The Nashville Drummers Project

It is particularly intriguing within an interview context to sit down with someone I have been fortunate enough to consider a close friend for years now - someone whose story I know to a degree, but in a sense have much to learn about.  Many of the drummers featured in this project (including myself) were once burgeoning young players at Belmont University that quickly formed into a nurturing, loyal band of brothers that I sincerely hope is made stronger through this series, along with the hope that this community will become even larger and more interconnected. 

One of the individuals within this community happens to be Richard Scott.  It is remarkable for me to see Richard’s growth and maturation as a musician and a person in the years that I have known him, so to hear it in his words was quite an honor.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to hear his wisdom and insight in this setting, and I hope you do too.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing, and more specifically, your exposure to music growing up and any early musical inspirations you had.  What caught your ear then?

RS: This will probably be the most embarrassing question of the day.  I didn’t really come from a musical family – one of my sisters was in choir in high school or something like that, but that was about it.  There was always music in the car, and in the house somewhere, but it was always my mom’s cheesy music, like Twila Paris records.  It wasn’t anything cool.  It wasn’t until I got into high school that I found Led Zeppelin, Journey, Steve Miller Band – all these old bands that were incredible.  I had gone through my Metallica phase in middle school, and tried to be cool, but it just felt kind of lame.  Going into high school I began figure out that I could explore music on my own, and I wasn’t necessarily bound to what was in the house.  All through college, I started discovering jazz – guys like Michel Camilo – people that were just blowing my mind in realizing that there was more to life than Twila Paris and Amy Grant (laughs).

DR:  Was there sort of a “light bulb” moment, where you thought, “Oh my gosh, what have I been missing this whole time?”

RS:  Yeah!  There were a few “light bulb” moments, but I’d say [a big one] was when I first got into Ben Folds Five.  It was not only his song craftsmanship, it was finding music I could identify with, and that got me excited about music itself as well.  That started a whole new listening experience for me.  I remember the year I got Whatever And Ever Amen, and within three weeks I discovered Ben Folds Five, Bela Fleck, Michel Camilo – all of a sudden I went from listening to classic rock to listening to everything.  All in this one month.  It was weird, and somehow it started with Ben Folds Five.  So thanks, Ben.

DR: This may have been something you were aware of, at least subconsciously, but were there things about the drummers of the bands you mentioned – Darren Jessee with Ben Folds Five, John Bonham with Led Zeppelin, Steve Smith with Journey, and Gary Mallaber with Steve Miller – that stuck out to you?  Was it more of a big picture kind of listening?

RS: For the most part it was a big picture, but with Zeppelin and the Folds Five stuff – even The Who – there’s a raw energy that comes through on the drums, and you can’t help but notice it, whether you’re a drummer or not.  For those few bands, it was “Holy cow.  This drummer is awesome.”  But overall, it was a big picture thing – “Listen to what these guys are doing.  This is not the same cookie cutter stuff that I grew up with in my house.  This is incredible what they’re doing.”  Even today, I’m going back and listening to those bands and finding new little things that I didn’t notice when I first started listening to them.  I think that’s the big thing – finding something new every time you listen to them.  That’s what got me.

DR: How did you end up making your way to Nashville, and how did you start to get work once you got here?

RS:  Kids, don’t follow this advice.  I was almost done with a degree in industrial design at Auburn, but the whole time I was a music fan.  That was all I did in my free time – listening to music, watching live DVDs, and going to shows whenever I could.  I just made the crazy decision to buy a drum set and drop out of college. 

Troy Breaux, the percussion instructor at Auburn, had gone to LSU with Dr. Chris Norton, [who teaches] at Belmont, which is how I found out about Belmont.  For some reason I just got it in my head that I had to be there.  I had to be studying music at Belmont.  I had to dive in and submerse myself in music than more than I ever had before. 

I went to Troy and said, “Hey man, I need some lessons.” 

He said, “Okay, for what?” 

I said, “I’m auditioning for Belmont.”

“When’s your audition?”

“Oh, it’s at the end of February or something like that.”  (This was in November.)

“Okay.  Play me a half-time shuffle.  Play me something with swing,” and all I could do was play the groove from “Walk This Way.” (sings groove) 

He said, “Well, what about a half-time shuffle?”

“Pssh.  What is that?”

“Dude, you’re really going to audition?”

I said, “Yeah!  I’m going for it!”

“Alright man, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I didn’t make it, obviously.  So I went back to him and said, “I didn’t make it.  Let’s really dig in,” and I thought that he was going to say, “Alright. Here’s everything you need to know about jazz.”  Instead, he said, “Let’s work on your marimba scales, let’s go back and work on rudimental snare, and I’ll give you some drum set stuff to practice on your own time.  There’s more to going to music school than that.” 

So he sat me down with all these Hal Leonard and Mel Bay jazz play-along books.  Really simple stuff – “Here’s the basic idea of all these different types of grooves.  You need the coordination because you’re just a garage band drummer right now.  That’s all you are.”  It was pretty much true - I was practicing in a storage space that I got for free by fixing their computers.

So I came back a year later [to Belmont], auditioned, got in, and thought I had arrived.  Meanwhile, relationships are going to crap.  Man, it was a really hard transition, because people look at you like you’re crazy – “What are you thinking?”  And in their minds, they’re being friends, saying “I’m not going to sit by and watch you throw your life away on a pipe dream,” you know?  A lot of people had a misconception of what it was I wanted to do, but I just had to ignore them.  [I had to] take everything they said with a grain of salt and realize that they were just trying to be friends.

I came up here to Nashville, had been here a day, walked into those first ensemble auditions, and just bombed.  I was horrible.  It was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever done in my life.  It was a rude awakening to get up here and sit down in front of a bunch of college students that had been playing their instruments five, six times longer than I had.  I had no idea what they were doing sometimes, saying, “How did you even come up with that?  You’re incredible.”

I went to lunch with Chris Kimmerer that day during auditions, and I’m just doing good to play a five-stroke, and he’s got endorsements and he’s on the road all the time.  I said, “Dude, I am in way over my head.”  There was a lot of fear.  I spent a lot of time in the practice rooms, and then eventually started practicing with other players, playing with other human beings.  I got over my fear, and got to point where I could let them inspire me rather than intimidate me. 

It was just a whirlwind because all that happened in two years, from not getting into school, to being scared of everybody, to being inspired by everybody, and just hoping that I could inspire somebody on some kind of level.  That was it - just trying to step into my own and learning to work with others.  As dumb as it sounds, it’s really simple.  Keith Carlock talks about that a lot – “Play with other human beings.”  Every time I’ve seen video clips of him doing clinics or whatever, he talks about the fact that he was always playing with other musicians, and that’s what got him where he is today.

You get to a town like this and you start to understand the importance of that.  That’s the only way you’re going to become better.  You can’t learn to lay back the pocket or sit on top of the beat by just sitting in your house with a metronome.  I mean, you can, but you don’t really learn it until you’ve got a bass player that can lay it back a day and a half behind the beat, or you play with a guitar player that’s a mile ahead. It has to become more of a feeling than a scientific placement.

That’s where coming to Nashville has led me to be, learning those lessons.  I’ve come a long way from the green Pearl Export that sat in a storage unit. I came up here with the wrong idea of what Nashville is, and what it was going to mean to be in music.  But slowly, you kind of start to settle in.  I can’t imagine a better place to be making music, so I stayed.  Literally by the grace of God, I’ve started getting work.

I never thought in my wildest dreams I would have made it as far as I have.  Nashville has been awesome, and [was] totally worth it just to go for something and be excited about it all the time, whether it’s music, engineering, whatever.  [It’s] just ignoring everything else that’s going on around you - what you feel like you should be doing - and doing what you really want to be doing.  It’s been really cool.

DR: Tell me about your concepts and philosophies on things such as groove, time, pocket, and coming up with parts in the studio or in a live situation.  How do you feel that the music you grew up with and the drummers you idolized ended up becoming integrated into your own playing?

RS: Let me start with being in the studio and coming up with parts.  One thing I’ve learned about groove, about the pocket, is that it’s dictated by what’s going on around me.  I could come up with the most funky groove ever, but if the rest of the music’s not funky or as funky, then it’s just going to sound horrible.  It’s just going to sound out of place and dumb.  To me, there’s almost a logical sense of pocket, where it fits and it makes sense.  It’s almost like a puzzle. 

Coming up with a design background, I listen for negative space, the same way an artist does with a canvas.  You listen for the empty spaces that you can either fill or not fill.  Listening to Zeppelin, a lot of those spaces got left open, whereas listening to Rush, a lot of those spaces got filled.  I always found what made me move more was people leaving that space open.  There’s a lot to be said for “dead air,” where there’s not anything happening, and it just leaves you hanging on.  You want to know what’s next, and you can’t wait.  It’s almost like you’re holding your breath in those moments.

DR:  I think one of the strongest parts of your playing is that you have a way of combining very tasteful restraint with these subtleties that you kind of have to go back and listen to a few times to catch, things that you don’t notice the first time.  The thing is that if you took those parts out, or just left them in, it’s not going to detract from the song.  The nuances are there and are working, but the song could work without them just as well.  You also have a way of being able to lay back in a pocket, yet still drive it, which is a rare thing.  It’s hard to sit back yet still have an energy that pushes something forward.  It’s just interesting to me that you would talk about space, because I feel it’s a very, very strong point of your playing.

RS:  Thanks, I appreciate that.  One thing that I think [influenced] that was studying with Zoro.  He offered up that most encouraging thing I’d ever heard a teacher say, because he listened to me rehearse with one of the big bands at school.  He said, “Even when you hit stuff wrong, you did it with attitude.”  He stressed a lot of that attitude.  When I go into a situation, and it needs to drive, I guess I just make a frowny face and drive it (not literally, but you get what I’m saying).  That’s the coolest thing about drums, and music in general, in that there’s a lot that has to do with the attitude behind the playing.  It comes out whether you realize it or not.

DR: Is there any particular experience, either in the studio or in a live setting that you can look back and consider your favorite?  Or even something that made you say, “This is it, this is worth it, and this is why I love doing what I do”?

RS: I can come up with two, right off the bat.  I was playing for this guy Gabe Vitek, and we did a short tour, like twelve days, out on the road with Steve Moakler and his guys.  None of us had any money, we were in a caravan of Honda Elements, and that’s how we toured for almost two weeks.  We were sleeping on floors and air mattresses, but it didn’t matter.  That’s when I first got that sense of camaraderie like I’d never gotten before.  It was the most incredible experience. Out of all my tours, that’s it – the one where we had no money, and where we were in cars where gear is in your face the whole time you’re driving.

[The other experience was when] I was in the studio, setting up, and the engineer was like, “Dude, I’ve got to warn you.  This may not be your favorite session.”  Basically what he was saying was, “I don’t like the music very much.”  I kind of got that sense from the band as well, that “This is going to be a rough one.”  So we heard the scratch track, made our charts, and the bass player and I were just like, “Hey, let’s try this idea.”  It was weird, we didn’t even stick with that idea, but somehow the whole attitude changed, and the whole band actually got excited about the song.  The lyrics may have still been bad, but it didn’t matter.  We had taken the chance to really push something to be better, and we did.  You realize there’s a lot of power in that kind of creativity.  You walk away amazed that it could happen, and amazed that you got to work with that kind of musicianship around you.  It just gets you excited.  You can’t help but be excited about it.

DR: There’s something very invigorating working around creative minds, where you walk in with the mindset of having to “polish a turd,” but if you’ve got guys there that know how to polish turds, then you’re going to come out of there thinking, “We’ve done it!”  That being said, how do you go about creatively feeding off of other people?  In so many things I’ve heard you do, you find a way to come up with something that’s very unique and inspiring, not so much that it’s off in left field, but in taking very straight-ahead stuff and tweaking it just a little bit to make it your own.  Do you feel like that tends to be something reactive, or is it something where you say, “I think this particular thing will work for this song or section”?

RS: It actually depends on the situation.  I did a session for this one artist who had no idea what she wanted, and so I was working with an empty canvas.  The drums were the first thing that got laid down, and it was just me and a scratch track.  I was like, “I want to be the one that gets reacted to.”  You don’t really sit there and think that out mentally.  You just kind of have this attitude of, “I’ve got to start this off right.  I have to deliver.”  You get excited, and you come up with all these little things, and you’re telling the producer, “I want to take this one section again, I have something different that I can do.  I just want to see what you think.”  And it’s really fun to listen to their reaction – “Yeah!  If you do that, when the bass player comes in, he’s totally going to feel that.”

But then other times when you’re in a situation where you’re tracking live, or you’re just in a rehearsal space, it’s a lot like a relationship to me.  I’m feeding off other people’s commitment level.  If they’re in the song, and they’re totally committed to what they’re doing, whether it’s strumming on two and four or coming up with the sickest delay part you could ever think of – whatever they’re doing, if they’re feeling it because they know that’s what’s right, then I can’t help but feed off that, react to it, and do little things.  It’s really fun to sit in a drum booth when you have windows and you can see everybody else, and you do this one little ghost note thing that you didn’t do in the rest of song, and you get this eyebrow raise from the guitar player.  Or a bass player does a lick coming out of a chorus that just makes you smile. 

I’d say it’s both.  It just depends on what I’ve walked into, but either way, I want there to be something to feed off of, whether it’s me or whether I’m reacting to somebody.

DR: What do you feel is most gratifying to you as a player when you’re asked to come into so many different situations?  What do you feel you take away most from those situations?

RS: This might sound weird at first, but the thing I take away the most is what not to play.  I think as drummers, we watch all these Drummerworld videos of guys just playing these crazy “drum-nastic” things, and you feel like you have to live up to that, because they’re at [one] level, and you still feel like you’re way down here [at another].  But then you walk into a situation, you’re playing the song, and you realize, “I don’t need to play here.  I’m going to let this part over here take care of it.  I’m going to let the guitarist do his thing,” or, “We’re about to have a sweet organ fill the space and create the mood,” or whatever.  You learn where not to be, and that’s how you fit in the song.  The only way I can think to really put that into words that makes sense is if you’re on a baseball team, you learn really quick that if you’re playing left field, you stay out of center field.  You cover your area.  That’s what makes the whole machine work. 

That’s what I take away the most is learning how to be a part of something that’s much bigger than me, by not getting in everybody’s space.  I think that’s more valuable than any crazy 64^th note lick that I can do coming out of the bridge or something.  That kind of stuff to me can be a dime a dozen.  Everybody can do at least one or two fast licks, and you can place it just right and everybody will be like, “That’s cool.”  But that’s one moment in the song.  You’re learning to see something much bigger.

DR: It’s interesting to me that you have that perspective, because earlier when we were talking about the way you heard music growing up, it wasn’t this thing where you focused so much on one aspect of it.  You heard the big picture.  Do you feel that’s the natural way you hear things in a studio situation, where you’re creating as opposed to ingesting music?

RS: Yeah!  When I first got here, it wasn’t.  When I got in the studio, all I could hear was the drums.  I’m still guilty of that sometimes.  I have a lot of growing to do and I always will.  But yeah, it’s gotten back to that point where you walk into the control room and you’re listening to playback, and you’re all nudging each other like, “I really like this, I really like this,” but what I’ve found I’m listening for is “Is the music really pushing that melody?” You know, “This melody is hitting this really cool point coming out of the chorus.  Did we really support it?”  So you kind of hear this big picture – “Am I getting in the way of this guy?  Did he get in my way?” or whatever. 

You’re listening to everything.  It’s something that came from growing up just listening to that big picture of music, and enjoying all those parts – going nuts over a cool guitar riff, that’s being driven by an awesome bassline, that’s got this crazy cool melody on top of it.  There are so many things that just drove me nuts about music in a good way. 

Now that’s what I’m listening for in the studio.  I learned the hard way.  I did a session once and all I heard was the drums.  That’s all I heard.  We did playback, and I was like, “Awesome.  Drum solo with some words over it.  Man, I’ve got to get back to where I was.” 

But yeah, that’s what I listen for in the studio is a big picture, and that’s probably why my parts come out somewhat simple a lot.  You know, little accents here, little ghost notes there, but for the most part they come out pretty simple.  It’s really fun when you sit down behind the drums - and you pray: “Let me do my thing.  Let my ego just stay outside,” and it works, but then, “Let me have the guts to take advantage of the big moment when I can.”

DR: From your own experience here in Nashville, doing a sort of retrospective of all the things you’ve been a part of, what advice would you give to somebody who wants to be in the position you’re in, where you’re in demand as both a studio and live player?

RS:  Don’t be afraid to leave the practice room every once in a while.  That was something I wish somebody would have explained to me.  I got here, went to Belmont, and spent all my time in a practice room.  Buddies and I were coming up with systems – “If I sign up in this practice room and you sign up the hour after me, and then we flip-flop in the other practice room, we could just stay there, and we get an hour extra of practice.”  Then I would go home practice on the practice pad, or I would switch to the marimba room, whatever.  It just consumed me. 

Meanwhile, most of the other people were going to parties, going to shows, or just little hangouts, and I wish somebody would have said, “You’ve got to find the balance.”  I feel like I came in behind, so it was almost obsessive to practice like that.  But it doesn’t do you any good to practice, practice, practice and never meet a soul that might want to play music with you.  Otherwise, if you just sit in a practice room all the time, you’re counting on some random vocalist walking past and going, “Hey, I’d like to hear that guy.”  It’s just not realistic.  You have to find that midpoint between hanging out just enough to make friends and enjoy your life really, and practicing.  When you come here, it’s all about the hang, it really is.

DR: Tell me the story about everything that led up to you getting the gig with Addison Road.

RS: It was kind of a crazy story because we knew so many of the same people.  They’re in Dallas, I’m living in Nashville.  Before I came to Nashville, I worked at a summer camp – they worked at a different site of the same camp.  They kind of knew Jacob Schrodt, and a lot of Brandon Heath’s guys, who were all from Dallas.  The bass player from Addison Road, Travis – his roommate is a producer, so he’s used a lot of those guys.  So we had all these weird connections, and it was actually Jake Goss and Jacob Schrodt that finally connected the dots for me, because they said, “You need to call this guy.” 

I still had a day job at the time, and they were like, “We just need you to fill in for us.”  They were in town finishing up an album, I went to dinner with them, and we hit it off – from liking Mexican food, to certain bands that we liked – it was kind of a big deal.  We all had our different things.  Luckily, going back to that time when all of sudden my mind just blew up with music, it played out well at that dinner.  I was talking with one guitarist about these bands that I love, then I could switch over to the bass player and talk about this bluegrass band that I knew about, or whatever.  You could always find common links, so I had a good feeling about it.

I did the tour with them.  It was a disaster.  The first two weeks of that tour were an absolute disaster.  The weird thing is they had launched this YouTube search for a new drummer.  They weren’t sure if they wanted a full-time band member or just a full-time player.  They didn’t know what they wanted or who they were going to find, so they started this huge search.  It was almost like “Addison Road Idol” or something.  They said, “We’re going to have this guy fill in while you all submit all of your videos,” and after those first two weeks I thought for sure they were going to tell me, “We found somebody on YouTube.  See ya.” 

Oddly enough, they ended up saying, “We’re going to shut down the search.  We’d rather you just stay with us.  We like what you’re doing, we like having you out on the road, and it was a no-brainer.”  I was thinking, “Okay.  Go back to my day job?  Or keep hanging out on the road with people that I love hanging out with and playing music?  Heck yeah, I’m going to do that.” 

It wasn’t how I imagined that transition to be.  I thought, “I’m going to go in, kill it, and [this tour’s] going to be the most awesome thing ever.”  Instead, we had computer crashes – they had asked me to run tracks and I said, “Sure, I can do that,” but the triggering system was slowly going out at the time I started.  Crazy things were happening.  The stage would vibrate [a certain way] and something else would trigger.  It was nuts.  All that on top of the fact that their RV and trailer had blown up.  I say “blown up” and everybody kind of goes, “Oh okay, yeah, the engine caught on fire.”  It literally blew up – there were explosions happening.  That was my third day with them.  I was thinking, “Man, all of this in two weeks.  Loops are crashing, RVs are blowing up, ‘our pets’ heads are falling off!’” (laughs)

But somehow it kept going.  They had been out on the road long enough to know that sometimes that’s just the way it goes, and were able to teach me a lot of lessons that way.  Somehow, we came out of those two weeks excited and moving ahead.  We got new transportation, some new gear, a new trailer, and we just went back into it. 

It actually ended up being a really cool story.  It was a lot of fun to be a part of their record release - doing CD release tours and getting to see how all of that plays out for them.  It was just an exciting time to start making music with them.  It’s been really cool.

Richard’s Addison Road setup

DR: Besides Addison Road, what do you have in the works right now, and in a broader sense, what are you looking forward to in the future?  What are some aspirations you have for yourself and your career?

RS:  When you have a touring schedule like theirs, it’s tough to have stuff outside of them.  I’ve been fortunate enough to get called for sessions, and they’ve just so happened to work out.  I get called for a date, and it happens to be the day I’m getting back.  So I’ve been able to stay in the studio, which has been huge.  When you’re out on the road, you’re essentially playing the same set every night, night after night after night.  It’s nice to come home and be a part of something fresh, something creative that’s totally yours to create.  That, and I’ve done some programming stuff for some people, just making some drum loops.  Anything from shaker and tambourine loops to entire groove loops.  It’s been cool to dive into that a little bit. 

As far as aspirations for the future, it feels very wide open right now.  You never know what’s going to happen.  With Addison, things could become unbelievably busy, but I’m still making it a point to come home and do gigs outside of them, just getting my hands on whatever I can.  For one, it’s always exciting, and two, you’re constantly having to learn and adapt as you do that - keeping things fresh.

So for 2011, I’m just aiming to get even more things outside of Addison Road [in] a wider range of musical situations, just to keep learning things that I can hopefully bring back to Addison and say, “Hey, I was in this session or this gig and came up with this idea.”  The guitar player, Ryan Gregg, and I have started doing stuff through email.  He’ll say, “Hey, I kind of want a loop like this,” and I’ll send him a loop and he’ll work out this song idea that he has for their next album.  He’ll either send it back or write back and say, “I need another loop, I need another idea.”  It’s kind of cool to be in the little beginnings of that creative process, so I’m hoping by expanding my experiences outside of them, I can bring even more back to them.

Those are the short-term goals.  The long-term goals are to have a thirty-piece drum set and do a clinic tour….I’m just kidding (laughs).  None of that in my future.

DR:  (laughs)  Seriously though!  Where would you like to be at a certain point?  What does your dream situation look like?

RS: I don’t even know how realistic my dreams are sometimes, but I kind of don’t care, because they’re still worth pursuing.  I would like to be at a point where I could mostly just work on records with people.  Not like, “I just got called in for this Tim McGraw record, then I went over to play for Brooke Fraser” – not like that.  While that would be cool, [I would love to] just be in that constant place of creating.  I’ve never really seen myself as a producer, even though I like the big picture and all the little elements.  It’s never really been my bag to sit in that seat.

I would just always like to be a part of something being created – doing little side projects here, maybe getting called for some bigger records there, and getting together with friends and going, “Hey, let’s try this in our small little home studio.”  Just going from one place to another all throughout the year would be a great place to arrive at.  But I also know that I have a long way to go before I get there.  I still have plenty more experiences to have and plenty more people to meet.  I believe that it will slowly evolve into that.  I guess one of my biggest aspirations is just to be patient, be excited about where I’m at now, take it all in, experience it as much as I can, and let those experiences that I’m enjoying now and taking full advantage of help me get to that place.  I’d also like to be on a clinic trail with you…

DR: (laughs) What?

RS: Yeah. (laughs)   It would be kind of cool though to hopefully get the experience to the point where I can go out and teach.  That’s been one of the biggest things for me – realizing the importance of mentors and teachers that have come in and out of my life.  I want to be at a place where I can be that for somebody, whether it’s saying, “Hey dude, you need to watch this in your personal life,” or “Let’s go play some drums and let’s just build you up.”  I’ve had teachers take me over to their house for dinner, bringing me in and letting me eat with their family, and all they want to do is spend the whole meal encouraging you to keep going for what you’re going for. 

Ultimately, I think that’s even more important than being in a place of musical enlightenment – to be where you can have a very positive impact on other people’s lives.  That’s more important than how much money you can make, how many records you’re on, how big the tour is that you’re on.  If you’re not involved with people and wanting to make a difference in their life, to me it’s not going to mean quite as much.  That’s what I’d like things to turn out to be.

Also, I’d like to have my own signature twenty-inch deep snare…  (laughs)  I’m just kidding.

DR:  (laughs)  Man, I think we’re good.  It was great.  Thank you very much.

RS: Yeah dude.  Thanks so much for including me in this!

On a pristine winter’s day in Nashville, I make my way just a few minutes south to Franklin, Tennessee, one of Music City’s many outlying musical Meccas.  I am meeting up with Jacob Schrodt, a Texas native who has been making serious strides in the Nashville music community in what seems like no time. His warm, humble demeanor and personality are just as engaging as his superbly tasteful playing with artists such as Chris August, Dave Barnes, Ben Rector, and Andrew Ripp.  He was kind enough to allow me into his home for a few hours to talk about his career, musical background, and aspirations for the future.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing, and more specifically, what your exposure to music was growing up, and what caught your ear and moved you.

JS: My mom and dad are both musicians – my mom was a flutist, and my dad was percussionist/drummer.  Neither one of them did it professionally, but they both played in church, community bands, church orchestras and stuff like that.  I remember being in elementary school - probably in kindergarten music class or maybe first grade – and listening to different classical pieces, just loving it and being moved by it.  That even led up all the way into fifth grade, where my teacher had a huge classical collection of music, and he would let me borrow different CDs, like Mozart, Beethoven, all this stuff, and I loved it.  I wanted to be a violin player, and think I wanted to be a bassoon player at one point – I was in that world.  And I loved film soundtracks, and all that kind of stuff.

In sixth grade, when you’re going into junior high, you have to make the decision of the instrument you’re going to play in band.  I was fortunate enough to be selected to do percussion, because everybody wanted to do percussion.  I started studying privately with some teachers through the school, but in band class, I was also learning snare drum rudiments, reading melodically on the bell kit, xylophone and marimba, and learning to play timpani.

DR: With the leaning towards classical music that you had growing up, did you hear an overall bigger picture of music when you were listening to it, or did you find yourself focusing on what the percussion was doing specifically?  Were there also certain artists or bands that struck you, particularly in the drumming aspect of it?

JS: Honestly, as far as me playing drum set, I didn’t get a drum set until I was fourteen, which was the middle of my eighth grade year.  It was my birthday/Christmas present that year.  My exposure to music was maybe pop music or Christian music that was on the radio in the car.  I grew up in a Christian family, grew up in church, and that’s the kind of music I was hearing.  But as far as what moved me and what I was listening to, it was classical music and film soundtracks.  I would just eat that stuff up.

Later in junior high, as I was getting closer to getting that drum set, that’s when I started getting interested in [popular] music.  Being influenced by drummers, and music that involves a drum set – pop music, rock music, jazz music – that didn’t come until high school, around fourteen or fifteen years old.  So I got the kit, and just started playing.  Freshman year of high school, I jumped in with some guys in a garage band playing covers.  I think the first song we learned was “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas (laughs).  Aaah, the memories.

That was the time I started getting into the school jazz band.  I didn’t listen to jazz growing up, and honestly didn’t listen to a whole lot of jazz early on in high school.  It was more of this kid who knew how to play some rock beats trying to play in the jazz big band.  It wasn’t later until probably my sophomore or junior year that I started realizing that I needed to be listening to jazz music if I’m evenly remotely going to sound like I know how to play jazz drum set.

I was also playing with the same group of guys [from the garage/cover band] in a Christian rock band at the time, and I was also doing marching band, and orchestral percussion still.  I was trying to cover a wide range of genres and styles of music.

DR: While you were still in high school, what first caught your attention about the University of North Texas?  Everyone I have ever talked to that has either auditioned or gotten into the program at UNT almost always mentions their first encounter with Ed Soph.  We’ve talked a little bit in the past about his quirks, personality, etc., and I really want to hear how he, both as a person and a killer jazz musician, ended up influencing you and how you’ve been able to translate and apply that in your own playing, especially in situations outside of a jazz setting,

JS: Yeah, so the transition from high school to North Texas was in doing the jazz band stuff.  I knew that this is what I wanted to do, and I was getting serious about playing drum set.  I was actually fortunate enough to attend a jazz drum set camp one summer that Ed Soph still puts on through North Texas.  That was my first real exposure to jazz music and understanding jazz music and jazz drumming as well – it was just a little taste of it.

The summer after my senior year, going into college, I was able to take some lessons from a guy named Stockton Helbing, who was the one o’clock drummer at North Texas at the time.  He kind of whipped me into shape, and had me listening to tons of records, through which I’ve come to learn listening is the most important thing.  It’s where we get our vocabulary, it’s how we internalize the different styles of music.

The audition at North Texas was pretty intense.  For the drum set portion of it for a jazz studies major, you go in and there’s just a big band chart, a drum set, and Ed Soph sitting in front of you, and he says, “Play the chart.”  So you play the chart like you’re playing along with a band.  I don’t think I fell apart too bad (laughs).  I was accepted into the school, and I was fortunate enough my freshman year to immediately start taking lessons with Ed.  He’s a phenomenal player, a brilliant mind, and really well-spoken, but he’s somewhat of a legend – there’s a lot of stories about crazy lessons or tempers and things like that.  I personally didn’t ever see that, and that may just be “the legend continues.” He’s a very intense man, but part of that intensity is because he’s such a great drummer.

My first three weeks at North Texas were just ride cymbal.  All we played was a swing beat on the ride cymbal – how to hold the stick, how to subdivide the swung triplet on your upstrokes - for three weeks, getting down to the basics.  It might seem like overkill, but the ride cymbal is jazz drumming.  That made me really focus in on just details, in not just playing, but knowing what you’re playing and why you’re playing it that way.

Ed taught me so much about phrasing.  Most of it was under the umbrella of jazz music, but I apply that to pop music all the time – outlining certain sections, leading the band into a chorus, leading the song out of a bridge into a down chorus.  [It was about] knowing how to drive the song as a drummer.  We can dictate where a song is going through dynamics, phrasing, fills, and those types of things.

Another thing Ed taught me was the Moeller stroke, which sadly enough, I don’t think I applied it that well while I was in college.  In my fourth semester at North Texas, I had an arm injury.  I was playing five or six hours a day - practicing, playing in lab bands, playing in smaller ensembles – but I was also playing pop gigs and churches on the weekend.  There was one Sunday morning when I was playing backbeats on a song, and my left hand just started hurting immediately, just from hitting the snare drum.  The injury was never diagnosed after seeing tons of doctors and having bone scans and MRIs and x-rays done.  But I know that it was probably from me not warming up, not playing loosely, and not using the Moeller stroke – things that Ed had probably pointed out to me many times and had talked to me about.  It took a very serious injury – an injury that kept me from playing drums for nine months – to open my eyes to the importance of stretching, warming up, playing with proper technique, breathing, not playing tensely but loosely, those type of things.

DR: It’s interesting, because I’m sure you dealt with this or were around this at some point at North Texas – I know I was at Belmont – where you get guys that get so concerned about wanting to play these ridiculous 32^nd note combinations between three limbs at 168 BPM in 15/16, or whatever.  I just have to wonder at the end of the day if those guys have good technique and have all the basic things down?  It’s funny about all the things you mentioned about Ed, because the thing I hear in your playing a lot is this great finesse, but also this simmering energy.  When you were talking about leading into sections of songs, I hear that so much in your playing, particularly on Ben Rector’s record [Into The Morning].  Even watching videos from a few months back when you were out with Dave Barnes, you do such a great job of leading the band and taking the reigns, but not putting so much of you in the picture where it becomes just about you doing your thing.

JS: Yeah, and sometimes some of it is real subtle things, like crashing on a ride cymbal a little harder just to create some energy from the wash.  You can play intensely without slamming the drums.  It’s funny, Ed was huge on rimshots.  For some reason, when we would do funk stuff or just stuff that involved a backbeat, he was all about slamming a really good backbeat.  Honestly, you can play and get a huge sound out of the drums without slamming them – you start to choke the drums and even the cymbals when you hit them too hard.  Honestly, for pop stuff, I usually keep the kick drum and the snare drum at the same volume.  It’s the way you orchestrate around the kit that kind of brings that dynamic – opening the hats on a chorus, splashing on the ride a little more as opposed to just playing with the tip of the stick, or riding on a floor tom as opposed to a hat. 

Dynamically, you’ve got to know where the song is going.  You’ve got to make sure your choruses aren’t too big where the bridge can’t go anywhere.  Usually the bridge is huge on pop stuff.  Sometimes you can’t let the bridge get too big because that last chorus needs to be huge.  But I feel like in pop music, those dynamic changes come from other parts of the kit - probably mostly the cymbals, not necessarily the snare drum and the kick drum.  Usually in pop music, the mixing engineer is sample-replacing the kick drum and snare drum to where it’s just slamming the whole time anyway.  Now if it’s a singer-songwriter, a vibier, more organic type of thing, then you can use dynamics with your kick drum and snare drum and the whole kit, which is a different situation.

DR: Speaking of orchestrating, something else I’ve noticed about your playing is you will often line your parts up with a piano part or a guitar part.  Is that something you end up coming up with on your own, or do you work that out in the studio together and say “Hey, this is great, let’s work with this”?

JS: Yeah!  It’s a little bit of both, and that is so huge as far as just listening to each other.  Even dynamically, it can be frustrating for you to be building into a bridge and no one else is going there with you.  You’re slamming on a bridge and it feels like everyone’s playing a verse.  Listening to each other is so important, and I’ve been fortunate enough to play with guys who understand the importance of listening to what I’m doing and what other people in the band are doing.  What the vocal is doing is huge for me as far as kick patterns.  Rhythmically, what is the vocal doing?

As far as things like that where things musically line up, a lot of times – particularly with this bass player Adrian Disch who I’ve played with for nine or ten years now – it’s like second nature now for me and him.  We listen to each other, we know where each other are going, so a lot of that stuff can be worked out between the two of us, but I may just hear something and go for it and it takes Adrian to a [similar] place with what he’s playing on bass. 

A lot of times, it is a thing where maybe I’ll hear something rhythmically on the kit, and maybe it’s overdubbed later on.  Most of the Chris August record was tracked live, which was an awesome experience.  A lot of that was just “Let’s work this out, let’s see what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.”  The Ben Rector record, on the other hand, was where we tracked drums first, and then they overdubbed bass and pianos and guitars.  But yeah, there’s discussion, even when you’re doing drums that way, where you do talk about “Hey, what rhythmically can happen on the bridge?” or “Hey, what can we do on this intro to separate it from the verse?”  There’s definitely some thought put into it – it’s not where I’m just going to throw in a random rhythm or fill and hope that it works later.  I don’t want to put my “drum stamp” on a song only to hear it later and it doesn’t work at all with what they added to the song.

DR: It’s a very strong point in your playing, and I feel that it happens so tastefully that it really sticks out, where I’m like, “This is exactly where I thought this would happen” and it feels great.  There are some killer moments on Ben Rector’s record where you put these super tasty, but not super flashy fills that lead into choruses or little nuances in grooves that change things up and keep it interesting.  But like you said, you’re still playing around the vocal, you’re still putting the song first.  I want to hear your take on “playing for the song.”

JS: The first time I was exposed to what it meant to play for a song, especially a pop song, was in my lessons with this guy Stockton Helbing.  He would have me sit behind the kit and play a pop song off the top of my head.  Not any particular song, but just making up a song.  A four-bar intro, an eight-bar verse, fill into the chorus, eight-bar chorus, fill out of the chorus, play that four bar turnaround which is the same as the intro, bring it back down for the verse – maybe it’s a little bit of a variation for the second verse.  Fill into the chorus - maybe play the exact same fill that you played going into the first chorus, maybe change it up.  You know, first chorus and second chorus, the kick pattern’s exactly the same.  First verse and second verse, the kick pattern’s the same but maybe you add some ghost notes on the snare.  Maybe it’s voiced differently – the first verse was voiced with a tom riding on eighth notes, then on the second verse it’s riding on a hi-hat. 

These exercises that he gave me to do were kind of formulaic, but it made me think about outlining songs for sections.  If I’m in the studio, and there’s a scratch track with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, my first step is to find the form of the song and map that out with a chart or just in my head.  On the second listen, I’m listening to what the vocal’s doing rhythmically, dynamically, and emotionally.  If the bridge has a really strong vocal where the singer’s belting out a really strong line, I’m not going to be playing on a closed hi-hat on that bridge.  You’ve got to listen dynamically.  Rhythmically, I try to make sure kick patterns don’t compete with what the vocal’s doing.  If we get a third listen (which you usually don’t - the third listen is usually your first take), that’s when you can try to listen to what the actual lyrics are.  If it’s a really dark song lyrically and even chord-wise, where the chords are based around a lot of minor chords or the six chord or something like that, you’re not going to throw up your Zildjian A Customs and your Ping Ride.  Even sonically, what you’re choosing for the song is important, and it’s based on what the song is about and what kind of mood and vibe the song is trying to put off.

That’s kind of how I approach it.  We live in Nashville, and a lot of country songs are just high-energy pop songs with bright drum sounds, bright cymbal sounds, and big fills, whereas I’ve gotten to do a lot of stuff with Ben Rector or a guy named Andrew Ripp, who has some awesome music – an awesome singer-songwriter – and a lot of that stuff is darker, lower-volume, more organic type of music where I’m going to use darker cymbals and my older Slingerland drums.  I’m going to put tea towels on the toms and deaden the snare and make the snares rattly. 

Sonically, I feel like you’ve got to listen to what the mood of the song is and where it’s trying to go.  If Jay Bellerose would have played a DW kit on Raising Sand [the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss record], it just wouldn’t have worked.  He heard that music and said, “This old Rolling Bomber kit is what this music needs.”  You’ve just got to be really aware of where the songs want to go, what the lyrics are saying, what the overall picture is, and what the final picture is supposed to look like.

DR: Tell me some of your favorite drummers, particularly those you feel exemplify all these things the best (obviously Jay Bellerose is a great example).

JS: Yeah, Jay has almost reinvented his thing on Raising Sand, with Patty Griffin, Jakob Dylan –

DR: He just played on an awesome Elton John/Leon Russell record too [The Union].

JS: Yeah, Elton John, Ray LaMontagne – he’s hot right now, because he so appropriately found a sound, a sonic sound that just works so well for that type of music.  Probably my favorite drummer would be Matt Chamberlain.  Matt’s not one of those guys that’s blowing chops over a song.  I’m sure he has tons of chops, but his groove is just unbelievable.  He’s another guy that sonically, when you hear him on a track, you know it’s Matt Chamberlain.  From his cymbals to his drum sounds to his snare drum sound and lots of dirty ghost notes, you know it’s him just by hearing it.  And then what he’s actually playing on top of that is usually just unbelievable.

DR: In a wider sense, who do you feel has inspired your approach both in the studio and in a live setting in not just playing for the song, but playing in general?

JS: My biggest influence would be a guy named Will Hunt.  He’s a producer/drummer currently out of Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas.  I haven’t talked to him for a while, but I hear he’s doing huge things – I think he just produced a record for Amy Lee, the lead singer for Evanescence.  I was fortunate enough to by hired on sessions by Will.  He would usually play drums on a lot of the sessions he produced, but some of the sessions I guess it just made it easier on him, or if he didn’t have an engineer, he would hire me. 

That was priceless.  I was being paid money by Will Hunt to give me drum set lessons in the studio, that’s how I felt.  To have a drummer that you look up to and respect so much on the other side of the glass, coming in on the talkback mic telling you, “Hey do this, do that, think of this, think of that,” influenced me more than North Texas, more than high school [band], more than anything.  Will’s one of those guys that has chops, but he’s not blowing 32^nd notes between his hands and feet [during a song].  I think I even remember him saying that he’s a drummer that hates drums, or something like that.  Anything that’s “drummy,” he doesn’t like. 

He is just all about the music, about making things sonically interesting, but in that, Will opened my eyes up to so many different things in my playing.  He exposed a lot of habits that I would fall into consistently that I didn’t even know I was doing.  He would always try to discourage me from playing a fill from left to right, like snare drum through the toms.  He showed me how to open it up – “You don’t always have to start your fills on the snare.  The fill can go from the right to the left, or it can switch between the snare and the toms.  It doesn’t always have to be a constant 16^th note fill.” 

Another thing he exposed in my playing was I would start a lot of fills with a drag or a ruff.  That gets really old really fast, and I didn’t even know I was doing it!  [It was good] to have another drummer there saying, “Hey man, do you realize you’re doing this all the time?”  I don’t think I do that as much anymore.

Another thing that you’ll hear me do a lot is a thing I got from Will, and it’s actually the groove that I played on the second verse of “Starry Night,” the Chris August song.  It’s putting the dotted-eighth sixteenth note rhythm – “ONE-e-and-A two-e-AND” – starting on beat three.  I don’t feel like I ever really hear that kick pattern [commonly played] starting on the second half of the measure.  It’s one of my favorite grooves now – there’s just something about it that feels so cool.

DR: At the end of your years at North Texas, and after having gained the experience of working with Will and playing in Dallas, tell me how you ended up coming to Nashville.

JS: My time at North Texas ended with the hand injury, which happened in April 2005 during the end of my fourth semester at school.  I was a jazz studies major, so almost all my classes were music classes that involved playing drum set.  I was able to barely get by at the end of the semester, and was thinking, “It’ll probably be fine,” through the end of the summer.  It didn’t get better, but I continued to play on it, which probably wasn’t good, but that’s how I was making my living at the time and I didn’t want to lose my gigs.  I took a few online courses, but the farther away I got from North Texas, the more difficult it was going to be for me to ever go back there.  It’s just such an intense program.

It finally led to me having to stop playing, because nothing was working.  I took nine months off, and took a job at Guitar Center in the pro-audio department.  It was a tough time, but I learned a lot about recording, keyboards, and audio production in that time.  Nine months later I was just like, “Man, I really hope that my arm is feeling better.”  I started playing again, and it slowly was getting better.  It was obvious that some damage had been done, but I was able to start taking gigs again.

In Dallas, I was heavily involved in the church worship scene.  There’s a lot of opportunities of that there, so that’s where I found myself playing a lot.  Even just through playing in churches, that’s where I learned to play with a click.  A lot of the church bands and worship leaders were playing with clicks, and to be able to play gigs that just force you to play with a click was awesome.  I did that probably from 2006 all the way to 2009. 

Through that, I’d always wanted to move to a big music city like Los Angeles, Nashville, or New York.  I’d always kind of slipped hints to my wife that I wanted to move to a bigger music city, and we have family in Dallas, so it was going to be a tough move.  We decided on Nashville just because the music that I felt like I could play the best was pop music.  I wasn’t playing a lot of jazz after North Texas, and a lot of North Texas guys were going to New York, which definitely wasn’t where we were supposed to be.  We thought about L.A., but it just didn’t seem right for us as far as where we saw our family down the road, so Nashville seemed like a great fit.  We knew a couple of people in Nashville, so I started making trips, checked it out, and it just seemed like this is where we were supposed to be, so we moved up in here in July of 2009.

DR: Is there any particular experience in the studio or in a live setting that kind of sticks out above the rest, or one that you could even consider your favorite thus far?

JS: All my experiences with Will definitely trained me and got me to where I could confidently come to a place like Nashville.  Confidence, just be confident.  Know that you can do a good job.  I feel like that’s what having the experience of working with Will in Dallas gave me.  He just gave me a lot of vocabulary and a lot of ideas.

A session that was just an awesome experience was probably the Chris August session with Ed Cash, who produced the record.  First of all, I was just fortunate enough to be on that session.  I’ve been playing with Chris since 2004, and a couple of [other] guys from Dallas have, and Chris was just so cool to go to bat for us to play on the record.  He showed Ed some stuff we had played on, and Ed was cool with it.  It was really cool of him to just show some trust to allow these random guys from Dallas play on this major label record where there’s a lot on the line.  Just to be given the opportunity was huge.  That’s really the hardest part of breaking in here in Nashville - just getting the opportunity and gaining some trust from people.

The reason that session stands out in my mind is because I’d been playing with these guys for years, and we had never done a session where we all tracked live together.  Everything that we had ever done in Dallas was all overdubbed – drums first, bass, guitars.  We were all pretty skeptical about it.  We were excited, but we were kind of like, “We’ll see how this goes…” 

That first day, we get set up and get sounds, and Ed’s just trying to encourage us that everything’s going to be okay.  We get the first song up and listen to it and chart it out. We’re all wanting to make Ed Cash happy and impress him, so we’re all ready to go and we’re going to get this first track pretty good.  We do a pass of this first song, and when we’re done with it, Ed brings us back into the control room.  He’s listening to it, stops it, and says, “I’d put that on the record right now.”  We were all thinking, “What are you talking about, dude?”  We were all trying to nail it, but we were also trying to figure out what parts we were playing.  But there really was a special energy about that first take, probably because it was a nervous energy, but that take ended up being the take that was used on the record.  I think we had to punch one or two things.

DR: Which track was that?

JS: It’s a track called “You And I, ” which is the first track on Chris’s record.  To be honest, there’s definitely things in there that I hear that I wish I could have gone back [and redone], and I probably begged Ed to let me go back and fix it, but that’s just the way Ed rolls.  He wants to capture a moment and a special energy in a take, and I feel like he did that on that record.  But you know, we probably kept the third take of the next song, and there were things on that where I was like, “Eeeh, I wish I could go in and fix that, Ed,” and he just wouldn’t let me do it.  He just said, “Nope, this is where it’s at.”  So I quickly figured out that if you’re working with Ed, you’d better nail it the first time because he may keep it.  

But it was awesome, because we were getting to hear what these songs were going to sound like instantaneously in tracking together.  Working with Ed in general – he’s just a brilliant man and obviously very successful, and there’s a reason for that.  Just that whole session was a real cool experience.  I think Chris’s record is doing well, and hopefully a lot of people dig it musically.  And just for my own personal satisfaction, to hear some of these tunes and know that “Hey, that was just a take” [is pretty cool].  It wasn’t like we went in and chopped it up and moved things around.  That was me concentrating like crazy to nail it, because I knew Ed was probably going to keep it. 

That’s how a lot of people work here in Nashville, just setting it up in a room and saying, “Let’s do it.”  As a player, I’m in control of what I sound like, so having your stuff together is so important.  Not every session is going to be one of those sessions that you get to go in and edit drums or move things around.  That session opened my eyes to that, and it really made me aware of [the fact that] when the red light is on, you’d better be playing for real.

DR: Speaking of Ed Cash, I want to talk about Dave Barnes, since Ed did Dave’s last record [What We Want, What We Get], among many of his other records.  I feel like anybody that steps into that drum spot steps into what I feel is this great lineage of drummers, such as Dan Needham, Josh Robinson, and Paul Mabury.  Tell me about how you got the gig, but also what it feels like to replicate those parts, but as any good musician knows, also being able to put your stamp on it a little bit so you don’t start to feel like you’re someone else entirely.

JS: Just to get to play with Dave was so, so cool.  I mean, when I lived in Dallas I would play along to Dave Barnes records – country music and Dave Barnes was Nashville to me (laughs).  I knew who Josh Robinson was through Dave Barnes.  I think Josh is one of the best drummers in town, a phenomenal drummer.  I learned who Paul Mabury was after I moved to Nashville, which also exposed me to Dan Needham, who played on a lot of Dave’s records. 

The fact that I even got the opportunity to play with Dave was just a huge blessing, and was a really neat experience.  I only played five shows with Dave over two weeks.  Paul Mabury is Dave’s drummer, who is an incredible drummer, but I guess Paul was not available for those dates.  I think my friend Chris August went to bat for me and put in a good word for me, and playing with Ben Rector and Andrew Ripp may have exposed me to Dave a little bit, but honestly it was just Dave giving me a chance.  I honestly just feel really blessed to even have to chance to get to play with Dave. 

I loved playing some of these tunes that Paul Mabury played on.  I feel like Paul is the master of rocking a 16^th note groove on the hi-hat, so to get to do that for five shows and try to sound like Paul Mabury was a blast.  I think it definitely improved my playing, just playing those types of grooves. 

The actual experience of playing with Dave – it’s funny, you work hard to get into these positions, but then you get to the show, and the bottom line is you’re just playing drums.  Again, in that moment, it’s just about playing for the song, playing what’s appropriate, and playing what’s on the record.  Dave’s a drummer too, so he will definitely give you some input as far as what to play, and I totally respect his opinion [in coming up with] drumming parts.  It was just a really neat experience.  That was one of the more special moments for me as far as moving to Nashville, just because of the way I saw Dave Barnes while living in Dallas, and so getting to play with the guy was really cool.

DR: Being in the position you are, where you’re in demand and have been able to play with so many different people here in town, what have you been able to take away from it as far as being able to stay active?  Things go up and down – you go through periods where it’s dry, other times where getting work doesn’t seem to stop.  What would you say to somebody who is aspiring to be in the position where they’re kind of just throwing themselves at the mercy of what happens here in Nashville?

JS: I’ll first say that for being here a year and a half, I know I’ve been so blessed and fortunate with the opportunities that I’ve been given.  It’s been amazing.  You know, when we moved here, some people told me, “You’ve gotta give it three years,” or “You’ve gotta give it five years,” and some people said, “You’ve gotta give it one year.”  So I feel so fortunate to have already had so many opportunities in working with Ed, or getting to play with Dave.  I wouldn’t have ever thought that’s what I would have gotten to do within the first year I moved to Nashville. 

I feel like I was prepared for those situations because I didn’t move to Nashville right out of college.  After college, I spent a good four years in Dallas playing with bands and in the studio – really trying to get myself together and hone my craft to where I would be prepared for a bigger music city.  And that’s not to say that I came to town and could play better than other people, because that’s the furthest from the truth.  There are so many talented people packed into such a small area that it’s pretty overwhelming sometimes.  But I think [it came down to] having the experience of a couple years tracking on records with Will Hunt, spending two years at North Texas, playing at churches, playing with clicks, and really using that time to become a better player and understand music in the studio better. 

When I got to Nashville, [I realized] it’s all about making a first impression.  People might write you off pretty quickly after hearing you just one time if they’re not really feeling it.  I can’t imagine moving to Nashville when I was twenty-one, because I know I’m a completely different player now, even just four years later. 

I would just say when you get to place in the city you’re in, where you feel like you’re doing really well and you’re getting a lot of opportunities, and you feel like the only way to take it to the next level is to go to L.A. or Nashville, then you’ll know it’s time.  I don’t know from experience, but I think that it would be pretty difficult to try to break in as a musician in Nashville while you’re still trying to figure yourself out as a player.

DR: What are you currently involved with, and in a broader sense, what are you aspiring to?  What do you feel is an ultimate goal of yours to have happen within any amount of time?

My time is being spread out between a couple things right now.  I’m playing with Chris August for some of his live shows, and I’ve been playing a lot with this guy Andrew Ripp.  I love playing with artists and musicians who are moved by and value the same kind of music.  I don’t want to do gigs just for the sake of a paycheck.  I would rather do a gig that pays twenty dollars where I love the music and I’m a hundred percent on board with it, as opposed to doing a gig that pays two hundred dollars and I’m [not really into it].  I don’t even think you should take gigs where you’re not going to be able to give a hundred percent to the person that’s hiring you.  That’s not fair to them.  I think we all have to take gigs we don’t necessarily enjoy as much, but in those situations, you need to be able to give a hundred percent, have a positive attitude, and be there in the moment, because it’s going to come out in your playing, and in your personality and attitude as well.

I think my goal would be to find artists whose music I love, and try to fill my schedule playing with those types of artists as opposed to just gigs for the paycheck.  I think everybody would love that.  I would love to be doing more studio session work.  I’ve been fortunate enough to get plugged in with a couple producers already, and I just hope that keeps growing.  I’ve also started producing other artists.  I’m currently working on a worship record for some worship leaders in Dallas, and I’d love to be able to do that more. 

Ten years from now, I would love to be splitting my time in between producing records and playing on records.  I would love to be in a studio every day.  I don’t think that I’ll ever not want to go out and play live shows, because there’s just something about that that you can’t find anywhere else.  There’s something special about playing in front of an audience and seeing the excitement and joy on people’s faces when you’re playing songs those people love. 

But I personally just get so much joy and satisfaction from being in the studio and creating.  Playing on records and producing records are experiences that you kind of get to relive later on, because you get to listen to record if you want to, whereas in a live experience, once it’s done, it’s done.  It’s a memory, unless it’s a live record!  I’m going to try and play on only live records (laughs).

You never know what’s in store.  Ultimately I just want to play music that inspires me and that I connect with emotionally.  If that’s on a live stage in front of people ten years from now - if I’m getting to play music and play drums at all – there will be no complaints from me at all.  I feel so blessed and so fortunate to get to do what I do.  I know that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t enjoy their jobs, but I get to wake up every morning and get excited about going to play drums or play music.  It’s pretty unbelievable, and pretty amazing.

On a chilly day in early December 2010, I make my way over to a small black brick building just a few blocks east of LP Field.  Housed inside are various offices and organizations, while in the back is the studio and creative space for one of Nashville’s best and most sought-after drummers, Jeremy Lutito, who has made his name in Music City providing a rock-solid foundation for artists such as Jars Of Clay, Brooke Waggoner, Mat Kearney, Erin McCarley, A.J. McLean, and many others.  I walk in to find Jeremy surrounded by an arsenal of vintage keyboards, working on a mix of a track from his recently-formed band, Leagues.  He was gracious enough to allow me some time out of his day to talk about his career, and the unique background and perspective that helped form him into becoming one of Nashville’s most creative and lauded drummers. 

DR: Tell me about your upbringing and what kind of exposure to music you had growing up.  What first caught your ear?

JL: Well, I grew up in a totally non-musical family, the youngest of five, but there was music playing in the house and stuff.  Michael Jackson was my hero - saw him in concert at Mile High Stadium on the Victory Tour in 1984.  That was my first concert and it was ridiculous.  And so I always loved the idea and the mystique of a performer, and music as a passion, but I didn’t even touch music until I was seventeen.  I maybe had piano lessons for four months or something when I was in sixth grade, then quit. I was in sports like any other kid and kind of just discovered it late. 

As soon as turned fifteen, I just started listening to the radio, hearing and getting into the Seattle scene - Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden – and then it started with my friends.

I had two friends that said, “Let’s start a band,” and I was like, “Let’s do it!”  We all didn’t even know how to play any instrument, none of us did.  It was just a joke.  So we just decided to play and I was like, “Well, I’ve always wanted to play the drums.”  I was always intrigued by them.  I went to Catholic school, so there was a horrible music program that didn’t even really exist. There was a music room with a piano and one tom in it.   I would go in every day, and I’d go up to the tom and just tap on it or something.  Then class would start, and the teacher would say, “That’s it, no playing the tom anymore.”  So I was super intrigued.

And so finally, I got a kit right before I turned seventeen.  It was a student kit, you know, and my mom said, “If you’re going to do this, take lessons.”   So I started taking from a guy named Al Knipe in Denver, and I had just started out – didn’t know what I was doing.  Basically from there, I just had a horrible band.

What really changed the game though was a friend in a Spanish class overhearing me talking about drum lessons, and he immediately ended up being my best friend.  He immediately jumped in and said, “You’ve gotta join drumline next year!  We have an awesome drumline and you’ve gotta march.”  And so I was into that, and it came down to quitting my job at a golf course or joining band camp the beginning of senior year. They told me, “You can’t have a job, we’re basically in band camp for two weeks.”

So the discipline of that really got me where I started taking it seriously.  I fell in love with it, and was just practicing every day like crazy.  Drum set was still there, but it turned more into percussion and orchestra and band.  Before you know it, it was a year, and it was already time to audition for colleges.  I turned in my SATs, which weren’t great, and just thought, “I want to major in music.”

So I went up to the University of North Colorado and had an audition.  We rented a marimba for two weeks so I could slowly practice the song and count the lines of the notes and learn it.  I got in at the university and it was literally the absolute – it was a joke - “Why did they let me in?”  Everybody had been playing since they were in the womb pretty much, and were percussion majors and I couldn’t even get a good bounce on a double-stroke roll yet. 

I don’t know how I got in, but literally that was fuel.  I kind of over-the-top practiced – four hours of snare drum from 7 AM to my first class or whatever.  Pianissimo rolls, four-stroke ruffs, rudiments, solos out of all those books.  Then it was marimba for a certain amount of time, xylophone scales, cymbals, timpani, everything.  I really got into marimba, and sophomore year I got into the Leigh Howard Stevens Marimba Camp (laughs).  My parents bought me a marimba, I was so into it.  I picked it up quick with four mallets and got way into it.

It was a really good jazz school and all my friends were these great jazz drummers.  I was just trying to do all of it, and it just so happened that I started gravitating more towards orchestral.  My drum set just starting kind of collecting dust.

DR: Did it begin to feel like after taking lessons on drum set, yet getting so focused on classical percussion, that your desire to play drums starting falling behind?

JL: You know, my first love was, “I want to be in a band.”  That was it from the beginning - “I want to play drums like Dave Abbruzzese and be in a Pearl Jam band.” But then, this whole other world opened up.  I think being so young and impressionable that band and the discipline of that – we had the most serious, hardcore band director, who turned the program around.  The year before I entered in high school, the band went from like 56^th, not even placable in state, to 20^th in his first year.  Then my senior year, my first year, we won state.  It was just super serious discipline.  So that kind of influenced me.  I think in college, there was just such a good band program and a decent orchestra, and a good jazz program, that I just lost it on drum set a little bit. 

It also felt unique to dive into something like a marimba and chamber music because all the other guys played really great drum set.  I auditioned for a combo, and didn’t make it because of my chart reading.  It just kind of fell away.  I would jam every once in a while with friends in college, but I felt bad about it because I was thinking, “I’ve gotta work on my rudiments.  Jamming, what is that anyway?”  I had this elitist attitude for a little bit, just because I was growing in music. 

But then, it just kind of escalated, and I took it so seriously.  I dreamed of going to Julliard for my Master’s, and auditioned there.  Literally, there were only six positions open for the Master’s program and I was number seven.  That devastated me, because I just had it in my head that I wanted to go there. 

So my fallback was Rice University in Houston.  I went there, and that was a lot more like, “You go here if you want to play in a symphony orchestra,” because the student orchestra was one of the best in the world.  So I played in that, but hated it down there.  It kind of all hit me at once – I really just got overwhelmed and burnt out.  I went down there doing my typical thing of practicing ten hours a day, was maybe going to transfer to Yale and study marimba with Bob Van Sice, but then I started realizing, “Why did get into music in the first place?”  It was the drum set. 

I dropped out after a semester – my parents were pretty upset about that – moved back to Denver for six months, and started playing drum set again for a friend of mine named Ben Glover, who I had met the year before I went to grad school.  I started playing in town with him a little bit, and moved to Nashville six months later because he got a record deal.  He told me, “I’m moving to Nashville, you want to follow me?” and I said, “Heck yeah, I’m there.”  So I moved to Nashville with my six-piece Yamaha drum set with a China, two splashes, and a double-kick pedal, and quickly learned that’s….yeah.  It is what it is.  That was sort of my progression in music until I moved to Nashville in 2000.

DR: I want to go back to the sort of “lightbulb” moment you had when you were first hearing Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Obviously Matt Chamberlain played with Pearl Jam for a little while early on, then Dave Abbruzzese, and then of course you had Dave Grohl with Nirvana.  Was there something specifically about those guys in any of those early records that stuck out to you?  What grabbed you?

JL: Oh yeah!  It was the fact that – and I’ll say really quick that right before that I went through my Metallica phase – as I started maturing, I noticed the musicality of it.  I just knew that it grooved, that there was musicality to it.  Then of course when I got to college, even though I was in the classical world, I would listen to Sting, and was obsessed with Vinnie Colaiuta, and of course Matt Chamberlain.  I was just going, “Ok. It’s awesome to rock out, but there’s something about how musical these guys are.” 

I was just taking that all in at once, and was juggling that with learning musicality through dynamics, and the importance of taking a marimba piece, when you think you’re playing pianissimo to a forte crescendo – literally, you need to exaggerate it so much.  It’s where you’re as soft as you can play to absolutely as loud as you can play. 

So I just noticed that those guys were dynamic and musical and passionate, and [came up with] interesting parts.  That’s what I think really clicked with me.  In my second year in Nashville, that’s when it really started clicking, because that’s when I really dove into practicing drum set, playing to records, and getting rid of this baggage of being so technical and methodical from the classical approach – shaking that off and literally playing along to records like I’m a kid.

DR: It’s interesting, because I feel one of the strongest points about your playing is that it’s very colorful.  And, I’ve noticed this on so many records you’ve played on, that you have a great way of taking normally what are just straight-ahead, down-the-middle grooves and sticking these little nuances and colors that make me think, “Oh, now I know who’s playing on this.” I listen to Jars Of Clay, or Brooke Waggoner, or even some of Mat Kearney’s stuff, and it’s like I know automatically know who’s playing on it.  I’ve always been intrigued by that, and wanted to dig into how your classical background ended up influencing your approach on drums, because many times it sounds like you’re composing at the kit.  Your parts seem very thought out, but so natural at the same time.  It’s interesting that you talk about guys like Dave Abbruzzese and Matt Chamberlain, and all those guys having musicality while rocking out, because I feel like you have a massive sound, and yet still have this great finesse. I want to hear more about just how you feel the classical side of your studies influenced your approach to drums.  I feel like that’s what makes you so unique.

JL: Thank you for saying that, man.  When I was first in town, and I was looking at other drummers, I was just scared to death, thinking, “I don’t know.  I can’t do this. I’m not that good.”  I’d start with the self-deprecation and insecurity.  But in a really cool way, without me being totally aware of it, [having my classical chops influence my playing] happened because when I first moved to town, I was pretty bitter about the fact I spent so much time in classical.  I started thinking, “If I would have spent those five years in jazz bands doing drums, I would be killing it right now.”  But in a really cool, subtle way, that started to just come out in my playing.  Now I’m at the point after ten years or whatever going, “Man, I’m really glad I had that background.”  Will I ever spend that kind of time practicing again?  No. (laughs) Now I just want to make music.  So yeah, hands down it has been one of the biggest influences. 

I think the weird juxtaposition of starting late, loving rock music, and wanting be Pearl Jam’s next drummer, to loving Stravinsky and Prokofiev and just freaking out about that - it was just those two worlds meeting.  But it didn’t and couldn’t mature for a while.  I was really confused for a while.  All I knew is that I was just bitter about the fact that I had spent that much time on it and kind of threw it all away, and then rediscovered a love for just – I think it wasn’t a love of the drum set, it was just a love of creativity and making music, more so than just loving the drums.  Of course I love playing the drums; it was just more about “I want to be creative.”  I want to be a part of that kind of magic and spark that happens when you’re playing with other musicians that can’t happen when you’re reading music and playing a four-stroke ruff perfectly in a symphony. 

I’m honestly glad that it’s not totally a thought-out process.  I mean, there’s a process to it when I’m recording with different musicians or whatever, but I think that’s why the most unique parts of my playing came out in the Brooke Waggoner stuff, because it felt classical.  The reason that there was spark there because it was creative, and it was such a quick thing.  It was a one-day thing on both of those [records], not knowing the songs.  Without me knowing it, I knew I had to rely on watching her.  It was almost like watching a conductor or being in a chamber ensemble.  And so if I didn’t have any of that background, in literally watching a conductor because I knew I would just get reamed in front of everybody if I was late on my snare drum hit or whatever in orchestra – it just came out naturally.  I’ve had a more difficult time adjusting to the whole Nashville studio [mentality of ] “get with the click” than I have been able to do with the thing with Brooke Waggoner or just ensemble playing.

Jeremy’s C&C kit

DR: With all that in mind, I want to get your approach and your own personal concepts, after we’ve pulled from all this stuff.  Give me your take on groove, musicality, “playing for the song”, and things like that.  You’ve got a very interesting background that, like you said, has made you something really unique.  Everything I’ve ever heard you do has been “playing for the song,” but along with any of the drummers who do a good amount of session work, I can tell it’s you by the drum sound, all the little nuances and things.  You’ve got a great element of surprise in your creativity.  There are drum parts on “The Long Fall Back To Earth” record that I listen back to and think, “I would have probably never thought about that.”  It’s so unique in that it’s not necessarily straightforward, but it’s not off in left field somewhere.  So I want to hear your take on specifically your own playing, but also how you make your way in each individual situation.  I feel like you’ve got so many different things you’re pulling from, and obviously from playing for a myriad of artists.  How do you go in and approach each one of them and still feel like you are putting your voice on it?

JL: First of all, with groove, I just don’t feel like there’s protocol for that.  I think a lot of drummers try to say that there’s protocol for it.  I am not in the books anymore – I think because of the baggage of the classical thing when I moved to town, I tried the Garibaldi for a bit, to which I finally said, “You know what? No. I’m going to listen to music.” 

There’s no protocol, man.  There are guys that play that don’t have the greatest time, but it just feels good.  It’s just about ‘how do you uniquely make it feel good?’  What do you like to play?  What kinds of grooves do you like?  Do those.  Don’t force yourself to do stuff you really don’t like to do.  I know that that seems a little stubborn, but I think in a musical situation, you’re not going to be inspired every day.  Especially on certain sessions, you might not feel inspired by the music at all. 

But there are those times where you’re fortunate enough to where you’re enjoying the creative process.  With the Jars records, Brooke Waggoner, Erin McCarley, Disappointed By Candy, that stuff was inspired, and so naturally stuff starts coming out that you can’t control.  You know, some of it is totally thought out, but it’s really just repetition – “Let’s do this song again” and “Ok wait, let’s do that chorus again” and going “Nope, that doesn’t….”  It’s almost like you dive into the work until it feels right.  There’s that alarm that goes off, or it’s like a buzzer that goes “Mm, nope.  Nope.  That kick pattern? Nope.  Nope, nope, nope,” but kind of being not too aware of it.  If you’re too aware of that, you’re going to get in your own head and end up thinking too hard about it, and it’s not going to feel good.

Something I’m still learning is to make it just feel good, and sometimes that is doing something so ridiculously simple.  For the most part, drums are an accompanimental instrument.  They just are.  We’re so bombarded, especially by drummers in Modern Drummer, with “Play for the song.  Play for the song.  Play for the song.”  It’s ok to want to sit at the drums and go berserk on them and kick ass, you know?  It’s cool. I’m just kind of over the fact of “Why does this have to be so pounded in?”  There are people who just want to play good music. 

Every musician should know that you’re serving something, whether you’re the bass player, guitar player, whatever - you’re all serving something together.  I mean, I’ve seen drummers play where they’re pretty good, but I’ll see they do a fill that’s way out, and you can tell they’ve been practicing it, and it’s just totally this façade.  It doesn’t fit at all, and they’ve got this smirk on their face afterwards like they’re pleased with themselves.  I’m like, “You just ruined the whole thing.”

So I literally just think that groove is listening, but not over-listening.  I’ll go through periods of time where I don’t listen to music, purposely, because I just don’t want to get too much stuff in my head that’s not going to be me.  I’ll go through times where I’ll intently listen and then put it away for a while.  The thing is, if I were to play “Fool In The Rain,” it’s never going to sound anything like Bonham.  It’s going to sound like how I do it, and if you played it, it’s going to sound like the way that you do it, and all of those could feel great.  I just don’t care for “Well, can you do the Purdie shuffle? Can you do this?  Can you do that?  Do you have this in your repertoire?”  Why?  What made those guys unique was they just heard the song, they felt inspired and they did something.

DR: It’s easy to forget sometimes that those guys didn’t sit around with method books of those grooves, and just read them and say, “Oh, this groove that I learned yesterday in my practice room would sound great on this record.”  Most of them didn’t read music, and most of them were self-taught.  They just went for it.  As far as “playing for the song”, I totally agree.  I feel like “playing for the song” has been sort of a pseudonym for “Play super simple and don’t step on anybody’s toes.”  But I feel like the greatest drummers who play for the song are guys like Ringo Starr, Levon Helm, and Jim Keltner, and you absolutely know it’s them, but they are serving the song in a way where it’s like they are integrating themselves into it.  They’re not an outsider sitting back, timidly just going, “I’ve just gotta make it through, I’ve just gotta play for the song!”

JL: Yeah, and I think for young drummers – I don’t know any other way to say it – that’s going to do more harm than good.  You learn just by doing.  You just do.  I just feel like it’s so blown out of proportion, that phrase.  I’ve been to clinics where I just walk out, because I’m just like, “You’re really going to do the whole hour on ‘playing for the song’ and ‘here’s what it like not to play for the song’ and you’re going to show off?”  It’s just a joke to me.

DR: With this very eclectic mix of artists you’ve been fortunate to play with, which one – and I’m talking down to even one specific day in the studio or a live experience – would you could consider a sort of favorite, where you felt like, “This is worth it.  This is what I love doing.  This is what I want to keep doing”?  Is there one moment, or sort of a collection of moments?

JL: There’s definitely been moments.  From a broad perspective, whoever I’m playing with, if I have a creative role in it, for some reason it’s so much more fulfilling, in a performance or in the studio, to know that you’re all on the same page creatively and you’re all putting your best effort towards it.  That could mean me only coming up with a drum part, or me going, “Hey, what if the counter-melody did this?”  That’s been in my own bands, that’s been a little bit with Jars.  From the standpoint of a favorite, where I feel like I’m most uniquely represented out of anything has been the stuff with Brooke, just because there was such spontaneity to it.  I didn’t know what to expect going into, and was literally one of the magic chemistry moments that you hope for when you perform music.

DR: Yeah!  The few months I was playing with her, she was talking about those moments – I think during the second record [Heal For The Honey] – when this odd synergy was going on where it felt like stuff just lined up where it wasn’t with a click, it wasn’t to a grid, it was just people in a room playing.  It was so much more organic for her and for everybody else in the room, and it just felt like, “We’re doing something here without relying on the system.”  It was back to organic music-making.

JL: Yeah, and kind of stumbling on that by mistake.  I went in going, “It’ll probably be so many clicks, blah blah blah, I haven’t even heard this stuff,” and just heard it and thought, “That makes we want to do this.”  It was the kind of thing where when it’s happening, you’re like, “Oh, this is pretty cool.  Wow, that’s pretty cool.”  And then you hear it a week later, and you go, “Wow. Whoa.”  You don’t realize how profound that situation is until it’s hindsight, but you just know something’s happening when you’re doing it.

DR: This is sort of an opposite question.  Instead of necessarily being with a particular artist, what to you specifically, in any situation, is most gratifying about the position you’re in, being asked to come in for your specific voice for so many different things, where one day you’re asked to do one thing, and then something different the next? What do you come away with in those situations?

JL: It always feels good, at any kind of level with anything, to be sought after, and knowing you’re going to bring what you bring.  But that’s the thing, is that no matter what, insecurity never seems to go away.  You could play with a group of friends in the studio, and you could walk into the control room after a take, and they’re like, “Yeah!” and everyone says, “YEAH!”  And then you can do a session the next day, and it’s people you don’t know, and you walk out going, “That was pretty good.”  Then you walk in the control room, and everyone’s like, (slight pause) “Great.”  You know?  “That was good,” and you’re thinking, “W-was it?” 

Everything is different with that, and then there are the times when there’s not really many calls.  It’s really slow, and you start thinking, “Jeez, what did I…did I do anything bad or wrong?”  So, I guess to say the most gratifying thing is just when things line up to where you are uniquely you, and the artists want you to be uniquely you.  If I’m in some way able to just inspire or help lift up the project to whatever level, and if I’m able to do that, I can walk away – even if it’s particularly music that I wouldn’t listen to – feeling fulfilled in a way, and go, “Man.  The day started off weird and I didn’t feel good about myself, but it ended up okay.” 

The more willing I am to just serve it, and get myself out of the way – you know, it’s a servant industry.  You’re here to serve what the music is supposed to be -  ‘What’s the best interpretation of this song when it’s just a chord chart or a scratch demo?’  How do you push that to the next level, to flourish and to where it’s fully what it’s supposed to be, or supposed to communicate?  Some days that’s a lot more difficult than others, but more so it’s just about the work.   I don’t really believe anymore in inspiration just coming down, descending off the clouds.  It’s more about putting your head down and working and discovering inspiration, and not just waiting for it.

The other gratifying thing is just where you feel like you have a creative role in it, that maybe without what you did, it wouldn’t be the same.  That’s few-and-far between, but when it happens, it’s really, really awesome.

DR: From your experience as a working musician - along the lines of both being out on the road and in the studio playing drums, as well as doing things like you’re doing now on your own - what can you pull from your own experience that would be beneficial for guys coming up that are desiring to do the same thing?  To be in-demand, to be out on the road with good gigs, and take all the stuff we’ve talked about and integrate it into themselves so they get work?

JL: Man, my advice would just be do what is uniquely you, and if it takes you time to discover that, if it takes time playing music that makes you think, “Wait a second.  I don’t want to do this,” then you may have to go through years of that, but it’s worth it just to do what you like to do.  If someone somehow makes you believe that “you should be able to play a really great Mozambique groove, and do clave on your left foot,” that can sometimes do more harm than good.  If you love playing rock drums, then just go for that a hundred percent.  I think it’s a balance.  Just play to records, that’s the biggest teacher.  Literally, just put the books away.  I know there’s a time for that, but just not all the time.

DR: The way I’ve heard it said is that you can be a chameleon after a while, but chameleons are also able to not be recognized because they blend in so well.  You just become part of the background.  I’ve heard a lot of guys talk about headroom, doing all these crazy things like playing three on one hand and five on the other and stuff like that, and they come out of it saying, “Why did I do all this?”  It’s good to be able to play stuff, but I feel that if you take the time to learn every jazz lick that Art Blakey played or something, it’s like, “That’s great, but are you really going to pursue a career in jazz?”  Yes, it can be applicable to other things, but you can only go so far with that before you say, “I’m tired of this.”

JL: Yeah, and I think if you do go through that, which I had to go through that, however long it took for me, I think it’s how tapped in you are to make those you.  If I were to get really, really specific about this, I would say if I were to play along to, say, J.R. Robinson - Off The Wall by Michael Jackson - I would play along to that record all the time.  And then I would play along to D’Angelo, to the Voodoo record, and I would try to make that feel just like ?uestlove.  As soon as I felt like I got close to it – “Okay, this feels good” – I would put it away, and then I would make it feel like me doing it. Sometimes it’s just repetition man.  I mean, let’s face it, that stuff’s hard.  Even the “Fool In The Rain” thing.  That rhythm (sings a snippet of the groove), to not make it feel robotic, but not make it feel just sloppy, is just difficult. 

So I think it’s a willingness for repetition, but it’s also willingness to go, “Okay, I’m going to practice all these licks, but then I’m going to know when to say stop.”  There’s a unique passion that needs to come out – “Well here’s how I’d do it.”  The more and more I see and hear great drummers play, I’m more encouraged.  I can see a guy who’s only been playing drums for four years and he thinks he’s not great, and I can maybe be inspired by something in his performance, because I would think, “I’d never think to do that, that’s awesome.” 

I guess that would be my advice.  Know when to really go down the rabbit hole, but know when to just stop.  Play as many different kinds of music as you can, but do what you like to do.  If you don’t like doing something, don’t do it because you feel you should do it, like “Oh, this’ll be really good to work on my country chops.”  If you don’t ever want to listen to country music, don’t play it.  I think that’s the thing with the drummers – since it is an accompanimental instrument, the mindset becomes, “Well, I should be able to know all these styles.”   No you don’t.  You don’t have to, man. There’s a lot of freedom in that, because then the canvas is open.  You can express yourself on an instrument however you want to.  I’ll watch a Wes Anderson movie, and hear that section in The Royal Tenenbaums where it’s just a drum solo.  It’s just a jazz drum solo, and “I love this right now!”  There’s something about that, and I know that that’s all stuff that could be in the Chapin book, but in that moment it was just inspiring.

DR: We talked a lot about everything that’s built up to the point you’re at now.  Tell me about Leagues, first of all.

JL: Leagues is really interesting in the way it came about.  Thad Cockrell is a guy that I’ve always respected in town, but always just met in passing. I saw him at a show, or he saw me play a show and would say, “Hey man, what’s up?  Cool, good to meet you.”  And then one day, I saw him in Marché.  Thad’s so funny, because he was super serious and was like, (whispers) “Hey…can I get your phone number?”  I said, “Uhh, yeah.”  So he called me that night and said, “Hey man, I’ve got an idea for a band and I want it to be the deal.  I’ve got this guy Mike who plays bass.  Do you know Mike Simons?” I said, “No, but I’ve heard the band he used to be in.”  He said, “Well, he suggested this guitar player, Tyler Burkum.  Do you know him?”  I said, “Yeah, I’ve been on tour with him for a year and a half.  He’s great.”

Thad lives here, but he’s traveling out and about.  Tyler lives in Minneapolis, but he’s here all the time doing sessions and stuff.  Mike lives in Raleigh.  But we literally, since February, have only been in a room together for only about twenty days.  We’ve written about fifteen great songs, and so we’re excited.  We’re going to go in and record our first three songs with Vance Powell engineering, and are going to cut to tape.

The idea behind the band is just we’re all uniquely bringing what we bring to the table.  It’s full-on accessible pop, but I’m kind of taking the approach as a drummer that I want this to sound like a hip-hop record, throwing in elements of a little bit of programming with organic drums with just kind of otherworldly sounding stuff.  We just want to make a great record that’s just an amazing song after amazing song, but kind of piss off the Pitchfork Media people because…they’ll know that it’s good.

DR: (Laughs) Which is easy to do, I’ve come to find out.

JL: Yeah, so we’re really excited and I feel like I’m taking a lot more of a role in the production side, and I’m learning on that.  When you walked in, I was actually working on a song for that, and you’ll actually see more keyboards than drums in here right now.  I just love learning stuff that I’m not good at and trying to get good at it.

DR: On top of that, tell me about I Am The Actor.

JL: I Am The Actor has kind of been my creative outlet that’s drawing from the things I miss about classical music, where I was in symphony orchestra and playing this amazing piece, feeling the buzz of “There’s sixty people on stage and we’re playing this.”  I’ve always wanted to start this instrumental thing with a classical-inspired background, so I met with my friend Jason Morant, who’s getting into that as well, and we came up with six pieces of music that either I had completely conceived or that he complete conceived, and some that we did completely together at the same time.  We had some time at Paul Moak’s studio – two weeks – and it was just like Wonderland, where we’d be saying “Oh, play the organ on this one,” “Let’s do the piano, and let’s put tape on the strings and make it sound like pizzicato” “Let’s do percussion,” – everything.  It’s really exciting, and we’re actually scoring a film coming up in the spring, which is like a long-time thing I’ve always wanted to do.  We’re just getting into that together, which is really fun learning together, and are kind of free to do whatever we want.

That’s just something that desperately I need that just feeds me, where I’m off the drums and I’m going, “Okay, I want to arrange strings, and I want to do this and…” Performance-wise, it’s going to be really complicated, but we’re looking at a house show, maybe in March, and it’s basically going to take eighteen people – maybe an eight-piece string section, four or five pianos, percussion, and organ.  It’s just really fun, and to describe the sound, it’s like taking the emotion of Sigur Ros or Arcade Fire, but not sounding anything really like that - basically pop-structured instrumental music, that still is emotional and otherworldly, but has themes and makes a person feel the same way they feel when they hear a great song.   There’s no words, and there’s no main vocal melodies.

DR: Tell me what you’re looking forward to in the future, as far as your career goes. Give me some of your aspirations.

JL: I thrive a lot more – I’m learning this about myself – in a community of musicians, whether that’s working with one other person or working with three or four. Aspirations for mine would just be to continue make great music.  I know that sounds broad, but let me narrow it down.

I think for me to produce records is a new thing that I would love to get into, just to make great music with artists I believe in.  Man, I’m not going to deny, I’m thirty-four and I still want to be in a great band.  The feeling of a band, where you have a creative stake – everyone leans on each other for their weaknesses and strengths and you’re just a unit, a creative unit.  There’s nothing like that, to be able to connect on whatever level, whether it’s playing for fifty people or ten thousand people, to what you’re saying in a song.  All the guys I look up to, in drummers or just musicians, were just in great bands.  Even the composers I look up to started in rock bands.  Danny Elfman…

DR: James Newton Howard.

JL: Yeah, Mark Mothersbaugh, you know.   You’ve got all these guys who were in great bands and they ended up being great film composers.  So I guess my dream scenario would be to have a great band, produce records I believe in, and be able to score films and do something that’s totally uniquely mine, like a Philip Glass kind of thing.  If I somehow could dive into even more of a uniqueness with what I’m trying to communicate on the drums, and hopefully that’s understood, I’m hoping that can carry over in composing and writing. 

I’m more interested in expanding, rather than just more of the same.  Right now, a tour with an artist and good pay doesn’t excite me as much as maybe not making as much money, but being creative.  If we all could have that balance – I think everybody needs it man.  Maybe some of us require it more than others, but if at least twenty percent of what you do is fully creative, and maybe you don’t make any money out of it, but it’s fully creative and fulfilling, then that’ll feed you.  That’ll feed the other eighty percent.

DR: Yeah, it can be really stifling.  I remember when we got together a while ago, and you were talking about being in the studio with a Christian artist or something, and that they were trying to shoot for something like MuteMath, and it was just not working.  And so it ended up going back to the same stuff.  I know guys personally that have gotten so burnt out, even though they’re not playing country music and stuff like that, they get sucked in by so many other things where it’s just like, “I have to do this every time, everybody wants this same thing.”  They’re sort of doing what you’ve already expanded into, in having a space, having a creative outlet to go and do their own thing, so when they come back to that other stuff, 1) they’re not bored to tears and 2) they’re more inspired, which may end up making those performances more inspired than they would have been.

JL: Exactly.  It’s going to pour into everything else you do.  If I go in next week and I play on a session for music that’s not particularly inspiring, at least I know that I’ve got a wellspring of things to draw from, and that’s the beauty of it.  The scary thing is when you’re creative, you’re attached to what you do.  You have to stand up for what you put out there.  As a drummer, I could play on a horrible record, and no one’s going to give me flak about it – it’s going to be the producer and the artist.  So that’s the beauty of it – you can go in and play on something great and say, “Okay, I did my best and I go home.  My hands are clean of it,” or you go in and do something horrible and say (whispers) “Okay, my hands are clean of this.”  But if you do create something you know in your heart wasn’t great, then you’ve got to answer to it, unfortunately. Not that that should instill fear in you, but you have to have responsibility for what you do.

DR: Dude, I think we’re good.  It was great.

JL: Cool man!

DR: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

JL: Thank you.  Awesome, man.