Stu, you're known as the guitar virtuoso's bassist and also as a very accomplished tap-style bass player, but it seems as if you're branching out even further these days. Where would you say you're at with your career right now?

Stu Hamm: Well, I feel very fortunate to be able to do different kinds and styles of music. I started out playing upright bass in my high school jazz band, reading changes and playing jazz charts. When I went to school at Berklee College of Music in the late ’70s, I studied classical music but, for me, I like to get in my rock chops when I play with Joe. I love the energy of playing at a rock show. Even though sometimes you might think the music is simple, it's really not. It takes as much talent and work, I think, to play a simple bass part and make it sound rocking and convincing as it does to play something really complicated. But I think a steady diet of rock eighth notes would be kind of restricting after a while.

What do you think it is about your approach to bass that makes it work so well with Joe Satriani and with Steve Vai, both of which must be very demanding gigs?

SH: I met Steve Vai when we were both 18-year-olds at the Berklee College of Music and we've always had a great relationship. With Joe, when we started out in the late ’80s, we used to play a lot more notes than we do now. As you start playing bigger places and getting more popular, or just a little more mature as musicians, you realize that simplicity is good. We're playing more songs than open-ended jams, and it's great. A lot of times it's what you don't play, not what you do play. And I'm trying to play with more space. I've been fortunate in my solo career, and a little bit with Steve and Joe, to be able to incorporate tapping and the slapping, but I think I've reached the point in my life where I never want to put in a lick just for a lick's sake. The worst thing you can say to a bass player is that you sound like a guitar player. I do what's necessary to fill the role of the bass, which is unifying the rhythm and the chords, you know, which is the great power of the bass. If the bass goes to the bridge, it sounds like the song goes to the bridge and everyone else is messed up, instead of vice versa.

The music you just did with GHS, how would you say that was different?

SH: It's definitely in a jazzier vein. With my early solo records, I tried to emulate Joe's success by writing—I wouldn't say Joe Satriani songs—but I played with the guy so much that some of his writing rubbed off on my writing. So with GHS, it was like jazz boot camp. We had 10 songs, and we locked ourselves up in Steve's studio. Every day, we'd wake up and throw out some ideas and get together a song, then we'd record it and mix it. And the next day, it's the next song. It was really a challenging and creative process. I was pleased with the solos I did. I would come from the space where I would try to find something totally new to play, instead of trying to rely on the same old slap and pop techniques. I played some really nice fretless tracks on it, actually.

Tell us about your new solo album.

SH: This is my fourth solo record, and doing a solo record is so different. There's so much of me on it. It's a real reflection of where I'm at in my life now, which is that I live in San Francisco. I've been living here for about two years. It's a funky urban city. I live right in the city, actually up the hill from the Castro. So there's one song I wrote that's a reflection of the beats from the gay bars coming up the hill to my house. When I was writing the record, I could've had a guitar player play the melody and hired one of the great drummers I know to play on it, but it's the year 2000, and I wanted it to reflect that. So I met these two kids named Chris [Collins] and Greg [Forsberg] that have a production company called Youth Engine here in the city. They do video game soundtracks and house beats and stuff. So most of the beats are generated electronically on the record, but it's in no way a techno record, hip-hop record or trance record. There's certainly a lot more of my own playing on it. I was a real stickler for the melodies and the way the melodies would be played. I'm spoiled playing with Steve and Joe. The guitar players that ended up on the record were great, because there were times when I need someone to play a solo that I can't play. But I ended up doing a lot more of the melodies and leads myself on fretless and on my bass, Larry, which was an original Urge bass, short-scale, 32-inch. I strung that up with piccolo strings and then put it through an octave box, an octave up, with a distortion pedal and delay so that I could get the melody frayed the way I like it. The record certainly has the chance to reach a wider base of people than the GHS record or maybe some of my records in the past. It's not just a bass wank and tap record, you know, there are actually songs there. The songs that I wrote all mean something emotionally or are about something, rather than "let's see some chops" kinds of things.

Is there anything you do, like a "mojo" for playing? Like, they say Jaco used to carry a chicken bone around in his case. Is there anything like that that you do to get up for the gig?

SH: I've always just been one of these cats that has a hard time relaxing. When I used to go out with Joe, I'd have "Relax and Slow Down" written on the grilles of my monitors. I have a routine that I go through to warm up my fingers, and I try to do some stretching and breathing, so that when I walk on-stage, I'm comfortable and relaxed. The opposite of that is about three weeks ago, I played the National Anthem at a San Diego Padres baseball game.It was a great thrill for me, being a sports fan. There's a version of the National Anthem on Outbound. It was great to get there before the game and see the guys take batting practice, just be led right on to the field and that, but then when it's time, and 30,000 people stand up, and [mimicking a stadium PA] "Ladies and Gentlemen-Gentlemen, Stu-Stu Hamm-Hamm." I was a little nervous! It came off well, but it's just a different environment from people coming to a rock show, you know, to be standing there in front of a bunch of San Diego Padres fans who were going "What's this guy going to play?"

Tell us about your new bass. We had the Urge and now we have the Urge II.

SH: The Urge II is kind of an extension of the original Urge bass. We listened to feedback from the original bass and tried to accommodate and address the issues that people had with it. The main issue was that the original Urge bass was a short-scale bass, 32-inch scale, and we worked very hard to get it to sound big and full, and it did. But some people just had a mental block against it, "I can't play a short-scale bass, that's not manly." To be honest, once I started playing a longer-scale bass, it makes you feel like you're laying down a heavier groove. The Urge II uses the electronic advances Fender has made in the last 8 years or so. I think with the Urge II that we've finally accomplished what we wanted to do with the original Urge bass, which was to take the best that Fender has done and bring it up to the best of what is happening in the modern bass world. With the 3 pickup configurations and the active electronics, you can get a great J-Bass sound, a great P-Bass sound, and also with the active electronics, you can also get it to sound a little more modernized. You can use any variation of the 3 pickups. It's the only Fender bass with a full 2-octave neck, a little thinner, asymmetrical neck design. So it wasn't just built to be a vanity bass, "Hey, get this bass and tap and slap like Stu." We came up with a really functional and versatile bass. It has so many different tones.

If someone asked you what it was about the Urge II that makes it a Stu Hamm bass. Would you say it's because your hand was in it?

SH: Definitely. My hand is in this thing. Anything that you see my name is on, it's because I use it and I'm involved in it. We spent a lot of time on the original Urge bass, you know, and I learned a lot. My original thought was, "I want an ebony fretboard," because I thought that was cool. But the way this bass worked out, it made it sound clacky. Just the different material that's on the bridge and the nut makes it sound different, and the body and the materials everything is made out of. We really had to mix and match it to come up with the tone we wanted and to get a bass that's very versatile, functional and usable.

We spend a lot of time informing people about the materials that go into guitars and basses and how those materials effect tone. Especially with the Custom Shop, and why we don't make certain things.

SH: I remember back in the day when I had my CBS Jazz Bass and added all kinds of aftermarket parts, just because it seemed like the thing to do, but that doesn't necesarily mean that it's going to make the bass sound good. Now, on one of my basses, I have a brass pickguard because it looks great, but that effects the tone a little bit, especially with active electronics. So I have a backup plastic pickguard“I mean, how anal-retentive is that, just to switch pickguards to get the right tone? I play this thing so much that it's ridiculous how little the action has to be off for me to notice it. I've been doing this quite a while, and it's what I do.

For more information on Stu Hamm's latest release, visit www.favorednations.com