Side Roads
Discoveries Off the Beaten Path
When international
music sensation Yanni
wanted his bass player
to stand out amidst
the spectacle of lights,
sound and extravagance of his stage
show, he bought a
Barker bass.
Not only did the
instrument have a
visual presence—an
unusual shape made
from exquisitely finished hardwoods—
the Barker let bassist
Hussain Jiffry make his
sonic presence known.
“A bass with a lot of
sustain—it’s one of our
bragging points,” says Lee Barker, inventor of and designer of the Barker Vertical
Bass, which he builds by hand in his
shop in Redmond, Oregon.
Yanni is one of fewer than 100 people
worldwide who own a Barker, but praise
for the upright bass guitar has been universal, Lee says.
“It has a chambered body that stands
apart from the player,” he says. “It solidi-
fies what makes my instrument different,
and why people who play it say no other
bass sounds like it.”
The Barker’s mass combined with
hollowed out acoustical chambers
give it the ability to vibrate on its
own and produce nearly unlimited
sustain once it is amplified. Lee uses
premade bass guitar necks, so his
focus is on the resonance of the body
and electronics.
The origin of the Barker was functional, not musical. Lee, who played
bass guitar for years, began to experience pain in his left wrist.
“If I played bass guitar for 20 minutes,
I didn’t want to play anymore,” he says.
“That was discouraging.”
In his youth, Lee studied tuba in col-
lege, then switched to bass guitar when
Building a
Better Bass
Party Days
The old days were party days, at least in
terms of telephone service. For much of
the 20th century, most of the country
was served by party lines. A party line
involves two or more customers sharing
the same phone line. The 1959 movie
“Pillow Talk,” starring Doris Day and Rock
Hudson, illustrates the joys and hazards
of party lines. A 100-mile-long party line
in Ruby Valley, Nevada, was once the
longest in the united States. Few party
lines remain today.
Photo by Nancy livingstone of Ruby Valley, Nevada
By Mike Federman
One man’s quest to build
an ergonomic bass guitar
turns tradition on its head
Lee Barker plays a Barker Brio bass inside the sound room of his Redmond,
Oregon, workshop.
asked by friends to play in a rock and
roll band in the 1960s. After a hiatus to
raise a family, Lee got back into playing bass again in various musical settings in Central Oregon. The thought of
not being able to play music anymore
because of physical limitations was not
something Lee would accept.
He studied the hydraulic lines of a
backhoe and noticed they matched the
movement of the human wrist, only with
more flexibility. He decided to minimize
stress on his wrist by turning the bass
guitar upright.
The task of creating a new instrument
cobbled together from used parts was
no big deal for Lee, a longtime professional woodworker. When he finished his
instrument in 2003, the most important
thing was the ergonomic design allowed
him to play again without pain.
“Now I’ve got my bass, now back to
work,” Lee says, recalling his desire to
return to making music. “But my band-
mates said it sounded really good. That
was not something I was prepared for.
I was not focused on how it sounded. I
was focused on how it played.”
Lee built another bass, did some
research and realized no one was making
