Bryan Beller
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Bryan Beller is a bass guitarist, much known for his work with guitarists Mike Keneally, Steve Vai, and Dweezil Zappa.
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[edit] Musical Profession
Degreed in 1993 by Berklee College Of Music at age 22, he immediately landed a gig with Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa’s tweaked rock project Z. Also in that band was one Mike Keneally, a true Frank Zappa band alumnus and freakishly talented guitarist/composer. In a lasting gesture of solidarity with his avant-garde pop/rock/fusion musical vision, Beller left Z when Keneally did in 1996, playing on 12 releases as of 2007 and as a team of clinicians for Taylor Guitars[1] in which they've played numerous acoustic "tours" since the mid-1990s during which they recompose Keneally's, Beller's, Frank Zappa's, and various other artists' work "on the fly" for only acoustic guitar and bass guitar with amazing technical skill - an album of Keneally/Beller acoustic work has been recorded and is forthcoming. Keneally’s 2006 release, Guitar Therapy Live, is the musical culmination of his and Beller’s shared live experience.
In 2003, Beller felt he had something to say compositionally, and said it with force and grace on his debut release, View. A completely self-financed and uncompromised product – and released on Beller’s own boutique label, Onion Boy Records, View didn’t merely aspire to bass heroism. Instead, it arrived as a carefully crafted, highly emotional tapestry of interweaving themes and styles. The resulting body of work ran from jazz/rock to vocal pop to thrash to acoustic solo to world beat while staying thematically intact, all the while displaying equal parts density and sensitivity, melody and dissonance, tranquility and furious release. The album earned critical acclaim across the board, with Bass Player Magazine’s Editor Bill Leigh particularly praising View’s “sublime moments of melancholia, beauty, and joy.” Beller has currently finished demoing the songs for his second album and will be recording them Winter/Spring of 2008.
Beller’s well-rounded experience made him a natural session-ace choice for guitar legend Steve Vai, who tracked him on six albums (including the Grammy-nominated “Lotus Feet” from 2006’s Real Illusions: Reflections) before Vai tapped him for his own full-blown collaboration with the Metropol Orchestra. Beller joined Vai for the entirety of the resulting 2007 rock/orchestra CD/DVD Sound Theories, a tour-de-force of complex rock and modern classical genre-bending compositions. Beller soon joined Vai’s touring rock band on the European and North American legs of Vai's "String Theories" tour (he left the touring band to play bass on the Dethklok live tour, which coincided with the South American dates of the "String Theories" tour) which played sold-out halls and theaters throughout Europe and continues in the U.S. and Canada.
Beller then took several months with a portable recording setup and traveled 'cross-country and in Los Angeles to various studios and friends (Mike Keneally, Rick Musallam, Griff Peters, Joe Travers, Marco Minnemann, Jeff Babko, Nick D'Virgilio, Chris Cottros, Jody Nardone, Marcus Finnie, Jude Crossen, Bruce Dees, Clayton Ivey, and Scheila Gonzalez) where they would record sections of music that he had demoed during downtime on the Steve Vai tour. After returning to San Diego he finished recording at "Double Time" studios, where many of Mike Keneally's albums have been recorded as well. Beller's sophomore album, entitled "Thanks In Advance" was "Officially Finished" on May 20th, 2008. Tentatively presales will occur in September of '08 and the release in October of 2008. Much like the last several releases by The Mike Keneally Band, there will be a "Deluxe/Special Edition" released over the Internet first which will contain a bonus DVD of footage spanning the beginning of the genesis of the album through the recording to near the release, with footage of the recording process in multiple areas. There will also be a "Standard Edition" that contains just the album and will be released into stories some time after the "Deluxe Edition".
Very soon after the finishing of "Thanks For Advance", Beller once again joined Brendon Small, Gene Hoglan and Mike Keneally in a second Dethklok tours. Unlike the first one, which upon retrospect was to gauge audience desire for such a tour, this will be held in legitimate theatre-sized venues such as the House of Blues as opposed to the University Campuses played at during the first one.
[edit] Music Industry Profession
In 1997, Beller decided to add some financial and mental stability to the life of an LA session musician after a failed audition with Steve Vai by taking a job with SWR Sound Corporation, a leading high-end independent bass guitar amplifier, speaker cabinet, and acoustic guitar amplifier manufacturer of which he was an endorsee for his musical equipment. Quickly over the next five years he rose from Amp Tester to Customer Service Manager to Artist Relations Director to Export Sales Manager to Product Development Manager and eventually to one of two Vice Presidents in the company in 2002. In 2003 SWR was purchased by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, and in 2005 Beller has since left FMIC due to his unhappiness over a likely move to the new SWR/Fender headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona and the lack of musical opportunities there offers a working musician compared to his hometown and former SWR manufacturing location of Los Angeles; for six months he flew or drove to Scottsdale three days a week while the other two days he telecommuted from home in LA, and then agreed upon working in Scottsdale for one week a month and the rest of the time working out of his home office via e-mail, fax, and cell phone. However, the combination of musical opportunities that came up such as playing with guitarist Steve Vai in Holland with the Metropol Orchestra[2] ("a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity"), his role as bassist in The Mike Keneally Band which was being severally strained by his travel schedule ("I really couldn't do this gig (SWR/Fender) and be a musician at the same time") along with the death of close friend Wes Wehmiller (bassist for Duran Duran, Warren Cuccurullo, Missing Persons, and I, Claudius whom Beller had met as a student at the Berklee School of Music over a decade previously) which reminded him that his musical opportunities could not exist along with his "day job" and that music was still his main priority in life.[3]
[edit] Personal life
During his thirteen years in Los Angeles, Beller acquired a reputation as a uniquely talented yet supremely tasteful hired gun bassist for adventurous rock guitarists and singer/songwriters alike, touring and recording for Wayne Kramer (ex-MC5 guitarist) and indie singer-songwriter Janet Robin (Lindsay Buckingham) among many others. Now, after relocating to Nashville in early 2006, he’s played everything from country (with up-and-comer Kyle Wyley and others) to R&B (with artist and session singer Kira Small, his Significant Other) while commuting to LA for Mike Keneally projects, his 2007 tours as bassist in Steve Vai's touring band, and everything in between.
Beller’s other main creative outlet is writing, and he serves currently as a Contributing Editor for Bass Player Magazine. His cover story on Tool’s Justin Chancellor ran in the July 2007 issue, and he’s interviewed a long list of bass luminaries – Neil Stubenhaus, Oteil Burbridge, Michael Rhodes, Edgar Meyer, Jonas Hellborg, John Patitucci, Lee Sklar, Dave LaRue, Adam Nitti, and more – for his advanced Masterclass column. Additional interviews include Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, David Lee Roth), guitarist Jon Butcher, and film scorer W.G. “Snuffy” Walden (The West Wing, thirtysomething). Beller’s work has run in seven different publications to date.
