Anthony, tell us about your school, Bassology.
Well, that’s something that I’m really excited about. Bassology is a continuation of my teaching but with my own curriculum. The school is located in the DC area and I generally go between 80 to 100 students a week. The school is going into its third year but I’ve had some of my students from previous places. Some go back as far as 10 years! I’ve got students that come in from as far as Vermont and Buffalo!

Bassology is not just instruction, it’s a good hang and it’s a lifestyle, a way of life. I try to always stay in the ‘student-teacher’ mode and one of the things that keeps me on my toes with teaching is that I’m always willing to show somebody what I know and I’m always willing to be taught something. And that’s one of the philosophies of Bassology; just try to stay in the ‘student-teacher’ mode all the time. I owe a lot of the credit to my wife because she was the one that convinced me I could do it and it just took off, so now it’s spreading out a little bit – I teach in Philly, so I bring Bassology to Philly once a month and I’ve been offered to teach in Texas once a month which I’ll probably start doing soon.

Do you have any online classes?
Not with Bassology yet, I’m still trying to figure out how to correspond with Bassology and I’m 90% of the way there. I do teach at an online music school called Music Dojo. I just thought I would reach more of the local people that I didn’t have room for but I get people from all over the world! I still think of it as Bassology just through this other place. Music Dojo is how people can reach me online until I can get the Bassology classes up and running.

That sounds exciting; some good things on the horizon.
It is exciting yeah. As long as I can find somebody to help my lessons stay pure and transparent the way that they come out of me. That’s why I’ve shied away from doing instructional videos and books because it’s really hard to get the gist of the teacher. I think that one of my specialties, as a teacher is that if I see that somebody is not getting something, I might have four or five different ways to explain it once I see they’re not getting it one way. But when you put out a book or DVD, the DVD or the book doesn’t know that the student didn’t get it and doesn’t offer another explanation. I never want that to happen but I think I’ll be able to do what it is that I do with the online lessons.

Do you have a driving force or certain focus that you strive for at Bassology?
It’s a lot of different things. I think there’s a mechanism to being a working musician and if you understand that mechanism, you can work in any town and in any situation. You don’t even have to be a great musician but you’ll work if you understand the mechanism. If you don’t understand the mechanism, no matter how good a player you are, you’ll only end up playing in your basement or in music stores or at NAMM shows!

Sometimes I hear people say, “Man I’m gonna move to LA cuz there’s more gigs there”. And I try to tell people, “If you don’t understand the mechanism of work, you’re just going to move to LA and be more miserable because now your family and your friends aren’t there, you don’t have that support mechanism and you’re not working!” Make it happen in the town that you live in. Prince turned Minneapolis into a music Mecca and Kurt Cobain did it in Seattle with Nirvana. All of these “small town USA’s” can be a mega-music capital if you know how to make it happen. So, that’s one of the things that I strive for. Another thing is that there are ways that I want to understand what it is that I do. I try to teach students that for every musical concept you know, you should know it equally four ways: physically, visually, sonically and intellectually. If you learn a new concept, or a new scale or new lick, ask yourself, “Of those four ways, which of these ways am I the strongest? And of these four ways, which am I the weakest”, you’ll always know what it is you need to work on.

How do these four concepts work? If I used the example of the A major scale, I need to know that concept physically; second finger on the fifth fret of the E string and so forth, so I can physically play the A major scale. Visually doesn’t mean with my eyes, it means with my mind. I want to know where that A major scale is with my mind, meaning that if you needed me to teach you how to play an A major scale or you wanted to teach me an A major scale and there wasn’t a bass around, you should still be able to teach it to me. If I asked you to describe your wife or girlfriend to me, you shouldn’t have to have her in the room in order to that! You should know how she looks even if she’s not around and the bass is the same way. If I asked you, “What’s the 20th fret of the A string,” you should know that that’s an F. So that’s what I mean when I talk about knowing musical concepts visually. Knowing things sonically is self-explanatory: that A Major scale has a certain sound and you should be hyper-aware of that meaning. If you go to finger that A Major scale that we talked and you trust that fingering, if I adjust one of the tuning pegs without you knowing, you should know that what you are hearing is not an A Major scale. And intellectually means breaking down that A Major scale to the formula of whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. And I’ve found that there’s a cultural divide in learning. A lot of inner city players grow up getting good at the instrument physically and sonically; what we call ‘playing by ear’. And I’ve found that a lot of kids who grew up in a suburb, who grew up playing classical music or who were able to get lessons right away, get good visually and intellectually but they don’t develop an ear because they weren’t forced to drop the needle on a record and learn a part! So, Bassology is about really combining those four things and not having that divide. That’s one of the driving forces behind Bassology, to understand music and what we do on this instrument four ways, equally.

To switch gears a bit, you are quite active in your local area aren’t you?
Yes, I play with a lot of local artists from the DC area. Even though get I now get to tour nationally & internationally, I still consider myself a local musician - and I like that. There’s one artist that I’m really fond of whose name is John Lutsky and he’s a really great songwriter and guitar player. I play with him a lot and it’s always fun. I’ve also done a lot of sessions for people like Lisa Williams and I did some gigs with the gospel legend, Walter Hawkins and that was exciting

How did you get into tech work?
I minored in audio engineering and I own a recording studio so I am interested in that side of things. I’ve always done my own set ups and I think every player should know how to work on their bass but I still never considered myself a tech until Victor put a band together and realized that if he had somebody to handle his rig and his basses, it would give him more time to spend with his fans in the audience. So, he hired me as his tech and I would do the set ups and set up & tear down his rig. Because our styles are so similar, I could set up the bass as if I was setting it up for myself! It wasn’t really like I had to learn somebody’s idiosyncrasies, all I had to do was set up his basses for me and they were perfect for him.

You have been playing with Victor since the late-90’s correct?
I did my first tour with him in 1999 and in the beginning; I would play on one or two songs a night whereas now I’m doing most of the show.

Is it difficult to balance the arrangements in a two-bass ensemble?
When you’re the only bass player in the band, you have a particular sonic area to yourself. A 24-fret, four string bass goes from 41 Hz to 392 Hz so the lower-end of that frequency range is basically all yours, you’re not stepping on anybody’s toes and you’ve got that whole area to be as busy or as open as you want. But when you’re in a band with two bass players, you have to share that space with somebody else and it doesn’t really work unless someone is conscious of that. If not it can sound like two elephants in a small room!

One of the things I’ve learned from this is how to be aware and sensitive to the other things happening in that frequency range. I have to be aware of when Victor’s goes from playing a melody up high to coming down low and we start occupying more of the same frequency range, I know I have to make a change. Sometimes that change is with the frequencies or it’s a dynamic change. So it might be a combination of me moving out of his way, frequency-wise and giving him some room dynamically. I’d like to think this is one of the things Victor likes about having me as his accompanist; I’m always trying to accompany him, meaning I’m always aware of where he is dynamically and frequency-wise so I can make adjustments. And it leaves him the space to do what it is that he does. I almost want him to be able to forget about me; it sounds weird but if he always has to be conscious of me, he can’t do his thing. I think that’s why I’ve been able to be his bass player for a long time because I’m sensitive and conscious of that.

And that is the main thing, to allow the artist to shine.
Yeah. One of the things I like doing the most musically is making someone else, the singer or the band look good. If the singer blows the verse and she goes to the chorus I’m gonna be right there with her because I don’t want her to stick out in anyway. I don’t need to be out front and playing melodies or soloing a lot. I just like standing in the back, in front of my amp holding down the bottom; that’s what I do.

How are you getting along with your Aguilar rig? I love it! It’s the first time that I’ve plugged my bass into a rig and set it flat; set my bass flat, set the rig flat and it’s the sound that my bass is supposed to sound like! It’s the sound I was looking for without any effort. I’m not a knob twiddler; I don’t want to have to twiddle knobs to get my sound. I don’t know what the fairies are doing inside that head to make it that easy but that’s what I wanted. Since I started using it, we get so many compliments on my sound. Victor loves the sound of my bass as well as the engineer, which is real important to me. We had the good fortune to tour with a lot of different bass rigs recently; we had 23 bass cabinets with us! I went through every cabinet and nothing came close to the Aguilar rig; the AG 500 SC and the DB series cabs are my sound! Are there any features that make your life easier on stage? Yeah, I work closely with the front of house engineer and there are things that make our set up easier like the Pre & Post EQ button for the DI, the mute button helps out a lot, the send & returns for the effects loops; all of those features are great, very convenient. I always like to ask this question: what are you listening to lately? What’s inspiring you? Well, I’ll tell you; I don’t listen to any bass music or bass players at all, unless they are part of an ensemble. My favorite artists are Stevie Wonder and James Brown. There is probably not a time when I’m in the car where I don’t listen to Stevie Wonder; he’s still my favorite writer, my favorite artist. I listen to a lot of James Brown because I credit James Brown and Sly Stone with inventing funk, which is what I consider myself, a funk player. I grew up listening to R&B and Soul Music at a time when R&B and Soul Music was at it’s best. And so, that’s primarily what I listen to.

On the jazzier side, my favorite band is The Yellowjackets. In the last 15 or 20 years, I’ve probably been influenced as a bassist more by Jimmy Haslip than any other bass player because he sounds like he’s singing when he’s playing the bass. When I hear him play lines, I hear that they’re lines that a singer would sing. When I take solos now, I actually sing a lot when I’m playing because I really want it to be musical.

Thanks Anthony! You’ve given a lot of insightful comments and I’m sure everyone will get something out of them. Much appreciated!