Scot N. Kaeff + bass guitar / vocals    journal
 

1) What is your full name?
    Scot Nicholas Kaeff
2) What instrument(s) do you play?
    Bass guitar and enough guitar & piano to be just a bit dangerous (mainly to the hearing of those around me.)
3) How long have you been playing & how did you learn your instrument(s)?
    I started playing at age 14 because I was already in love with music and wanted to do something with it, to be in it as opposed to just listening to it.  I sat next to a fellow in high school that played drums and his band needed a bassist.  Having already become enamored of bass when most folks fall for guitar, it fit.  I got a Hondo All-Star P-bass copy for my birthday and off I went.  I took lessons for two years, learning more how to pick lines out by ear than any theory (and it shows, to this day), and then began writing almost immediately because that was where my heart was.  The act of creation, more than anything, drew me to music.
4) When & why did music become “your thing” or something that helps define you?
    Music became my thing, along with poetry, almost immediately.  I also played sports (baseball & football) but bass became my “thing” around age 16.  I was writing my own stuff, playing in an original band and falling in love with music as a whole.  It’s one of those things that just happens.  It’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of it, but there are those moments of epiphany when someone sees you coming out of a movie theater and asks if you’re the bassist in this band they’d seen and, lo and behold, you are.
5) What is your family set (married? kids? pets? etc.?)
    Married to Tracy for three years, no children and that’s probably going to remain, but we have three incredible felines, Percey, Anitya and Roger.
6) Who are some of your favorite bands?
    Manic Street Preachers, Iron Maiden, Warren Zevon, King Crimson, Duran Duran, King's X, Hanoi Rocks, Motorhead, U2, Peter Gabriel, The Dresden Dolls, Over-The-Rhine, Savatage, Radiohead, Hamell On Trial, etc., etc. and so on….
7) Who are some of your favorite musicians?
    James Dean Bradfield, Warren Zevon, Adrian Belew, John Taylor, Tony Levin, Sam Yaffa, Ed Hamell, David Torn, Steve Harris, Ric Hordinski, etc.
8) Who are some of your influences, musical & otherwise?
    Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Strand, Picasso, Jimmy Carter, Dr. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Yves Tanguy and other surrealist painters, Peter Gabriel…really, somehow or another everything I listen to and read has an influence, whether profound or subtle.  What we take in colors what we put out.
9) What inspires you?
    Peace and anger at the same time, creation, ingenuity, looking at things from new and different perspectives and seeing the minute strands of life that most folks miss, which is in a great way what I feel the role of the artist is.  "Creative thinking may simply mean the realization that there is no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done." - Rudolph Flesch.
10) What drives you?
    The hope and dream that somehow, some way we can make it all work out.  That’s the world view, anyway.  On a day-to-day basis, writing and playing and creating become a perpetual motion machine.  The dream of playing music and writing as a true career.
11) What is/are your day job(s)?
    I play with forklifts for a living.  Actually, if you have a broken one, call me and I’ll send someone to fix it.  Obviously, this is completely counterpoint to what I really do/want to do.
12) What is your educational background?
    I have a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Philosophy from Northern Kentucky University, graduated cum laude in 1995.
13) Who are some of your favorite authors?
    The aforementioned Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Strand.  Also, Carl Hiaasen, Douglas Adams, Charles Simic, Charles Bukowski, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Henry Rollins, Corson Hirschfeld, etc.
14) What are your hobbies/interests?
    I’m still a big sports fan.  I don’t consider my music and writing to be hobbies.  Hobbies are what you do to kill time.  With music and writing, I create time.  I’ve been a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan since 1979 (I was six), like the Cincinnati Bengals quite a bit too.  Love baseball and have become quite a hockey fan as well.  I dig spending time with my wife and doing whatever comes to mind.  This isn’t a hobby either, really, but I work with my best friend since elementary school, Bunny, and our wives, on Meet Cleaver Theatre, a horror host show based in Cincinnati.
15) What are some of your previous bands?
    Mystery City, The Fugue, A Weasel Named Joe, Eyes Wide Open, DaVinci’s Burden, The Scot Kaeff Band, Secret 9, Feelin’ Crystal, Cat Saint Jane, Season One and others…never heard of any of them?  Hmmm…alas, I’m not surprised….
16) Who are some of your favorite artists?
    Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, H.R. Giger, Georgia O’Keeffe, Brian Easterling.
17) What is your favorite song?
    Currently, that title would be bestowed upon “Australia” by Manic Street Preachers, but it can change day-to-day.
18) What are your aspirations as a musician?
    To continue to grow in such a way that facilitates a more full realization of the music I hear in my head and being able to produce it through my hands.
19) What are your aspirations as a person?
    To maintain my calm, cool demeanor and become the person I know that I can be…or could be if the world weren’t such a depressing, turgid, morbid mess.  And yet, even with that, it’s damned beautiful too…ah, the irony.
20) What song(s) do you like that you’re embarrassed to admit to?
    I’m not actually embarrassed about it…I’d cover it and love singing it, but John Conlee’s song “I Don’t Remember Loving You” would surprise most people by being in my collection.  Great tune.  I guess my embarrassment would come if you caught me in my car listening to the "Hair Nation" station on my Sirius satellite radio, but some of those tunes rocked, man *makes devil sign with hand*!