A Q&A with Bass Virtuoso Rich Brown

Rich Brown is an all-around bass virtuoso who is everybody's first call across the Canadian border. I had the great honor of chatting with Rich recently. This interview features excerpts from that conversation:

When did you first start playing music, and in particular, when and why did you take up the bass?

I took guitar lessons when I was around eight, and I dreaded going to those lessons every single week. But my dear mom urged me to keep at it. She would make me practice for 15 minutes before I could go outside and play with the other kids.

My interest in the guitar waned until one day at the age of 13 when I turned the TV on and saw a video on MTV called "Unchained" by Van Halen. When I saw how much fun those guys were having on stage and realized how good the music made me feel, I knew I wanted to be a musician.

I taught myself to play by listening to Van Halen, Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Mark Knopfler. But years later, in high school, I found that there were a million guitar players and zero bass players. So I made the switch thinking, “How hard can it be to play bass?” The answer was, VERY!

I started by playing along with albums by the Police, and I would spend my days playing along to the songs on the radio, most of which were simple pop tunes. One night when I was 17, I tuned into a jazz program that had announced that a bass player named Jaco Pastorius had just died. I had never heard of Jaco, and the two hours that followed completely changed my life. The first song they played was “Continuum,” and by the end, I realized there was a higher level of musicality on the bass. So, I made it my mission to get to that level, and to this day, I'm still on that mission.