Dave Shul - Guitar

I'm Dave Shul I hope all is well in cyberspace. I play guitar in Spearhead. I've been involved in the Bay Area music scene for about 20 years. I was working in the office at Secret Studios when Carl Young (bass player for Spearhead) walked in and said "I'm looking for a guitar player." I told him I'd like to audition, they auditioned two other cats, and I ended up getting the gig. That was in April of 1998. The first gig I played with the band was in Seattle, then we did two gigs at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and then it was on to New Zealand and Australia. Since that time I have been on the road with the band in the US, Europe, and other parts of the planet.

My favorite part of travelling is meeting local folks, because I don't usually get to see a lot of the sites as we are moving from place to place so quickly.

I first started playing guitar at age 12. My older brother had a guitar and I used to sneak into his room and play it, because everytime I'd ask him for a lesson he'd bop me on the nose and say, "get outta here you ...!" Eventually I got better at it then him and went on to make my living doing it.

At age 13 I went to Cazadero Music camp at the Russian river in northern California. A lot of other well known musicians went there as well, like Jay Lane (Rat Dog drummer), Dave Ellis (Rat Dog Saxophonist, Dave Ellis Group), Joshua Redman (World Renowned Jazz Saxophonist) and many others. Among the teachers were Bobby McFerrin, Eddy Marshall, and John Santos. It was my first experience playing music with other people, and I got exposed to lots of styles from big band to funk,rock and R n B. As I developed I later went on to teach there for five summers.

My first band didn't have a name, it was just a group of friends that used to jam together in the garage. We played whatever came out of our hearts, but we never played a gig. At this time I was listening to Miles Davis, P-Funk, James Brown, and whatever was on the radio.

My first bands were Ice Age (funk group) and Undertow(ska), we opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone and Madness when they first came out. After that I began subbing for a lot of groups, and sitting in on a lot of groups in the San Francisco acid Jazz scene. Eventually I started playing sessions for commercials, TV, and video games.

I put out my own album in 1999 called Welcome to the Conga Club featuring a whole host of Bay Area musicians, all of whom I came to know over the years. The album is on Aztlan Records and will soon be available on the spearheadvibrations.com site and at Spearhead live shows. It features a song with Michael Franti called "Conga Clubbin'". In addition to my studio work with Spearhead I have also been working with narada Michael Walden up at Tarpan Studios in San Rafael.

My on stage gear, for those who might be interested:

Fender American Standard Stratocaster (My main axe) 
1970's Ibanez Les Paul custom Larrivee steel string acoustic guitar

Amplifiers:
Fender '65 reissue twin
Fender acoustic

Effects and floor pedals:
Electro harmonix Q-tron 
LIne-6 Digital Delay pedal 
Line-6 modulation pedal 
Mesa Boogie V-twin distortion pedal 
Boss compressor 
Dunlop Crybaby Wah Wah pedal

Strings: DR strings