The Wicked Bees

Clyde Schuman is the kind of bass player who operates just below the surface of the madness, holding the whole machine together with thick strings and a suspicious amount of calm. A devoted disciple of the low end, Schuman pilots a five-string bongo bass like a riverboat captain steering through heavy fog—steady, deliberate, and absolutely essential. His heart beats somewhere between the deep thump of reggae and the manic bounce of ska, and if there’s a groove within a hundred miles, Clyde is likely already locked into it.

But the bass is only part of the operation. Schuman is also the sonic mechanic behind the curtain—a seasoned sound engineer who knows how to wrestle microphones, cables, and stubborn amplifiers into submission. As part owner of 8 Side Recording Studio, he spends countless hours sculpting sound, dialing knobs, and chasing that elusive perfect mix that most people swear exists but rarely ever find. He’s the guy who hears the details others miss—the buzz, the rattle, the tiny ghost of distortion lurking in the corner of a track.

The legend of The Wicked Bees began, appropriately enough, in the fluorescent chaos of the Best Buy music section in 2010, where Schuman crossed paths with a fellow traveler named Dan Christianson. Two musicians surrounded by bargain cables and discount drum heads realized they were speaking the same strange musical language. Before long they formed a band, and Schuman’s bass became the gravitational center of the whole enterprise—steady, heavy, and impossible to ignore. Since then he’s been anchoring the groove while the rest of the circus spins overhead.