The Road to CukoRakko: A Conversation with Freekbass September 28, 2015 08:40

FB:  Yeah, I started playing live when I was about 14 with a lot of the places being before I was legally allowed to be there if I wasn't in "the band". I read where Keith Richards said that the stage is the place that most feels at home, and I definitely feel that way. I couldn't tell you what I ate for lunch but I think I can remember almost every stage experience since I started. It's a unique place to grow up. Probably one of my earliest stage memories is when we played the 8th Grade talent show. Everyday in the lunchroom there was this big, pretty intimidating looking cat that would always call me names and threaten to beat me up. At the talent show I played guitar and we played "The Jack" by AC/DC. That next day the same dude who acted like he was going to pulverize me, acted like he was my best friend with a huge smile on his face full of positive energy. That was one of the first times I realized the power in music. 

FB:  I worked at a music store the summer going into high school to pay off a bass I wanted.There were always older musicians who were gigging for a living coming into the store talking about the lifestyle, touring, and recording. They would compare stories with each other about where they had been, what gear they liked, crazy road stories , etc. It was fascinating to a kid just starting to play. Then a lot of times they would sit down and play and let me play with them. That is how I learned how to thump and pluck on the bass. One person from an r&b/funk group would come into the store and start thumping on the bass Louis Johnson style. It sounded magical, so I asked him if he could show me how to do that on the bass. About once a week he would stop in the store and have me mimic back and forth what he was doing and little by little I would "get it". 

FB:  Bootsy's singer from the original Rubberband, and a member of George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic, Gary "Mudbone" Cooper, had heard about me around Cincy and asked me to play bass on some of his demos. One day he called and said he was working on a track for a new compilation album for P-Vine Records (funk label out of Japan) which were songs written about Jimi Hendrix. A different funk collaboration would do each track. Muddy was doing a track with Kidd Funkadelic/ Michael Hampton and asked me if I would like to play bass on the track. I said of course and asked him where we would be recording it. He said Bootsy's, and Boot would be producing and engineering the track.

As you can imagine I was pretty excited. We went to Bootsy's studio and he and I hit it off great, and a couple of weeks later he asked me back out to the studio to write some songs and record together. Definitely a huge turning point in my career. That is when he gave me the name 'Freekbass' too. He had a bunch of bass effects at his studio and I always used a lot of my own too and he would always say "do that Freekie thing with your bass" and folks around the studio picked up on it and everyone started calling me "Freek" or Freekbass and it stuck. 

FB:  Wow, you are going back right after high school days. Right when we got that deal (which was a big indy label distributed by a major) was right when SHAG (the funk band I toured with right before I started the Freekbass band ) was starting. So for a while I tried doing both bands. But SHAG started touring so much it became really difficult to do both things and I didn't think it was fair to the ST band to suffer or take a back seat to what I was doing. So I made the decision to move on with SHAG. It was tough to do because I had been playing and writing with those guys since early high school days, but it felt like the right move. 

I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have gotten to play with some incredibly gifted folks. We already talked a bit about Bootsy which was and always is incredibly inspiring when we get together. Playing and writing with Bernie Worrell has been pretty amazing. Bernie is one of those folks that it is very easy to use the word genius with. He has been on a few of my albums , and I got to play with him at Moogfest a few years back which was incredible since him and Moog are so closely linked. 

Also, playing and recording with Mike Gordon has been great. He and I met at Bass Player Live (event put on by Bass Player Magazine) few years back. I asked him if he would like to be on my album and he was down. Since then we have become pretty good friends usually spending a lot of the time talking bass geek stuff like the newest pedals and effects. He is a great bassist with his own very unique voice and such a good guy.