Ocean Beach is home to many musicians, but perhaps none quite as busy as bassist Barney Firkes. Currently, Firkes holds down a key spot in the line-ups of sludge metal band -(16)-, hard-rock guitarist Taz Taylor and experimental quartet Nice World, all while also performing with such local faves as Mike Hood and Ziggy Shuffledust, as well as working as an actor on Balboa Park’s Halloween favorite, The Haunted Trail. He’s also a bass teacher at Mark’s Guitar Exchange. It’s just the tip of the iceberg for one of the unsung heroes of the local music community. It would be a rare week when Firkes didn’t have a show to play. He next performs with Taz Talor at the Ramona Mainstage on Nov. 5. “Honestly,” he laughed, “I picked up the bass guitar out of necessity. I started playing guitar when I was 7 years old. I took lessons at this little shop called Bertilino’s that used to be out on El Cajon Boulevard and 54th Street.” The shop’s owner put on big recitals at Horace Mann Junior High in the auditorium, “so I was performing onstage from an early age. I really dug the energy of playing live, even back then. By my early teens, I was jamming in rock bands with my friends. We always had too many guitar players and no one to play bass, so I switched over. Man, I never looked back. I found my home on the low end.” It didn’t take long for Firkes to decide to make music his professional life. “When I was 21 years old,” he explained, “I dropped out of SDSU and moved up to Hollywood to attend Musicians Institute. That’s when I decided that I was going to just go for it and do music full-time and nothing else.” Interestingly, despite Firkes’ virtuoso skills, it’s not about being in the spotlight. “I know my strength is as a sideman,” he remarked. “Of all those bands listed above, I was only in one of them from the beginning. I’ve always been the replacement guy. However, I like to think that I have a unique approach to the bass guitar and that my style and abilities are what keeps me busy as a player.” Firkes has become a regular on the European tour circuit, first heading across the pond with Sylvia Juncosa and more recently the Taz Taylor Band. “I enjoy playing in Europe much more than the U.S.,” Firkes noted. “In Europe, the promoters actually pay you what was agreed upon. “The clubs all have artist apartments, or rooms, that you can stay in while there. They feed you dinner, give you snacks, alcohol or whatever, and usually send you on your way with breakfast the next morning. It’s just a respect thing, really. Here in the U.S., if you are a musician, at least in the underground rock idiom, you are not taken very seriously by most people. The attitude in Europe is just much more accommodating.” After 35 years in the music trenches, Firkes is quite happy to still be making music and especially, tour. “Right now,” he saysd, “-(16)- is in the recording studio, and that is very rewarding in a different way. We have spent months writing and reworking these new songs, and now we are almost finished with an album, which we hope to send off to the record label, Relapse, by the end of the year.” The plan is for the album to be out by spring, with a European tour to match. “It’s rewarding to see that whole process through from beginning to end,” he said. But his biggest thrill in music is much closer to home. “Both of my sons have a real love for music. It has been great to share that with them and see it blossom.”