white poison industries

So, after Whiplash Willy, I started playing a lot of solo acoustic stuff and inevitably ended up playing rhythm guitar for a while. $trick9 was off doing his own thing, writing rhymes and I was in the midst of a roots rock revolution. I ended up rehearsing with a couple guys that were more or less classic rock/blues, but that didn’t pan out. While I was playing with them, I was playing a Fender Highway One Stratocaster through a Fender Stage Lead 1000 amp. It was a crazy good set up. I ended up with a bunch of pedals, including an original Tube Screamer, a few cool chorus pedals and an Eric Clapton modeler pedal, which produced some near-Clapton sounds. (Alas, I am a bassist, so none of this stuck.)

I was pretty much kicked out of the group and ran into a couple guys that would become Hedgerow. They needed a bass player, I needed to play bass. So, it was going to work out. Hedgerow was a jam band. In the first rehearsal it was just Wingert (the future, former drummer for the Truth), Moose and myself. I played on the red Ibanez bass through my old Crate amp. I really dug the vibe and most of what Whiplash Willy was (outside of being a really psychedelic folk duo) was that we could jam.

So, the following weekend, I packed up all of my guitar stuff, my Crate bass amp and went down to Ground Zero Music in Indianola. I told the guys what was going on, that I was going to play bass and (in my mind) was through with 6-string and I traded in all of that gear for a bass set up and a new bass.

So, the GZ guys start accounting for what my trade in value would be and I start looking around at bass gear. I find a few basses that would do, but one stood out in particular. It was a midnight purple Fender fretless jazz bass.

Duke's Fretless Fender Jazz

Now, I’d never played a fretless bass before, but I knew Jeff Ament from Pearl Jam played fretless (he plays a fretless Wal bass on a number of songs, which is incredible) and I figured since it had the fret line markings, I’d be ok.

I sat there playing it for maybe three hours. I was taken. The sound just burped when you played it. The strings were flatwound Chromes. The aura of the bass spoke to me in ways that I’d never thought were possible.

Now, most of the stuff I was playing while sitting there would eventually become riffs for the White Poison mixtape. There was a feeling that I was coming up with new material, just by playing a different bass. New and unique ideas and sounds were flowing through my mind. (This is probably why I’ve collected the number of basses over the years that I have as each has given me new ideas for playing and expressing my bass prowess.)

So, I ended up going with the fretless bass and a 200 watt Fender bass amp. It was a 12″ speaker combo. I figured I was set. On the drive back from Indianola, I stopped into Day Dreams and picked up a Grateful Dead skull & roses sticker, which remained on the back of the bass throughout its tenure in my stable.

Rehearsals with Hedgerow went really well. The fretless sound was perfect for what we were doing. Eventually, I outgrew the Fender amp and moved into a GK rig. This was essentially when Hedgerow added a rhythm guitarist.

I played the fretless for a few of the early shows and on a few songs on the White Poison Mixtape.