Jammin’ at the Frankfurt Musikmesse 2013!

Hi!

The annual Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany is the biggest music fair in Europe! Although it has been bigger, with even more exhibitors, it sure is big! I have been thinking about going there for many years but haven’t managed to go until this year.

So why go now? There are at least a couple of reasons…!

In Sweden there has not been that many opportunities to try out different Ubass models. The popular demand of the Ubasses is really nice but it has been a bit difficult to get enough Ubasses to Sweden. There is already been a change for the better and I hope the availability will be even better! The Scandinavian Kala dealer is Akustikken. Please check out their site!

In Frankfurt at Musikmesse there was a lot of different models in the Ubass booth! Seeing all these different models at the same time was a bit mouth watering 🙂
It was nice being able to try models I have only read about! Because of the cacophony of noise building up from the different exhibitors around the Ubass booth it was hard to try the instruments thoroughly. Initially I thought of doing some video reviews on the spot but it wasn’t possible 😦
I hope to do so in the future as more and more models arrive to Sweden!

Another reason for my visit was to finally meet Mike Upton and Rick Carlson from Kala headquarters in Petaluma, California. It was great talking to them at the UBass booth! Thanks guys!

I also met and got to jam with a great ubassist that played in the booth, Armin Alic. Please check out his band, Royal Street Orchestra!

Besides hanging and jammin’ in the UBass Booth I checked out a lot of nice instruments and pro audio stuff!

The best booth jam I saw was probably with the great Etienne MBappe, his son Swaeli and a drummer. Sorry, didn’t get the drummers name. Great groove!

I got to meet a lot of great musicians. Among these was Gary Grainger (I met him almost 20 years ago in my old home town when he played there with the great Dennis Chambers on drums, a Norwegian keyboardist, Hakkon Graaf and Swedish guitarist, Ulf Wakenius. It was nice to talk to him for a bit!

Dennis Chambers and Gary Grainger on YouTube!

When I was at the Ubass booth a great bass player and someone I have listen to a lot through the years stopped by. It was great seeing Billy Sheehan! A new Niacin record has just been released. It’s called Krush!

Steve Lawson, a great bass player that plays a lot of solo shows using looping and effects was also there. It was two years ago we first met at the Victor Wooten Music/Nature Camp that I have blogged about before.

Speaking of the Music/Nature Camp. I also met Ariane Cap and my danish friend Sune R. We all met for the first time since the 2011 camp but it felt like it was yesterday 🙂

Ariane plays Marleaux basses from Germany and I got to meet Gerald Marleaux and his staff. Great people and wonderful instruments!

I also got to jam with a great bass player from Israel, Or Lubianiker. Hopefully we’ll be doing some collaboration in the future! I didn’t get to play with Christopher Bolte this time but was also a great player!

As you can see there was a lot of new and old friends at musikmesse. I really hope I can go again next year to meet them and even more lovely people! Music is life, life is Music! 🙂

…AND when I got home the Kala Acoustic-Electric UBass had won one of the M.I.P.A. Awards in the Acoustic Bass category. Great news!

Take care y’all!