Photograph by Peter Gannushkin

Without electronics or overdubbing, Dresser still often sounded like two or three players.

My nephew arrived at my North Park shack around 6:15 on a clear Monday evening for our trip to The Loft at UC San Diego. I’ve been feeling like hammered shit due to an ailment that has rendered it impossible to swallow, so I haven’t had a solid meal in two months. As a result, I’ve had to cut the concertizing down to a bare minimum, but I was determined to catch Mark Dresser’s solo bass outing, a CD release party for his new disc Tines of Change, just out on the Pyroclastic Records label. I’ve been following Dresser since I was a teenager, so I was willing to leave the house in search of a transformative experience, despite my aching innards.

As we exited the 5 at Gilman and began the long, steep climb into La Jolla, I noticed that it was still light out, even though the 7 pm start time was imminent. Count me as one of those rare souls who is grateful for daylight saving time: as we got closer to the campus, I could watch the huge eucalyptus trees that line the sidewalks swaying in the wind. Then, just as we neared the top of the hill, my nephew’s tire apparently struck a huge lag bolt. The tire started making a distracting, obscene slapping sound, which picked up an ominous echo once we entered the Gilman parking structure.

We parked and started to hustle along the winding sidewalk toward the Price Center building, a couple of thousand steps away. I was feeling a little light-headed before we got halfway there, but I hung tough. Exiting on the second floor, I lost my bearings for a moment — I think they must have remodeled since my last visit — until I spotted the large smoked-glass doors of the Loft. Much to my dismay, they were still locked, so I took a look around at the gathering crowd. I recognized some of the San Diego cognoscenti: Pulitzer Prize winning composer Anthony Davis and his wife, opera singer Cynthia Aaronson-Davis; bassist Rob Thorsen (no surprise — there were a ton on bassists in this crowd); and luthier Dave Millard had all arrived early.

Those smoked glass doors opened right at 7, and we filed into the large dark rectangle with its well-appointed bar/kitchen in the back, then spread out under the aluminum planks staggered among the ceiling’s matrix of beams and girders. I headed for a table with prime sight lines of the elevated stage and its heavy black velvet curtains. On stage, I spotted Dresser’s two custom-made (by luthier Kent McLagen) basses, leaning against two stools. Both instruments had been drastically modified to Dresser’s specifications.

At the appointed time, the award-winning instrumentalist took the stage and began a demonstration of just what each bass was capable of. Dresser used a variety of bows to elicit an otherworldly dissertation from each instrument. He eked out impossibly low tones from the 5-string, and coaxed freakish, alien textures from both instruments. At times, the specially amplified overtones made me envision the creaky timbers of a haunted Spanish galleon. Without the aid of electronics or overdubbing, he still often sounded like two or three different players — or at least one guy with three or four hands. Other than the occasional drone of the central air conditioning unit mounted on the ceiling, the large room was completely silent, with everyone leaning in to pay close attention to each detail. At least that’s the way it went down until one super-vulnerable moment of a bass interlude, when Dresser was joined by the high-pitched whine of a daiquiri being created in an industrial blender. Thankfully, that chilled out soon after it began.

As fantastic as the first set was, I opted to leave early — the pain emanating from my diseased gut had reached a crescendo that threatened to drown out the music. It had been a joyfully solid hour of recitation, showcasing state-of-the-art of modern bass playing. The walk back to the parking structure was draining, and I felt myself huffing and puffing like an advertisement for COPD. There, we examined my nephew’s wounded tire and were relieved to discover that it hadn’t gone flat. Together with the Dresser, that made it our lucky night — because he didn’t have a spare.