The Nashville Drummers Project

The NDP's Best Of 2011

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:20:00 -0500

Friends/faithful NDP readers, I hope this finds you well.

To preface, I feel it necessary to give a word of clarification for the lack of interviews, transcriptions, posts, etc. as of late. I have been in a recent state of a vast array of endeavors - from getting married in June, moving into a new house and starting a life with my wonderful wife, to touring all over the country with many great artists, and producing/engineering/playing on sessions at the studio space at my home and elsewhere. At times, the NDP had to take a backseat in order to make these other things work. Things will be back in full swing soon, as interviews from Noah Denney and Caleb Crosby are coming, as well as new performance transcriptions of Nashville’s finest drummers.

All that to say, the inspiration and subsequent realization of this project has been something I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams. The gentlemen that I’ve had the great fortune of interviewing for the NDP has led to what this idea was all about in the first place - the nurturing and encouragement of community. I am thankful to call all of the drummers in this project not only musical inspirations, but great friends and, in many ways, mentors. I have received a great deal of emails, messages, and comments that have often left me speechless about the impact this project has had beyond the initial concept of exposing the broad range of talent Nashville has to offer in the drumming world. One in particular comes to mind that was sent to my good friend and mentor Mr. Paul Mabury in response to his interview. I hope that the author won’t mind if I quote from his message:

“I read your interview on the Nashville Drummers Project and have been watching your session videos. I really appreciate all the information you shared. The videos are incredibly helpful and inspirational to me. I’ve been praying and thinking about moving to Nashville for about a year, and have been pretty unsure, but your interview and videos have really helped me to feel inspired and encouraged to pursue Nashville. Thanks a ton.”

Now that’s pretty cool.

To commemorate the first year of the NDP, here are some of the best nuggets of wisdom and insight from all the players featured this year. Enjoy!

Jeremy Lutito

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

Jacob Schrodt

“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.”

“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.”

“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… [W]hen the red light is on, you’d better be playing for real.”

Richard Scott

“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 the point where I could let them inspire me rather than intimidate me…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.”

“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… I think that’s more valuable than any crazy 64^th note lick that I can do coming out of the bridge or something… 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.”

“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.”

Will Sayles

“With a lot of younger players, they might listen to a record and think, “Oh, I could have done that, there’s nothing complicated going on.” But they don’t realize how many decisions were made to get there. Whether it’s the musical ideas, the arrangement changes that were made, the different tones from swapping out drums, changing the tuning, dampening the heads, changing out a cymbal, whatever - for a long time I never even thought about that stuff, but it’s changed the way I listen to records now.”

“I’ve tried to strike a balance between having an identity as a player, knowing my strengths, and then at the same time trying to expand on that… Everyone has had different experiences, and everyone’s drawing from different places… I feel like there’s a tendency in the drumming community to value things in a very one-dimensional way, especially if it’s something really “technical” and difficult to play. It’s really unfortunate, because there are players out there that aren’t really that confident when they should be, because they have strengths that aren’t really as celebrated.”

“You can’t really craft out a path to follow. Just try and be a part of as much stuff as you can…If someone asks me to play, particularly if it’s in town and I’m available, then I try to do it. I don’t want to get to a point where I say, “Oh, there’s no money in that” or “They’re only paying me fifty bucks” or something. As cheesy as this sounds, if you love music, let that passion help make some of those decisions.”

Jake Goss

“Always have a good attitude and be respectful to the artists who are hiring you. One thing I think I bring to the table is that I bring light to situations, in that I like to have a good time, kind of goof around and not be too serious, but if I need to be serious, I’ll put my game face on. Giving the artist what they want and taking direction well is crucial.”

“Being prepared and taking interest is super important, in being able to believe in the music you’re playing… I just want to know all about the artist, to study them and know their tendencies and instincts… Don’t slack off on learning songs and whatnot. I really do my best to come in prepared and have a good attitude, and it’s worked out a lot.”

“The Nashville drumming community is just a big brotherhood. It’s really nice to be here in this community, because a lot of times you can get in situations where it feels like a competition and it makes you feel insecure. But here in Nashville, so many friends of mine are really supportive. We’ll all try and come out to each other’s shows, or listen to records we’ve played on and get feedback from each other. ”

Marcus Hill

“For me, the biggest thing I’ve learned is that the music is something that’s beyond me. It’s real easy to get caught up in learning the songs and the details of everything. All of that is important and I’m not discrediting that at all, but once you finally get onstage and play the show, especially if you’ve done the homework where you’re no longer worrying about what’s coming up next and it’s internalized, that feeling is pretty awesome to me. At that point it’s no longer about me, but it’s more about how the music is affecting others, hopefully in a positive way! It takes a lot of work to get to that point, but all that work pays off when other people are benefited or blessed by whatever you’re doing, whether that’s playing on stage or playing on a record someone’s listening to in their car. That’s something I enjoy every time I get to do it. Anytime I see anyone out in the audience bobbing their head, I’m like, “Okay – we’re successful!” You know you’re doing something right!”

“Make sure that when you are working on your craft and getting it up to par, make sure you’re practicing being yourself and don’t try to be someone else. If someone calls me for a gig, it’s because they want how I play on that gig. Practicing being yourself will help create a unique sound, and that’s very important in this circuit. The other thing is that in this town, it’s about networking just as much as the playing, if not more so – knowing people and being in the loop. For the drummer, that means getting out and playing as much as possible, but also going out to shows, meeting people – basically taking any chance you get to make connections with people. Not that you have to be schmoozing with people, but making friendships and just building strong relationships. In this town, even if it’s your dentist, everybody knows somebody that does something in music, if they don’t already do it themselves.”

“There’s no formula. It’s all about the feel - making the song feel good, pushing when it needs to, holding back when it needs to. Every instrument has its part and spot in a song, and drums are the same… There’s always a role for the drums, but it’s always up to drummer or the producer to decide how the song should feel. The drummer has a lot of power. I feel like if the drums are where they’re supposed to be, it’s a lot easier for everything else to fall into place. To me, it’s all about feel, man. If you can trust your heart and your internal groove, whatever song or record you’re doing will turn out great. I think it’s a matter of playing out a lot, playing live and studio sessions. The more you do it, the more you get a feel for what songs need and what they don’t need, and the more you get a feel for your internal sense of groove and learn to trust it.”

Evan Hutchings

“Being able to work as a team and to communicate well with other people is so important. You may say something that you may not mean to come across a certain way, or somebody may say something to you, and it will just totally kill the vibe. [You have] to be able to be sensitive to other people. That’s been a huge thing that I’ve taken away from playing with so many different people is how to interact with them. You’re creating something that is so special to everybody, and you’re playing on something that somebody put a lot of work and time into, so you want to serve that as best you can.”

“Take every gig that you can get, but also be happy about what you’re playing. If you take a gig where you may not necessarily be into the music, don’t take that out on anybody else. Never say “no” unless it’s something you know is going to be negative for your career or something you may not enjoy. But also, just go for it, just do it. I know that’s easier said than done, but my mentality is don’t waste time.”

“Be fearless about what it is you do. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be worried that somebody won’t hire you because you do something different, because the guys that I look up to are where they are because they’re different.”

Paul Mabury

“A painter paints on his or her own, and they get to share it with people afterwards. In music, we get to share the creating of the image. What people get to listen to is, and to me should be, community. That’s one of the things I love about this town is that we get to meet each other and communicate in music usually before we’ve even communicated verbally. That’s such a great way to get to know each other, and it starts to knock down walls that we can sometimes put up. For me, that’s the whole reason I’m doing what I’m doing. I love drumming, I love music, and I love listening to music, but it’s the fact that music and the drums take me to people. That’s where the beauty is. We get to create together. It’s an incredible privilege to be a part of that.”

“[We have] the opportunity…to contribute to something that is very dear to someone’s heart. A songwriter or performer comes in and they’re basically handing you their baby, their vision, something that is incredibly important to them. I love seeing the transition between that happening and the vulnerability to the reward, where they’re just so happy with the way the track’s sounding. It’s so in the moment, and we get to witness that as session musicians and people involved in this process. We get to be a part of that really special moment. I think that’s the most rewarding thing. As a producer, it’s even more so, because it’s more tiring since you’re on the whole journey. But it’s two-fold as a producer, because you are serving the artist’s vision, and so you get to see the pre-production happen, which is like putting the first splashes of paint on a blank canvas. Then you get to see this story evolve, you get to hand it to them at the end, and the whole time you’re just serving the vision that they have. Man, I love that. For me, it takes me out of myself and places me in, as much I can be, their hopes and their dreams for the project. That’s an incredible opportunity. I think that’s the thing where I gain the most satisfaction.”

“I would say to musicians, especially the guys who have just gotten married, to be careful what you decide to do. Establish boundaries that protect your wife and protect yourself, and make sure you don’t put it all on the line for success, at least not the things that matter, anyway. Work really hard and trust that good things will come within the boundaries you’ve established. The most important thing in my life is my family, then music. That’s where I’m at man, and I’m really grateful that I’m involved within those boundaries.”

Nate Onstott

“I know how many people come to Nashville and they have that goal – “I want to be the drummer for a huge country artist,” or at this point, “I want to be the drummer for an indie-acoustic artist,” or whatever’s hot at the time. I love that there are guys in town who have that drive, but I’m sad that a lot of them miss the mark when they don’t realize that all of that has to come naturally. It doesn’t have to be a forced thing where you go in and meet every drummer in town, get numbers, and pound the pavement in a business sense.”

“Being in a town like Nashville is a double-edged sword. It’s an amazing community and there are so many opportunities, but it is so packed with people that want that job or experience. Dig in – it’s not going to happen right away… Go to a town like Nashville, meet people, play every gig you can. Make sure that you’re well-rounded. Don’t be stuck in one mindset of wanting to be a “rock drummer” or in Nashville, a “country drummer.” Guess what? Most of those guys are not necessarily “country drummers.” They have talent, and have all these other contexts they can pull from that attributes to their gig.”

“Don’t come with an expectation that you’re going to be the next Chris McHugh or Jeremy Lutito. Be the next you and continue to do that until someone notices, because it might take four or five years of playing in a cover band gig, but everyone that has talent, the personality, and is a good hang gets gigs. It just might take a little while. Persistence is the word.”

Of course, these are just tiny snippets of a treasure trove of information - practical, technical, musical, spiritual, relational - that if you haven’t checked out by going through the full interviews, do yourself a favor and read ‘em.

Many, many thanks to all the people who have encouraged this project and kept up with it. It means so much that one little idea I had floating around in my head for years would have such significance in so many lives I would have never imagined, including my own.

And of course, a tremendous heartfelt thanks to the gentlemen who were gracious enough to allow time out of their schedules this year to let me interview them for the project. You fellas are an inspiration and all serious masters of groove.

In closing, thanks for a great first year for the Nashville Drummers Project, and to the future of it in 2012. Stay tuned!

Dustin

Interview #9 - Nate Onstott

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:04:00 -0400

As a Nashville transplant via Chicago, Nate Onstott has become a force to be reckoned with as the drummer for Mikeschair, a burgeoning Christian band based in Nashville, as well as many other up-and-coming artists. Nate exudes an infectious energy and passion behind the kit, possessing a natural showmanship while laying down rock-solid grooves with bursts of color and creativity. It only helps that he is one of the most down-to-earth, genuine, and humble individuals working in the Nashville music community, qualities that have only helped him become more and more successful as a professional musician. It was a great privilege to conduct this interview, as I’m sure it will be to read it. Enjoy.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing and, more specifically, what the musical environment was like while you were growing up.

NO: I got into music because my mom was a high school band director before I was born. Right when I was born, she quit. Music was always her thing and it was something she wanted me to consider. I was pretty much dead set on being a trumpet player. I practiced the little embouchure or whatever, got to the day where you try out instruments and I had a list of trumpet, saxophone, tuba, all these other things, and just failed every single one of them. It was like the biggest letdown of my life. Percussion was one of those things where they didn’t let everyone try it, and it became a thing where I said, “Okay, can I just try this?” and they said, “…yeah, sure.” They pulled out the snare drum, the guy plays a little rhythm, I play it back. The guy plays another rhythm, and it turns out I did well enough to where they said, “Yeah, you could be a drummer!” It felt like I was getting stuck with it at first. That was my introduction to sort of being a musician.

My family always had music growing up around the house. I’ve always kind of adhered to music, because my mom would play country music around the house when I lived in Houston. I knew all the words, even the songs that were in Spanish! Garth Brooks was everything to me. I’ve just always clicked with music, so it was a natural progression. As I got older, my dad started to introduce me more to rock bands that he listened to in the 70s, like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, just good quality stuff. On any given day, I’d be listening to the Eagles or Gloria Estefan with my mom. I’m literally a product of such an A.D.D. music environment that it all got wrapped up and scrambled in my head. When it came time to actually pick an instrument out, it came naturally to me.

DR: Was there any sort of “lightbulb moment” that occurred when everything clicked and you thought, “This is really what I want to pursue”?

NO: Growing up as a kid, I was way into drawing, art, creativity, all that stuff. That was kind of my focus up until high school, when music became another thing that I would do. There was never a thought of, “This is what I was put on earth to do,” or “This is God’s plan for me.” We had a really intense jazz program at my high school, and I grew up listening to that jazz band because my dad was a teacher at that school. He pushed me to go to every concert they did, and I remember looking up on stage and thinking, “That’s what I want to do!” I wanted to be in that jazz ensemble. That was the first goal. Then I got into high school, worked my way up to that goal, and got into that jazz ensemble. The next year I skipped one of the jazz ensembles and got to the junior level ensemble. I liked to challenge myself and that became my focus. The program and the level of it was something I held high in my mind, and I wanted to just succeed in that.

Probably around senior year of high school, I said, “Okay, I want to go to Belmont and be a Commercial Music Major.” I didn’t think I was good enough or had the skill set or anything like that. I had a great private lesson teacher in Chicago, Bret Sher, who taught at the school. Around my junior year, he said, “I don’t know if you’re ready for how intense music school’s going to be,” but I said, “Eh, you know, it’s kind of my thing. I think I’m going to go for it. Let’s see what happens.” I got into Belmont University and realized it was going to be tough, but was confident that I had enough knowledge from the previous four years that it put me somewhere on the level of everyone else. It took a long while for me to get the point where I said, “I want to pursue this as a post-high school career option.” And it happened eventually!

DR: I want to backtrack just a little bit to the music you were hearing growing up. What do you feel you were taking away from that as far as its influence on your musical development? Also, in terms of private lessons, what were some things you started to pick up on? How did those things begin to integrate themselves into your playing?

NO: I don’t think at the time it was a direct connection. I was just doing it - playing drums and doing concert band - because it was just something to do. I also knew my mom wanted me to do something like that. I swam in high school outside of school for my dad, because he was a swim coach and I knew that’s what he wanted, so I felt like the band thing was kind of for my mom. At that time, it wasn’t where I was consciously aware of how listening to music made me feel. Once I got to high school and started taking really intense lessons, learning concepts and things, I started to put together the pieces of the puzzle – “This really complex pattern that’s all offbeat and crazy is related to this song that I’ve heard for ten years that I love.” Who knew that Mick Fleetwood was doing that? As I grew and got stronger in the concept range, it became a thing where I would apply it.

I was never a lesson guy. I was much more of a listener. Probably from growing up listening to a lot of music, my ear was tuned into what was going on and what was making a snare drum sound happen or something. That kind of thing hit me – not necessarily playing overall, just what was being created. I would go to that before I’d say, “How do I make this happen on a drum set?” or “Oh, that’s a R-R-L-R L-L-R.” I struggled, more or less, through lessons and all of that growing up, which is probably why my drum teacher was like, “I don’t know if you’re ready for music school. You realize it’s lessons all the time?” I think it was just because of the ear thing that I gravitated towards playing with people and vibing off of other musicians. That was what I wanted to do – it was interaction and utilizing creativity with other people. Who knew what was going to happen?

DR: You mentioned coming to Belmont, where you’re in this community of guys who are all striving for the same thing. Tell me about the next step, where you began to get work and started becoming professionally active as drummer.

NO: I know that there are tons of kids who come to Belmont and I remember thinking, “Who are these guys talking about?” in hearing all these names being thrown out, talking about how that guy played on that record, this guy played on that one. All these guys just knew who was on every track of a record. They were so tuned into that world. I remember being like, “I like Jimmy Eat World and the Apex Theory…” I was such a band guy from the beginning, so my first step was starting a band. There was plenty of community in that world at Belmont too. By my sophomore year, I found somebody whose songwriting style I liked, got together with them, and put together a band. I worked on that non-stop. That was my life for pretty much all of college from that point on. Once it clicked, I just thought, “Okay. I want to be in a band.” That was my thing. There were other guys around town who wanted to be studio drummers or a live guy for an artist, but I was just like, “I’ve got my guys…we’re going to do this forever!” My brain wasn’t really tuned to the idea of doing anything other than playing in the band that I created.

God is funny. You think you’re going to do something and it somehow always comes back to how it’s supposed to be. Because I was in a band, I was in a community of musicians, whether they be solo artists, bands – I was always a guy that I think people knew, but they realized, “Oh, Nate’s in that other band.” I was never a first-call guy because of that. I think cornering myself into a band mindset maybe stunted my growth a little, but I got to know a bunch of people who got to know my drumming and my style. I will never take back those years, because I really didn’t have an identity as a drummer until that point. I was a sponge and was trying to soak up as much as I could, but I don’t think you really build your identity until you dig in with people, where you throw out some idea and see what people think about it. I wouldn’t say I think I have a really solid identity, but I picked out what my influences were and just kind of went with it and built from there.

I think that affected getting calls later, because right out of college, I started playing with Jaclyn Schutrop, or Jaclyn James. I was friends with her because she was kind of a rock chick who was friends with all the bands and needed a drummer. She said, “Nate, I love what you do with your band and I need something fresh and different. I need to change it up.” I had never thought about playing with another artist or a solo artist, but I loved her music, and so it was a challenge and I wanted to take that. So we just started working on music, and she put another new band together where I was the drummer. We just locked ourselves in a practice room a couple days a week and hashed out these songs.

We got to record them, and it was my real first experience in a real studio outside of Belmont, with a real engineer and a real producer. We had two days at House Of David and just hammered out these songs. That was when I kind of realized that, “This band thing is really cool, but I like working with someone and giving them what they want artistically and not having to argue for five days about ‘I feel like it needs to be this way,’ then ‘No, I feel like it needs to be this way,’ and butting heads.” It was kind of freeing at that point to realize I was kind of a leader in my band, but that I could also provide what was needed for an artist.

When I was working with Jaclyn, her guitar player was Sam Tinnesz, and he was in a band called Mikeschair. They were all my friends and people I went to college with, who I started with and graduated with. They always had an open drumming chair, because their drummer was out of the picture after the first year that they were a band. My goal all through college was, “I just want Mikeschair to call me! I just want to play one show with them!” I loved their music and looked up to them, because they were the guys at Belmont who were doing it right. Everybody was like, “Oh, they’re going to get signed,” and that kind of thing. So I started playing with Sam in Jaclyn’s band, and I think playing with him was what kind of clued them in. Noah Denney had been playing with them for a year and he’s awesome. He just had to be in school and they had just graduated, so they needed someone full-time. One day, Sam said to me, “Hey man, have you ever thought about playing in Mikeschair?” I said, “Thought about it? Dreamed about it is more like it.” At the end of that summer, August of 2007, they said, “Hey, learn these songs.” I said, “Learn ‘em? I know ‘em! See you on Monday!” We rehearsed, did a quick audition, did the songs they asked for, and then they asked, “Hey, do you know this one?” and I said, “Yeah I do. Let’s play it!” We just played that one down. I think at that point they thought, “Yeah, we think you’ll be good enough to handle this.”

I jumped from playing in a band to an artist to getting this real gig. I never saw that coming and it was never a stated purpose, with me thinking, “I’m going to come to Nashville and be the drummer for a Christian pop act who is signed to a label.” Even when I started with Mikeschair, who I was good friends with, the working relationship between them and I was that I was a hired gun, paid per gig, and more or less that it was an open thing. I don’t think they ever expected me to like it or to want to stay. Obviously as a band guy, I wanted to be a part of what they were doing and really dig in. I think that surprised them. We got along so well that it was like, “If you’re happy, I’m happy. Let’s just keep it going.” So four years later, I’m in pictures and on the record. I’m more than just a “hired gun,” but there’s still some freedom in it. I don’t have to deal with all the business that goes along with being in a band at that level. I don’t have to speak in to every decision that is made. If they want my input, which they often do nowadays, they ask. I give them my opinion when they need it. I play music with my best friends and get paid to do it!

DR: One of the things you mentioned a few times was the community of people that sort of weaves in and out of itself. That seems to be a consistent topic that comes up in a lot of these interviews. It comes down to people having relationships that existed long before they were in a professional situation. That isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with desiring to play with a particular artist. I’ve just found that most of the guys who are really doing it came out of a similar situation that you were in, where it was a friend or a bunch of friends that happened to know somebody, and it leads to something bigger.

NO: It just comes about by chance. I know how many people come to Nashville and they have that goal – “I want to be the drummer for a huge country artist,” or at this point, “I want to be the drummer for an indie-acoustic artist,” or whatever’s hot at the time. I love that there are guys in town who have that drive, but I’m sad that a lot of them miss the mark when they don’t realize that all of that has to come naturally. It doesn’t have to be a forced thing where you go in and meet every drummer in town, get numbers, and pound the pavement in a business sense.

I think that everything that has happened to me and, like you said, other people in town is because they’re people doing music because they love it. That’s all that they care about. Because they love music, they love the people that make it. Those people end up loving them, and it’s this whole lovefest in Nashville, and everybody loves each other! You interviewed Jake [Goss] a few months ago. He’s a kid who is a hundred percent real all the time. He never comes off like he’s trying to get somewhere, trying to be friends with you because he wants to get somewhere, and guess what he did? He got a gig before he was out of college, because he’s such a great guy and a ridiculously talented drummer. He’s left-handed, unfortunately – sad but true. He’s a great combination of all those great qualities, and I think people want that before they necessarily want the dude that’s so good at drumming or so business-oriented. I’ve heard it a hundred times, but it comes down the fact that you’re going to be in a van or a bus with that person so much that it’s better to be a good hang, be competent, and learn as you go.

It’s definitely a thing that I fell into. It was never a stated purpose, but it just happened and I love it. I feel blessed that there is a community of drummers and musicians. There’s a community of musicians in town that everybody kind of knows and that’s great, but eighty percent of my phone contact list is all drummers. I can send a text to any one of them right now and say, “Dude, I just saw you do this,” or “I just heard you on this record,” and that vibe is way cooler to me than competition. That’s so “high school” to me. We were at Belmont together and I never felt like it was, “I have to be better than that guy.” It was always, “What does that guy know that I don’t?” or “That’s not my thing, but I want to hear that guy talk about that.” I feel like that’s why there are so many great, talented drummers coming out of Belmont. There are a few that are just coming to Nashville and breaking into all this different scene stuff. We’re all just one big happy family!

DR: That’s right! So after all the internal, objective work that you’d been working towards while at Belmont, and even after being on the road and in the studio with Mikeschair along with various other gigs, describe to me your own philosophies and concepts as far as groove, time, feel, coming up with parts, playing for the song, all those types of things.

NO: I can explain it in three worlds – there’s playing live for an artist, there’s playing in the studio for an artist, and then there’s just being a drummer. They’re three completely different things, but they’re all under the same umbrella. As a live drummer, which I’d pretty much been with Mikeschair exclusively for three and a half years, it was a really natural process to go into that and say, “Okay, I’m going to learn every song note-for-note and play that.” That’s my philosophy. We have a new record where I wasn’t on every track, so my goal is to learn those songs. For the first couple of months - rehearsals, probably the first two tours - I will play those songs as close to note-for-note as I can. At that point, once I feel like I have the songs in my body and in my head, I’ll start to tweak things. I’ll make it mine. Sometimes at a soundcheck I’ll mess around with things. Half the time the guys don’t like it, half the time Mike will turn around and say, “Can we do that in a show?” But what’s important is that you’re getting paid to play the parts on the record. There are plenty of guys who say, “I’m going to be me on this and put my take on it,” which is definitely one way to look at it, and it depends. I’m playing with a Christian pop artist. They’re really tied in to what’s happening. With some of the indie stuff, it’s probably a little easier to do your own vibe and it’s more accepted. The gigs that I’ve done have been very down-the-line, play the songs as they are until you get comfortable and know everything about them, then you can kind of loosen up.

When it’s [a studio scenario], it’s still a new thing to me. I definitely wouldn’t say I’m a “studio drummer” yet. I learn so much in every session. I’ve been doing a lot of work with this studio called Studio 930, run by a couple of guys who are our touring bass player, our sound guy, and one other dude who all live together. When they started working with me, I asked if they were looking for a house drummer. Since they were looking to seriously start recording artists, that idea made sense to them, and so they wanted to help me get some work. So every couple of weeks, I’ll go in there and play for like three different artists that they’re tracking, and it’s just a blast. I get to make my mark on some music, but it’s not really just about me. I feel like if I didn’t have that within the past six or seven months, tracking with Mikeschair would have been a lot more difficult. I had to build back up the skills of coming up with something on the spot, reading off a chart, hearing a song then going in the room, playing it, hearing a producer say, “I don’t like how you did that, can we change it to this?” and being able to go, “Got it!”

Never say no. I got the awesome experience of listening to Jeremy Lutito track drums with Mikeschair on the batch of songs before mine. I wanted to see how he works in the studio. The one phrase I never heard was, “No.” I literally wanted to grab the talkback mic and go, “Hey Jer, would you dance around the studio while tracking that shaker…it needs more vibe, you know?” because I wanted to see if he would say no! I don’t think he would! He’s so for the song and for what the direction of the song is. As a drummer, I’m sitting there hearing a producer say, “I want you to do this beat,” and you can almost hear his mental clock ticking and thinking, “Mmm, I don’t know if that’s going to work,” but you never hear him say it. He just goes, “Let’s try it,” and he’ll try it! He’ll give it a hundred and ten percent.

There are certain places and times where it’s okay to give your input. With Studio 930, they bring me in because I’m a little older than them and obviously more experienced as a drummer, but they’re all really talented musicians and producers. They get the idea of the end result of a song, so they’ll throw ideas out at me. There are times where I go, “Man, I know what you’re saying, but I have this idea that I want to try,” but then there are times where I’ll catch myself going, “Okay, I should probably just try that. Why not?” I’m still learning that. Every session I get, I’m very thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow. I feel like I’ve got a lot of work now that I can point at and say I’m proud of it. A couple of weeks ago, I got the final mixes back of the two songs I played on for Mikeschair. I knew what they sounded like already because I played them, but hearing the big picture and realizing that, “I’m playing with my band,” remembering that I did those two songs in three hours, an hour after we got back from a weekend trip. That was not an ideal situation, but I guess I was prepared!

Then there’s “drumming” world. You’ve heard me practice when we lived together – just chops all day, because that’s the only time I get to get that out. I’ll go to Fork’s Drum Closet, play a groove, and literally just play that groove until one of the store guys says, “Seriously, we’ve heard that shuffle groove for ten minutes. Can you play something else?” So there are three different worlds, and that’s where the drum community comes together. We play the Groove Game and get excited about hearing other people play these off-kilter things that we would never think about, and it just makes us go, “Gosh, I need to learn how to play that!” or “Wow, I need to hit the practice room, because I am not keeping up.”

You asked about groove and things like that, and those are the kind of things where I feel like you can never stop learning. You can never stop trying to perfect a groove. If something feels good, people will let you know. I feel like I’ve been really blessed with a lot of really cool moments lately. We played at the Dove Awards this year in Atlanta and the house band was all gospel guys. Super tight band. Tommy Sims was the bass player and bandleader. We were hanging out during rehearsals and I got watch them rehearse and it was so cool. He’s just the coolest dude – sunglasses on, playing his bass, not even looking at the charts, just playing and killing it. Then it was our turn to soundcheck. I’m sitting at my kit and the sound guy asked me to play a groove, so I just start playing four on the floor, snare on two and four, eighths on the hi-hat. There was no goal in mind, but whenever I play a groove like that, I want it to feel good. It was the first time I’d played my new C&C drums and I was just laying into them, trying them out and hearing the nuances. I had my ears in and nothing’s coming through them, so I’m in my own little world and I start to hear horns. I thought, “That’s weird.” I look down and the horns are actually playing with me! Tommy Sims is right in front of them as they’re playing with me and he’s just bobbing his head as if he’s thinking, “That is not a bad musical experience.” I think the guys in Mikeschair know what I bring to the band, and I don’t think they make it unknown to me – “We love you, we love what you’re doing. You bring so much to the band.” But I think in that moment, they were thinking, “That’s our drummer! This is so cool!” I feel like an idiot talking about it, but it was just really cool.

Nate’s C&C kit setup for the 2011 Dove Awards

DR: You may have just answered this question, but do you have any particular experience in a live setting or the studio that you feel sticks out above the rest?

NO: The Doves experience was definitely a great one. I think being able to track the final two songs on the Mikeschair record, my first master scale, full production thing, and being a small part of what went into those songs with the band was beyond awesome. I went into that session going, “I’ve done the math. They’ve recorded ten songs and I’m going to play the last two. I know they’re going to put eleven on the record. Well okay. I may get one song on there.” In that situation, it can be one of two stories – those songs could be leftovers that nobody really likes and they just want to track them as an option, or they’re songs the guys are super jazzed and excited about. I was very lucky that it ended up being the latter. The guys had just written these two new songs that were really fresh on their minds. One of them had a part that alternated between seven and eight, and to them that was like, “Whoa, this is crazy!” I love that kind of thing!

[It was great] being able to track with them, getting the songs done efficiently where everyone’s happy, and at the end of that week heariing them say, “These two songs are going to make the record. Let’s figure out what song needs to be cut from what we’ve already recorded.” I mean, I’m facing ten songs that were tracked by Jeremy Lutito, who’s been a huge influence ever since he tracked drums on the first Mikeschair record. That was my first introduction to him, and I remember thinking, “This guy is exactly what I want to be as a drummer.” He plays in bands, he’s got his own thing going on, but he’s this studio cat that everyone wants to call because he brings such a cool vibe to the studio. He’s not this straight-laced studio guy – he comes up with cool stuff. I can’t think of a single drummer in Nashville who hears a Lutito track and goes, “Nah, that’s garbage.” He has his identity, his sound, and it’s in everything he does, but it’s so for the song. I went into those sessions knowing what Lutito brought to the game and I wanted to play off of that. I studied it extensively. I had all those songs and just listened to them non-stop, because he had kind of created a soundscape for this record drum-wise. That was kind of the production idea, in that they didn’t want it to be typical. The guys were happy with it, I was happy with it, and I look back and think, “Wow, that was a really cool three hours.”

DR: What do you find most gratifying as a player, in being asked to do sessions as well as having held a particular gig for as long as you have? What is most invigorating to you about those scenarios?

NO: In every situation, you have to find a way to be invigorated constantly. With Mikeschair at first it was, “I’m playing and I don’t have to come up with parts.” I love just copying records. That was what I grew up doing, playing drums to records and trying to figure out how to play the parts exactly without pages of notes and music. Now it’s gotten to the point where I’ve been there for four years, and I’d obviously love to be more involved creatively, especially after tracking on the record. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen, but that experience got me excited about what I could end up getting out of this gig.

I’ve started to realize that as much as I love Mikeschair, it’s not me a hundred percent. This is not what I’m going to do the rest of my life. I’m going to be a drummer. Eventually that will end at some point – hopefully not soon! – and I’ll have to move onto something else. The Studio 930 thing came along and I really love what I’m doing there, but at the same time, it’s not necessarily the [ultimate] creative outlet. It is a creative outlet, but again, it’s not a hundred percent me. I was having coffee with Lutito one day and I asked him, “How do you get excited about music?” This isn’t a direct quote, but it was more or less that, “The studio is great, but it’s not where you get your creative outlet. Don’t let that be the thing that drives you to be creative, because at the end of the day, it’s what the producer wants, and that’s your job.” That’s why I think he started Leagues, and that’s why I’m thinking the next step may be finding some guys I love playing music, putting something together, and seeing what happens. I’ve been in pursuit of that for the past six or seven months. I haven’t nailed it down yet, but I feel like I’m on of the verge of finding the right people and being able to get into a room and throw music around.

Mikeschair is my gig. I do studio stuff when it comes and hopefully it comes more often as things go on, but at the end of the day, this musical experiment I want to start, literally on the side of this crazy gig I have, will be where I make my mark. Even if it doesn’t ever become anything, hopefully I’ll have some really cool recorded music where I can say, “That’s me. That’s my mark.” That’s my drive right now, in making sure that all of those things are happening, that they’re gelling well together, and that there’s room for me to be the live guy, the studio guy, and the band guy I’ve always been. I think that’s what I’ve missed, in being the band guy a hundred percent.

DR: From your own experience in being in Nashville, if someone asked you how to do what you’re doing, what advice would you give to them?

NO: I run into a bunch of drummers in little towns all across America when I’m out with Mikeschair, and they’ll say, “I love playing drums and I want to do what you do. How do you it?” I don’t really have the answer for that. Being in a town like Nashville is a double-edged sword. It’s an amazing community and there are so many opportunities, but it is so packed with people that want that job or experience. Dig in – it’s not going to happen right away. Like I said before, I only got the gig I got because I was a known person for four years before it was ever an idea [of me playing with them]. They had always gone to my band’s shows, they’d always seen me, but I think they got stuck on the idea that, “Oh, Nate’s a band guy.”

Go to a town like Nashville, meet people, play every gig you can. Make sure that you’re well-rounded. Don’t be stuck in one mindset of wanting to be a “rock drummer” or in Nashville, a “country drummer.” Guess what? Most of those guys are not necessarily “country drummers.” They have talent, and have all these other contexts they can pull from that attributes to their gig. I’d love to do a country gig one day, and I feel like what I’m doing now will help me with that, but it’s not necessarily my focus right now.

You have to be persistent. I don’t think I would be where I’m at without learning to trust that God has a plan for me. Even when it’s really, really hard, and the struggle is intense, if I don’t trust God, it’s not going to happen. It’s been a really cool experience to go through the ups and downs and know that there is definitely a plan for me. I’m just kind of painting by numbers as I go. I don’t know what’s next.

Don’t come with an expectation that you’re going to be the next Chris McHugh or Jeremy Lutito. Be the next you and continue to do that until someone notices, because it might take four or five years of playing in a cover band gig, but everyone that has talent, the personality, and is a good hang gets gigs. It just might take a little while. Persistence is the word.

DR: What are you currently involved in, and beyond that, what are your aspirations and goals for the future, both short-term and long-term?

NO: Obviously right now the focus is going to be Mikeschair. My head’s just spinning about new songs. We have the whole record done now, so I’m listening and preparing mentally for what will probably be crazy amounts of rehearsals and a new touring season, which we’ve been out of for six months. We’ve just kind of been doing spot dates here and there, so I’ve had a lot of time to do my own thing.

I want to do as much studio stuff as possible, branching out a little into production. I’ve been meeting tons of amazing people and musicians through my church and through knowing other amazing musicians. I’ve just now gotten to the point where I’m like, “Okay, I like these songs you just played me. Would you consider me being a part of this production besides just drums?” I have the band mindset so ingrained in my head that when I was in a band, I would sit there and go, “What are you doing over there? What are you playing on guitar?” Okay, what are you playing on guitar? I’m thinking this” – being the glue or whatever. In the best bands, the drummer always knows what’s going on outside of just his parts. He’s always the thing that’s tying it all together. I want to see the big picture in the studio and not put myself in the track, but put what’s necessary in the track. I want to be a sponge and learn as much as I can.

I think I need to hit the ol’ drum set a little more often! For the longest time, I had one kit, and when you come home after one or two weeks of touring, you don’t want to haul your drums out of the trailer, especially when they’re in trunks in the middle of the trailer. Now that I have two - one that stays at home and one that’s on the road – I have no excuse. The investment of that money was for practice. If I have a kit at home, look at it, then go watch TV, I’m not going to get better. I’m trying to be the best drummer all-around that I can be. I’m wanting to play outside of Mikeschair whenever possible, and start saying yes to gigs where I would normally say, “Well, I don’t know what my schedule’s like, so I can’t really do it.” I want to be able to take a gig knowing that I’ll be able to play it, be challenged to learn some songs, and not be “Nate Onstott, the Mikeschair drummer.” I want to be “Nate Onstott – the guy who can jump into a situation and just kill it.”

I’ve been playing at church, and have found a really cool community at Cross Point Community Church in Nashville. Right now, that is a huge inspiration to me. I’m playing there as much as I can. I grew up doing worship music as a kid and then got really burnt out on it, and all through college I didn’t want to play drums for church – “I’m not a church drummer, I’m a Christian in a band. I do my own thing.” Now that I’ve found a church that I love where I really love how they do music, I just want to dig in and be there as much as possible, whether it be Sunday morning with the main service or Wednesdays with the youth group. Christian music and worship music is so cool now. There are bands out there now that are like Arcade Fire, but they’re Christian and they’re doing worship. That fires me up.

I never understood worship until maybe the last year that I started playing drums at Cross Point, where it’s like, “Oh, that’s what it’s like to be filled with the Holy Spirit!” In my case, that means I get this desire to but take it to that next level behind the kit. I leave a Sunday having played four or five services and going, “I’m on fire! That was exciting! Maybe I got up at five in the morning and now it’s two in the afternoon, but that was so worth it – I want to do it again!” A lot of the musicians there are just Belmont kids, and that’s what blows me away. Belmont is such a cool place, and I’m still kind of tied to that community. I’m kind of big kid. I just want to hang out, play some drums, play with talented musicians, and whatever happens happens.

I don’t want to be a live touring drummer my whole life. At some point, I want a family and to be able to support said family with music. I don’t want to have to do anything else. One person I think of immediately who doing that is Paul Mabury. Just from following him on Twitter, it feels like he’s playing four sessions a day, and from what I can tell, he’s with his family all the time and supporting their life in some way, shape, or form with music. It’s not like he’s gone on the road for four months at a time. He’s home. His day job is playing drums, producing music, destroying grooves non-stop, and he comes home and he’s a family guy! That’s where I want to be. I don’t think I’ll ever necessarily be a Paul Mabury, but I want to be able to say that I’m a professional drummer and that’s it. No side job, nothing else.

I’m kind of a gear nerd and tone freak, and I geek out on drums. I’ve always had this dream of having a cartage company, basically a Drum Doctors for Nashville, or a consultant where people can say, “We want to get a really cool drum sound, and this is what we want,” and just knowing how to get it for them. I want to be able to create soundscapes using the drums like guitar pedals do for guitar players or a computer does for a synth player. I want to be able to expand what drums are in a track to support a song. I actually came to Nashville thinking, “I’ll play drums, I’ll be a music major, but I want to be a drum tech.”

Drums excite me. I think I’ve gotten to the point now where tuning drums doesn’t excite me as much because I have to do it so much for myself. I was hanging out with a guy who said, “Man, this is the kind of drum sound I want,” and I said, “Well, if you’re going for that, you’re going to want this kind of shell with this kind of finish, etc.” I just want to be knowledgeable enough in that field that people come to me with a need like that. Basically, I just want to be more than a live drummer, more than just a studio drummer. I don’t think I have the overall musical talent to produce full-time or to do anything else outside of drums. Drums are my passion and my love, so it’s just finding ways to make that love new again.

Interview #8 - Paul Mabury

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:52:00 -0400

As one of Nashville’s most in-demand and hard-working drummers, Paul Mabury has made a name for himself both in the U.S. and in his native Australia as not only an outstanding musician and producer, but as a man of personal integrity, humility, and wisdom. His unique playing style – a soulful, funky mix of undeniable feel and pocket with a seemingly endless vocabulary of creative grooves – is instantly recognizable, and often emulated by dozens of other drummers in the Nashville area and elsewhere. He has performed in the studio and/or on the stage with Hillsong, Brooke Fraser, Bebo Norman, Dave Barnes, Brandon Heath, Josh Wilson, Jason Gray, and many others, as well as One Sonic Society, a collaborative project between Mabury, songwriter and producer Jason Ingram, and former Delirious? guitarist and songwriter Stu Garrard. Personally speaking, I am unabashed about stating that Paul is my favorite drummer in the Nashville area, not only for his unbelievable groove and pocket, but also for his kindness, warmth, and transparency. He has a big heart for music and an even bigger heart for people, and I am thankful for his willingness to be a part of this interview. Enjoy.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing, and more specifically, what you were hearing when you were growing up. What first caught your ear?

PM: When I was born, and for the first five or six years of my life, my dad was a big band arranger and conductor. I grew up turning a Rhodes into a spaceship, sitting underneath it and imagining I was going to fly away in that! I grew up being around and listening to band rehearsals, horn sections, and drums. When I went home for Christmas this year, I saw a picture that surprised me actually, because I didn’t really remember having a love for the drums at an early age. I saw this picture of me around the age of three, and I’d set up a drum kit out of buckets and baskets. My brother was playing a bat or something as a guitar, and we’d set up all these soft toys, teddy bears and stuff, as our audience, of course. So I saw evidence of me loving the drums even before I can remember. I was born into music and had music around me.

I think most of my musical memories are of church, because it was just a consistent thing every Sunday. That was how I started to play the drums actually. It came out of being on a church camp – my dad was a speaker, pastor, a great communicator. He was speaking at a camp just like you did a lot, and I would get bored a lot. I’ve got a twin brother, and this was a moment where I wasn’t hanging out with him. I was just kind of on my own. I walk into a hall and there’s a drum kit there; I must have been about eleven or twelve. I sit on the drums, and just start playing a beat. I didn’t know where everyone was; I assumed I was a long way from where everyone else was at the camp. The drummer, the owner of the drum kit, came into the hall and I didn’t know. I had my eyes shut I guess, I was just playing away. He heard me playing, went and grabbed my dad, and said, “How long has your son been playing the drums?” and my dad said, “He doesn’t play the drums.” The drummer said, “Well, he does now! You should get him a drum kit and some lessons!” And that was kind of the beginning of the whole drum story. To be honest, my memories as a real little kid are big band and gospel music, and it just moved on from there.

DR: Was there any particular instance growing up that was a sort of “lightbulb” moment, where you felt like music was what you wanted to pursue?

PM: Yeah, it was probably Bill Maxwell on the Keith Green records. He produced and played drums on those records, and was such a dynamic musician like Keith was an accomplished pianist. His drum parts just used to leap out of the vinyl as my dad would listen to those records. The thing that drew me to the drums was the percussive nature of a needle on the record, where if you turned the volume all the way down, you can still hear and feel the drums. You can hear the hi-hats. I think the three things that made me want to go and play were 1) the sound the drums made - my ears were just drawn to it - 2) the sound of drums on a vinyl record, and 3) the fact that I got to see drums all the time. Let’s face it, for a little boy, that’s like candy.

So I just wanted to play, but for the most part as a little kid, I assumed that playing drums wasn’t going to be an option because they’re loud. I had been playing piano for five or six years at that point - my grandmother taught me to play, and I had lessons with her once a week. I thought, “Well, it’s going to be back to the piano,” but as soon as I could quit the piano I did, which was foolish, but I was twelve. Once I quit, I moved over to drums and haven’t stopped since.

DR: You mentioned something about beginning drum lessons. Tell me the story about how you started and what you started to pick up on in that setting.

PM: Well, my father said I could play the drums, but I had to play on a practice pad for six months. It happened to be the middle of the year, so if I made it to Christmas and I still wanted to play, I would get a drum kit. That’s what happened! My first teacher was a guy named Ray Thomas in Perth, Australia. He played drums in the big band my dad would run when I was little. I hadn’t seen him in years, but then he’s on the scene and he’s teaching me the drums. He taught me for six months, went through some stuff, and the lessons had to come to an end, and that was it. I didn’t get any more lessons or training on the drums until I decided I wanted to be drumming for a profession. That was when I was twenty, a long time later.

I went through all my teenage years, finished school, and then went to graphic design school for a year. I was actually in America with my parents at Disneyland, and a show band was playing. I watched the drummer and thought, “Well…why don’t I just do that?” In other words, “Why not play drums and get paid for it?” I hadn’t thought about doing that before that moment, because my parents had always told me, “There’s not much money in music. You should get a trade or something.” So I kind of resisted, but then had this epiphany, and that was it.

It was from then I wanted to ask the question, “How do I do this for real?” I was advised to go to music school. I had to work pretty hard, and I was cheating a lot while drumming. I used my wrists a lot, and my technique was shot. I was, on the whole, self-taught, so I humbled myself and went back to the beginning, and learned how to hold a stick. I mean, I had played a lot of drums – I’d been in bands, doing the thing, and I guess people were kind of considering me a good drummer or whatever. The reality was I felt like I was kind of faking it, and I was finding it difficult to go to the next level. My wrists were fast, but I couldn’t get any faster except to muscle my way through those things.

There’s an incredible music school in Perth, the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. It has a conservatory there, and has both an incredible jazz school and classical school. Graeme Lyall, who is a very, very well-respected composer and musician, and Frank Gibson Jr., an incredible jazz drummer, were both there. And so they were drawing the best from all over the country to come and learn, churning out incredible musicians. I was fortunate to be accepted into that school and to go through my (laughs) one-year stint! What happened was I got in and simultaneously started getting gigs in working bands in town. I was doing that many gigs to where I couldn’t study and play, so I asked Frank, “Should I stay and study, or should I go and play?” He said, “Go and play,” and the rest is history.

DR: Once you decided that were going to pursue drums on a professional level, what influences started coming into your playing as far as artists, records, drummers, etc.?

PM: The first record that really grabbed me was probably Andraé Crouch’s Live At Carnegie Hall, which I think came out in 1974, which was the year I was born. There are a number of great records from that year - Rufusized by Rufus and Chaka Khan is another one. But Live At Carnegie Hall was one of the first records in my dad’s record collection that I wanted to listen to, and the drumming on that was obviously just incredibly soulful and musical. You could tell that everybody who was playing was making it about the vocal and the melody. From that, if I think back to when I started studying music and studying jazz as a twenty, twenty-one-year-old, it was the jazz guys that really started to form my thinking, listening to the melody, chord changes, and how important theme and variation was. I think the greatest thing that listening to jazz and learning how to play jazz drums does for you is that it forms vocabulary. You gain an ability to speak and to say things. That was something it did for me, but at the same time as listening to Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and this incredible history, I started listening to soul records, Motown records, and I just got addicted to the groove and the way that music made you feel. I remember my teacher talking about Steve Gadd, and when I was twelve or thirteen, I remember watching Up Close. So I remembered Gadd, and would find anything Gadd did. His playing with Chick Corea was ridiculous on records like The Leprechaun.

DR: Three Quartets.

PM: Oh yeah, all that stuff’s just crazy. But Andy Newmark with Sly And The Family Stone was one of the most influential drummers to me, and I immediately wanted to get his right hand and start working on how he made the hi-hats speak. [There’s a lot of] power in opening it up in a funky way, a groovy way. I had listened to Art Blakey and drummers like him just slam on those hats, or Buddy Rich, who played with this incredible stamina and strength. But listening to these guys like Andy Newmark and Jeff Porcaro, they seemed to come at it at a slightly different angle. It was a little more fluid and, for the want of a better word, more commercial. That whole world swallowed me up, and I was listening to any records that those drummers were on.

I think that was the beginning of a very long season for me. I was playing in funk bands every night of the week, playing in blues bands, and started going through this love for the backbeat. I made a very deliberate departure from jazz. I was talking with one of the bass players in town last week after we were out playing a show, and we got talking about jazz. We talked for hours. That world will swallow you up, but it’s just such a massive, beautiful world. Still to this day, if I’m producing a record or playing a bunch of sessions, I’ll throw on Kind Of Blue or Bill Evans Trio’s Waltz For Debby to kind of reset and clear the palette. Stuff like that will always be in my life, and I’ll always have a love for that kind of music. But ultimately man, I’m just a sucker for the groove.

DR: It’s interesting – as you know, I’m self-admittedly a huge fan of your playing. The thing I feel you have that a lot of guys don’t tend to find until much later, or at least don’t take the time to develop, is the same thing that guys like Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, and Jim Keltner had, who all came out of heavy jazz backgrounds. They ended up making names for themselves in playing backbeats, and yet still had swing built into their playing. There was lean in their playing. That’s what I think sets you apart from so many other guys. You’re able to pull in that great, thick, right-down-the-middle pocket that can sit anywhere you want it to, and it feels great all the way around. There’s a freshness to your playing that is informed by other players from many previous generations. Oddly enough, that pocket sits incredibly well with pop records now. You’ve worked with artists like Dave Barnes or Brandon Heath where it’s more of pop setting, but the groove is relatable. Someone twenty years older than you could hear some of the stuff you’re playing and say, “Wow, I know this, that sounds familiar.”

PM: Thank you very much! It’s interesting, at the end of last year, I was called up and asked to go down to Music Row and track a soul record for Jackie Wilson, who’s a singer in town, and the players on that record were smokin’. I was the baby on that session, and I could tell by some of the looks that it was like, “Who’s this dude?” We started to track these songs, and this is my music, man. This is the music I listen to and try and emulate with everything. It’s funny, a couple of songs go down and the guys start saying, “Man, where did you come from?” One of the guys was saying, “It’s real.” That made me feel really good, but I think the difference is that I stayed in that music. I wasn’t trying to dig on it for a minute, going, “Oh cool, that’s funky, let me try and play ‘funky drums’” or something.

DR: Like it’s an obligation.

PM: No! It wasn’t something where I was thinking, “Oh, this would be fun for a minute.” I lived there and I wanted to stay there. I love soulful music, whether you’re talking about folk, hard rock, blues, or hip-hop. For me, I feel like really good music is soulful music, and so I try to bring that to whatever style of music I’m playing. Those soul records had a very, very deep impact on me. I think that’s the difference. As I was playing this session for Jackie, I was enjoying a bit of a harvest. The music was throwback, but that’s my passion and my first love. If I had to play one kind of music for the rest of my life, it’d be soul.

DR: I’m in total agreement with you on that one.

PM: And to speak on hip-hop man, I think it’s one of the greatest things that’s happened to drummers as far as the history of drums and pop music. It’s a very exciting time to be in the studio because there’s this collision of genres and musical approaches. For a drummer, it’s nothing but fun and possibility.

DR: I think even to a certain degree it’s given a name and face to lot of drummers who played massive grooves that nobody knows about that got sampled literally hundreds of times.

PM: That’s right!

DR: Even beyond that, it has helped give a name and a face to really obscure but killin’ soul and funk records that some hip-hop artist found somewhere and thought would work for their next single or something.

PM: Yeah man. I remember one time before a James Brown show I went to, Arthur Dickson was standing on the street and no one knew who he was. What his playing meant to me, Clyde Stubblefield, the funky drummers – just being able to meet and be around these players [was huge for me], because they had such a massive impact on my playing and my love for music in general. I can’t remember enough of that story for it to be any good part of an interview!

DR: (laughs) I think I sense where you’re going though. From my own experience, I was fortunate enough to study with huge influences of mine when I was in school. Again, it puts a name and a face to something. I feel like you’re better able to relate to that individual. There’s something to be said for hearing somebody play something on a record and being able to literally pinpoint seconds in a song that may have changed your life.

PM: That’s right!

DR: There’s something really spectacular about having that experience and to then to be able to get together with that person for coffee or breakfast, knowing that something they did, say thirty years ago, still moves you and only helps to inform those types of personal dynamics that come after.

PM: I think that one of the greatest influences on my drumming – it’s almost comical how much I rip this guy off – is Phil Collins. His pop sensibilities, songwriting, to the way he played the drums – to me it’s all inseparable. He’s one of the reasons why I started to play. I was getting on a gig, going to Japan, and I meet the guy who’s playing keys. It’s Brad Cole, who’s basically played every single Phil Collins show. Getting to play with him and being in his life was a big deal. He kept telling me stories and I had to keep reminding myself, “Wow, this is for real.”

DR: Man, it’s bizarre. I mean, I’ve eaten fried chicken at Chester Thompson’s house, if that tells you anything.

PM: Yeah! (laughs) That’s great!

DR: It’s unbelievable sometimes to think about where these guys have been.

PM: Oh yeah. I’ll be playing sessions with Akil and thinking, “Dude, your dad has had a massive influence on my drumming.” I mean, he must have heard that a ton of times. That’s the greatest thing about living in this town though, in that we’re really around a great host of incredible musicians. To just be a small part of that, to play, and to get paid for it – it’s a wonderful thing! I don’t think I’ve ever been as musically excited as I am right now. It’s a really good time.

DR: On the heels of that discussion, let’s talk a little bit about Nashville. Tell me the story about how you ended up moving here and how you began making a name for yourself and getting work once you made the move.

PM: My story here is interesting. I was working a lot as a musician in Australia, and doing a lot of Australasian touring and traveling. I’d started working with a girl from New Zealand called Brooke Fraser, was putting her band together, and working together on her stuff. She thought it was a good time in her career and in her relationship with Sony/BMG to move to Sydney, and that is where I was based. I was going to a church called Hillsong, and it’s a big musical environment. I was reluctant to get involved there musically because I was working in music during the week, and when I went to church on Sunday, I didn’t want to have to play again. But I had a lot of great friends there, was really connected, and loved life there, so I was able to introduce Brooke to a lot of these friends. The rest is history for her - she became incredibly connected at that place.

As for me, I started getting involved there. I was asked quite a few times, and started to feel like it would be a good time for me to get involved, so I started playing and teaching there and playing on things that were being recorded, and ended up co-producing the All Of The Above record with Joel [Houston] and the boys, basically hung around to record the Saviour King record in 2007, and then we moved here. I brought my wife, who I met in LAX on tour with Brooke, which is crazy, but the rest is history for us. We got to know each other while I was on the tour with Brooke in New Zealand. We got married, long story short, and had our first-born, Miller. He was three months old when Maggie and I moved to Nashville.

It’s a hard part of the story man, it’s really hard to describe. There’s a guy called Bill Armstrong, who is a very successful businessman, and he kind of wanted to get into music and see what could happen. That was kind of short-lived, but it was my ticket to get here, because it’s expensive. So for a year, I was pretty tired and kept to myself, but then after a couple of years, I started to have a desire to play. I came over here really unsure of what I wanted to do. I just knew I could do this music thing, I could play the drums, I liked to produce records, and I had a bit of experience in that, but I was really unsure of how it would pan out. I didn’t feel like Nashville needed another good musician!

It took me a while, but after about a year and a half, I started feeling like, “No, I really want to play.” I set a drum kit up, came downstairs, and played the drums. I remember walking up to Maggie in the kitchen and saying, “I’m a drummer. And I love to play.” That was kind of a turning point for me. It was like, “You know what? I want to do this.” So it was from that point that I started going out and meeting people, and it kind of just went from there. I’d get asked to do a session, and they would dig it, and ask me to come back. I’ve been really fortunate. There are a lot of great players in this town, and there are a lot of people who have a lot to bring. I’ve been one of the fortunate ones who have been invited to bring some things, and I’m really enjoying that journey. But to tell you the truth man, I’ve never been happier musically than I am now. This city holds so much opportunity creatively.

The other thing I would say as an artist is that a painter paints on his or her own, and they get to share it with people afterwards. In music, we get to share the creating of the image. What people get to listen to is, and to me should be, community. That’s one of the things I love about this town is that we get to meet each other and communicate in music usually before we’ve even communicated verbally. That’s such a great way to get to know each other, and it starts to knock down walls that we can sometimes put up. For me, that’s the whole reason I’m doing what I’m doing. I love drumming, I love music, and I love listening to music, but it’s the fact that music and the drums take me to people. That’s where the beauty is. We get to create together. It’s an incredible privilege to be a part of that. It’s the power of the song.

The funny thing for me is that I’m drumming a bunch, I’m playing on a bunch of stuff, and I really feel fortunate, but I’m very, very rarely found in a drum shop. I never really even took note of what kind of wood my drums were made of. I’m just not one of those guys, and it’s been embarrassing, you know? I’ll be playing a gig, and there’s a line of drummers there all watching, and the second there’s down time or whatever where I go and get a beer and they’ll be like, “What kind of snare drum is that?! What kind of drum is that?! What year was it made?!” and I’m like, “Man, I’ve got to tell you, I have no idea. I just tune them until they sound good and then away we go.” It’s been recently where I’ve started to get into that kind of thing and work some things out as far as what kind of drums I want to use and what kind of sticks I want to play, because I’ve always just been kind of a grip-it-and-rip-it kind of guy. So it’s kind of weird for me even to be talking to you about this stuff, because it’s a very natural part of who I am. It’s never something where even now I go, “I’m a drummer drummer drummer!” I’m just a guy who loves the song, and the drum kit’s the way I come into that environment.

DR: That’s honestly how it should be. If you’re a “drummer,” nobody’s ever going to call you. You have to go into it seeing the bigger picture.

PM: Yeah man! It’s so funny you say that. I remember this guy, who’s an incredible drummer that puts on clinics – the stuff he does on drum kit is stuff where I have no idea what’s going on – coming up to me one night after a gig and he goes, “Man, how do you make it feel like where you’re putting it?” I don’t know, to tell the truth! But one thing that is something I do, that I would say to drummers that I think can be helpful, is record yourself and listen to it. Play a feel at a tempo that doesn’t feel comfortable until it feels comfortable, and become more aware of how long a quarter note is at that tempo. Enjoy the space. Be conscious of your left hand if you’re right-handed, be conscious of your right hand if you’re left-handed. I think that’s something that recording does - it makes you aware, painfully aware, of what’s going on. I think that was the greatest thing for my playing, in that earlier in my career, I got the opportunity to record. It was from that point where I started going, “Man, I suck,” and when I realized that, it was a turning point! (laughs) A moment of truth! It’s clarity. There’s no greater clarity as musician than to listen back to what you’re saying. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of addicted to it now, playing and listening back to it.

So play to the click for ten minutes without doing any fills. Just play that feel. Then turn the click off, play that feel for another ten minutes, and then turn the click on and see if you finished where the click still is. You start to work on your internal body clock and getting that stronger. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m still doing that. For me, that’s still most important thing when I practice. It might be on a session, where I put the song down and I’m like, “Man, I was having to think and focus during that take because, for whatever reason, that tempo was working me out.” So I’ll immediately come home and dig deeper into that. Instead of going, “Oh, I was fine, I played fine, everyone’s happy, everyone’s high fiving,” I’ll immediately come home and jump on that. To me man, it’s all about how you make it feel. Meaning every single note, putting every note exactly where it should be – that’s what I think about. It’s what sometimes actually messes me up.

I tell you what, when I actually started doing those funk gigs, there was this guitarist named Percy Robinson, a New Zealander, who just had this incredible feel when he played guitar and had a wonderful voice. He was one of the biggest influences on my musical career. He was a very dynamic guy, right up in your grill, and he had a lot of belief in me, but man, he let me know when it didn’t feel right. He was the most confrontational and the most helpful musician I’ve had in my life. He kind of helped me to become an ambassador for groove and for how the music makes you feel. I feel like I could work on that for the rest of my life without taking on anything else. It’s a massive world. These players that people speak of like Steve Jordan, Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro, John Robinson, Andy Newmark, Mike Clark, Steve Ferrone, the list goes on – it’s how those players made it feel. Bonham! The way he made it feel. It sounded like he was hitting the drums with baseball bats. That to me is where I want to live – I have no desire to depart to anywhere else. It’s a love affair for me. I really have fallen in love with the concentration and the focus element of the groove, and the way it takes your mind and places it on something simple – make it feel good. That’s it!

DR: Having gotten to that point, I want to hear your perspective on your own playing. Tell me more about your personal philosophies on things such as groove, feel, time, coming up with parts in the studio, playing for the song – all the raw, basic essentials to playing drums and playing drums well.

PM: As far as the way I feel about my own playing, if I had to have a title about this topic, it would be “Tortured Soul,” because I generally can’t stand my playing, but I guess that’s part of the reason why I want to keep improving, and maybe why someone else may like my playing. It’s because I’m just not settling. There’s a fine line between dysfunctionally crucifying yourself over what you’re not getting right or whatever, and then something like the desire I have for the perfect pocket, which is what keeps me moving forward.

As far as playing drums on songs and playing drums in the studio, there are two things that are really important to me. One is the sound – what am I playing? How am I playing it? How am I striking the drum? Confession: I’ve never set up three cymbals on a session in Nashville. It’s always two rides, with one as a crash, and the hi-hats.

DR: WOW.

PM: Whenever I’m on sessions in town, there’s always a crash stand empty, and it’s certainly not because I’m trying to do that. It’s just that I believe you can get so many colors out of one cymbal. Really, I think that’s the jazz world that’s taught me that. Look, if I have the need for a third cymbal, I’m just going to go ahead and throw it on there, man. It’s not like I’m trying to make a point. It’s just that I’ve never needed something over my right shoulder. I just kind of feel like sound and tone comes out of the elements which I normally set up, which are very few. I think that’s an important thing – what you bring as far your sound, quickly getting to those tones that are going to match the song, and that you see yourself and the engineer working together as a team. You ask questions. I’ll ask questions like, “Is that sounding good to you in there? Is there something I can do that you think would make it sound better?” Having an attitude of “team” [is very important]. Working with the producer, you ask things like “Dude, are you digging this?” “I’m going for a darker sound here, is that what you’re after?” “Do you want me to listen to anything you’ve been listening to so I know what sounds you’re going after?” I’ll often even check in with producers before I come and ask, “Can you give me some references?” You know, “What kind of snare drums am I bringing? What kind of cymbals am I bringing?” That stuff is really important to me.

The other thing is song compatibility. What am I bringing to the song that’s going to make the melody pop? Listening to the melody, looking at the chart, thinking, “How do I pick everybody up on this song and carry them to the end?” That’s what I think about. The thing that I’m listening to more than anything is the melody. A good example of this is on the Andrew Ripp record. There’s a song on there called “Growing Old Too Young” that starts with me doing hi-hats and a one-drop – putting the kick on ‘2’ and ‘4’. When they played it to me, I heard the song and I was like, “This just needs to be huge! The drums just need to sound big!” I’m usually using 16-inch crashes as hi-hats anyway, so they’re on there, and I think the smallest cymbal I had on the kit was a 22”. I was just like, “This has got to sound really big!” I’m playing the hi-hats with the sticks coming over my shoulders – I was playing hard! I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I listen to a song, I try to place myself in an emotion – “What is the emotion of this song? What is the mood? What are the colors? What’s the season? Is it summer, spring, winter?” You go in and try and play that emotion or that season or that temperature or those colors. Man, it’s so enjoyable. It’s what we love doing. It’s like bringing something to the story of the songwriter and the person who’s performing the song, and bringing something to ourselves that edifies and holds up and says, “Here’s the message. This is what we’re trying to say here corporately.”

Obviously from a session point of view, you’ve got to be able to do all these things, generally speaking, quickly, and also be able to play the song nineteen times in a row if that’s what everyone wants. It’s funny man, you’ve got to be kind of careful with what you play in the studio, because if it’s something that’s difficult to keep up for a long period of time, and you’re on one of those sessions where the producer likes to play the song over and over and over again, you’d better be able to do it for that long. I’ve said on a couple sessions too that, “Look, I’m playing really hard to get this thing sounding like this, so I’ve probably got five or six takes in me.” It’s kind of like, “Let’s just be aware of that. I can either back it off and track it differently, or we can keep on tracking the way we’re tracking right now, and I’ll hit the drums the way I’m hitting them right now, and then I’m going to be done.”

DR: Do you have any particular experience in the studio or in a live setting that sticks out to you above the rest?

PM: Hmm. That’s a good question. I think from a live point of view, playing Berlin Stadium in Germany two weeks after the World Cup with Hillsong – that was pretty crazy. Another was opening for David Bowie in Wellington, New Zealand with Brooke. I think the best gig I’ve ever played was my first time to Tokyo with Brooke Fraser. We played a twenty-minute show. We were there for five days in a beautiful, big apartment, and just surfed the subway all over Tokyo for five days, played the show, and I was like, “Are you kidding me? This is what I do for a job.” I’d just met my wife, and so I spent most of what I earned on the phone with her, telling her about how much fun I was having. Those would be the gigs that stick out off the top of my head, but there are a lot of experiences that keep coming to mind.

In the studio, working with Jeremy Allom – he did some work with Massive Attack and Incognito, the whole acid jazz movement. He came up under George Martin at Abbey Road, and was the guy who gave me the courage to even think of myself as a producer. I was playing drums on something he was producing and I kept saying, “Well, how about this? How about that?” He took me out for coffee later on and said, “You’ve got a real producer’s head and this is definitely something you should be considering.” I didn’t even know what a producer was; I was just doing what I was told and playing drums on songs. That’s an old memory from back in Australia.

Recording the All Of The Above record with Hillsong United was another one. There are a couple of moments there that really happened in the moment that weren’t touched or changed. They were just pure musical experiences. That’s a group of people who do life together. There’s a song called “Hosanna” where at the end, Joel and I and the guys were like, “Let’s just keep playing at the end and just see what happens,” and people who know that record know what happened. It’s just exactly as it went down. Another song on that record, “Lead Me To The Cross,” was a track where Brooke brought it in really late. We were taking a while to work it out, some dudes were stressed out, and then all of a sudden we were like, “Let’s just track it!” We went through it once, and then it was the second take that everyone heard. What I hear when I listen to that song is just history and relationships manifested in togetherness as it’s going down.

I loved the experience of working with Dan Muckala on Brandon Heath’s record - that was a lot of fun. I love working with Dan. Man, I’ve got to tell you, on most sessions I’m playing lately I’m just having a ball. I love it. Even if the music’s not really my cup of tea, the hang, the players I’m getting to play with, everything – I don’t take it for granted. I absolutely love every minute I get to do this. I think if I wasn’t loving it, I’d just stop doing it and do something else. There are too many people who can do it and love it for me to be complaining or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes I’m in a session and one of the guys will be complaining, getting upset about this or that, and I’m like, “Man, there are too many people who want to do this,” and I don’t want to be that guy, but man, it’s pretty good what we get to do. I’m just really fortunate to be a part of it.

DR: What do you find is most gratifying to you as player, as someone who is asked to come into so many different situations both in the studio and in a live setting?

PM: I think it’s the opportunity that we have to contribute to something that is very dear to someone’s heart. A songwriter or performer comes in and they’re basically handing you their baby, their vision, something that is incredibly important to them. I love seeing the transition between that happening and the vulnerability to the reward, where they’re just so happy with the way the track’s sounding. It’s so in the moment, and we get to witness that as session musicians and people involved in this process. We get to be a part of that really special moment. I think that’s the most rewarding thing. As a producer, it’s even more so, because it’s more tiring since you’re on the whole journey. But it’s two-fold as a producer, because you are serving the artist’s vision, and so you get to see the pre-production happen, which is like putting the first splashes of paint on a blank canvas. Then you get to see this story evolve, you get to hand it to them at the end, and the whole time you’re just serving the vision that they have. Man, I love that. For me, it takes me out of myself and places me in, as much I can be, their hopes and their dreams for the project. That’s an incredible opportunity. I think that’s the thing where I gain the most satisfaction.

The other thing that I really kind of enjoy is seeing myself improve. It’s such a labor of love. When you care about how you sound as much I care about how I’m sounding on the drums, it’s the tiny things that have a massive impact on me, the kind of things where someone else may be like, “Oh, I can’t even tell the difference.” You live in the minutia of the skill. I’ll come in [the control room] and be like, “Yeah, that feels good,” and I’ll feel like I just want to be happy that it’s feeling like I want it to feel. The problem is that sometimes I’ll be sitting in the room hating what I did, hating the way it feels, and people around me are going, “Whoo! Yeah! Yeah!” That kind of makes me start to feel like I’m some sort of lunatic or something. I’m going nuts because of some little thing that’s not right, but I’ll say it again, man – I’m not listening to anything more than the way the rhythm just sets up the melody. For me, if it’s not feeling quite right, it drives me nuts. So yeah, those are the areas where I get the most satisfaction.

DR: What do you feel you end up taking away from those scenarios after they are finished, beyond what you experience while they are actually happening? What do you feel you come away with that has the ability to translate into all sorts of things, particularly your playing?

PM: Right, that’s a really good question, and I think it’s very relevant for drummers who are wanting to get into this world. I think I hold what I do pretty loosely – I at least like to think I do! (laughs) When I come out of a session and I’ve played on a record with my peers, where Tony Lucido or James Gregory or Brent Milligan’s playing bass, and they’re like, “Dang, that was great man!” or “How much fun was that?” or “What a great couple of days,” I’ve come away from that experience feeling like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing. I’m doing what I’m good at, like it’s a hand in a glove. I feel like I’m where I’m meant to be. When the artist comes away and they say, “Man, I love what you brought to this project,” you come away feeling like you’ve contributed something that was worthwhile. I like to think of it as adding to the conviction that you have, the reasons you do what you do, and the reasons why I’m still playing a drum kit.

When I first played a drum kit, I didn’t know if I was going to do that for a job or anything. It still kind of feels weird. You know what man, it’s probably going to change, but still to this day, I don’t have one endorsement. I’m not endorsed by anything, and it’s because I don’t go after that stuff. I still don’t wake up and go, “I’m a professional drummer!” but I do it almost every day and it is how I’m paying the bills. So what’s left? (laughs) It’s kind of weird. To kind of tie that up, I have drummers email me or they’ll get me on Facebook or send me a message on Twitter and they’ll say, “Man, can we hook up and chat? I just want to pick your brain on how to get into this thing.” My answer for anyone in that position is, “I don’t know how you get into this thing.” You know? The only thing I can think to say is you get an opportunity, you deliver, and you get asked again, or maybe do something else. To me, it’s not a complicated situation. I mean, maybe some of the other guys know how. You asked me that question, “When something goes really well, what do you take away from that?” [The answer is] “Maybe I’m meant to be doing this.” That’s what I’d say to someone who isn’t doing it yet. Just take it a day at a time. Work really hard. Work on two and four. Make it feel good, because that’s what pays the bills. Write songs. If you can’t play the piano, play the piano. If you can’t play a chord on guitar, play the guitar. Pick one, do one, whatever. If you’re like yourself, just play everything really well. The truth is if you want to play drums professionally, then it’s going to be like any trade. You do one job well and you get hired again, and it’s just one job at a time. That’s all it’s been for me.

One thing has always led to another, and I’m still just trusting that it’s going to continue. It just sounds painfully simple, but I don’t know how to see it any other way. All the other boys in town that I know who are playing great are busy, you know? There’s a lot of music being recorded. There was a time when I was here when I wasn’t busy and I was getting a gig every now and then, but then I’d get another one and that would lead to another one. It is what it is, man. I had to turn down a couple of records over the winter, and it was painful, but you know what? Someone else stepped in and played their pants off. That’s the greatest thing and the most intimidating thing about this town.

(At this point, the recording stopped for just a few minutes before we both realized it. The conversation went into how there is a close community of drummers in Nashville who can step in and play on a record when another is unable to do so, and there remains a sense of brotherhood and friendship as opposed to envy and bitterness. Paul also began discussing the reasons behind posting videos of drum tracks he has played in the studio to websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, which is where the recording begins again.)

I’ll upload YouTube videos, or sometimes an artist or an artist’s manager will do so, of me playing. I don’t think it gets me work. You get work through relationships and through doing really well for a producer. One of the things you want to do as a player is impress another drummer, so that when he can’t do a session (it rarely happens), the producer will say, “Who do you think I should get?” Or more importantly, impress a bass player. I’ve gotten sessions from bass players, and I’ve gotten sessions for bass players. What I would say is impress musicians, and what will happen is work will come if they’re working, so impress working musicians.

But that’s not why I upload videos, and I have on a couple of occasions thought of pulling the videos down and stopping, because the last thing I would want is for people to think that I’m showing off or something. The sole reason why I do it and I haven’t taken them off is for the young people who are thinking one day they could do this. I want to do anything I can to inspire them to believing in that, and to kind of lift the curtain back and say, “This is actually what it’s kind of like. For what it’s worth, here’s a session. Here’s a song going down.”

To inspire young players like that is important to me. Like I was saying, people will send me a message on Twitter or whatever and say, “That was great! Keep the posts coming!” Little things like that cause me to think that I need to keep uploading these things, because I know young players are looking forward to the next one, or not young players, just players in general - people who love music. I know that when I was young, I would have wanted drummers to do that. I’d have been hanging out for the next video, you know? Like I was saying to you earlier, when I was growing up and learning to play, there was no such thing as YouTube. I couldn’t type in “paradiddle” and then two hundred videos would come up. I had to go out and buy a video of Steve Gadd or another great player and sit and watch that whole thing. When you were done with the video, that was it. That’s all you’re getting, whereas now there’s such an incredible access to information that I think we owe it to that whole world to be plugging into that. It’s not for everyone and I get that, but I like using social media and the social networking system to keep the musical community as connected as possible. That’s what I love about what you’re doing.

DR: Thanks man!

PM: There’s a saying – “You lose what you don’t celebrate.” What you’re doing is choosing to celebrate what’s happening in this city.

DR: I just think you guys are great – that’s it!

PM: The truth is, I guarantee you that every single player that you’ve interviewed felt encouraged. That’s important, man. I think an important element to a good result in music is artists being able to say, “I’m feeling encouraged in what I’m doing and I’m being well-received by my peers.” That’s why I’ll upload videos of what’s been going on during one in every four sessions or whatever.

DR: Man, if this any encouragement to you, for one, I love when you post videos, and secondly, through either showing them videos of you or they just saw them on their own, a lot of people have really been inspired by them. The first video I ever watched of yours was you tracking drums on “Someone’s Somebody” by Dave Barnes, and occasionally I still go back to it to watch you show how it’s done. You play a song down that feels great, it’s tasteful, and you put your spin on it. It’s not stick twirls and double-bass patterns in 15/16. I mean, I’ll do YouTube searches for friends of mine who are playing regularly, just to see what’s out there and see what they’re up to. It comes down to just holding each other up.

PM: I think there’s a pressure in the music world to be “cool,” or to be obscure. I think there’s an element of humility that comes with, “You know what? I’m going to involve other people. I’m going to video this and put it up there so people can be involved in what I’m doing.” I’m not going to be this guy sitting in a green room with everyone pushed “out there.” I want to reply to people. I want to tear down the walls between someone who’s doing well and someone who wants to be doing well. Ultimately, the most effective thing a musician can do is to watch someone being effective. How do you get better at your golf swing? You watch a really good golf swing over and over again, then video yourself swinging a golf club, then get it looking better. Get it looking like the other guy! You know what I mean? That’s the way I like to drum. I love to find footage of players doing stuff that I haven’t done and then get on it. Just get on it and try and make it feel like that other player was making it feel. If you liked it, get on that. There are just no excuses anymore because it’s so easy to find information now.

That’s what I’m saying that I think is so exciting about music right now. I can listen to a record and go, “Man, that drum part’s beautiful. It feels so good,” and then immediately go online and find stuff out. It never used to be like that. It’s a very, very new situation and it’s such a useful situation. I was listening to the new Adele record, and from the downbeat, I was just totally enjoying every minute of it. And then when it got to track six, “He Won’t Go,” I have to say I couldn’t believe how much I was like, “Dude, that is my vibe right there! This guy must have listened to the same records and must have been influenced by the same gear.” I mean, the sound of the stick on the hat and the way he had the snare drum tuned, all that stuff. It’s that community aspect – I guarantee you that if I was able to hang out with that guy, I know we would have a lot of stuff in common. It’s those little things about music. I remember this guy calling me up and saying, “Dude, I’ve been listening to this record. You’re playing awesome on it!” and I said, “It’s not me on that record!” but it’s another guy from L.A., and we have similarities in how we play.

Honestly man, I really love that stuff. I love that we’re all bringing something different, but there are plenty of things you find in common. As much as I can get online and find stuff that’ll inspire me, I want to do it. I’m just doing my best to contribute to that. I think what you’re doing with this site is killer. It looks killer and the interviews are smokin’, man! It’s cool because we don’t often get to connect. Jeremy Lutito and I will bump into each other in coffee shops from time to time, but unless we make a hang happen, it’s never going to happen. He’s on a session, I’m on a session, we’re always on two different sessions. Both of us on the same session? Now that’d be freaking cool, man! I’m never going to get to hang with these other guys where a lot of the time we’re sharing records. If anything can be done to bring the community together, let it be done, and you’re one of the people who are actually doing it. Well done, man. It’s good times!

DR: Thanks man, I really appreciate that! Tell me about what you’re involved in right now, especially with One Sonic Society, along with the producing and playing you’re doing.

PM: The story behind One Sonic Society is that I’ve known Jason Ingram since 2004. I was coming here finishing records and producing and involved in mixing them here. We met, and apparently the mix engineer said, “This guy wants to come and take some of your time and sit and chat,” and I was like, “Yeah man, cool.” We connected and really just felt like we wanted to keep this relationship going. So every single time I was in town, we’d catch up and connect. Between 2004 and 2007 when I moved here, we just stayed in touch, and I was here a bunch. We got to know each and we always felt at some point we’d love to do something together, but we weren’t trying to fast-track that or make that happen. So OSS really came out of his drive. Jason thought, “If there’s anyone I could work with, who would it be?” and thank the Lord I was one of them, and the other one was Stu Garrard. To put it simply, we’re just writing songs and recording them for the church to hopefully inspire the arts in that environment. It’s really not anymore complicated than that. We kind of see it as a way we can give to the community and try to inspire artistically as well, but we are all very conscious and deliberate about the fact that we want it to serve the people and not serve us. It’s something that I’m really excited about and thoroughly enjoying. They’re some of my closest friends, and it’s great that I get to work with them in different settings as well on other records and situations, but OSS is kind of like our professional baby, if you like, that we’re all enjoying. It’s certainly not as artistic as we could go, but it has a very clear purpose. Our latest EP is I think our strongest and has really good songs on there that some churches are already singing.

I’m getting to produce a lot of music for a group called Sons And Daughters, which is David Leonard and Leslie Jordan. They’re incredibly gifted singers and songwriters. I got to produce their first EP, and we’re about to get busy on the second one. It is a really beautiful project.

There’s a bunch of stuff on the books, like a lot of records I’m getting to play on over the next couple of months, as well as things opening up in L.A. It’s great! I’m writing a lot more now. I’m excited about songwriting, and really enjoying that. Anything and all things music, man. I’m just really happy and excited to be involved in the community here. I feel really privileged to be a part of it.

It’s funny man, there’s this quote that keeps coming back to me from when I studied jazz under Frank Gibson Jr. I remember sitting in his “office,” which was two drum kits facing each other and then a wall of vinyl, so you think of the most inspiring room for us and it was pretty much that. I was sitting there one day, and sometimes we wouldn’t play, we’d sit and chat like we’re doing now. He said, “Man, look at this quote right here,” and he pointed above him and behind his head was a white board that he’d always just draw stuff on. There was this quote on it that said, “Music isn’t about being competitive. It’s about being creative and not letting the instrument get in the way of the music.” That quote has stayed with me ever since then. It’s like it was engraved on my soul. I think that when we get competitive, we have a breakdown in community. The ideas stiffen up, the expressions stiffen up, and we hold the sticks too tight, if you will. When we stop being competitive and deliberately make a decision to be creative and also deliberately find people to go be creative with, we find great ideas and a river of flow in terms of great ideas. We hold the sticks loosely. It’s the quote that I try to keep in front of me at all times as I’m navigating through one of the most competitive environments in the music industry. Look, we’re here in Music City and there’s only so much work. There’s a lot of work, but there’s only so much, and there’s an incredible amount of people moving here to be successful. My advice to anyone, including myself, in every moment is forget competitiveness and just go after creativity.

DR: What do you aspire to or, should I say, where do you aspire to be in a year, five years, ten years, and even longer?

PM: (speaks slyly) I’d say my greatest aspiration would be to get a stick endorsement. (laughs)

DR: All right, we’re good to go, that’s the interview. (laughs)

PM: So I wouldn’t have to buy sticks anymore! I’m totally kidding. I think Jason Ingram, myself, and Stu G. have a number of things percolating that I’m really excited about, and there’s a bunch of artists that I’m really excited to get to work with and see how that pans out. I’m really enjoying the producing, and I’ve got a number of opportunities coming up to be producing a lot. It’ll probably mean that I’m going to be doing less drumming. I’ll still be drumming a lot, but will have more producing, and that excites me. While I play the drums and I love the drums, I love making songs, and so anytime I get to be more a part of the full process, I’m really happy to be doing that. I think my wife would rather me just play the drums, because I come home after a session and I’m sitting on the couch with her, and generally speaking, when you’re producing, it’s all-encompassing. But the producing thing is something I really love. I think short-term, that’s what I’m really excited about. And you know what, mate? When I am producing a fair bit, I go and play the drum sessions I get with this freshness, because I’m like, “Awesome, tomorrow I’ve just got to rock out and play the drums,” and you enter into that situation with a lightness ‘cause it’s like, “This is awesome! I’m just getting to play the drums today.” I’m able to kind of bring something to a project since I haven’t heard the song until I walk in the room. So I’m really excited about the producing.

As far the long-term goes, it’s really interesting that you asked that question, because I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Where do I want to be in five years? Where do I want to be in ten years? How’s it going to look? You never want to assume anything. I think a great goal would be to be an established music maker in this city, and to be making great records. In five to ten years from now, to still be an integral part of the music scene, to have moved deeper in that experience, and to have become more effective and more useful [is what I aspire to]. That’s the knee-jerk reaction.

I’m a parent now. I’ve got two boys, Miller and George, and another one on the way, and so with every day that goes by, there’s more pressure on success in music. Like I’ve said countless times, I feel really grateful and really fortunate. I think one of the main reasons I’m repeating that is in light of being a father – you know, I’m not a single guy, I’m married – I’m still making music for a living, and that’s why I’m so grateful. At this point, I’m providing for a family and still getting to do what I love, and I feel really fortunate about that. I think in simply looking forward, I just want to be able to improve and maintain forward motion in my career in music and be grateful for every opportunity that I get, be able to be involved in music, and be a great dad and a great husband. There are a lot of taxed families in the music industry.

DR: You hinted at some things I wanted to address, because I don’t think I’ve had a lot of opportunities in these interviews to touch on this subject, and I feel like it’s vitally important. Tell me, as best you can, how you’ve been able to balance the workload you have and the nature of being a professional musician with maintaining a healthy family relationship, along with other important relationships.

PM: The middle of last year, I remember I was on a record, and it was a big record with a big budget. Every single player on that record was a producer, and I mean regularly producing records. From a production point of view, I was a newcomer, having only had a couple of opportunities here to date. All the other guys were just throwing out the records. One of the first conversations that we had was about the “magic” that happens between 10 and 2 – 10 PM and 2 AM.

As I was sitting pretty quiet in this conversation listening to this, I became painfully aware that that had been my life. My single life had been discovering this silence, where as the day is winding to an end, your creative flow increases. You end up in this space where great things happen. That was the conversation.

They didn’t know, and I didn’t say anything, but two days before that record started, I was in conversation with Maggie, saying, “This is not working. Me staying up working on music, you going to bed on your own - it’s just not working,” and she was like, “Absolutely.” I was sorry for that and I wanted to turn that around. I just made a decision in that moment that we would, as best we could, go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time with the kids, and therefore I’d get to work a few hours in my home studio right here before I’d have to get to a session for a ten o’clock start or whatever. So instead of saying, “No, I’m creative, I’m going to stay up late and work,” or whatever, I just say I’m not going to do that, for the sake of our marriage and for the sake of our parenting. Whenever it comes to the time when I’m leaving this planet man, I’m not going to be thinking, “I wished I’d worked longer hours that night on those records,” but I know I’m going to be thinking, “Man, I wished I’d spent more time with my boys. I wished I’d hung out and talked with my wife more.”

You know, we’re talking drums and stuff, but this is part of life and to me, it’s what is going to make me a better player, so that when I rock out to play on a record, I’m healthy in myself. I’m not divided inside. I’m connected to my wife, I’m connected to my boys, and I’m bringing that environment into the studio. Unfortunately, the studio can be a place of really broken relationships, and so early on, I’ve made a deliberate choice to really work on that. Every now and then I have to burn the midnight oil, then get up early with the kids. It’s one of those things where every now and then, you’ve just got to work hard. My wife is amazing and incredibly gracious and sometimes goes, “I’m going to let him sleep because he’s been up all night turning that project in.”

But man, I just think it’s a decision. That’s what keeps you healthy. A lot of the musical scene is based on the hang time and stuff, and I’ve just already resigned to the fact that I’m not going to hang out a bunch. If I’m out in town and hanging out or whatever, it’s going to be very deliberate and from time to time, but this is what I do man, this is my job, so I get up with this very 9-to-5 attitude. I want the exception to be that I work late and that I’m away from my family.

I don’t get out much on the road anymore. That’s another real big practical thing. I came off the road gigs I was doing and, generally speaking, people know now that I just don’t go out on the road. For an exception, I’ll go out and do something, but I just trust that the money and the success will come in other areas. You know, I’ll still go out from time to time on this and that, but the general rule is I’m home. The studio is my focus now. I had to make deliberate decisions. I was out on a couple of road trips and was turning down a fair amount of sessions. I was like, “I’m a dad and I’m a husband, and I don’t want to be out on the road making money when I could be home making money.” That was simple decision to make.

I would say to musicians, especially the guys who have just gotten married, to be careful what you decide to do. Establish boundaries that protect your wife and protect yourself, and make sure you don’t put it all on the line for success, at least not the things that matter, anyway. Work really hard and trust that good things will come within the boundaries you’ve established. The most important thing in my life is my family, then music. That’s where I’m at man, and I’m really grateful that I’m involved within those boundaries. All that said, it’s real tough.

DR: I think the struggle that I’ve faced in many instances has been, “This thing I’m involved with could lead somewhere, so it needs to happen.” For instance, I had a possible slot on a tour that would have gone on for about six months straight, which would have started about a month before I get married. I would have basically spent the first five months of my marriage away from my wife, who would be here by herself trying to start a life for us without me. It would have been great money, but thank God I didn’t get it. I would have been shipping tons of money home, but why would I dedicate myself to spending the rest of my life with someone only to be apart from them for the first five months of that? And for what? To take two pieces of wood and hit things each night? Is that it? I mean, I love what I do, but at the same time, if my arms and legs got cut off, at the end of the day, I’m still going to have a wife who loves me. I’m still going to be who I am.

PM: People ask me about this, and I think the disclaimer that I usually put out there is everyone’s different. Everyone has a pattern that works for them. I’m good friends with some guys who are just road dogs, and they’ve been married for over twenty years. Their wives got used to them being away a lot. It sounds crazy, but if they come off the road for a little while, they have to have this huge adjustment period where suddenly it’s like, “Hang on there a minute, you’re home all the time? What?” So I get it, and who I am to say anything about that? I just know when I’m away for extended periods of time, Maggie doesn’t like it, and I don’t like it, and my kids don’t like it. My oldest son doesn’t cope. I’m not going to injure my sons, particularly my oldest, or my wife for the sake of my career. I’d stack shelves before that. It’s just not a negotiable situation. It’s not something you entertain. I would encourage musicians who are married to talk about it with their wives. Those who are engaged or thinking about getting engaged? Talk about it. Don’t let it just be, “Well, that’s just the way it is,” and don’t let the conversation be, “Well, I thought it was going to be different.” Talk about what it is and go from there.

The reality is the road is contagious, especially here. The tour bus lifestyle is pretty sweet. Your responsibilities are pretty minimal, you’re pampered, you’re really well looked after, especially if you’re on a good gig, and it’s a lifestyle you can pretty well get used to for very little work to do. I remember I finished a record on the road. I did all the tracking, I knew the tour was happening – it was a bus tour, so it was perfect. I tracked everything in a couple of days and jumped on the bus with a hard drive full of tunes and tracks. I finished the whole thing on that tour, because there’s just nothing to do. I got up in the morning, sat on the bus, set up my laptop and inbox and went and did the whole thing. I did soundcheck, went back on the bus, worked on things, did the show, came back, worked some more. I’m saying that because most of the time, there’s really not much to do at all. You can finish a record! There are really obvious reasons why musicians get stuck in that life, because they really don’t go well together in being a dad and looking after kids, then getting on a bus and hanging out with a bunch of blokes, sitting around on your bum all day and playing the drums.

These are not very popular things to say, but I don’t mind saying them for a second. It’s a big freaking deal in the music industry. I mean, heck man, this may be the only drum interview where this has ever been talked about, I don’t know. The truth is, for me, my family’s more important. The funny thing is I’m working with a bunch of people who feel the same way, and that helps. My experiences in working in studios after moving here were very much nocturnal experiences. I think one of the things I love about this place is that it’s got a very business-like approach to recording music.

DR: It’s not seedy.

PM: No! When it gets to like six o’clock on a session, everyone’s looking at their watch. Everyone’s like, “Weellll….” Some of them are getting calls from their wives and saying, “Hey, let me get this.” It’s just a town that really embraces that. You’ve got to have your family, so you’ll say, “See you tomorrow.” Every now and then, you get people who are like, “We’re going to track late. I hope that’s ok,” and their managers will send you an email letting you know that, and then still most of the time, you never do. You just get it done and you go home, so that’s a great thing about Nashville. You get to be involved in music and have a family. There are a lot of people moving here from L.A. right now because of that. Generally, at 9:30 or 10 AM, that’s the downbeat, and you’re tracking, and then come 6 o’clock, you’re heading home. It’s business-like. It’s cool man, when I’m doing drum sessions for a record, something I love to do is to say hey, “Give me the hard drive and I’ll whack percussion on tonight or loops or anything that you can take or leave.” On most of the sessions I do that. Even then, if there’s a real time pressure, I’ll bathe the kids, hang out with my wife, have dinner, then I’ll go downstairs, do a couple of hours’ worth, and go to bed. I’m still kind of sealing up the day at the same time. You just learn to manage it.

It’s a big deal. It’s interesting, we talked about, “What kind of music did you listen to?” and “What inspires you?” and “How do you make a career out of this thing?” Well, if you want to get married, you’re in love, and you want to be a dad, or you want to be a mom, this kind of stuff is really important. You want to find other musicians who are in a good marriage and they’re good parents and are playing music for a living. It’s doable, but you’ve got to rage against the machine. That’s for sure. It’s not easy, but it’s just like I said, it’s following through on strong and simple decisions.

Interview #7 - Evan Hutchings

Fri, 13 May 2011 22:18:00 -0400

One of the challenges many up-and-coming drummers face is the process by which they allow an identity to emerge from their playing, enabling them to successfully balance the needs of artists while still being able to creatively express themselves within their given musical situation. As someone who has invested countless hours of time into the study of great music and the great drummers behind it, Evan Hutchings has been able to successfully blend those two worlds into a drumming style that is musically diverse and rich with vocabulary, yet is also uniquely his own. Evan has provided a solid, colorful foundation for an array of artists including Griffin House, Katie Herzig, Tyler James, Matthew Perryman Jones, and Pico vs Island Trees, and continues to grow in reputation as one of Nashville’s most uniquely talented drummers both in the studio and on the road. Incredibly warm and talkative during our interview, Evan exudes an infectious passion for drummers and drumming that continues to drive and inspire him.

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

EH: I grew up in Arkansas in a pretty musical family. My dad plays guitar and keys, and played enough drums to show me a beat. He grew up playing in the church environment. The story goes – and I don’t know if this is really true or not – that when I was two years old, I jumped up on the drums while my dad’s band was rehearsing. And when the drummer had left to go to take a break I hopped up there and the rest of the band didn’t know that he was gone. So I just kind of picked up [where he left off]! I was just playing at an early age.

I was in junior high concert band for just my seventh grade year. It didn’t really click with me. I was more into sports, but was still playing in bands and things. But then in high school, I got really into playing jazz. A friend of mine who I was in a band with called The Exception was an amazing jazz bass player, so he was turning me onto some stuff like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, that whole thing. We started playing a lot together, doing jazz gigs in town. We had a traditional New Orleans jazz group we’d play with. I got really into that and just kind of went from there.

DR: Did you have any formal training or lessons growing up?

EH: Not really. Later in high school, I did take lessons at a local music shop. It’s funny man, I learned how to play rudiments from Vic Firth’s website! If you go to the Education page, they’ve got the forty essential rudiments, and I literally printed off the pdf files and watched the videos of how to do it. I just made charts for myself to track my progress. I didn’t do marching band ever, not even in college when I was a music major, so I had to supplement that somehow. It was the most random way to do that! (laughs)

DR: It’s interesting in the way things have changed with technology and the availability of things like Vic Firth’s website that have now become viable ways of being educated.

EH: Right, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that to anybody, it’s just what I had to do.

DR: While you were growing up, what artists and bands were catching your ear? Also, from a drumming standpoint, were there any particular players that stood out to you?

EH: Yeah man. Matt Chamberlain is the man, “the guy,” and I was listening to records he played on where I didn’t know it was him, but I was really drawn to the records - there’s a Steven Curtis Chapman record that he played on! The Wallflowers’ Bringing Down The Horse and Breach were two records where I had no idea who was playing on it, and at the time I didn’t really care. He was a really big influence, almost subconsciously. There was also a band called Polarboy whose drummer was a really big influence on me. It wasn’t until later in high school that I started checking out guys like Tony Williams and Elvin Jones.

Stanton Moore was another huge influence on me. I went and saw Galactic in Tulsa, Oklahoma at Cain’s Ballroom and it was just eye-opening. I was glued in the whole time. I went to a clinic that he did, and later got to take a lesson with him in Nashville a couple of years ago.

DR: Tell me about the process by which you ended up making your way to Nashville.

EH: When I was in The Exception, we were doing tours around the U.S. – we had a trailer on my Explorer and just did it, you know? We were a very ambitious band for being in eleventh grade! So we all moved to Nashville together. The guitar player and I went to MTSU, the singer was at Belmont, the bass player was at Vanderbilt, and we were all in school doing music. I initially went to MTSU to be a recording major, and did that for a semester, but I wasn’t doing enough music, so I changed my major after my first semester. I wasn’t really anywhere near the other guys as far as the classical end of things – four-mallet solos, timpani, that whole thing - so I had a lot of catching up to do. Luckily, the director there, Lalo Davila, was great and really took me in. The drum set teacher there, a guy named Tom Giampietro or “Tommy G”, has been huge in my life as a mentor. He took me where I was, in not being able to really read at all, to helping me jump into the jazz band and salsa band and start sight-reading charts with no problem.

So yeah, I did the classical thing, practicing for hours each day behind a marimba, at the time going, “Why am I doing this?” But now, I see the validity of all that and how you can use it in musical situations. I was there for three years, and basically lived in a practice room. Even after I changed my major, I was still a recording industry minor, which continued to give me exposure to being in studios, seeing how all that works, getting tones, and being able to hone the craft. But really, I wanted to be a jazz drummer. That was my thing and I really loved it, but then I just really fell in love with Nashville, even with the songwriting thing. I was looking to transfer to a different school in New York, went up to check it out, and even talked to some professors there. I went to North Texas for a camp, and was going to go there, but I just loved Nashville. Going away made me want to come back even more.

DR: I want to pick your brain a little bit more about some of the players you mentioned. It’s interesting that you such an early affinity for great jazz drummers, but also for great studio players as well. What specifically about the players in each of those worlds resonated with you?

EH: The way I view drummers is sort of like a tree. There are three guys that I look up to that are, for the most part, “non-jazz” drummers – Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, and Levon Helm. The guys that I love, that I could listen to for hours every day, are guys that came from that style, like Jim Keltner, who is probably one of my favorite drummers of all time. He and Charlie Watts even did a drumming record together! Jim Keltner, Matt Chamberlain, Jay Bellerose – they really come from those first three guys. Even Matt Chamberlain, who has a jazz background, plays on the back side of the beat most of the time and has a lighter touch, which is what I was really drawn to with most of those guys – their touch. They never overplay, and if they do play something that sounds like they’re about to, they land it. It’s inside them all the time, so if something comes out, it’s amazing. There’s this YouTube video of T-Bone Burnett playing on Leno in ’06 or something with two drummers – Jim Keltner and this girl, Carla Azar, who’s amazing. Keltner’s doing his thing, playing with a maraca and a stick, the whole deal, and then going into one of the choruses, he does a double-bass drum triplet fill! I didn’t even catch it the first time! Who does that?! But it worked! He had the double-bass drum pedal, and I’m not really into that, but it’s cool to see the guys who can do “chops” things and be so tasteful with them.

With the jazz guys, the thing that resonated with me about their playing the most was the emotion behind it – the feeling, the way they would play melodically, and how they would utilize different aspects of the drum set to make music. That included playing on the rims, the shells, just doing weird things.

DR: It’s funny, because everything you just mentioned makes absolute total sense in describing how you yourself play. You have this very warm, earthy, inviting sound that’s loose but tight at the same time. It’s a quality that I feel reflects a lot of the Ringo influence you mentioned. You couldn’t ask for someone to better serve a song than Ringo Starr, who brought tons of personality to a track, yet was somehow able to stay out of the way and become a part of the overall sound. You know it’s him as soon as you hear him play, but it doesn’t detract from the song at all.

EH: He’ll play things on the drums that most drummers wouldn’t ever think to play. That’s what I like about Keltner too. With those guys, they may play on a chorus that’s part of a pop song, and they’re only using the bass drum and the hi-hat and making it feel so good. There’s a record that Keltner played on for an artist named Neil Finn where, on one song, he literally just plays bass drum, hi-hat, and the rack tom every once in a while on a chorus. It feels so good. During the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to understand why that feels so good, and how to make that happen. That’s a lifelong process, and it’s a lot of fun.

DR: Something else as well that you mentioned about Keltner’s double-bass chops –

EH: It’s so random! (laughs)

DR: (laughs) Yeah! The funny thing is that here’s a guy who I saw a video of that was posted recently playing with Steve Jordan in the studio, just hanging out with a stick and a maraca.

EH: And his entrance on that, when he reaches over to get that stick, and hits the snare and the shaker with the stick at the exact same time – it’s flawless. I didn’t get how hard that was until I tried to do it. I was talking to Dennis Crouch, the bass player who’s played a lot on T-Bone’s stuff and said, “Dennis, how is Keltner getting that sound?” He had a little thing with duct tape on his stick, and it’s the same sort of sound he used on this Mavis Staples record that Ry Cooder produced. I don’t know if I should be saying this – it’s one of those “secret” things, but it’s kind of cool. Dennis said that they were on a session together, and one of the runners asked if anybody needed anything. Keltner said, “Yeah, I need some baby food and some Tic-Tacs.” Everyone’s looking around thinking, “What?” They think they’ve heard it all at this point. So the runner goes out and gets him two jars of Gerber baby food. Keltner empties them out, takes the two caps, puts the Tic-Tacs in the caps, puts duct tape around them, and tapes that to his stick and that’s how he’s getting that sound.

DR: WOW.

EH: So I tried that, and I couldn’t really get it the same, but I made a different version of that. But it’s so cool man – if you try something like that, you’ll hear that sound.

DR: That’s where I was about to go to with all of this. He is somebody who will do almost anything in the studio to get new sounds. Coincidentally, I have seen many videos and pictures of you in the studio coming up with these cool, bizarre kit configurations where you’re able to create new grooves and sounds on the spot. Do you feel that literally altering your physical perspective as far as what you’re playing on and where and how you’re playing it changes how you approach things in the studio? Even when you get back behind a standard kit setup, do those types of experimentation influence your approach in that setting?

EH: Totally man. Those two things influence and affect each other. I did a tour with Katie Herzig last year, whose music is very percussion-based because she plays drums, and she’s a great drummer. With some of her music, the drums are kind of pieced together as far as playing parts, so I had to take those sounds and make it work from a drummer’s perspective. I had things taped to my legs, I’m playing with a mallet, or two sticks in one hand and a brush in the other, just figuring out how to play it. There was only one song on the whole set where I was playing with two sticks! Even when I was doing that though, I was still hearing those other things in my head, so it kind of strengthens what you’re playing when what you’re playing is really simple.

I do a lot of sessions with songwriters, and so to not get in the way of what they’re doing with their voice and where it sits frequency-wise, I may have to come up with other ways of making things happen. Maybe instead of playing the hi-hat, I’ll play with two marimba mallets on the bass drum or something. That’s totally a Jay Bellerose rip-off, but he’s a guy who really changed the way that I listen to music. A good friend of mine gave me a record he played on called Civilians by an artist and producer named Joe Henry. It literally changed my perspective on music, drumming, everything. It’s such a dark-sounding record, and I’d never heard music sound the way it sounds on that record. He doesn’t use hi-hats at all on the whole thing. I thought, “How can you make something feel so good and not use hi-hats?” I delved into that for a while, but I had to kind of step away from it - I’m still in Nashville. I still like playing loud!

DR: After having internalized the influences you’ve mentioned, I want to hear your perspective on your own personal concepts of things such as groove, time, coming up with parts, playing for the song, etc..

EH: I feel like my time on the drums is always relative to the band, whoever I happen to be playing with. I always try and hone in and see if the singer plays on top of the beat and maybe sings on the backside while they’re playing, or the opposite. Maybe when they get excited, they want to rush a little bit. Musical time can kind of ebb and flow when you’re not playing with tracks or whatever. I did a record with Griffin House a few months ago, and there was no click track on the whole record. It was all to tape, there were no punch-ins, and everything is how it is – it’s a “one pass” kind of thing. So I just had to have big ears and listen to everybody. During the past year and a half, I’ve been really able to hear if my time is slipping, if it’s going too far back or too far forward. I’ve been able to hone in on that more recently, just from listening more. The more you listen, the better your time will get. Practicing with click and all that is good, but playing with people can be even better.

I think my approach to coming up with grooves really just comes down to what feels best for the song, in being able to stay out of the way, but coming up with something creative and interesting that may set it apart from every other record that’s out there. I just did a record with this Irish artist named Ben Glover, and we brought in a 1930s-era 28-inch kick, just to have a different feel. When you hear that, you play differently. An 18-inch Gretsch bass drum that’s tighter and punchier [will make you play another way.] A lot of times I’m more inspired by sounds that will make me play a certain way.

DR: After having played with the eclectic range of artists you’ve played with, are there any experiences, either in a live setting or in the studio, that stick out to you above the others?

EH: Yeah man! I play sometimes with this girl Angel Snow, and Viktor Krauss plays bass. Working with them has been just an amazing experience, especially playing with Viktor, who plays with Matt Chamberlain a lot, and Steve Jordan played on Viktor’s record too. To play with somebody who has worked with those guys, and for him to say to me, “Man, this feels good,” is just one of the best compliments. That’s one of the highlights. And then, you know, playing big festivals and stuff is always fun, but to me, there’s nothing like being in the studio with a group of guys helping to create something you’ve just heard. You’re coming up with something on the spot, and then you go back in the control room and listen to it come back at you on the speakers. That’s what I live for. That’s what gets me going, whoever it may be – it could be a pop artist doing a pop-rock thing, or if it’s super mellow, and really vibey. I love it man.

DR: This is sort of the opposite question - what are some of the big things that you take away from being a part of those situations, among many others, that have ended up influencing you and helping you grow as a player?

EH: I think with the whole studio thing, it’s really been [about learning] the mindset and psychology of the session world. I’m not really a “session guy,” but from what I have done, being able to work as a team and to communicate well with other people is so important. You may say something that you may not mean to come across a certain way, or somebody may say something to you, and it will just totally kill the vibe. [You have] to be able to be sensitive to other people. That’s been a huge thing that I’ve taken away from playing with so many different people is how to interact with them. You’re creating something that is so special to everybody, and you’re playing on something that somebody put a lot of work and time into, so you want to serve that as best you can.

Also, taking someone’s direction, being able to translate what a singer may want you to play, and being able to get that as quick as possible is something that I’ve been learning. Learning how to be in a van for a long time too is also important! (laughs)

DR: What advice would you give to someone who is looking do what you’re doing, in being able to play with a wide variety of artists both in the studio and on the road?

EH: I would just say take every gig that you can get, but also be happy about what you’re playing. If you take a gig where you may not necessarily be into the music, don’t take that out on anybody else. Never say “no” unless it’s something you know is going to be negative for your career or something you may not enjoy. But also, just go for it, just do it. I know that’s easier said than done, but my mentality is don’t waste time.

Be fearless about what it is you do. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be worried that somebody won’t hire you because you do something different, because the guys that I look up to are where they are because they’re different. Matt Chamberlain does some things that you would never dream of doing on a session, but he does it and does it well, and he owns it.

DR: What are you currently working on at the moment, and in a bigger sense, what are you aspiring towards in the future?

EH: What I’m working on right now is getting more recording gear. I feel like it’s really important now to be able to record drums and get great sounds at home. A lot more people are outsourcing their work, where people are just coming over to the house and plugging in a hard drive and getting amazing sounds. Me and a friend of mine named Scott Hundley, who I was in The Exception with, are kind of pulling our resources together to try and do more of a home studio thing right now. I’ve also been writing more, which has been a fun experience, and I’m wanting to get into more of that. I’d love to be the next Matt Chamberlain or Jim Keltner, but having my own voice and my “print” on whatever it is that I’ve played on, and just being a part of a healthy musical community that I’m happy to play with [are all things I aspire to]. Some of those friendships will last forever. I want to keep building those, and hopefully be working with those same people twenty years down the road. I feel like that’s more meaningful than just random things.

After the interview concluded, our conversation about the musicians, artists, and bands we both admire led to a sort of impromptu interview about some more of Evan’s influences and stories about his life and career. I started recording again, as I sensed it was something that would definitely be worth documenting. Here is the transcript:

On Will Sayles:

In 2005, I saw a Derek Webb concert at John Brown University where Will was playing drums, and I’d never been to a concert quite like that. At the time, I was on the fence about whether I wanted to go to Nashville, to Texas – I didn’t know what to do. I really wasn’t going to go up to Will after the show and say “Hey.” I was pretty nervous, but my sister said, “You need to go do it!” So I did, and he was really nice, responded to emails, helped me out with gear choices and things like that, acting as sort of a big brother to me, and then was really instrumental in helping me get gigs in town too. Some of the really cool stuff I’ve done has been through him. That was one thing that was really influential in helping me decide what I wanted to do.

On seeing Wilco:

I saw Wilco in either 2004 or 2005 at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis on the A Ghost Is Born tour, where they had the backdrop with the images going on. Seeing Glenn Kotche play, I didn’t get it at the time. In my head, I was thinking, “Okay, this is exactly what I want to do. I see it, it’s here,” but I didn’t know how to get to that point. His playing was so different, so textural and creative. I was just blown away. It was amazing. I’ve seen them a couple more times since then, and after one of those shows, which was in Tulsa, me and one of my friends snuck backstage and waited by their bus to talk to them! (laughs) So I got to talk to Glenn, and was asking him things like, “What’s your electronic rig like? What are you using?” and he was so nice. That was another thing that was really influential to me, in hearing music being played that way.

The guys in Wilco are so tuned into tones and sounds, and that was another thing that really struck me and perked my ears up, where I was thinking, “How do I get that sound?” On “Reservations” he does kind of a timpani thing, but finding out that he actually has a tube going into his floor tom that he’s blowing into [was mind-blowing for me]. I feel really fortunate in being exposed to that while in high school, at an earlier age, and kind of having to deal with that then. Listening to that stuff early on…it was so different than everything that I listened to that I didn’t really like it at first. The first time I heard A Ghost Is Born, I thought, “I really don’t think I like this!” But listening to it more and more, I sort of began to understand it, even though I had never heard anything like that. I knew it was cool, but with anything that’s new, you can be a little hesitant with it. I mean, the song “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” is ten minutes long! But that’s a testament to Glenn’s playing, in that he can hold that so tight and not change for that long, and it feels so good. It’s kind of like the Steve Jordan thing, where playing simple parts becomes harder than playing a lot of notes.

Transcription #3 - Richard Scott In this installment of the NDP...

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:43:00 -0400

Transcription #3 - Richard Scott

In this installment of the NDP transcription series, we take a look at some killer grooves from one of Nashville’s most hard-working and creative up-and-coming drummers, Richard Scott (check out Richard’s NDP interview here - http://bit.ly/dTaTbW). Here is a little insight into each of these grooves from the man himself:

“Rooftops” - This groove is one of my all-time favorites! It was fun to experiment with fresh takes on one of music’s best grooves - the blues shuffle! After trying more traditional hi-hat patterns such as swung eight notes, we decided the quarter note hat was the way to drive the track. That presented a challenge since it seemed to open up some space that wasn’t necessarily desired. So, the added ghost notes were used in hopes of retaining that awesome blues shuffle feel that we wanted for the track.

“The Wind” - During the pre-production process, Gabe and I had talked about some percussion ideas for the last section of this track. We talked about overdubbing hi-hat triplets or reversing the groove and overdubbing cowbell. Out of those talks came a groove that melted the two ideas together. It started as a way to recreate the groove in a live setting without using a percussionist. The result of that ended up being the groove Gabe liked best.

“Change In The Making” - One of the best parts about having a gig with Addison Road is playing this groove every show (it’s also one of my favorite lyrical themes of the show)! Making the groove sit just right is the most fun/challenging part about playing it. One of the keys to making it right is balancing subtle ghost notes with a fat rock groove.

Interview #6 - Marcus Hill

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:39:00 -0400

On a breezy, late December morning, I make my way over to one of Nashville’s most hallowed halls of music, the RCA complex on Music Row. Housed inside is what is now officially Crystal City, the central location for the all-in-one production company created by the supremely talented Marcus Hill and his brother Dwan. Marcus’s reputation as one of the most solid, grooving, and versatile drummers in Nashville has been growing steadily ever since his arrival in 2005. Having held the drum chair with artists such as Melinda Doolittle, Nicole C. Mullen, B. Reith, Joe Robinson, and Alvin Love, among many others, Marcus’s superb sense of pocket, time, and feel, along with his incredibly warm and humble personality, have made him one of Music City’s best up-and-coming drummers.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing, and more specifically, what your musical exposure was like and how it played out as you were growing up.

MH: Ever since I can remember, I’d been exposed to music all the time. My parents are musicians – my mom is a singer, and actually played organ, piano, and a little bass guitar in her church. She did a lot, but she was a preacher’s kid, so she was kind of forced to do everything. My dad was the same way – he played piano and saxophone. I came into a musical family, with cousins and grandparents that are involved in music.

I’ve always kind of had the rhythm thing. My mom says she used to set up pots and pans when I was real small. They always gave me toy drum sets and all that jazz. But my brother and I actually began taking piano lessons when I was five and continued until I was about eleven or twelve. I was playing drums throughout that whole time, but around the time I was seven or eight, I started playing more at church, for children’s choir, youth choir, youth activities and things, but it wasn’t like I was playing every Sunday. It was just like once a month when they had “Youth Day” or whatever. As I got older, I started to play more and more in church. Then in middle school when band started up, I started doing percussion like snare, xylophone, timpani, and all that. In high school, I did concert band the first year, then in junior year I did marching band, where I played snare, and then senior year I did choir. (laughs) I just wanted something different. After that it was college. I went to Belmont, and majored in commercial music playing drums.

As far as influences, I was listening to pretty much only gospel and Christian music growing up, because that was all we were allowed to listen to! (laughs) It wasn’t until junior or senior year of high school when I started branching out, and even more so in college, when I was like, “There’s so much good music out there, and I need to find as much as I can.”

DR: Tell me more about your musical experience within the church. How did that environment influence your playing? Were there any musicians, especially drummers, who you were drawn to early on?

MH: I’ve always said that playing in church is the best ear training. I grew up in a black Pentecostal type of church. In those kinds of churches, you have Sunday morning services, but you have mid-week services and revivals and stuff. And in those types of settings…basically anything goes! (laughs) Anything can happen! I think it prepared me in a way to be able to follow, to change, and to be spontaneous. At any point, anybody can start any song that you may or may not know (most of the time you don’t know) and you just have to catch on and follow, whether it’s piano or drums. It could be in whatever key – normally it’s in a random key, so you just kind of have to figure it out.

Being in that type of setting really taught me that you basically have to be prepared beforehand, know your craft, and know your skill. If you’re playing piano, know all your keys and figure out the basics that are in most songs, so if somebody starts a song that you don’t know, you can kind of fake your way through it. Those types of lessons play out in playing drums professionally for artists. While that stuff doesn’t happen that often, sometimes it does. Sometimes an artist will say, “Hey, I need to pull this song, do you know it?” It’s easy to be more comfortable in that situation having grown up in situations like [I did in church]. Since church happens every week, it would be forcing me to learn songs every week. It kept me playing, and allowed me to get used to the idea of playing all the time as my thing.

As far as drummers go, at that time I really wasn’t keeping up with who was playing on what, I just knew what I was listening to. Any of the gospel of the 90s, I basically knew it all - I kind of had to! Thinking back, it was probably drummers like Joel Smith, Calvin Rodgers when he was first starting out, and Marvin McQuitty. I was heavily influenced by Marvin because he played for Fred Hammond, and that was my favorite at the time. He’s really where I got my pocket from, because he’s a straight pocket drummer, and a lot of the fills and stuff I learned from him.

DR: It’s interesting you mention that, because something I’ve always noticed about your pocket is that you sit right on the beat, but there’s enough “lean” in your playing where it kind of pulls and pushes at the same time. There’s a great energy to it, but you’re able to sit back yet still drive something forward.

MH: A lot of it comes from listening to all those gospel drummers back in the day, but a lot of it really is Marvin. To me, he was the best out of all of them as far as staying in the pocket and making it feel really good. After getting out of listening to all that gospel and listening to all that other stuff, it all kind of merged together and influenced my playing as well.

DR: Once you started listening to other music besides gospel and Christian music, who started sticking out to you as far as artists and drummers alike?

MH: Before I got to Nashville and Belmont and really got serious about drumming, I would hear about certain drummers and think, “Hmm, maybe I should go listen to them.” During that little period, I was listening to people like Dave Weckl and Dennis Chambers. Those guys had big names, and I thought, “Oh – these are the people I’ve heard of, so I’ll just go listen to them.” After I got to Nashville, I started branching out more and listening to different genres. I learned how to play jazz when I got here when I was studying with Chester Thompson. Chester basically taught me how to play jazz. He took me to the Belmont library one time and said, “You need to listen to all these jazz artists and all these jazz drummers,” and introduced me to Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, all those guys. I basically sat down in the library one day and listened to those guys all day. After that, I started pulling out some pop stuff, listening to guys like Dan Needham. I love love LOVE Dan Needham. I love his pocket and his fills. I also started listening to Steve Gadd, Vinnie Colaiuta, got into some Steely Dan, and Stuff [the New York-based collective of musicians featuring Steve Gadd], Will Kennedy from the Yellowjackets, Stewart Copeland, all of the Sting and Police stuff, Keith Carlock - I just started grabbing everything!

DR: After hearing all those different artists and drummers, how did you begin to integrate what you were hearing into your own musical style and palette?

MH: I was trying to understand that, thinking, “What is it about all these drummers that makes them really great, and what is it about the recordings they played on?” What I discovered was how their drumming fit the song and how it helped make the song what it was. While I learned a lot from all those gospel drummers, most of the time it’s not really about the song. Sometimes it is, but all the drumming in the songs kind of sounds the same. I could tell you beforehand in any of the gospel songs what they’re going to play, because it’s the same type of stuff. Some of it is a lot of chops, and it’s whatever. But listening to this other stuff, it made me realize that playing for the song is really important. I learned that those guys were able to bring their style of playing and any of the chops that they learned [to the table], but would make it fit in the song really well, whether it’s no fills throughout the song, or one fill. One perfect fill in one song will make a song for me. I love Steve Jordan, and he does that all the time. What he’s played in some songs makes me think, “That’s perfect. If he had played anything else, it wouldn’t have been the same song.”

DR: After you really started understanding where those guys were coming from and how they were able to bring their own unique voice to different situations, tell me about how your own concepts in terms of groove, pocket, playing for the song, and coming up with parts for songs developed.

MH: It’s almost like there’s no formula. It’s all about the feel - making the song feel good, pushing when it needs to, holding back when it needs to. Every instrument has its part and spot in a song, and drums are the same. Also, every song is different. Sometimes I feel the role of the drums is to just lay down a pocket and a groove so the song feels good, maybe some fills here and there, or maybe it doesn’t need anything else. Sometimes there are songs where it needs a little bit more, where the drummer has to push the songs a little more and add more energy. You may set up certain sections, like a keyboard solo or something. Maybe you’re playing an instrumental song on a jazz-fusion record and you’re going all out the whole time! There’s always a role for the drums, but it’s always up to drummer or the producer to decide how the song should feel. The drummer has a lot of power. I feel like if the drums are where they’re supposed to be, it’s a lot easier for everything else to fall into place. To me, it’s all about feel, man. If you can trust your heart and your internal groove, whatever song or record you’re doing will turn out great. I think it’s a matter of playing out a lot, playing live and studio sessions. The more you do it, the more you get a feel for what songs need and what they don’t need, and the more you get a feel for your internal sense of groove and learn to trust it.

DR: It’s really cool to hear you focus primarily on feel, because something that I feel you’ve been very successful at is taking a really rich, meaty gospel pocket, but doing away with much of the chops-oriented part of it, where it fits better in a wider variety of situations. You can wail in a Latin setting, a pop setting, and a gospel setting, but it all works. You’ve been able to integrate the most important parts of all those things, yet it still sounds like you. It’s very focused. I’ve heard you play in many different environments, and you’ve definitely got chops, but they’re super tasteful chops. I’ve seen and heard a lot of guys who came up playing in the church as you did who are either really great gospel drummers, or gospel drummers with really great chops. There’s a difference. Many guys in the latter group will get work, but it seems to be in these crazy over-blown fusion bands, where I tend to come away thinking, “It’s great that you can do that, but those types of things normally won’t last that long. You’ve really got to figure out what will get you consistent work.” I feel like you’ve been able to do that extremely well.

MH: Thanks man! That was kind of my goal. I love lots of different genres, and I wanted my playing to be able to get me calls for all the jobs and not just one, so I thought, “How can I get my playing to that point and that level?” I credit a lot of it to, first of all, being in Nashville and being able to hear a lot of guys in different genres. There’s lots of country of here, but there’s lots of other things here too if you know where to look. I’ve been able to get around a lot of those other guys and study them and just learn from what they’re doing. A lot of the guys that you’re interviewing for this project, and a lot of the guys I went to school with made me say, “What is it about their playing that I really like and how can I use that in my playing?” It’s the same thing with all the celebrity drummers too – I like to take what I like about all of their playing and infuse it into mine, whether it’s Latin, jazz, country, r&b – whatever it is, I like to put it in. I’ve been blessed with the gigs that I’ve gotten. I was just thinking about that today. All the gigs I’m playing right now are basically in different genres! I love to be able to switch out like that, because they’re all lots of fun to play.

DR: Is there any particular experience, whether playing with in a live setting or in a studio setting, that sticks out to you above the others?

MH: In the studio, it was probably working on a record that just came out by Alvin Love. I was able to do the majority of the drum parts on that. That was probably the most fun and fulfilling studio project I’ve done so far. We did a lot of work on focusing on what drum tones and parts we wanted. That’s a really great example of dissecting every song and saying, “What exactly do we want for this song? How can the drum parts make the song?” It was a blast playing all those parts.

As far as live experiences, there’s so many. As I said, I have so much fun playing lots of stuff. I was playing in a Latin-jazz band for a while called El Movimiento, and we played every week at a coffee shop called the Frothy Monkey. We weren’t playing to thousands of people in a stadium - it was just like fifty people or so. I had so much fun doing that. We played Latin-jazz for two hours every Tuesday, just fun songs, and people would come sit in – it was just a cool vibe. I miss it now because we don’t do it anymore.

Of course, it was fun doing the bigger stuff. I did Africa with Nicole C. Mullen in 2009. That was a lot of fun, because it was just a stadium full of people. I could tell that every single person that was there was excited to be there and were really fulfilled by the music we were playing. It’s a really good feeling to know that the music you’re playing is affecting and benefiting others. That was a blessing to me, and I really enjoyed doing it.

DR: This is sort of the flip side of the last question. What is most gratifying to you as a player in being a part of so many different musical situations? What do you feel you end up taking away the most from those experiences?

MH: For me, the biggest thing I’ve learned is that the music is something that’s beyond me. It’s real easy to get caught up in learning the songs and the details of everything. All of that is important and I’m not discrediting that at all, but once you finally get onstage and play the show, especially if you’ve done the homework where you’re no longer worrying about what’s coming up next and it’s internalized, that feeling is pretty awesome to me. At that point it’s no longer about me, but it’s more about how the music is affecting others, hopefully in a positive way! It takes a lot of work to get to that point, but all that work pays off when other people are benefited or blessed by whatever you’re doing, whether that’s playing on stage or playing on a record someone’s listening to in their car. That’s something I enjoy every time I get to do it. Anytime I see anyone out in the audience bobbing their head, I’m like, “Okay – we’re successful!” You know you’re doing something right! (laughs)

DR: From your own experience in coming to Nashville and playing with so many great artists, what do you feel are the most important things for drummers to know who are wanting to break in and have consistent work as players?

MH: Of course all the obvious things for drummers – practicing, working on your craft; I think all that stuff kind of goes without saying. There are a couple of things though. One is to make sure that when you are working on your craft and getting it up to par, make sure you’re practicing being yourself and don’t try to be someone else. If someone calls me for a gig, it’s because they want how I play on that gig. Practicing being yourself will help create a unique sound, and that’s very important in this circuit. The other thing is that in this town, it’s about networking just as much as the playing, if not more so – knowing people and being in the loop. For the drummer, that means getting out and playing as much as possible, but also going out to shows, meeting people – basically taking any chance you get to make connections with people. Not that you have to be schmoozing with people, but making friendships and just building strong relationships. In this town, even if it’s your dentist, everybody knows somebody that does something in music, if they don’t already do it themselves. I would say those two things – having a unique sound and building strong relationships with people – are what will take someone a long way.

DR: What are you currently involved with or working on, and in a broader scope, what are your aspirations for the future?

MH: Right now, those two questions kind of go hand in hand! I’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up! In November, I did a tour of Europe with this guitarist named Joe Robinson, who’s from Australia. We did about thirty dates that month, and the second leg of that tour is in January, where we’re doing Australia, just touring everywhere there. I’m still doing touring dates with Melinda Doolittle, who was a finalist on American Idol a few seasons back. She’s got a lot of dates coming up this year. The really exciting thing is that I’m finishing up my solo EP! That’ll be available in January. Being on the Joe Robinson tour kind of forced me to do it, because I needed something to sell on the road. I put it together real quick before we left, producing it and playing drums on it, and got a lot of friends to play on it and write songs. It’s a five-song EP, and it’s not really a drum record. I love the drum parts, but it’s kind of a compilation/production type of thing. I think it’s cool, and I’m excited to hear what other people think about it!

That will kind of be in conjunction with what I have coming up as far as aspirations go. My brother and I just got this studio here on Music Row, which is pretty exciting, and we’re starting our own production company. We’re going to be doing production work for people where they want us to produce or play on EPs, full projects, or demos, or any other musical production needs. If they just need a drum track from me, I can track it here and send it to them – whatever people need, it’ll be sort of a one-stop shop for production. It’s called Crystal City, and that’ll be launched in January as well. We’ve got a lot of exciting things happening, man. We’re just going to keep trucking and do what we love. It’s great to able to do this for a living.

DR: What would like to see yourself doing years and even decades down the road from now?

MH: I love to travel, so I could see myself being a touring musician for a while. Not that I’ll do it forever, but for right now that’s what I love to do. I want to get into doing some clinics as well. I want to somehow incorporate teaching – I don’t know if teaching private lessons or in a public school is where I’ll be, so maybe doing clinics, and books and DVDs as well, is something I’d like to look into doing later on. I want to think big, and I want to work with a lot of the big producers that are basically doing all the music you hear on the radio. Ten or fifteen years from now, I just see myself working with a lot of people and playing music with a lot of different people. Like I said, I love playing different genres, and I want to work with everybody! (laughs) I just want this production thing and my playing to get out there so I can work with as many people as I can.

To learn more about Marcus and to check out what Crystal City is all about, go here – www.crystalcityinc.com

Transcription #2 - Jacob Schrodt This installment of the NDP’s...

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:11:00 -0500

Transcription #2 - Jacob Schrodt

This installment of the NDP’s transcription series spotlights just a small handful of killer performances from Jacob Schrodt. As one of Nashville’s best up-and-coming drummers, Jacob is making a name for himself as a passionate, creative, and energetic player, landing him the drum chair with artists such as Chris August, Andrew Ripp, and Dave Barnes. (Check out Jacob’s NDP interview here - http://bit.ly/gKicef)

Here are a few comments from Jacob on each of these excerpts from his performances:

“Yahweh” - This track was produced by one of my biggest drumming influences, Will Hunt. Will and I came up with the groove for the verses. The song has a pretty standard 6/8 feel, but we spiced up the verses with a syncopated and sometimes linear type groove using the hi hats and floor tom.

“Starry Night” - One of my favorite grooves is a beat that Will Hunt turned me on to back when I lived in Dallas. It uses a very common kick pattern, one that normally begins on beat 1. By starting the pattern on beat 3, it gives the groove an entirely different feel. This groove can be heard on the second verse of “Starry Night.”

“When The Deal Goes Down” (Intro) - The intro groove of this tune was actually inspired by a video Andrew showed me of Dave Barnes behind the kit. Dave was playing a really funky beat with the snares off. This was my take on Dave’s groove. Paul Mabury played drums on the rest of the track.

(Audio clips from each of these tracks are featured above.)

Interview #5 - Jake Goss

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:58:00 -0500

It is a blustery, rainy day in Nashville as I make my way over to the Jarhole, Jars Of Clay’s rehearsal/recording space, housed in an old two-story brick building that is painted bubblegum pink. I am meeting up with Jake Goss, one of my best and closest friends who, since 2009, has held the drum spot with one of Christian music’s most respected, successful, and critically-lauded bands. Jake is one of Nashville’s brightest talents behind the kit - a rock-solid force of funky attitude combined with fluid, tasteful restraint that has led him to play with artists such as Steve Moakler, Ben Rector, Clemency, The Attack! (now known as The Deep Vibration), and of course, Jars Of Clay.

Jake is a joy to be around. You cannot help but be immediately won over by his upbeat personality, hysterical sense of humor, and humble, gracious demeanor. There are those few human beings in the world that can make you feel like a million dollars by simply being in the room with them, and Jake has that gift in spades. This interview was a thrill to conduct, and I hope you enjoy it as thoroughly as I did.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing, and more specifically, what your musical environment was like growing up. What were you hearing when you were a kid?

JG: Well, my mom grew up singing because of her mother, Ma Mary Shambarger (my soulful grandmother). She taught voice at Ouachita Baptist University for thirty-five years. Her claim to fame is that she coached Point Of Grace. So, I was exposed to my mom and grandma singing their hearts out (my grandma is the only person you can hear at church because she loves slow vibrato). I grew up in a CCM [Contemporary Christian Music] household, listening to Audio Adrenaline, Point Of Grace, Newsboys – all the goodie CCMs. When I started getting into drums, I was introduced to the youth band at our church. There was a guy named Zach Cameron playing drum set, and I thought he was awesome. He was my brother’s age, so I looked up to those guys. I was in fifth grade about that time, and became interested in band in middle school. That same year, That Thing You Do came out. That movie and Zach Cameron from our middle school worship band were pretty much the two reasons I started playing drums.

DR: What got your attention in watching That Thing You Do?

JG: I thought the movie was so awesome and hilarious. It’s one of my favorite comedies to this day. I really enjoy that era of music, all the jazzy, fun, Motown-y stuff. I remember loving Tom Everett Scott, who Billy Ward actually taught so he could play in the movie. There’s some really cool drumming in it. For me at the time, it was the coolest thing ever. I asked my parents for a drum set for my birthday, which they got me, and I ended up learning “That Thing You Do” for the fifth grade talent show. I wore the turtleneck and everything – I was Guy Patterson, which was the character’s name. That was my first drum set experience.

My parents hooked me up with a drum teacher named Kevin Bonner at a local music shop called Sigler Music. It was funny, he brought some of his drums to our first lesson because he knew I was left-handed and needed to switch them up. Most people were like, “Why don’t you just learn right-handed?” and I said, “Well…I’m left-handed and my drum teacher told me to play left-handed.” We started working out of Syncopation, Stick Control, and all the basic fundamentals that were vital in early development, and then we learned “That Thing You Do” for the talent show, Semisonic’s “Closing Time” and “3 A.M.” by Matchbox 20! (laughs)

I started doing middle school band in sixth grade, and I was also playing djembe in our youth group during the same time - no big deal. I got to play when Zach was playing drum set, so I got to rock the djembe, tambourine, cowbell, timbales – I had the whole get-up. By the time Zach graduated, when I was in eighth grade, I started playing drum set in our youth group.

DR: Tell me about when you first started hearing music outside of the CCM you grew up with, and when you started discovering particular artists/bands, as well as drummers, that moved you early on.

JG: I listened to a lot of what Chad, my brother, listened to, and so my first exposure to secular music was Pearl Jam. I remember he had either Vitalogy or Vs., which was when Dave Abbruzzese was playing with them. I just fell in love with the grunge scene – I loved Soundgarden, Pearl Jam – and then my other big influence was the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Probably my biggest influence is Chad Smith. A group of friends and I started a band in ninth grade called Very Special Guests, or VSG, and we started covering Pearl Jam and Chili Peppers songs. Through those friends, I started getting into U2 and loved Larry Mullen Jr. Pearl Jam, U2, and the Chili Peppers all made up my first big exposure to secular music. I loved learning all those classic Pearl Jam and Chili Peppers songs, because both Dave Abbruzzese and Chad Smith had this attitude of “We’re just going to play whatever comes into our head and not think about anything,” whereas Larry had these really cool ideas and his parts were perfect for each song. I think anybody can just start singing the groove to “Sunday Bloody Sunday” because it’s so recognizable.

DR: It’s interesting that you mention Chad Smith as your biggest drumming influence. The Chili Peppers have made a niche for themselves in that they’ve been able to successfully pull from both old school and new school influences, and have made themselves accessible to people who grew up listening to P-Funk and James Brown, but are also able to resonate with a younger generation that grew up listening to modern rock and hip-hop. Even in the 80s they were, in many ways, an antithesis to what was going on in a very synthesizer-dominated era of music. I feel like your playing is an extremely similar and effective mix of old and new influences in your vocabulary, feel, and groove. Listening to you play, you’re able to go between those two worlds very easily.

After having developed your skills early on and having been exposed to the influences you mentioned, tell me about the process by which you ended up coming to Nashville to pursue music.

JG: Around the time I was in eighth grade, I started getting really intense about drumming. I was coming home from school and practicing one or two hours a day, then practicing for concert band, and All-Region and All-State Bands. I was reading through every Modern Drummer I could get my hands on, studying all these different drummers and really loving it.

In one issue, there was an article on Chester Thompson talking about going on tour with Phil Collins. I remember reading the article, and that night my mom told me that my great aunt, who is Marjorie Halbert, the director of musical theatre at Belmont University, had called and said, “You should really have Jake come to Nashville and take lessons with this guy Chester.” So my mom tells me (mimics her Southern accent) “Jake, Aunt Margie has some ties at Belmont and would like you to come take some lessons from the professors there. There’s a guy a named Chester Thompson—” and I said “What? Chester Thompson?! Who plays with Phil Collins?” She said, “Oh, you know who I’m talking about?” I said, “Yes!!” I was freaking out.

That spring break, my parents and I road-tripped to Nashville, and I got to take three one-hour lessons with Chester over three days. It was so awesome. He first sat me down and said, “Just play a little bit.” I was terrified. I have recordings of those lessons and I sound like an eight-year-old girl. My voice is so high (in really high voice) – “I’ve been practicing all these grooves, so I’ll just play something.” It’s so embarrassing to listen to. I sound like my mom, and I’m a guy. But Chester was so gracious and nice. I know I sucked, but he was really helpful and really pushed me to be a better player. We started working out of Jim Chapin’s Advanced Techniques book, developing jazz skills. He would have me play a pattern from that, and then a four-bar fill or whatever. He would play along with me, and then he’d play his four bars and I’d be thinking “Whaaat?!” We’d just go back and forth. He’d also go back to the fundamentals like Stick Control. Those first few lessons were focused on pretty basic, fundamental stuff.

After that, I started going to him every spring break and every summer throughout high school, so I knew I wanted to go to Belmont. I practiced a lot, especially my classical side of the audition. I would go once a week to Fayetteville where I was taking lessons with Chalon Ragsdale, the head of percussion at the University of Arkansas. I auditioned at U of A and Belmont, but I was pretty set on Belmont since U of A didn’t have much of a drum set program. Belmont had this Commercial Music program that sounded awesome. I got in, and ended up coming to Nashville!

DR: Very cool. After having discussed some of your biggest musical influences, I want to hear your perspective on things such as groove, time, “playing for the song,” and coming up with parts. How do you feel are able to translate things you’ve learned and been influenced by into a studio or live situation?

JG: When I was first being influenced by Chad Smith and all those guys, what I loved about them was the freedom and emotion they put into their playing. They had no reservations. So early on when I was practicing, I was doing all these crazy independence exercises, but really wouldn’t apply them in the ways I should have. I’d be playing a song and think, “Here comes a spot for a fill. I can do what I did in practice today.” Then I came to Nashville and realized that was not going to fly! So I started listening to big studio drummers like Jim Keltner, Dan Needham, Matt Chamberlain, Joey Waronker, all these guys that played such great parts for the song and knew their role, just like I had heard before listening to Larry Mullen play with U2.

When I got to Nashville, I started playing with a bunch of artists (you and I played together with some of them!) because it was just good to get out of a practice room. It’s great to practice all the crazy stuff though, because it helps with your confidence. That’s the thing about Chad Smith – that dude was just arrogant and confident, and you could tell that in his playing. He was never hesitant or insecure.

Playing with artists helped me kind of settle in with knowing groove and knowing my role. It also depends on the artist too, because I’ve played with artists that want me to play out and do crazy stuff and I’m thinking, “Eh, I don’t know…” But they thought it worked for the song, so I’d try and give the artist what they wanted. My teachers at Belmont, like Todd London, were huge on playing for the song and knowing your role, which really influenced me. I ended up going to the practice room and playing along to records where I was just playing a groove. For instance, playing along to John Bonham on Led Zeppelin records consists of playing some dirty rock grooves that were sweet for that era. Dirty grooves are the best.

I just really started getting into groove. Joel Wren [a friend of ours from Belmont] talked about how he would go into a practice room and start playing a simple groove with ‘1’ and ‘3’ on the kick, ‘2’ and ‘4’ on the snare, and eighths on the hi-hat, for ten minutes. Then after ten minutes, he would throw a little nuance into the groove, like a ghost note or something, until he felt the groove felt great. I remember hearing a story about Abe Laboriel Jr. where he would play a groove, and when it started feeling good, his dad would touch him on the shoulder and say, “It’s there.” I want to have that kind of groove!

I was fortunate enough to play with some pop artists like Steve Moakler and Ben Rector, where it was just straight-up pop-rock and I’d be playing some groovy, straightforward beats, but those guys would also hire me to kind of do my thing. Most of the time in my head, I just listen. That’s one of the things I learned a lot with Chester, in just listening to other players and feeding off of them, particularly after playing with jazz combos. I enjoy being able to throw my part into the song where it fits, where I’m not overplaying or stepping on anybody’s toes, and to just make it feel right.

DR: You are able, though, to put a lot of your personality into the song where it actually enhances it and yet still doesn’t take away from it. Obviously having seen and heard you play for years now, you have the ability to lay down a deep, solid groove yet put a lot of creativity and just overall tastefulness into it, where it gives both the song and the drum parts themselves a more unique and memorable flavor. How do you feel you’re able to balance those two worlds, where you’re in a servant role to meet the artistic needs of the artist, yet also simultaneously know that they specifically hired you for your voice to come out in their music?

JG: Sometimes I’ll come into those situations and someone will have an idea for me, and I’ll kind of mess around with it. But I have this style of playing where I think differently about playing just a straightforward groove. I’ll maybe throw in a weird accent or a hi-hat jab somewhere, or just something unique that I do quite a bit - I like to call those “tasties”. Many times I’ll have a groove skeleton in my head, but not think about it too much and just play what comes naturally. That stuff just comes out on the fly. If I start thinking about it, I get sloppy and insecure. I just try and come up with something through influences, experience, passion, and just playing what comes to my head.

DR: Is there any particular experience or experiences you’ve had in the studio or in a live setting that stick out above the others?

JG: The studio experience is probably recording Steve Moakler’s record All The Faint Lights. Me, Steve, and Jeb Holmes just drove out to Virginia to record with a producer friend of his named Paul Barber. We recorded at this studio where artists like Jason Mraz and Lifehouse had tracked, this barn-looking place that had been converted into this sweet studio with a really cool drum room. We ran through the songs one day with Paul, doing a little pre-production, then just went into the studio. It was really cool for me because I really believed in Steve’s music.

Tracking drums was a blast, and it was just a really cool, fun environment hanging out with Steve and Jeb while we were tracking. There was gear at the studio that I didn’t have that I was loving, like a 26-inch Ayotte kick drum that I used on a couple of the songs. My favorite song that I played on that record is “Run,” and I do just a train shuffle with some Ultraflex sticks, and I played that 26-inch kick on it. It was recorded at nighttime, we dimmed the lights, and even though it was a straight, simple shuffle groove, I had the time of my life. Making that record was definitely a gratifying experience, because that was my first exposure to a real professional studio environment.

My favorite live experience was with Jars Of Clay when we went to Europe a few months ago and played in Budapest, Hungary, at this club that held about 900 people. They had never played in Budapest, so they weren’t sure how the show was going to go. So thirty minutes before the show, we look out and there’s tons of people chanting “Jars Of Clay!” and we’re going “What is happening?!” It had sold out! I’m freaking out, and I’m always giddy at Jars Of Clay concerts, because those guys are heroes of mine. So when they’re excited, I’m just peeing my pants, because they were giddy about it too!

We get onstage and play and everybody is just so into the music, throwing their hands up in the air and so excited that Jars Of Clay is there. I was smiling the whole time! These people genuinely loved music, and were so thankful we were there just to play some tunes. It was a blessing.

DR: On the flip side of that question, what is most gratifying to you as player after you’ve been a part of so many situations? What do you take away from them?

JG: I come away with a better understanding of what elements it takes to make a song come alive, whether it’s what not to play or what to play, but a lot of it’s what not to play. When I’m playing with a straightforward pop artist, the goal is to be transparent and have no one notice you. You just serve the song well. It’s different with other artists. Some want a bunch of rhythmic patterns and a lot of kick drum math with the bass player. It’s really about being in a setting and figuring out what works to make it come alive, in really listening to the other musicians and the lyrics.

A lot of it is that I just really enjoy trying to connect emotionally with artists and their songs. That’s definitely been the case with Jars Of Clay, especially in the stories they tell through their songs. I try to listen to melodies, which is how I come up with parts too. Todd London talked about one of his favorite players having the lyrics in front of him at a session so he can get emotionally attached to them and can play to the meaning of the song.

I’m really inspired when artists write great tunes, because it motivates me to be a better player. When Jars works on new music, they’ll have an idea, and they’ll all gather around and throw parts at each other. It’s really inspiring for me to use that behind a kit in some way, to be able to show them my ideas.

DR: How did you end up getting the gig with Jars?

JG: Being in Nashville, it came down to just meeting the right people and building relationships. Around the start of my sophomore year at Belmont, there was a girl I was playing with named Colleen McCarron, a fun, poppy, artsy artist, and I played with her all throughout college. She was really hoping to make an EP, so she was shopping around, looking at some different producers. It came down to either Neilson Hubbard or Mitch Dane, and Mitch has produced a lot of Jars’ records. Neilson had a really good budget that would have been cheaper for her, but Mitch Dane came to a show at 12^th and Porter, took her aside, and said, “I know your budget’s kind of tight, but I’ll work with it because I definitely believe in your music and I really think there is something great here. I’d love to make your EP.”

Mitch was going to use his players, but she was still really tight on her budget, so she sent him some roughs that we had played on at Belmont’s studios, and fortunately he said, “Sure, you can use your players.” I knew of Mitch Dane, so when I found that out, I was so excited but nervous too, because it was my first time to work with a producer at that caliber. So me and my friend Blake Stratton, who’s an insanely talented bass player, got to come into Sputnik Studios that Mitch co-owns with Vance Powell and track with Colleen for her EP. I was nervous, because I knew Mitch was super talented. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but I knew there was a possibility that it would be a relationship in the future.

After I did the EP, he got my info and said he’d really like to work with me again. I was like, “Sure! That’d be awesome!” So a month later, he hired me for a session, and I ended up doing a couple of records over the next six months with him. During one session, he got an email about how Jars Of Clay needed a fill-in drummer for a weekend. This was right after Jeremy Lutito quit, and they were originally going to use Will Sayles for the summer, but this was the unfortunate weekend when his father-in-law passed away, and so he was going to be gone. Mitch looked at me and said, “Dude. I’m going to try and get you on this Jars Of Clay thing.” I was like, “What?! Stop it.” I honestly didn’t think much about it, because I didn’t know if that would ever happen.

That night, I was at McDougal’s with the Clemency guys, Jason and Paul Watkins, and I get a call from this random 615 number. It’s Charlie Lowell, keyboard player for Jars! He just said, “I’ve heard some great things about you from Mitch, and we’re just looking for a guy to fill in for a weekend. We’ve got about twenty songs, and we’re going to rehearse in a couple of days. We were just wondering if you were available.” I said, “Absolutely.”

So I went and charted all those songs out, and went and practiced them in the practice rooms. A lot of my teachers at Belmont were great, because they understood that kind of thing, so I worked it out with all my classes to be gone for a few days. I came into rehearsal on Thursday morning, two days after I got the call. I had never met the guys, and I was just star-struck, because – I’m going to take you back a little bit – I played “Flood” in the seventh grade talent show. It was with my buddy Jordan Carpenter, who was in VSG, and my friend Ryan Key, and our band name was Circle Town Drive. Aaaaand we all took solos of course, like you do in “Flood.” What? So it was crazy for it to come full circle and rehearse that song with Jars Of Clay that day.

We rehearsed and everything clicked. The songs were great, they were happy with my playing, and said, “Alright. See you at bus call tonight!” I was so giddy. All the guys were super nice and really happy and thankful to have me out for that weekend. They’re top-notch dudes, with some top-notch hearts - whoa, that was a little girly of me to say.

After that weekend, they told me that Will Sayles’ wife had a big surgery coming up, and that he was hesitant about being out on the road because he wanted to be with her. So Charlie showed me some dates they had booked throughout the year and asked if I could do them. I was about to graduate from Belmont, and just told him, “I’ll make it work!” He called Will and said, “Hey man, if you need to stay with your wife, we had a guy fill in this weekend and it really worked out.” The guys talked through it for a while and came to me and said, “Yeah man, we think it would be a good fit. Do you want to play these shows?” Then I saw him write an email with the words “our new drummer Jake” and I was like, “Get outta tooooown!”

I somehow made it work with school. I almost didn’t graduate because of convocation credits - death. I think I had to write six humongous papers, ended up graduating, and was immediately out on the road with Jars, and I’ve been doing it for almost two years now. It’s been so awesome. Those dudes are great to be around and so inspiring. They’re awesome musicians, amazing writers, and just super passionate about life and music, creatively and emotionally.

DR: After having had so many experiences that have led you to where you are now, what do you feel are the most important things for drummers to do who are trying to make it in Nashville and get work and be in demand?

JG: Always have a good attitude and be respectful to the artists who are hiring you. One thing I think I bring to the table is that I bring light to situations, in that I like to have a good time, kind of goof around and not be too serious, but if I need to be serious, I’ll put my game face on. Giving the artist what they want and taking direction well is crucial. If they want something, they are hiring me, and I’ll do it. If it’s just completely ridiculous, I’ll give my opinion, and then we can figure something out.

Being prepared and taking interest is super important, in being able to believe in the music you’re playing. When I first started with Jars, I geeked out because they do stuff differently live, and I would go on YouTube to watch how they do the songs live. So at rehearsal, they didn’t say anything about it because they were used to how they did those songs during shows, so I’d just watch it and play it like it was on YouTube! I just want to know all about the artist, to study them and know their tendencies and instincts. And the talent of course is a huge factor. Don’t slack off on learning songs and whatnot. I really do my best to come in prepared and have a good attitude, and it’s worked out a lot. With Jars I get in their head by listening to 80s music. They love it slash I was seven when their first record came out, WHAT?!

DR: What are you currently involved with or working on, and what do you have coming up in the near future?

JG: Right now, I’m still out on tour with Jars Of Clay, and we just finished our Christmas tour with Audrey Assad. If you haven’t heard her, check her out, because she is incredible. That’s the thing about Jars, in that they’ll often tour with another artist, so that allows me Gabe [Ruschival], the bass player for Jars, to accompany the artist. We got to play with Audrey and with Brandon Heath on the past two tours. I especially love that, because on tour you’re playing the same set, and even though I get to be creative each night with Jars, it’s fun to play a completely different set. I’ve been fortunate to play with different artists because of Jars.

I’ve been doing some session stuff – tonight I’ve actually got a session over at Sputnik. I want to really get into session work down the road, but I really enjoy touring and hope I can keep doing that. I’ve been able to tour with my buddy Steve Moakler, Ben Rector, Jars, and a guy named Andrew Ripp. But I really hope to one day really be heavily involved in studio work. I really enjoy creatively being there, coming up with parts – I really love when a song comes together and a drum part fits. I like being in there with other musicians, hacking away at a song and making it feel good. That’s probably my favorite experience, in being in the studio.

Jake’s setup for Jars Of Clay’s 2010 Christmas Tour

DR: What do you see for yourself as far as long-term aspirations? Where do you feel you would like to end up years from now?

JG: Years from now, I would like to be a guy like Dan Needham, doing sessions every day and producing, which I’d like to get into eventually. If I have a family with kids, I’d like to just be in town, go do my work, produce or play on a record, come home and hang out with my family. And if my friends are still out touring, it’d great to do a little bit of touring here and there.

DR: One more question. Tell me about James Brown.

JG: Oooh baby! Why have I not talked about James Brown yet? I’m embarrassed everyone, because James Brown is my everything. So the band I was a part of in high school, Very Special Guests, we were…let me see if I can describe this in a word…sloppalicious. We were a sloppy grunge band that loved James Brown. I don’t know where our obsession with James Brown came from, but we just thought he was hilarious and so funky. When we got into this funk scene, we were always listening to James Brown. We loved his antics on stage, because (laughs) we just loved the way he would dance. He was so tight with his band too. He was a great leader. We just loved how funky fresh he was. It didn’t hurt that Clyde Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks changed my life.

So we would always play some James Brown songs at our concerts, and I played a James Brown song at my Belmont senior recital! We would always have the little James Brown doll up there with us, and we’d press the button and he’d dance around. We’d play a song called “James Brown” where our lead singer would say “James Brown!” and the audience would say “JAMES BROWN!” just back and forth, over and over. We would write our papers about James Brown in school. We just had this crazy phase in our lives where James Brown was our everything.

And then my first bud at Belmont, Mr. Dustin Ransom, during our first audition, we bonded because we talked about how much we loved James Brown, and our friendship went from there! I’d also like to say that a lot of the influences I have are those monster drummers I mentioned earlier, but at college, Alex Nixon, Richard Scott, and Dustin Ransom were probably my biggest influences. Alex was always singing basslines, so I was always getting into basslines because of him. Richard was our father. Then you knew every song there was, and so I just started listening to all these records and it helped me find out about all this music that was out there to take from. So thank you!

DR: You’re welcome! Thank you too!

JG: I’ve just been influenced by a bunch of friends too, but James Brown – the Godfather – that’s my man. (laughs)

DR: I think that’s it man! Thank you very much!

JG: Sweeeeet! Thank you wooorrrld!

Shortly after I left the Jarhole, Jake called me to tell me that he felt he wanted to go into more detail about the Nashville drumming community, and how those individuals have influenced and inspired him during his time in Nashville. I was thrilled that there was more he wanted to include in his interview and I gladly obliged. So after sending me a few voice memos, I compiled them into a kind of extra interview, or a “Part Two,” if you will. Here, in his own words, is Mr. Jake Clifford Goss.

The Nashville drumming community is just a big brotherhood. It’s really nice to be here in this community, because a lot of times you can get in situations where it feels like a competition and it makes you feel insecure. But here in Nashville, so many friends of mine are really supportive. We’ll all try and come out to each other’s shows, or listen to records we’ve played on and get feedback from each other. I just wanted to talk about some of the guys in town who have really influenced me. When I first got to Belmont, I met Dustin Ransom, Richard Scott, and Alex Nixon. Those were my buds. We ran around a lot together and became a close group of friends, and I want to talk about all three of those guys, because they had a big influence on my playing and just my overall approach to music and life. The four of us were all really close.

Dustin was the first guy I met at Belmont. I met him at auditions, and he auditioned for the Rock Ensemble and destroyed it. I was like, “That guy is a freaking stud, and I know I can learn from him,” and we became fast friends. He and I got to play in a band together called The Attack!, and we had some fun experiences together. Dustin’s playing and approach is so musical and creative. He knows this plethora of music and musical instruments, playing-wise. He brings so much to the table, and I love being in musical settings with him because he’s got great ideas, plays passionately, writes great parts and great melodies because he plays so many instruments. If you go to a show and you see Dustin playing keys, you’ll think “Oh my gosh, best keys player ever,” and then you’re like, “Knock knock, who’s there? Yeah, he majored in drums.” Stud muffin. Somebody will be like, “Hey, have you ever heard of this instrument?” “Nope.” “Well Dustin plays it!” Eyeoo! Dustin’s just a stud. It’s been great to be around him - someone who’s so good at everything, and so humble about it all.

I already knew my buddy Alex from Arkansas because we were in All-State together, so I was really excited to dive back into that relationship and become better friends with him. He’s a goofball - love him. When we were playing in the All-State Jazz Band together, I was always so intimidated by him because he was so good, and he used to rock a ponytail. I just thought he was awesome. Then I saw him at Belmont at Towering Traditions one day, and so I was like, “Sweet, we get to hang out at Belmont and rock some drums!” He’s got such a classic, smooth approach. A lot of people at Belmont come in just hard-hitting, whereas Alex comes in with this finesse, a classic-rock approach that’s really influenced by Steve Gadd, Joe Morello – a group of guys that had great finesse and played great parts. He’s got a great feel and has developed a great sound which shows in the gigs he’s been playing the past few years. He’s been owning them. He used to be kind of a quiet guy, and now he’s been super mature about developing as a musician and as a person. He’s become really personable, and it’s great to go out and get to see him play because he’s such a killer player with such a cool and classic feel.

Then there’s my daddy, Richard Scott. Richard is sort of our father of the group because he’s a little older than us, so we just call him our dad! He was our go-to guy/dad. He’s perfect and he’s precious. He’s one of my best friends, and I got to know him really well throughout college. As far as playing goes, he has improved so much, because he started when he was older, and came to Belmont after having spent some time at Auburn pursuing another degree. We got to play in Bass Ensemble together, which had two drummers, and we’d just throw ideas to each other and feed off each other. It was so great, because he had so many cool ideas and a cool approach with coming up with a groove, in hearing these great grooves line up with melodies. It was great for us to able to go back and forth with each other, being in this ensemble together. That was one of the most enjoyable semesters I had a Belmont. Now he’s out on the road playing with Addison Road. I’m so happy for him, because he’s such a great drummer. I remember about a month ago, I was playing a gig where Risen Drums was backlining. I was just talking with them about some friends of mine that have played Risen Drums and enjoy them, and mentioned Richard and they said, “Oh yeah, we know him! You remind us a lot of him.” I was like, “Yes.” I love being in the same sentence as Richard, because he is my father and has such a killer groove. He has done some cool stuff in the studio. He always seem to come up with these bad to the bone signature grooves. I want that!!!! Be sure and check him out.

One of my favorite things about being in the Belmont ensembles and jazz combos was that I knew I’d be in there with another drummer. I was so inspired by every single drummer I was in a combo with. I was in one with a guy named Kyle McCarter, who’s out in L.A. now. He was this beastly funk player who loved gospel chops. I was in another with a guy named Scott Shirock, who was one of my favorite drummers at Belmont - just super tasteful. I also loved watching Joel Wren, who was one of my favorites when I first came to Belmont. He was a junior when I was a freshman. Another guy named Nate Onstott, who was Joel’s age - Nate plays with Mikeschair - and a guy named Tyler Ritter, who was a year younger than those guys. These guys were super cool to me. I loved listening to all those guys play. Other Belmont guys that are great are Marcus Hill, Noah Denney, Chad Currie, who have all been doing well. It’s great that this community has done so well after being at Belmont, and we can still get together and pour into those relationships. It never becomes where someone’s jealous of someone else’s gig and wished they had it. It’s a smaller community, so we’ll all recommend each other and end up playing with a lot of the same artists since all those guys are killer players.

Outside of Belmont, Jeremy Lutito is one of my favorites to listen to. You know when it’s him playing a record, because you immediately know his sound and feel. It’s just amazing. I’m so lucky to be learning his parts playing for Jars Of Clay and kind of doing my own thing with them, because I obviously can’t play like him. I wish I could. He’s a stud. Will Sayles is another killer player, and has played on some killer records. When I first came to Belmont, I was in love with guys like Dan Needham and Scott Williamson, these giants. I remember emailing Dan Needham one time and I was being so goofy and weird, saying stuff like, “Hey, your groove changed my life,” and he emailed me back and was like, “Dude, you’re hilarious!” and I thought, “Oh, this guy doesn’t hate me!” I’ve definitely emailed someone with a similar email and they responded, saying “Oh good. Weirdo. See ya later.”

Another guy is Jacob Schrodt, who I met when he first came to town. I went to see him play at the Cannery Ballroom with Ben Rector, and remember thinking, “That guy has a ridiculous feel and groove.” We met up afterwards, swapped emails, and he said, “Dude, send me some tracks you’ve played on.” I was like, “Yeah, sounds awesome, ‘cause I suck.” He sent me some that he played on and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this dude is legit.” I highly recommend checking out some of the records he’s played on, like Ben Rector’s Into The Morning andChris August’s No Far Away. Those are some of the highlights. He’s going to be a beastly studio musician, and has a great approach to studio drumming. He’s just super solid. Be careful - he’s going to steal all of your work because he’s the best drummer ever. Jacob Schrodt – stud.

So those are some of the drummers in Nashville I’ve really been inspired by and look up to. They’ve all really played a big part in my life. Those guys are the best. And James Brown? Love him. And Scott Stapp? Is there a better vocalist? I think not.

Interview #4 - Will Sayles

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:08:00 -0500

On a cold rainy night in mid-December, I make my way over to Smoakstack Studios to meet up with one of the hardest-working, most in-demand, and revered drummers working in Nashville today. Having provided a solid, creative groove and feel for artists such as Mat Kearney, Derek Webb, Sixpence None The Richer, Griffin House, Over The Rhine, Katie Herzig, and Ginny Owens, along with the acclaimed Ten Out Of Tennessee tour, Will Sayles has undoubtedly established himself as one of the premier timekeepers in Nashville’s richly eclectic music scene. Will is incredibly warm, relaxed, and humble, and offered a treasure trove of insight and wisdom into being a successful working musician. Enjoy.

DR: Tell me about your upbringing and, more specifically, what your exposure was to music growing up. What were some of your early inspirations and things that struck you?

WS: I grew up in Texas, just north of Dallas. I had a lot of different interests as a kid, and I really wasn’t particularly into music any more than most kids. When I was going into 6^th grade, everyone was required to take one year of concert band. One of my brothers had played drums in the school band a few years earlier, so we had one of those student-line Ludwig aluminum snares sitting in the house. So when my turn came in fifth or sixth grade, that’s what I ended up playing. School concert band was my introduction to basic snare drum playing and some of the basic rudiments.

In terms of the music I grew up with, being the youngest, you’re always trying to follow what your older brothers are into. Being in Texas, there was a LOT of country music on the radio!!! I unfortunately have a certain era of early 90s country songs forever etched into my brain! My oldest brother had a couple of REM records, I remember having U2’s The Joshua Tree on tape, I think my mom had a couple of Beatles records, and of course the Eagles, growing up in Texas. I was definitely always interested in the drums, but I really didn’t get super serious about playing until late in high school, and even on into college. There was a lot of music I didn’t even discover until, I’m ashamed to say, pretty late. Some of my friends’ parents were playing them these classic artists, and nothing against my parents, but their record collection was not very extensive. Even now I feel like I’m playing “catch-up” to a certain degree. It’s stuff that’s become really standard like the Stones, the Beatles, even old jazz and blues stuff – it was completely not on my radar until I came up to Nashville and was introduced and exposed to a lot of music.

I’m checking out new bands all the time, but then there’s the part of me that still feels like I need to get a better handle on all this stuff that’s already happened. I remember the first time I sat down and listened to a Led Zeppelin record from top to bottom. I’d obviously heard Led Zeppelin on the radio, but when I started to really dig into their records, it totally rocked my world, but I was nineteen or twenty.

DR: At that point after you had been exposed to the percussion/drum world, and once you started getting into different artists and bands, what were things you started picking up on as far as drumming and drummers go? And in a bigger sense, what was it about some of those artists that made you think, “This is something I could get into”? You mentioned so many great examples of bands that have legendary drummers like John Bonham, Charlie Watts, and Ringo Starr. What started sticking out to you about them?

WS: I’ve always gravitated towards great songs. Obviously it must be a compelling performance but the power and weight of a great song has always been what excites me as a fan of music. I wasn’t buying Dave Weckl solo records when I was kid. It was not the drums, in and of themselves, that got me interested in playing. The drums became my way of participating within the music. When I was fifteen, I never wanted to sit in my room and play a drum solo. I wanted to put on Abbey Road, put headphones on, and play along. As I got older, I realized that so much of what I love about the drums is the overall feel and the groove. I have a lot of different guys that have influenced me but pretty much all of them have that component in their playing.

It’s interesting what can be an influence even though it may not come out in my playing, or it may come out in a very understated way. One record is Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live, which is a double-disc live record, and there’s also the video. Tony Levin’s on bass, Manu Katche’s on drums. What Manu Katche plays on a lot of that stuff is so different, unique, and kind of bizarre. The rhythm and the groove are so strong, and even though Manu tended to overplay a little bit, it totally works in that context.

Another record that completely rocked my world and got me excited about playing drums was Fiona Apple’s When The Pawn…, and a lot of that was Matt Chamberlain. There are a million things that Chamberlain could have played, but his choices are so musical and perfect for the songs. He taught me a lot about feel, and that fills should be an extension of the groove, not a break from it. That record had an immeasurable impact on me.

That’s kind of how I listen to records and to other drummers. I don’t really get into, “Oh, this is difficult to play, so it’s really great.” It’s more about, “This is so perfect for this song. It’s not distracting or taking away from what the rest of the band is doing, it’s totally the right thing but also still very expressive.” That’s so hard to do consistently and give that foundation. There’s a lot of guys that do that really well who fly under the radar unfortunately, because that kind of thing doesn’t sell drum magazines!!

DR: It’s interesting that you say that. One thing that has always struck me about your playing is that I’ll hear something you’ve played on, and it seems like the song could not be what it is without your parts. You seem to have a great way of integrating yourself into a song and looking at it as a big picture. For instance, you do some great drum intros and doubled drum parts on Derek Webb’s The Ringing Bell. First of all, when I hear those, I automatically know what song it is. Secondly, if I was in the position of playing that live, I’d be thinking, “I’m going to have to play this exactly how Will did it.”

Your desire to be in the middle of something - being in the middle of the song and hearing this bigger palette as opposed to saying, “I’m just going to play on top of this” – is a great character trait of your playing. You mentioned something about certain guys being under the radar, and that’s really what this thing is all about. That stuff does not get talked about enough, in not necessarily playing for the song, but being part of the song. Give me your perspectives on great groove, time, coming up with parts, and more about your perspective on being a part of the song as opposed to just being an outsider who happens to be playing on it.

WS: The thing is, I absolutely love recording. I enjoy touring and I love playing shows, but I really get energized from working in the studio. One of the things I love about it is that every time I go in, I’m always learning something new. Early on, it was really obvious stuff – you do a take, you think it’s killin’, you feel great about it, you go in and listen, and it’s not happening at all! I feel like that’s probably common for a lot of younger guys, because you start realizing that maybe the way you’re perceiving what you play is not really that objective. You have to train yourself to really be listening and care about the little nuances, because ultimately in the studio, it’s the little things that start to really matter.

Another thing is really caring about the sound of the drums. I know when I first starting recording, I was focused almost entirely on what am I going to play. But then I realized, “Oh, that’s only one part of this.” I need to be paying attention to the tone of the drums, the tuning, the cymbals I choose, the snare, the way I’m hitting everything and how it speaks in the track, etc. That’s the kind of stuff that is a never-ending learning process. But I really enjoy all that.

DR: Tell me about your experience in “learning the ropes,” so to speak, about the way things are done in Nashville as far as the recording process goes and what has helped you be successful within that framework.

WS: A lot of music now is recorded to the grid, meaning you’re playing to a click track. For me, from a feel standpoint, it can present a different set of issues and challenges versus performing where a song’s time may ebb and flow a bit. I remember soon after I moved to Nashville, I was talking to [producer/songwriter] Charlie Peacock about the responsibility of the modern session drummer being able to play well with a click. One thing that he told me that I’ve always remembered is that most drummers slightly rush when they go to play a fill. If you slightly rush, you’re going to have to compensate for that in the next measure to get back on with the click. That compensation or “correction” is going to give you a sense of the drum performance dragging. What I realized is that when I would sit on the other side of the speakers and listen back to something I’d played, I’d think, “That’s weird, I dragged that bar.” Actually, I rushed the fill before that bar, and that’s the problem - little revelations like that in the studio can be really helpful. You can get too obsessive about that stuff too though, which I don’t think is good. The danger of Pro Tools is to use your eyes instead of your ears!! You’ve got to strike a good balance.

It’s important to remember that keeping the exact tempo throughout an entire song is a very modern, and a relatively recent approach to music. Think about the way tempo increases and decreases in classical music. It helps create dynamic shifts and scene changes. I was listening the other day to “Let It Be,” and I was tapping out the tempo because I was covering it with a band. The song starts with a piano, and the tempo’s around 75 or 76 BPM. When Ringo first comes in with a full groove, it actually drops below 70. It ends up sitting around 68 or 69, and it speeds back up a little bit by the end of the song. We tend to listen to music with a certain criteria that’s very “now,” for better or worse. There are going to be gigs and sessions where it needs to stay that exact tempo top to bottom and you don’t need to drift at all, but then there’s a song like “Let It Be.” The tempo dropping really contributes to the emotion of that track. I think it’s partly why it’s such an incredible moment when the drums first come in. It’s kind of counterintuitive, because it kind of creates this epic-ness to the song [by slowing down]. I was surprised by that when I sat with a metronome and tapped it out, because it’s not something I really noticed before, and I think it’s because it’s so musical.

DR: It feels great. Even the 16^th note hi-hat groove he comes in with feels killer, but you would never notice the change in tempo because it breathes.

WS: Yeah. I’m always working on my time, and working on my feel. Another hero of mine is Levon Helm – when I first started listening to The Band, I was just thinking, “What is going on here?” There’s something you can’t really articulate. It’s not just what he’s playing, it’s the way he’s playing it. Some guys would say that having groove is having perfect time, and maybe in a certain context that’s true, like if you’re doing more of a modern R&B thing, but [someone like] Zigaboo Modeliste is another great example of that old school kind of feel that I love.

DR: I was just thinking about him!

WS: Yeah! I remember where I was the first time I heard “Cissy Strut.” What’s cool about it is that you can’t fully explain what it is about it that makes it so great. There’s a mystery to it, and I think that’s good. That’s what’s exciting to me. I love Zig, I love Stanton Moore, Shawn Pelton, all these dudes that have that kind of lilt and that grease in their playing.

DR: Earlier you mentioned briefly about things that were happening when you first came to Nashville, such as meeting Charlie Peacock. Tell me about your coming to Nashville, seeing and experiencing what was going on, and integrating yourself into that.

WS: I went through some ups and down when I first came up to Nashville, because there are so many great players here. I was at Belmont, initially not studying music. I was doing a music business thing, but I was studying drums with Chester Thompson. Studying with Chester was amazing, but initially, it was very hard for me. It felt like, “Okay, let’s tear down everything and rebuild it,” but the rebuilding can be a slow, painful process.

DR: I took from him as well, and it was just this very long, arduous process where I was thinking, “I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this. I’m having to relearn things I’ve been doing for years.”

WS: Studying with Chester was great, but if I had to go back and do it again, I would have tried to integrate all that stuff I was doing into the context of playing music with other people. I spent a lot of time in college just sitting by myself at the drums, which can be good, but only if it’s helping you to ultimately express musical ideas. Being able to do an independence exercise within itself isn’t really useful. It’s all about the application. I got to take a lesson with Stanton Moore, and that’s his thing – application, context, something being musical. I filter everything I learn through that framework.

DR:Is there any particular experience in a studio situation or a live setting where you thought, “Wow, this is what I’m supposed to do, this is what I love doing, and this is worth it.”?

WS: Recording-wise, probably around 2003, me and a bunch of guys were hanging out and playing with an artist named Griffin House. We booked out a studio for a week and did the whole Lost And Found record. It was a really intense five days – Griffin was writing some of these songs the day we were recording them. It wasn’t like we had done tons of pre-production or anything. I think that project was special for everyone that worked on it.

There have definitely been some live shows that [were incredible as well]. I was touring with Mat Kearney, and we were the direct support for John Mayer on the Continuum Tour. Everyone in his band is just ridiculous. Man, that was an education for me, and I look back and realize I learned so much in that time period. Me and the guys in Mat’s band would go out to the soundboard and watch those guys play almost every night – it was that good. I remember the last show of the tour was at Madison Square Garden, and it was completely sold-out. It’s the kind of thing where you can’t even process it at all in the moment.

I felt the same thing when I got to play on Late Night With Conan O’Brien. I’m such a huge Conan fan, and I got to play on the original NBC set with Mat. He ended up doing a lot of the television stuff, but playing on Conan had been a dream for so long, and it was very significant for me.

Experiences like that make you want to keep at it and keep working. For me, it’s vital to stay inspired about playing music. I’m always trying to strike a balance between the practical side of playing music for a living, which is making ends meet financially, versus the artistry of playing meaningful music and wanting to build a body of work that I’m proud of. Sometimes the two overlap and unfortunately sometimes they do not. There’s an ebb and flow to it. If I do go out and play with someone for a month or two, and it’s really great pay, I’m sort of thinking through the month or two after that, where could I involve myself in something where the money isn’t as good, but I really love it. I use projects that pay really well to give me that freedom. I know these jazz guys in town, and that’s what they love, but they’re never playing any of that. They’re doing a country gig and they’re miserable. I don’t ever want it to be that.

That’s one of my goals, to let whatever I need to do financially afford me the time to do some of those other things, however I can. When Trent Dabbs talked to me about the Ten Out Of Tenn thing, where it’s ten artists [on one bill] I thought, “I have to do this.” As recent as that stuff was, I feel like it has been very significant for me in terms of feeding that part of me that needs to believe in what I’m a part of.

DR: I feel like one of your biggest strengths is that you’re able to be in so many different situations and have so many different elements of your playing come out. Ten Out Of Tenn is a perfect example of the focus being on the song and what is important for the song, and being able to put yourself in the middle of that. I don’t know of too many other people that could do that as well as you do, where you’ve got ten different voices with ten different ideas coming at you one right after the other, and it sounds like you playing with all of them. You could be playing other people’s parts, but it still sounds like you and your voice and personality. Even then, you’re still able to be in the middle of something and integrate yourself into it.

WS: I got to play some of your parts! (laughs)

DR: I know! (laughs)

WS: The thing that was really exciting to me was that ten artists and me on a tour bus is like summer camp. Seriously! Everybody gets along, and we would joke that, at night, no one wants to be the first person to go to sleep because they’re going to miss out on something. It’s the best hang.

It’s also a fun challenge because all ten artists want to hear different things from the drummer. I’ve worked with artists that, for whatever reason, don’t like cymbals!! The thing is, I can’t laugh at that. I have to recognize that at some point they’ve probably played with a drummer that had no finesse or had really loud, bad-sounding cymbals. That’s part of the challenge, where I’m thinking, “You don’t like cymbals, and I want to make you happy.” That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t play cymbals, but it means, “How do I adjust what I do around your preference?”

Tempo can be another issue. One artist might feel a song at 100 BPM one night and 110 the next, depending on how they are feeling that particular night. Other artists will want their songs the exact same tempo night after night. It’s a fun challenge to try and make ten different artists happy. Ten Out Of Tenn was great. I hope more stuff happens with it. I know it’s difficult to coordinate everybody’s schedules, but when it happens it’s hard to beat.

DR: This is sort of the opposite question. As a player, what is most gratifying to you when you come out of certain situations? What do you take with you when you’re done with those and you move on to something different?

WS: The crazy part about music is that there’s so much that you learn that’s not necessarily conscious. It’s why musicians can play things that they themselves maybe can’t articulate or break down. Different things end up shaping you in ways that you may not even realize. All the gigs you play, the records you listen too, the conversations you have with other musicians, the recording, the practicing…all that stuff ultimately affects and shapes your playing. I’m excited to see how I will have grown and changed as a player in twenty years, because I know I’ll be better. I’ll probably make different choices in certain scenarios, and that’s just what happens when you do it over and over. You soak up all that stuff.

DR: Does it tend be something that makes more sense down the road when you’re involved in something else, not in the sense of “I should play this groove here,” or whatever, but more along the lines of certain thoughts, ideas, and philosophies coming into play?

WS: Oh definitely. I think experience really comes into play in the studio, especially when things maybe aren’t totally coming together. Knowing what things may need to be changed to make something right for the song is imperative. It could be so many different things - a section that doesn’t feel right, transitioning in and out of sections, and I’m always trying to tweak and fine tune that stuff until it sits right – to the tones [of the drums]. I’ll spend however long it takes to get the snare to sound right for the track, [things like] “Do I change the tuning on this? Do I change out the kick drum? Do I put a softer beater on the kick pedal? Do I switch out the hi-hats? Do I play at the tip of the hi-hat?” Some of that stuff will be conscious decisions and then some of it will just change naturally as you react to everything.

You’re always sort of responding to [what’s going on around you]. Everyone’s doing that. Every musician. The bass player may say, “My tone needs to be darker” or “I need to simplify that section.” It’s a constant process of refining. By the end of the day, after twelve or fourteen hours of that, I’m just beat! That’s the thing - with a lot of younger players, they might listen to a record and think, “Oh, I could have done that, there’s nothing complicated going on.” But they don’t realize how many decisions were made to get there. Whether it’s the musical ideas, the arrangement changes that were made, the different tones from swapping out drums, changing the tuning, dampening the heads, changing out a cymbal, whatever - for a long time I never even thought about that stuff, but it’s changed the way I listen to records now.

DR: Everything I’ve ever heard you do has been this great mix of serving a song and the music as a whole, while still retaining your personality and putting your spin on things. You remind me a lot of someone like Jim Keltner, in that you can come in and lay down the most straight-ahead parts, but incorporate a kind of brilliant quirkiness that keeps things interesting and intriguing, along with having a great feel and groove. How do feel you are able to balance those worlds of “playing for the song” yet still expressing your unique identity and personality as a player?

WS: I’ve tried to strike a balance between having an identity as a player, knowing my strengths, and then at the same time trying to expand on that. There are guys that just have a really strong voice/identity on the instrument. My friend Jeremy (Lutito) is like that. I know it’s him when I hear him play on a record. Jeremy has definitely influenced my playing, and it’s because I’ve been around him so much. Everyone has had different experiences, and everyone’s drawing from different places. Vinnie Colaiuta’s amazing, but I could never sound like him. There was probably a time where that really depressed me, but if you’re upset about that, you’re looking at it really one-dimensionally. I feel like there’s a tendency in the drumming community to value things in a very one-dimensional way, especially if it’s something really “technical” and difficult to play. It’s really unfortunate, because there are players out there that aren’t really that confident when they should be, because they have strengths that aren’t really as celebrated.

DR: It’s interesting you bring up Jeremy, because something he said that really struck me during his interview was that he can be at a show and see a guy who’s only played drums for maybe three or four years, where maybe the guy doesn’t think he’s that great, but Jeremy can watch him play and think, “I’ve never even thought about some of the stuff he’s doing, that’s great.”

WS: Absolutely!! I experience that all the time.

DR: But then you see a show and watch some chops wizard blow for an hour, which is all fine and great, but I don’t feel anything after that. I feel empty.

WS: Totally man. To me, that’s what’s so amazing about music. It might be the simplest thing, but someone makes this decision to play this certain part that’s just brilliant!! You don’t have to be one of these clinician guys, and I’m not knocking that at all, but when you say, “I don’t feel anything,” I am the exact same way. When I hear someone do a drum solo, that just doesn’t get me excited compared to when I hear a great band play. The power of a great groove gets me really excited. I love Stanton Moore because he kind of exists in that world, but man, he’s so musical. There are a lot of guys like that – Steve Jordan, Steve Gadd – and those are the guys I gravitate toward.

DR: From your experience in being in Nashville, working with so many people, and particularly with your experiences when you first arrived, what advice would you give to someone who desired to do what you’re doing and be at the level you are?

WS: I never made playing professionally the “thing”. I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but I never got caught up in that. I think I had a luxury in that when I moved here, I was able to be in school and let that be my “day job,” if you will. It wasn’t like I was working somewhere I hated, thinking, “Man, all I want to do is get out and play drums,” which is totally valid. I’m very sympathetic to that. For one, it’s hard work. I feel like I’ve been very blessed by a lot of things that have helped me be able to do this for a living. I don’t think for a second I’m here because I did A-B-C-D.

DR: Do you feel that the relationships you had, such as those you developed before you made the Lost And Found record with Griffin House, had an impact on the direction your career has taken?

WS: I do think that’s a big part of it. I don’t want to say it’s being in the right place at the right time – that’s probably more true when someone’s trying to get a record deal as a pop star. I feel like being a professional musician is completely different than being an artist. When you’re an artist, I do feel it’s more about getting breaks. When you’re player, you do need to have those opportunities, but there is so much you can do on your own. All the people that I know who do music professionally seem to all have a different story of how they got where they are. There’s really not a “thing” you could do necessarily. But moving to Nashville was a big step, because there are lots of opportunities to play here. Follow what you’re passionate about. From early on, I loved recording, and I did that as much as I could.

There’s a bass player in town named Craig Young, who’s played with just about everybody. He told me during one of my first couple of years here that, “Every significant gig that I’ve had has always come from doing something for free.” This is a guy who probably gets paid double scale to record, and he’s still going out and playing in a club with somebody because he loves it, because he loves music. Then the guitar player hears him and says, “Hey, we need a bass player for this tour.” In turn, the guy who was playing in that tiny little club gig is now playing with some huge artist.

That was a big lesson for me, realizing that you can’t really craft out a path to follow. Just try and be a part of as much stuff as you can. That was kind of his bit of advice, and that’s what I’ve tried to do. If someone asks me to play, particularly if it’s in town and I’m available, then I try to do it. I don’t want to get to a point where I say, “Oh, there’s no money in that” or “They’re only paying me fifty bucks” or something. As cheesy as this sounds, if you love music, let that passion help make some of those decisions.

DR: The way I’ve always thought about it was if someone wasn’t in some way passionate about music until they knew they could make money doing it, then they probably need to re-evaluate their career choice. I’ve met and know guys like that and I really have a hard time taking them seriously.

WS: For me, it’s always been about the playing. I’m not looking to have some lavish lifestyle. If I can make ends meet and get to play, then that’s awesome. But I promise you, if I wasn’t playing professionally, I would still be playing as much as I could. I love it, I’ve always loved it, and I think that’s really what it comes down to.

DR: What do you have currently in the works, and in a bigger sense, what are you looking forward to? What aspirations do you have for the future?

WS: I’ve been in town this whole last year. My wife had a crazy surgery in April, so this year more than in the past, I really didn’t tour at all. I’ve been playing some with this band Sixpence None The Richer, which I love playing with them. We did a record with Jim Scott last January out in L.A. It’s done, but I’m not sure when it’s going to come out. Hopefully [I’ll be] touring with them some this next year. I’d love for there to be a Ten Out Of Tenn thing as well, if possible. Katie Herzig has a new record that’s almost done and I’m really excited about that too.

DR: What would you say are your long-term goals?

WS: My goal is to be doing what I’m doing now, but I would love to be able to get to a point where I’m more and more involved in stuff that I love. It’s being able to play with artists that I really respect, I’m into the music, and I’m not really having to make as many decisions based on the budget component. I want to continue to work with more and more artists, and to keep working on my playing by watching other guys play and getting inspired. I’d eventually love to have a Meters cover band!! I’d love to have a group of guys that just know all the tunes and we can just get together and play for fun, and doing more projects like that, where it’s just about enjoying playing.

Transcription #1 - Jeremy Lutito - “Tender...

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:13:00 -0500

Transcription #1 - Jeremy Lutito - “Tender Mending”

I’m proud to announce the first installment of the NDP’s transcription series!

The inaugural transcription is of the great Jeremy Lutito’s performance on Nashville-based singer/songwriter Brooke Waggoner’s “Tender Mending,” from her Heal For The Honey record (the track is available in streaming audio above). A bouncy, danceable, quirky whirlwind of piano-based pop, Lutito tastefully and effortlessly maneuvers his way through tempo and feel changes, abrupt stops and starts, and shifting dynamics. Pay attention to the subtle variations in the main groove, particularly after the half-time breakdown section. Lutito adds flashes of color and texture by adding tom hits, ghost notes, and open/close hi-hat within the context of what would normally be a straight-ahead dance groove. Overall, a brilliant performance from one of Nashville’s best and most creative drummers. Also, be sure to check out Jeremy’s NDP interview here - http://bit.ly/g8ED59.

Interview #3 - Richard Scott

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:51:00 -0500

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!

Interview #2 - Jacob Schrodt

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:42:00 -0500

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.

Interview #1 - Jeremy Lutito

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:48:00 -0500

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.