LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
Despite being from Chile, travelling musician Felipe Gomez, also known as "the Bass Invader," might be more Canadian than most.

Felipe Gomez a.k.a. the "Bass Invader," is a touring musician who once travelled from Saskatoon to St. John's on his bike. He was in Fort Simpson to play the Open Sky Festival on July 2 and 3. - Joseph Tunney/NNSL photo

Besides Nunavut, Gomez has been to every province and territory - primarily via biking.

"(Travelling is) not just for its own sake, I want to see the world with my own eyes," the one-man-band-styled bass player said.

With his long black hair that reaches past his shoulders, his partially nomadic lifestyle and the intensity Gomez plays his bass, it seems like Gomez is after the simple things in life. And, with the cheering heard at after one of his songs at the Open Sky Festival earlier this month, it sounds like it's getting him somewhere. Gomez played both July 2 and 3 of Open Sky and said this was his first time in Fort Simpson.

He says his mission is to seek adventure, music and community.

"The part of adventure is me with my bicycle, community is by talking to kids and youth in the schools, music is what I do for a living," he said.

For Gomez, if you're going to be a solo-bass player you've got to learn how to make the instrument fill the stage. You have to take the instrument out of its comfort zone.

"You have to take it out of the composition," he said.

When Gomez is playing, it's clear he's not playing backup for anybody.

Right now, he said he's trying to blend the music of his home country with what he's learned here.

In one of his songs you can especially hear the First Nations influence in the vocals as the thunderous bass plays beneath.

"Recently, with all my adventures in Canada, I just became really connected with First Nations music and First Nations communities."

"It's the connection with the land and the respect," he said. "We've lost that in the cities."

However, he's no stranger to the North.

He has friends back in Yellowknife he considers his family and tries to visit them once or twice a year. He came to Canada in 2009.

Gomez describes the country as its own continent and said it was on his list of places to travel for a long time.

But he's done more than just travel the country.

On his cross-country bike tour that brought him from Saskatoon, where he calls home, all the way to St. John's, N.L., the slow pace of the bicycle made him really take in the beauty of the country.

"You have enough time to have friends," he said about the speed he travels.

However, that doesn't mean everything has been smooth sailing for Gomez.

This January he's even releasing a movie about his journeys on the ice roads to Whitehorse.

He'll be touring it in northern Saskatchewan from September until December.

"Everything went to hell most of the time," he said. "Between grizzlies, my dad having a heart attack, between broken bikes, everything went to hell."

"(It's) still one of my best memories," he said, laughing.

While the body will adapt in situations like travelling across Canada or with his hurtles on the ice roads, according to Gomez, what you have to work on the most is the brain.

But despite his unorthodox life, the Bass Invader says it all comes back to one message.

"Anybody can do what I do," he said.

"We're humans, we have the skills in ourselves, the muscle, the brains."

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