Jeff Genualdi - bass

Born in Chicago, raised in Niles, IL.  Currently reside in Arlington Heights, IL.

Previous bands: Garbo Swag, Stone Diam, Cyberputz, Destiny, numerous short-term rock and jazz groups.

Top 3 musical influences: Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Paul McCartney, and obviously Flea.

Gear: Ernie Ball Music Man Sterling 4-string, Ernie Ball Music Man Sting Ray 5-string, Gallien-Krueger 2001RB amp head, Gallien-Krueger 410RBH and 115RBH speaker cabinets, Alesis 3630 Compressor, Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron, BOSS Bass Overdrive.

With that stuff out of the way, what else can I tell ya?  Well, let's see…I've been playing bass for over 20 years.  I wanted to play drums when I was about 8 years old, but my parents didn't let me because they thought it would be too loud and take up too much space in our small house.  So I settled for an acoustic guitar.  I tried taking lessons for a month, but had a really crappy teacher that didn't show any promise of teaching me anything fun.  I wanted to play KISS tunes and he was more of the Peter, Paul, and Mary type.  So I quit the lessons, but kept the guitar to just jump around with, pretending I was Gene Simmons.

Then in 8th grade I was introduced to Rush, and was so inspired by Geddy Lee's bass that I took off the top two strings of that old acoustic guitar and started trying to play along with Exit…Stage Left, using my fingers to pluck the strings.  A few months later I finally convinced the p's to get me a real bass guitar and a little practice amp, and I started with lessons again.  I was a bit more mature at this point, so I had the patience to learn to read music.  I bounced around with a few instructors, including Chicago-area guitar virtuoso Dave Uhrich.  He was an amazing teacher, and showed me tons of things about scales, chords, jazz, and several flavors of 80's flashy tapping techniques.  I got real into Billy Sheehan and Stu Hamm for a few years, and then discovered Jaco Pastorius.  I was in several rock bands during high school, plus the school's jazz band and orchestra - where I played string bass for 3 years.

Off to college at NIU, and finally discovered RHCP.  Mother's Milk was the new album, and ever since then Flea has been one of my very favorites.  I do not tire of playing his basslines, or at least haven't yet!

After college, I played my arse off in a band called Garbo Swag (originally named Stone Diam).  We started off as an alt. rock cover band, but then focused on our own songwriting.  We put out 4 albums over our years together, and did a ton of gigs around Chicago and the burbs.  The band ended when our singer moved to L.A., but we remain friends.  Pauly G. was the drummer, so the bond of the Funky Monks rhythm section has a very long history.

I guess this has been boring enough to read, so I'll just end by saying that I hope Mike and Pauly come up with something a heck of a lot more entertaining than I did to say in their bios.  I'll at least be adding a goofy picture or something to win a few smiles.