
been kicking around in my head, in my repertoire for a
few years and just hadn’t found the right forum for them.
As I started bouncing off ideas from Chris and Greg at
Youth Engine, the songs started to take lives of their
own. So a lot of the songs just happened that way. I
had a basic framework, but I left enough room for
interpretation, improvisation and inspiration to arise in
the studio while we were playing them.
As far as marketability, I can’t really say that’s how I
write records, but you know, maybe I should. Maybe I’ll
do that next time; try to blatantly sell out and make a
record that sells a whole lot of money but that’s not
really what I do. I just kind of write in the way that each
song is about a specific event or book or emotion or
something that I felt and that’s just how the songs
work.
PD: I noticed that you're signed
to Favored Nations for "Outbound" so I checked
out their web-site and saw that Steve Vai heads up the
label and it sounds
like there's a lot of support for the
"virtuoso-instrumentalist" genre that
is always seemingly in danger of extinction. How
important was Steve and
the label in getting "Outbound" out to the masses? and
also in supporting
players such as yourself?(and himself for that
matter)
Stu: Of course, they have a wonderful staff
working at the Favored Nations offices and I’m sure
they will do just wonderfully at getting it to the masses.
But as for Steve and as far as creativity, I’ve known him
for a long time and we’re friends, but I can’t say that
really had anything to do with it. When I was shopping
around for people to put this record out, they (Favored
Nations) seemed the most inclined. He (Vai)
understands the music for what it is and what it isn’t.
He seemed to be willing to just leave me alone and let
me make the record that I wanted to make and trust me
artistically and let me just be able to get it out knowing
what it is. So it worked out great… of all the options that
I had, Favored Nations was certainly the best and
everything’s worked out fine so far.
PD: How is your take
,specifically, on bass today? From the new advances in
amps/instruments to the new players?
Stu: Well, there’s certainly a crop of great
players like Victor Wooten, Oteil Burbridge , Reggie
McBride, John Pattituci, guys that have been around a
while, and also guys like Flea and Les Claypool. There
seems to be good spirit for people that are playing the
bass. As far as gear, the companies are always
coming out with great new stuff.
Of course, the best new gear lately has been the Stu
Hamm Urge 2 Fender Bass….plug, plug, plug. I see a
lot of stuff getting smaller. I’m not so much into the
digital and gear end side of things. I prefer to
concentrate just on the playing. But there’s this
Pandora PX3 Bass box and that actually is great
because it has a metronome and grooves you can jam
to and you can play along to your cd’s and cancel out
the bass line. So that’s been a nice unit to carry
around. People keep reinventing the same stuff and
you could spend as much money on as much gear as
you wanted.
PD: With the path that you
helped to forge a decade and more ago, do you think
it's become any easier for bassists to be seen as a
valid solo voice today?
Stu: I think maybe so and I’m not the only one
blazing the trail, there’s a lot of guys around doing it. But
before us there were people blazing the trail from
Charles Mengis to Alphonso Johnson to what Stanley
and Jaco did, kind of open the books. And now you see
a lot of the virtuosity in other elements too like what Flea
and Les Claypool do.
That’s certainly not in a jazz fusion environment, but
they get to play and the bass is a featured, prominent
thing…so that’s good.
PD: The other side of the coin
as well is, how is it for you to be seen by
producers/employers as a guy who can "lay down a
groove" as well as being a
soloist? Or, does that even factor in to getting hired for
various gigs?
Stu: Well, it certainly is a catch 22. When I was
living in LA, I auditioned for like every band in the world
and didn’t get the gig. I auditioned for Cher, and Oingo
Boingo and Jean-Luc Ponte, and I guess the turning
point for me was when I auditioned for "Weird" Al
Yankovic and it was the opening slot on the Monkees
Reunion tour and I didn’t get that gig. So at that point, I
decided that I’d create this alter ego of Stu Hamm,
because my name’s really Stuart, the bass playing
guy.
I decided to just go along that route and concentrate
more on the stuff I had been writing. Plus, living in LA, I
didn’t get time to go to the right AA meetings to
schmooze the right people to try to get studio gigs. But
it
is a catch 22 where one of the pluses is that I think I’m
a really versatile player.
Like the set we’re playing with Satriani allows me to
play some melodic stuff, some hard driving stuff, some
improv, some fretless. But I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve done auditions where I show up and I just
play normally and it goes great, but then the people will
get a wind of who I am and they think, "…he’d be bored;
he wouldn’t want to play a regular blues gig or he wants
too much money or he’s too busy…" So I don’t really
work as much as you’d think I would or as much as I’d
like to so that’s the catch 22 of it.
PD: Now lets get a little
existential....where does Stu Hamm go when he plays
his music? (besides the venue at which said gig is
happening) What is it
that drives you after all these years to keep playing and
reaching for that
next note?
Stu: Ummm, my financial situation! No really, I
love to play the bass. I just try to get inside the song.
Every song has a different feel and a different emotion
that I’m trying to convey. I feel blessed. Like on the
Satriani gig, they leave the stage and I’m up there for 10
minutes and I just play whatever I want. A solo of
unaccompanied bass and people scream and love it
and yell my name and you just can’t beat that.
So, I always feel that I’m progressing not only just
technically on the bass, but also as a well-rounded
musician… I’m always learning about the writing and
recording processes ..learning how to record better
sounding records. So there’s still always something to
inspire me and to push me forward.
I read an interview with Robert Fripp and he said if you
ever think you’re too good to practice or progress, then
you’re delusional and you should just give it up and try
something else. So there’s still a whole lot more for
me to try and create and progress on.
PD: And finally, what is it that
you attribute the ongoing
longevity of your
career to?
Stu: I wish I had a snappy answer for that. I just
kept
plugging at it. I kept diversifying the kind of gigs I play
and the people I play with and the music I write. And
always trying to find a market and the fact that this is
what I do so I have to keep doing what I do!
PD: Thanks again Stu for your
time and patience. All the
best with taking the
new millenium by storm!
