Traveling the Music Universe at Worf Speed

There are two fundamental kinds of players in popular music: band members and session artists. Band members obviously put most, if not all, of their musical eggs in a single basket. In return, they get a solid gig and a reasonably steady paycheck in an industry that all too often offers little of either. Session players, on the other hand, trade this relative safety for the musical freedom that comes from the chance to mix it up with a multitude of different artists and styles. While one can argue the merits of these divergent paths, there’s one point that can’t be debated: Among session players, few have flown farther than acclaimed bassist Glenn Worf. A 20-year veteran of the Nashville music scene, Worf’s discography is quite possibly the industry’s most impressive. From traditional country stalwarts like George Jones and Toby Keith, to rising stars like Miranda Lambert and Mindy Smith, Americana artists like Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris, and rockers like Bob Seger and Mark Knopfler, who claims Worf as his post-Dire Straits rhythm ace, Worf has almost literally played with them all and in the process become a virtual industry unto himself. Last month, we spoke to him by phone from his home in Nashville, where he talked about how he got where he is today and what it’s like to be Music City’s bass track go-to guy.

Let’s start by finding a little bit about where the bass bug first bit.

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and I suppose a lot of it was just that as a kid, being too young to get into clubs or anything, there were several clubs that used to let us stand outside and listen to the music. One of the ways that it really got me early on was just that I could feel the bass, and I don’t know why, but it was something that I responded to. I felt like every other kid of my generation. I started out wanting to be in a band like the Beatles, and everybody wanted to play guitar, and I was no exception.

So I was standing outside some of these clubs and on occasion going to hear live bands. For some reason I was always drawn to the sound of the bass and just the way that it literally felt in my rib cage. I didn’t even know what the instrument was. But that’s probably the most primitive awareness I had of it and probably the earliest response.

How did that morph into actually picking up an instrument?

Well, I was in a little band when I was about 13 years old. This would have been ’68 or thereabouts. I think we did a total of about two gigs before we broke up! We had three guitar players and a drummer. We didn’t have a bass player. We didn’t really know what they were. Nobody we knew played one. I went and heard a couple of different bands that just literally shook me, and I thought, “Man, I think maybe that’s what I want to do.” So I left guitar at that point and bought a little Kalamazoo bass, a little Gibson knock-off, and that’s kind of where my launching point was.

Did you then go on in high school to do the band thing there?

I did. I played with basically kind of a blues/rock ‘n roll band through high school. After high school, I started getting a little bit more curious about whether or not I could actually make a living at it. And I wound up going to college for a couple of years, the music school at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. They had a great staff. They kind of bent the rules to take a self-educated street player, which is all I was at that point. They got me into their academic program, and basically the way I like to think of it is that they kind of taught me how to teach myself from there.

So you were self-taught, at least in the beginning?

Yes. Very much so. I was one of those, like so many of my generation, whose education consisted of dropping a needle on a record and trying to figure out where it was on the neck of the instrument. And then going back and forth, back and forth.

Do you recall who some of your earliest influences were? Some of the bands that really ignited the fire for you?

The blues band that I played with was pretty educational. I had no idea who anybody was in those days. I didn’t know who played on any of those records, you know. Turns out that Willie Dixon was one of the guys that kept coming up time and again. Of course, I didn’t know who he was, and he’s playing string bass, and I was too dumb to even know that there was a difference. I just heard the sound, and it sounded low and mysterious to me and that was very intriguing. A little later, of course, I got hit by Jimi Hendrix and all the great British bands who were basically playing American blues faster. The Stones. Cream. The Yardbirds. All those great bands. As time went by, I became more aware of James Jamerson, when I realized this was a real person who was doing this body of work. It became a lot more intriguing to me, and, of course, as my ears and my understanding opened up, I got a lot more intrigued with his playing. Certainly, Paul McCartney because of his wonderful melodic sense on the instrument.

How did you make the transition to Nashville?

I left college after a couple of years. Ran out of money and had never played absolutely full time year-round. I’d always been in part-time bands, but I thought, “Okay. I need to go make some money, and I need to find out if I really can keep this up and be enthusiastic about playing six or seven nights week.” So I left school. Went on the road with a number of different unknown lounge bands, country groups, rock and roll groups, blues bands, all different kinds of music that I wound up playing through those years. Most of it pretty horrible, I’ll have you know. Most of the bands I was in, we were not very good. But through that, I paid my bills and learned a bit about music. Certainly learned more than anything from fellow band mates who would turn us on to whatever he or she was listening to and that was always a great continuing education. But after a number of years of doing that, of just playing endless club gigs across America, I kind of realized one of these days, I’m going to wake up and be an old man in motel room. And it spooked me. So I thought, “Well, maybe I need to find a place, a music center, that I can set up a base camp, draw a line in the sand and try and make some kind of stand for myself.”

Once I realized I was not going to be in a successful rock and roll band, I became quite enamored of the idea of being a freelance musician, and that kind of led to wanting to get into session work. So I looked at L.A., and New Orleans, and Minneapolis, and some other towns that had at least regional recording centers, if not bona fide major ones, and wound up settling on Nashville more on a gut instinct that said, maybe I could survive in this town without much money to begin with. I was very struck by how friendly the other bass players I met were and still are. Their attitude was quite encouraging unlike what I encountered in L.A., which was not quite so friendly.

Do you remember your first major session or gig in Nashville?

I did a lot of just-whatever-I-could club gigs, road gigs. Most of the sessions I started out with for the first few years were not particularly good. A lot of it was pretty horrible music. I did a lot of what they call “custom sessions,” which is somebody who thinks he or she can sing. And they come to town, hire a producer, and pay them a bunch of money and the musicians get a little bit of it to make a record.

I worked for a woman called Terri Gibbs for a couple of years, played in her road band, and from that she pulled me into the studio to do a couple of her albums, which helped in a little sense put me on the map. But the thing that I suppose was one of the watershed moments for me was a couple of guys called Foster and Lloyd. I had done demos for these two guys as individual songwriters. They got a record deal as a duo, kind of a hip young country duo, and they just drafted those of us who had played on their demos into making their record, and the first song they put out went #1. I very distinctly remember hearing that on the radio for the first time, and it was a real moment for me to realize, “Wow! I finally played on a big record.” That was sort of the launching point, I suppose, in that I started getting other calls from other people. I’ve been here ever since. That would have been, I’m going to guess, mid-80s.

Your name is fairly ubiquitous on album credits. In fact, it would be easier to list the people you haven’t played with!

I’ve been really lucky. I have worked with a lot of different people, and you know, Nashville is and probably always will be predominantly a country music capitol. I’d say the biggest bulk of my career has been involved with country artists, but I’m also very happy that I’ve been able to branch out and work with some non-country artists.

Let’s go throw out some artists that you’ve played with and get your impressions of the experience or the music or the role that you played. First, you played on what is arguably one of 2007’s most impressive releases, Patty Griffin’s Children Running Through. Tell us about that.

She is just so wicked cool. She is absolutely the bomb in my book. That came about through a friend of mine. I had been a big fan of Patty’s for years, and I think we did a couple of TV shows where I was in the staff band and she came through as one of the artists. So we met through that but absolutely had no chance to get to know each other or anything like that. Just strictly a quick hello and on to the performance. I got a call from a friend of mine, Mike McCarthy, who was a long time engineer here in Nashville years ago, and he’s since moved off to Texas and created quite a name for himself with mostly independent rock bands, and that kind of thing. So he asked if I would do this record with Patty and come down to Austin for a few days and work on part of the record, and I didn’t hesitate at all. I grabbed the first flight out and came down.

It was a very interesting experience. They had rented a small house and set up the equipment in there, and Patty is a very organic, spontaneous artist. One of the first things we did, she said, “Well, I just kind of hear string bass and me.” And they had rented this little string bass that, to be frank with you, was pretty close to a basket case. It was virtually unplayable. I thought, “Well, here we go. Let’s see whether I’m man enough to cover the check here.” And I had to kind of cradle the bass. I had to almost recline as if I was in an easy chair or something like that, with my left leg on top of the instrument to keep it from vibrating the wrong way. It was surreal. But I gotta tell you, credit where it is due. When she sings, it is just… Time kind of stands still may be a bit of an exaggeration, but she sings and you’re just in that moment. That whole weekend was kind of a combination of that kind of thing. Most of the things we did were first or second takes. A couple of things were things that she had cut previously, I believe with some guys that are sort of her steady band, and I wound up replacing some bass on some things or adding bass if there wasn’t any to begin with. It was a combination of just real raw live performances and overdubbing on some things that they’d laid a framework down for. She was fabulous. Absolutely incredible. I list Children Running Through as one of the things I’m probably most proud of. I’ve finally gotten a chance to work with her, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that one day the phone will ring again, and I’ll get to do some more.

How about Miranda Lambert?

She’s fantastic. I love working with her. It’s a challenge working with somebody like that in the sense that we’re a totally different generation. One of the things I feel like I can offer people is years and years of experience, but sometimes that’s the dead last thing anybody wants. She’s a young woman. She writes songs for a young audience. And she wants it to be unpredictable and not cliché. She likes hearing things she hasn’t heard before. So it’s a bit of a challenge, a beautiful challenge, in that you’re expected to just throw it in there as if you were 19 years old and playing in the band behind her.

I love working with her. She writes these slightly unusual twisted songs, and there’s a real sense of “Well, let’s just see how bizarre we can make this one and maybe still get it on the radio.” She’s very cool. I think she’s a great artist, it’s always one of the high-water marks of the year to get to work with her. I’ve done two of her albums and hope to keep doing it. She’s one of those [artists] that people didn’t know what to make of at first. I had lunch with her and her producer before we did the first record, and she made it very clear even at that lunch that she did not want to be thought of as just another one of the current crop of singers. She wanted to have her own identity. I’ve heard that many times from other artists in the past, but she was one artist that could stand and deliver. She does not want to hear any of the cliché sounds that I’m afraid we’re often so guilty of here in Nashville.

You have quite a history with Mark Knopfler.

Yeah. If I had to pick one artist that I’m the most proud of an association with, it would be Mark. I’ve been with him, off and on, I guess since about ’93. I like to think of that as the absolute ultimate part-time gig. Since we first started working together, he’s drafted me into all of his solo projects, and as a result of that, I’ve wound up playing in his live band when we go out and tour, which with him averages every two or three years. He’s the most amazing songwriter I’ve ever been around in my life. Certainly one of the most brilliant guitar players I’ve ever heard. And on top of that just one of the nicest people. He’s one of my dearest friends. I think we’re going to go out and do a tour next year, but there’s no tour this year.
You were also part of the Roadrunner tour Mark did with Emmylou Harris.
That was fantastic. The record itself was kind of an unusual thing in that originally Mark was just doing several songs he had written where he wanted to have a duet partner, and Emmy came in and did a couple of songs on that. And it went so well that he and Em decided, “Hey, maybe we should do a full-length CD this way.” So we did that, but we did it over the course of several years. Just in bits and pieces; when she would have a couple of things she wanted to do, or when Mark would, or when one or the other would have a bit of time to get everybody together. It was kind of a sporadic approach to doing that record, but I think it came out real well. And we did a short tour of something around two months or so that was just as much fun as I’ve ever had on stage, I would say.

Why was that?

Just because there was such a camaraderie between Mark and Emmylou, and they’re both artists of the very highest standards. They’ve set very high standards for themselves and when you work with people like that you just naturally want to bring your very best effort to the table, too. There were no egos involved. It was very much grown up adults who just happened to be, in my book, magnificent singers and songwriters. As an accompanist, it just doesn’t get any better than that kind of situation. I’ve often wished, I think we all have, that we could go out and do that combination again. And who knows, maybe at some point we will.

It certainly did achieve a surprising level of success given the state of radio today and how hard it is to get music like that heard.

Yeah, it really did. You’re absolutely right. It’s just a very different day now when it comes to radio than when either Mark or Emmy were young. When they were young they were all over the radio, particularly Mark, obviously. But nowadays that’s all been kind of pushed aside. You might hear some of the classic Dire Straits on an oldies station, if you can find an oldies station. And then some of the more independent-minded stations will play his new stuff or her new stuff. But they’re both still really viable artists, actually probably better, just in the sense of artistry, than ever.

I’ve had the good fortune to work with [Emmylou] a lot through the years. In fact, actually just a few months ago we did a kind of a big installment on what will become her next record. She was working with her former producer, Brian Ahern, who did all her early really classic stuff. So it was a real treat to be working with them. I don’t have any idea when it’s coming out or anything or if there’s more to be cut or what, but at least they’re working on it. Something’s on the way.

How about Bob Seger? That was a surprising entry on your roster…

Yeah, you know that was kind of a weird thing. I’ve been recording with Bob off and on since probably ’93 or ’94. Bob is just a really, really prolific songwriter, and I don’t know if he still is, but he was, in those days, a real big fan of some kinds of country music, sort of the cutting edge country music, and he just called out of the blue one day. He had bought several different albums that I had played on, and he liked the albums. Wound up just calling me one day. Asked me if I’d come down and overdub on some songs he’d written. Of course, I was thrilled to get the chance to do that. And I don’t think any of those songs ever saw daylight. As I say, he writes so prolifically. I think whatever actually gets put on an album couldn’t amount to more than about three percent of what the guy is actually churning out.
I think at one point they pulled a couple of songs that we had done and stuck them on a greatest hits album they put out a number of years ago. But this current album, the one he put out this last year, was sort of a combination of some of those sessions we had cut some time ago and then a fair number of sessions that we did early last year. It was his first real studio album in quite a few years. And again, he’s one of these guys who’s just a great guy to work with. Extremely intelligent, very intuitive kind of artist. Late in life writing great songs and still can sing his brains out. Just one of the all-time great singers in American music as far as I’m concerned.

How does it generally work in your world? When you show up for session, do they hand you charts or is there a certain level of collaboration and improvisation involved?

You know, it varies a great deal. I did an album a few weeks back with this guy named Jon Secada, and I had never worked with him before, but I got a call to do it. I’m giving him as an example because he was sort of one extreme. I guess you could technically call it an orchestra date. There was a large string section that we cut with at the same time as the rhythm section recorded. So everything went down at once. In that kind of scenario, obviously everything is written out. There may be moments for individual interpretation certainly and moments where somebody might have to improvise a little interlude or perhaps an introduction, but the bulk of it is written out note-for-note. So in those kinds of situations, you have to be able to come in and read what is a very thoroughly constructed chart. Obviously with that many pieces involved, it’s the only way you could do that type of thing.

I certainly don’t do a lot of that. I don’t think there’s a lot of that that gets done anymore just because of budgets and everything else. Often times they’ll cut with a rhythm section and add strings, but it’s kind of a rare deal to do it all at once. So there is that extreme where everything is pretty much in there note-for-note or at least the arrangement is pretty thoroughly set in stone.

Then these other artists, for instance, Patty or Knopfler or Seger, all three of those would share one thing in that they basically play a song to us and somebody in the band will sit down as we’re listening and write a chart out. Sometimes everybody writes their own, but generally one guy will be picked to write the charts for the date. In Nashville, we do a lot of these number charts as opposed to chord names. We just assign each chord of the scale a number, and it makes it easy to transpose from one key to the next if the singer decides they want to change it right quick. So in those situations, which is probably closer to the bulk of what I do, there’s a great deal of involvement on the part of the musicians. It’s part of what I guess we depend on here in Nashville. Hopefully we have enough of a musical personality that people want our input on our respective instruments. So, again, in my experience, being able to do both extremes has really made a difference as far as keeping that telephone ringing or not.

There are people that can do any number of things better than I can, certainly. I guess one of the things that I feel fortunate about, probably just because of my early interest and exposure into all different kinds of music, [is that] I’m able to float fairly convincingly from one genre to the next. And I always try to bring a certain amount of passion to it. That sounds like bull**, I know, but I’m convinced that kind of stuff shows up on CD.

It’s interesting that you seem to straddle a kind of “Nashville Divide” between the Miranda Lamberts and the Patty Griffins, the so-called “alt-country” artists, on the one hand and more traditional country artists on the other hand, artists like Toby Keith, Leann Rimes, George Jones that actually get on the radio and who tend to define the more conservative view of country music. There’s been some talk in the music press about the alt-country movement being sort of an antidote to this more rigid definition of country music that’s promoted by the so-called Nashville establishment? What’s your take on that? Do you see a divide here or from your perspective is the situation more fluid and open?

My own perspective is that it’s more fluid than certainly the critics would have you believe or the press would have you believe. There’s a couple of different things that I feel that I should say. Number one, I know some producers and some labels and some artists that are dead set on getting a very commercial product on the radio and selling it in as vast numbers as they can. That’s their absolute mission. Then there are some other people that don’t want to know anything about that. They just want to make, however they define it, the best music they possibly can and then try to find some way to market it to anyone who will listen. Then there’s a whole bunch of people, probably the multitude, of producers, label people, certainly of players and writers, that [are between] those two schools of thought. There are people that are trying to be as artistic as they know how to be and, at the same time, trying to find some way to get it exposed and turned into a product that people will actually buy. But anybody that tells you that they don’t care at all about any commercial success is either already financially independent or lying. Ultimately, as much as we wish it were not, it is a business, and in order to run any business you have to make money.

My own personal taste certainly does not run toward the real commercial stuff although I’m fairly actively involved in it as far as being called to play. I will say this: All throughout my career I couldn’t tell you how many records I’ve done that pretty thoroughly competed, shall we say politely, with the alt-country stuff. I’m talking about some people that were brilliant writers and [had] really, really great musicianship, whose records were made with the absolute best of intentions and nobody ever heard ‘em. They came out and they just absolutely went nowhere. So I have a great sympathy for the alt-country scene. I’m all for it. I’ve got a number of friends that are artists that you would probably say are in that camp. The better the music, the better it is with me.

Who are some of your current favorites these days?

Certainly, Patty Griffin. Always has been and always will be. That’s a really excellent question because, I’ll be frank with you, an awful lot of what I listen to has nothing whatsoever to do with country music or rock and roll or anything else. I listen right now, and have for years and years, to an awful lot of jazz. And I guess it’s a bit of a dichotomy…

It’s certainly an interesting answer. Not the one you’d expected!

Yeah, I’m not trying per se to become a jazz player. I’m not kidding anybody in thinking that I’m going to move to New York City and try to become a contender in the local string bass scene up there. That isn’t going to happen. But I like to expose myself to things that I can’t do and try to understand them. One of the things about jazz is that it really, really stretches your ear.

Do you find that it informs your playing?

It definitely helps my playing even though, you know, if you listen to a Toby Keith record or whatever, you’re probably not going to hear much if anything that has any connection to jazz. But the thing I love about jazz in its purest form is people, in theory anyway, kind of playing and responding to each other. That’s what I love about great jazz. There’s a lot of horrible jazz out there. Unfortunately, if you probably get right down to it, the percentages in any genre, there’s probably 10 percent that’s just outstanding and 25 percent that’s pretty damn good. And the rest is maybe fairly disposable.

Let’s shift gears a bit and find out a little bit about your experiences with Elixir® Strings.

I’m trying to remember how I found out about them. I’m gonna guess that I simply saw them in a music store and picked up a set to try. I can’t imagine there was any other scenario. But the thing that I was really struck by was how they sounded. I’m not the kind of bass player who likes a lot of top end. I don’t like a lot of top end on my bass. I like to have enough where it’s present, but I often hear people in the studio say “My sound’s just not cutting through.” And my attitude has always been that I like to be one of the guys you have to cut through. Let me give you something to cut through! When I was younger, I used to change my strings just as often as I could possibly afford to. I would always try to keep real fresh wiry-sounding strings on. But through the years, my tastes changed, and I wasn’t so intrigued with that sound anymore. And when I would change strings, there was always this horrible break-in period. Again, it’s very different from what I used to think when I was much younger. But I could hardly stand it to play the strings for the first couple of weeks because it took awhile for them to break-in and lose some of that harsh top end. But Elixir® Strings, right out of the bag, right on the instrument, immediately were ready to play. To my ear, they sounded exactly right.
The thing I had no idea of when I bought them was that they would last so long. I’m a big fan of the old flat-wound completely dead string, no sustain whatsoever, and I use that sound. I’ve got a bass that I’ve had strings on since somewhere around 1971 or 1972. Ancient strings now. And there’s not a second’s worth of sustain on that instrument. But in some situations, it sounds absolutely fabulous. But for everything else, I just really, really was taken by those Elixir® Strings.

I went out on one of these tours with Mark Knopfler. I’m going to guess it was 2001, I think. Several people from Elixir contacted me. They were kind enough to send me a box of strings, and they sent me several e-mails throughout the tour asking me when did I want the next box of strings. And I kept saying, “I don’t need them!” And I’m talking about heavy, heavy usage. When I tour with Mark, we’re playing at least five nights out of seven. He’s not one these artists that goes out and does a gig one night and then takes two days off. If he’s on the road, he wants to work. We’re doing long shows. A lot of them outdoors. Very demanding conditions for a string. And I mean my tech kept coming up, “Well, you ready for me to change the strings?” No! They sound great. I don’t know that we ever did change strings. We might have toward the very end of the tour. Maybe. It’s extraordinary. That’s the other reason that I became such a fan. They sound great. They sound great immediately to me. And they last a stupid amount of time!

What does the rest of the year look like for you?

Well, I’ve got a number of albums booked. I’m doing Alan Jackson’s new record next week. And I’ve got George Strait in September, so I’ve got a couple of big, classic country artists to work with. And I’m excited because I’ve got a number of new artists. There’s a young man named Charlie Pate, that I’m hoping people will be hearing about. We’re going to do a record with him in August, and he’s being produced by a guy named Frank Liddell, who’s a brilliant producer here in town. He’s the guy that does Miranda Lambert, a really, really, great producer. Charlie Pate is a young guy from here in Nashville, and he’s a throwback in time. He’s like 21 or something, can’t be much older than that, but he writes these songs that sound like they were written two generations ago. He writes really hard-hitting lyrics. It’s very traditional country sounding, but definitely with his own twist. I’m really excited about it. It’s kind of hard to describe, but I’m hoping he’ll be one of those one who will fit squarely in that alt-country camp. It’s not going to be commercial country radio, you know. Hopefully you’ll be able to find it. He’s on Lost Highway. They’ll get him out there. And then, it’s not a done deal yet, but I have a pretty strong indication we’ll probably tour for at least probably the first half of next year with Mark again. I did a new record with him early this year, and I think it comes out in September or thereabouts this fall, and then I’m sure once we get it all inked and everything, we’ll go out and tour behind that.