Dave Carpenter

Dave Carpenter was an American bass player who appeared on the albums "Sixteen Men Of Tain" and "Flat Tire".

The Outter Limits: Allan Holdsworth's Out of Bounds Existence (guitar.com 1999)

A cursory listen to any of Holdworth’s ten recordings since his 1979 debut as a leader, I.O.U., reveals a player of astonishing technique -- the stunning streams of notes, unparalleled harmonic sophistication, singular chordal voicings produced by seemingly impossible reaches on the fretboard along with his orchestral scope as an arranger and his improvisational daring. But on his latest release, The Sixteen Men of Tain, the reluctant guitar god has trumped himself. Fueled by the rhythm tandem of former Chick Corea drummer Gary Novak and in-demand LA upright bassist Dave Carpenter, Holdworth has come up with his jazziest offering to date for the small, mail-order-only Gnarly Geezer Records (www.gnarlygeezer.com). The typically mind boggling legato chops are very much in tact on Tain, and the swinging, interactive dynamic underscores the Trane connection.

Guitar.com: Are you still playing with the trio that’s on the record?

Allan Holdsworth: Since that recording, Gary Novak started working with Alanis Morrisette, so he’s gone doing that. I’m playing with Dave Carpenter still but we’ve got Joel Taylor on drums. Joel’s a really great musician. And it changes it again. Each guys brings something different. I’m also doing a tour of Europe with a different band -- Gary Husband and Jimmy Johnson. So that’s going to be pretty different, too.

Guitar.com: What was your attitude going into this project?

Holdsworth: After doing the [1996] album None Too Soon, which was like a bunch of old jazz tunes [by the likes of John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Django Reinhardt and Bill Evans] I wanted to pursue this direction but with my original music. The interpretation of my music varies depending on who’s playing it. I had been playing with Gary Novak and Dave Carpenter, and I could hear that their interpretation was pushing into a different direction and it sounded really kind of natural. So I basically wrote the material that was on the new record with that in mind because I knew how Gary Novak would interpret it. He plays with a lot of energy but he can also play pretty soft. It’s different from the way Gary Husband’s interpretation would be and I was enjoying it. Also Dave Carpenter, who always on the live gigs would play electric bass I knew he played acoustic bass and I thought that would help even further to create the kind of sound I was looking for.

Guitar.com: I always felt your music was defined by the drummer. And I often wondered what these same tunes would sound like with, say, Billy Higgins on drums and Dave Holland on bass.

Holdsworth: It changes everything. The music actually stays in tact but the presentation of it changes it so much as well. Playing with Gary Novak and Dave Carpenter was just something I was enjoying. Plus, it was a lot less loud less volume. We toured with that group on and off for a couple of years and I really wanted to record it but I didn’t have a record deal. So at the end of one of the last tours we did together I felt, "I really would like to record this now while we’re still playing it." So we went into my home studio and recorded the basic tracks then, a couple of years ago. And I just shelved it. I stuck it off to the side and waited until such time as I could get a record deal to finish it. I’m glad I did that, actually. Because if I had waited until a deal came around [to record the basic tracks], it would’ve been different. I probably would have ended up doing it with different people. So I’m glad it happened how it happened.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

What happened with Dave Carpenter, was he busy, or...?
Oh.... it was a long story. It’s a long story.

You love the saxophone and recorded with trumpet player Walt Fowler on ‘16 Men Of Tain’. Do you ever think about recording some more with a horn player?
Yeah, I’d love to do something more with a horn player. It was just always like a budget problem. It’s hard enough trying to pay the guys in the band to do it anyway. A lot of times guys do it for next to nothing already, so..It’s just because they want to do it. So it’s kinda difficult with a horn. The last one it was nice because Gary Novak and Dave knew Walt Fowler. So it was nice to talk Walt Fowler into coming down and doing some stuff on that one which sounded great. I like trumpet and guitar actually. I like it a lot.

A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)

Bill: This particular rhythm section of Joel Taylor and Ernest Tibbs seems more interactive than others you’ve played with. Joel in particular has a real loose swing feel that seems to open the music up a bit more than usual.

Allan: Yeah, I really like playing with Joel. I started liking that approach more open approach after working with (bassist) Dave Carpenter and (drummer) Gary Novak. And then I carried on working with Dave and Joel, which was great too. And when I found Ernest, I was lucky. We needed a bass player for a few gigs and Dave Carpenter wasn’t available, and it was like the last minute deal. Gary Willis was in town so he ended up doing two of the three gigs and then Ernest came in and did the last one. He got the music from Joel, came to the gig and played really great, and we’ve been working together since then. I love working with Joel and Ernest. The vibe that they give as a rhythm section is totally different from other rhythm sections that I’ve played with. Like you say, it’s loose. And I like that. What they do together as a rhythm section also really affects what I play as a soloist, which is cool.

Audiostreet Featured Artists (Audiostreet 2000)

His new album "The Sixteen Men Of Tain" is full of this "love affair" his sonic landscapes loaded with a romanticism and passion that so many current musicians lack, particularly in the overcrowded ranks of modern day guitar heroes, but this accessibility is more coincidence than premeditation. 

"It wasn’t a conscious effort, it was just a nice accident. Because what I wanted to try and do after the last album that I did with Gordon (Beck)"None Too Soon" we played old tunes, so in a way it was my album but I didn’t think of it like it was my album. The last band album I think of was "Hard Hat Area" which was with Gary, Skuli (Sverrisson) and Steve Hunt and right after that album I was thinking I wanted to write some original music, but just put in a different setting, a slightly different setting. And in a way this also happened by accident because I was playing with Dave Carpenter, who introduced me to Gary Novak and we played a lot and we did two tours of Europe with that group and I also knew he played acoustic bass. 

So after the end of the touring I felt like I needed to record it. I had lost my record deal so my manager loaned me the money to pay the guys to do the record. So we recorded it like one weekend and then I shelved it, and sat it on the back burner until I got a record deal which was about a year and a half later on this new small label. Then I went ahead and finished it. Since then I did another album with Gary Husband and Jimmy Johnson and I’m holding that one back cos this one only just came out! I just wanted to have something that had original music, something that had intensity but was softer. The fact that Dave Carpenter played acoustic bass was nice because I was like "maybe it would be nice if you played acoustic bass on this record."

The lighter acoustic bass sound helped move Holdsworth’s writing and playing in to a new area that he has never really pushed before. "That’s the beauty of it as well because he, like a lot of the other bass guitar players I’ve played with, he plays a lot. If you put Dave on bass guitar he’s playing all the time and he plays chords I keep telling him I’m going to buy him a one string bass guitar! So giving him the acoustic bass was great. It was a good element to have and I think it also added something to the sound, which also important to loads of people’s perception of it."

One Man Of 'Trane (Jazz Times 2000)

"The interpretation of my original music can be played in so many different ways, almost like different kinds of styles," he remarks. "And as I began playing with Gary Novak and Dave Carpenter a couple of years ago, I could hear that the interpretation of it was pushing into a different direction. And it sounded really kind of natural. So I basically wrote the material that was on this record with that in mind, because I knew that Gary Novak’s interpretation is a different kind of thing from the way that Gary Husband’s interpretation of it would be. He plays with a lot of energy but he can also play pretty soft, and I was enjoying that. [Novak] has a pretty amazing way of just making it feel good. It feels better than it does with other guys even though you can’t really put your finger on it."

Allan Holdsworth on Reissuing FLATTire (Guitar Player 2014)

“Most of the things I played weren’t particularly technical in the sense of requiring exceptional dexterity,” he explains. “They were all about the emotion and staying true to supporting visual images. That’s very different from making a normal record, where the focus is on pieces of music and soloing within them. Also, other than having Dave Carpenter play upright bass on two of the pieces, I played all of the parts myself, including the ‘drum’ parts, which were done with an Alesis HR-16 drum machine. From a compositional standpoint, I’m most happy with the final piece, ‘Don’t You Know,’ which has the fake clarinets in the middle. That’s definitely the highlight of the album for me. I managed to do something I am quite proud of.”