Future Islands' William Cashion on Beginnings and Why He Loves a P-Bass

With a new album—The Far Field—and a slew of late-night television and festival appearances on the docket, Baltimore’s Future Islands is currently riding high in the saddle.

But when asked to reflect on the band’s success, bassist William Cashion recalled the trio’s roots, from forming multiple bands during high school to meeting frontman Samuel T. Herring and keyboardist Gerrit Welmers in their native North Carolina, gelling as a band (then called Art Lord and the Self Portraits) and finally making the move to the vibrant creative scene of Charm City.

“When we first started, I really wanted to play keyboards,” Cashion said. “I was really in to Kraftwerk, and I was doing some programming in high school. That CD is what I first gave to Sam. I met him on my first day of class at (East Carolina University) and I said, ‘I’ve got this weird music that I made. What do you think?’

“He wanted to start a rap project. I didn’t think he could rap to it, but it was something. We quickly started talking about starting a project. When I got to college, I knew I wanted to start a band. Right off, I grabbed some keyboards from friends and my parents’ house, and the first show was largely keys. The second show was when we brought Gerrit in, and the house that we practiced at had a Jazz Bass in the corner.”

That Jazz Bass kicked off a career that Cashion could never have envisioned. Originally a guitar player from the age of 13, Cashion thought about the magic of plucking those four strings and the way they reverberated alongside Welmers’ keys.

“I picked (the Jazz Bass)up and played for one song, but everyone said that the song where I played the bass sounded awesome,” he noted. “I agreed. I thought it was really cool with the keyboards and the bass and drum machine.

“I never really considered playing the bass, but I found myself with it. I took my approach to playing the bass differently than most. I never took bass lessons. I was pretty much the rhythm guitar player in my high school bands. I think that informed the way that I keep rhythm.”

In his own words, Cashion discusses his favorite basses, his use of effects and Future Islands’ songwriting process.

”The Biggest Inspiration Was the Smashing Pumpkins”

“I was totally in to them. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was huge for me. It was the first record that I just dove into, and there was so much was to discover. That made me want to play guitar.”

”My First Electric Guitar Was a Squier”

“That’s what I had when I started my first band in high school. It was really tough for me early on to play other people’s songs. The trick, for me, was the effects that people used. And also different studio tricks that producers used. I’d play the tabs, but they didn’t sound the way they did on the albums.

“I found it easier to just make up my own songs with my buddy, Brian. We’d just pull them out of the air, and that was more fun. When I was 15 or 16, we started to write our own stuff. Our first show was at a friend’s birthday party, and then there was a record store in Raleigh called Record Exchange.

“There was a period at the end of high school where we’d just make up a band every month or two and go play there. It was like, ‘You play drums for this one, and then I’d play bass for another,’ and we’d get there and make it up on stage. Our friends at school and parents would come out. Somewhere out there, videos of those sets exist.”

”The Most Interesting Way to Go From One Point to the Next”

“Sam has always encouraged me to, as he calls it, ‘Take the bass for a walk.’ It’s about making it as interesting as I can … to make it move, in a way. Of course, sometimes, all a song needs is a really driving bassline. But I never feel stuck. I’ll just try a bunch of different ideas, and one will work.

“When we write—and this is largely what we’ve done since college—we have the drum machine going, and we just start to jam until we find a chord progression we like and figure out where it should go. From doing that, we end up playing those chord progressions for an hour or two, just the same thing. We still do that now, even when we were writing The Far Field. I’m figuring out where the bass should fit in, Gerrit is figuring out the keyboards. It’s still interesting to me, after all these years.”

”I Usually Just Use a Fuzz Pedal and Sometimes Some Delay”

“I don’t think there’s any delay on this new album, but there is some fuzz. I do try to make it a little different live. I sometimes use a digital delay to have a slap-back effect to it makes it sound like I’m playing twice as fast as I really am to give the song more energy … to make things pop. I’ll play a phrase on the bass and flip on the delay pedal just for the very end of it. A really quick delay, on-and-off. I’ve also been using a slight bass overdrive live, too.

“I have a couple pedals that can just make things freak out, like at the end of ‘Tin Man’, where there’s a loud noisy jam. I can just bash my bass and make it sound crazy, and then go into the next song.

“Overall, though, it’s a fairly clean, but overdriven sound.”

”My Main Bass Is a 1975 Precision Bass, the One With an ‘A’ Neck”

“I guess for a little while in the ‘70s, they were made with the same neck profile as the Jazz Bass, so the width of the nut was the same as the Jazz.

“Early Art Lord days, I played a Jazz Bass, and then I borrowed my friend’s Yamaha with a P-style pickup. That was on the first two Future Island albums. And then when I had a little bit of money, I bought a Jazz Bass because I thought they looked really awesome. On the Water was all Jazz Bass. But when it came time to record Singles, our producer insisted that I use a P Bass. That album made me start thinking about bass tone.

"I never really thought about the pickups having any effect on the sound, which is totally naïve, I know. But I thought, ‘I used to play a P-style pickup for years, and then I switched. And the sound changed.’ So, I ended up going back. I was concerned about the neck width of the P Bass, but I heard about the ‘A’ neck from the mid-‘70s, so I picked one up and slowly started bringing that into the mix. We did a cover of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ a few years ago, and that was the first Future Islands song that I played the P Bass on. I thought it just sounded awesome, and I kept that bass for years.”

”The P Bass Pickup is Such a Rich, Warm Tone”

“Having a band based around the bass and keyboards, it allows me, as a bass player, to take more of a front seat. A lot of times, the bass is in the background where they cut the highs out and you just hear the lows. That’s something I’ve definitely struggled with, from soundmen or producers. The bass should sit right next to the keyboards, not underneath them. So, I think it’s allowed me a lot more freedom to move around within the song."

Learn more about Future Islands here.