JAMES DOUGLAS MAHON

Jamie Mahon had served time as an integral member of such Philadelphia favorites as The Three4Tens and Marah when he was drafted into The Get Quick during the ’04-06 skydiving sabbatical of Riko Litts. He played on the Rainbow Quartz International release HOW THE STORY GOES, which featured his song “Talk About You Today.”

Being a longtime associate enabled him to work exceptionally well within the band, co-writing a dozen songs with Erjk in a matter of days – many of which were included on the albums DAGGER OF THE MIND and IN THE GRIP OF OBLIVION. All three albums are colored by Jamie’s influential playing style and the distinctive sound of his custom aluminum neck Travis Bean fretless bass.

The Low-End Theologian of Philadelphia

Let me tell you about Jamie Mahon.


Not the polite version, not the press kit fluff. I mean the guts and glue of it — the spiritual custodian of the American fuzz-buzz subconscious, hiding in plain sight behind a fretless ax that could crack a concrete wall clean in half.

He came up with The Three4Tens and Marah — bands who knew how to get sweaty on stage and biblical on record. But Jamie wasn’t just another scenester Eeyore — he was the guy behind the guy. The secret weapon. The ringer. You need a riff? He’s got five. You need a song revamped? He’s already halfway through a new arrangement while you’re tuning up. You need someone to steer the band from imploding at 4am in a Motel 6 parking lot in Toledo? Jamie knows the way.

When Riko Litts took off wingsuiting in 2003, The Get Quick didn’t just need a replacement. They needed a resonant frequency, and Jamie Mahon was it. Not a frontman. Not a hired gun. More like a creative accelerant — the guy who walks into the room and suddenly everyone remembers why they’re in a band in the first place.

You ever hear “Talk About You Today” off HOW THE STORY GOES? That’s him. It’s melodic melancholy with spiked wrist cuffs, the sound of a guy writing a pop song while thinking about death and coffee and what it means to still believe in your band after all these years.

But that wasn’t the end — oh no.


Then came DAGGER OF THE MIND. Then IN THE GRIP OF OBLIVION. Albums of Shakespearean hallucinations, and Jamie’s bloody fingerprints are everywhere.


That aluminum neck bass? That’s not just tone — that’s alchemy.
You feel it — not in your ears, but your sternum. A warm, low-frequency truth serum that makes everything else either more honest or more shameful, depending on what you’re hiding.

“I don’t play fretless to be fancy,” he once said, tuning up an G string like he was garroting a goblin. “I do it cause I can slide in between the notes, where the real music lives.”

You could call Jamie a bassist.

But that’s like calling Hemingway a guy who types.


No, this cat understands song — how to build it, how to bleed into it, and how to let it stagger around until it collapses into something like truth.

James Douglas Mahon:
Bass bombardier. Songsmith. Resonance evangelist.


The man who held the center when it damn near fell apart — and only let the bottom fall out when it was part of the arrangement.

— Mark Question, 2011