I can honestly say that I have been extremely lucky in my career to be able to play with some extremely talented musicians. This is one of the major reasons I love what I do. Without them music wouldn’t be a lot of fun and recently I’ve had the good fortune of re-uniting with one of my favorite bass players on the planet, Menno Verbaten.

Menno and I go way back. Not way back to childhood or anything, he’s from Holland and I’m from, well, Kansas, but way back to when we first moved to LA. Which is a long time ago. We attended Musicians Institute at the same time and did some touring together in the late 90’s. I won’t mention the person we toured with but it’s an interesting story…

I had only been in this “band” for a month or so and we were preparing to go on a 5 week tour of the US. In preparing for the tour we were doing some local dates around LA and San Diego, you know, getting the band tight and ready to take over the world. After our last LA date, which was about 5 days before leaving for the road, our band leader decided to fire the bass player. I remember getting the phone call the next day asking if I knew any bass players that could basically pack a bag and leave town! Now most people might start freaking out but I was actually kind of glad our bass player got canned. Why? Because I didn’t really like playing with him. Not that he was a bad guy but he just wasn’t a very good player. And as any drummer will tell you if the bass player sucks the gig is going to suck. So I told our band leader I would make a few phone calls and see what I could do. The first call was to a bass player buddy of mine from MI and asked if he knew anyone that could pack a back and hit the road in 4 or 5 days plus learn all of the tunes. The first name he gave me was Menno. At that time I hadn’t worked with Menno but I knew him.

Lucky for us he was good to go. He learned all the tunes in like 2 or 3 days and I think we did maybe one rehearsal before we jumped in an RV and left town. Little did he or I know what we were in for!

We thought traveling in a nice big RV would be great. Lots of room, a fridge, TV, we were on top of the road, right? Nope. Not only did we travel from show to show in the RV but we literally lived in it! What’s wrong with that you ask? Well for starters we didn’t have a trailer for the gear. I had a 6 piece kit with a big rack at the time, Menno had a big bass cab and both guitar players had 4×12 cabinets with heads and 2 or 3 guitars each. With meant if you wanted to sleep you had to re-arrange the entire RV! I tried sleeping with my drums one night and they don’t make a very good bed. It was tight, I mean TIGHT!Living in the RV also meant that the only bathroom to use was the little one in the RV. Now this might not sound like a big deal but those bathrooms are more like a last resort type thing than an everyday bathroom. We have 4 guys and a girl using this like it was our home. Not a good thing. And to make matters worse most of the time we weren’t staying at RV parks. Meaning the “waste” would sometimes go a week or more without being emptied. If any of you have travelled in an RV you know what the smell can be like!

On top of that I did most of the driving. Menno, at the time, didn’t have a US drivers license so he kept me company while we pulled off many and overnight drive to make it to the next show (the routing wasn’t planned very well). The rhythm guitar player didn’t drive and letting the other two drive was about as safe as driving a car off the Grand Canyon.

I’m leaving out some of the more “juicy” details because they just don’t need to be told. Oh, I did enjoy listening to Menno win debate after debate with our rhythm guitar player. That was entertaining!

Despite all of that I was very fortunate to work with Menno. We have worked together quite a few times since then but as of late we hadn’t done much together. That is until now. He has been recording the bass tracks for a new band of mine (more on that in a later post) and it’s absolutely awesome to be working with him again. The rhythm section is the driving force in any rock band and Menno and I work together really well. Once he started tracking the bass it all just came together. Solid, solid, solid! As I said in the beginning, I have been very fortunate in my career to work with great musicians but there isn’t a musician on the planet I like better than a great bass player and Menno is just that. A great bass player.

Stay tuned world. This record is going to knock your teeth out!

The Basher