So Tim Boomer is my real name – a perfect match for the loud, low frequencies of electric bass. No wonder my first instrument, the flute, didn’t stick longer than a few years. I don’t even want to talk about the oboe.
I have played in Bay Area bands for decades, playing original music, covers and standards in a lot of genres ranging from Classic Rock, Latin Rock, Funk, and Jazz to Ska and Reggae and even performed in one band improvising over live loops with a drummer. At one point I got a book published – “The Bassist’s Bible: How to Play Every Bass Groove from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco” which is in it’s 2nd Edition. I brought this knowledge and experience together into my songwriting in order to keep things fresh and interesting and avoid what happens when you play a song so much, that is so similar to other songs in your set, that you begin to zone out while playing it, wondering if you locked the house before you left.
As a teenager; I snuck out to see shows at the Fillmore, Winterland and Family Dog on the Great Highway. After seeing Hendrix, the Airplane, the Dead and The Mothers of Invention, there was no turning back. This path led right through to The Allman Brothers and Steely Dan and from there to Weather Report, Return to Forever and Miles Davis. I had never seen Rock bands improvise like that, yet often sound so tight. Every show was different, and this was not lost on the the Jazz players who began electrifying and moving more towards dance rhythms. Even as a kid I could tell this was not like most Rock or Jazz I had ever experienced and once I began playing I wanted to do that too.
Looking back on music as it has evolved in my own lifetime it seems like new forms become old forms more quickly these days and nothing moves for a while while everyone catches up. I still see tons of exploration going on but it follows the culture and the culture is still mostly about the result instead of the journey. I remember when it dawned on me – the first gig that my Who tribute band played in some warehouse in SF where the sound guy, responding to my query to him as to whether he played music said “I used to actually play but now I can do so much more with my computer.” We walked on stage, played our 50 minutes and blew every other band off that stage that night. As our lead singer swung his mic over our heads and the sound guy forgot to mute it the entire band began to flange through the sound system during the closer “Baba O’Riley”. After our set, somewhat gobsmacked, the sound guy said “so … you guys don’t sell CDs or … T-shirts or merch?” Nope. We just walk out and play. It felt so good; one more person who might have felt the way I did as a kid. It wasn’t just another Rock n Roll show and even if it was Peter Townshend’s music, not ours, we melted a few faces. My idea is to take that energy, add original material back into the set and make it more human both for the musicians and the audience. It’s not about the tech or the genre or show. It’s the musicians and the audience both taking off together.
Thus the idea began forming of using a lifetime of listening / playing / teaching / and writing about music to composing songs that were more interesting than playing in the traditional Rock-Blues / 1-4-5 forms, 32 Bar Rhythm Changes, standard genres or even the wilderness of complete full-band improvisation that sometimes is perceived as “noodling” to non musicians (which is sometimes is, of course.) Why not use everything? Form with prescribed exploration/play but not to excess. Not a unique idea, of course, just a lot more fun.
So … after long experimentation I formed Groove Alchemy to be the antidote and ultimate mix of everything that came before in my experiences of music; joining with my fellow band mates to do what we do best: letting musicians be musicians.
