SIGHT/SOUND/RHYTHM

You just moved back to California after 13 years in New York. What prompted that move for you?

Well, two things. The main thing was family. My mother is getting older, plus I also have a fifteen year old nephew and I really want to be more involved in his life.

There's no place like New York as far as the music scene, which is what drew me there, but it was just the day to day living that I tapped out on. Just the thought of getting on the train and dealing with all of those energies in a compact space... I just needed a bit more balance, for my own sanity.

So those were the main reasons, but I also have a ton of friends in LA, too, that were pulling me there.

L.A. is the type of place where you can't really beat the quality of living. I might be spending the same amount as far as rent goes but I have more time and I'm able to balance out my day a little bit more. Plus the sun is always out so it's easier on the body and brain.

What are the things that you've valued the most by being between New York and L.A.? Does one feel like a better fit than the other?

That's a good question. Well, I've mainly valued the music. Being in New York I feel like I developed faster, just because it's 24/7 and a lot of the guys that I looked up to and wanted to be around were in New York. By being there I found out who I was and what I actually wanted to do. Also, I always wanted to be involved in more than one thing and New York was the place for me to do that. Whether I wanted to play gospel music, or jazz, or hip hop, it was all happening in that space. I feel like New York made me a little stronger.

L.A. has a beautiful music scene. It's a little more close knit because you have a lot of people who are from there and who grow up with each other. It's almost like these little pockets of families who grow up with this musical journey.

It feels as though it's a little more open now, especially with a lot of the younger dudes, where you get into playing more jazz and experimental music. Although it is still a part of it, it's just not as studio focused. On the flip side of that, L.A. is teaching me a lot about the studio because it's sort of the mecca for that. I'm learning lots about mics and EQs.

I do feel like the two places are still connected. I used to say that if you wanted to become a hardcore musician then you move to New York, and if you wanted to have more stability then you'd move to L.A., but it's changing, mainly because of the younger generation and having access to the internet.

What was your experience like growing up as a kid?

Well, being in the Bay Area, there was a vast amount of artistry, from Tower of Power, to Sly and the Family Stone, from the Black Panther movement to the Hawkins Family. It was really cool to be in an environment where art was prominent.

I was fortunate to go to Berkeley High School where I met Thomas Pridgen and a lot of other amazing musicians. Even though it was a public school, the school band was really good and it had this stature for being one of the best in the country. That school was just a bunch of creatives.

I was there with Daveed Diggs, who was in Hamilton, as well as Chinaka Hodges. There were a bunch of different creatives there and that was really cool to be around. There were also outreach programs like the Young Musician's Program, which is a summer school at the University of California, Berkeley for kids under eighteen and they're basically teaching you at a college level. From being there, and being around the people that I grew up with, I knew what I wanted to pursue. I knew as a kid that I had a talent but I didn't start to exude in it until after I left the Bay Area.

I was very active in music, plus my mother is also a gospel musician, so I was learning a lot. I was fortunate enough to have good parents who helped me to cultivate my craft and I'm very thankful for having been in that environment. I had opportunities to play small gigs. I really commend my mother because from the ages of thirteen to fifteen, she used to let me play at late night clubs and she'd come pick me up at two in the morning. I'm very fortunate that she allowed me to have that outlet.

That's some good parenting.

Yeah! She's a musician as well so she saw an opportunity for me to go in a direction that she didn't really go in. She would go out on tour but it was a struggle because she wanted to be at home with the family. Whenever I wanted to practice or hang out with musicians or go to shows, she was always there to take me. At a young age I got to see a lot of guys playing who would be coming through the Bay Area, like Dennis Chambers and Brian Blade.

You've been friends with Thomas Pridgen for a long time.

Yeah, we grew up together. I met Thomas when I was 8, and I think he was 9. I actually just talked to him earlier. To this day he's like my brother. I'm fortunate enough to have grown up with a guy like that, especially with playing drums.

Were you learning from each other?

Man, he was at such a high level that I was learning from him, for sure. He had access to a lot of the guys that we were watching and he was exposed to the instrument at a very young age. I think the most that I gained from Thomas was how to find yourself through the instrument and how to really dedicate yourself to the craft. We used to cut high school together to go shed the whole day. We'd meet up at school, go to his house to play drums, and then go back to school for band. (laughs)

I also met Ronald Bruner through Thomas. I remember that Thomas would call Ronald and they would play drums over the phone! Those two are my brothers for sure.

Is Ronald still playing with Kamasi Washington?

Yeah, he is. I'm not sure what Thomas is doing right now but he does everything. I know that he was playing with Residente and before that Trash Talk. He's playing a lot in the bay area and he's always super active. I got to see him play with The Mars Volta and that was unreal.

Yeah. All of the drummers who have passed through that band have been phenomenal.

Yeah! Jon Theodore, Deantoni Parks, Thomas, Dave Elitch. All special dudes, for sure.

When you left the Bay Area, did you go straight to New York?

Not right away. I ended up auditioning for the Dave Brubeck Institute, which is at the University of Pacific, in Stockton, California. So I studied there for two years before moving to New York, which was actually a smart move because when I look back on myself at eighteen, I wouldn't have been ready for New York, as a human and as a musician.

It was cool to still be somewhat closer to home and to still be able to take the time to really figure it out. Eric Moore also lived in Stockton, California so I became really good buddies with him. He was my shed partner and we played drums every single day. Being there allowed me to really focus in on the instrument and that's where it hit me that I wanted to do this.

I learned that in order to be good you had to put in the time and the work. So that put me in a really good space and it became a habit of me just trying to get better.

Was it after studying in California that you went to the Julliard School for Music in New York?

I auditioned for the New School and Julliard, where I ended up getting a full scholarship. Once I saw the curriculum though I realised that it wasn't for me. Their curriculum was something that I had already been through, with all of my studies at high school and also at the Brubeck Institute.

I actually dropped out on the first day of school. I woke up and just thought, 'I can't do this'. I didn't even go to class, I went straight to the Dean and told him that it wasn't for me.

At the time there were so many musicians that I looked up to, from Steve Coleman to Yosvany Terry to Josh Roseman... I mean, Steve Coleman had a workshop every Monday at the Jazz Gallery and I used to go there and study. Then it was really about playing and learning what that experience was like, so I dropped out of school. It was the best thing for me because I was just ready to play.

That was a smart move.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes I look back on it and it probably would've been easy to go back to school and to get a degree and get my masters but I wasn't in that headspace. I was ready to play and I was on a mission to try to get better. So I dropped out of Julliard and spent one year in New York working. I got a day job at Guitar Centre just so I could survive. After six months I thought, 'if I'm really going to do this, I just have to fall face first'. I had to be involved in anything and everything that I could, from a restaurant gig to a jazz gig. I knew it was going to be really hard but I had to do it.

After that first year there I ended up going back to school. I went to the Manhattan School for Music and that's when I met other cool musicians and started to build a name for myself. While I was in school I got the call play with Kenny Garrett and after that I started touring.

After leaving Julliard and taking a year to work, do you feel like you benefitted from not fully going down the academic route at that point?

Absolutely. It felt like a better move for me to do that.  

I still consider myself to be a jazz musician, and in New York you still have the masters there who are the great practitioners of this music. I was going to shows and sitting right up under the drums and watching everyone from Brian Blade to Billy Hart, and I even got see Max Roach when he was still around. So it was about going to check out the masters, asking them questions and really learning about the culture.

If I was doing a hip hop gig, I was going to the hip hop clubs and asking Rich Medina what albums to check out. CBGBs was still around, so I got to and see what that was like and to experience that. So it was about learning the culture of each music and I feel like that's something that they aren't going to teach you in school. It's something you have to find for yourself.

What would you like to see implemented in music education that wasn't present when you were studying, or that you feel is just absent?

That's a really good question. I think allowing more students the opportunity to check out the masters. They need to be bringing in people who have the real experience and not just a teacher who went to school, learned the methods and then says, 'here's how to be a jazz musician'. That's not the way to do it.

Colleges bring in master musicians but it's only a minuscule part of the thing. It'd be great to be able to call someone like Billy Hart and to take students to them, to see the show. Also, it's an economic game. Berkley and the Manhattan School for Music have the money to do it but I think it's really about grabbing a hold of the experience. You're not going to really grow unless you're out there doing it. You can be taught a bunch of theory but to be in the moment and playing is where it's at.

You've collaborated with a multitude of different artists including Flying Lotus, Thundercat and Esperanza Spalding, How have you found it adapting to all of those different situations?

It's all about connecting the line. They're all unique individuals but they're also very like-minded. They're vessels submitting to this music and they're all willing to grow. I feel like the more music you go and check out, the easier it is to connect the dots and be able to adapt.

I learned that I would play differently in certain situations, whether I was playing with Esperanza Spalding or Thundercat, but it was really all about submitting to the music and setting a foundation to make things feel good. It's all music and I just want to be able to bring out the characteristics of what the artist is trying to say. At the end of the day it's about having the mindset that it's really not about me. It's about a bigger picture and to be a vessel in a way that gives someone hope or inspiration throughout their daily life.  

The physical aspect between the people I play with can also be different. Once I started playing with Thundercat, I knew that I could play in that style but I knew that I didn't have the physical capability and stamina to do it. So I had to go back to the drawing board in some ways. I even went to Thomas (Pridgen) and asked him, 'how do you not get tired playing these gigs?' He told me that not only do you have to play like that in your practice but you have to take care of yourself by getting proper sleep, drinking a lot of water and stretching. Over time it became easier.

I had a regimen within my practice where I would work on independence and groove, but then it just became about playing and getting my body in the flow. It takes a lot of patience to understand what works and how your body reacts to certain things, like when you play from fast to slow. Trying to relax the mind and body within that. It really comes down to submitting to it.

So it's mainly been the physical changes between gigs that I've had to adapt to more than the musical ones. I guess there are stylistic things which are different. I mean, with Esperanza it'll be sort of samba and bossanova, but with Thundercat it's more backbeat rock. Essentially it's about grooving, making the music feel good and always being open to learning. I try not to be single-minded in music, because the more things you're able to expose yourself to, the greater the musical language is that you can draw from. It's about always being 100% in it. Always checking out music and going to shows. Always talking about music, and just being a musical nerd. The more experience you get the more natural it becomes.

You played with Herbie Hancock. What was it like getting that call?

Bro. That was crazy. Playing with Herbie was a surreal experience. He's been a major influence on me throughout my musical journey so it was a dream come true.

I think it was Terrence Martin that recommended me. I got the call and did the rehearsal... I rarely get nervous but I was starstruck. I couldn't believe it was happening. For the first few days of the tour, it took me a little while to get over the hump. Like, 'oh, man, I'm on an airplane with Herbie Hancock! I'm eating with Herbie Hancock!' (laughs) On the third or forth day he walked up to me and said, 'Yo, Justin! You've been killing it these last few days!' And it just kind of took a load off me, because he was cool and he was feeling what I was doing.

I got to ask him a bunch of questions about Miles (Davis) and Tony (Williams). He actually told me that Tony played with John Coltrane, which was mind boggling to me.

What period would this have been in?

This would have been in the '60s. Herbie was really good friends with Tony, so I asked him: 'Man, did Tony ever play with Coltrane?' and he said that, yes, he did. There was a week at Birdland where something had happened with Elvin (Jones), where I think he might have got arrested, I believe. So Coltrane asked Tony to play that whole week. I asked Herbie, 'Are there any recordings of it?' and he said, “Yeah. I believe his wife has the recordings.” So it was documented.

Herbie never heard the recordings but he saw Tony afterwards and he said that Coltrane was the reason why Tony switched to playing with bigger sticks. Coltrane had so much stamina from playing as much as he did that Tony wanted to get on that same level. This was in the '60s, so already early on he was trying to get more energy and more power after playing with Coltrane. So that was a really cool moment that he shared with me.

Herbie's full spectrum, on a musical level and on a human level. He's extremely open and is very technically minded. We were all sitting at the dinner table one night and we're taking pictures on our phones. Herbie walks up and says, “you guys want to see something? You ever seen a 3D camera phone?” A company called Red made the first 3D camera phone and they sent him the first one. He was like, “yeah, they sent me the aluminium one. I asked for the titanium one, so that'll be waiting for me when I get back!” He's always been that guy. When Sony first started making CDs, they called him. When Midi was first starting to be used, he was one of the first guys to know about it. So it was just really cool to be in that space. I got to chat to him everyday.

He's not going back but he's moving forward into the beyond. I'll definitely cherish that moment [of playing with him] for the rest of my life. I knew going into it that I had be humble; to be thankful and learn as much as I could from Herbie. It definitely made me a better musician and a better human, just from that one month on the road with him. Just seeing how focused he is... it was unreal.

What have been some of the milestones in your playing that have pushed you creatively?

Meeting Herbie was definitely a milestone for me. Anytime I get to talk to one of the masters, I feel like that makes me a stronger human and a stronger musician. It makes me more confident in what I want to achieve. Playing with Kenny Garrett... as well as being able to play with my peers, you know. It's really cool to just be able to grow together.

The day I heard Caravan by Art Blakey when I was ten years old blew my mind. Just hearing how he played the drums and how much authority he had over the instrument was one of those moments where I thought, 'oh, so that's how you do it!'

For me it's about adapting to the energy of the room and being open in that sense as to how I can inspire someone. It goes back to submitting to the music. All of the practice, as well as checking out videos and seeing drummers live definitely helps, but I also want to be a musician that is completely in the moment. I don't ever want to go onto the bandstand thinking that I know what's going to happen. I want to have a mindset that is ready to expect the unexpected and to always play what is called for in the music. You have to be able to open yourself up to what's going to come out naturally and not try to force anything to come out.

All of those things have made me a better musician.

What's something that you've been paying attention to recently that's been inspiring you, either musically or non-musicially?

Well, I'm not really political but I am paying more attention to issues in the world, because as a black man, I feel like I have no choice, you know? I have no choice but to find a way to dumb down the bullshit. So I'm trying to pay more attention to what's going on in the world; to try and inspire someone to get through, because these are tough times.

I've been given a gift... in church you learn at a very young age that it's not about the accolades or being seen, it's about being a spiritual vessel, to give back and to give praise to the most high.

I guess musically I'm really paying a lot of attention to the drum community and seeing how social media is having an affect on it. I saw the transition with my generation, so it's a little harder for me to go all in and just post things up all of the time. I don't want to over expose myself, but I also just want to be a positive example for someone and to inspire the next generation of younger players, to show them that it's possible. I'm also paying more attention to my health, because with the older I get and the more I'm touring, my health is key to staying strong.

You put out the Nyeusi record a little while ago. Are planning on doing anything more with that project?

I'm still trying to figure it out. I am starting to hear the music and I am starting to get the inspiration to do another album, but I'm not sure if I'm going to call it Nyeusi, because I'm in a different space. With where my life is moving, and all the things I draw inspiration from, there might be a different message.

I wanted Nyeusi to be a theme of who I am more than anything. Even though it's my music it's still not about me whatsoever, and I wanted room for all the other musicians to speak in that project. I mean, I might do a Nyeusi II, just because it was well received and people gravitated towards it, which gave me the push to keep going.

It took a lot of energy and a lot of time to put that album out, and once it was out I didn't really do much touring. There was another side that I had to learn about which was how to be an artist and to present the music. Now, I'm more in a head space of wanting to play and wanting to get the music out live and create more content. So it's very loose and in the air, but I will say that for 2020 I'll be doing more shows with Nyeusi and I'm going to have more live content out, so that's where I'm at with it.

Any European dates for 2020?

Yeah, in the fall, and maybe even later on, and then just doing some shows in New York and L.A..

If you could give three albums to a drummer, which would you choose and why?

This is really difficult. Man.

Ok, I would say:

James Brown – Funky Drummer, or The Payback. Why James Brown? Because that's where hip-hop is coming out of, with backbeats and breakbeats. So it can provide a good foundation for someone wanting to become a hip-hop drummer and to have an understanding of the language. Not just James Brown but soul and funk music.

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. Just because that's a quintessential record for jazz. You can hear where it's coming from and where it's going.

Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life. He's an amazing songwriter and he plays every instrument. Being a drummer, you can get so caught up in the drums that you lose sight of what the message is, and Stevie Wonder is a beautiful storyteller. The music is killing but there's also a message which makes you want to investigate the lyrics. You get a sense of purpose and what music is actually meant for; what your role is as a drummer, too.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you, either as a musician or just on a human level?

On a human level, learning to love and respect everyone for who they are and what they do. To never knock another person's path. To always be encouraging and spread love, if you will.

As a player, and this is going to sound crazy, but playing louder and faster. (laughs)

I mean, that's a really hard thing for me so I'm really trying to develop and get my phrases and musical statements to be a lot stronger, so that it becomes a part of a language and not just a lick or a fill. So I really want to keep developing and getting better as a person.

Good answer. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and do this.

Man, no problem! Thanks for asking!

How has the tour with Donny McCaslin been?

Well, it's over! This is the last date but the tour went well. 

You have Nate Wood playing bass with you tonight, is that right?

Yeah, Nate is with us. He's done the last few gigs. My friend Owen Biddle, who is part of the project Edit Bunker that I have, he did a chunk of dates in the middle. At the beginning of the tour we had Jonathan Maron for one gig and before that in the States we had Tim Lefebvre. So we've had four bass players over the course of a month and a half.

Do you remember the first time you played drums? Was it something you felt you had an immediate connection to?

I don't know that I remember the first time I played drums but it was at a very young age. My parents are both musicians and I grew up watching them. My mom was a professional singer and my dad was a piano player, and I remember going to see them perform in night clubs as a three year old and I eventually gravitated towards the drums. I don't remember exactly when but I might have been five or six years old, but as I was so young I sadly can't remember any of the feelings involved with that.

What were your parents like? Were they good mentors for you as a musician?

Yeah, they were both in the music scene, plus I grew up in Greenwich Village in New York City, so those two things alone were a big advantage and gave me a leg up. They had better judgement perhaps than if they weren't musicians, as well as an understanding of whether or not I had any talent.

Now, with the internet, it doesn't matter as much where you come from as we all have access to the same information. Everybody puts up everything that they've got and it's all there. Back in the day, when you wanted to hear good music or if you wanted to find good drum teachers, you needed to be hands on and that came from where you lived and who you knew. It's not like that anymore. It's much easier.

Did you study music formally at college?

No. I went to a performing arts high school for a couple of years but outside of that I took lessons at the Drummers' Collective in New York as a young teenager and that was kind of the extent of it.

People tend to go to college to figure out what it is they want do but I was already touring a lot as a musician throughout high school, so the advice I got from the musicians I was playing with was to just carry on.

You incorporate a lot of technology into your playing, across a lot of different projects. How does technology influence how you play or are you using it to mainly expand your sound palette?

These are questions that I think about a lot and I don't know if I have the answer yet.

Technology for me has had more of a production value means rather than a drumming means. Whether it was something I could use to augment my own drum sound for a particular aesthetic or if I had a production sound in my head when programming drums for sample based stuff. I'd then use it to figure out how to arrive at that.

So if I wanted to get an old school seventies funk drum sound, I'd figure out how they would mic the drums, what effects were used and what types of rooms they recorded in. It wasn't so much technology directly being used to augment stuff in a live playing situation. I mean, that’s something I now strive for but initially it was to get recorded material to sound and feel a certain way, not only from the drums but across the board. I used technology to get something in my head out that couldn't have been achieved without it.

How time consuming is it to create a single song for Edit Bunker? Does the process still challenge you?

The process is excruciating. There are times where I can write something that is ready to be performed in a matter of hours, and there are other times where I can sit for days and not even get out of the gate in terms of what I want to do with it. It's a constant struggle and the process takes a long time.

What software are you using for Edit Bunker?

Mainly Ableton. I don't want to throw any companies under the bus but I'm having certain issues with the new computer that I have where there are drop outs of audio. I'm trying to call each company, but neither is aware of the problems. So I'm getting sent a laundry list of things that I should try to solve some of these issues. It's frustrating but for me there is no option to turn back.

Right now in my life I have zero interest in not doing what I'm doing. I have zero interest in just playing the drums. I would sooner go into a different line of work. If someone were to say that I had to throw out all of my computers and just focus on playing the drums I would say no, because I can't fully express myself in that way, it'd be too frustrating. I'd rather not express myself at all and just go and open a restaurant.

There's a frustration that comes in knowing how much I'm having to compromise that pure drumming thing in order to see this vision through. What I do is the hardest, most frustrating thing but I have to do this. I feel like I'm playing drums with my hands tied behind my back because of all of the limitations of what I'm struggling with with the electronics. I want to be able to give the same amount of focus to it that my favourite drummers give but I can't. So that's where the frustration lies – but I won't give up the electronics. I'd rather suffer as the drummer right now.

Are you using any electronics with Donny McCaslin?

No, I'm not. It's funny because he asked me if I wouldn't mind throwing in some stuff, but it's like – it's all or nothing for me. I don't just want to sort of do it. It's got to be something that's fully fledged where I'm devoting a lot of energy to it, because if I just went up there with a pad with a couple of samples on it I'd be just half-assing it and I don't want to do that.

At what point did you become interested in incorporating technology into your playing?

1993.

Wow! That's pretty specific. What happened in 1993?

I bought a sampler and wanted to see that vision through a little bit more.

Was there anyone during that time who doing something in drumming that was interesting to you?

No, not in '93. I just loved sampling, and it wasn't even the influence of hip hop, which I loved at the time, I just liked recording sounds and being able to manipulate them, so that's when I decided that it was something that I wanted to pursue. 

The first thing that I did which spoke to that was a project called Bluth, which not a lot of people knew about in 1996. That was me and the bass player Tim Lefebvre, which was before our other band Boomish. It was a lot of sample based stuff which was humorous. People likened it to Frank Zappa, though we never listened to Frank Zappa. I actually felt that the Zappa stuff was over my head and I never gravitated to it, so that wasn't an influence on us. No doubt, if you hear humour in music you think about Frank Zappa pretty quickly, so to say that it doesn't sound like that wouldn't be true, but it wasn't a target for us.

So in 1993 I decided that I wanted to sit behind my computer more and make music that way, and again in '96 when I heard drum and bass - Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. That was where I heard something specific which made me sit up and say wow, but in '93 it was just an idea because I loved sampling, computers and sequencing and I wanted to do more of that.

Have there been any other points between 1996 and today where you've heard players that have made you feel the way that drum and bass did when you first heard it?

Yeah, I'd say more and more. The biggest one for me was when I met Mark Guiliana. We often joke because he claims that we met numerous times between 2000 and 2009, but I'm really bad with names and faces, like embarrassingly so.

We finally had a proper introduction and we met and spoke about a bunch of different things over lunch. He mentioned that he had some gigs coming up so I went to see him play and I thought, wow, this guy is playing the drums the way I'm hearing them in my head. His approach was more that of a beat maker and producer than a drummer. So I liked what Mark was going for. We became very close.

There's a new crop of guys within our network, where we'll hang together as friends and share different ideas about what we like. We all pick up things involuntarily from each other.

Nate Wood is playing bass in the group tonight and personally I would like to hear him play bass and drums on this gig at the same time, I would enjoy that more than hearing him just on bass. I'd rather hear him do both, but that's me. He loves the way I'm playing on this gig and we both sincerely like the other person's thing as much or better than our own stuff. It's very sincere and we both pick up things from each other. He's learning the wrong things from me, as far as i'm concerned. He should just stick to what he does because it's just way better than what I'm doing, but we do trade knowledge, and you end up having similarities in your mindset and in your approach.

I'm older than those guys so they came up listening to me just because I'm the older guy here, but I feel like I came up again, in an almost second incarnation, listening to them. I feel like that kid in the bedroom listening to these new players that I want to be like. We're all helping each other – or maybe not, I dunno, but that's what seems to be happening.

Well, that's a cool network to have.

Yeah, it is. It’s something that I value a lot.

What's the creative approach for writing with Edit Bunker? Are you starting with a particular piece of film in mind or does music come first?

It can be either way. We can have tracks written without any particular piece of video in mind but we can also see something on the web, or remember a movie that we loved as a kid, or even see something happen on the streets and grab a video of it to turn it into something.

We're doing some gigs soon and I want to have some new tunes for it so Owen said, 'Hey, I've been thinking about this one scene in a movie that's kind of cool which involves phones dialling, tones and spoken parts', and I immediately thought that we could segue into one of our Mister Barrington tunes called Wrong Number, which also has a similar concept. So now we have a tune from ten years ago which all of a sudden has the potential to be merged with this.

Sometimes the video starts and we wonder how we can write music to it, and other times we’ll write a track and have to think about what visuals could be used. So things don't have just one way in which to operate.

Are you improvising ideas to the films or are you working away from the rehearsal space and then coming in with new ideas?

I would say that we're writing them first and then improvising with them later. I wish I could say that there was one way in which we approach it but there isn't.

Do you still live in New York city or are you in L.A. now?

I would actually say that, at this very moment, I don't live anywhere right now. I'm bouncing between both but I really don't know where I'm going to end up.

I'm trying to make L.A. a base, at least for the near future. I have a rehearsal space out there but I don't officially have an apartment as I tend to rent through Air B&B. I'll leave a suitcase with clothing and things that I need when I'm there but I haven't signed that one year lease on an apartment because I don't want to yet.

I also honestly don't have the time to look for a place and to furnish it because I'm gone every other week. Being away gives me time to think, do I even want to be here?

If you were to move to L.A., what would prompt that move for you?

It would be based on my friends who live there and not a musical decision at all. It's also not necessarily a lifestyle decision either, because I like the New York lifestyle better - I like a real city where I can walk around. L.A. is different from New York and it feels like a little break that might give my brain the chance to think different things and to make different decisions, for better or for worse.

Again, I would look at it as something temporary. If great things happen there  and I start to have more of a settled life then maybe I'll think differently. But right now it's nice to have a rehearsal room there where I can work out ideas for my own projects.

What are some of the things that you've valued the most from being between the two cities?

Being in New York, I value the conditions of how the day is structured. You don't need a car. You can walk around and it feels like there's an immediate social impact. You're not alone in your car, isolated, like in L.A., because it's spread out. I mean, the weather is great there but I actually don't care about that. I don't love it when it's cold in New York but it's ok, you deal with it. So the weather isn't the draw for me there, it's friends. I like hanging out with them.

I haven't been to the clubs in L.A. as much as I've been to the clubs in New York, so it feels a little fresher in that way. It feels a little more unknown, even though I've spent a lot of time there over the years. Again, I do think that it would be a temporary thing for me.

I think that I would sooner consider moving to Europe longer term than I would moving to L.A.

Anywhere in particular?

Vienna, Stockholm, Barcelona, maybe Berlin or Copenhagen. Just cities that I like to be in, and not even musically speaking. London would be a smarter move professionally, so that's on my list by default, but I think I like places like Copenhagen more. I mean, I'm there for a few days at a time, and I might get bored if I were there for a longer period, but I like the way those places feel and I get a good vibe from them.

What have been some of the milestones in your playing that you feel have pushed you forwards creatively?

Oh, man. I don't think I've hit many.

An absolute milestone for me was playing with Wayne Krantz, but I don't love my contributions to the records that we did in terms of the execution. I can't listen to them because I don't feel like I played up to par for my own standards, but it was a milestone to have been a part of that, especially given what Wayne brought to it, and what his skill level and vision was. I feel like what it was, in terms of what we did, was beyond being up to par, but not what I did.

I wish I could do it over and do it better, and I feel that I could now, but back then I don't feel like I did as well as I would've liked to have but that felt like a milestone because I turned a corner.

Certainly the stuff I did with my own groups Bluth and Boomish, which is where the aesthetic in my head was realised, and again with a group called Bedrock with Uri Caine and Tim Lefebvre, and then for sure with the band Mister Barrington. I think Mister Barrington might be the only records that I can listen to without an ounce of regret on any part of it, where as with every other record it's like, turn it off, I can't listen to this. But I don't say that with those albums, at least not yet anyway.

That's been a very personal project for you.

Yes, we did three records together and every time I listen to them I still like it.

What's something that you've been paying attention to recently that's inspiring you, either musically or non musically?

That's a tough one. I would say just the commitment that I've invested in towards what it is that I'm trying to do, and the continuation of how much further I have to go as well as knowing all of the things that I want to do with the technology. I write everything down in a document, so whenever an idea comes to mind I have it there. The inspiration is in knowing how much more there is that is still to do. I see so much more beyond where I'm at, and not abstractly but very specifically. I know exactly what I want to be doing and I just have to do it. The reward of doing it will be worth it.

That's what keeps me going probably more than anything because you get to a point, or at least I do, where I get older and I like so many things but I don't like so many things for myself. I like very few things for what it is that I want to say, where I realise that I can only say a finite amount of stuff and still feel genuine, you know.

Knowing that I literally have it mapped out in steps of what I need to do, and getting better at the things I'm interested in, and allowing them to speak more clearly, that's what keeps me going.

Thanks so much for your time, Zach.

Yeah, man. Of course.

Interview by Dave Jones. 

Live photo by Julie Ann Rouquette.

https://www.instagram.com/zachdanziger/

How's the tour been going so far?

Good, thanks. We have three shows left for this run after tonight.

You played here at Leeds University before, didn't you?

Yeah, we last played here about ten years ago.

Have you been next door to see where The Who's Live at Leeds was recorded?

Yeah, I just went over there to check it out. I'd seen it before when we were here last time but I had to go and take a picture of it. Buzz (Osbourne, Melvins frontman) was saying that he remembered seeing photos from Live at Leeds and that the stage was really shallow.

The Stones, Zeppelin, and tons of other bands played there, which is pretty impressive. I remember the last time we were here they had pictures up of The Who when they played there again in the mid '00s.

Whenever I'd listen to that record I always imagined that it was recorded in some really nice, pristine theatre, then I saw it and was like, this is where they recorded it? A crappy lunch room?! [laughs] It kind of makes sense I guess.

I was listening to Live at Leeds recently and I can hear some of that vocabulary in your playing – the way he played fills around the kit. Was Keith Moon a big influence on you?

Yeah, pretty big. I didn't really know The Who until I joined The Melvins. I heard them through Buzz, and he's a huge Who fan. They were, and probably still are, his favourite band. He always talked about how you can tell that Pete Townshend was writing with his drumming in mind on a lot of their material.

I met Jim Fox who drums in The James Gang not too long ago. Somebody had made him aware that we'd covered the song Stop on our new record, which they had done a cover of, too, so he came down to one of our shows.

They had done a bunch of shows with The Who in the U.S. during the seventies. Townsend really liked Joe Walsh's playing, so they invited them to come over here to the U.K. and tour. He said that the way that those guys toured was that they each had their own car and driver, so they got paired up together. So it'd be Joe Walsh with Pete Townshend, and Jim Fox got paired up with Keith Moon. Sometimes they'd ride with Roger (Daltrey) but they didn't like it because he drove his own car and they said that his driving was really crappy. [laughs]

I knew Jim would have a million Keith Moon stories, and he was like, 'Yeah... but he'd just pretty much pass out in the car for the whole day and then wake up at around 5pm'. Keith would be there asking, 'How was the show last night?' It was probably amazing, judging by how good Live at Leeds is.

What were you like as a kid?

I was kind of a goofy kid, glasses, but pretty normal. I heard music early on though. I had Beatles and Monkees records from when I was about six years old. I liked baseball, and still do. I didn't like it for a long time but now I like it again.

I grew up in a very small town with not a lot going on...

That's Aberdeen, Washington?

Yeah. I actually had parents that weren't divorced, unlike all of my other friends.

[Dale's phone vibrates]

Sorry, that's my friend Bob (Hannam). He's the guy who made our documentary. He's actually from Bradford.

[Laughs] Ah, ok. You and I actually met in Bradford in 1996 when you guys were touring Stag.

Oh, wow! Really?

Yeah, you'd just finished playing at a club called Rios. We hung out for a while afterwards and you, Buzz and Mark Deutrom were teaching me and my friend how to play Craps in the car park with some dice that you'd recently picked up in Las Vegas.

[Laughs] That's crazy!

I remember that tour. The Seattle thing was kind of over by that point and I remember our booking agent trying to talk us out of doing the whole tour in the U.K. He was saying, 'Look, it's going to be bad. London will be fine, but you just shouldn't do it'. We really wanted to do it though... but, on the whole, it was really under-attended.

Yeah, I think there were probably around 50 people there and you guys were doing three sets.

That's right, we did!

I remember you ending one of the sets with Cottonmouth...

Right! We were just talking about that the other day, about how I used to play guitar from behind the kit and sing that.

I gotta ask my friend really quick about this show. [Dale sends a text to Bob Hannam]

Melvins were playing three sets a night on that tour. How did you prepare yourself for that?

Practicing a lot, plus when you get on tour you get used to playing pretty quickly. I think by that point we had been on tour for a while. Prior to that we had already played shows before where we had done two or three sets. Once you get past the second set you're already warmed up and can do it without any problems.

I did it last year when we were playing over here in England with Melvins and Redd Kross, so I'd be doing a set with both bands, and by the Melvins set I'd be fully warmed up.

How old were you when you first started playing?

I guess officially I would've probably been about eleven or twelve.

I found out that my neighbour had a drum set in their basement that they didn't really play and I somehow talked him into letting me take it home, just to bang around on it. I also played guitar from when I was around eight years old, and I always liked both.

I remember being in a talent show in fifth or sixth grade and playing guitar. I taught my friend that lived across the alley from me how to play the drums for it.

Around that same time I had this older friend who lived a block away, who eventually went on to play in the band Metal Church, and he befriended me. By that point I was already into Kiss, who I had seen play when I was in sixth grade, but he turned me on to Zeppelin and stuff like that. He was even showing me how to play rock songs on the guitar, like Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent, but then at some point he said, 'You know, you should get a drum set so we can jam!' So that's kind of how I started.

Did you have an immediate connection with the instrument?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I was already really into it, even before that... especially with Kiss. That was the band that made me want to play music.

I don't even know if schools have much of a music program anymore, but starting in fourth grade back then you could play a stringed instrument, so I started playing cello. Then in fifth grade you could play a brass instrument, so I wanted to play the tuba [laughs], but then rock and roll basically took over and I switched in the following year and got a snare drum. I had a paper route and I delivered papers to buy my first drum set, and I had it by the seventh grade.

That first drum set was from the 60's and it got pretty thrashed. I used it when I was in The Melvins, too.

What was it like growing up somewhere that didn't have a music scene?

It was weird. Even then a lot of the music that I liked wasn't being played on the local radio, so I found out about stuff through my older friends. One of my friends got into a cover band and I used to go and watch them practice all the time.

I actually met a drummer who was pretty good from the neighbouring town, whose brother actually ended up marrying my sister. He had a Ludwig Octaplus drum set with double bass drums and eight toms. After a while I wasn't into Kiss anymore and I got into Rush, so I was really into Neil Peart.

You're going to need those toms!

[laughs] Exactly! I never got there though.

At one point, the drum set I had in The Melvins was a red sparkle kit which had two mismatched bass drums from different kits. They were the same colour but they didn't quite match.

So I had two bass drums, two rack toms, a floor tom, and then another big floor tom in the centre, so it was this kind of weird pyramid/diamond shape. It was held up by gravity and shitty stands and I couldn't afford cymbals. When I eventually could, I remember buying one and bringing it to practice and those guys taking it from me and hiding it. I could only use it when we played shows because I just used to break them, you know.

Did the geographical isolation of Aberdeen help you guys as a band?

Definitely. I mean, all we did was practice when we started, but really we made most of our music away from there. It inspired us to play because there was really nothing else to do, besides smoke weed and drink.

Do you still have family there?

No, not anymore. Both of my parents have passed away. My mom had actually already moved out of there when she retired and so she went to Olympia. There was a lot more going on there, and when The Melvins first started out that's where we would go and play. I mean, there was no place to play in Aberdeen at all, and nobody would've liked it anyway.

How supportive were they when you first started playing?

They were really supportive. I remember the day that Buzz and Matt came over to talk to me about playing in The Melvins. My mom had just been saying to me, 'You know, you've got to find a band that's really going to do something', because the stuff I was doing at the time really wasn't going anywhere.

I already knew who they were from seeing them open for Metal Church in Aberdeen, and nobody liked them. That was the one gig that happened there ever, besides some school dances.

I'd actually seen them already because this cover band that I played in had done a benefit for a live radio show which was happening at Christmas time at Elk's Lodge, which The Melvins were also playing. They were the only band around who were playing original material, which I thought was kind of cool. I didn't know anything about punk rock then besides what I'd read, and I'd never heard it because you couldn't find any of those records. I'd seen the film Rock & Roll High School, and the only thing I could relate it to was that they kind of sounded like The Ramones and also like Motorhead, so I liked it. My other band mates thought it sucked, probably because it was competition for them.

Before all of that my bands were practicing at our house. We had a little four bedroom house and my older brothers had already moved out and gone to college, so I had command of three bedrooms. The one at the back of the house was where we would practice. When I first joined the Melvins we practiced for about a month before our first show.

Where was that first show?

In Olympia.

Do you remember much about it?

It was us opening for D.O.A., and I think it went well.

There was another one a week later that was with Green River and a band called The He-Sluts at the Tropicana in Olympia. The U-Men were supposed to play, who were a pretty popular Seattle band, but for whatever reason they didn't show up. There is a recording of that show available.

[Dale receives a text from Bob Hannam]

Bob said about that Bradford show: “Yeah, you did three sets. My friend left half way through because he couldn't stand it.” [laughs]

What were the things that were important to you when you first started playing and how have they changed over time?

Good question. Well, it's not so important for me to play fast anymore. [laughs]

Things have changed and grown so much that it's really hard to say. Even from our first recordings to now, they're far different, but I guess that comes with experience. We still practice a lot, so some things haven't changed. We have our own studio now and we're able to record whenever we want to. I think that's helped us musically.

When we did our first record, we'd rehearse those songs so much before we ever got to record them, and we probably beat some of them into the ground and ruined what the original feeling was.

Did you record the first album with a label in mind to release it?

No, not with the first record. There are probably a chunk of songs that never got recorded because we didn't have the means to do it. We'd play them live a few times and then get sick of them and write new songs that we liked more, so there were probably at least a full album's worth of songs that we never even recorded, which we've probably since forgotten about, too.

They might be on some cassette tape somewhere. When we can't play anymore we'll dig up all the stuff from the archives, kind of like the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series.

Similar to The Mangled Demos?

Yeah. That stuff was all with Mike Dillard who was the original drummer.

How long was Mike playing in The Melvins before you joined?

Probably for about a year. The band started in 1983 and I think that once Buzz started to write songs that were a little more complicated, Mike wasn't quite comprehending it. We're all still good friends and we did the Melvins 1983 record with him on drums.

It's cool because he still feels like a part of the band, and whenever we hang out with him it's like we're back in eighth grade again. [laughs] He and Buzz used to cause a lot of trouble when they were teenagers.

It's nice that you still have that connection. Were there any things in particular that you remember trying to master when you first started?

Oh, gosh. Well, I remember playing to Kiss records.

I'm sure that there were triplet fills which incorporated the bass drum and stuff like that, or just trying to figure how drummers did certain things.

I remember even before I started taking lessons that the Bay City Rollers had a Saturday morning variety show in the States and they were huge. I wasn't really a fan of those guys but I could watch the drummer on the show and I could see how he played certain things.

I mean, I had a pretty good time figuring stuff out, and it wasn't too difficult.

How long were you taking lessons for?

Probably about three or four years, and that started because there was a school band when I was in Junior High School, which had a lot of drummers, probably more than most school bands would have. Most schools would have one or two and we had up to eight.

There was a professor at the junior college who was a jazz drummer and he offered lessons for 50 cents per kid if we'd go in on Saturdays. So there were drummers there who were older than me who had seniority and they were first chair, but none of them showed up. So it was me and one other kid, who couldn't play very well.

The next week came and only I showed up and the drum teacher said, 'I was hoping that this was going to go a little better and that more people would show up, but I can't really give you lessons for just fifty cents [laughs], but if you want to take private lessons with me I can do it for six bucks an hour'. So that's where I started learning rudiments as well as working on proper technique, which I still practice now.

A lot of players who hit as hard as you do aren't always that aware of their own technique but this seems to be something that you're definitely aware of.

Yeah, these days there's less movement in my drumming. I realised this recently that I use my fingers when I'm playing a lot more now. When I was younger I didn't really sit around and practice all of that stuff too much – I just wanted to play rock songs, but now I do a lot more of that stuff. Also, I still feel like I'm still learning. I'll go on Youtube and figure stuff out and look at how other people play, which is great.

It's a process that never ends.

Yeah!

Have you had any physical problems from playing at all?

I pinched a nerve in my shoulder when we were playing with Jello Biafra. We were practicing a lot and I moved my arm in a weird way and that was it. It took a long time to heal. It was... it was fucked, [laughs] but I still had to play and get through it.

How are your ears holding up?

I'm hard of hearing and they're going for sure. I've actually got hearing aids but I don't wear them all of the time. When I'm around my kids I have a hard time hearing them, so it was something that I'd thought about for a long time and I finally got them.

You've always struck me as a very ego-less player in a lot of ways. I can't imagine many drummers being completely willing to include a second drummer into a band, or switching to bass for an entire record and letting another drummer take over.

Likewise with your playing itself. I remember first hearing the intro to the song 'Queen' from Stoner Witch and being impressed at how simple the opening part was, which I found to be equally as impressive as some of your more complex playing. I feel that a lot of drummers wouldn't dare to play something so simplistic like that. 

Do you have a particular philosophy towards drumming that informs how you play?

No, not necessarily. It all depends on the song.

With regards to being ego-less, there are a lot of drummers who wouldn't like it if a guitar player said, 'I want you to play it like this'. But, for me, it's like: well, he wrote the song!

Sometimes I might not know what exactly to play and Buzz might have an idea for what he's already hearing. This gets back to how someone like Pete Townshend wrote for Keith Moon, and a lot of the time Buzz writes with me in mind. That isn't always the case. Sometimes he might not know what needs to be played and then I'll come up with something.

How does Buzz dictate some of those ideas to you?

A lot of it is just him telling me where he hears certain ideas, and sometimes some of that is hard to learn in order to get it right, but he's got great ideas.

The band has gone through many line up changes over the course of 35 years. Most bands wouldn't have lasted as long under the same circumstances. Do you think that this has worked to your advantage as a band?

Yeah, it's certainly kept it fresh. We never wanted to part ways with anybody in particular, it just always came down to personal problems. After we had Kevin Rutmanis playing bass – that was a really hard break up because we really liked him but he had troubles that were affecting the band.

After that we went back into it not wanting to have anyone that we would consider permanent anymore. We want to have an open relationship basically [laughs], and that's worked great!

This current line up of The Melvins features two bass players (Jeff Pinkus and Steve McDonald). Has playing in this configuration forced you to alter your approach at all?

I don't think so.

Does it help to create more musical opportunities?

Yeah. I try to play with them both, so I'm not really following one or the other. They've both come up with their own parts for the whole thing.

What were the musical challenges for you when including Cody Willis from Big Business into the band as a second drummer? I know that you had talked in the past about including Dave Grohl as a second drummer in the mid nineties so I'm guessing that this was something you'd been interested in doing for a while.

Yeah, after Nirvana broke up we actually asked him if he'd like to come and join us. It was an open invitation to come and do whatever, whether that would have been recording or playing a show. We heard that he was into it, and we saw his old band mates in Scream who said that Dave had even drawn up some plans for building one large drum set that we would both play, but it never went any further. Soon after he formed Foo Fighters and that was that.

So, yeah, it was something that we had been thinking about for a while, and we kind of did it with the Melvins/Fantomas Big Band with Dave Lombardo, so we knew that it would work. There was another guy that we asked who was in a band called Hovercraft but he didn't want to do it. We had toured with them and he would keep his drum set out and then come out and play the song 'Amazon' with us, so we knew that it was an idea that would work.

After Kevin left the band my wife actually suggested that we ask Jared, who plays bass in Big Business alongside Cody, to join the band, because she'd been friends with him, and we'd played shows with them before. So I mentioned that to Buzz and he said, 'Why don't we just ask both of them to do it?'

I thought it'd be cool. Cody plays left handed so we were able to put the two sets together and share certain parts of the kit.

We just asked them to come down and play, not to try out for the band, just to see what they thought, and it happened right away. We worked really hard on everything. Funnily enough, they were already thinking about moving down to L.A. to begin with.

You played on some really early Nirvana recordings, including tracks that ended up on the album Bleach. What are some of the standout memories you have from recording those sessions with Jack Endino at Reciprocal?

They wanted to do a demo so that they could get a permanent drummer, basically, and I worked it all out with those guys. We drove over to Reciprocal Recording and did ten songs, which were done really quickly. Whenever I listen to some of those songs now I'm reminded that we were drinking coffee and eating chocolate covered espresso beans, so you can hear some of those songs speed up, but we weren't really too worried about because it was just a demo. They ended up going back later to remix and use some of those songs. That night after recording we went and played our first show, then the next day we shot a video at Radio Shack in Aberdeen.

We had a friend who was the manager there and the video is just us miming along to one of the songs [laughs]. We were sort of messing around. It was fun!

Among the many projects that you've been involved with, you and Buzz played with Omar and Teri in Crystal Fairy not so long ago. What was it like doing that project? Will you be doing anything more with it?

Unfortunately I don't know that any more will happen with it but we really liked writing songs with Teri. We just got in a room to figure out what kind of songs we wanted to write, and both Buzz and Teri had a few ideas. Within the first day of getting together we had written and recorded three songs that were damn near done. She's really quick at writing and comes up with amazing lyrics. I'd never played with a singer who could just come up with melody and good lyrics right off the top of their head like that. It's crazy.

Yeah, it was cool hearing her in a different context to what I had heard her in before. It's a great record.

Yeah! I'm involved in it of course but I think she was doing things that she'd never done before with that record. It was one of my favourite things that I've been involved in at that point, so I was really bummed that it fell apart and that we didn't get to play any shows.

Buzz and I were really committed to it. We were going to put The Melvins on hold because we thought that it was something that was really special. So that was a tough loss.

Your musical relationship with Buzz is now into its third decade. What is it that makes the relationship between the two of you work so well?

I don't know. We were in a working relationship before we were really friends, which is probably different from most bands.

I think just keeping our heads together and being realistic about everything, and really wanting it to work. Bands usually break up for stupid reasons but, for whatever reason, we never wanted to quit. I'm really happy about it. We've never really gotten into fights or anything like that. We get along well.

When we're at home we sometimes hang out and go to a baseball game together, or maybe the movies or go play golf. We don't live in the same neighbourhood, so we aren't over at each other's houses much, maybe once or twice a year, but we see each other all of the time elsewhere anyway.

How does being a dad fit in with being a touring musician at this point? What do your kids make of what you do?

I think they like it. Sometimes kids at their school even know who the band is. They've come to see us play and have pretty much grown up with it but it is hard for them, especially when I first leave. It's hard for me, too.

Before we even had kids, me and my wife would have long talks about how it would work. I mean, I have to keep doing this because this is how I make money, so it's going to be hard but we just have to deal with it the best we can. It's a strange life. Not everybody has that. The one thing I could maybe relate it to would be like someone being in the military, but then those people are sometimes gone for longer.

I relate things to baseball a lot, too, [laughs] but baseball players will play a hundred and sixty two games a year and half of those are away. The only thing that's probably easier for them is that they aren't in one place for a single night, so they'll play at a place for three or four nights. I wish we could do that. That'd be great! [laughs]

What are the things you spend the most amount of time thinking about these days?

You mean besides baseball? [laughs] I honestly don't know. I try to live in the moment.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you?

Trying to schedule everything in my life, because there's so much going on.

Melvins is always a solid schedule, but when I get home I also have a solo band now and I also play with Redd Kross, then there will be more Melvins shows. So just trying to get everything to fit in and still have time for family.

I'm trying to do all of these things and not feel like I've got too much on my plate and still be able to get everything done.

It's a hard balance.

Yeah, it is.

Well, thanks for taking the time to do this, Dale. It's massively appreciated.

Thank you!

How are you finding balancing touring with family life? Has becoming a father forced you to be more selective with the projects you start and become involved with? 

So far so good. My wife is also a musician and is very understanding, so that makes things very easy. I really try not to be gone for too long at a time. This tour runs for two weeks and for me that still feels okay. 

There's nothing as rewarding as presenting my own music. Aside from enjoying the playing and the company of the musicians, it also serves as an investment to the indefinite future. Whereas playing as a side man sometimes feels as though you're stuck in a bubble. It's cool but there is always a hard end to it.

When I'm presenting my own music there is no end to it. Which means there's a little more value when I'm away on tour; knowing that it's helping to plant seeds for things in the future. It's important that I'm not gone too long but with things like FaceTime and Skype we're able to speak as much as we can and stay connected.

What's your approach when writing for the many projects that you lead? Do you bring in specific ideas and chord progressions or are you starting with rhythm and moving out from there?

It's always case by case with each song and each situation.

With the jazz quartet I'm bringing in complete songs with the arrangement and charts. Inside of that it's really important for me to leave plenty of room in the compositions for these guys to really shine, because not only are they some of my best friends but they're also great musicians, so for me that's a big priority because I'm writing for them, too. This is a new band but we've played together in other situations and have a shared camaraderie from those. I just try to put them in a position to shine.

With Beat Music it's a little more open, but also a little more closed in a sense. Somethings are very detailed, down to which patch on a synth has to be used every time and what pedals are used on the bass. A lot of it is essentially through-composed, but on the other side of things there might be four bars of a bass line which we'll begin with and then just go from there, and that might become twelve minutes. Again, it's about me knowing these guys so well and trying to really exploit their greatness to be honest. [laughs]

Aside from being a great musician, Miles Davis was famous for being a great band leader and band creator. So I think of it as coming from his school. Call the right guys, get the hell out of their way and you're good.

Well that's a good philosophy to have.

Yeah, you have to select great musicians and let them play. Really let them play! You can hire anybody, but if there are restrictions then there's only so much that you're going to get.

You released Family First: The Alternate Takes shortly after the initial album's release. Are there any plans for you to issue similar releases for other albums that you've already put out on Beat Music Productions, which offer a slightly wider perspective of a session? 

I don't plan to but I wouldn't rule it out. This one felt right because we had played a bunch of takes in the studio and in certain cases it was difficult to really select which ones would make it to the record, because there is so much room inside of these songs to highlight the improvising and, of course, that's going to change from song to song.

There are two tunes on the Alternate Takes that aren't on the record (Family First) and they're both great but they just weren't able to fit on there. So we have those and then four alternate takes of songs from the album.

For me I was thinking back to those Blue Note records from the sixties. When they came out they were issued on vinyl, so with that format there is a limited amount of minutes available, but when they reissued them onto CD they were able to put more on there, and often they would include alternate takes. The first time I was buying those records was on CD and on a few of those there are certain alternate takes which I prefer and that I've developed more of a relationship with. Not that they are necessarily better or worse, but there is sometimes a different type of magic in the improvising. To be able to hear the musician's different perspectives on the same tune a take later is an amazing insight.

Between My Life Starts Now and Beat Music: The Los Angeles Improvisations, were there any set parameters in place when writing or recording? 

The only parameters within the improvisations was that I wanted to explore all of the different “bands” within the band. It's a quartet, so there's only one version of that. Then there are three or four different trios, six or eight duos, and also four soloists. I wrote down all of those combinations and wanted to have at least two improvisations from each combination, and then we did a bunch together just as a quartet.

If you just hit record with us all in there we're probably all going to be playing at the same time and that can get pretty dense. So it allowed me to hear their solos and then grab my favourite moments.

With My Life Starts Now they were all of my compositions, so it was a much more traditional way of recording, where we would record a particular song and change things around to get the right sound and to try to get a good take. Both were pretty easy as the direction was very clear to begin with.

Nice! Can you talk a little about the project you did with David Bowie?

Sure. It was a session for one song, which I was recommended for... and I said yes! [laughs]

It was a collaboration between David and Maria Schneider's orchestra, who are amazing. I was brought in and we did a few rehearsals followed by one day in the studio. He was unbelievably kind and generous and was there during the rehearsals the whole time. It was very humbling to be there.

A lot of people ask me, “was he there in the studio? Did you meet him?” and I can understand that perception. Honestly, he was the first one there in the studio and the first one there for rehearsals, too.

You also played with Meshell Ndegeocello at one point too?

Yeah, the first time was in 2008 but we're good friends and we've stayed in touch. She calls me sporadically to do stuff. I've never been her drummer, as in one of the guys in the band, but a couple of times a year we get to do something together. She's one of my musical heroes.

She's great. I was first introduced to her music through an album of hers which Deantoni Parks had played on...

The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams?

Yes!

That's around the time that I was playing for her. I was basically subbing for Deantoni, so I was playing that repertoire which was really fun, and it was scary to follow him, you know. [laughs]

I can imagine that there's a certain weight that comes with stepping into someone elses shoes like that.

Yeah, but Meshell is so open and she never said “play like this”, but the way he plays those parts is so identifiable that it becomes the song, and the song needs that element. That was a great experience.

Have you played with her since then?

Yes, a few months ago. I have a friend named Alan Hampton, who is a songwriter, and they'd been writing some songs together.

Nice! You've recently put together a group called Halo Orbit. Can you talk a little about how the album came about and what the process for writing was?

Juan (Alderete) and I have been friends for a while and he called me and said “let's do something together! I have a friend from Buffalo Daughter (Sugar) in Tokyo. We should all meet in L.A.” I flew out to L.A. and stayed at Juan's place for a week.

We worked on some songs and recorded, then I flew out another time to stay there. So we're slowly chipping away. It's a very casual project. I've heard a few songs that are mixed and it's super cool. It's all instrumental but I don't know when or where it's going to come out. Juan is the main engine of the project but I hope that once it is out that we can do some stuff, that'd be fun.

I hope so, too. I'm really looking forward to checking it out.

Yeah, he's a great guy.

You also recorded High Risk with Dave Douglas. How collaborative was that?

Quite collaborative actually. We did a lot of improvising in the studio and he brought some songs in as well. It's really about the four guys in the group.

What Shigeto brings to the group is an incredible sonic landscape. He's the opposite of what most people would think of a “DJ” being in a jazz group. He's incredibly interactive. The way he has his rig set up is very open and he's very spontaneous and an incredible musician, so that was a real treat to get to make music with him.

I saw him play a few months ago for the first time and was so impressed by his solo show.

Yeah, he's an amazing drummer and musician.

You've said before that Zach Danziger and Jojo Mayer were huge influences on your playing when looking at acoustic players who were tackling their instrument with a more electronic mindset and approach. Was there anyone else you were exposed to who had a similar impact on you?

They were really the main two but, you know, a guy like Deantoni Parks, absolutely.

Was he also someone that you were going to see in New York as well?

No, I didn't really know much about him until around the time that I started playing with Meshell Ndegeocello, so it was really just those guys. Although electronic music was an influence to a lot of other drummers it was just that: an influence. You could hear that some people were checking it out but it still sounded very much like a human playing. [laughs]

Whereas Zach and Jojo were really making efforts to recreate that music at a very high level, and Deantoni too. I didn't know him as well but as I started to check him out you could see that his playing was coming from a different electronic place than those guys.

You live in New Jersey but have clearly spent a lot of time in New York. Have you noticed the impact that gentrification in New York has had upon what you and other musicians are able to do, or does great art and music find a way irrespective of circumstance? 

That's a good question. I think the biggest thing that it does is tell you where you can and can't live. You certainly can't live there but it doesn't mean that you can't make art there.

For example, one of my favourite clubs is called Rockwood Music Hall and it's where the CD release party for this band was. They're very open minded there. There are three different stages and we played a set on each stage, which was a lot of fun. It's in the Lower East Side at Houston and Allen, right at First Avenue. I don't think that anyone who plays at Rockwood Music Hall could live in that neighbourhood but it doesn't mean that we can't play there and express ourselves, you know.

From the guys in this group, both Jason (Rigby) and Fabian (Almazan) are up in Harlem, and Chris (Morrissey) is in Brooklyn. So I think it's pushing everybody out a little more but we're still there.

You hosted a series of drum workshops at Rockwood Music Hall last year. What approach did you take with presenting those?

My son was born last year so I knew that I was going to be home more and intentionally turned things down. I love teaching and I do it as often I can but I can't really have any consistent students because I'm not home enough. So I knew I was going to be home and thought about doing some workshops and I just picked a few topics that were important to me. Very fundamental things. It was mostly drummers there but it wasn't pitched as just a drum thing. I challenged myself to present things in a way that wasn't only unique to the drums. Some of the people who were there included guitar players, bassists, singers, as well as some visual artists who attended, so that was really cool and a great challenge.

I could talk about drums all day, and get really nerdy, but it was a great dynamic to have none-drummers in the room. So we were talking about dynamics, form, shape, just much bigger picture stuff that I like to think about in music. I hope to do more of it but it's challenging to arrange and to maintain a flow.

If I were to do it again with my current schedule it would be cool but it would also end up being a little more one-off. Whereas in the case of the workshop series, I had seven of them planned with a bit of a progression. So technically if you came to all of them there wouldn't be over lapping content. If they're more spread out it's difficult to get a shape to it.

With the teaching you do, is it mostly one to one?

Yeah. I have a few consistent students but it's mostly one-offs where people who are passing through town get in touch to schedule an hour or so.

Are you also teaching in schools?

I have some students through The New School in Manhattan. Those guys get nine lessons in a semester where they get to choose who they want to study with, so that's usually only for shorter durations.

Is there anything that you would like to see implemented within music education that isn't already in place?

We constantly joke when we're on the road, or in the airport, when we're trying to figure out all of the none music related stuff that comes with touring. It's like you get told “you have to know every standard,” but you're never told how to do taxes or how to pack for a two week tour. A lot of practical things.

I think that for me it's just general acceptance that's a big thing, too. There's so much competition that's ingrained in school and I wish that there was a little more unity and oneness, and less judgement.

When I was younger I had my opinions that I can laugh about now, where I might have been snobby about certain things, which is okay to go through, but I think that overall it's just music and we should all try to actually make it together, because the times when I've had my most enjoyable musical experiences have come with people who I feel really close to. Zero ego. Zero competition. But I understand that that is hard to do in a fixed collegiate experience.

For me, when I went to school at William Paterson in New Jersey I had an amazing experience. The teachers were amazing but I think that I learned even more from my peers. If you can create a situation where that is encouraged and that is recognized as being important, or as important as the classes, then you can really grow.

Having being based in New Jersey and New York what are the things that you've been exposed to that you've valued the most?

In New York you can find a world class musical situation every night, so you can never get too comfortable. Just when you you think, 'my thing is cool' you go to some club and leave thinking, 'okay back to work!', you know. It's just seemingly infinite inspiration and I'm trying to take it from everything. From all things inside and outside of the arts; from my family. Everything.

The trick is to take influences from a wide variety of things and to really let them coexist in a harmonious way, which is not always easy. When I was younger I used to take a lot of offers but I would think, okay, I'm on a jazz gig so I'm only allowed to use these influences, and similarly with electronic music. So over time I've just been trying to let them all coexist and if those influences want to come out, that they come out in an appropriate way.

The stereotype of America is a melting pot and New York embodies that. You'll hear twenty languages per day depending on what neighborhood you're in. So I'm trying to absorb as much as I can and not think too much about how it's coming out because the goal is just honest expression, and for me the honesty is just things that have affected me.

In a way it's like deflecting any responsibility from myself and it's a little trick to play with my mind because I don't consider anything that I play to be mine. I just consider it a combination of all the things that I've experienced and, for me, I'm much more at peace with that. The way I think about it is that my playing is just a morphed version of all of my influences, instead of thinking that you have to find your own voice. That feels like there's pressure and weight on me to be unique.

This is what it is today. Tomorrow could be different. Because once you identify with one thing it becomes a thing that you have to do every night and live up to, but if you can just be open and let it come out in an honest way then there are no expectations and that way it can change and morph to fit different situations.

Awesome. Thanks for your time Mark.

My pleasure.

Interview by Dave Jones.

Photography by Deneka Peniston, 2014.

You're currently on tour with Trash Talk. How's it all going so far?

Man, it's fun! I'm learning a lot about the world. I'm learning that people like to jump off of rafters and ladders. Some dude did that last night. He looked like Jim Duggan from WWF. [laughs]

No major injuries yet?

Some people got messed up. One dude split his nose open the other night. Some bruises, a few knockouts.

This is the first tour you're doing with Trash Talk. Is this going to become more of a permanent thing for you?

Yeah, it is starting to be a permanent thing. It's kind of crazy how it all happened, too, but I'm excited about it. I like everyone and I'm having fun.

Half the battle is finding people you have that connection with, both musically and on a personal level.

Yeah, totally!

I can't imagine a lot of people coming from a gospel background and ending up playing with a band like Trash Talk.

A lot of people who came from a church background don't do shit! [laughs]

I take it there's not only a shared musical appreciation but also one based around lifestyle as well?

Well, just because I came from a church background doesn't mean much. For me I just like to play different styles of music, so if I wanted to play Reggae, I could probably play reggae, you know. I've recently been touring and playing a lot of jazz stuff with Thundercat.

Are you still playing with Christian Scott, too?

Yeah, me and Christian are supposed to be doing another record together really soon.

I've just been doing more jazz based stuff recently and now I just want to be able to play something that's more aggressive. In some ways I'm challenging myself, too. I don't think anybody from the gospel world even knows what a blast beat is, or would ever play one. I'm just challenging myself and not thinking about it too much. It's like, OK, I play all these different styles of music, so I might as well have fun and play with the dudes who are actually doing it right!

There are a lot of people I want to play with. I totally want to play with Sting and people of that calibre, but I want to play this type of stuff also. I feel like I can do it all. When I was in The Mars Volta I didn't really do anything else, because I didn't have the time to do anything else. Whereas now I'm at the point where I want to play with everybody.

All the players I appreciated and admired when I was growing up played with so many different types of people, and did so many different styles. Everyone from Billy Cobham to Art Blakey; Tony Williams to Vinnie Colaiuta. They were all diving into different things.

I love that Billy Cobham went from playing with Miles to Mahavishnu Orchestra, and totally switched it up with his set up. Using huge cymbals and oversized kits...

It's like if you're a painter and you're around all these different painters all of the time, you're bound to pick up all this different stuff from them. Even if it's technique, or learning about framing, or how to mix paints. So you're constantly learning all of these different things that you can throw into whatever you're thinking or feeling at the time. I feel like I'm learning all this different stuff from everyone that I'm around. Everyone is giving to me as much as I'm giving to them.

Stylistically you're covering a lot of bases between all of the projects you're involved in. That freedom has to be pretty liberating for you as a player.

Yeah, it's scary! You're always wondering if you're making the right decision, but you can be switched to thinking about other music just by being around different people. It's just all about being inspired. Some people are only inspired by playing in church, so playing gospel music is their only inspiration, you know. So they don't have too much to pool from. There isn't the same pallet there that someone who's been around, doing other types of stuff, might have. It's just a different thing, man.

Even now, I'm starting to play with people from different countries. I'll play with a guy from London, and the whole rest of the group is American, and that can be liberating in itself, because you get to travel and go to all of these different places and figure out the way that they think about music from their point of view.

I'm also playing with a band from New Zealand, so I'm out there in Wellington and I'm meeting all of these different people and just learning about life, really. So I'm almost taking the fact that I play music to learn more about different cultures. I'm going to museums all over the world and learning about history that I wouldn't necessarily get to know about by staying in Oakland, you know.

Sounds like the best job in the world!

Yeah, man! It's cool!

The kind of musical independence you're talking about, does that add a particular aesthetic to the music you create. Do you feel like you're able to completely speak in your own voice when playing?

Yeah, I think so. I've been in bands with people who are deemed to be some master of life, but then that guy that everybody looks up to has no inspiration and he's not inspired by anything! Which is usually why the music starts to suck! Just because you have talent doesn't mean you have inspiration. In some ways that inspires me to practice and to learn other things, or throw something I've learned into some weird blast beat that no one's ever heard, even if they have! I mean, to me, I think I'm doing something new! So I'm just throwing these things out there and hopefully somebody runs with it, then they throw it out there and the next thing you know it's out in the world and people are doing this thing. I try not to think about it too much, because I do over think things a lot in my life.

To play with all these different people, it's like, hell yeah! Because I don't feel like I'm playing just one style. If I'm playing hardcore, or hip hop, it all ends up being this one thing. It's all the same. I'd be in church and I'd be playing the ride cymbal way hard, and people would be looking at me with this look like, 'you play this way differently!' It's because I've been to all these different places and I'm not just hearing it in one particular way. Sometimes I hear a clave and hear a reggae groove over it, because it's the same thing almost. That clave goes in every beat. I hear it in most of the music I listen to, which trips me out, but it's just where my mind is at.

Are you still playing in church at all?

Nah. It was fun. Sometimes I want to but I don't even know which church to go play in. 

I mean, I got to watch pretty much all these dudes that everybody loves now, way before anybody even knew of them. In that time they weren't putting gospel players in Modern Drummer or any of those magazines. Just because someone played with Jay Z didn't mean that they'd be in Modern Drummer. Now, popular culture dictates that they should put whoever is playing with Lady Gaga on the cover of Modern Drummer, because they can't sell a magazine without having someone's name on it like Lady Gaga.

I feel blessed that I got to learn with a lot of these guys really early. Watching them mess up and watching them do awesome shit that they probably don't even remember they did. A lot of dudes, like Aaron Spears, who I used to watch with his group Gideon Band. Doobie Powell, who plays flat footed. He'd be doing all this crazy stuff. Now I have students who also play flat footed, and he's the only guy I can reference.

I got to watch so many people when I was young, like Dennis Chambers, Vinnie Colaiuta, Virgil Donati and Dave Wheckl. All those dudes! This was before my generation really knew how to catch on. A lot of people our age weren't like me and Tony (Royster Jr.) and Ronald (Bruner Jr.), who were already in the industry and getting all of these crazy videos, where we'd learn about Akira Jimbo when he was in Japan. They didn't know who Virgil was. I had videos of him when I was ten years old. So I would go to church and try to play these rolls and people didn't understand anything about it, because they weren't seeing this same thing.

What's happening with the drum DVD you're looking to put out?

I'm still trying to work on it but it's hard because I'm constantly playing drums and touring, and I'm constantly getting better. I can't settle on it. My mind is constantly moving and changing. For me it would have to be way more than just drums, too. If it's just me sat there playing drums I'm just going to critique it the whole damn time, and I'll never want to put it out.

That need to incorporate different aspects outside of just the music, does that stem from other things that fuel and inspire the playing side?

Yeah, a little bit. It's more that most people just don't say anything about who they are. Nobody knows who most of these guys are! They could be poor and living in the back of a shack and you wouldn't know it. The only reason you think that they're paid is because of a perception, you know what I mean? 

It's the same thing all the time. You don't get to know anything about them, then they'll do an interview and be like, 'these drums... yeah, they're the new drums, they sound like shit, but this is the best drum set I've ever played! I can't wait to take it on tour! [laughs] It annoys me. I don't want to come across like that. I just want it to be about how I live. I'm living as multiple people. I'm one person when I'm with my family. I've got bills that I've got to pay, which I don't even understand how I have! On top of that I've got twenty one songs I've got to learn in three days, and balance all of it together. I mean, that's the musician! We're all multiple facets.

I want to get it right. I'd rather not do it than give it to some fools like Hudson, or some drum company who'll make it look dumb. I don't care about bright lights and pretty drums. So it's been very difficult. I also want to incorporate all of the bands that I've played in, which is difficult because then you've got to talk to people again, which is like, fuck!! How do I talk to these people?! [laughs]

I just really want to do music that's memorable. Playing music and travelling is actually the easiest part of all of this for me. I don't have to talk about business or talk about concepts of what's in my mind. I'd rather just sit on the drum set and show you.

Of everyone you've played with, who's provided the most challenging environment in terms of a creative relationship?

Damn! I don't know, man. It's hard, because no one's going to do the most of anything.

I was in The Mars Volta for three years, which is a long time in my mind. It was like a whirlwind of nothing. You don't know why your name's not on anything. You don't know why anything is happening. But you're rolling with it! You spin the bottle and all of these awesome things happen. Then you meet some awesome people and think, I was only supposed to know them for a year! You take it for what it is. Some of it lasts long and some doesn't. There are good things to take from it and some not so good. Honestly, The Mars Volta was really cool because I learned a lot. I wasn't doing things that you'd do if you were playing R & B all the time. You've got dudes who learn hella paradiddles and they go play behind Beyonce. It makes no sense! 

We program ourselves to be really great clinicians, which is really what we are, and then dudes go and sit behind 50 Cent! I don't get that! Regardless of how big he is, it's like, alright, if you're working then do that, but a lot of dudes who do do that don't have a creative outlet. It's not like they're in the studio with the guy! So it's like, OK, let's go on Google and see how many records you're on. OK. You're not on the 50 record. You're not on ANY records! Then you look at Tony Williams. Hella records! Terry Bozzio. Hella Records! Vinnie Colaiuta. More records than all of them, probably! I mean, Josh Freese is on records. Travis Barker! On records!!

So you have all of these dudes spending their time trying to work with the next Chris Brown and they're not playing on anyone's records. So being in The Mars Volta got me out of a mind set that I could have easily have crept into. It was like, everything that I'd been taught up until then... it all went out the window. Doing that allowed me to be creative and showed me that I could play solos on records and people would buy it.

If you live in LA you get dudes being like, 'you play pocket? If you play pocket you'll get paid!' I'm like, if you play pocket you'll be boring as fuck and you'll be the drummer for Luther Vandross and nobody will ever know you for the rest of your life. [laughs] It's like, these dudes make all this money and they won't even be creative and do their own record! On the flip side, I learned that you can be like Zach Hill and just go and play to two hundred kids without a band. That artistic aspect of it is great. 

Some people have all the talent in the world and they just don't throw anything into the creative pot. I mean, Tony Williams threw Lifetime at us! Billy Cobham gave us Spectrum! What are you giving us? You play for Jay Z? That makes no sense to me! Then these dudes frown upon people like Travis Barker, who don't have the chops, but he's throwing stuff out there! You can't hate on that just because you don't have a heart and you'd rather be playing behind, what's her name... Katy Perry! [laughs] You know what I mean?!

Did a part of you feel you might eventually get stuck playing the same gig when doing The Mars Volta? Was that one of the reasons to stop doing it?

No. That happened because everyone's sitting around talking and drinking beers, and the next thing you know you get a contract from them that looks like you ain't ever been friends before! [laughs] It's like, we're friends, but when business is happening, we ain't friends right then.

When I was doing the R & B thing, I got to sit in Keyshia Cole's meetings about her budgets and how much money she's making. I mean, in The Mars Volta, dudes would sit there and not put my name on the record and then say they wrote paradiddles... you can't write a paradiddle! Half of Bedlam is paradiddles! So, if you wrote paradiddles, OK, I'll give it to you. The guitar player wrote paradiddles. It's bullshit! But if you're gonna be like that, pay me!

Half the people who have ghost writers, Dr Dre, Michael Jackson, they pay you! They're not sitting there like, 'I'm not going to give you no money, and I'm going to say that I did it!' It doesn't make any sense. So that was my problem with it.

It's like, a lot of my friends don't really play music. They're straight hood dudes. So a lot of the way I think and interact with my friends is some hood shit. I might not be able to do business with this dude on my block but I'm going to speak to him! They ain't like that. They're the type of people who are like, 'oh, we ain't doing business together? I can't say hello to him', and then walk by you! So I find it hard to be around people like that.

That alone also made me think about why they'd had like five drummers. It makes sense! If you're going to say everything it is that you're saying, understand that not everybody's down with that. Especially when the gig is half drums! [laughs] At the end of the day, if you want someone to be around, act like you want them to be around! If you want to keep things pushing you're going to figure out a way to do that.

In certain people's defence, if you look at what's going on... Omar goes and starts a band with his girlfriend and everything he's been saying is about how he's sharing everything. Why? Because he's fighting his own demons. It's a demon to keep putting your name on an album ten times. Everybody has issues! Some people just blame everybody else for their issues and never think, 'maybe I'm out of my mind!'

If people talked like regular human beings and called each other saying, 'how can we figure out how to do something together', I would do it! I would! It'd be fun! We do this because we love it. Just make sure you pay me for my work! It's just got to be on a human level.

It's the same with drum companies. If we have any problems we work through it. I've had times with DW where they were mad at me for playing another company's drums. It's like, when I first started working with DW, I did it because they were making some crazy stuff. They were making green stands, mirror ball drum sets... go back to that! That's what kept me interested. Then they hook me up with something crazy looking and I'm playing it!

It sounds like you've had some pretty interesting mentors along the way, from Dennis Chambers to David Garibaldi and Walfredo Reyes Sr. What are some of the lessons that have stuck with you from studying alongside some of those guys?

I mean, it's not just those guys. Walfredo called me just the other day. He's like, 'Tommy, you wanna go to Cuba?'. I'm like, YES!!! [laughs] He goes out there a lot and all of the Cuban dudes hit each other up. They'll be at his place in San Francisco having jam sessions. A lot of times that's how I learned how to play salsa really, by being around those guys. I really appreciate him.

Dave (Garibaldi) was teaching me how to read music. Dennis didn't really give me lessons but he just embraced me as a younger brother.

How old were you?

I met Dennis when I was nine. He sent me cymbals and sticks to my house when I first met him. Dave Weckl was always cool. Little John, Chris Dave. All those dudes. I'd just sit next to their snare drums and just watch them play.

There was a club near where I used to live and my mum would take me there on Wednesday nights. So we used to go and on the paper it would say that Dennis Chambers was going to be there next week. I'm like, 'Mom, I'm there!' So I started sitting in with Dennis, and since every drummer in town would be there I would know everybody. I ended up meeting a drum teacher there by the name of Curtis Nutall. He taught me how to really use my fingers and hands. Curtis helped me with the rudiments, as well as the mobility and the reading.

I was taking lessons from a bunch of people. I'd walk up to Gerald Hayward and be like, 'how are you doing this thing, dude?', and he'd show me. I was always a really fast learner. After that I was sneaking into huge theatres with a friend, seeing all kinds of stuff. It was always just about drums for me. I was playing in church when I was in elementary school, then I went to junior high school and high school, and they both had jazz bands. After that I was like, I'm going to music school. It just kept rolling over.

So, yeah, it's like everything comes full circle. I've been with DW since I was seventeen and the A&R dude is the guy who used to work at the drum store I used to go to all the time.

Was that Guitar Centre?

No, it was Drum World. Way before Guitar Centre took over.

Which I presume is everywhere now?

Yeah, it's pretty much everywhere. Well, what they do is... they have everything. So they kind of force these companies to just make what they want. It's like, Yamaha are making a bunch of $1400 drum set. Mapex are doing the same. DW, how are you gonna just make $3200 drum sets?! Then DW are like, fuck these nice kits! We need to make Performance Series and PDP kits! Just to be in Guitar Centre.

You mentioned education before and I know you were given a scholarship at Berklee. How many years were you there?

I was there for two years. The scholarship was for four years but I couldn't take it there.

Why did you leave?

It was fucking cold! [laughs] That and I didn't need to be there for four years doing essays about some bullshit. I didn't need to be in some curriculum. I needed to be around people who could help me get to where I wanted to be. A lot of the people who go to Berklee don't know what the hell they're going to do. Most of their parents are like, 'you're going to go to college or I'm not taking care of you.' Some of them get through it, some of them leave, some of them don't even know what the hell they want to do! By seventeen or eighteen years old, I fully knew what I wanted to do. I just wanted to tour! 

I would get into school and then have to leave to go out on tour, which I did twice. That was confusing because I thought, everyone here wants to be on tour. I'm on tour... Why am I here?! In my second year I took hella lessons from all the classes I wanted to learn from. I took double bass drumming, twice. I studied with Kenwood Dennard twice a day. I was gigging with all of the teachers, the students... I was burnt out. Plus there's no money in it. You'd go play at Wally's and they'd pay you $50, and it costs like $15-$20 to get there in a cab, and I'd end up with $25-$30 dollars after the gig. At home I'd be making $100-$150 a show, sometimes $200. Now I make $150-$200 every time I walk out of my house, at least! So to go to Boston and get screwed over like that, just because you're a student... it was whack! It was hurting my pride and I was like, fuck, I need to leave! So I left and I was on tour with Keyshia Cole as her musical director. I mean, she's like family and I knew her way before any of this other stuff. So for me it was comfortable. I think at first she had a three million dollar deal, and then they gave her six million dollars. That's an extra three million on top of her budget, so we were chillin'!

That time was awesome because I got to learn so much about the business. Which was good for me, too, because a lot of musicians don't know shit about business. I mean, 2Pac sold his publishing for fifty thousand dollars! So did Biggie! Both of their parents are fighting dudes like Puffy over publishing. Fifty thousand?! For 2Pac?! That's crazy, dude! Luckily, when I was young, I had cats like Dennis (Chambers) telling me to take care of my money and read contracts.

So what would you like to see put in place at somewhere like Berklee that students could benefit more from?

There's a ton of stuff. I mean, first of all, if you're judging everyone the same, that's a big problem already. Also, if you're paying attention to half the stuff going on out there you'll know that school in America is a scam. Every year tuition goes up so they can get tax breaks, and then you look at how much money Berklee costs, which is fifteen thousand dollars a semester.

You can go and pay Virgil Donati and he will teach you all day everyday for fifteen thousand dollars a semester. [laughs] As a matter of fact, if you had fifteen thousand dollars, you could probably get Herbie (Hancock), Chick (Corea) and Virgil to teach you how to do music. You'd be better off doing that! Plus we're not even talking about how much it costs to eat and get around. You could pay anybody that! Dude, you could go and ask Bill Gates to show you how to be a millionaire for that!

At least you got a scholarship!

Yeah! I have friends who spent something close to one hundred thousand dollars, and I'm like, was it worth it, bro? Musicians are already notorious for not making that much money, and then you go and get yourself a bill for a hundred thousand dollars straight out of college!

My girlfriend went to Berklee, too, and we can't talk people into it. I mean, I wouldn't tell you to go, but also wouldn't really tell you not to either. It helped me on a level of being able to devote time to playing and meeting all kinds of people there, from Christian Scott to Esperanza (Spalding)... That's one thing you can take from it is that you'll meet everybody, but for fifteen thousand dollars? You can call them for a thousand and say, 'yo, can I meet you?' [laughs]

How challenging is it for you to keep your playing ideas fresh?

It isn't challenging really. I think it's more challenging to keep coming up with new ideas than keeping them fresh.

I've got a lot of students and I'll be teaching them and coming up with new ways to try something, and I'll come up with something I can't even do, and be like, damn, this is actually hard! [laughs] I just have fun with this stuff. I just try and challenge myself all the time, and playing different styles of music is the best way to challenge yourself. Somebody's like, 'play a blast beat'. 'Play twenty one songs in three days! Learn them all!'

Is that what happened with the Trash Talk gig?

Yes! To do that is hard! Any style you've got to learn, that you're not familiar with, after you've just got off of a jazz tour, is hard.

I mean, I came off tour with Thundercat, then went to New Zealand to learn some other band's music in two days, and played three shows with them. Then I flew directly to L.A., without even going home first, and learned hella tunes on jet lag. The first show was a festival which had fifty thousand people at it. I'm just challenging myself. Throwing myself in the ocean and seeing if I can swim.

So many of my friends are scared to do it. They're like, 'so are you in a tour bus, bro?' I'm like, no, I'm in a van! They don't get it, but it's just a part of being a person. It's hard, man! Not everybody's built for this! Some people are really just soft. I'm soft to a degree but I'm just so happy to be playing music and meeting hella new people. I'm meeting this dude and his family (points to Trash Talk fan Jake Purple, who's been traveling around the UK with his family to almost every date), then when I go out with other people I'll be like, 'I got a homie in Manchester who I just did an interview with!'

I take all of these things together and it ends up being part of one giant experience.

Sounds awesome! How are things with The Memorials. Is everything on hold while you're out touring?

Yeah, but I think we're going to record another album pretty soon. Everybody needed time to make some money and do some other stuff. The new record should be out by this time next year.

Viveka (Hawkins) is my girlfriend, and it's like, I love you to death but I gotta do something else right now. Just because we're around each other all of the time. Most people get to have a break and go on tour, but we'll be on tour together. It's cool though. Our relationship is great, because we've known each other so long. We've got a new guitar player, too.

I really want to do a record that is better than the second album. I had a lot of shit going on when we were doing that one. My grandma passed away during making that record!

Right now I just want to record! Which is crazy for me because mixing that last Memorials record was hard! Most of the tedious stuff, like the mixing, mastering and art, I had to do. Viv was with me to help, which was great, but it was a lot of me doing it. Everything from being the engineer to drumming on the tunes; helping to write songs and then figuring out how to put it out. I had to have some time to be able to tackle that. It's such a massive project.

So the last year was about not doing anything else except for that. Right now I'm all about trying to do that and fit all of this other stuff in there. It's fun though. It's just a lot of shit to take on. 

It's one of the reasons it's good for me to go out and play with other people, because I'll get super inspired in a deeper way. I'm taking all of these inspirations and tossing them into what my mind is thinking, because my mind isn't usually thinking in 4/4. My mind is usually thinking about some crazy shit. We've started a couple of tunes so far but we haven't finished them at all. I'm just playing it by ear right now. I'm planning on finishing the album by the end of the year. Then I'll be doing a Christian Scott record and then one with Trash Talk. The rest of this year will be about me getting ready for next year.

Awesome! I'm looking forward to checking those out. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

It's cool. Thanks, man!

Interview by Dave Jones.

Pretty amazing. I'm definitely a little more tired than normal but there's really nothing like it.

It's kicked me into a higher gear in a way, so I have to be even more motivated to just get things done on a day to day basis. He's a happy guy so far and doesn't hate me yet, so I'm happy about that. [laughs]

I love experimentation of all kinds and having a kid is a huge experiment! I have the kind of schedule which allows me to spend a lot of time with him, which is great because he's only going to be this age for so long, so I'm really taking advantage of that. As un-rock and roll as it sounds.

What was your first introduction into playing drums?

I was eight years old and my neighbour was a drummer. There's an organisation that's still running in my home town, which is the colonial fife and drumming corps, and we travelled all around the United States playing in re-enactments and parades. We had played for Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles, celebrations for the 4th July, so it was pretty interesting. I had the knickers, a wooden canteen, tri-corner hat, buckled shoes... I looked like fucking George Washington.

I was the youngest kid in it, and everybody else was high school age, so I definitely got into a lot of trouble as a kid. As far as drumming goes though I had a really strong foundation for rudimental playing. Our drum instructor was a guy called Jerry Whitaker, who was the west coast rudimental snare drum champion and he had this really intense military background.

After that I got into a bagpipe band with a bunch of World War II vets playing Scottish music, which was a completely different style and feel, and different drums too.

I ended up doing that until I was about sixteen, and then that kind of overlapped with Dazzling Killmen which was my first real band. I definitely have a varied background. My parents and two older brothers always used to listen to records, and that mixed with the extracurricular stuff I was doing definitely helped to carry over into my life. I was playing along to a lot of albums that I was into at the time, too, like The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, The Buzzcocks. The Jam was another huge one. I learnt to play drums by playing along to those early punk rock records.

I guess with that influence it must have been pretty interesting for you when you finally moved to New York later on?

Absolutely. I played CBGBs a bunch of times when it was open and I always loved playing there. For one thing it had an awesome P.A. and they were not afraid to crank it. A lot of other venues after a while started to get more conservative volume-wise as the neighbours started complaining and, you know, the rents started to get higher as the neighbourhoods started to become gentrified, so a lot of great clubs got pushed out.

You're upstate now, aren't you?

Yeah, I'm three hours up state now. I was in the city last week doing a session, and I left my house at 7:30 in the morning and I was at my parking spot in Chelsea by about 10:40. So within just a few hours I was parked a block away from the studio I was going to. I'm used to the drive now. In three hours it's like being on another planet some days.

I'd read somewhere that after Dazzling Killmen broke up that you didn't play with anyone for a couple of years.

Yeah, that was a big wood shedding period for me. I'd dropped out of college by that point and I had a big loft practice space in the downtown area of my hometown that was super cheap. I taught drum lessons for a living and when I wasn't doing that I was just playing drums. I was about nineteen at the time and I just sat and played for hours and hours, so that was a huge growing period for me.

It's where I developed a lot of the independence that I use, as well as the quasi-west African rhythms which also came about from that period. I worked a lot on repetitive rhythms in the feet which allowed me to play rhythms with my hands over that. I guess that went on for a year or two.

Sometime after that I started playing with different friends and it eventually turned into what would become Laddio Bolocko.

One of the first times I heard you playing was with Laddio Bolocko and I was always struck at how unique everyones approach to their instruments sounded. Was the writing process pretty open and loose?

Yeah, almost everything we wrote as a band came from improvising together. Later on, as we got into writing the very last EP...

Was that As if by Remote?

Yeah. We were composing more in a kind of a pop format, but still through improvising. We were always into avant-garde stuff but we all liked good pop songs at the same time, so we were trying to incorporate those things together towards the end.

I absolutely love that group. I really do. Of all the things I've done, that group holds the biggest sentimental spot in my heart. The bass player (Ben Armstrong) just got back in touch with me recently after buying one of my new records, and we hadn't spoken in a long time. Marcus (DeGrazia) and I are still in touch and he's still in touch with Drew (St. Ivany), but Drew and I haven't been in touch for a while.

I'd like to but there's some baggage from the past still so we've both been cautious, but I think that will happen at some point in the future. We've all grown up at this point. Laddio was when the stars aligned for me when playing with a bunch of other people. Since then I've kind of been in and out of focus, but with Time's Up I feel as though I have that focus again.

Is there a particular period from then that stands out for you and has left a lasting impression?

I gotta say that we had a lot of fun doing that band. We did two full tours over in Europe and we had a fucking blast, man. We were like a real band should be, almost like a gang. There are a million stories, so it's hard to pinpoint a particular moment.

It's such a cliché thing to say but there was a power with that band that we felt, and that we knew the audience felt. When you're in the middle of that it isn't clichéd and there's a very real power to it. I think everyone involved had pretty unique approaches to their instruments and somehow that all worked as a cohesive whole. It's something that doesn't happen very often.

Well, I hope that you're able to reconnect at some point. That would be pretty cool.

Yeah, it would be. Even if it's just to say, 'hey, look at how fuckin' bald and grey I am now!' [laughs]

A lot of musicians end up gravitating towards New York City to immerse themselves in the culture and resources that are available. Were you drawn there for the same reasons?

The original draw for me was that it was the place where a lot of my heroes came from and it's always been a hotbed for culture and progressive ideas in all kinds of ways. The first time I was there was in the early nineties with Dazzling Killmen and I was just electrified from just being there for a couple of days. It's just like its own little planet and it's very inspiring.

Contrast that with now and I'm very inspired by just being out in the woods and being in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around. Man made things like the city were really inspiring to me at a young age but now it's more about the natural world. Living where I do I get the best of both.

Where I live in the Catskill Mountains, it's cheap to live and it allows me to be the kind of musician that I want to be. It allows me to survive under my own ideals. The most commercial thing I've ever done was The Mars Volta, and that's a crazy prog band, so I'm not really known for doing a lot of commercial work. 

I still travel back to the city but I'm a lot more selective now. Right now, I teach at the college up here three days a week. It's awesome in that I get to make my own schedule, I get health insurance, I teach drums and run two bands. And that's like my straight job. It's awesome! [laughs]

You mentioned The Mars Volta, which was band you helped form. What were those initial rehearsals like?

Pretty interesting and exciting. A lot of jamming and improvising. As we played more and more it got to be fun and everything started working out.

I had some initial reservations when I got there for the first time. Everybody was kind of hanging around and there were a lot of pills going on at that point and people were getting fucked up.

Drugs at the time had not really gotten in the way yet for some of the people in that group. I mean, they can be detrimental when playing music. I lived with Jeremy Ward and the dude was twenty seven years old when he died of a heroin overdose. So it was a whole other level and I was pretty uncomfortable with that. It got to be too unpredictable. There was a bit of day in and day out insanity involved, and not the good kind.

I didn't talk about that stuff initially but enough time has gone by and enough people know the back story of that band, so I'm not really dishing any dirt that people don't already know about.

Had much changed when you went back the second time around?

A lot of the drug use was gone but the personality and ego issues were firmly in place, more so than they ever had been. Omar and I basically had twelve hours of negotiations for me to come back into the band. He was living in Amsterdam and he was flying from there to Texas and he made a stop over. He got to my place in Brooklyn at 7pm and he left at 7am. So we spoke for the whole twelve hours, just hashing out stuff from the past and working out an agreement for me to come back. It came out of nowhere basically.

It's a weird organisation and I'm sure it's different for each individual. There's a reason why they keep losing drummers. One reason is that the drummers get quite a bit of attention, just because of being able to play the music. I don't know for sure but I'd guess that's why the split happened with Jon Theodore. He's a really great drummer but if you've got Jon, Omar and Cedric in a room together, that's a lot of cooks in the kitchen and at the end of the day it's still Omar's band.

Sounds pretty intense.

I felt that I wasn't able to be myself the second time around and I was there just to fill a role. I dunno, I'm too damn stubborn for it. I'm not really into learning other people's parts. I'm capable of doing it but it's hard to put your heart into it. Between that and the ego issues... there'd be times where we'd have a break in the tour and I'd maybe get a call the day before saying I had to be in L.A. to shoot a video. Well, fuck, if they'd known about that three months ago why didn't they let me know sooner? So I felt a sense of manipulation.

I think that part of it came from reading about Captain Beefheart, and the methods that he put onto The Magic Band and thinking that's really fucking cool. Well it is if you're reading about it, but if you're one of the dudes in The Magic Band it also ruins your life, too, in a way. I'm too old for that. No matter how big the carrot was that was dangled in front of me it wasn't worth it. It's not why I play music at all.

Switching topics, I wanted to talk to you about your new record, Time's Up. I should probably take this opportunity to say congratulations on putting it out. The whole package looks and sounds great. Were you surprised by the response you got through your Kickstarter campaign?

Absolutely. I'd never done a Kickstarter campaign before so I gave myself thirty days to hit the target I needed, and just hoped that it would happen. I spoke to my wife and she said, 'listen, you know that it might not work, and if it doesn't happen you can't let it crush you and we'll try and figure out a way to make it happen.' She was just trying to be realistic with me. The next thing I know I was funded within forty eight hours. I couldn't believe it. It was kind of akin to slowly watching the lottery ball numbers come in. I couldn't believe it. My goal was three thousand dollars and I raised that in less than forty eight hours. By the end of the thirty days I'd given myself I had raised almost five thousand dollars.

About a month or so before doing the campaign I was almost ready to just give up. I'd gotten to a low point and was depressed. I thought, no one's going to care or give a shit. You know, just kind of self defeating, but I pulled myself out of it and forged ahead, which is all I can do, and I'm so glad that I did. Just to see how accepted and well received it was, and to raise all that money and sell records like crazy. I've sold over half of my records already. I'm kind of astounded and it's gone much better than I thought it would.

Are you planning on playing any of the record live at all?

As of the last year or so I've mainly been doing solo projects, and I wouldn't be able to recreate Time's Up live. So I'd have to put together a group of drummers, which I'd thought about doing, but at the same time being in band is difficult, you know. You end up dealing with other people's lives and being tied to their schedules. Right now the big thing I've been concentrating on is just promoting the record and playing solo, which is more improvisational. 

I actually have a video artist that I work with and we're looking to do a show in the next couple of weeks. She does live video improvisation to my drum improvisation.

I started off playing in a bunch of bands and then I whittled it down to a two piece group for a little while and now I'm fucking solo, so go figure! I'm hard to work with! [laughs]

Have the solo drum performances come out of having a smaller pool of musicians to draw from since leaving the city and moving upstate?

I actually started doing solo stuff when I was pretty young. Even when I moved to New York, if I had time during the day I would just set my drums up on the sidewalk and just play for people. The first performance I did in an actual venue was right when Laddio started. I have it on Super 8 tape somewhere which I need to transfer and maybe put on Youtube.

It was the first one I did and I naturally started to incorporate some performance art aspects into it, so I'd get up from the drums and start becoming these kind of weird characters, and I still do that. I like the idea of being able to play solo on a drum set but have it to be something that people don't expect at all. I want it to be entertaining.

I wanted to come up with music that I wanted to play, and not just play some grooves. I got into that mind set during the period after Dazzling Killmen and it's just sort of carried over for what's been twenty years or so now. It would be cool if I could tour something like that. I just need to put my energy into doing it.

What were your main motivations behind recording an album comprised entirely of drums and percussion?

I've always wanted to do it. For a long, long time. I just finally had to get off my ass and do it instead of just thinking about doing it. Also, I've always tried to be as resourceful as I can and if it's just me playing a drum set then I want to be able to do that (make music that is). I have my drums, my studio and some percussion so it was like, let's make something with it! It was kind of done out of necessity, for my own sanity.

A really interesting part of the album for me is the way it sounds sonically. Did recording in the basement of a hundred and fifty year old church add to the vibe that you were trying to capture?

Yes, because I had that entire building to myself and I could do anything there without having to worry that someone might be outside listening or that someone might be able to hear me, which was always the case in New York. I've always been very fortunate when living in a city with having access to either a shared space or my own space, though it was usually my own. There would always be noises around so it could be very distracting, but the fact that I was a lot more isolated in this big old building with a great history allowed me to not be as self conscious and to free myself up. There's definitely something kind of witchy where I live, man. There's something about these hills that I can't quite put my finger on, and I like that. It's beautiful but it's witchy, and it was like that from the first time I came up here. It's a great energy to draw on.

It sounds like Twin Peaks.

Yeah, there's something about it that's quite Lynchian up here.

I started playing a number of ideas a couple of years ago, but it wasn't until a year later that I started going through files and listening to snippets of recordings. At the time I didn't know what to do with it, but then I started to have these little epiphanies and all of these ideas I had started to make sense and I knew exactly how to finish them. So I started working on the record about a year ago and it took me about seven months or so to complete it fully, to where all of the recording and mixing was done.

Now I can sit and look at it on my turntable which is pretty awesome. I'm already thinking about the second record.

Do you see it as being along similar lines to this one?

I think I'm going to do it all drums and percussion again because I still have a lot of ideas left in me for it.

In my own investigation I've never heard a record that sounds like mine and I don't mean that egotistically, but I mean it in a student of music kind of a way. There are other drum records out there but they don't sound like mine and part of it is the limitations I had going into it.

I had a laptop and an Mbox, and the Mbox had two inputs. Then I had a four-track recorder that I used as a pre-amp. I couldn't plug a condenser mic into the four-track because it doesn't have phantom power so I would use an SM57, or a similar dynamic mic, and I would get my distorted tones from that by overdriving the pre-amp in the four-track. I also used a condenser mic in the clean channel of the Mbox. I've got a good knowledge of how to record drums, but now I've gone from years of using fifteen mics when recording to just using two. I spent a lot of time listening and then moving the microphone.

The sounds that you hear on Time's Up, those are the sounds going into the computer. The only work done later was on the track Smells Like This Heat, where there's some delay in the middle of that song. The delay was put on afterwards. Everything else you're hearing are sounds that I was creating that are going straight into the Mbox. I didn't want to have to do a bunch of stuff in post production. I wanted it to have as much of a raw, visceral quality to it as possible, as opposed to people thinking, oh, this is just something that's been cooked in a computer.

It was great to just be in that big space with no clocks ticking, and so if it took me two days to find a certain drum sound for a take then I did it. That was a good process for me to go through. I had to be very patient with myself, and I've not always been so good at that in the past.

The idea of having two drum kits playing together and going out of time on The Ballad of Double Beard works really well. How did you go about recording it?

The Ballad of Double Beard is quite simple in concept actually. It starts with two drumsets and two djembes playing a groove in unison. Then one of the drumset grooves moves up one bpm from the other and that's when the craziness starts. What you're hearing once this happens is a cycle of consonance and dissonance as one groove stays the same and the other becomes a 16th note off, then an 8th note off, then a dotted 8th off, then a quarter off, then 5 16th notes off, etc. Until it fully cycles through every 16th note of a 4/4 bar and ends up back in unison where it started. 

The dissonance is the journey between 16th notes and the consonance is when the two grooves are locked in but offset by a 16th, an 8th, dotted 8th etc. It's still the same drumbeat throughout, it's just that one of them is 1 bpm off.

I take it you were playing to a click...

[laughs] Yeah, I had to, because there's a 1bpm difference between both kits. I like to think my timing's pretty good but I had to play to a click to keep that straight. 

With some of the rhythms you play there's a definite African influence that can be heard in there, especially with a lot of the poly-rhythmic stuff you do. Is this something you'd studied and consciously worked into your style?

Yeah, but I never studied it with anyone. I just listened to records and CD's and learnt that way. There are a couple in particular, one west African drummer called Mamady Keita, who's kind of a world renowned djembe player. I'd gotten some of his music as a teenager and from the first time that I heard it it kind of blew my mind. I listen to a lot of African music and me and my wife have it playing in the house quite often.

If you were to ask me to play some specific west African rhythm I don't know that I could do that. It's always just been something that I've worked into my playing and assimilated in my own way. I just wanted to try and use those rhythms, which is something that I also try to teach my students. You can take all kinds of ethnic rhythms, but depending on what kind of context you put them in, that's what gives it a whole new sense of meaning or definition.

My thing has been to always kind of assimilate this information and make it my own. It's important to find your voice in all of that. That's the thing that made me look up to the musicians I was into, you know. When you put on Elvin Jones, or Tony Williams, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, or who ever, within two seconds you know that it's them. I always wanted to have an identity like that, which was why I dropped out of college, because they weren't encouraging that. They were wanting you to sound like particular players, and while inspiration is great to a degree, after a while you have to get onto your own path, and they didn't really get that. So it's always been important for me to find my own individual voice on the instrument. I was always looking for the sound of my own experience and my own language.

There's a big influence in your playing from bands like Can and This Heat. How important were those bands for you in terms of how you approach music?

Can especially were very important, along with The Velvet Underground. There's a lot of repetition involved in that music and when I first heard them (at the age of 19) it coincided with me smoking pot at the time, which was kind of the perfect circumstance to take that in. It worked perfectly with that kind of music.

The repetition had a huge influence on me, along with stuff like James Brown's music, and if we go there were back at Africa again because his music is basically like an African drum ensemble with vocals and people playing guitars and bass. With as much crazy poly-rhythmic stuff that goes on in African music there's also a lot of repetition at the root of it, too. So a group like Can was highly influential because of their ability to use repetition and build momentum.

It's been mentioned that you've contributed to a book called 'For Drummers, by Drummers'. What's going on with that?

Yeah, it's supposed to have been coming out for the last couple of years but I honestly don't know what's going on with it at the moment.

This might have changed, but what I do know is that it's going to be an oral history of studio drumming. It's a pretty cool idea really. Everyone who has contributed to it was sent out fifty questions and, from what I understood, a question would be posed and then you would see all of these different drummer's answers. It's interesting because you get to see all of these variations of answers from all of these different players, so we'd all be answering the same question. It would be kind of like the book Please Kill Me: The Oral History of Punk Rock, and I love that because you see everybody's version of pretty much the same story.

So it's everything from, “what do you like to drink in the studio?” to, “do you play with a click track?”, and stuff like that. There's a pretty hefty list of players in there so I was pretty honoured to be included. People like Hal Blaine, who's one of my all time favourite studio drummers. John French from The Magic Band was also going to be in there, so I'm in good company. I really hope that it comes out.

You mentioned a couple of weeks ago in an email that you were doing some session work. Is this something you find yourself doing more and more of?

It's up and down. There are some months I'm really busy and others when I'm not busy at all. Sometimes I'm in the city a lot and others I'm not down for maybe a couple of weeks.

I was actually down there last week and I was doing ten tracks for the guy that wrote that [sings] 'hot town, summer in the city' song...The Lovin' Spoonful!

Then I'm back down in a week or two with a friend of mine who does soundtrack work. We did a soundtrack for an animated feature that's coming out. After that we're doing something for some celebrity's daughter where we're putting together a song for an interview she's doing, so that should be interesting.

The teaching you're doing, is that in the city or...

No, it's upstate. There are a number of New York state universities so I teach at The State University of New York at Oneonta. If I remember correctly they were the first college to have a contemporary music industry program.

It's a really contemporary program and I was lucky enough that they were pretty forward thinking. I mean, I dropped out of college and don't have a college degree at all, but I do have a good resume that's been made from just being out in the real world, which should count more anyway, and luckily it did.

They created a position for me, there was no opening or anything. I teach twenty five students and run two rock bands over three days. So when I'm there I'm really busy, but then I have four days to do freelance work or hang out with my family and do what I want to do. I make my own schedule, so if I need to go out on tour or fix a studio date I can do that and I get health insurance on top of it.

For a drummer that's huge, man. I didn't have health insurance for many years.

It sounds like pretty balanced work.

Yeah, you know, I'm forty now so... balanced is a good description [laughs]

Well, thanks for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it.

Me too. It's no problem. You'll probably be transcribing this thing for a week! [laughs]

Interview by Dave Jones.