Okay, guys, we are here with the amazing Tom Kennedy, who I've been geeking out on four years.

Years, the first time I actually heard you was on Dave Wekel's album Synergy. Oh, wow. And I was listening to it. I was listening to it on the train. I thought, I'll listen to some Tom down on the train to the studio, so I've been listening to you this morning, Tom. That's amazing. But just in case you don't know who Tom is, you were born in St. Louis, son of a professional trumpet play. In fact, your whole family were musicians, weren't they? You had no choice. That's right. You were always going to be a musician. Yeah, started out on acoustic bass at age nine. I didn't even know that they made them small enough for a night. Was it just sort of like... They didn't. It was huge. You reached. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you were just an abnormally tall nine-year-old possibly. I used to lean it down like that to play it. Oh, really? Yeah, wow. Took up Electric aged 17 and by 18... Check this out. By 18, you played with Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, George Russell, Nat Adley, Peter Erskine and Freddie Hubbard and probably a ton of other people.

Man, you must have been good. Anyway, moved to New York in 1984 and then you went on to record with Michael and Randy Breck with steps ahead, Aldi Mola, Mike Stern, who would just been hanging with, Steve Kahn, Joe Sample, Steve Lukather, Dave Sanborn, I mean, so many others. And obviously, with Dave Wechle as well. And you've recorded five solo records. You were being busy, Tom. How did you find, yeah, how did you end up finding the bass in the first place, the up-prite?

When did you get started with that?

It sounds like a cliche, but the bass found me.

It was really amazing the way it happened.

My brother was in middle school, and he was tall.

Yeah. And they were looking for a bass player for the orchestra at school.

And he was the only guy in school tall enough to play this instrument.

Yeah.

And so she said, you know, and everybody knew, you know, about his musical prowess, you know,

and he could do, he could play anything.

Was he killing already at that time?

Oh, ridiculous, ridiculous. Yeah, already playing great jazz piano.

And so he brought the bass home to practice. And they said, well, you know, you have the

weekend to learn the bass, and then you start with the orchestra on Monday. And that's

the way I was. Yeah, yeah. And he said, okay, I'll take it home.

And so I walked in the house and nobody was home.

And I walked into the music room where there was normally just a piano

and here's this thing.

Yeah.

You know, on the ground, sideways on the ground, one of the sides.

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