WILLIE BASSE - The Back Sheep of Real Estate
by Martin Popoff

Man, talk about a guy who's seen it all. Still, Willie Basse is best known in our circles as the bassist for an obscure '80s band called Black Sheep, which gets a sort of asterisk in history as a band who at one time or another featured the likes of George Lynch, Paul Gilbert, James Kottak, Randy Castillo and Slash.

But Willie started in classical singing as a kid, moving on to an esteemed R&B an' blues circuit in his native Texas, to a lifetime of equipment careering and jobs, and even... real estate!

"Yes," laughs Basse, talking to us on the eve of a brand new solo metal record called The Money Grind. "I have my license, and I had a company called Rock Star Cribs, where I specialized in homes with recording studios in them, and kind of targeted entertainers. As a matter of fact, I bought a house from CC Deville, and now he's talking about buying it back, so it's kind of weird (laughs). We're going to collaborate on the title track for the TV show. We'll see how that goes. He just had a kid, you know."

TV show?

"Yes, the TV show is called Rock Star Reality. I took this journey into real estate over the last three or four years, so it's a reality show of my segue out of real estate back into heavy metal. So that's the TV show. And then we've got a movie, a suspense thriller, a horror movie, called The Trail. And it's going to have a slamming soundtrack, man. It's just going to be all my favorite bands, and it's going to be sort of like a greatest hits compilation."

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