Innocent Pipe
James Welburn
Innocent Pipe
I have a battered piece of metal pipe, about the length of my forearm, which has become a surprisingly regular feature in my music and live shows. It was given to me by a friend who used to use it as a “drumstick” on empty metal barrels—that’s where it picked up all its indentations.
In our early noise rock band, I quickly realized it could either really damage my electric bass guitar or I could make surprisingly musical sounds with it. Today, it’s a regular tool for sonic exploration, it invites accidents, like a kind of wildcard I can reach for. Its roughness connects with the abrasive nature of music that I am drawn towards.
With its many beaten edges, it can generate enough friction to “bow” the electric bass. Rough random beaten metal (the pipe) upon designed/textured metal (the string). It can create bell-like resonances, and even delicate metallic textures. Its “voice” can be excited in many ways. For example, dropping a small vibrator (like the kind they sell in the toilets at Berlin ‘s Schönefeld airport) inside it creates a metallic scream. The pipe can also work as an oversized guitar slide, or it can strike all the strings hard into a chorus, or it can be more focused towards one tone. It has featured in many live performances and on recordings. Once I lost it on a busy festival stage, I had to go back later that night and search for it. For some reason, someone could tell it had an important role to play and they’d put it somewhere safe. It looks like junk metal... yet it’s clearly an “instrument”. Whenever I am stuck for ideas—on stage or in the studio, in improvisation or composing, I reach for this beaten-up pipe and it can take the music to a surprising place. When I travel, I never have it in my hand luggage, always in the checked-in luggage, because once an overzealous airport employee tried to take it off me at the security check... He thought I might try to cause some harm with it. Luckily, I could talk him out of that idea, and they didn’t make me throw it away. Ever since then, it always goes in the plane’s hold. To conclude, I have found in my discussions with other musicians, some of whom are way more trained than me, that at some point we try to unlearn our musical habits. For me, the pipe has been a path to innocent playing, as long as I don’t learn it too well.
James Welburn is an experimental bass player and composer, based in Lillehammer, Norway.