Hippies & Pilots

Hippies & Pilots - Feel Good

About his gear, Mark told us, “I use, when there’s room, a multi amp set-up including a Carvin Pro Bass 600 Head with a single 15” and 4x10” cabinets, plus a Peavey Wiggy head and 2x12”. When there’s not that much room, I’ll use the single 15” with a Digitech Bass Driver pedal. I think that actually gets pretty close to the sound I’ve been looking for, or maybe I’m just getting too old to haul the rest of the rig around!”

“I fell in love with the sound of multi-course instruments when I had a Carvin Double neck DN612 guitar made in the early 90’s, because I was a big fan of Zebra and Triumph, and I would sometime play that instrument with an Octave pedal, actually a Whammy Pedal. That SOUND just grabbed me. When I finally realized that a lot of the noises I heard on Cheap Trick records were 12vers, I realized I had been playing the wrong instrument all those years. I found a Hamer 12 in a local music shop and found it hard to play (turned out it had a warped neck) and kind of forgot about them until 2004 when I found the Carlo Robelli 8-string bass at Sam Ash. That was it…. the addiction had taken hold!”

“The 12-string and 8-string basses never fail to illicit a reaction wherever we play. Especially when Skip, our guitarist/vocalist steps out for a lead and it still sounds like there’s a guitar somewhere, the sound stays nice and beastly! Actually Skip told me it sounds like a dinosaur eating a dump truck, but in a good way!”

Hippies & Pilots - Protector Of My HEart

Mark told us, “This album was produced by George Noriega at Cutting Cane Studio, he produces Shakira, Mandy Moore, J-Lo, he was in Miami Sound Machine forever, and wrote songs for Ricky Martin. Some of the bass on ‘Protector’ is blanketed, he really didn’t know how to treat the 12.”

Hippies & Pilots - One Boy’s Dream

Mark writes, “‘One Boy's Dream’ was the first tune I wrote when I started using the 12ver. I like them all but I think it’s my favorite, it starts with the 12 and drums. It just has a great vibe to it.”