P-Bass Expressway began with a friendship that formed between Paul Bimler (AKA Nava Thomas, AKA Confucius) and Ariel White in the early 90’s. Inspired by classic funk acts of the late sixties through to the mid eighties they began recording their own funk music in 1999 using Paul’s Sumner bedroom studio.
Everything was done in a relatively crude way with low-grade microphones taped to whatever they could find, while recording bass and drum arrangements into Logic on a Pentium I. Without a band line-up at the time, the goal was to get the compositions played on radio. Demo versions of the first P-Bass Expressway track, ‘Interstate with Raoul’, received good airtime on b-net radio throughout New Zealand. Soon after, a second track, ‘Swampthang’, was recorded with the input of Simon Kay on trumpet and Dan Collins on guitar. The addition of both these accomplished musicians solidified the band’s line-up.

P-Bass Expressway played their first gig live on Christchurch’s 98.5 RDU. Shortly after this, Kurt Dyer (Solaa) joined the band on percussion. The first public gigs came in the form of a regular once a month Wednesday night at the old Jetset Lounge. The crowds were not large but P-Bass began getting good reviews in local publications both online and in print.

After a year of performance, the five-piece group began recording their debut album, ‘Expressfunk’. Various delays finally saw the release of this to stores in December 2003. Tracks from this release performed exceptionally well on the b-net radio top ten, including ‘It’s a Journey’ that reached number one in September that year. A number of tracks from Expressfunk were played extensively throughout the USA on New York’s highly rated funk show, ‘The Groove Boutique’. P-Bass Expressway began to look further a field with tours following throughout New Zealand and Australia. In 2005 a vinyl 12” was released with 3 new tracks and a remix from Sunshine Soundsystem’s Downtown Brown. Distribution for the record and CD were secured in Australia, and P-Bass songs began appearing on playlists around the globe.

From 2004 until 2007 P-Bass Expressway were fortunate to play alongside some on New Zealand’s finest acts, including Shapeshifter, Salmonella Dub, Hollie Smith and Kora, to name a few. Highlights were playing Rippon 2006 and Christchurch’s Unity nights.

Although predominantly instrumental, there have been a number of guest vocalists in the band over the years. These include Christchurch’s Sacha van Beek and Jennine Bailey, with well known MC KPz joining the band as a regular member early 2006. All of these, along with Sydney’s MC Janny, now appear on the brand new P-Bass Expressway album ‘Snag Bag” to be released in Australia in November 2008.

P-Bass have worked hard to overcome the geographic distance between members who are spread throughout four cities in Australasia. The result is group of funk lovers who love bringing the groove and soul of funk music to the people.

P-Bass Expressway – Myspace