Evan Lieberman - Bass Guitar, Backup Vocals

Evan Lieberman has been playing bass since he was thirteen when his cousin sold him an Italian copy of a violin shaped Beatle-bass for $10. It turned out that his cousin didn’t own the bass and so began a long and winding road. He started a band almost immediately undeterred by the fact that he had no idea how to play, but over the course of his teen years he became fairly adept moving between heavy rock bands, fusion, jazz and even did a brief stint playing double bass in The Atlanta Youth Symphony, which convinced him he would never be a classical musician. Going to college in Athens, Georgia during the heyday of REM and the B52s his ska/reggae influenced band Little Tigers released a well reviewed single Ska City, which he wrote, and toured the east coast with !0,000 Maniacs. With prospects of future tours and a record contract looming, he did the sensible thing and went to film school at The American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In LA he played with pioneering transvestite noise rockers Glue and blues legend Blind Joe Hill while working in the film industry as a producer and screenwriter, Homesick for Georgia he moved back to Atlanta to pursue a PhD in Film Studies from Emory University where he eventually became a professor though his musical pursuits were limited to playing drums with garage rockers Trash Reactors and recording with the more experimental City Planners, though he did direct several music videos that played on MTV back when they actually showed videos. In 2006 he moved to Cleveland to teach film at Cleveland State University and within a few years joined Jen Poland in The Poland Invasion, which became Kiss Me Deadly when they didn’t want anyone to mistake them for Nazi sympathizers. That was over fifteen years ago and he has been happily rocking with the band ever since.


Evan’s development as a bass player can to a large degree be traced through his changing influences. He began by emulating Paul McCartny and Jack Bruce and working through Carol Kaye’s “How to Play Electric Bass (Volumes 1 & 2).” It wasn’t until he began to learn the bass lines of Allman Brothers bassist Berry Oakely whose jazzy, funky style really taught him how to play. Evan took a perhaps unfortunate detour into the fusion of Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorious, which led him to regularly play too many notes, but he did wind up with a fretless Fender Jazz Bass that continues to be a favorite instrument. Fortunately before long he turned to the more groove oriented playing of Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads), Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett (Bob Marley and the Wailers), and Larry Graham from Sly and the Family Stone, all of whom helped cure his tendency towards overplaying. Most recently he’s been studying the work of Chuck Rainey with Steely Dan, James Jamerson whose Motown bass lines changed the instrument and back to the beginning, Paul McCartney who remains the single most profound influence not just on Evan but on the electric bass in general