Steven Ayres

I started playing guitar poorly about 1970, a tradition I struggle to maintain, but I was diverted a few years later when this crackhead drummer I'd met handed me a six-string Wurlitzer bass with one busted string and asked me to help him out with this band he was forming. (Okay, this was before crack, but you get the idea.) I fixed the string and played that right through a brief and ultimately pointless flirtation with college, until the guy who actually owned it broke into my house and stole it back.

So I did the prog-rock thing for a little while, lots of hair, weed and bad clothes, but underneath it was always the blues. Maybe it was the location, more or less halfway between Detroit and Chicago, maybe it was dumb luck, I dunno, but I always had a feel for it, and whatever the current project, be it bluegrass, psychedelia, folk-rock, Top 40, progressive, polkas, pit work, big band, straightahead rock or club jazz, I eventually returned to the rhythm and the blues like it was home.

I'm also involved with Carlos and Matt Jackson in the Jackson-Jones Jazz Trio, which is its own brand of big fun. Beyond gigging I produce radio shows on KJZA-FM, build stuff, produce other people's recordings, screw around with old cars, talk too much politics, and for a living I run a little translation company.

Gear

I bought my Guild B-301 new in '76, because it was the one in the store that felt like it fit my hands, and have since acquired the B-301F and B-302F that are the main electric axes now. Once you give up frets you usually don't go back. I've been sold on Gallien-Krueger amps for decades -- the primary is an 800 RB from the '80s -- and I've recently got into a Sansamp 
preamp for some extra presence among all these damn guitars.

For most acoustic work I play a '52 Kay five-string with a high C and K&K Bassmax pickup. For more formal shows I'll bring out my Englehart S-9 with David Gage pickup, which is prettier. In up to medium-sized venues these are 
usually reinforced with an Acoustic Image Contra rig, also using a Sansamp stompbox.

I admit to Bass Acquisition Syndrome, so don't be surprised if you see something else on the stand on a given night.