Drumming on the Precipice of Insanity

I’ve been drumming for a number of years, and over that time I’ve developed certain appreciations for techniques and sensibilities of fellow drummers that I’ve seen and heard. You probably haven’t heard of most of these guys, but they are the best drummers on the planet by my estimation (and a lot of other authority-style people).

Richie Hayward from Little Feat has long been my favorite drummer. He’s very much from the New Orleans-school of drumming, but not in the traditional sense. I met a DJ/Drummer once that described his drumming as “he never comes in on the one” which is one way to put it. I think I’m drawn to his playing because of his creativity. His dual snare approach and cymbal technique really impressed me. Richie clamps all of his cymbals down TIGHT. Those boys move the minimal amount when he hits them. After trying it, I’ve gradually concluded that’s the RIGHT(tm) way to do it. The cymbal isn’t going to be rolling around everywhere when you want to hit it again, and it allows for another hit straight-away which opens up repeated accents on the same cymbal. I really enjoy listening to Little Feat probably more than any other ensemble if musicians anywhere. As a group, their songs just fit together in a strange kind of way that appeals to me for some reason. I remember when I got a copy of their 1976 live CD (a double album originally), Waiting for Columbus, I listened to it for nearly 1.5 years almost to the exclusion of anything else. The recordings of “Fatman in the Bathtub”, “Time Loves a Hero”, and “Dixie Chicken” on that LP are so wonderful. Their recording of Sailin’ Shoes which meanders sleepily between 5/4 and 4/4 is also very good. I’ve actually met Paul Barrere and Fred Tacket from Little Feat three times, and I got Richie Hayward to sign my copy of the October 1995 Modern Drummer with him on the cover at their show in Deadwood, South Dakota in 2000. This was the only time that I ever allowed the fan boy hero-worship bad chemicals in my brain take control of my actions.

Another drummer whom I’m constantly amazed by is Rod Morganstein. His work with the Dregs and Jazz is Dead is amazing. I actually saw him play with JID in Columbus, Ohio and stood about 5 feet away from his drumset, it was absolutely amazing. Probably the best drumming I’d ever seen in my life. He’s got incredible hand-to-feet coordination. I have some cheesey 1980s drumming video called “Putting It All Together,” where he shows off some of his Steve Morse Band licks whilst sporting a dapper 80s hair style. It’s really a great video though. I learned a couple of the groove’s in that video pretty well and practiced “ghost strokes” nearly endlessly after seeing how he incorporates them into his beats.

It doesn’t get any cooler than Roy “Futureman” Wooten. He plays a “Synthaxe Drumitar” that he constructed himself, wears a pirate captain hat, and calls himself “Futureman”. I like when creative people are a bit loony. I think Futureman is kind of like the Richard Feynman of the drumming community. I’ve seen him 3 times now, Ft. Worth, Minneapolis, and Columbus, Ohio. I chronically listen to all of the Flecktones stuff as I infinitely enjoy how “Futch” incorporates electronic and acoustic drums into his playing. If you haven’t seen him play before, he uses his “Synthaxe Drumitar” and “Zen Drum” as midi triggers, and an assortment of atypical acoustic percussion including an “X-Drum” and a Pearl “Box”. His nonstandard beats and use of the Drumitar are beyond interesting. His work with the Flecktones stuff revolves around highly complicated compositions where there are two different time signatures going on at the same time (polyrhythms). I’ve been listening to them since around 1998 or so, but I only recently started to _really_ get into them. I particulary like their new “Little Worlds” triple CD release. There’s a lot of interesting stuff on those CDs. It’s so weird to see that much music get released at once by a band, and all of it be interesting.

I’ve studied Carter Beaford’s drumming a lot. I saw him in concert in 2000, and I have his drumming DVD, “Under the Table and Still Drumming”. He’s a bad ass drummer. I like his open style of playing a lot. His technique is absolutely beyond reproach. His technique of playing a ride cymbal with his left hand while using his right hand to do the snare work looks completely natural and obvious when he does it, but as with most things that seem rather simple when you see someone else do them, it turns out that it’s really quite a task to get the carter right-hand-right-foot coordination down to the exact science that he has managed to accomplish.

I discovered the drumming of Stanton Moore whilst reading Modern Drummer sometime in 2000. The first thing that I heard from him was “Late for the Future” which absolutely blew me away. Eventually, I managed to track down his jazz recordings with his band which are nearly impossible to find. I was glad that I finally tracked those releases down because “All Kooked Out” and “Flyin’ the Koop” quickly became two of my all time favorite CDs. Stanton is the protege of famed New Orleans drummer John Vidacovich and Zigabou Modeliste from the Meters. He incorporates a fair amount of originality into his playing too. He plays on bottles and a man hole cover as well as incorporating some electronics into his kit. I think he’s really following obscure old New Orleans drummers like Smokey Johnson who played with drumsticks with bottlecaps attached to them on the side of his floor tom on the Professor Longhair’s “Big Chief” recording. Moore likely absorbed the New Orleans second line groove sensibility and using atypical objects as percussive elements from the long history of NOLA-based drummers. He’s offers some very original ideas in his own right though. His live shows with Galactic are not to be missed. He’s now incorporating breakbeats and more electronics into his repertoire.

My new obsession is David King from The Bad Plus. It’s the strangest most absurdely avant garde drumming I’ve heard since discovering Art Blakey. I really love how he tunes his bass drum down so low on the last two Bad Plus LPs, These are the Vistas, and Give. A lot of the work Art Blakey did with Thelonius Monk can’t really even be transcribed to sheet music because of certain “Blakeyisms” that aren’t typical of playing a drumset. David King is very much of that school of drumming. On Vistas, he kind of rubs a stick quickly back-and-forth across his snare for a strange kind faux scratch/kaos pad-style of effect in the bridge on their cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”. The Bad Plus have an interesting knack of playing in what appears to be total cacophony, but then coming out of the whole thing unscathed and in time back in some sort of loose groove which will hold together for a while and then wander back over the precipice of insanity again. A lot of people are calling them the “future of jazz”, and all sorts of various nonsense. Ethan Iverson responded to that with, “I never claimed to be the future of jazz. I’m just trying to play the piano good”.