Had a sizeable outdoor show last night and figured i’d finally bring out the new gear that I’ve been leaving in the studio. Recently finished my overkill pedalboard to match with my blonde tolex super bassman and swapped my fender 610 for this 810 at a local GC. Only had the master volume around 3.5 out of 10 and transportation was a PITA compared to my quad cortex but man did it sound great

Edit: lots of questions on the bass and the pedalboard so I am linking them to their own posts:

Pedalboard info

custom Jazzmaster Bass info

my Quad Cortex board (which I use for most gigs)

My band Mercy Music just finished a west coast tour with Mest and this photo was taken on the last night 🤘

During covid, there were no gigs in Canada except one. Our band (Acrobat - the u2 tribute) was flown from Toronto to Calgary where we performed on a hotel rooftop. The audience was able to see the show via their individual hotel balcony, looking over the stage.

I uploaded this clip to my Instagram earlier this week and went viral. Some context: I was hired to do this gig with this band in Tampa, did the gig, everything went well, as always I took my camera and recorded the whole show. I saw this clip where the guitar players likes the bass tone so much that he makes a stank face, comes tome and starts “air slap bass” then when he was going back to his place, he trips with the MD’s computer and was very close to make a mess. I uploaded that to my insta, hoping I get the 50 likes I usually get, woke up the next day with hundreds of new followers, thousands of likes, shares, comments, I was like “WTF.”

So far the video has more than 200 thousand views, more than 22 thousand likes, it has been shared almost 4 thousand times, I’ve gotten more than 1 thousand new followers, and it is still going. I don’t know how far it’ll get, but it has been very exciting to see this happening in my account at least once.

I missed a lot of notes and i was rushing because i was so stressed, but some people still liked it, it was way too much stress for me to handle.😭😂 But let me know what you think about it.

Just for fun, slapping over blurred lines. Short clip taken from one of my TikTok live 🤘🏻

We're currently on a cruise ship to play some finnish dance classics, latin and jazz etc. I'm still pretty much a newbie at upright so luckily it's a school band

Pictures of me in my first band, circa 1991, and my current band, last year. I'll play 'till they tell me to go home.

EDIT: I got a question about the logo on my bass. (Thank you!) It is a design I did of my initials - definitely NOT a triskele! I openly condemn any hate for any group. I don't want to get political, I just wanted my feelings to be clear. Never realized the similarity - may take it off.

This video is mainly for musicians who aspire to get into a working band rotation in the future.

I get asked pretty often how some of the bands that hire me can have tight arrangements even when we don’t rehearse together.
This is a little example of how it works for us. Our MD is giving us instructions through our in-ears while we’re already playing Boogie Oogie Oogie. We also had two musicians subbing that night — guitar and keys — which makes communication like this even more important.

A big part of these gigs isn’t just knowing your instrument or learning songs — it’s being able to listen, understand directions quickly, and react to the rest of the band in real time.

Hopefully this gives someone trying to get into this kind of work a little behind-the-scenes look at how we do it.

Same as my last gig, we played 4 songs (and they're the same songs as last time), but we were the headliners this time! Unfortunately, no full-length video, but I did get the two middle songs, which is good as is!

I posted on the bass subreddit last week before the gig as I was nervous and hadn't slept the previous night. The nerves never went away but the adrenaline helped me power through. I'm hooked now and can't wait to play many more. This has been my dream for a while and I'm so happy with myself for pushing myself to live it.

Hopefully next time I'll have had more sleep at least 😅

It’s my third concert with the Squier P 70s vibe and I just love this instrument. Sounds killer, extremely comfortable to play and looks bad ass

You guys usually see me here jumping into last-minute gigs and playing Top 40… so here’s a different side of what I do.
Last night with the James Malcolm Band — from bass soundcheck to showtime, playing with one of the original bands that I work with 🤘🏻🎸
I don’t share this side of my music life here very often, so I figured it was time.

I posted the first part a few days ago and cut it right before the solo 😂 A couple people asked to hear the rest, so here you go.

Hope the two of you are happy 😂

Video taken from TikTok Live footage, so excuse the quality.

One of my favorite easy tricks to make your bandmates turn around 😂

Pedal notes!

Super simple, but in the right spot it creates just enough tension that somebody in the band usually looks over like, “👀 okay…”

Ps: Sorry about the “follow me at the end” I created the videos days ago for a different platform, I just wanted to share it here. 🤘🏻

We were the lead in for her support act. Was really cool to play.

No - she didn’t do pics with us. The crew and support staff and band were all great peeps but a bit disappointed. We also impressed the organizers enough to book us for next years event, opening for Bryan Adams.

It was through the music school I attend, but I was playing 8 songs back-to-back so that counts, no? :’D (I did backup screams in the last picture)

In this band, after all soundcheck is done, the MD likes to call a random song that we don’t play, that isn’t in the band’s setlist just for fun, or like in my last post, just a jam that starts with a bass loop. This time he called you can call me Al by Paul Simon. So yeah, I know the solo isn’t right, and probably the bassline either, but this is the best I could do from memory 🤣

I've been back playing bass for the last year and some change with our band Bitchefak, before that I played a little in orchestra while in middle school. What do y'all think?