Steve Smith's
Drum Talk:
Confessions of a U.S. Ethnic
Drummer (part 2)
In Part 1
of his interview with jazz journalist Bill
Milkowski, drummer and scholar Steve Smith
addressed the idea of being what he calls a
"U.S. ethnic drummer."
This second
installment, which details more of Smith's
playing experiences past and present, picks up
where he left off, bemoaning the loss of
creativity and individual personality in modern
day drumming as the pop world turns with
increasing frequency toward having drummers
emulate the "perfect" beat of drum machines.
MD: There was a moment in
time, and you have to go back to the '50s, where
pop music had all this very expressive drumming
happening on records. Think of Earl Palmer's
bass drum into on Fats Domino's hit "I'm Walkin'."
The hook of that tune came from the bass drum,
which kicked off the track. Drummers could make
creative choices like that on those sessions
which revealed their unique personalities.
Nowadays, as you say, drummers have been
relegated to simply emulating drum machines and
so their playing is devoid of any personality.
Steve Smith: True. One of
the measures of a good drummer today is that all
your hits sound exactly the same and that you're
consistent and perfectly in time. I don't see
that so much as progress, really. I see it as a
skill. It's a necessary skill for today's music
business and I can do it.
I play on pop
records so I can draw on that skill but it's not
a natural or fun way for me to play music. I do
it as if I'm a house painter and somebody tells
me, "Paint my kitchen red." I'll go in and apply
a coat of red paint to the walls. I don't feel
like an artist at that point, I'm just following
orders. And if somebody wants me to play a track
on their record I'll go in and do it... make
sure that all the snare hits are the same and
the time is real even. It's a skill but it
doesn't feel like what I aspire to do as an
artist.
MD: So this is
the prevailing aesthetic in the pop music of
today. But what about when you were playing with
Journey? Was there more room for expressiveness
from the drum chair in that band?
SS: For me, that was a time
when I was investigating and exploring and
partaking in that whole rock experience, and at
the time I felt a combination of restriction but
with some creative license. I had come from
playing with Jean-Luc Ponty and big band jazz
and people like that so it was a big shift for
me to play one beat for the chorus and another
beat for the verse and have to stick to those
rather than playing a time feel that was
constantly varying. That was definitely a new
concept for me but I tried to be as creative as
I could within those parameters.
So I
really started to get into that idea of
developing that skill, yet it was before the
time of click tracks and drum machines so there
was still the concept of the band developing a
pulse together with time being relative. It
wasn't absolute as it is now with click tracks.
You developed a pulse so the band could play
together with a nice feel. And when we made
records we tried our best to play with real good
steady time and feel, and the records hold up
today and still sound good. But if you analyze
them against the perfection of today's standards
you'll hear a chorus will speed up a little and
a verse may slow down a little. The music
breathes, it flows.
All pop music up
until sometime in the mid '80s or the early '90s
had that flow. Since then, virtually everything
is done with a click. But with a group like
Journey I had some freedom and also
restrictions. So it was a bit of a balance. But
still, it was never my everything. I didn't feel
like it expressed all of who I was or am as a
musician.
MD: That's
true of every gig you've done since then from
the Buddy's project to Vital Information to all
the Tone Center stuff. You're so versatile that
no one gig represents the whole scope of your
musicality.
SS: And I
need that. I guess I just need a constant
shifting around of playing with different
people. In a way, Vital Information does satisfy
quite a bit of my musical urges. I can create it
to express what it is I'm interested in
expressing. So that's one of the more complete
musical experiences that I've had. Steps Ahead
was also like that.
MD:
Let's address your prodigious output in recent
years with Tone Center. How did you get involved
with that label?
SS: The
Tone Center label started with the first Vital
Techtones record. Mike Varney owns Shrapnel
Records and I had made records for him before --
Tony MacAlpine's first record (1986's Edge of
Insanity), a Richie Kotzen record (1989
self-titled debut), Jeff Watson record (1992's
Lone Ranger) and a few others.
Anyway,
Varney had wanted to get into some fusion. I
think part of the motivation was that there was
so much emphasis at the time on smooth jazz and
people dumbing their playing down for the masses
that a whole audience was being ignored. And
that's what we were going for, the people that
LIKED the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jeff Beck and
The Tony Williams Lifetime. There was no label
addressing that kind of music in the present
day. And yet it seemed like there were a lot of
people who wanted to hear musicians really
playing and pushing their limits.
So with
the stuff we do on Tone Center, it's aimed at
the musicians. We're going for the same people
that like to come to the clinics. And we're not
worried about making music for the masses, we're
aiming it at the listeners who want that
adventurous playing. So in 1997, Mike Varney
came up with the idea of me putting together a
fantasy trio. I immediately blurted out, just
sort of joking around, "OK, how about me, Scott
Henderson and Victor Wooten." And he said, "OK,
let's make it happen."
I had worked with
Scott before in the ‘80s with Jeff Berlin and
the band Players, so I called Scott but I didn't
really know Victor. I only knew Victor from his
solo records. I had checked out his first solo
record at a listening station in a record store
and was instantly blown away. I bought the
record and just really loved it and I thought,
"Wow, this guy is amazing. It would be great to
play with him." Later he came to see Vital
Information at Catalina Bar & Grill in L.A.,
which is how I met him. So I somehow traced him
down, asked him about doing this fusion trio
project with Scott and I, and he was into it.
And then after we agreed on a time we got
together at my house and made that record,
pretty much just by jamming the tunes up... a
song a day.
MD: That's
been one of the conveniences of having a home
studio.
SS: Yeah. But
after the record was done then Mike Varney
showed up with the record contracts and it said
"Shrapnel Records" on the top of the contract.
Somehow that didn't seem right for this music
because Shrapnel Records was well known at the
time as a heavy metal label and this wasn't a
heavy metal record at all. So we talked to him
about considering another label name and so Mike
came up with the name Tone Center. And after
that first record with Scott, Victor and myself,
Varney said, "OK, so now I got a jazz label. I
need product! Think of another group." So I just
came up with all the different combinations I
could think of.
First I did a recording
with Frank Gambale and Stu Hamm (1998's Show Me
What You Can Do). Next I was going to do one
with Larry Coryell with Jeff Andrews on bass but
something happened where Jeff couldn't make the
session so we got Tom Coster to play B-3 and
play left hand bass, that one's called Cause And
Effect. Then I started getting a little more
creative and I came up with three other guys I
had never played with or even met but just
thought it would be great to work with, which
was (harmonica ace) Howard Levy, (violinist)
Jerry Goodman and (bassist) Oteil Burbridge.
Howard I knew from his work with Bela Fleck &
The Flecktones and Jerry, of course, played on
those early Mahavishnu Orchestra recordings that
were so influential for me. Oteil is someone I
had never heard of but Victor Wooten recommended
him, saying that Oteil was his favorite bass
player and that I should really work with him. I
got in touch with them and even though we had
never met we got together and created The
Stranger's Hand, which is a really interesting
recording.
MD: And a lot
of this music develops while hanging out and
casually jamming at your house?
SS: Yeah, basically, with that idea of
doing a song a day. For each project we'd set
aside nine or ten days and each day create a new
piece of music.
In some cases, like with
the Larry Coryell project, Larry brought in some
finished tunes and we also created some stuff on
the spot, so it was a combination of things, as
it was with The Stranger's Hand. On that project
Howard came in with some tunes and Jerry came in
with some song fragments that we developed in
the jamming scenario. But in general we'd just
come up with things in the spur of the moment --
improvise a duet... you know, do something! Just
get into a creative space and go with it. So it
was always a great experience.
And we've
continued that momentum with Vital Techtones 2
and two more projects with Frank, Stu and myself
(2000's The Light Beyond and 2002's GH3) and a
great group called Count's Jam Band that
features Larry Coryell, Steve Marcus and Kai
Eckhardt. And then other people started making
records like those for Varney. (Bassist) Bunny
Brunel started putting projects together for
Tone Center with Dennis Chambers on drums and
Tony MacAlpine on guitar called CAB. And then
Jimmy Haslip, Robben Ford, and Vinnie Colaiuta
put one together (2001's Jing Chi). And Mike
also signed Rachel Z to the label. So he's
gotten a lot of other people now who are making
records for him with that same attitude of
pushing the envelope and appealing to the fans
of real playing. He keeps hammering us for VTT3,
which hopefully we'll be able to do someday.
It's been hard to get everyone together for
another one.
MD: A
departure from that formula of fusion-oriented
thing which has come to define Tone Center was
the Buddy's Buddies project.
SS:
Right. I brought the idea to Mike Varney, which
was a little more of a stretch for him because
it was more straight ahead jazz. But it was a
group that I had been playing some gigs with and
it was a lot of fun. So we did the first one
(1999's Steve Smith and Buddy's Buddies) and now
there's two in the can, Buddy's Buddies Very
Live at Ronnie Scott's -- Set One and Set Two
-- they will come out late 2003.
MD:
What do these Tone Center records represent to
you as a player?
SS:
Well, I have a very large part to play in the
creative process. On most of them I'm credited
as the producer so I organize the sessions and
direct them while we're in the studio. And
before we do the records usually I'll take some
time and come up with, say, ten song ideas that
are just drum parts or grooves. So there'll be a
tempo and a concept and maybe even a reference,
like, "OK, listen to this Mahavishnu tune where
it uses a beat like this and let's try writing
something in that vein." So out of those ten
grooves maybe six of them will be turned into
songs. First by me playing a groove and then,
say, Victor or Stu or whoever's playing will
come up with a bass groove to go with that drum
part. And then Scott or Frank will come up with
the chords. And then the melody will happen and
we'll go from there.
The other guys also
bring in fragments, generally not completed
songs. And that way it gives everyone input. So
as a drummer it's exciting to be involved on the
ground floor of the composition of a piece of
music and the direction of it.
MD:
But is there anything in that context of those
Tone Center recordings that you're doing
technically that you can't do in Vital
Information or other situations?
SS: Each one is very unique. With Vital
Information there's a concept that we now have
which is more or less the soul-jazz Hammond B-3
organ sound with some swing and funk and New
Orleans in the mix. So I have a general
direction with that group. With GHS3, that's
more rock-fusion, where Frank plugs in, turns
his amp on ten and wails. We don't generally do
that with Vital Information. Maybe at the end of
the night or sometimes for the last tune, but
generally we don't do that. So yeah, it's
different and I play with a different concept on
the drums in each setting.
MD:
Do you use a different kit for the more
hard-hitting fusion-oriented stuff?
SS: A little bit of a different
kit. Usually is use a bigger bass drum and some
different cymbals. It's generally the same kit
but with a bit of a different playing concept.
With Vital Information I might have Zigaboo (Modeliste,
of The Meters) or Mike Clark (of The
Headhunters) in mind as a reference. Or even
Tony Williams, but Tony from the '60s. Whereas,
with Vital Techtones or GHS my reference is more
Tony Williams from the '70s, like the New
Lifetime band with Holdsworth, or Billy Cobham
or Alphonse Mouzon. It just gives me a different
point of reference conceptually to come from.
And so naturally I play differently in all of
the settings.
MD: I
understand that you've been involved lately with
playing a lot of Indian music. What are your
points of reference with that as a drummer?
SS: Interestingly with the
Indian music there's really no precedent. So in
some ways it's the most uniquely creative outlet
for me as a drummer. There are no U.S. drumset
players that play with an Indian concept, at
least not that I know of. Trilok Gurtu is the
other way around. He's not a drumset player who
plays with an Indian concept but an Indian
drummer who incorporates a Western concept. So
he's somewhat of a reference but I use the
actual drumset when I play in these Indian music
settings. So I have to really create that sound
on my own, which is nice...and very creative.
MD: What are the situations
that you are currently playing in that utilize
this Indian concept of drumset playing?
SS: There's two groups that are
somewhat similar. One was with tabla player
Sandip Burman called East Meets Jazz with Victor
Bailey on bass, Jerry Goodman on violin, Howard
Levy on keys and harmonica and David Pietro on
sax with special guests Randy Brecker on trumpet
and Paul Bollenback on guitar. That was in a way
my trial by fire introduction to Indian music
and I found it incredibly fascinating. I learned
a lot playing Sandip's music because he wrote
music that was based on Indian rhythmic and
melodic concepts. So it was really, really
challenging and difficult at first until I
started to understand some of the basic concepts
and then integrate them into my playing.
And then I wanted to learn a lot more about
Indian music so last summer I had the chance to
study with a teacher from South India named
Karuna Moorthy, he plays a drum called the tavil.
It's a drum from South India that we don't see
very much over here. It's a short double-headed
drum. On the right hand he uses what look like
thimbles on his fingers and with the left hand
he plays with a stick. The left hand is the low
side and the right hand is the high side. He
taught me the basics of a rhythmic system called
kunnakol, which is a rhythmic language of South
India. Not drum sounds but the rhythmic breakup
of phrases that you hear in Indian music... you
know, the taka-dimi-taka-dimi-taka-takita-taka-takita
rhythmic phrases that they vocalize.
So
he taught me some of that and a lot of other
exercises, and he gave me some drum
compositions. One of the things that the Indian
drummers do is write rhythmic compositions for
the instruments, and many of them are like
standards. They know lots of these compositions
and most everyone knows the same ones. So Karuna
taught me some of them and we played them
together. And then I've had the good fortune of
being in a band and touring with Zakir Hussain,
who is really, probably, the greatest drummer
alive on the planet Earth. He's just an
incredible musician and an incredible drummer.
We play together in a band called Summit with
Kai Eckhardt on bass, who played with John
McLaughlin and Trilok Gurtu, Fareed Haque on
guitar and George Brooks, who is the bandleader
and principal composer, on sax.
We did a
record together and we've been playing gigs
around the world lately. Doing that has taken me
to another level because the music is very
sophisticated. I'm playing these drum
compositions that I've learned with Zakir and we
get to really stretch out. It's incredibly
exciting! We just recorded a tracked for an
upcoming Magna Carta drummer CD, it features
Zakir and I playing solos and duets, we called
it "Mad Tea Time."
MD:
You're playing the regular kit with that band?
SS: I play the Sonor Jungle
Set, which is the same thing I played with
Sandip, because the tablas are very quiet. I had
to develop a kit that wasn't too loud, so I use
mainly flat cymbals and splashes and use brushes
or bundled rods instead of sticks.
MD: As you mentioned that the
swing beat or swing feel is the fundamental
characteristic of U.S. drumming, what is the
fundamental characteristic of Indian drumming?
SS: That's a good question
and I don't know the answer yet. I do know that
playing with Zakir is very different than
playing with Sandip because Zakir has
incorporated the rhythmic feels of all the
different cultures from around the world into
his playing. He'll play what absolutely feels
like Afro-Cuban rhythms on the tabla, or he'll
play African sounding stuff or even swing on the
tabla. He can sound like an American swing
drummer and he even incorporates a walking bass
by playing melodically on the baya with his left
hand. It's incredible!
So he really
adapted his playing in a lot of ways to the
Western concept and it just feels very
comfortable for me to play with him. In a way,
I'd say our fundamental way of communicating is
still more U.S. but with the flavor of raga and
tala, that melodic and rhythmic characteristics
of India. And the way we play is essentially
we're U.S. players. Actually, it's a pretty
international band from Fareed (Pakistan) to Kai
(Germany) to Zakir (India), but we communicate
fundamental with a U.S. central concept and then
superimpose the other concepts onto that.
Indian musicians have such an extensive
rhythmic vocabulary to draw on. They work on all
of these rhythms and time signatures... we call
them time signatures though I hesitate to use
that word because it's more thought of as beat
cycles. As a drummer it's infinitely interesting
to get into. And again, playing with Zakir has
been so inspirational.
The tabla is such
an expressive instrument. You get so many sounds
just on one little drum and with Zakir's two
drums, in a way, he plays with more sounds than
I do with the whole drum set. The closest that
we drummers come to the level of nuance that
tabla players can get is when we play with
brushes. We can muffle the tone, we can hit it
and let it ring and get some different tones
that way. With the stick we can get different
tones depending on where you play on the head,
but mostly it's open tones on the snare drum.
But without having a hand on the drum to
alternate between muffled tones and open tones
and pitch change it's tough. Although, there are
some great drummers, like Jeff Hamilton, who are
exploring the concept of pitch change on the
drumset. He plays melodically in a way I've
never seen anyone do. He can play actual jazz
standards using pitch bend by putting the stick
in the head. He's one of the most musical
drummers on the scene today.
MD:
It seems that today the drumset, a U.S.
invention, has become such a universal
instrument.
SS: Right,
it went out from the U.S. and was accepted by
other cultures and then was adapted in some ways
to them. Really, the first culture outside of
the U.S. to embrace the drumset was the British.
And as a result we have the first generation of
rock drum stars. For the most part the archetype
does come from England. Even though we had Dino
Danelli and Carmine Appice and Earl Palmer and
Hal Blaine... a lot of great drummers came from
the United States but really the main archetypes
that defined the rock drummer even of today are
the English drummers from Ringo to Charlie Watts
to John Bonham and Ginger Baker. So the British
really embraced the instrument and then added to
the vocabulary.
MD: And
each really had a unique style, a signature
voice on the instrument.
SS:
Yeah, really different. And essentially they all
had strong pulse and great swing to their
playing. And then the French, especially with
Kenny Clarke moving to Paris (in the 1950s),
they really embraced the drumset. And then it
spread to the rest of Europe and guys played it
but with a bit of their own culture added in.
Take a guy like Jan Christiansen, for
example (drummer with Keith Jarrett in the
'70s). To me, he sounds like Jack DeJohnette or
Tony Williams and yet there's something really
uniquely Norwegian to his playing. Somehow he
put the music of his own culture into his
drumset playing. And you hear it today in
players like Akira Jimbo, who has integrated the
U.S. concept with a Japanese technology concept,
or Trilok Gurtu, who is essentially a North
Indian tabla player who has brought in elements
of the drumset and created a real unique hybrid.
Or Joe Zawinul's great drummer from the
Ivory Coast, Paco Sery, he's absorbed the whole
U.S. thing but he's put his own thing on it, an
African concept. And obviously there are the
Afro-Cuban players like Horacio "El Negro"
Hernandez who have assimilated the drumset into
their music, and so on. You can see how it's a
real adaptable instrument. It's been brought
into the other cultures and everyone's done
their own thing with it.
MD:
How would you look back at yourself as a drummer
when you just got the gig with Jean-Luc Ponty
and were getting your career started? What was
your vocabulary like at that time and how have
you grown since then?
SS:
OK, that's a good question. When I auditioned
for Jean-Luc Ponty I was a seventh semester
student at Berklee. I was 22 years old and my
focus was big band jazz. I toured for a couple
of summers with a trumpet player named Lin
Biviano, who was a lead trumpet player for Buddy
Rich and Maynard Ferguson and had his own band
in the style of the Maynard Ferguson big band --
the small big band he had at the time with two
bones, four trumpets and three saxes and a
rhythm section.
We toured the East Coast
and the Midwest with that group, which included
Bobby Malach on tenor and Barry Kiener on piano,
Joe Romano on lead alto, John Lockwood on
bass...a lot of really great players. I played a
lot of big band and I also played a lot of free
jazz at the time in a Boston group called The
Fringe with George Garzone on tenor sax and Rich
Appleman on bass. I had played a little bit of
bebop with (clarinetist) Buddy DeFranco and also
played locally in Boston in a pop-funk band with
bassist Neil Stubenhaus that played at the
Ramada Inn six nights a week.
But at the
time I met Ponty, I didn't really play much
fusion. I had played a little bit of fusion with
(guitarist) Jamie Glaser and (bassist) Jeff
Berlin. And then there was a band I played with
called Baird Hersey & The Year of the Ear, which
was kind of fusion. So I didn't have much
experience playing fusion but I had heard it and
seen enough of it to get a handle on it. And I
was able to get the gig with Ponty because I
read well. He put a lot of charts in front of
me... I mean, odd times and some very difficult
music, and I could read everything. I think he
saw that I had the potential to do well but it
took me a long time to really do that well with
the band.
MD: It seems
like it must've been a very disciplined gig.
SS: Yeah, I was more of a
jazz drummer than a fusion drummer at that
point, so things were sort of... a little more
separated. I was a good straight-ahead jazz
drummer and I could also play sort of pop-funk
drums but I didn't do much of both together. So
that Ponty gig put them both together for me.
That gig was literally fusing those two
styles so I very naturally developed the ability
to play fusion. I have a video of me playing
with Ponty from the first couple of months. I
used a little Gretsch drumset. I didn't have a
double bass kit back then. He asked me to get a
big double bass kit "like Billy Cobham's," so
that's when I got my first Sonor drumset with
two 24" bass drums and three rack toms and two
floor toms.
Then I worked on that style,
consciously emulating Billy Cobham and Narada
Michael Walden, who were my favorite drummers at
that time. I especially loved the way that
Narada Michael Walden played with Mahavishnu II,
especially on Visions of the Emerald Beyond.
That Ponty gig was a big transition for me and
that was the doorway into being a rock drummer,
because once I got the double bass drum set I
really started operating at a different
dynamic...playing loud, playing hard, which then
led me to eventually playing with (guitarist)
Ronnie Montrose. I left Ponty at the end of '77
and by early '78 I moved to L.A. and auditioned
with Ronnie Montrose and Freddie Hubbard in the
same week and got both gigs, so that was a real
turning point in my career. It was like, "OK, I
can play with Freddie and do the straight ahead
thing or play with Ronnie Montrose doing
something like a Jeff Beck kind of thing."
MD: This was just after
Blow By Blow?
SS:
Exactly. Ronnie had just put out an instrumental
record called Open Fire, which was in that vein,
and for the tour he wanted a fusion drummer. So
that made sense for me to play with him because
I wanted to play a little bit more of the rock
thing. It just seemed interesting to me at the
time. Where, geez, I would've loved to have
played with Freddie Hubbard but I had to make a
choice and I just somehow had the feeling that I
could always do that or something like that.
So for me, playing with Ronnie Montrose was
a more unique opportunity, to see what that more
aggressive style of playing was like. So I took
that gig and that ultimately ended up leading to
Journey because we were the opening act for
Journey. And then I wanted to see what that was
like... playing with singers. So there I was
playing with singers and songwriters and rock
players, but to me they seemed very good at what
they did so it didn't seem like that much of a
stretch.
Neal Schon played great guitar
and Gregg Rolie was a great B-3 player and
singer and Steve Perry was a great singer and I
liked Ross Valory's bass playing. It just all
made sense to me. And my chops were slowly
developing and adapting to each situation. I'd
have to say that I had the potential to do well
in each situation but I needed to develop into
the gigs.
But it's not like I feel
today... as you say, I can go into something and
have a large vocabulary to draw upon. I didn't
in those days. I was just building it. I'd get
my foot in the door because I had enough
musicianship to do that but then I would exploit
the situation and learn as much as I could from
it. I was learning about rock drumming from
hanging out with rock musicians and playing with
rock musicians. I was learning about fusion
drumming from hanging out and playing with
Jean-Luc Ponty and (bassist) Tom Fowler and
later (bassist) Ralphe Armstrong and
(guitarist). Allan Holdsworth played with that
band for a minute and appeared on the record
Enigmatic Ocean.
I was thrown into
situations and I was learning by doing and
developing a vocabulary, researching the
drummers that did it in each setting. When I was
with Journey I was listening to everyone from
Charlie Watts to investigating how Nigel Olsen
played ballads with Elton John. In some ways,
Nigel was an inspiration for my playing on some
of those Journey ballads. He doesn't get a lot
of credit but, you know, he was somebody that I
checked out and really liked how he approached
the music.
MD: So you've
always had an analytical ear?
SS:
I guess so. And I would do a certain amount
intuitively, just as a response. But then there
was the studied thing too that I would get
into...seeing how other guys did it and then
adding their ideas and licks to my thing. And
then the next really big thing that happened for
me was leaving Journey and playing for Steps
Ahead. That was really jumping in with both feet
playing with great musicians like Michael
Brecker and Mike Stern, Darryl Jones and Victor
Bailey and Mike Mainieri.
But again, I
think I had the ability to get my foot in the
door but I didn't go in there and do this great
job from the first minute. I really worked my
way through it, worked my way up through
practice, through listening to recordings,
studying and hanging out with the players.
That's when I really started to try and work on
my chops a lot more because I needed to play
with a lot more dynamics in Steps Ahead than I
had played with in Journey...that and the
ability to play really fast jazz tempos. That
all required a lot more finesse so I really had
to re-examine my technique. And that got me into
eventually studying with Freddie Gruber.
MD: What specifically did he
work on with you?
SS:
The first and really the most essential thing
for me was to get into the balance point of the
stick. When I was playing with Journey and even
in the early Steps Ahead days I held the sticks
way in the back. Well, if you hold the sticks
way in the back you have to individually play
every stroke, there's no bouncing, there's no
rebound. The balance point is finding the spot
where the stick just bounces by itself.
Freddie, being from the old school, is really in
touch with how to play the drums very relaxed
and naturally. That wouldn't have been an issue
for drummers from the '60s on back. People
picked up the drumsticks and they played with
the proper balance point in order to play the
music, they didn't have to try to play loud all
the time. And even for me...before Journey I
played the same way I'm playing now but I got
out of that because I changed my grip. You can
play louder if you hold the sticks in the back
but you can't play with more subtlety.
MD: Did you ever try to play
with a matched grip?
SS:
A little bit. I messed around with matched grip
but it never felt that good to me since I
started with the traditional grip from the time
I was a kid.
MD: But you
can get more volume that way.
SS:
Yeah, I think I could. But at this point I'm not
concerned with volume, just sound. So that was
the first thing I did with Freddie Gruber...
finding the balance point. Then he helped me get
out of the habit of always hitting the drum hard
as opposed to letting the stick drop and getting
a nice sound, really getting a better tone on
the drum. The other thing was breaking the habit
of playing through the head. I describe that in
the DVD... that idea that you allow the stick to
rebound off of the head rather than driving the
stick into the head. And that just opens up a
new world.
You can play so much more
relaxed that way and you can get a nicer sound,
and interestingly, a bigger sound. You actually
get a bigger sound by just aligning with a lot
of these natural principals. So as I'm
incorporating all of these different techniques
and playing concepts I'm generally not
discarding any of the old ones, so it's an
ongoing and natural way of building abilities
and vocabulary, which is not something you can
only do at home in the practice room. You can
sit home and practice, do some research, listen
and transcribe and get some things together, but
ultimately you need the on-the-job experience to
actually turn these concepts into music and
really absorb the ideas and have them be
meaningful and useful within the different
genres and idioms.
So when I play a
certain fill and I'm playing with a rock
musician they give me the nod of "Yeah, that's
working" as opposed to the stare or surprised
look of like, "What the hell was that that
you're doing!" You figure that stuff out just by
experience on the bandstand. So the tendency is
to go for the nod. And the concepts are
different, depending on who you're playing with
and what the music is. Some of the things that
worked great for Journey, if I did that behind
Michael Brecker it would be like the "What the
hell are you doing?" look.
MD:
You've gotten that look before in your career?
SS: Absolutely! (laughs)
Sure. It's part of the learning process and you
want to try to avoid that look. You know, you
figure out what people need. Even in the same
band, different things are going to work for
different people. When I play behind Tom Coster,
what's going to work for him is a little
different than what's going to work behind Frank
Gambale. And it's like that with whatever band
I'm in. You have to just learn to listen and
make some adjustments.
MD:
So through all these experiences over the years
you've arrived at this place now where you're a
far more seasoned player, a more well-rounded
musician than that kid who came out of Berklee
to play with Jean-Luc Ponty.
SS:
Yeah, definitely. I was a pretty good musician
for my age back then but I had a long way to go,
really. That's why I tell students who come to
the clinics, "Just because you went to an
audition and got the gig doesn't mean that
you're really good enough to do a great job on
that gig right away."
In my case I was
good enough to get my foot in the door of that
Ponty gig, but that was just the beginning. The
leader usually sees, "OK, the kid's got the
potential." But then it's up to you to get in
there and take advantage of the situation and
really learn and grow and develop. And I think
you hear that with all musicians that did that.
The Tony Williams that left the Miles Davis band
in 1968 was a different drummer than the one
that played on Seven Steps To Heaven back in
1963. Follow the path of Elvin Jones from the
beginning of the Coltrane experience to the end
or Billy Cobham from the beginning of the
Mahavishnu Orchestra to the end. They evolved.
If they're into it, they'll take advantage of
the situation and learn and grow from that
situation.
The Dave Weckl that first
started playing with Chick Corea was a great
drummer. But where Dave Weckl is now is a
completely different player. He's so much more
seasoned and mature and has developed a lot as a
musician. That's just one example that's easy to
see. I think a lot of young people get fooled
into thinking that once you get the gig, that's
it. Relax. But it's not really the case. That's
when it's time to start going to work.
Continue to Part 3... |
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