Crash Romeo, of New Jersey. a signee of Trustkill Records released their first CD, Minutes to Miles, in 2006. They toured heavily to support the critically acclaimed disc and followed it up with Gave Me The Clap -- a title Gearwire hopes is not the result of all that touring -- in March 2008. Bassist Lil' Steve Matthews talked to Gearwire about his rig, touring and other musical miscellany.

To begin with, Matthews mentioned that one of the bands on their recently scheduled tour dropped off -- which led to the tour disintegrating. Fans in Dallas were thus deprived of seeing Crash Romeo perform on Good Morning Dallas. They had originally planned to stick the tour out solo but realized that was a ticket to the poor house. Sometimes you have to know when to pull the plug on a tour and live to fight another day. You cannot do it lightly but there are times when you have to.

Matthews moved on to a more comfortable topic -- his bass.

"I play a Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay. My back up is a Fender -- a P Bass. " says Matthews.

The P Bass has special significance as it was his first bass. Loyalty, however, only goes so far.

"When I save up enough loot I am going to get another StingRay," he says. "The tone I get out of it. It gives me that slinky tone. I played a lot of Fenders. Fenders and StingRays are the main basses I have played. My favorite bass player, Mike Hererra played a StingRay. It's as cool looking and I loved the sound"

One of the issues between the two basses is that the Ernie Ball is active and the P Bass is passive. Matthews uses a Hartke 5500 head which has inputs for basses with passive or active pick ups. This can create a problem when changing on stage. Techs may accidentally plug into the wrong input -- and the passive just doesn't sound as good to Matthews.

"With this set up, the active is way better," he says. "The active input is way louder. I don't know what it is with passive and active, but it is SOMETHING."

He also uses a Hartke XL series 8x10 cabinet with aluminum cones. For practice he uses an Ampeg 8x10 for practice.

"Before the Hartke, I had an Ampeg SVT 3 Pro head and borrowed a Mesa 400. It was awesome, but the guy who lent it needed it back." he says. "I moved from Mesa to Hartke, and Hartke is doing me well."

He is, however, hoping to get an Ampeg endorsement to get an SVT classic.

One thing he does not like in a bass head has nothing to do with sound but with his own psyche.

"I don't like graphic equalizers on the head. It is too much. I am too OCD for that." says Matthews.

Matthews says he will fiddle incessantly if there is an equalizer which can lead to madness since every room you play in is different.

Matthews is not big on effects. The only one he uses is a Hartke Bass Attack pedal to "push the gain. . . the deep distortion gain."

"I don't see the need for effects. We are pop punk kids playing pop punk music," he says. "On the albums, there are effects, but not even so much on the guitars on the new record -- there is flange"

When asked about things breaking on tour, Matthews comes up with a different item than most road warriors.

"The most common thing I break is my strap. I move around a lot," he says "On the Warped Tour, I broke four straps in three weeks. I had an Ernie Ball, a Dimarzio [and] a Gibson strap that ripped apart."

And they all broke in different ways. If anyone out there has a titanium woven bass strap, you may want to endorse Matthews. If he cannot break your strap, no one can.

Crash Romeo plans to tour in July and August and to push the new record. Getting out on the road is part of selling your recordings.

"Even if you are on a label it is still real DIY." says Matthews. "You can be signed, have a booking agent and a manager but you still have to do a lot yourself."