Otis Taylor took a phone call four years ago from bassist Kenny Passarelli, who said he could make only a few shows on the summer tour.

"He hung up the phone and said, 'Cassie, if you don't play bass, you don't get an allowance,' " recalled daughter Cassie Taylor.

Then 16, Cassie had less than three weeks of working with her father to become proficient enough to hold her own on a European tour, based on a single lesson Passarelli had given her when she was 12.

The band knew she could make it because "I learned the bass line to Hey Joe in 10 minutes, and they were all 'Whooooo!' " she said.

Cassie became a huge part of the band, with her vocals on Few Feet Away a highlight of the new album, Definition of a Circle.

"She blows me out of the water. So I have to balance it out so that it's still about me. I go to France and people go: 'Where's Cassie? Where's Cassie?' " Taylor says, affecting a strangled French accent. "I go, 'Did you see Cassie on the poster?' "

Daughter Jae, 17, also sings, but she didn't like being onstage, Taylor said.

With Cassie, at first "it was hard offstage, easy onstage," he said. "Especially when she was 16 and we were touring Europe. It was really hard. Teenage daughters or sons are a nightmare. Onstage she's very professional. She holds it together."

"Yeah, I gave him hell," Cassie, now 20, said of the early tours. "We used to fight a lot on the road. I wanted to go out and be 16. Looking back on it, he did what was necessary to keep me away from the destructive lifestyle that music is famous for. I'm grateful now, but I wasn't at the time."

She first sang onstage with her father at age 8, and though she sounded good, "it was almost a gimmick," she said. "When I started playing bass, I really felt more a part of the band."

Cassie, a theater student at Metropolitan State College, will tour with her dad in Europe this month and in May. But she said she doesn't expect to be a side player forever.

"I really want to establish myself as a creditable bassist before I really go into the singer-songwriter thing."