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“Bass players are the cool ones.” People always say that when I tell them I play the bass. I won’t say it’s always true (I’m proof of that), but the image I have in my head of bass players is of Adam Clayton of U2, or the dudes from The Hold Steady and Arcade Fire–cool guys that stand at the back of the stage and calmly do their thing while all around them is chaos. I remember watching a huge Oasis concert maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and there on the stage, the bass player was sitting on a bar stool with his legs crossed. He was so cool he couldn’t even be bothered to stand!

Obviously, there are exceptions. Sting for one, Paul McCartney for another. Great bass players, great songwriters, but not “cool” in the sense of “the opposite of hot.”

I’m not a particularly cool bass player. I can’t hold still when I’m playing music–maybe because I spent so many years as a drummer. The thought of sitting on a bar stool during a show horrifies me.

I’ve performed on several instruments with different bands in New York. I switched from bass to drums during the four years I played with Mere (and did one show on electric guitar…it sucked). I play mandolin sometimes with The Sabre Rattlers. But what keeps me coming back to the bass is that it’s a fairly mindless instrument, whether I’m playing it cool or not.

Mindless in a good way, obviously. Next time you’re watching a band perform, look at the different musicians. The guitar player has a lot to do: get the perfect tone out of the guitar and the amp, keep six strings tuned, work the effects pedals, play solos, and manage difficult chords that can require up to six notes at a time. Six!

Look at the drummer–he’s keeping time, making sure the band isn’t rushing or dragging, and synchronizing the actions of four limbs at once. In my band Shakedown at the Majestic, our drummer has a lot of control over the band’s volume too, and he sings fairly complicated harmonies while he does all that other stuff.

The singer has it the easiest…he just needs to plug in a mic and do his thing.

I don’t have a good voice, though, so the next best thing is bass guitar. I only have four or five strings to worry about, I’m only playing one note at a time, and I rarely need to play anything faster than an eighth note. One slow note at a time!

And I’m not generally responsible for enforcing the tempo or the volume. Heck, I don’t even really worry about the tone on my instrument or amp. I choose between “deep” and “bright,” and even then, in a loud, small club, the differences between the two are negligible to all but the most discerning ears.

All this simplicity means I get to enjoy the show. The guitar player is sweating and the drummer is furiously concentrating on hitting the right things at the right time, but I get to take in the audience, enjoy the song we’re playing, dance around a little bit, or whatever.

Another benefit to the simplicity is the amount of prep time I have to put in. An awesome bluegrass band called Engines of Commotion emailed me this week with an invitation to sit in with them for a gig tonight. I started listening to the music and learning the chords on Tuesday, and by tonight I should be pretty much ready to go with the ten songs we’re playing.

Contrast that with every other member of that band (fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar), who’ve spent hours and months and years of rehearsals learning the complicated solos and runs. It’s not fair for me to even be sharing the stage with them, but that’s why I love playing the bass!

I know there are fast, complicated bass parts that you learn if you take bass lessons. Those are only useful if you’re trying to impress a girl at Guitar Center or you play in Rush, Primus, Steely Dan, or Rancid. Otherwise, get back to playing eighth notes one at a time.

I recently lent out my old starter bass to a teenager who lives in my neighborhood. He’d never played one before but saw me perform at a street fair last week and was interested in trying it out. He’s taking guitar lessons from my friend, so I know he’s learning guitar chords–I give him two weeks before he’s able to play a couple easy songs on bass, and within 12 months he should be able to play any bass line you’d hear on the radio. That’s why bass is awesome.

But enough about bass. If you wanna hear real musicians playing real instruments, come by Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn tonight (Friday) and watch Engines of Commotion. The show’s at 9pm and the band is amazing (check em out below).

Very excited to “announce” my new band, Shakedown at the Majestic. Those who knew me in college might remember the band as Fat Elvis…same guitar player/singer (Chris Vermillion), same bassist (me), but we swapped out my brother on drums for a crazed percussive animal named Taylor.

Chris called me about a month ago asking if I’d replace their outgoing bassist, and how could I say no? He’s a fantastic songwriter–fun tunes that are a little pop, a little surf rock, a little doo-wop, a little ska, a little british invasion, and just a hint of late-70s punk. And the best thing about his songs is they make that blend of genres feel entirely natural (if hard to describe). Get a taste at our MySpace page…I recommend starting with “Run for Your Life.” If you don’t like that tune, you probably don’t like music, or maybe your heart is dead or something. You should get it checked out.

And BTW, it’s totally inconceivable that MySpace STILL doesn’t let you embed tracks from its player. Ridiculous.

Anyway, my first show with Shakedown at the Majestic was at a street fair on Saturday (photo above), and we’ve got another show Thursday night on the Lower East Side. R Bar, 9PM. Come on out, it’ll be fun!

P.S. — I’ll be editing some video from Saturday’s show, and I’ll post it here and on YouTube when it’s ready. Unless it sucks.

P.P.S. — If you’re wondering about Mere, our showcase at CMJ in October will almost certainly turn out to have been our last show. The guitarist and songwriter just moved to Georgia, the singer’s got his big TV moment (he’s in The Pacific), and our wives all had babies at the same time. So the story of Mere ends happily, I think. And our commercial is still airing during NBA games (which never seem to end).

P.P.P.S. — If you’re wondering about The Sabre Rattlers, we’re on summer hiatus while our fiddle player is out of town. But I got to join Mark for a quick set at the street fair on Saturday. It was good times…we played several songs for the first time up on stage. That’s how real folk music is made–if you know all the lyrics, it ain’t real folk music!

1. Mere has been named Stereofame’s Artist of the Month! Big thanks to Stereofame and the SF community, which has been a huge supporter of Mere for a while now. Which brings us to…

2. The live video from Stereofame’s CMJ showcase is now online at Stereofame and embedded below. Great video and sound quality, fun crowd, and Dwight’s voice sounded AMAZING.  Only bummer is that I was hollering my lungs out on background vocals, but got lost in the mix–but perhaps that’s for the best. Anyway the video includes a Mere interview with Fuse TV’s Allison Hagendorf, followed by “You & I” and “Anything at All.”

Sidenote: The other club we’ve been banned from is Snitch, because Brett almost got in a fight with the booker a couple years ago. But that was fine; we played several shows there and the sound guys were horrible, and on any given night, half their amps were blown out and one of their mics wouldn’t work (or something). Plus their drink prices are ridiculous, so our fans didn’t like the club any more than we do.

Anyway, the CMJ show a few weeks ago was my second Mere gig on the drums. I played for years when I was a kid–even dropped out of college for a semester to play drums in a rap-metal band in Portland–but I loved playing bass with Mere. Drummers are stuck sitting down during shows, and playing drums requires concentration (and playing drums and singing takes practice). Let’s be real: bass guitar is the easiest instrument in the world. I could play my bass, sing some backup vocals, and have plenty of brain power left over to enjoy the show and feel the energy.

But once in a while, it’s fun to sit at the kit and bang on some cymbals. Brett, the rhythm guitar player, took over on bass, and we were lucky enough to get erstwhile Mere singer/songwriter Christian Brucculeri back into the lineup on rhythm guitar and vocals. He even sang lead on Try, which is my #1 favorite Mere song, and is probably in my top 10 favorite songs. Christian wrote several great Mere tracks like Anything At All and Falling. Great singer and great songwriter, as is Dwight, so having them both onstage was great.

And now, for some pictures (courtesy of my buddy Daniel Parker):

How exciting is this: my band Mere is rocking the CMJ Music Marathon in NYC in a few weeks!! We played SXSW last March, and now we’re playing CMJ! As indie music festivals go, those are the two big ones, so it’s a real treat to play them both.

Obviously, once the CMJ folks see how much enthusiasm I’ve expressed over the gig, and my use of the word “treat,” they’ll probably rescind their offer in favor of some Brooklyn band with a theremin, but just in case they don’t, here are some details. The show is Friday, Oct. 23rd at Ace of Clubs, and we’ll be taking the stage around 10:45 pm. And I’ll be playing the drums for this show,  with Rock Reilly on the bass, and the brilliant Christian Bruculleri playing rhythm guitar and singing some backup vox. I think Mere fans will really like the new configuration, so if you’re in NYC, come on out and have fun with us. (We’re way more fun than that theremin band)

• Chugged club soda with almost all of my Austin friends and many of my SF friends.

• Saw the best hair-metal cover band in history do Journey songs better than Journey.

• Watched from the VIP booth as thousands of maybe-too-enthusiastic guys swarmed around a stage for a live taping of DiggNation

• Asked one of the lead Facebook dudes some tough questions about the redesign (but maybe not tough enough…still hate it after two weeks)

• Watched guys from Firefox, IE, Opera, and Google Chrome spar over Web standards

• Met Dooce, and listened to her, the “Stuff White People Like” guy, the Lolcatz/Failblog dude, and the original Wonkette talk about the secrets of blogging with my friend, the Passive-Aggressive Notes girl.

• Met a lot of my tech-reporter-blogger heroes (whom I won’t name here out of embarrassment).

• Sat on a panel of judges with iLike‘s Ali Partovi to evaluate some new music startups that are launching soon.

• Maybe danced just a little bit. But not too much. But maybe a little.

• Flew home to NYC to find out WE’RE HAVING A GIRL!!!! (yeah, I buried that tidbit way down here so only the real blog readers would see it!)

• Flew back with Mere to play a show.

• Had a lot of fun hanging out in Austin with the band

• Local friends like Cindy and Piet showed us around and took us to the spots where the locals hang out when we got sick of the SXSW crowds

• Ate a ton of awesome barbecue at Stubbs and Iron Works.

• Saw a flier for the Mere show on the sidewalk in downtown Austin. Loved seeing Mere’s name in Austin, even if it was underfoot on the sidewalk!

• Mere show went well, considering the lineup changes and the fairly thin crowd (though it wasn’t as thin as it looks in the video). It was a fun day for a barbecue and live music, and it was fun to have friends there. And hey, the trip was free! Video travelogue of the trip is embedded below (part 2 of a 2-part series on YouTube, sorry so long).

The real news about the show is that the lineup’s a little bit different. Our drummer can’t make the trip, so I’m going to be manning the drumkit while former Mere bassist Tony tries valiantly to fill my shoes on bass. Christian, the former Mere lead singer and writer of “Anything at All,” will be playing rhythm guitar. Dwight and Brian will still be Dwight and Brian.

The party is at The Vortex on Saturday the 21st at 4pm. More details are here.

Weirdly enough, I’ll also be covering the SXSW Interactive festival for PCMag this coming weekend, and you’ll be able to read my coverage on AppScout.com and PCMag.com. I fly home on Wednesday to find out the sex of our baby and see him/her for the first time via ultrasound, and then head right back to Austin for the Mere show. Good times! Hit me on Facebook or email if you’re going to be at either SXSW or SXSWi.

“…go to Google and type in these four letters: m-e-r-e.”

Did he discover my band? Is the world hot, flat, and crowded enough that Mr. Friedman stumbled across Mere sometime during his extensive wandering in Asia? (We have a small but loyal following in Dubai, after all)(I’m not kidding).

Turns out no, he was using the letters to illustrate some point with Google search results. But all the same, if you were to go to Google and type in m-e-r-e, Mere’s site would be the second entry in the search results. You see, students, because the world is flat, in order to rise to the top you have to have excellent search-engine optimization. And Mere does.