Sep 24, 2026 · 42 min · 12 segments
Stu Hamm has spent his career making the bass do things you didn’t know it could do, from the explosive lines he played with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani to his unmistakable solo work. Ian and Stu…
Stu HammGuestIan AllisonHostSo what I sense in you, just in this initial encounter, is this love of teaching.
But then what's so amazing is the first thing that you talk about is this appetite for teaching and for writing music for other people to learn to develop their skills.
develop throughout your career? My father, Charles Hamm, was the president of the American Musicology Association.
So I grew up sort of taking my little army man and putting between strings of the piano for Cage to play his prepared piano pieces.
And my oldest brother, Bruce, who played guitar, his room had all the cool records from Live Evil and Miles and all these really strange records.
Southeast Asian classical music, you know, Cyril, which is like a fretless sitar, right? He's a great teacher.
And my dad would take us to see, you know, Judy Collins and then, you know, a Mozart opera and then a steady diet of really avant-garde performers, pieces from John Cage and Non June Pike and all these.
So what I sense in you, just in this initial encounter, is this love of teaching.
But then what's so amazing is the first thing that you talk about is this appetite for teaching and for writing music for other people to learn to develop their skills.
develop throughout your career? My father, Charles Hamm, was the president of the American Musicology Association.
So I grew up sort of taking my little army man and putting between strings of the piano for Cage to play his prepared piano pieces.
And my oldest brother, Bruce, who played guitar, his room had all the cool records from Live Evil and Miles and all these really strange records.
Southeast Asian classical music, you know, Cyril, which is like a fretless sitar, right? He's a great teacher.
And my dad would take us to see, you know, Judy Collins and then, you know, a Mozart opera and then a steady diet of really avant-garde performers, pieces from John Cage and Non June Pike and all these.
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