A few years ago someone asked me if there was an instrument I would take with me were I ever stranded on a desert island. This seemed like a ridiculous question at first – if I were ever in fact “stranded on a desert island”, surely I wouldn’t have the opportunity to prepare for the stranding beforehand.

Anyway, after I got over myself I thought about it for a moment and realized there was only one instrument in my possession that I could not do without. This was, and still is, the Blue Bass.  

A bass might seem like an odd choice at first, but this particular 1960s Teisco EB-220 short-scale bass is no ordinary instrument. To begin with, it is very good-looking. This may not seem exceptional, but in the extremely over-geeked world of bass players and basses there are such grotesque things as five-string basses, six-string basses, headless basses… you get the idea. 

Generally, the bass is just not a sexy instrument to look at, which is part of what makes the Blue Bass so special. The body is painted a creamy steel-blue colour and cut into a distinct hook shape reminiscent of what the future was supposed to look like had we not fucked up so horribly (no flying cars, no hover boards, no alien romances). At least we got this bass and the Internet. 

Imagine a Klingon Bird of Prey – if you’ll permit me to go there – with a very short and playable fret-board jutting out of its nose. Bill Shatner would have tapped this bass.

Okay, I’m way off topic here, so let’s talk about how this thing sounds.

To be honest I’ve never been a very good guitar player. My first instrument is piano and because of that the guitar has always seemed so odd. The further you move to the right on the piano, the higher the pitch of the note; very straightforward. On guitar there are all of these strings and they’re all tuned to different pitches. It’s so chaotic.

This is all to say the Blue Bass is the only guitar I’ve ever played that makes sense to me. As soon as I pick it up and begin playing, the parts just seem to write themselves. The notes come bubbling off the strings, each one a perfect little round bump of sound. Not too long, not too short. And somehow my fingers, usually so stiff and unsure on the guitar, feel suddenly loose, limber and long as they glide over the strings of this perfect instrument. 

There is something so calming about these moments when everything is so easy and music comes spilling out. Such a simple, yet profound pleasure it is to make a beautiful sound. You don’t ever want it to end. One has to wonder if I would still feel as romantic though, alone on my little desert island hunched over the fret-board of the Blue Bass, wondering why the hell I brought this instrument without an amplifier, as I’m slowly crushed by the sun.

Matt Peters is a singer and songwriter based in Winnipeg. He is the frontman of Royal Canoe. The band’s new record, Today We’re Believers, is available now.

Published in Volume 68, Number 16 of The Uniter (January 15, 2014)