A Quest for Tone
For Dennis Feeney, music is what makes us human. “It’s as elemental and unique to humanity as fire. I suspect that before there were actual words, there was music of some kind.” He loves the term a fellow musician from Laramie, Wyoming has for the way musicians pursue their craft: the quest for tone.
For Dennis, the quest began with rides around Kansas City in the back seat of his mom’s car. In the pre-child safety seat days, before formatting fragmented audiences, a kid of three or four could hear the Fifth Dimension and CCR on the same radio station, while older brothers played Bob Seger and Deep Purple on the hi-fi at home.
Down the street, a brother’s friend had a band whose drum kit, amps and light show further impressed the young listener. By the fourth or fifth grade when his family had moved west and settled in Laramie, Dennis was writing lyrics and music and started his own band in the sixth grade.
Punk rock had made it to the Continental Divide, and Dennis once sang at rehearsal with Laramie’s Dirty Dogs. “It was such a rush to hear my voice coming through their gigantic PA along with drums and guitars. I was hooked.”
Dennis never thought of playing anything but the bass. He remembers – again, as a young child – being most impressed with the bass player backing a guest musician on Sesame Street, the sound of his Fender bass.
“The bass is a bridge between rhythm and melody. It creates the most beautiful sounds, and like the foundation of a building, its role is vital to the sound of the band. I love driving the rhythm and playing off the drummer.”
After nearly 30 years playing the bass, Dennis continues the quest. “I continue to learn all the time, and I seek out inspiration from all sorts of sources. I want width and depth and often get inspiration from the physical geography of a place.
“Being from Wyoming, I wasn’t pressured to like a certain style of music. Sometimes, if you’re in certain places that are more cutting edge, I think you’re more influenced by what’s trendy at the time.” Wyoming also comes through in Dennis’ preference to be unaffiliated with any particular genre. “In writing and playing, I just let the song be the song that hits me.
“My music has also been described as ‘earthy.’ Maybe that’s the Wyoming influence, too. I’m grateful for that.”
Hearing his voice through a PA may have hooked him, but Dennis has since built a broader understanding of what he does. He sees music itself as a bridge between himself and others, something that is meant to be shared. His favorite artists express their lives and passions in their music, either with lyrics or instrumentally.
“Bruce Cockburn, Johnny Clegg, Peter Gabriel, Cowboy Junkies … and I love Def Leppard’s unabashed commitment to rock’n’roll and the healing spirit that touches you through electric guitars cranked through Marshall stacks! I also love the way the new Celtic music can utterly transport me into a different place and timeless space.
“Really, I’m a hick kid from the sticks who loves to play bass, write songs with a kick-ass rock band, and then get out of the practice room and actually perform for people – and have it last. It’s a life’s work, and I’ll never really be done with it.”