Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
James Keyes: Low-End Lunatic of Northern Ontario
James Keyes doesn’t just play bass—he wrangles it, growls through it, and lets it rumble through the floorboards until your drink's doing the jitterbug. A true connoisseur of chaos with a deep affection for pocket grooves and sonic rebellion, Keyes is the kind of bassist who’d rather bend the rules than read them. Stability? That’s for buildings. James brings the earthquake.
Started thumping the four-string beast at 15, right after he’d beat the hell out of a drum kit and just before he picked up the guitar for dessert. But it was the bass where the real voodoo clicked—thick, dirty tone, big attitude, and that irresistible urge to make everything shake.
His musical soul? Built on a foundation of Cliff Burton’s molten fury, ‘70s-era swagger, and the revolution-ready rumble of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. The list of influences is long, loud, and tattooed somewhere on the inside of his skull.
Most famously, he laid down the low-end thunder for Maiden Canada, Northern Ontario’s unapologetically heavy cover band that never met a volume limit it didn’t shatter. If you’ve ever caught a bassline punching through the fog at a dive bar off Highway 11, that was probably Keyes, smiling like a man who knows he's shaking the universe one note at a time.
He likes sounds. The dirtier, the better
James Keyes: Low-End Lunatic of Northern Ontario
James Keyes doesn’t just play bass—he wrangles it, growls through it, and lets it rumble through the floorboards until your drink's doing the jitterbug. A true connoisseur of chaos with a deep affection for pocket grooves and sonic rebellion, Keyes is the kind of bassist who’d rather bend the rules than read them. Stability? That’s for buildings. James brings the earthquake.
Started thumping the four-string beast at 15, right after he’d beat the hell out of a drum kit and just before he picked up the guitar for dessert. But it was the bass where the real voodoo clicked—thick, dirty tone, big attitude, and that irresistible urge to make everything shake.
His musical soul? Built on a foundation of Cliff Burton’s molten fury, ‘70s-era swagger, and the revolution-ready rumble of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. The list of influences is long, loud, and tattooed somewhere on the inside of his skull.
Most famously, he laid down the low-end thunder for Maiden Canada, Northern Ontario’s unapologetically heavy cover band that never met a volume limit it didn’t shatter. If you’ve ever caught a bassline punching through the fog at a dive bar off Highway 11, that was probably Keyes, smiling like a man who knows he's shaking the universe one note at a time.
He likes sounds. The dirtier, the better
