Straight from the crazy and creative minds of Bruiser Queen‘s Jason Potter and Morgan Nusbaum comes The 12 Bassists of Christmas, a holiday spectacular featuring a cast of St. Louis musical all-stars. We’re talking choice players from bands like Pretty Little Empire, CaveofswordS, The Blind Eyes, Bunnygrunt, and more, all joining BQ on-stage WITH a giant tambourine ensemble for an unforgettable performance.

Poster by Jason Potter.

So, a bass-heavy local show being put on by one of the area’s premier guitar and drums duos…wait…what? We went to the source (J. Potter) for the skinny on this magical, goofy-ass event. Says Potter:

This show is the realization of an idea that we’ve had for well over a year. We love tambourine in a recorded and live setting, so it actually started there. Often times during shows, people will spontaneously hop on stage and sing along and shake whatever they can find during our last song, “Old Man Winter.” So, the idea of a planned bunch of people on stage with us frantically shaking it for the “World’s Largest Tambourine Ensemble” in (and out) of time completely cracked us up.
 
The bassists aspect stems from being a guitar/drums duo. There are advantages (ease of travel, writing, scheduling, rehearsing) of not having a bassist, but also drawbacks. Morgan was a bassist herself until we formed this band (essentially), and we’re always flirting with the idea of adding someone on bass to our line-up. St. Louis is home to so many great bassists, so it took us a year of convincing 12 of them that joining us on one song apiece would be a good idea (results pending). This is sort of our way of dipping our toe in the bassist water.
 
The number is an obvious play on the Twelve Days of Christmas, and lucky for us, two of our favorite and best friend bands – Middle Class Fashion and Sleepy Kitty – were available to join us for the night.