We’ve all been there – someone in your band brings a new song idea to rehearsal, and suddenly it's your job to come up with the perfect . It's a fine line to walk: If you're overly adventurous, you risk hijacking the tune, but if you play it safe you may end up with a line – and song – that's downright boring. Bassist Ben Kenney of Incubus fame knows this story all too well.
When guitarist Mike Einziger brought the idea for the band's 2006 hit , Kenney was presented with a blank canvas. To find the right bassline, he simply listened. “The interaction between guitar and vocals leaves negative space,” he told .
“That made it pretty clear where I could fit in with the bass. How much of that space I wanted to fill was up to me.” After sitting out at the very beginning, Kenney starts by planting long root tones under the intro, setting up a contrast for the driving riff that enters at bar 9.
Kenney’s bassline for the verse is where things start to get interesting. Leaving a ‘one-drop’ rest on the first downbeat, he summons the ghost of the Police's . The slippery vibe of his bass part is also a nod to bass players like Kim Deal of the Pixies.
“In the slide from D down to Bb, I stop off at C for a hot second,” said Kenney, highlighting beat one of the second bar. Note that in each verse, Kenney makes a subtle change by picking – rather than slurring – that C. In the song's powerful chorus, the guitars drive harder than in the verses, but Kenney takes a.