Rock the Cradle must have been a fun event!
Oh man! It was so great because we did so many different kinds of music; we could do Led Zeppelin one minute and Bobby Brown the next! And you had to be prepared to play that stuff authentically to make it sound right. Sometimes we had to take the old songs and update them to sound modern, so the young kids could bob their head to it but still have the feel of the original. That was a challenge because they didn’t give us that long – each artist only had an hour! They would come in, tell us what song they were doing and then we would try to switch it up in an hour and make it sound good. Each song was only 90 seconds so we had to cut the song up, put the twist on it, make sure the artist is happy with what section of the song they wanted to sing and then vamp it out real fast. That was the challenging part; we had to move, you know what I mean? If we had charts it would have been much easier; you chart everything out, read it and then, bam, move on to the next. But since we didn’t know what they wanted until they came in, we couldn’t chart it out. And then we had to change keys for some tunes and we had to do it right there at the drop of a dime!

That kept you on your toes!
That really kept me on my toes – that kept everybody on their toes! And you wanted to nail everything as much as you could because you didn’t know when they were going to have the camera on you! You didn’t want to the camera on you and you were the only one in the band messing up (laughs)!

You didn’t want to have your “mistake face” on!
Oh, exactly! You didn’t want them showing you mess up on TV. So, yeah, that really kept me on my toes.

You have done a lot of high-profile tours with major artists – how do you prepare for a commitment like that?
Well, once you’ve been doing this for a while, you kind of develop a system. I always get the list of songs or whatever the set list is going to be. If we’re starting off the first week and I know we’re gonna be hitting six songs or something like that, I’ll focus on the first four or five songs. I know there’s gonna be different changes coming along or a different arrangement, it might run into a medley, so I just focus on those four and get the format and all that before I come in. So, now all I gotta remember is the changes – I already know the actual song. If they wanna cut out a chorus here and go straight to the vamp, I know what the song is so I can just focus on what chorus they wanna cut out and where the wanna go from there. Most of the time, when we come in and learn the stuff and start playing it, there’s no vocal because the singer is not even there yet! So you gotta remember what the forms gonna be and it helps if you studied the song with vocals beforehand. It’s easy with the vocals to remember when the chorus or the bridge is coming up. Without the singer, you have to be on your “P & Q’s”! You get into the habit of coming in there prepared with your notebook or your laptop with notes like; “break here, after 16 bars come back in, bass fill on bar 22, etc.” I do it like that.

How about session work – do you have a lot of time to prepare ahead of time?
Or are you hearing things for the first time when you show up?
When I did P. Diddy’s record, they called me in, played the song and said, “We want this kind of feel and do you”. And with the Hip-Hop artists, they don’t do charts! You just have to come in and have good feel and make the music feel good. You have to try and get what they want and be yourself at the same time. But it all happens right there. They’ll give you a couple of takes but if you are in there for a while, they will say, “You take too long! We need somebody else who can get this moving”. You have to make it feel as good to them as possible right away. The faster you can work with the Hip-Hop artists the more they want to use you. When you see them smiling, you know everything is going right! And it’s so hard for them to explain things because they’re not truly musicians in terms of playing an instrument, so the way they will describe things, will be so crazy sometimes and you just try to figure it out and make it happen!

What is one of the biggest learning experiences you’ve had in getting to where you are?
I’ve had a few but I would say, the Janet Jackson tour because at the drop of a dime I would be playing bass on one song and then you would hear a count off in your ears for the next song and would have to go to the key bass. Or if I were playing key bass, at the 3 count, I would have to go straight to another patch just like that! I was doing this all on one keyboard, manually! So if I don’t get that patch changed, I’d be doing What Have You Done For Me Lately with a patch for Control (laughs)!
And she has such good ears for her music that during rehearsals, I’d be thinking, “I gotta get this change just like that in a split second or I’m gonna mess up the whole song!” If you were a split second off she’d turn around and say, “Was that you Ethan?” She hires the best people, so you don’t want the finger pointed at you (laughs)! “I’m handling my stuff!”
So, that was challenging because they were very particular about the sounds that were on the record, so we had to create my sounds for the keyboard and sample the sounds from the record so they were identical. Not only did the feel have to be there, but there was a lot of work to get the right sound from the records. Usually if I come in on key bass, and I work with a lot of people where I play key bass, I come in with my own sounds that are close and they are fine with it but this was very detailed.

On a related note, how much interaction is there with the “star” on a tour like this? It sounds like Janet was involved in
quite a bit.
She was very involved. It just depends on the artist. I’ve worked with so many people like Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish down to Babyface or a gospel group like The Clark Sisters and each artist varies.
Janet is a sweetheart. She comes in the first day of rehearsal and knows everybody’s name. Everyone. Then you have some artists who you don’t see or communicate with at all; they tell everything to the musical director and then he tells you what’s going on. You get some artists who wanna be on stage with you right when the sound check starts! Usually the artist doesn’t come in till 45 minutes after the band goes up and does a line check. They come in, check their mic, run a few songs with the band and then they’re off the stage cuz they’re superstars! But some artists just want to be on stage and make sure your stuff is cool. They just want to be a part of the whole thing.

With all of the different projects you have been involved in, what is one of the most important traits for a musician to have?
A great keyboard player or a great drummer, what makes them great is that they know how to adapt to any situation and make any situation work and give the artist or producer or musical director whatever they need. So, when you got great cats with you, it makes it a lot easier.
A good musician has to have an ear for a lot of different kinds of music, so when you’re in a situation where they want you to make that kind of change, you have a wide variety to pick from and make it happen. That’s an important thing to have. When someone asks me, “Ethan, we don’t want this bass line, we want it a bit more funky!” I’ll think if I want to go with a James Brown-type of funk or a Sly Stone and the Family Stone-type funk? Larry Graham or a Louis Johnson-type of funk when he did this little break on a Michael Jackson album? Maybe something like he did on The Brothers Johnson?

You are also a musical director aren’t you?
I used to do a lot of musical directing when I moved out here; I was the MD for Brandy, Bone, Thugs & Harmony and a gospel group called Mary Mary. But being a musical director you have to have a lot of patience! My hat goes off to the musical director; there are a lot of demands that you have to meet. I was frustrated doing it because I’m a nice guy (laughs)! I hired my friends and they were getting to me, I had to tell them, “Can you please show up to rehearsal on time?” And they would say, “Make up an excuse for me! I’m your boy, I’ll be there” (laughs)! I’d rather just show up and play bass! I’ll let another MD handle that and I’ll show up on time and do my thing!

In regards to breaking into the scene; how did you get your name out there?
Man, a lot of sitting in! I’m from Chicago and I moved out to L.A. ten years ago this year. I didn’t know anybody when I got here. I had cards printed up and I passed them all out and introduced myself to so many people but it’s so political in the music scene sometimes. It’s all who you know or what your resume was and it can be very… Hollywood! People won’t deal with you unless you’ve done something already. They don’t know you from anybody else and I’m quite sure they get approached like that all the time. Some people can’t play, so they are very cautious.

So I got the blow off, my 3,000 cards were gone and nobody called me (laughs)! Then I went on to the next step and I started finding jam sessions and I found that Ricky Lawson would be there or Greg Phillinganes or people of that caliber and sit in and play my hardest and try to make everything feel good. And my approach was a little bit different, coming from the Midwest, and people started complimenting me and asking for my number and it started snowballing!
I met this great cat, Andrew Gouche, and Andrew was the one who really helped me get the ball rolling out here because I was so used to playing everyday in Chicago. I was playing in the clubs and doing the gospel stuff, I was playing everyday and I moved out here and didn’t play out for eight months! I went from playing packed clubs to playing in my friend’s living room! Andrew Gouche used to have a jam on the weekends and everyone would be there. I was introduced to him and he called me up to play and I was never so nervous in my life! So, the first time I met him I had to play in front of him and all of these people! I got up there and played and I think I played pretty well but I was sweating so bad – I sweated like I just ran a 26 mile marathon and then grabbed my bass (laughs)! After I played, I ran straight to the bathroom to freshen up – it looked like I’d been playing for three hours! He took me in right away and liked what I did and was so cool with me. The thing that really got me rolling was that he got called along with all these other L.A. guys to play with Jody Watley. He couldn’t do the gig, but told everyone, “You gotta call this young cat, he can handle it.” And they called me! So when we did the TV circuit, all of the L.A. cats had their friends watching. After that, they all started asking for my number! Their attitude was, “If he can play with them, he can play with us too!” Even though I was thinking, “I gave you my number five months ago and you never called (laughs)!” From that, one TV show led to another – I was doing Leno once a week! So I give all the credit to Andre Gouche because I probably would have still been working in a club another eight months before they realized what I could do!

You’ve been with Aguilar for a while now – what have you been using?
I’m using the DB 750 head and two GS 212 cabinets. I gig around town with the AG 500 head and man, that amp is killin’ too! I’ve been using that with the 210 cabinet and a 112 around town and it’s great! I’m almost tempted to try the 500 head on the tour to see how far I can go with it and experiment with the different sounds. It is a different sound from my touring rig, it’s a different tone but it’s still a killin’ tone! So I’m thinking of playing it through the big cabinets.

So, the larger rig is your tour rig?
Yes, two GS 212’s with the DB 750 and that’s the rig I used on the Babyface tour, Christina’s tour, and also what I’m taking out with the New Kids.

Thanks Ethan for taking time out of your busy schedule to share some of your knowledge with us!