The rest of the recording budget went toward transforming their Mesa, Arizona, rehearsal space into recording studio. “You can hear a real openness on this record,” explains Rick Burch, who is celebrating 14 years playing with his childhood friends. “To be able to go into the studio and work for ten hours a day while still having that balance of normalcy with our families made us feel really free. If a day went by when something wasn’t happening, we’d have been bumming at a normal studio because we’d have nothing to show for the money we spent. In this situation, it was, ‘No big deal—we’ll come back to it tomorrow.’”

Coupled with the band’s collaborative spirit, that freed-up approach fits well with Burch’s overall bass philosophy: being there for the greater good of the whole. “I play ‘support’ bass,” Rick laughs. “Playing together is very intuitive, especially when we record. Zach [Lind, drums] and I work out our parts so there’s no conflict there. We’ve known each other for years, even before we’d played together, and that helps with the day-to-day of being in a band.”

With the band tuning down for many of its songs, Burch wrestled with pitch problems playing his American-made Fender Precision. “The tuning on my bass is low: C#G#C#F#. That’s a half-step down and another full step for the E string. As a result, the string tension is really low. Heavy-gauge strings helped, but if I hit a note, the motion and arc of the string would create tension and pull the note sharp.” When a tour-bus snafu snapped the neck in two, he brought the bass back to Fender Custom Shop’s Alex Perez for repairs—and an unexpected solution. “Alex explained that the more the strings are under tension, the more stable the note is going to be. He did for me what he’d done for other players, which is to put a left-handed neck on a right-handed bass. That made the E string—my low C#—the longest string from the peg to the bridge instead of the shortest. It’s amazing how stable the note is now. I also changed my E string to a heavier .125 from a 5-string set.”

CAN BE HEARD ON

Chase This Light [Interscope, 2007]
Futures [Interscope, 2004]
Bleed American [Grand Royal, 2001]
Clarity [Capitol, 1999]
Static Prevails [Capitol, 1996]

GEAR

Basses The “Blue Bass”: Lake Placid Blue Fender Custom Shop Precision Bass with single tone knob; the “Black Bass”: 1975 Fender Precision Bass (both strung with Ernie Ball heavy-gauge strings and a .125 E string); Lakland Hollowbody with Ernie Ball flatwounds; Jim Dunlop heavy picks

Rig Two Ampeg SVT Classic heads with Ampeg SVT810 8x10 and 2x15 cabinets

Effects Line 6 PODxt rackmount effects module
“If it’s a big enough room, I’ll run the signal into both heads and let it roar! It’s a lot of fun playing in front of those cabinets. We’re very considerate, though, and if the room can’t handle it, we’ll back off for the sake of the show overall.”