Fusion-Bags.com | 4 years ago

Lars Mullen has been virtually meeting with Fusion Artist Donald Waugh as part of our 2020 Fusion Virtual World Tour.

Born and raised in Kingston Jamaica, Donald started playing the piano at the age of 7 encouragement by his parents.  When he was 17 years old, he found his brother-in-law’s bass guitar and by the next morning had taught himself to play a few bass lines. His passion for the bass guitar and for music, in general, grew from there. When he started College, Donald became serious about his music career. He studied visual arts, Jazz theory and the bass guitar at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica.

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Well, we've certainly been to some countries in this program. Oh, we're heading off to Canada Ontario to meet Mr Donald Waugh.

Mr Donald Waugh, annoyingly good on bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, flamenco guitar, classical guitar, drums it just goes on and on...

And every time I see you at one of the NAMM Shows or wherever guitar shows anywhere around the world, you're covered in microphones and cameras and you are promoting yourself on these guitar stands. You're a self-promotion person.

You know even with COVID, I find a lot of musicians now realize the value in
in using the internet we don't necessarily need a PR person or a road manager or all that because all the tours I have done it's pretty much just been me sourcing them and I've been touring since 2008.

You know I've been almost everywhere in the world except Africa and China.

Well, you must be missing this, in lockdown at the moment with the shutdown period.

Actually, I'm enjoying being at home because I don't remember a time being at home
for an entire year, ever. You know, so this is the first time. I've never actually stayed home for a full year and another fantastic thing happened, you know, a new little person came into the world and I get to see her. I'm seeing her grow, she's now nine months old and it's just amazing to see her grow. So I'm glad I'm home and not touring, so it kind of worked out.

Again going back to when we talked a few years ago I was commenting on your writing skills. Some of the songs are really, really good content and the lyrics and stuff but I didn't know where you were from but I said there's like a reggae influence in there somewhere, which you've just explained why.

Yeah, I'm quite happy that you noticed that. You know, it's something I try to still incorporate in music from my country.

But I always try to come back to the roots of the music with reggae and kirby and mentor and ska and calypso and all that stuff that kind of shape the way in which I view music.

We've got to a little bit promote, to anybody who doesn't know, it's just about to be released:

A collaboration of Fusion Artists. We did the Bill Withers 'Lovely day'
song. We can still hear it in our heads but it's great, it chops around what this artist, that artist. We all had a small part in it and Donald being annoyingly good on the drums and the
bass laid down the foundations.

Someone from Fusion mentioned that they wanted to do a collaboration with all the Fusion
Artists. I was like man, that sounds really complicated but hey we have the time right it's lockdown season, it's fantastic.

I think we should do another one.
Yeah, why not and it was produced by
Jordan Scannella, a bass player.

I'm just quite interested where you've got to say all the drums the bass all the things you can play. Do you get hired as a session guy for just drums, just bass or for the multi-instruments that you can play?

When people call me and they say:
'Donald I need you to do backing vocals or I need you to do a session here.'
The next question is like which instrument is it?

Because people either hire me to play the banjo, play with the bass, play the drums.
Right now I'm working on another band and I'm on drums this time. Sometimes I get hired to play the piano, the ukulele. So, that's been the story of my life.

I grew up in a musical household, my dad played bass and keyboards in church and my mom sang in church and just seeing music all around me I wanted to play something
I asked my dad if I could play the drums but there was always a piano, so he kind of steered me towards the piano and said why don't you just play the piano? So I would just sit around the piano but the drums just seemed so cool you know I said the drummer at church I just
watch him every single Sunday and my dad eventually got a drum set, a used one and my cousin would come over and pretty much just hug it. I literally probably played it once
and but my mom did send me to piano lessons so I started playing classical music and that's what kind of triggered that musical journey in a sense.

Travelling with a Fusion Bag. Fusion Bags they're the deal.
The fact that it went through hell and this instrument is still alive and well, perfectly fine, is a testament. Get yourself a Fusion Bag, trust me.