Using a boatload of well-oiled grooves and improvisations,
local musicians Mike Alvarez and Greg Gohde have teamed up to perform pop and
rock classics, old standards, a smattering of jazz tunes, and a few original
compositions with their inventive juxtaposing of their two instruments: cello
and bass. As their instruments are geared to the low end of the musical
spectrum - Alvarez plays the cello, the lowest-voiced instrument in a string
quartet, and Gohde plays the bass, often the lowest-voiced instrument in any
ensemble - they call their collaboration the Bass Clef Experiment.
A combination of two baritone instruments might be expected
to have the woofers working overtime and to produce some low rumblings and not
much more, but the duo's music is quite tuneful, expressive, and often quite
surprising. A melody turns into a groove, and then turns back to a tune. Riffs
pass back and forth between the two instruments freely, like a game of musical
shuttlecock.
Gohde and
Alvarez (In full disclosure, Mike Alvarez is a contributing writer for the Troubadour.) had known each other for a
long time before forming the Bass Clef Experiment in 2006. Alvarez had been a
customer of Classic Bows, Gohde's violin shop, since the early 1990s, when Gohde
had first opened his store. "Mike had been coming into the shop for years, and
one day he gave me a copy of one of his homemade recordings," says Gohde. "I
listened to it, but it was more of what I read in Mike's bio that got me
interested in playing with him. One of the persons he listed as an influence
was Jeff Beck, who is one of my favorite musicians. So the next time he came in
the store, I said let's get together and jam."
Alvarez was
skeptical. His interests are in progressive rock, and he just assumed that
Gohde, a classical bow maker in a shop of violins, violas, and sheet music for
Mozart's string quartets, had musical tastes quite different from his own. But
Gohde told him that he was into rock music and that they shared a lot of the
same tastes. Their first jam session went well, and right off the bat the two
knew that they had the right chemistry. Alvarez says, "The music just came to
us pretty easily, and so it was obvious that we didn't need a guitarist or a
drummer. Things worked with just the two instruments. And the biggest reason
we've remained a duo is that it continues to work."
With only
the two instruments, a lot of room - as well as a great deal of responsibility
- is on Gohde's shoulders. Alvarez says that Gohde does a lot more than just
hold down the root note and has moved the bass beyond its traditional role.
"He'll pop an extra harmonic tone into a lick or play double stops in order to
flesh out an arrangement. Sometimes he'll do something completely unexpected
but never loses the groove."
Gohde plays
a fretless electric bass. The instrument combines some of the characteristics
of the upright bass and some of the characteristics of the electric bass -
which is a fretted instrument - and in many ways has qualities that go beyond either
instrument. Gohde says, "The fretless electric is more expressive. You can get
more vibrato and a nicer glissando with the instrument. I also like the sound
of the string on the fingerboard instead of the string coming down on a brass
fret." Indeed, the notes seem to growl sometimes and can often have a muted
sound as well.
Gohde has
played the fretless bass for decades. He was influenced by his cousin, who
lived next door and played the bass, Gohde picked up the instrument during his
early teens and spent several years in the basements of his Chicago
neighborhood, practicing and playing in bands that played the pop and rock hits
of the day. In 1973 he attended a music festival in downtown Chicago and heard
the Navy Band "Their bass player was really great and he was playing a
fretless," Gohde remembers. "I asked him if it was difficult and he said that
it wasn't that hard. So I made a point of getting one for myself." Gohde says
that he became aware of the instrument's potential when he heard fretless god,
Jaco Pastorius, and his contribution to Joni Mitchell's 1976 album Hejira.
A graduate
of DePaul University, where he studied music, Gohde has picked up several
instruments throughout his life - guitar, violin, viola, mandolin, and the
upright bass - and has performed in a wide variety of ensembles, from the San
Diego Mandolin Orchestra, the Irish duo of Mark Hayes and Dennis Cahill, and
the Northwest Indiana Symphony. But the one constant for him has been the
electric bass, the instrument that he feels the most comfortable playing.
Alvarez has
been a cellist almost his entire life. He first took up the violin when he was
a fifth grader at El Toyon Elementary School in National City. "There was a
music director - his name was mister Rossé - who went from school to school in
the district in a white bus. I remember it was called the band wagon," says
Alvarez. "And out of the band wagon I chose the violin, but playing it and
having to hold it up under my neck, I found awkward. So when I saw this big thing
in the wagon, a cello, I took an interest."
By the time
he was in junior high school Alvarez fell under the spell of the Electric Light
Orchestra. The band churned out pop hits, but as part of its act a string
section was featured in its ensemble. As Alvarez saw the band jamming on "Roll
Over, Beethoven" or another rock and roll number, the cellists and violinists
rocked along with the rest of the band. He now felt that as a cellist he could
be included in the music that he loved. In high school he was playing classical
pieces in the school's orchestra, but rock music remained his great interest.
He would spend hours at home spinning his records of Boston, Led Zeppelin,
Queen, or Kansas, absorbing the riffs and licks of the rock guitarists.
He minored
in music at UCSD, studying the cello with Peter Farrell. For years Alvarez
jammed with his recordings, without a band to perform with. Even with the
influence of ELO, playing the cello in a pop or rock band is akin to being the
number one surfer in Nebraska. This was also at a time before they started
electrifying and amplifying cellos, as they had been doing with basses and
guitars for decades. So even if a band had come calling, Alvarez's cello would
have been lost amid the clatter and clash of just about any rock band.
In 2000
Alvarez bought an electric cello. Like the ugly duckling turning into the swan,
suddenly everybody and his brother wanted to have him in the mix, and he hooked
up with a number of bands and individuals. He played with acoustic guitarist
Scot Taber, Bridget Brigitte, and the Roswell Six. He was featured on Michelle
Shipp's CD Arm's Length, as well as
numerous other recordings. For the Bass Clef Experiment he uses both his
acoustic cello and electric cello.
In their
weekly practice sessions, the two musicians work out their arrangements in a
fairly casual manner. Choosing a new tune, they toss the melody back and forth
between them, seeing what works best and where they might improve on things.
Alvarez says, "With just two musicians, we try to get to the essence of the
tune that we're covering. And after a while it's instinctive to find out where
the heart of the song lies." They have mostly chosen rock and pop hits from the
last 30 or 40 years, with the Beatles songbook comprising almost half of their
entire repertoire. Gohde says that the strength of the compositions of the
Beatles songs made them obvious choices for the Bass Clef Experiment, and
putting their new spin on the old tunes is a real crowd pleaser. "People like
to hear the familiar songs. We'll be playing "Eleanor Rigby" or "Norwegian
Wood," and it's interesting to see how people's heads are turned."
Over the
years Gohde and Alvarez have also written a number of their own compositions.
Simply titled Bass Clef Experiment, they have compiled five of their numbers
for an EP, which they released last month. The styles run the gamut from funky
to really funky, each tune based on a groove that Gohde sets up on his bass.
Clive Alexander joined the two musicians for the recording and filled out the
sound, adding percussion into the mix. Although they mostly work as a duo,
Alvarez and Gohde frequently work with a percussionist or drummer on their live
gigs as well.
Alvarez
says that their music mixes so well because their musical interaction has now
become an outgrowth of the great friendship that has developed between him and
Gohde. "We both trust each other and support each other. And that makes a big
difference."