Next Level Bassist Left Hand

Ranaan Meyer: What’s it been like to be with the Punch Brothers?
Paul Kowert: To talk about the last 5 years is tough to summarize, but
overall it’s been really great. It was kind of a quick change of pace for
me because they were a touring band already, with a couple records
under their belts. I was a big fan of them and listened to their music.
Their first concern was getting a bass player on the road to play these
gigs that they already had, and then after that seeing if it would work
as a permanent solution. It was a quick change because the Punch
Brothers had tours lined up and I went straight from the practice room
to a 15 passenger van!
R: You were at Curtis at the time right?
P: I was in my 5 th year at Curtis, which is the final year for many
students. My teachers, Hal Robinson and Edgar Meyer, the administrators,
everyone was ok with me taking off early in the year, and they
made it work around the school. It was something I really couldn’t
pass up. Even though I had just begun the 5 th year, they gave me the
green light to leave.
R: How did you develop yourself as an artist to that point?
P: I started on the violin, because my sister was 3 years older and was
playing. There was a strings program in my elementary school that
I wanted to take part in, but I didn’t want to play an instrument that
I had already been playing for 6 years, so I started the bass. It was a
more social instrument. I started the electric bass at the same time
as the upright. I joined a rock cover band and I was playing in jazz
groups before too long on the upright. All those things tend to be
more social than an orchestra for a 9 year old! It was important for me
to do something that involved other people my age, rehearsing and
playing on our own terms. I was also perhaps more special on the bass
than on the violin. I play fiddle tunes on the violin now.
I started listening to Edgar Meyer when I was in high school. This was
around the same time that I met this band, The Knob Hill Boys, who
came to my high school as part of a Music In Schools program. The
banjo player from Punch Brothers, Noam Pikelny, actually started
playing banjo the same way I got into bluegrass - we both saw bluegrass
players play at our schools through this program. In my high
school in Wisconsin, the Knob Hill Boys came, played, and taught the
instruments to the kids in the orchestra. Just seeing the way the fiddle
was playing, the aggression and the power of the high instruments,
really got me going. I started playing mandolin then, and around
that time also started listening to Edgar Meyer. I liked the music
and I respected his playing, but it coincided with this new interest in
bluegrass because he was making all these records with mandolin and
banjo players, etc. It was a lot of the same individuals I was listening
to outside of bass - Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Strength in Numbers. I
found a couple kindred spirits for this music in Wisconsin. We would
get together and play what we could - some of the tunes that those
guys recorded are challenging to pull off in a jam setting. It was a good
learning experience to push ourselves, trying to play things even when
you don’t exactly know what’s going on. It’s a good way to get comfortable
improvising and become a solid ensemble player. I was jamming
a lot before I went to Curtis, but I went to school there because I knew
I wanted to make a life in music. I didn’t know how to do that, but I
knew that getting a good conservatory education would be as good as
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Strings Handmade in Germany
Photo Credit © Pöllmann
22 SUMMER 2014 NEXT LEVEL BASSIST