Today we’d like to introduce you to Don Schiff.
Hi Don, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. Both my parents were music educators and my father a gifted musician on Sax who played for a lot of club gigs and big bands of the time. My father encouraged me to play by bringing home all different kinds of instruments for me to play… trumpet, trombone, alto sax, tuba, sousaphone, cello, upright bass, banjo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar… all through the course of 13 years. Then he brings home an electric bass saying, “If you don’t like this, I get it, you don’t wanna play.” Lol, in retrospect I say to myself, “Ya shoulda led with that one!” lol. I loved it.
He sent me out on gigs and I learned to read music and develop my style of playing. After I graduated high school my dad gets a call from “Rosalind Kind” (Barbara Streisand’s half sister) manager asking if she could take me to Las Vegas as she is opening at the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas. It is the summer of “74 and my dad says, “Sure, he just graduated high school.”
Gig was for 3 weeks and at the end they were heading back to New York. I said that I was going to stay in Las Vegas and asked her manager to get me a gig. He said, “Meet me in the lobby tomorrow morning before we leave.” So the next day I find him in the lobby of the hotel and he says, “I got you a job, Your a busboy at this very hotel!” Not what I was looking for. He laughed and explained if I want to stay I have to join the local musicians union. Also it is the highest paying in the country… and…. they don’t want you here, so they make it tough to join. You must sign into the union once a week and “not” work as a musician for 6 months.
So I go to the union and ‘sign up’ but ask…. “There has gotta be an out, how can I not wait the 6 months. They said, well…. if you could get a conductor of the 12 major showrooms to say “We have to have this guy, no does what he does.. then You’re in.” I didn’t know anyone but at least felt… well,…. there was an out.
So little known to me, my name kept coming up to a particular conductor by a local musician and after 5 months the conductor of a Showroom said, go get that kid outta the kitchen, I’ll give him an audition. Ah HA, there we have it….at last, “The Out”. Long story short, I got the gig. Played for all the shows, Elvis, Ann-Margaret, Shirley MacLaine, Raquel Welch, Perry Como, and many many more. Stayed for a little under 3 years. What I really wanted was to write songs, record on records, tour with bands… so I knew I had to move to Los Angeles. So in 1977 I did.
I didn’t know anyone in LA either but at least to join that local musicians union I didn’t need “An Out”, you could just join, maybe they would audition you but given what I had done already they let me in. Mind you that doesn’t mean you work, you just can… if someone would hire you. Ah Ha, the conundrum – who would hire someone who never played on a known artists album if you never played on a known artists album as time is money in the studio. I had no answer BUT my mantra in life is “Serendipity Is My Best Friend”. A drummer I had played with in Delaware was already in Los Angeles, so I called. He said, well I have a drum student whose wife sings and they are looking for a bassist. In short I meet them,
She sings great and he (Frank) eventually builds a recording studio. She (Tully Winfield) and I write songs together and Frank starts getting clients in his studio. Eddie Money starts recording his next record there. Eddie’s producer wants something else on bass to make the song feel different. Ah Serendipity is my best friend and so Frank says to call me. I do the session, Eddie likes it and I play on three albums. Another time Pat Benatar’s producer comes into the studio and hears one of Tully and my songs “Cerebral Man”. Loves it and asks if he could take it to Pat, and she loves it, records it, her “Wide Awake In Dreamland” album goes gold and so Tully and I get a gold album.
Along the way in my life journey I purchase a new instrument called the “Chapman Stick” and “NS/Stick”. With these instruments you can play bass and guitar at the same time www.stick.com. Getting known in small circles that I also play that instrument I am told about this country guitar/singer who needs a demo. I invite him over to my house as I had a four track tape recorder. I record about four song demos for Dwight Yoakum. In that same music vein I get a gig playing Stick and bass with Pam Tillis.
Stick Enterprises (who make the Chapman Stick) recommend me to teach. I wonderful gentleman comes to my house for a lesson and I teach him and get him started. His hands were injured and he felt playing this instrument would help. He told me he wanted to be a screen writer. A year or so later he calls me up and says that he got a couple screenplays sold and that he always liked my music, would I score the music for the movies. I did “Live From Death Row” and “Family Values”. He asked me about my childhood growing up with a music teacher dad. I told him a few fun stories and turns out he wrote them in his screenplay and movie “Mr. Hollands Opus”… One of my favorites.
He later meets the love of his life. She creates the show “The Guild” an incredibly popular online show about gamers. Pat says, you need a theme, call Don. So I did. The Guild premiered on July 27, 2007. It has now been financed to become a movie, maybe out next year.
There is so much more to my story so I’ll jump so it doesn’t take us a life time to read. I have become known as a premier bassist, Chapman Stick player and NS/Stick player and song writer.
I moved to Napa in 2017 and met Jessel from Jessel Gallery who is a wonderful artist and poet and has now introduced me to you. She saw me playing the NS/Stick, heard my music and asked if I would compose some music for her poetry for the NAPA Peace Project. I did and we have been writing for that and hope to complete the album this year. We have uploaded each song as we finish on on our favorite music outlets. So far we have “Napa Peace”, Whisper In The Wind, In Forest Deep”… Music by Don Schiff, Lyrics by Jessel Miller.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
When you play a new instrument such as the Chapman Stick and NS/Stick which most people have never heard as it being so new. I was primarily known as an electric bassist so I would get a call for a session to play bass but would bring out the Sticks saying it was a new designed bass. I would then proceed to play bass and guitar parts at the same time. Then once they were amazed and loving it, I would tell them the name of the instrument if they would want that on future sessions. And they did.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
See page one.
What sets me apart is that I play an instrument that covers so much sound that the music in the song comes across so complete. A band sound from one instrument. You instantly get the harmonies, bass groove, chordal comping and soloing. Much like the piano of bass and guitar.
What matters most to you?
That the music I play creates in the listener a realization of feelings that are known specifically to them, deep and personal.
Pricing:
- Spotify listening free
- iTunes
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.donschiff.com and www.stick.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/don.schiff1/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@donschiff and https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGuild
- Other: https://www.napapeace.com
