Stroking the Bass with Amanda Webster

Amanda Webster, senior at Rumson Fair Haven Regional High School and Rumson resident via Wyoming by way of Florida, is an in-demand musician in school based groups and in bands with her friends. Being really good and playing the much needed but seldom found electric bass guitar will do that for you.         

Webster said her musical journey began with other instruments. “When I was very young I loved listening to music and I had a six string guitar that I never played. When I was in the 5th grade my parents got me a drum set and I studied drums for about a year," she explained. "I didn’t love the drums, and one day I saw a bass at the studio I was having my drum lesson in. I pretty much dropped the drums right away, started playing the bass, and was playing with other musicians right away."

Webster said that after joining other experience musicians, slacking was not an option. "I almost didn’t have a choice to not improve and get good, I didn’t want to drag everybody else down.”

Webster ’s musical influences are diverse, from the Beatles to indie rock and jazz.  “My favorite bass player is Motown legend James Jamerson, because of his great grooves and melodic bass lines, but I really like many different styles of music. I like the different rhythms of world music and the walking bass lines of jazz,” said Webster.

Academically Webster ’s favorite subjects are English and History and when she finds time away from her music, schoolwork or college applications, she’s reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” or catching a movie, maybe something by Woody Allen or a recent favorite “The King’s Speech.”

Webster  is leaning towards attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and she’s been accepted to Gettysburg College, a small liberal arts school. Webster  explains that she would like to explore her passion for music in college. “I’d really like to do something in music; I’m not sure exactly what. I’d like to continue performing and possibly work in a recording studio," she said.

She also forsees a future int he music industry. "I have some experience with ProTools  (professional recording system) and I’ve made a few demos with bands. I had the opportunity to meet Dave Tozer who produces many artists including John Legend, so I could see being a producer,” Said Webster.

Regarding her current musical opportunities,  Webster said, “I play in the RFH Jazz band, Jazz Combo and Pit Orchestra and often with different friends in their bands. It’s a nice balance."

She says that performing with school groups gives her a lot of exciting opportunities. "At school we just got done playing the music for the performance of “Sweeney Todd”, and the composer, Stephen Sondheim, wrote really complex music for it that was really dark and shifted meters all over the place. That was a real musical challenge," she said. "Then recently our Jazz Band performed at the Teen Arts Festival at Brookdale Community College and was regarded as one of the top groups.”

Having already played with, among others, veteran rock guitarist Earl Slick, one of John Lennon and David Bowie’s sidemen, and in concerts and in clubs from New York to Philly to the Stone Pony, it is clear that seventeen-year-old Amanda Webster is off to an incredible start in music.