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Anatomy of MY Groove : Grooves With Reggie Washington
Greetings fellow low-end dwellers!! From my studio in the basement; (Stone Nives & Bare Skinz Studio)
I’d like to talk about…GROOVE!
A number of years ago I did a CD w/Steve Coleman called “Anatomy Of A Groove”. (Good CD)
I thought it would be a good title for a series of articles. The only groove I can talk about is mine!! So…….
The anatomy of MY groove is made up of a few things. Groove comes from life experience, (where you come from, what you did before & how you did it) & musical experience. (All the things you heard growing up, instruments you played good or bad & your adventures into each)
I started out hearing EVERYTHING EVERYDAY!!! The 60’s & 70’s was a groove hot box!! Groove came to me in many different ways & from many places!! From the radio, records my dad & brother were buying, from the jazz concerts & outdoor festivals my parents took us (my brother drummer Kenny & my sister violinist Yvette) to see. Groove came from the playgrounds in my hood in NYC where the Puerto Rican brothers were singing and playing congas & other percussion instruments all day…& night. The groove came from the church every Sunday! Saturday afternoon & Wednesday night if I was @ my aunt’s house!
All of these things fed my passion & my “groove”.
The next element was structure. I got that from playing sports & my classical studies on cello. It took a strange turn when I heard Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford & Sam Jones play jazz on cello!! Freedom & structure for me came together at that moment. I began to collect more information to build “my groove”. Motown, Stax, Muscle Shoals & many, many other energies of music I came into contact with. Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, The Meters, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown & Donny Hathaway got into me & took a hold! This was the time “my groove” was forming. Bass wasn’t even a serious thought yet… but my groove was taking root & growing.
Now all I had to do was GET A BASS!!!!
One of the elements of music I focused in on was…The Rhythm Section!! This was where all the groove was coming from. A smooth & smoking rhythm section in the 70’s that shaped how I listen & play music was of singer/composer/pianist Barry White. His rhythm section was full of accomplished players in their early days!! Ed Green-drums, Ray Parker-Guitar, Nathan East-Bass & of course Barry playing piano. I reached out to Nathan East (on tour w/Herbie Hancock at the time) while doing research on Love Unlimited Orchestra rhythm section.
Nathan was a young player when Barry heard him in California & invited him to play in the band. He told me it was an exciting experience being in the studio cranking out hit after platinum hit w/Barry White.
For me, each tune was a blueprint of discipline. The art of playing in a section where everyone has their part & function is lost in this time of guitar & bass Olympics. No one person was more or less important than the other. There was no overt flash or screaming guitar solos or mad bass slapping or thundering double bass pedal or cymbal crashing!! That section moved like a well oiled machine…or like I said to Nathan; “it sounded smooth like buttah”. The beauty of simplicity is what really got me about those guys! AND to find out it was Nathan playing bass, it made sense why I dug the bass. It was solid, good notes & to the point.
So; instead of checking out the “Bass Olympics” & “Guitar Aerobics” that pollute our sound waves nowadays, try checking out music that makes you move & feel good…not jump out of your skin!!
Music is not just notes. It’s composed of silence too. That’s why the musical rest was invented.
It’s O.K to create space. It’s been communicated many ways…”Less is Best”…”When in doubt, lay out”…& the most famous…”Silence is Golden” because he who lives by the note, dies by the note!!!
I’ll drop some more titbits on The Anatomy of MY groove next issue.
Keep the Bottom!!
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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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