Big Bottoms: Anthony Rondinone of JOLLY
If you don’t yet know Brooklyn-based progressive rock band JOLLY, your time has come. The band that generated lukewarm buzz two years ago by embedding binaural tones beneath the luminous riffs and thrilling, electric atmospheres of The Audio Guide To Happiness, Part One, is getting set to release the second half of their ambitious double-album. The release of The Audio Guide To Happiness, Part Two is upon us and it’s high time prog fans at large take notice.
JOLLY is everything we love about prog rock and nothing we hate. They have all the dynamic shifts, rhythmic naughtiness, refined melody and chops of the best prog bands but none of the self-indulgence (when they’re silly, it’s intentional). And just like InsideOut Music label-mate Devin Townsend, JOLLY has printed a license to do whatever they want musically, be it metal, alt-rock, pop or electronica.
One of the band’s many signatures is bassist Anthony Rondinone’s unique Warwick rumble. Tony’s sinewy distorted bass lines power JOLLY’s heavy riffs, driving their grooves to hard rock hell (or heaven, depending on what you’re into). His elegant single note patterns and rhythmic wavering add bounce and flavor and propel JOLLY songs to new cosmic heights of creativity.
In our Q&A, Tony shared how Hurricane Sandy has forever changed his crushing studio tone, the challenges he faced when he picked up the bass and some specifics about tunes from the new album, due out March 5 via InsideOut Music.
You were a guitarist before you joined JOLLY, so for how many years have you actually been calling yourself a bass player?
I probably joined JOLLY about three or four years ago, May or April of 2009. Even, honestly, for the first six months or a year of being in JOLLY, I don’t even know if I would have considered myself a bassist. That’s kind of weird to say because, at that time, Audio Guide One was being recorded and I was writing bass lines, but I don’t think I had a real handle on bass playing; I didn’t have my own style yet. I was just doing what my idea of a bass player was.
As I played every single day and became accustomed to bass and really learned what bass is all about—what it can do, how it can change a song in a positive and a negative way—that’s when I started to really consider myself a bassist, which is really cool for me.
All my sounds, my style, I take some things from when I used to play guitar and add that into my playing style. A lot of it I just based off of, “If I were a guitarist in this band, what would I want the bass player to be doing?” I was just learning different techniques that I could bring to JOLLY.
What were some ways in which the bass challenged you?
Well, at first, I still wanted to play like a guitarist in some ways, but I quickly learned that the bass hits are so prominent, and they can change the rhythm or the feel of the song so much, it can really pull a song in a different direction. So I think, as a bass player, you have to have a real understanding of the direction that you want the song to go.
If you’re hitting on a different time that you think sounds cool, it could be slightly off or change the feel of a song in a way you don’t want. Sometimes it works out well. In recording, I’ll sometimes come up with a line that Louis [Abramson, drums] or no one else is expecting and it’ll pull the song in a direction that we weren’t thinking. That’s a magical moment. Or I can make a mistake and hit a wrong note. Sometimes I’ll come in with a line that sounds cool by myself, but when it’s interacting with the other instruments, it isn’t right. That’s a big challenge.
As far as playing live, a big part of the bassist’s job, which I never realized, is muting strings that you’re not playing. Or if you’re playing a note and going for another, you have to be able to stop wrong notes from muddying up the sound. It makes a big difference. With guitar, that doesn’t matter as much because you won’t interfere with the frequency of much else. A big part of my job is stopping strings at the right point. It sounds like such an obvious thing, but you’d be surprised how easily a bass note can ring out and create muddiness that you just don’t want.
A big part your job is to shut the hell up.
[laughs] Yeah, exactly. And that’s a really good point. When you’re playing bass, it’s really cool to leave open spaces. That’s something I never realized either. My first real appreciation for bass was Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tool. They’re just so bass-intensive and it’s a constant bass sound.
I started to listen to other bands, dance bands or lounge-y kind of bands or weird drum and bass bands. You start to realize that it’s actually cool if you play a couple notes and then stop for a measure or so. If you have a constant bass sound, your ears just get used to it and it becomes nothing. If you do a little something and stop, then come back with a big bass note, it sounds so much bigger. Knowing when to stop playing, that’s a big part of music in general, but especially important with bass.
Do you end up writing most of your bass lines on your own or do you take notes from the rest of the band and build the parts together?
Yeah, it’s kind of a combination. When we’re jamming, either I will come up with some parts or I’ll work from what Joe or Louis are playing. While we’re playing, I’ll be messing around. A lot of times what I come up with in a jam session will be what the actual bass part is based around. It’s rarely exactly that because once I really get into the drum pattern and the guitars and the chords the keyboard is playing, I’ll go home and sit down and mess around. The good thing about Joe [Reilly, keyboards] is that he plays very weird, interesting chords, so it really opens up the different scales and notes that I can use. That’s really fun for me because it’s not a regular rock band that is just power chords and the bass player has to just follow and play root notes or fifths. He plays these very odd chords, which let me pull out even weirder notes. That’s what I was talking about, pulling a song in a different direction.
The cool thing about JOLLY is that I really do take care to write a bass line for every part. I try not to just go and play root notes every time, unless the song calls for it. For the most part, I really take care to write the bass line that I think compliments the rhythm and melody at the same time.
What bass players did you look to model yourself after?
It’s sort of a collection. I guess Justin Chancellor from Tool is definitely a big idol of mine. I don’t think I have the same playing style as him, just because JOLLY doesn’t lend itself to that. He doesn’t have a ton of low end in his sound, so he has the freedom to play a lot more like a guitarist. His sound isn’t a typical bass sound.
He plays a lot of really high, leady stuff. Then when he is playing low, rhythmic stuff, it sounds more like a guitar. I think he has an amazing sound and it works great for Tool. For some reason, they put more low end on Adam Jones’ guitar and he fills up more of the low end, in my opinion. So I don’t think I can play like Chancellor does, but I do love his sound.
I actually end up pulling more from drum and bass bands that I’ve heard that I don’t even know the bass player’s name or it might just be synths.
I got into Karnivool like a year ago and I really like [Jon Stockman’s] style. It’s a little more bass-y and he also does a lot of high stuff that’s really cool too. He has an awesome sound. I like Flea, too, but that doesn’t work for JOLLY. It really is a collection of every style of music that I’ve heard and what I think works.
I’ve really been digging that reggae part in “You Against The World.” It’s such a surprising but welcome turn in that song. How did you even get there?
Oh, yeah [laughs]. We were afraid that people are going to think that we just shoved that part in just to do reggae. It was actually really surprising how that happened. We were playing that song and it didn’t have that part originally—that’s not how it went back to the verse—we were just jamming on it one day and Louis started doing this semi-reggae beat and I started messing around with this reggae bass line.
I really hope people understand that about JOLLY, that we didn’t just shove that in there to be prog. The only reason why I started playing like that is because where I grew up in the Bronx, there were a lot of mechanics shop. For some reason, every mechanic shop plays reggae or reggaeton. So when I heard that drum beat, I started playing something that sounded like a reggae song coming from a mechanic shop. It just made sense to me.
What’s the bass line on the new record that you’re most proud of?
I would have to say “Aqualand and the 7 Suns.” It was really interesting to me because I’d never played a fretless bass before. When that song became a part of JOLLY, instantly I just wanted to play fretless. It just has a smooth, watery, gliding feel. I really wanted to get that and I wasn’t getting it with my bass. It still sounded good, but it didn’t have that smooth, warm feel that I really wanted.
So I got the fretless bass from Warwick—they lent it to me for a while. [Fretless] is a lot harder than I thought to play because it’s a lot easier to hit a sharp or flat note and make the whole song sound like shit, but it was a lot of fun to learn how to play. When we first started recording it, I was afraid it would sound too busy, but once it was mixed in, it sounded perfect to me. It’s really cool. I really love it.
What kind of gear did you use on the new album?
On Audio Guide Part Two, I used my Warwick Thumb-5 Custom. Warwick Thumbs usually come with two single-coil pickups and I got a humbucker put in on the bridge—the bass on its own sounds really good.
I use a GK 700RB amp and a Mega 210 PowerHouse cabinet. That’s my amp setup. I have a bunch of pedals, too. Recording-wise, I used a lot of different channels. For the most part I used a Fulltone Fulldrive MOSFET that just sounds awesome. I can get a lot of different tones from that. I can get a full, big distortion or I can lower the tone knob and get a tone that cuts more. I use a Sansamp. I get a lot out of that.
I guess I never wanted to say this, but since it got washed away in the hurricane I will. On the Audio Guide To Happiness Part One and Two, I used this really old Crate combo amp that Louis had that I used to practice with. It doesn’t sound good, but on the records, I always recorded with it. For some reason it cut through the mix really well. So there’s always a bass track with that amp, we call it the ‘Crate Track.’ It’s always underneath the other bass tracks. I always thought that was cool. Now I’m not going to have that anymore, so I wonder how much the sound will change.
What did you use to get the distortion on “Firewell” in the breakdown part?
That was the Fulltone. I have one amp that was the Fulltone Fulldrive and then I have a clean channel and then the Crate channel. So it’s really the combination of all three. That’s how I get that sound. The clean channel fills in the low end.
A lot of bass distortion really tends to suck the low end out, which in some ways isn’t so bad because it makes the riff a little tighter. So I have one channel that’s distortion. That fits on top with the clean channel. The clean channel fills up the low end. Then I have the Crate sound that really cuts through. You don’t realize how much of a difference that makes. The Crate really dirties up the sound.
