Wes Searcy

Playing trumpet and baritone since the 4th grade, Wes transitioned to bass guitar as a junior in high school. By necessity, he started singing shortly thereafter when vocalists were hard to come across. He enhanced his stage presence with 3 years of DJ work at radio station KMNR in Rolla, MO. He's worked in various versions of Rock, Country, Jazz, Big Band, Oldies, Blues and fusions of many of these genre's.

Avoiding name dropping due to the lack of a chorum, Wes met the bass player he claims had the most influence over his playing, Charlie Hayward of the Charlie Daniels Band. He says, "I dropped him a business card before the CDB started a show that read: Charlie, I learned to play bass by listening to the licks you laid down on the albums. Thanks for the music!, Wes .....At the end of the show, he made his way through about 30 people to come over to talk to me. I was (and still am) extremely honored."

Mullets still rule!

Fairly well equipped with music gear, a couple of music store managers have ribbed him as to when he planned to go into competition by opening his own store. Between 6 guitars, 3 bass rigs, 4 PA and 4 lighting systems, they may have a point.

Wes does all his own tech work on his guitars and favors the sound of a P-Bass he built by hand in 2004. "I threw some Seymore Duncans on a body I built out of some walnut that my dad chopped down in 1960." He says that the wood was so hard that the router (with a new blade) put out more smoke than chips. "The sustain is forever, especially considering it's a bolt-on and the tone is full, yet very clean." It looks like he is not stopping with just this one guitar. "Hopefully one day I might be able to design and build a double neck 5-string that will be light enough to play all night. I'd love to have a fretless and a regular fretted bass handy, especially within the span of the same song." This project is currently on hold due to his 4th antique car restoration project. He is building his 3rd, 1936 Ford pick-up. He currently has a completion target date of the Fall of 2007 for this project. Below is a link to a website he is maintaining for this truck.

Wes does most of the behind-the-scenes stuff for The Excelerators. This includes most of the booking, promotions, publishing, equipment maintenance and logistics. In addition, he runs the sound & light systems from stage. He says that after more than 30 years of playing in bands since high school, he knows the difference between the major, minor, mic, and audio c(h)ords.