BASS GUITAR
Robbie is equally a guitarist and a bassist. Bass is his first instrument.
As a bassist, Robbie has performed and/or recorded with
TOM MORELLO (SSSC, Nightwatchman)
NUNO BATTENCOURT (Extreme)
WAYNE KRAMER (MC5)
SLASH (Guns N' Roses)
RICKIE LEE JONES
SEAN LENNON & CHARLOTTE KEMP MUHL (GOASTT)
KELLY ZUTRAU (Wet)
BOOTS RILEY (SSSC, The Coup)
IKE WILLIS, DON PRESTON, ED MANN, RAY WHITE (from Frank Zappa / Mothers of Invention)
CHRIS HARFORD'S BAND OF CHANGES featuring DEEN WEEN and JOE RUSSO
SOUND OF URCHIN
GODFREY DIAMOND (producer)
Xenia Rubinos, Mighty Fine, Family Man, Eric Roth Soul Revue, Blanc Du Blanc, Old Rugged Sauce.
He performed on bass for Tom Morello's Nightwatchman live concert for Guitar Center Sessions video.
He has played bass in the musicals “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Raincoat” and “Godspell”.
His main basses are a 1986 Spector NS-2A, an Epiphone short scale, and a fretless Fender Jazz bass. He endorses GK bass amps.
-Long Story-
Although widely known for his guitar playing, Robbie played and studied bass for ten years before ever playing guitar in a band. Electric bass is Robbie’s main instrument. He started figuring out and playing basslines of popular songs at the age of nine and was soon recruited in a band at 10 years old and played his first show the same year. In the next five years he took private bass lessons with a local teacher (Don Regan) and attended two-week summer music school (The National Guitar Summer Workshop) for bass. Robbie’s father brought him to open mic blues jams roughly once a week where he learned to play with local musicians sometimes triple his age. He also played bass in community musicals in 8th and 9th grade. In the tenth grade, his bass teacher graduated him as his student, and invited to join two professional bands: An italian-american wedding band and also an instrumental fusion band. That marked his first year as a professional musician. Inheriting a busy gig and rehearsal schedule, it also led to his first experience as a studio musician. Soon, in the same year, he received a call from a staff member at Guitar World Magazine who heard about Robbie from the recommendation of the president of the music school he attended the previous summer. The magazine staff was assembling a teenage supergroup together with a drummer and guitarist (who also became musician pros: guitarist Kevin Rudolf and drummer Matt Slutsky). Robbie passed the audition for number one bass choice. Rehearsals, gigs, recordings, writing with all three bands at once and attending high school kept him busy. Robbie invested his money from gigs into bass gear, recording gear, a car, and lots of albums.
Robbie later attended college at NYU in NYC and continued to rehearse and gig in NJ with two groups. In 1998, Robbie saw Ike Willis (Frank Zappa) and NJ-based Project Object play and gave their bandleader Andre Cholmondeley his info. Soon Robbie filled in as bassist on a number of gigs, but was asked to play guitar which he did for the first lengthy tour of his career. As popularity picked up with the group, Robbie started to be more popular as a guitarist than a bassist. He still plays bass as often as he can.