Joseph and the Legend of the Spinal Chord (Radio Edit)
I heard this story about bassists: they get all the girls.
Joseph Harris neither confirmed nor denied this story.
We all know what it means when people can neither confirm nor deny the story, don’t we?
Feel it in Your Spine
Bass can be a hard instrument to talk about. Bassists, for whatever reason, haven’t gained the star power that guitar players have.
I don’t know why. When basses are strangled well, they’ll make your spinal cord jiggle.
It might be a personality thing.
Joseph Harris on Victor Wooten.
Joseph said there’s a particular cool thing that he likes about watching Victor Wooten play bass. The way Victor plays reminds us why it’s called playing.
Joseph said that you can spend all your energy learning technique and skill.
At some point you need to find out how your personality fits into what you do.
Where’s Your Soul?
Joseph grew up in the Carolinas, in the U.S.. He was born in North Carolina and moved to South Carolina when he was six.
At six, Joseph was already jamming. They stuck a pair of drumsticks in the kid’s hands when he was four. Like most parents, they gave him a set of pots and pans first.
Unlike all parents, they decided to cope with that mistake by giving him a set of drums instead of taking the drumsticks away. He started performing in church services.
After that he played saxophone. Then he learned guitar. Then he moved back to drums.
Then his Aunt Jackie — and God bless his Aunt Jackie for this — gave him a Marcus Miller record called M2. She suggested Joseph might like bass.
Joseph has this depth of musicianship reaching back into the dark ages! Practically. I don’t know. I’m not good with numbers. Five years, at least. He’s a dude who lives it.
Bass is like the human soul. You never THINK you notice it’s there. You just figure you’re SUPPOSED to have one because everyone else does.
So you’ve got bassist who are some dude who wants to be in the band, and you need a bass, and he’s no good, so you just put him in there.
And you’ve got bassists who get it and pluck at your spine because there’s a reason they called it “soul music.”
Bass Players Make Us Happy. That’s Why We All Want to Date Them.
I asked Joseph what he’d do if he had unlimited resources tomorrow. He answered me by basically saying he wanted to be the bassist to the whole music scene in Barcelona, in Europe, and, eventually, the world.
You can hear the cat’s fingers playing the spinal chord with Jezebel Lies here.
Spinal chord: a chord you can hear in your spine. Right? Okay, never mind.
This article is edited from its original version. For the whole article, jump over to our main site.
Here’s the link.
Author’s website…
More by this author here…
