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Bass Musician Magazine: Apr/May 2010 Featuring Dave LaRue
Jake: Do you feel that what is more or less prevalent, for lack of a better word, in what’s happening musically in general these days is ever I guess Ill say, a consideration, as far as the writing goes for Steve and yourself?
Dave: Not at all, although I guess we’re all influenced to a point in a subliminal way by what we hear, and probably draw on that. But in general, there’s no conscious effort, although in a way I “am” paying attention to what’s going on in terms of production techniques, or sounds that I’ve heard, and trying to join those things in. But it’s pretty trivial in the overall effort.
Jake: With all the work that you’ve done, and your beginnings being in the rock idiom, you seem to be able to straddle the rock/fusion chair quite successfully. What in your opinion was the foundation of your studies that you feel helped you cross over from those initial rock elements you began with?
Dave: It was studying jazz, really. There’s a lot of jazz in my background. I played jazz, I listened to jazz. It tended to be a richer harmonic format for me to draw from, and it helped me develop a vocabulary to be able to play through chord changes readily. And I believe that we are of a generation, Steve and I, where we are really uniquely American musicians, drawing from all of these idioms to the exclusion of none, and bringing everything in, which helps to create our music. It doesn’t have to be pure jazz, or pure rock; it’s just a synthesis of who we are. I’ve grown up listening to everything from Led Zepplin to John Coltrane, and that’s all in there. Steve is obviously very influenced by a lot of classical composers…me, not so much, although I love classical music. Steve shows a big influence in his writing from his classical guitar studies as well. And I think all those influences have naturally created our own genre per se, and the musicians we’ve become. Many of my peers are like that.
