The Musical Life of James, the Bassist
Like everything else on this website, this’ll focus on the music and not a lot else. I was born in ’75 and grew up in a small suburb of Dallas, TX, named Duncanville. My family has musical and artistic roots. My grandfather is a musician and my grandmother an artist. My mom ended up being quite good at both. Growing up I didn’t listen to the radio or records much (basically just Charlie Brown stories & Disney stuff), but there was always music around. My mom taught piano & art lessons to local kids.
I tried twice to take piano lessons, 2 different years. Neither attempt lasted too long. I loved the lessons and theory classes with my mom, but I never fell in love with practicing. In hindsight it doesn’t surprise me that as an 8 year old I couldn’t keep up with practicing piano – I could hardly sit still for 5 minutes. The second time I tried lessons I did manage to perform at a recital (scared me to death!) and I wrote my first composition. It was an assignment for theory class, and I so desperately wanted one of those “Composer Heads”. I still think those are pretty cool. I ended up choosing the Beethoven one since I thought his head looked cool. I didn’t title my little one-page composition, but I still have it. I had no concept of writing (you know, no real adherence to key or anything), so it really was just me putting dots onto paper.
After years of aimlessly listening to the radio, the first music that held any real meaning for me was Journey, which came along courtesy of my older brother Alan. When I was 10 he got the Frontiers album for his birthday and that first listen just floored me. It was THE coolest thing I’d ever heard in my life. I think I was hooked before Separate Ways was over. Over the next few years we acquired all of their albums and when I wasn’t listening to the radio, it was all Journey.
The next major musical moment came when I was 13 and I was introduced to Iron Maiden by Alan and my best friend Brian. It took a while for me to get into the band (at first I didn’t like it) but I think listening to Live After Death non-stop for that entire summer converted me. It was during the following summer that I had THE EPIPHANY. I remember sitting on my floor listening to Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and when The Clairvoyant came on, I heard something that I had never ‘heard’ before. THAT BASS LINE. Rewind. Oh My Gosh, THAT is incredible…I want to do THAT, I want to be a bassist!
After the Steve Harris-inspired epiphany, nothing was ever the same. I asked for a bass guitar for Christmas, but my Grandfather gave me an acoustic guitar to learn first. I’m so thankful that he insisted I learn guitar first. In addition to being a great compositional tool, it’s helped me become a much better musician than just learning bass alone would have done. I did finally get the bass for the following Christmas (my 16th). I took guitar and bass lessons from a local (Dallas) teacher named Chuck Pangburn for a few years during high school.
I joined my first band, Miniver Cheevy, 6 months after starting bass and played with them on and off for the next few years. That band was extremely important to my development as a bassist and musician, and also gave me early experience in playing live. I joined my guitarist, Bryan Dunn, in attending the University of Texas and in addition to playing in Cheevy whenever we were back in Dallas, we also played together in our college bands Echo Juliet & 3 Penny Opera.
As for developing my musical taste, everything really expanded in my later high school years and especially in college. After listening to primarily Journey & Maiden (and a ton of other heavy metal groups), I started listening to artists like Rush, Queen, Davíd Garza, Flat Mass, King Crimson, John Coltrane, Frank Zappa & James Brown just to name a few. It was King Crimson’s Discipline in particular that forever changed what I thought was capable through music. I also have to give special mention to my tenure as a volunteer DJ at UT’s student-run station, KVRX. I learned a lot about music that wasn’t my normal pop-rock-metal-prog stuff and that experience of being a DJ for three years definitely broadened my listening tastes.
Where am I now? Well, I’m in North Carolina playing guitar and occasional bass for Protean Mean. This is the first band I’ve played guitar in, and I’m very excited to see what kind of a guitarist I can become after only playing bass in bands since I was 16.
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