About
Jason Everett aka Mister E is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger who plays various stringed and percussive instruments including his seven-string fretted and fretless bass guitars, electric upright bass, conga, cajon, udu, and an electric sitar of his own design.
Jason started leading his first band at the early age of 13 while in high school. He attended Northern Arizona University at 16 years old on a bassoon scholarship and performed in many local venues with the college big band and with a fusion group at jazz clubs in the town of Flagstaff. While there, Jason was honored to perform with/or learn from Jazz greats, Louis Bellson, Rich Matteson, and Kim Stone of Spyro Gyra. He dropped out in his third year of college to play music professionally.
Members of the Little Green Men
From Left: Steve Sklar, Johnna Morrow, and Jason
Jason's Video Bio
In 1988, Jason moved to Minneapolis, where he became a prominent member of the renown Space Jazz ensemble, Little Green Men (LGM) who were featured in the December 1990 issue of OMNI Magazine. He was also a founding member of Machete' ~ Flamenco for the 21st Century with notable Minnesota artists: flamenco guitarist, Greg Wolf and percussionist, Mick Labriola.
Jason loved the freedom of pure improv with LGM and also loved the passion and excitement of Machete' but decided to form his own group, which he named: Tal Maya a Sanskrit term meaning, "beat illusion." This was the first real opportunity for Jason to compose and lead his own group, which was beginning to become well-known in the area when tragedy struck and there was a death in the group.
Jason moved to the Seattle area in 1994, where he formed and/or helped form several world fusion ensebles including Snake Dance, Resonance, Sarab, and Avaaza.
Jason also developed a passion for modifying his instruments and making them very unique. Originally a dedicated player of the Rickenbacker 4000 series, Jason radically altered his fretless bass by adding a string making it a five-string with custom pickups (including a specially designed bridge pickup by Bartolini pickups), and a carpathian elm burl facing. He also converted his Ric 4001 Geddy Lee bass into a scalloped neck picollo bass.
In 2009, Jason was injured on the job and had to take six months of work off to recover. During this time, he rebuilt both of those instruments and discovered a luthier making SEVEN string basses.
Jason had been playing an inexpensive six string but really needed an extended range fretless bass as the five string was no longer suiting him. The maker of this seven-stringed bass, was Conklin Guitars. Jason was able to purchase a used fretted and loved it immediately.
Most recently, Jason has been working with established groups in the Seattle area including Andre Feriante and The Bohemian Entourage, Tarana (World Fusion), Shoruk (Traditional Arabic), Deseo Carmin (Flamenco Rock), and Gina Sala' (Kirtan.)
His work has expanded into studio and video production. He produced the new CD by Tarana entitled, Waves of Sound in 2013, has edited and produced nearly all of the recent videos on this site, and has just been offered a monthly World Fusion radio show on the Voice of Vashon called, Musical Evolution. He is also working on a solo album featuring his compositional and technical bass skills to be released in 2016.
He has also become good friends with Bill Conklin of Conklin Guitars and they are in the process of calaborating on several new projects including a Jason Everett Signature Seven-String Fretless Bass to be released in 2016.
Debut of the "Om Bass" at a Kirtan for Gina Sala in Seattle WA
He eventually found a damaged Conklin GT7 body and neck on eBay for $200 and quickly snatched them up and began his renovation. After tearing out the frets, filling the fret cuts with a mahogany veneer, stripping the body, hand carving in a paduk design, installing new electronics and hardware, then eventually finishing the purple heart fingerboard with an epoxy resin...the Om Bass was born, which has become Jason's signature instrument.
Also during this time, Jason released his first solo CD with a slight twist on the name of his previous solo project, Tal Maya ~ Beat Illusion. Much of his CD was inspired by his visits to the Buddhist Monastery at Deer Park in Escondido, CA. This CD, entitled, The Eye of the Beholder was an experiment for Jason in his using technology to combine synthetic and actual recorded instruments and was more of a showcase of his compositional ability with many odd meters and fast unison melodies. It was also a project where Jason created every element of the project from each note, to the graphic design.
The original renovations of the Rickenbacker 4001 Scalloped-neck Picollo Bass and the Rickenbacker 4003 Five-stringed Fretless
