On July 28th, the editorial staff of Bass Frontiers travelled just under four hours from our home base in Nashville to Marietta, GA. Our purpose was to award the inaugural Bass Frontiers Billy Sheehan award…….to none other than Billy Sheehan!

Billy Sheehan And Dave Fowler

We had planned to present Billy with this award at this year’s Summer NAMM. Unfortunately, Billy had a family emergency to attend to and could not attend the luncheon we had planned for him. Thus, when we learned of Billy’s clinic happening in Marietta, we loaded up the truck with bodies and snacks and hit the road!

The clinic was held at Ken Stanton Music (which, by the way, is a TOP notch music store. Check them out if you’re in the area!) on a rainy Tuesday night. After the presentation of the award by our editor-in-chief, Dave Fowler (see a video of the presentation below), Billy put on a great clinic. He started out by playing bass for about 5 minutes, followed by almost 90 minutes of Q&A from the packed crowd. Topics included his time with Talas, David Lee Roth, and the past, present, and future of Mr. Big (hint: they’re probably planning a run on the U.S. very soon), setting up your own bass, practice technique, a denunciation of sight-reading and theory at the amateur level, and a number of other topics.

Billy Sheehan

We plan on presenting The Billy Sheehan Award to other bass players who have had innumerable contributions to the development of the instrument and its role in music. Visit Billy’s website to learn more about him!