NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans musician is reunited with his beloved, one-of-a-kind bass.
Saturday night, Ryan Clute was returning home from a gig in the French Quarter.
A Lyft dropped him off.
He says that’s when someone suddenly attacked him in front of his home on Taft Place near Bayou St. John.
“I was unloading and looking for my keys, looking through my backpack and I just bent down and it’s literally the last thing I remember.
Clute says someone hit him in the back of the head.
When he came to, the only thing that was missing was his bass.
“I found my pedal board in one spot and a couple houses down was my hand truck, so it was just like things were sprawled all over the place,” Clute said.
Turns out, the bass didn’t go far either.
We ran into Richard Sznerch, who lives two doors down from Clute.
He found the instrument in a neighbor’s yard.
WWL-TV told him who it likely belonged to.
Sznerch quickly got the bass and returned it to Clute. He said gave him goosebumps to see the instrument back in the hands of its owner.
“I know that’s a working rig,” Sznerch said. “That’s a thing a guy takes to work. That’s his tools. That’s his toolbox.”
Clute said losing his base was like losing a limb.
“Everything about this, not only the feel, but the sound and the varieties of sounds that it makes it’s almost like it’s my natural speaking voice.”
Clute says he has now experienced the yin and the yang of New Orleans. The dark side when he was robbed and the good side with the happy return of his instrument.
“I’m just so grateful for everybody’s kindness and their support. And Richard for finding my baby and bringing her back home to me.”
Clute told us his bumps and bruises will heal, but getting back his bass already makes him feel a lot better.
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