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Finding Your City by Allee Futterer
Finding Your City by Allee Futterer… So I get it, you’re a bass player, maybe graduating college and looking to go make it out in the world and then you realize that being a “professional musician” is a lot more intimidating than your college professors made it seem. The good news is that today we aren’t just trapped into moving to New York and playing jazz clubs for fifty bucks. The question isn’t really ‘where’ or ‘who’ but realistically ‘how’.
Relocating is a big step but there are lots of advantages to doing it now versus twenty years ago.
Step 1- Who Are You?
Sure, you love the sunshine, so LA could seems like an amazing fit… but maybe driving isn’t for you. Or maybe you’ve never lived in a city that’s climate varies between freezing cold winters and sweaty humid summers packed with frantic people taking pictures of billboards in Times Square. Most importantly you’ve got to figure out what makes you tick so you can feel comfortable settling into a city and calling it home. You’ll learn a lot about yourself in a new place so it’s important to at least think about yourself and your likes/dislikes as you are going into it.
Step 2- Utilizing Relationships
As a musician and especially a bass player our work comes from friends and colleagues, which we have built trustworthy business relationships with. If you think of yourself as a private consultant in the field of music then moving somewhere that you have no work is a sure way to have your business flop. Not to say that you should just pick up and move with all your friends, but follow the path of your friends who have been successful and created a path that allows you to do well.
Step 3- Getting To Know The Local Music Community
London, for example has a huge open mic scene that is unique to any other city. Many of the clubs there host open nights with great talent and huge waiting lists to perform, some times they will have 30 people performing in an evening. Being a bass player and playing an open mic may not seem like the coolest thing to do but hey, there is a potential to meet 30 people who might need bass players! Events like that can be great networking opportunities.
Step 4- Your Local Bar
We’ve all been there, lonely and wondering why we left the land of our loved ones and desperately needing to make new friends. Not that I’m encouraging binge drinking, but go get to know your local bartender. Honestly, hip bars with people your age can be one of the best ways to make connections that could even be life changing (as long as you don’t act too silly). Maybe once you get familiar with the place they’ll even ask you to play there a few times.
Step 5- Twitter
Everybody is talking about it these days and about just how important social media is, with Twitter being probably the most important in the music industry. It’s a way that people can stay relevant in under 150 characters. This means that your old friend from high school can’t write a saga about her ex-boyfriend’s new lady etc., but it does allow you to make communication with people that may otherwise be virtually unreachable. Say you want to book a gig with a band and their manager won’t respond to any of the emails, Twitter may be a good option.
As my father always said, “If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly!” Our industry can be a bit of a bear itself sometimes but it’s not impossible to not get eaten alive. Research and networking will always be the key to staying afloat and taking a new place by storm.
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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