“We are the most underrated and yet most important members of any band” with Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes)

Four Strings and the Truth

Brian Ritchie is our first guest whose primary instrument - the one that helped make his band Violent Femmes a household name - is an acoustic bass. Today we hear how all that came to be, the band’s path from busking on the streets of Milwaukee to rocking stadiums, and why their approach really hasn’t changed all that much. Along the way he tells some funny stories about early gigs, opens up about a new acoustic bass he’s gotten his hands on and even shares what Flea told him about working with producer Michael Beinhorn.

Also - and this will make sense after you listen - here are two updates to things I say in this episode:

1. My amazing engineer/mixer Matt Noble pointed me to lutefish.com, a hardware-software set-up that does enable near real-time jamming over distances less than 500 miles. I haven’t tried it out, because it requires being hardwired to my modem and that’s too far away from my basses.

2. Parquet Courts’ (fantastic) bassist Sean Yeaton doesn’t play a stock short scale bass - it’s a frankenbass made up of the body and pickups of an ‘84 Fender Bullet bass (short scale) and the neck of a ’50s P-Bass reissue (standard scale). It also has a weird hole in it.

Violent Femmes (https://open.spotify.com/artist/0rpMdBzQXf7aYRnu5fDBJy?si=XfFHPeSkTUyqNHhdWKdAgQ)

Brian Ritchie’s solo stuff (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5VlujeJlkf1SEspNUbdhq8?si=pREJiCIQQJKztGtRFon1Og)

Big Johnson Basses (https://bigjohnsonbass.com/) - Brian Ritchie’s next new favorite bass? And here’s a video demo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KeWe0KUznk) by its creator.

Guitars For Vets (https://guitars4vets.org) - a very cool charity, check it out

This episode is brought to you by "The Bastard Instrument: A Cultural History of the Electric Bass," the essential new book that illuminates the origins and impact of our beloved instrument in all its glory. An amazing read. Buy it at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Bastard-Instrument-Cultural-Electric-Tracking/dp/0472056816/) or your favorite book slinger. And check out author Brian F. Wright's website (https://www.brianfwright.com/) for unreleased content from the book and more of his writing.