Stepping up to the Mike
The truth is Mike Huckabee really wants to talk music. Yes, he’s the Arkansas Governor and a former presidential candidate, but he’s also steeped in the bass guitar. It’s an instrument that he has grown to love and one that he plays extremely well. He is tired of the same old questions, the Presidential race, the Vice Presidential nomination and political hoity-toity’s.

Despite being a presidential candidate, Huckabee wore his bass as a badge during the recent campaign. He played it at every turn and was asked to sit in with a bevy of famous bands and musicians. Whether it was playing “Crossroads” with a high school rock band or improvising on the Tonight Show, Huckabee proved his worth to musicians all over the world with a passion for his instrument and a hand on his fret board.

How did you get your start?


I started guitar at eleven. The Beatles came along and suddenly we all wanted to play the guitar. So I started begging my parents for an electric guitar but there was no way they could afford it. They ordered an electric guitar from the JC Penney catalog for $99 and it included an amplifier and all the things you needed to get started. It took them a year to pay the thing off; they paid so much per month. That was Christmas 1966; I played on that thing until my fingers nearly fell off.


Did you have any early training?

I took some lessons from a Pentecostal preacher in Hope Arkansas by the name of Joseph Geno. I thought I was going to be the next guitar star.


How about the bass?


It occurred to me that a lot of other kids were picking up the guitar but nobody was playing the bass. If I wanted to be in a band and if I knew how to play the bass, there would be a lot of opportunities. I saw some bass players around and I really thought I could do that. I found a used Vox bass in Texarkana, Arkansas. My first amplifier was built by my friend’s dad who was a fireman. He made it from the speaker of an old jukebox. Those old jukeboxes had those huge, 15” JBL speakers in them, a lot like the Peavey Black widows now. It was homemade, and it was the beginning of my bass playing.


Was Paul McCartney your main influence?


He was one of the main ones. In recent years I’ve come to understand what an amazing and innovative bass player he was. I think people thought of him mainly as a vocalist and a songwriter. If you go back and listen, he was very innovative on the bass. I think it was because he was a piano player and a guitar player before. He was not just a “ham and egg’er” bassist like I tend to be. His style was very cutting edge at the time.


Did you think you would be famous?

I think everybody has hopes and dreams that one day they’ll be playing arena shows, and the truth is that I did. I’ve played arena shows in front of 10,000 people but it was because my band opened for Willie Nelson. The reason my band was playing was because I was governor not because I was that good. I’ve been on stage with Alabama and REO Speedwagon and other wonderful bands. I’ve always told people if you’re not that great of a musician, then you better run for office or something and you’ll get to play with some pretty cool bands and get some cool gigs.


Tell me about a few of your bands?


When I was in Junior High and High School, I played in a variety of bands. I played both rock and country. I played in my church as well. When I was fifteen, I was asked to play bass on a gospel album for a local gospel group in Hope, Arkansas. That had a major influence on me. It sort of helped me move more toward Christian music. And it helped me to see that as a Christian I could still play the bass. I grew up in a church where there were no guitars or drums. We had a piano and an organ and we sang old-fashioned, traditional hymns. That was the first time I saw that maybe there was a place for this type of thing. In the early seventies, people like Larry Norman, André Crouch and the Disciples came along. Suddenly, there were people that were Christians that liked the same kind of music that I did. That was really the time when my musical stretch started to take place.


So have you played regularly ever since?


I didn’t have the time in college because I finished in two years and three months. When my first kid came along, I got down to groceries or guitars. We were starving; I was going to graduate school at Southwestern Seminary. I reached a point where I had to sell my guitars. I had a ’67 Gretsch Tennessean and a ’70 Fender Jazz Bass. If I had those instruments today I could have paid my kid’s way through college.


Did you ever replace those?

I found a ’64 Gretsch Tennessean just like the one I had before, but even better. I’m still looking for a replacement for the Jazz. I have a Jazz, but it’s white and one day I’m going to find a Sunburst like the one I had. In the meantime, I’ve got more guitars than I know what to do with.


What’s your main axe now?


Mainly I use a Tobias; it’s the sweetest playing guitar in the world. I’ve got a Dean Pro Edge, an Epiphone Acoustic Electric, and the old Fender Jazz. I’ve got a P-Bass, one of the modern ones. And just for the fun of it I have a Danelectro. I’ve got a 5-String Tobias and one day I will get to the point where I play it but I’m a four string guy. There are just too many years and too much muscle memory of playing one instrument that the fifth string just seems like something that I don’t need.


What about your rig?


I’ve got an SWR stack that I normally use when I’m doing something large, when I need a lot of punch. I run them with a Genz Benz head. I actually have two stacks so I could dual stack the cabinets if I needed to. One cabinet has six 10’s. The one that I mainly use has a 15” with the 4x10 cabinet. I get the low punch that I need out of the 15” and the 4x10’s really offer a nice range.

I’ve seen you on YouTube playing everything from “Freebird” in a club to “Crossroads” with some high schoolers. Do you get a chance to rehearse in most cases?


I’d never seen those kids before. I’d say 90% of the time there’s no rehearsal. I’m arriving at the event and they tell me in advance that there’s someone there that would like me to play a song. Sometimes they’ll tell me sometimes they won’t. One of the most frightening times and one I’ll never forget was when I was on the Leno show. Kevin (Eubanks) came back stage and said ‘I hear you’re a bass player’ I told him that I knock around a little bit. He said ‘we ought to have you sit in with the band.’ I thought OK, they’ll come back and if he’s serious they’ll tell me what I’m going to play and we’ll go over it and rehearse with the band, it is national television, for goodness sake. Considering I’m a presidential candidate I can’t afford to look like an idiot. I didn’t hear any more about it and we were getting ready to tape the show so I just figured they didn’t have time to work that in so that’s fine. So at the end of the interview Jay says (in Leno voice), ‘Hey Governor, I hear you’re a bass player. Why don’t you go up there and play with Kevin and the band? They have a guitar for you and everything.’ I looked at him like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ I couldn’t say ‘No.’ I didn’t have time to rehearse, so I said, ‘Sure.’ I walked over and Kevin straps a bass on me and tells me that were playing something in E flat and off we go. That was the total preparation that I had for it. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. This was national television, my man!

He couldn’t have picked a scarier key on the bass?


Yeah, and there’s a great post script as well. Not long after that I got a letter from Peter Cetera who has been one of my bass heroes from back when Chicago was the Chicago Transit Authority. I got a letter signed with a cover of Bass Player Magazine and a photo saying ‘Hey, I caught you on Leno and I knew you were a fellow bass player. Admiring what you’re doing out on the campaign.’ He said, ‘nice chops on the bass too.’ My world was made. I told my wife, then I went to campaign headquarters and said, ‘You guys aren’t going to believe this...’ and I think they thought we’d one another state or something. I told them ‘I got a letter from Peter Cetera.’ I was running around holding up this letter like I had one the California lottery. What’s funny is Bass Player is one of my favorite magazines. I’ll be on an airline and people will be looking at me to see what Huckabee is reading. They’ll assume it’s the Economist or the Wall Street Journal. Instead, I’ll be pulling out Bass Player that will have a picture of some long haired guy on the cover.


As a politician do you feel more or less empowered when you have your bass in your hands?

Far more empowered, it’s therapeutic and relaxing. It’s also a way to express something that’s a little unusual or out of the ordinary. I think people tend to think of politicians as stiff, programmed, and orchestrated in everything. When I strap on a bass and cut loose with a local band it’s an uninhibited form of expression. Not only do I enjoy it, but I think a lot of people appreciate it and see a side of me that they wouldn’t normally see. It makes me a real person to them and not just a character or figure that they have seen on television.


Do you ever worry that you won’t be taken seriously because you’re out playing “Freebird?”


My attitude is that if somebody is going to decide that being a musician means that I’m less than serious about life, then they would probably be more comfortable voting for someone else anyway. If that doesn’t offend them, then I’ll find another way to do it. I’d rather get them out of the way and be done with it. I’m of the opinion that there are two kinds of people in the world; people who love and appreciate music and the others who don’t matter.


How do you see your faith intersecting with your music and your politics and your day to day life?


On two fronts, I was the bass player in my church praise band for seven years in Little Rock. It was a new church with seventy five people when my wife and I first started there so they needed a body with a bass more then they needed proficiency. It was a great growing experience to learn the discipline to practice every week and playing every week in a worshipful atmosphere. Music took on a whole new meaning for me in that period because it was the first time I regularly played praise and worship music. I was thoroughly enjoying it and it gave me a whole new appreciation for the praise and worship of a service in a way that I found refreshing. Music has also given me an incredible bridge to people who would never ever want to talk to me. I’ll be in a music store playing and somebody will come up that will have more metal piercings then most Buick grills and a ton of tattoos. To an average person they might be known as a left wing freak, I see them as a fellow musician. We’ll talk about favorite artists, favorite instruments, the gear that we use and all the stuff that musicians talk about. I’ve seen barriers broken down as they’re talking to a conservative, straight laced, evangelical believer, republican. I’m treating him with dignity and respect because I’m talking to him as a fellow musician. Its remarkable how that can open opportunities to talk about why playing in praise bands is important to me, and my faith, and my relationship with Christ. It’s been a pretty remarkable way to break down barriers where people otherwise would never have given me the time of day.


What other cool bass opportunities would you like to share?


Don Griffin owns West LA Music; it’s one of the most phenomenal stores in America. They sell to all the country rock stars. It’s just a premiere, big time store, and Don is a friend of mine. A lot of people who work there are famous, like the former bassist of Three Dog Night. There are some amazing stories to be told. Don owns John Entwistle’s early bass that he had with the Who; he used it on “My Generation.” The guitar is probably worth a couple hundred thousand dollars. He has it on display at his place and I was in there one day and he asked if I wanted to play it. I said ‘you have to be kidding me.’ I was thinking ‘I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy.’ I picked it up and played a few licks. I was a kid who grew up in the sixties and realized the impact of the Who. I would liken it to a golfer who was asked if he’d like to play a round with Tiger Woods clubs, just a great experience.


Some people say music is either for God or against God. How would you respond to that?

I think music is the universal language. It’s like fire, it can either warm us and cook our food and keep us comforted or it can burn our house down. It’s purely how we use it. You can go anywhere in the world and music can communicate where words can’t. I’ve been to 41 countries and there are many places where I can’t communicate. Two things always transcend a language, one is a smile and the other is music. Those two things can completely create a relationship like nothing else can. When people say ‘if you’re a Christian you should only listen to certain types of music’ they tend not to know much about music history. Many of the great hymns that we sing so reverently today were bar songs in Ireland or Great Britain. Like “Amazing Grace” the tune was sung in bars and new words were added to it. It’s comical to me when people talk about the holiness of certain music when they know the background and find out it wasn’t so holy after all.


It sounds like your platform has been used to shed some light in a dark world?Steve, that’s what God has called me to be, salt and light. Salt is a preservative. I believe the metaphor that Jesus used was not so much the salt for seasoning, but the salt for preservation. There wasn’t refrigeration or ice, so when people took the fish out of the Sea of Galilee where he was speaking, he was probably pointing to some fisherman. When he said ‘you’re the salt of the earth’ they got it. They realized that when the fish come out of the water they start putrefying immediately, but the salt preserves them and keeps them from spoiling. If you see the world beginning to decay and to spoil and putrefy, the only hope for it is to salt it. He also said ‘you’re the light of the world.’ Where does light have the most power, in a well lit room? It doesn’t even make a dent there. Light has impact in darkness. So the darker and the more decadent things get, the more value a Christian believer has. Even a weak Christian makes an impact during the greatest levels of darkness. When I hear people say ‘I’d like to be a stronger witness,’ or ‘I haven’t been to theology school,’ or ‘I’m not that well trained,’ or ‘I’m not that smart or that bold,’ I think you can still be a candle, a flickering little one or a triple AAA battery flashlight, because even in pitch darkness you will still penetrate it. There’s a role for us to play. One of the great sins of the church is people believing that the point of fellowship for Christians is to huddle away from the world and practice our faith. I’ve always said being a Christian on Sunday is no big deal but being a Christian on Monday is really what matters. Jesus did not spend most of his time hanging out with religious people, but hanging out with those who were completely devoid of faith. I don’t think most of us spend enough time trying to change our culture. We try to avoid it, and that’s a big mistake.

by Steven Douglas Losey