One of my all time favorite bassist is Kai Eckhardt, not only because he’s an awesome bassist but because I particularly like his fretless, melodic style.

When I created my rough drafts for the new “Beauty And Fire” CD I sent a copy to my keyboardist/co-producer Don Turney. On the rough draft I played the bass. Don realized that I was playing bass in the style of Kai and said he loved the music but it would be even better if I just called Kai Eckhardt up and ask him to play on the CD. I hadn’t really thought of that. David Margen, my regular bassist is wonderful, but doesn’t play fretless bass much, and not the style I was after for these particular songs.

I decided I didn’t have anything to lose. To my surprise I discovered that Kai lives about 20 minutes from me in Berkeley, CA. I contacted him and after listening to my music he said he’d love to play on the CD. We recorded 4 songs together and not only did he play awesome bass, but was a real pleasure to work with.

Ironically, the first thing he said when he came into the studio was “so you play with David Margen? I love his bass playing on the early Santana CDs”.

Small world

Kai Eckhardt plays awesome bass