| SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION | MY RIG | MUSIC | SOME PICTURES | MYSPACE | EMAIL ME |
Hi, I'm Hank Van Sickle. I play both electric and upright bass. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa., I currently live in Los Angeles. I'm available for any style of music, but my favorites are blues, jazz and roots oriented music. I have no formal training. I've learned what I know so far by listening and picking up whatever gems I can. It's an ongoing process. It also helps to get the occasional tip from my dad Rodney, a wonderful musician and bassist, who graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and played double bass in the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Thanks for visiting ya'all, come back soon.
I've been with blues legend John Mayall since 2000. John keeps the Bluesbreakers (that's us) pretty busy with 100 to 120 gigs a year all over the world. Here's our current tour schedule. In the past few years we've been to every country in Western Europe, Scandinavia,
Hungary, Czech Republic, Lebanon, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Canada, and nearly every state in the US including Alaska and Hawaii. I've been lucky enough to play with some genuine icons; Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Robben Ford, Steve Miller, Larry Coryell, Gary Moore, Peter Green, Kim Simmonds and Mick Fleetwood have all been on stage with us. When not on tour I try to keep a steady flow of free-lance work happening in LA. It's usually a mix of club gigs, casuals and studio work. Nice to get the occasional commercial or film soundtrack.
Before I became a Bluesbreaker, I stayed very busy doing a pretty eclectic musical mix. I rarely had a night off.
Gigs ranged from symphonic to rockabilly to jazz to world music to blues to americana to punk rock to pop to whatever needed a bass. It's all there on the shameless self promotion page. One of my favorites was Combo Au Go Go. Make sure to click through and check the credits on these guys. Just about anybody who's ever picked up an instrument has hired at least one of them at one time or another. Speaking of credits, check out the AllMusic website. An encyclopedic source of all styles and all things music. They also publish great books. A lot of the links on this site are to AllMusic. You might have to register before the links work, but it's free, and great browsing for music lovers. Also, check out
Wikipedia. They've got great entries on
blues,
jazz,
double bass and lots more.
In the last few years I've become interested in photography and have really enjoyed learning how to use a camera. I try to take every opportunity to see as much as I can wherever we go, and have thousands of pictures of exotic and not so exotic places. I've posted a bunch, and plan to keep updating them, but it's certainly more fun taking them than organizing and posting them, and the months fly by pretty quickly lately. It's a tough compromise between download speed (file size) and picture quality. I chose to sacrifice picture quality for speed. Of course higher quality images are available, especially since I upgraded to an 8.0 Megapixel Canon digital SLR in the summer of 2005. If you're interested, contact the owner of the image. That's me unless otherwise noted.
I'm not very vigilant about answering email, so thanks in advance for any communications. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
If I don't get back to you at all, it's possible I deleted your email by accident with the tons of spam we all get. Please wait a few days and try again. Put something eye catching on the subject line like "such and such gig" or "I have Eden Cabinets too". Best to avoid "Breast enlargement" or "Free Software".
| SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION | MY RIG | MUSIC | SOME PICTURES | MYSPACE | EMAIL ME |