Special thanks to **Marley23 **for turning me on to this just-last-night youtube clip of the concert he got to go to, and I did not (grr) featuring the Trucks/Tedeschi Band.
See clip of their cover of the great Stevie Wonder tune Up-Tight (Everything’s Alright) here.
But this isn’t about Derek Trucks, slide-playing Channel of God/*wunderkind *tho he is. It’s about his bass player, Oteil Burbridge.
Dude gets a bass solo 5 minutes into the clip. And before you :rolleyes: your eyes and start telling bass solo jokes - yep, I get it. But look at the man’s fretting hand - just watch it during the solo.
In addition to having Frying Pan/Catcher’s Mitt/Freakin’ HUGE hands, Have you ever seen such perfect technique? He’s like Tim Duncan of the NBA: The Big Fundamental. No matter how fast, furious and funky he is playing, his hand is ALWAYS in the ready position and relaxed. And his Ready position is, to me, at the perfect angle: his fingers are angled to the neck, not perfectly perpendicular in more of a shredder/classical, full thumb on the back of the neck position, nor is it a non-tech, old-school casual grip. It’s just…perfect.
Just one of those things. Since I found myself unable to take my eyes off of it - and I rarely give two shits about technique if the music sounds right - I thought I would point it out…
Nice clip, WordMan! A bass solo can be a very cool thing when it’s done in proper doses, and I think Burbrige, Trucks & Co. had the right idea there.
For the record…Vic Wooten is a god. As this little duel shows, Anthony Wellington’s no slouch either. I can watch Wooten clips all day. In fact, I’m going to walk away from the computer before I start doing it again.
To be clear: I love Victor Wooten and his technique is pure, too. But…he has those sausage fingers man! I remember watching an old B&W clip of Andres Segovia, master innovator of the classical guitar - he had those plump fingers, too. But what technique; jeez…no disrespect to Wooten at all.
Burbridge has rock-crushing hands; they look like they could form metal. The fact that his touch is so precise and so…consciously natural, if you will…stands out in contrast to the bazookas he is using to my eye.
But hey, I respect the man for overcoming the limitation of his tiny stuffed casings!
If we are going for size here…
From the guitar side of things, if you watch Steve Vai or Jimi Hendrix play, they both look like they could wrap their fingers around the fretboard twice.
The wunderkind had to limp a little bit to get up to Oteil’s solo. He pops a string about 30 seconds before Oteil lights up the stage. Makes me wonder if the bass solo was on time, or had to come in early or whether it was improvised to cover for the absence of Derek.
That’s where seasoned and talented musicians can fool you. I just can’t tell what the actual plan for that song really was. But either way you can see why Trucks has such a high regard to O. Burbridge.
[youtube clip of JEFF BECK - yay! - with the lovely and talented Tal Wilkenfeld on bass, who is an amazing player and whose hands are as small as Oteil’s are big…and whose jazz-type bass cradles her bosom just…so.]
Awesome band! Really a terrific cover of that song!
I was really intrigued when I read this part of the OP, because that reads like a description of my own left hand. When I watched the video, I was like “yep, that’s how I look when I play; I guess it’s not as fucked up a technique/position as I thought”.
I had never heard of Susan Tedeshci before, but she’s got an awesome voice. That trumpet player was no slouch either!
One of my favorite bass players, Jeff Berlin uses the same relaxed left hand technique.
BTW, for anyone who knows what I’m talking about, I recently acquired a CD copy of the long OOP Road Games by Allan Holdsworth (with Jeff Berlin on bass and Chad Wackerman on drums). One of my favorite albums, but I lost my copy over 20 years ago. I know it has no relation to the OP; I’m just happy about it and bragging.
Does that make up for my thread about the band Cage the Elephant?
I hear you - my hand positioning isn’t all that great, but I am often stunned/pleased to read how someone I respect approaches the instrument and find out I do it the same way on some front or another…
In the Northeast, her last name, Tedeschi, is known because it is the name of a large store chain - she is part of that family, out of Boston. Carved a very Bonnie Raitt type of path through the blues, earning similar credibility. Solid guitar player, too. Robbed the cradle by hooking up with Trucks (she is, what, maybe 10 years older? Good on 'er!) while they were on tour together or something.
That was an excellent show Wednesday, and at least half of it is on YouTube now, which is a nice bonus. I don’t mean to get all technical, but Oteil is the bomb. I’ve seen him around 50 times with a few different bands and never seen him take a solo quite like that - very fast, very propulsive. I have seen a few video clips of him playing that way in the old days with the Aquarium Rescue Unit. Anyway I’ve been lucky enough to get very good views of him at some recent shows and I was just blown away by how busy, active and precise his playing was. I thought I learned a lot - first and foremost that I’ll never be half that good.
I’m pretty sure the solo was planned - they went from Uptight into that bass solo, then the drummers soloed briefly, and then they went straight into Manic Depression (sung by Oteil).
man! I remember watching an old B&W clip of Andres Segovia, master innovator of the classical guitar - he had those plump fingers, too. But what technique; jeez…no disrespect to Wooten at all.
I’ve seen him around 50 times with a few different bands and never seen him take a solo quite like that - very fast, very propulsive. I have seen a few video clips of him playing that way in the old days with the Aquarium Rescue Unit. Anyway I’ve been lucky enough to get very good views of him at some recent shows and I was just blown away by how busy, active and precise his playing was. I thought I learned a lot - first and foremost that I’ll never be half that good.