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Progressive Rock Update With Brad Houser: Tone Survival, Turning Nightmare Gigs Into Minor Triumphs
Meet Brad Houser
I am a procrastinator. This issue’s column was to be about “The Flaming Lips.” I kept trying to get started on it, and…. nothing. Repeatedly. In an ironic turn of events the topic of this column came to light onstage in…….. Oklahoma, home of the Lips.
So, this time around, I bring you “Tone Survival: Turning Nightmare Gigs Into Minor Triumphs.”
The Setting: typical modern music venue, capacity 200-ish… Punk Rock in decor and flavor… Four subwoofers on the floor in front of the stage… four mid/hi cabs flown on either side of the stage. Arriving after a 4 1/2 hour drive, we start setting up. Soundman is friendly, seems capable. (Our budget does not allow an engineer to travel with us; We in a van, dawg). Mics go up, our sound-check is the first song. Every time I hit an “F” it rings for about ten seconds, I’m guessing that the bass drum is feeding back. Tapping on that mic seems to produce no ring, so more guesswork. Consulting my “smartphone” I go to a website that lists a table of note values and corresponding frequency values, in Hertz. F at mid-neck is 87 Hz. I ask the engineer to come to the stage, informing him that cutting 87 a few db on the EQ would be nice. He is open to it, says the tabla mic may be the culprit. Indeed, I look over and there is a large diaphragm mic on the low tabla drum. Engineer tries muting that mic when drummer is not playing tabla, we continue playing our set. I’m also noticing that my bass in the house PA is squishy and pig like, as opposed to tight, woody, and fat. Seems like the subs are cranked, and it feels like all the mids are scooped out. My strings are feeling like rubber. Not Good. We slog our way through the first set, then it’s break time.
On set break, a local musician sets up his DJ rig and starts to rock it. At this point I notice that the PA is sounding REALLY scooped out; All bass and all treble, not many mids. I resolve to get crafty on the next set….
In my pedalboard, aside from the usual, distortion, delay, envelope, and synth pedals, I have a Radial Bassbone A/B switcher/EQ, a Tech 21 VT Bass, and an Aguilar 18 volt active preamp. Each one of these has bass/treble controls……. that’s a lot of eq before my signal goes into a direct box, at the end of my signal chain, before hitting the amp. On this tour, I’m using the drummer’s Ampeg RocketBass combo, a small 100-watt amp, due to logistics and van space. At this point in the evening I’m beginning to wish for 600 watts and a phat 4×10 cab, so I could just crank it and forget sounding good thru the PA. Not Gonna Happen!!!! So……. I cut the bass knob on the VT pedal back to 11 o’clock, (it was at 1:00), cut the bass knob on the Bassbone back to 11 o’clock (it was at 2:00). Leave the Aguilar where it is, bass up 20%, treble flat. I then bring the master volume up on the VT pedal (it has tons of boost ) to make up for the bass cut. I also take my vocal mic and put it in front of the Ampeg, turn the amp down to non-farting level, and hope Mr. engineer notices. He does, he later tells me. No vox for me. I’m hoping that the mic will pick up some mids off the amp…..
Lo and behold, my tone starts to sound like I like. Tight. Phat. Non-flappy. I’m not hearing the amp hardly at all, it’s all house at this point. Further bass rolloff/gain boost makes the G and D strings start to catch the subs better. (I’m playing a P-Bass with flatwounds. I like my sound clear AND dark). The rest of the set flows like magic and we and the audience are happy. CDs are sold.
What I Learned:
This keeps repeatedly coming back thru the years. To get more clarity, rolling off bass and boosting gain works. Simply boosting mids and treble would have just made the bass sound honky and shrill. Cutting lows and boosting gain tightened up the sound, while preserving fatness. The engineer later informed me that he turned down the volume to the subs a little, also. This helped tighten the room up. Seems like it was a boomy room to start with.
Many basses these days have active preamps, with bass and treble controls built in, and a lot of guys tend to crank both and let it rip. This works sometimes, especially in loud Metal and Punk Rock, but often won’t work for other stuff. I’ve also noticed that cranking the bass knob on the bass or the amp tends to make the low end get squishy and/or farty. Not what I prefer, but it works great for some folks. In the 90’s I started hearing a lot of guys with Music Man or J-basses in punk bands using Tons of treble, lots of fret buzz, cranked way up. Sounded ferocious, I would never have thought that type of tone would work. In those bands it sounds amazing, like an old American car crash, breaking glass, crunching metal, with Low End. There are a lot of options out there in toneland……
Hopefully this can help get you out of mud-ville, next time you get stuck.
Next issue……… The Flaming Lips.
BH
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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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