Glenn Fukunaga: Bass that Binds
Hawaii native has been Austin's 'ono' bassist since the '70s
Most people would feel lucky to master one art in their lifetime, but Glenn Fukunaga is not only a first call bass player, currently with Terry Allen’s sensational Panhandle Mystery Band, but a noted restorer of rare books.
Playing bass and giving life back to ancient volumes wouldn’t seem to have much in common, but Fukunaga said, “they both require an attention to detail and that you work well with your hands.” Bassists and book restorers are like baseball umpires- you don’t notice the good ones.
Hawaii native Fukunaga has been happily in Austin’s background for 48 years, playing in hundreds of recording sessions. But in 2012, he released the first CD with his name on the front cover and not just in the liner notes. Not a Word was just that, an album of six jazz instrumentals, flavored by spooky exotica and sprawling rhythms. Perfect housecleaning music.
It was a one-time musical declaration from a support performer. “After all these years of backing other people, I was getting a little frustrated with the rules of the session guy,” Fukunaga said from his book binding workshop behind the home in Barton Hills he shares with wife Sandy. “I wanted to make a record where no one was telling me to ‘walk to the four’ (a standard bassline),” he said.
Drummer Dony Wynn called Fukunaga “the quintessential quiet storm,” who doesn’t need to say much because he’s fully able to express himself non-verbally. “His confidence in life, and thereby, on his instrument (shows) a master at work.”
Though he now specializes in standup bass, Fukunaga was not really a jazz fan earlier in his career. His resume included blues (Lou Ann Barton, the Blame), folk (Terri Hendrix, Eliza Gilkyson), country (Home by the Dixie Chicks) and rock (James Burton), but almost no jazz. Didja know Fukunaga played the very first punk show at Raul’s in 1978, as a member of Bill Maddox’s band Project Terror? The Violators of Kathy Valentine opened.
“The big turning point was about 10 or 12 years ago,” he told me in 2012. “I was listening to KUT and they played a song by (jazz pianist) Bill Evans and it knocked me out,” Fukunaga said. He started buying every Evans record he could find and studied up on the man and his bassist Scott LaFaro, perhaps Fukunaga’s biggest influence besides Motown’s James Jamerson. “Bill Evans had this philosophy that everyone plays together, having a musical conversation, as opposed to one guy soloing and everyone else laying back.” This style of “collective improvisation” was the musical mindset of Not a Word.
Fukunaga grew up in Hilo on the island of Hawaii, which was not immune to Beatlemania. “Me and some friends all went from ukulele to guitar, but someone needed to play bass, so I volunteered under the condition that it would be for one year only,” Fukunaga said with a laugh. That was 1964. He overshot his limited period on bass by 57 years.
In 2011, Fukunaga was enlisted to play bass with one of his early rock heroes, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. “It was only one show in Marfa,” Fukunaga said of his time in Crown Vic, which also featured Patty Griffin, Michael Ramos, David Grissom and drummer Wynn (who played with Robert Palmer for two decades). “But it was a pretty amazing experience. There’s nothing like hitting the stage in front of a great crowd.”
Especially after you’ve spent the previous week rescuing tattered and crumbling books. “We used to have a storefront on South Lamar and we’d always get people coming in with their family Bibles falling apart,” Fukunaga recalled. “I’d look them over and say ‘that’s about 10 hours worth of work, so you’re looking at $650’ and they’d look at me horrified. ‘I thought it would be twenty dollars.’ Thank God we’re out of the Bible business.” Fukunaga sold the storefront years ago and works from home mainly with longtime clients, including Austin-based Mark Twain collector Kevin MacDonnell. Recent tasks for Fukunaga included binding special books for winners of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Award for American Humor, including Tina Fey, Bill Cosby and Carole Burnett.
Fukunaga’s introduction to the world of rare books was entirely coincidental. He was recruited to the Austin scene in 1974 by frat party booking kingpin Charlie Hatchet, who caught Fukunaga’s touring cover band Bamboo in Amarillo. For a day job, Fukunaga hired on as a UT shuttle bus driver, then a chauffeur. One of his first limo clients was notorious rare book dealer and publisher John Holmes Jenkins, who kept the 40,000 volume Eberstadt Collection of books and papers- bought for $2.7 million and sold, piecemeal, for $10 million- in a vault in the corrugated metal building on South I-35 that later served as a porno depot, with seven-foot high letters “XXX” on the side.
“Mr. Jenkins was quite a character,” Fukunaga said of the high stakes poker player nicknamed “Austin Squatty” in Las Vegas for the way he sat at a card table with his legs crossed under him. Jenkins was shot to death in 1989- at age 49- found in the Colorado River near Bastrop, a murder mystery that’s never been solved. The sheriff suggested the deadly shot was self-inflicted, in the water, because of the bullet trajectory and the lack of blood on the shore. But a gun was never found.
Though Jenkins hired his driver Fukunaga as a book binder, it was a restoration expert from Switzerland called Mr. Brunner who taught him the tricks of the trade.
A born perfectionist, Fukunaga took to the craft right away. “There were three or four of us working on the books and after a few months, clients started asking for me,” he said. It’s a slow process that requires a deft touch and complete concentration. One mistake could knock thousands of dollars off a rare book’s value. Fukunaga has worked on million dollar projects, such as restoring a dozen first edition copies of the Book of Mormon, worth about $90,000 a copy.
“It’s funny. I could do this deaf,” he says, slowly raising the spine of an old and tender book. “And I could do that blind,” gesturing to the standup bass he always keeps by his side in his workshop.
Sometimes he’ll think of a piece of music when he’s repairing a book and he’ll get behind the bass taller than him and work it out. But he’s got book deadlines, so he’s back at the big table before too long.
“I’ve definitely made more money with books than music in the past, but it’s getting to be 50/50,” Fukunaga said in 2012.
Hand in hand. Whether on stage, in the studio or in his workshop table piled with decaying literary classics, Fukunaga has enjoyed a life of balance.
Excellent! Thanks.
Glenn, - U are truly blessed. One of the greats from Hilo. Our hometown . . .