Interview with Franc O'Shea
by Valery Boshlov from www.bassbel.com, Belarus, CIS. October 2006
How did you get into music and the bass?
My first strongly conscious musical memories are from when I was about 8 or 9. A friend of mine had this instrumental piece of music he played for me on vinyl. It was like a big band piece, quite commercial and catchy but done really well. There were lots of trumpets and brass, I can still remember the tune in my head even though I don’t know what it was, I was captivated by it and kept asking him to play it. Around the same time my mother’s friend had left a big box of records at our house and I went through the whole box listening to everything. There was Jimi Hendrix ‘Smash Hits’ and Santana’s ‘Abraxas’ both of which I fell in love with. There were other things like 10cc’s ‘I’m not in love’ and Ram Jam’s ‘Black Betty’ which were in the charts about this time and I loved those records. Then on a holiday to Copenhagen when I was 10 years old I saw the Beatles cartoon film ‘The Yellow Submarine’ in the hotel room which fascinated me and I told my father I loved the sound of guitar. A year later on my eleventh birthday he bought me a 6 string classical guitar. By this time the whole punk movement had taken off in the UK and I was listening to bands like The Stranglers, The Jam and Ian Dury. All of them had great bass players and I was really taken by the sound of the bass and bass lines, so I used to play bass lines on the guitar until eventually, when I was 12, my eldest brother got a bass. He never used it and I began playing that. It was a cheap Jazz Bass copy. Eventually he got rid of that bass and I bought a Kay Precision copy from a catalogue using my pocket money. As I got older my tastes in music just grew and grew but I have always loved bands with great bass players as well.
Were you self-taught or did you study formally?
I am basically self-taught. My brother Ric helped me develop my ear as he was 4 years older than me and was very good at picking out tunes on both keyboards and the guitar. He used to play things on the guitar and I would try and emulate what he was doing. I remember one of the first things I learnt was the Pink Panther theme. I then began to work lines out by myself from records like Rush’s ‘Xanadu’. Later on, when I was 19, I took a one-year course in Jazz and Popular music at Chichester college. This was great in terms of getting to play in a Jazz context with lots of different players as the course was for all instruments. There were two other bassists on the course when I started but they left after about the first month and I ended up getting the bass chair for all the different groups. There were sax players, guitarists and piano players and we all studied together, it wasn’t bass specific. In fact, they had a problem with bass teachers at the time and I only got 6 half hour bass lessons in the whole year! I managed to get joint highest marks at the end of the year with a sax player and received a distinction. After that I just hit the street and started playing loads of jazz gigs in bars and clubs. I would ask everyone questions like ‘how are you voicing that chord’ etc… I also studied George Russel’s ‘Lydian Chromatic Concept’ book and Nicolas Slominsky’s ‘Thesaurus of Melodic Patterns and Scales’. In fact, I was studying every book I could get my hands on and also working out my own systems. These systems have become part of an advanced theory book that I have been working on for about 20 years.
Tell me about your CD ‘Esprit’.
Esprit was my first solo album, which I recorded back in 1999. I had a lot of music together that I had been writing since about ’91 and just wanted to put an album out. I paid for the whole thing to be recorded myself and then touted it around record labels and chose the best deal. I had some great players on there like Byron Wallen (we used to have a duo together in the past and studied a lot together in the early days) on trumpet, Nigel Hitchcock on Sax and Gerard Presencer on trumpet. Lianne Carroll also played piano and sang on a tune. I had known her for a while and she just recently one two BBC Jazz awards.
The album was quite an eclectic mix of styles as I have so many influences and it received great reviews and opened up many opportunities for me including an appearance at the European Bass Day in 2003. Tracks were used for some bass compilation albums where I appeared alongside people like Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, Matthew Garrison and Michael Manring. It got a lot of radio play too and was a good introduction to my music.
After Esprit you lived out in Spain for a few years, can you tell me something about those times?
I was studying Flamenco and playing in different Flamenco situations in England before I moved out to Spain. My wife is Spanish and it was like a decision we came up with one day, you know like lets have an adventure. This turned out to be a three-and-a-half-year sojourn and we still have all our connections out there and a place to go to. It was great meeting all these different Flamenco guys and we used to go to lots of concerts and informal gypsy jams in the Sacromonte. I began to play a lot out there myself too, which was great. We were living in Granada in Andalucia, southern Spain. Andalucia is where Flamenco originated from and there is a strong Northern African and Arabic population there. So it was great just to soak in that whole atmosphere and culture.
Was it difficult to be accepted by the community of Flamenco musicians out there?
It was funny because a lot of the gypsy guys are really proud of their roots and culture and quite rightly so. So some were a bit suspicious of this English guy coming along until they realised how well I could play, and they were even more shocked that I could actually play Flamenco. Because I had studied Flamenco before I even went to Spain I had all those difficult rhythms down like the Bulerias and Tanguillos. So once they realised that, I got respect and it was easy to integrate.
I remember when we first got there, we went to see this guy who owns this big venue to see if I could play there with my own group. We sat there talking with him in the club on a quiet weekday night and had a drink. He played my first album Esprit on the club sound system but wasn’t really listening to it. He was saying ‘ Oh I might be able to give you a gig in 6 month’s time if I can find a slot’. Then later on I was rehearsing with this band I was asked to join for a big concert we had in the Jazz festival. They had all the top Flamenco and Jazz musicians from Granada in it and we were rehearsing at this club in the afternoon. This same guy saw me playing with all these top guys. He came running over all excited saying I was brilliant and I could have TWO gigs in a couple of weeks time. It is amazing how quickly some people change their tune!
How did you get acquainted with musicians from Paco de Lucia’s band?
They heard my first album ‘Esprit’ and a demo of ‘Alkimia’, really liked it and agreed to play on Alkimia. This was Jorge Pardo on flute, Rubem Dantas on percussion and Juan Manuel Cañizares on Flamenco guitar. Each of them added such a warm presence to the album that I feel very privileged to have worked with them. They definitely captured the whole spirit and concept that I had in mind and took it even beyond my expectations.
Your second CD is recorded wonderfully and sounds superb. Please tell me about your CD "Alkimia".
I composed all the tracks on Alkimia and it was influenced by a lot of things that were happening in my life. As I mentioned before I was studying Flamenco music, but there are other influences in Alkimia such as my love for Irish folk music and African rhythms. I managed to marry some of these elements together creating something different. For instance the tune Anam Cara (this means soul friend in Gaelic) is a blending of an African abakwa polyrhythm with a Spanish tanguillos rhythm and an Irish jig. This is quite fitting since I was born in Africa, most of my blood is Irish, although I do have some Spanish blood, and my wife is Spanish. So, it wasn’t just a technical exercise. These things are close to me.
There is also the spiritual aspect to Alkimia. I have had a deep interest in things metaphysical for years and have studied religions and spiritual teachings from many cultures. My album is a gateway for channelling energy from other dimensions.
Also, I did most of the engineering and all of the mixing and mastering myself, and since I was new to this it was quite a challenge to learn how to do it well. I just threw myself in at the deep end and I think the results have made it all worth while.
Do you record with a direct line in the studio or with your amplifier miked up?
I record into the desk but I use a valve compressor and a valve parametric equaliser before I get to the desk.
Please tell me about your basses
I have three 5 string basses. Two are fretless and one is fretted. Two of these basses were made for me by a local UK luthier called Jeff Chapman. He just makes one off instruments to the customers exact specifications which is great for me and we have incorporated lots of my ideas into the design. He also rebuilt a Tobias classic bass for me which is my other fretless. It has a rosewood fingerboard made from an old Victorian dining table and it sings like an angel. The fingerboard is over a hundred years old. I use EMG single coil Jazz type pickups (but with a wider aperture) to get that clarity and I only use the bridge pickup. I got Jeff to put wooden tops on them as I have them really high. These wooden tops have scallops in them just underneath each string to stop them rattling. I have them really high as I like to have that ‘tabletop’ feel under the strings where my right hand plays over the pickup. All these basses sound great.
What type of amplifier do you use?
At the moment I am using a TL Audio valve compressor with a TL Audio valve parametric equaliser. For effects I use a Lexicon MPX1 and when I play live, I put all this through two Mackie SRM450 speakers and run it in stereo.
What are your favourite strings?
Bass Centre Elites with a light gauge, that is 30-110 with the 110 for the B string.
What bass players influenced you?
My first influence on the bass when I was 11 was Jean Jacques Burnel from the Stranglers. I loved those albums ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ and ‘Black and White’. Then bassists like Bruce Foxton from the Jam and Norman Watt Roy from Ian Dury and the Blockheads, I loved his playing on ‘Hit me with your rhythm stick’ and ‘What a waste’. When I was about fourteen, I got into Level 42’s first album with Mark King on bass and Mick Karn’s playing with Japan and his solo stuff. When I was about 16 I got into Geddy Lee’s playing with Rush, I love ‘A farewell to kings’. Then when I was about 17 or 18 I got into more fretless stuff starting with John Giblin on John Martyn’s ‘Grace and Danger’ and then Percy Jones with Brand X (Product, Masques and Do they hurt) and then of course Jaco Pastorius. The first Jaco track I heard was Havona and I was just totally blown away. I used to go and see Laurence Cottle play live a lot as well and he was a big influence on me as well as a local guy called Roger Carey who is the husband of Liane Carroll. I liked Jeff Berlin’s playing too. Later when I got into Flamenco, I really got into Carles Benavent who plays with Paco de Lucia’s band. I liked Kai Eckhardt’s playing on ‘Live at the Festival Hall’ too and Dominique Di Piazza, especially on John McLaughlin’s ‘Que Alegria’ album.
What music do you like to listen to?
I listen to all kinds of stuff from classical to world music to jazz to rock. I go through phases of really getting into particular albums and then after a while I will put that particular album away for a while and leave it as a gem to be re-discovered later on. At the moment I am listening to the Indian fusion band Shakti a lot with John McLaughlin, my favourite album of theirs is ‘A Handful of Beauty’. I bought a great album recently by a band called Almagama that mixes Flamenco with Indian music, it’s called ‘Encuentro’. I like that album ‘Spain’ with Tomatito and Michel Camilo. Other than that, there are all my classic favourites by artists like John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia, Kate Bush, Zakir Hussain, Pink Floyd, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Bowie, Henryk Gorecki, The Beatles, Weather Report, Ravi Shankar…the list just goes on and on.
What do you think is the key to success?
It really depends on what you consider success to be. For me it is not a money thing, it is an artistic and spiritual thing. If you are making music that is satisfying to yourself on a deep level and is connecting with other people on that level too, then you are successful, regardless of how much money you earn.
How many hours a day do you practice?
At one time I used to practice 8 or more hours a day, but now I tend to play for at least an hour a day if not more, but sometimes I will go for days without playing, but I always get my chops back fairly quickly. You have to live your life too so that those influences come out in your playing and as you get more mature as a player you find that your technique is pretty much there most of the time. You can also practice without your instrument if you know how, by thinking about it and applying things in your head, then with maturity it just comes right out on the instrument itself when you actually do it physically.
How do you achieve ideal intonation on fretless bass?
I use a lined fretless which helps. You just have to work at it and it is a combination of ears and technique. Make sure you practice against other instruments (as well as on your own) so that you have something to be in tune with.
What creative plans do you have for the future?
At the moment I am studying the classical forms of North Indian Hindustani music and South Indian Karnatic music. There were some of those elements on Alkimia and there will be even more on the next one. The fretless bass is a great instrument for playing ragas as you can get all those sharp and flat notes that are outside of the Western tuning system. There is also all that scope for slides and swoops, basically using voice like phrasing.
Do you have any advice for young musicians?
All the usual stuff like keep focused when other people try to knock you down and learn to distinguish between positive criticism and downright jealousy. Also don’t play your instrument with too much force, leave room for dynamics. One thing I believe to be really important is to get into MUSIC and not technical fads. Some younger bassists get into technical players that play really fast but aren’t saying anything musically. In a hundred year’s time no one will remember these players because it was all fireworks without any real musical substance. There is nothing wrong with chops, and I have a few myself, but it has to be balanced with, and be in a musical context otherwise it is just shallow. Music is an art form not a sport and if you can’t remember anything about a performance apart from ‘wow he was so fast’ then you are not feeling what this ancient art is really about. But if you can still remember melodies, rhythms and feel stirred in your spirit after experiencing a performance then you have connected with some REAL music.