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Charlie Siefert

Charlie is a Jazz electric bassist of about 30 years.

About Me

I play Zon fretted and fretless 6 string bass guitars. I played professionally in St. Louis, MO for about 15 years. I received a Associate of Arts degree from Southwestern Illinois College (Summa Cum Laude) where Jerry Bolen was the Head of the Jazz and Music Dept. I had about another year and a half study at Southern Illinois University with a double major in Jazz Performance and Classical Theory and Composition. Brett Stamps and Rick Hayden were the Dept Heads for the Jazz Dept. I was unable to complete my degrees because of alcoholism totally consuming my life, but have been recovering from that for 24 years now. I started playing bass at age 15, after hearing Rush's “All The World's A Stage”. When I heard the song “In The End”, I knew that bass guitar was for me. At age 16, I started playing with various bands, but really did not become a “professional” musician until I was 27 and recovered from the drinking thing. I started in small groups- usually a trio. After a couple years, I started playing society gigs, wearing a tuxedo. That's where I met many of the great St. Louis musicians. Over the next several years, I continued the society gigs, and anything else I could do on the side. There were two jam sessions in particular, that I was primary (and often the only) bassist for; one with the Park Avenue Band and the other with the unofficial Southern Illinois University Wed Jam Band. These were the best-I learned so much from playing with many, many different players/different instruments. Often reading new tunes, “hearing it”, working at fitting in with the various instrumentations, and really “cutting my teeth” as far as soloing as well as accompanying. The respective leaders were John Farrar (guitarist), whom I basically learned all about Jazz with, and George Geshwin (tenor sax), who is a great organizer and player. In the 1990's, I started playing with a drummer from SIU, John Hale (my musical brother), together we did the jam sessions on Wendsdays, and eventually started playing with a brilliant guitarist Amir Arab-who played Flamenco and Middle Eastern music and wanted to mix these with a Latin Jazz feel. Eventually we hooked up with another brilliant guitarist Farshid Soltanshah, and his brother Ali (percussionist). Amir is a very passionate guitarist (think Carlos Santana) and Farshid is a very precise guitarist (think Joe Sample). Together, we were amazing! We played Latin Jazz-Flamenco-Middle Eastern music-but at times we would break into rock, heavy metal, disco, damn near anything - and became the most popular band in St Louis within 6 months. We played EVERYWHERE! The best clubs, best hotels, the 2000 St Louis Botanical Gardens Jazz Festival, on the St Louis classical music station (several times), the Season Opening Party for the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, and we were the first opening band for Santana in 2000. The name of that band was Acoustic Internote. That band was by far my very favorite experience, we all respected each others' playing and musicality, which gave us all soooo much freedom. Unfortunately, that group broke up before our first CD was finished, but I wouldn't have been able to continue anyway as I broke my back late one night after a Ritz Carlton gig. I continued on with the band for another six months, but couldn't play after that. It is now 13 years later (2014), and my back is finally getting strong enough that I am interested in trying to play out again and am going to start hitting Jam Sessions down in Detroit and see if I can start gigging again...so I will update this profile soon, hopefully.

My Jazz Story

I love jazz because it is an incredibly complete way to express myself in the language of music, both emotionally and technically, in a group setting. When playing with the right people, anyone in the group can take the music in any direction, and times like those are the most emotionaly satisfying times I have had in life - to both support as a bassist and have freedom of expression within the framework of a song allows me to put myself inside the music completely. Listening to jazz music, especially in a live context, can bring the same feelings, to live inside the music, and have it be a part of me. I was first exposed to Jazz in a meaningful way in Junior College. I was a bassist in the Jazz Big Band. I wasn't intrested in jazz really, I wanted to be a rock musician like Geddy Lee from Rush. When we played charts by Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie(in particular)I heard, and felt the music in a way very comparable to the way playing with the great rock records did. There was both a freedom, and technicality that drew me into the music. That was the first time I lived in the music outside of a rock context. Dizzy Gillespie is still my Jazz Hero, and is always the background on my Facebook page. I have met a number of famous Jazz musicians-bassists first-Dave Engleke-bassist with the St Louis Muny Opera and Jazz bassist; Tom Kennedy-solo artist, has played and toured with Tania Maria, Dave Weckl, currently with Mike Stern; Jim Mayer-Jimmy Buffett's bass player for many years-I have taken lessons with the afore mentioned bassists-I have also met;Jonas Hellborg with John McGlaughlin; Ray Brown with his Trio; Jeff Berlin and Billy Sheehan-both at clinics. I am acquainted with:drummer Dave Weckl-played and toured with Michel Camilo, Chick Corea Elektric and Akoustic Bands, Mike Stern, along with and extensive solo career; drummer Steve Houghton-Big Bands, also early Tribal Tech; drummer Danny Gottlieb with John McGlaughlin (career too extensive to mention all); drummer Jeff Hamilton-with Ray Brown Trio. I was very honored to meet Paquito D'Rivera a couple of years ago at the Detoit Jazz Festival-he has played with everybody from 1940's Dizzy Gillespie Big Bands to his current self named band. "Unofficially" famous people I have met and played with are the many great local musicians of St Louis Mo. The best show I ever attended has to be a tie between my first Rush concert and the several times that I have seen Chick Corea-solo, Elektik Band II, the Time Warp band. Chick Corea is right up there with Dizzy on my "best of the best" musicial list. The first jazz record I bought was...I honestly can't remember. Probably a Dizzy Big Band or Oscar Peterson Trio album. I didn't get into fusion until a few years after becoming interested in Jazz. My advice to new listeners...My suggestions for new listeners is to listen to EVERYTHING Jazz, and anything else that interests you. Listening to at least some Classical music is important also. Try to listen to everything with and open mind-try to listen to and sort out individual instruments (and find the player's names in the liner notes) on repeated listenings to Jazz albums. Modern recording tech is so good that it is usually pretty easy to find individual players on a recording, even (and especially) older remastered recordings. It is very important to understand that Jazz has a very specific History. There are many defining periods and also many periods of change. Even if you don't really like a particular "type" of Jazz-realize that it has a definite place in Jazz History. Listen to at least one recording from each period-there is a fantastic timeline and resource at http://www.jazzinamerica.org/JazzResources/Timeline - For me, a big part of Jazz listening is to find and read History books and Biographies which are about and from the period of History that the recordings come from.