34 Strings

Russ, the guitarist and songwriter in the Eclipse trio has written a full-on Country song. It has everything except references to cars and an unfortunate dog. Russ recently visited Nashville and was inspired to write the song to see if any of the big names in country music might want to record it. This is obviously a long shot, but in a spirit of ‘if you don’t try you don’t get anywhere’ Russ pulled together a makeshift band to record a demo.

When I arrived it was clear that a song like this wouldn’t work well with fretless bass, which is what I play most of the time. Both my fretted basses were in storage so I used the only fretted instrument I had to hand – an eight string Warr Guitar (or touch guitar) tuned in fifths, like a cello. This turned out to be a good choice. Mark Warr’s instruments have an incredible bottom end (and top end) tone and being tuned in a way that a normal bass isn’t meant I wasn’t as tempted to play the usual root/fifth country cliché bass line.

Our drummer was Russ’s son, currently doing great things in his band Port Isla. We were later joined by Richard from my band who laid down some sizzling electric guitar lines. Russ overdubbed a twelve string on top of his six string, put a vocal on and we were done.

It’s a good, catchy song and I hope someone picks it up. Either way, this was another new musical experience.