Dons NoPo Music Studio

Don Bouyear is a bass player, songwriter, and recording enthusiast from Portland, OR.

Born & raised a poor feral child of divorced parents’ music was an escape from the realities of life. Don shared 1 of his earliest memories of playing in the front yard with a tennis racket guitar and jamming to the Bay City Rollers' song Saturday night. The time was the 1970s. Music of choice during his teenage years was classic hard rock such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, etc. 

Don’s mother purchased his first guitar for him in 9th grade after sending him to live with his Father in Seattle, WA. It was an acoustic steel string guitar, but Don never really learned to play it and lost it at school about a year later. During this time living with his father, he felt alone and isolated. Music became the dominant friend and emotional support Don needed.

1979 Don was kicked out of his father’s house and returned to live with his mother in her small 3-bedroom house that was now the home of 12+ stepfather family members.  At 17, Don joined the Army reserve to get away. Boot camp during the St. Helen Mt eruption. Don quickly realized a soldier's life was not for him. Passing a music store with money earned from boot camp, Don purchased a Memphis Les Paul electric guitar. He decided he was going to become a Professional Musician and started learning the guitar at the age of 18. To quote Ted Nugent, I played all day, jammed all night, practice tell I knew all the licks. Learning the guitar at that late stage of life was not easy. Everybody was playing guitar nobody wanted to jam with a want to be guitarist trying to find his way. 

A drummer friend from a band Don wanted to be in told him he should switch to playing bass. 

Bingo! Don joined the band and became a bass player. Suddenly all the guitar players wanted to be his friend and started sharing all their licks with him

Don played in many bands and worked the bar seen throughout Portland for most of the 80,s and 90s as a bass player and was able to earn enough money to get by without holding a real job most of the 80s. Don quickly became bored with playing classic rock copy tunes, but as a support musician with no vocal talent, that's what I had to do to get paid. Around 1984 Don purchased a Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder. It is what leads to Don writing and recording songs. The recording gear allowed him to be more creative and escape learning to play popular music.

1986 Don decided to take music writing classes at PCC and signed up for an Associate of Science in Music degree. Don's music abilities, to this point, had all been self-taught by using public libraries. Don would check out classical sheet music and then learn how to read and play it. There was no internet, and he did not have enough money to take lessons.   Don had never succeeded at much of anything in school before this. He was a professional dropout artist, but he wanted to do this and had to pay for it. Don graduated two years later with honors and a much better understanding of music rules.   He also discovered the progressive Jazz bass players changing his view of a real bass player. No more Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, etc. The bass can be so much more than just a support instrument. Onward to the likes of Jeff Berlin, Stanley Clarke & Jaco Pastorious. During this time, Don went to a Joe Satriani concert without any idea who the bass player was before this day. About halfway through the show, Mr. Hamm starts playing Linus and lucy thyme as a bass solo. Don had never seen a bass player with that much command over their instrument. I was going to give up and never play again. So amazing he was. By morning my new goal was to be that good.

In the 1990's I was still playing in bands, but I also had a full-time job, house, and family to support. Time becomes very precious. The music world is changing, and everybody has started focusing on making original music. The local bar and club scene also started drying up. Don began to concentrate more on recording and writing songs, mostly helping other musicians record their songs using a Tascam 8 track reel to reel machine.

Late 90 s Phantom Itch is born. Don is the lead guitar vocalist of this three-piece band based out of his basement. Paul Wilcox on Drums brought over a solid bass player friend John Grandbois, and I got them to start learning my songs. Most fun I had ever being in a band.

It was during this time Don started recording using computers.   Phantom Itch lasted about two years. Phantom Itch allowed me to work out the songs for the first two albums, The Phantom Itch & Feelings from the past.   Don was trying to do it all himself. No training, just determination. Don was able to make some money from these first two records due to a site called Mp3.com Then Napster happened and killed all the fun. From this point on, Don never returned to playing in copy bands.   Everybody is doing originals. Back to playing bass for other people’s bands and songs. Have some great recordings from these other bands that never amounted to anything, but they're not my song or my bands. I was just the bass player supporting other people’s goals. Don was not making any money playing other people’s originals. Still, Don continued to write and record his songs all along but could not put together a band to perform these songs. At this point, Don has seven original albums of his own available in the marketplace. Seventy-five demo songs he has recorded from his home studio.

In 2006 Don took a year to build the custom bass of his dreams.  He was and has been very happy with the results.  More on this later.

Don continues to write and record music as a solo artist and plans.  Stay up to date with Don at dbouyear.com