SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Practicing Drummer Podcast. My name is Craig, and in this episode, I have a conversation with Mark Ferber that was recorded in June of 2025. Mark has been on my radar for a while, but I got really obsessed with his playing a few years ago when I heard the Mark Copeland album called Someday. I just love his sound and the creativity and clarity of his ideas. Plus, Mark Copeland's music is just amazing. I also really like his playing with artists like Dave Scott, Ralph Villesti, Brad Shepick, Jonathan Christberg, and so many others. He's on over 200 recordings, so there's so much to check out. Oh, I should also mention that he works a lot with his twin brother, the trombonist Alan Ferber. In addition to playing and recording, he teaches at Cal State Fresno, which has an award-winning big band, and he also teaches in the master's program at Musicians Institute in Hollywood. Mark keeps a pretty low profile online, and I was only able to find a couple of interviews with him, so I was just thrilled when he agreed to do this. A week after we talked, he had a gig here in Minneapolis at a newer club called Berlin, and it was just awesome to see him play live. After the gig, we talked for a little while and he showed me the symbols I asked about later on in the interview. It was such a fun night, and I put up an Instagram reel of him trading on a blues if you want to go check that out. As always, I'll put links to some of the things we talked about in the show notes and on the blog at practicingdrummer.com. With that, let's get into it with Mark Ferber. Oh hey Mark, thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Absolutely. You know, it's rare I get to do these kinds of things, so I appreciate you asking.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's uh I'm really excited. I've I'm pretty obsessed with your playing. Um I've I was aware of you for a while, and I saw you, I think, in 2019 here in Minnesota when you came with Ralph Alesi to do a fundraiser for Jazz Central.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Oh yeah, that was it was like a warehouse kind of. I'm trying to remember the venue, but and I remember I'm a big fan of that Joe Lavano record from the 90s with uh Anthony Cox, Billy Hart, uh you know, uh Tom Harrell, et cetera, et cetera, and the other disc as well. Um, and that that was the first time I actually saw Anthony Cox play because we were doing a double bill. I think he was playing after us. That was that was a very kind of special night for me to get to see. I I didn't even know he was in um Minneapolis, and I was like, whoa, it's Anthony Cox. He lives here.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, he plays around here a lot, and like you, I'm a huge fan of that record, and then also the the trio stuff he did with uh Blackwell and Lavano. Oh, yeah, of course. That's incredible. Yeah, really great. But yeah, so that was the first time I saw you play, and then you know, of course, I've heard you on a lot of things, but then it wasn't until a few years ago when that Mark Copeland album called Someday came out, and it's something about that album just grabbed me, and it's one of my all-time favorites. Your playing on it is so beautiful. The sound's so good, the tunes are good.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Well, that was a yeah, just to just to sort of talk about a little bit about Mark is you know, he's actually one of the reasons I moved to New York in the first place. I think Los Angeles. I graduated UCLA with a biogeography degree. I wasn't even planning on doing music to begin with. You know, me and my twin brother Alan, I don't know, he's also a great uh musician still in New York. He lives in NyAC upstate. And we uh, you know, we just kind of, I mean, that's sort of a separate story in two and of itself. But Mark was one of those guys. I remember seeing him at the this old club in Culver City called the Jazz Bakery. And I saw him with uh John Abercrombie. It was uh John Abercarambi, I was a big fan of this record he did called Second Look with Billy Hart, Drew Gress, and John Abercrombie, Mark Copeland. I was the quartet, huge fan of Billy Hart, obviously. Mark came to the Jazz Bakery, and I saw him with uh a slightly slight variation. Drew is playing bass, Abercarambi, and Peter Erskine. Oh wow. Uh, you know, Peter was playing a lot in LA at that time. So I'd go, I'd make it a point to see C. Peter, I'd make it a point to see Billy Higgins, all these guys, Roy McCurdy, Joe LaBarba, uh, etc., etc. All the cats, Dave Weckel, some of the fusion guys, Vinnie Calliuta, those guys are living out here and playing a lot of the baked potato. Uh, but anyway, I saw that I had been a fan of this record, and I saw him play at the jazz bakery, and like from that moment, I was like, man, I gotta play with this guy. I was obsessed with his harmony and the his tunes, like you said, the way he writes, and just the sound that he can emanate from the piano, and also the sound that Mark and John this sort of like this chordal soup, like it's such a beautiful texture. It's fun to play drums under that. And um, I kind of like he was kind of one of those reasons why I was like, I want to be in New York to be closer to guys like that, to play with musicians like that. So that's he was one of the uh a few musicians that kind of inspired me to make that move in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

So were you when you would go see him play, did you talk to him and start forming a relationship, or was it mostly as a fan? I didn't talk to him.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I was too intimidated. You know, I have a hard time if I'm really yeah, sometimes um, I mean it's it's a little better now, but especially in those days, I was, you know, it you music is I don't know, it's all your heroes, you know, it's kind of they can be hard to approach. I mean, um, you're young, you're shy, you're intimidated, you're just getting into the music, you you're questioning what you have to offer, but you know, all these different things that play into your psychosis. And um, so I didn't talk to him until much years later. I remember I think Bob Shepard, who's a very good friend of mine that I was playing with at that time in LA, invited me. I think it's the first time I went up to his house and tell him Bob was in New York. He had an apartment there for a while, going back and forth. And he was like, Hey, you want to go up and play with Mark Copeland? And I was like, Hell yeah. I mean, of course. And Mark, and I think John Abercrombie, too. So we we went up there to do a session. That's how I met Mark and John in the first place, was through Bob. Bob's another huge inspiration, one of the guys that like kind of got my start in LA. He was calling me for a lot of gigs and like really supportive of younger, still is younger musicians, always having sessions at his house, really giving a lot of opportunities for hungry younger musicians to sort of play, get out there and um get their music out there. So so yeah, he year years, years later, he kind of brought me, invited me to go up there. And that's kind of how I started developing that musical relationship with with Mark and John, too. So that was great.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

And that that was quite a while. Well, what year are we talking about? I guess let's set up a timeline.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yeah, I mean, I moved to New York in January of 2000, drove across the country. Okay, a long time ago. Uh, I was kind of going back and forth for a while, by coastal in a way, uh more in New York. Um, but that's kind of when I initially moved there. And um just to sort of wrap up the mark thing, I I met him years later, probably 2016 or something, like way, way later. So I I'd already had this whole career in life in New York and played with all kinds of great people, fortunate enough to play with so many different artists that you know I really I live in LA now, I moved back, but um during COVID, but you know, it's one of those things I was there so long, 21 years, that I really I got everything and more I wanted to get out of New York in that time period. So it's not like you know, there's not like this magnetic pole to go back necessarily to live there, but um I really and still, you know, I really enjoyed the opportunities uh uh or appreciate the opportunities that it presented for me. Opportunities that wouldn't would not have presented themselves had I stayed here in LA. It's just a different environment, different scene.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, and now you know you you were there for so long that it seems like you have a pretty open door when you do go back. And it seems like you go back fairly regularly. I see you popping up on gigs quite often.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, yeah. I go back, you know, during COVID, I would say that's kind of fresh. You know, when I moved back, I was teaching Joe La Barber was on sabbatical leave from CalArts, so I was covering his position for a semester, the COVID semester.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So literally when, yeah, so I was kind of living sort of in California at that time, doing that gig, which I'd done before in 2012. And I I always loved sort of spending a few months, especially during the winter in California. And my parents live out here. It's nice to be closer to them, be able to visit them, and a lot of old friends out here. So um, yeah, I was kind of already living out here and made the decision to sort of like I'd been thinking about it to sort of just make the move while absolutely nothing was happening in music. So every everything was remote at that point. So I was like, oh, I could this is the perfect time to to do this. I've been thinking about it, so I'm gonna do it now, which I'm not the only one. I mean, that's obviously that was a huge wave of people that were displaced for this reason or that.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Yeah, and it seems like the scene in LA is pretty active right now. You do a lot of playing at clubs out there and a lot of are you do you do a lot of your recordings out there, or are you going to New York, uh East Coast, or Europe to do recordings?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Um that's a good question. I mean, I yeah, I do some stuff out here. When I was in New York, I was involved in so many bands that were simultaneously um touring and and recording, trying to stay on top of their their output, you know, their recording output in order to get gigs, you know, because that's how you that's part of the process of just continuing to work. So I was involved on a lot of different bands that were sort of in that zone. And so therefore there were a lot, there's just a lot of gigging and a lot of recording going on because I was in a lot of different projects. I mean, really ran the gamut, big bands, small groups, whatever, avant-garde, straight ahead. It doesn't, I kind of like to delve into all that stuff. And so out here, not so much, not uh not as many bands per se. So, but I still do recordings for different projects. I still go to New York for different projects to record. You know, it's like it's pretty loose. It's like whatever, you know, whatever happens. Sometimes I'll do a few little commercial things out here. I've done like jingles, I've done, you know, but but very little. Uh, but mostly for me, it's mostly at this point, yeah, gigging, touring, and teaching. I teach at two different schools.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

So okay, awesome. And I that's something I want to get to as well. And you touched on it a little bit just now, talking about the wide variety of projects that you've played on and your wide range of interests. I mean, that's I think that's one of the things that I like most about following you is you know, you have such versatility, but you always end up sounding like you. And oh, thanks. I'm I'm there's there are pieces of your development that I'm really curious about because it I hear you play straight ahead stuff. It's not only convincing, but it sounds amazing. And oh, thank you. You know, you have your own thing. And you know, but then I can hear you support a singer and just kind of play it straight down the middle and be very uh, you know, for lack of a better word, you know, doing your job as a drummer. Um, but then you've got the avant-garde thing. And anyway, I I'm kind of rambling, but what I'm curious about, I guess, is going back to learn about your development and your influences and how we got to where you are now. And then I have many, many questions about uh your your career now.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

I hope I can answer all these. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah, well. So I guess the first thing I want to know is what drew you to the drums and how you got started playing and what that looked like for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

I think it was just we had a I grew up again, it's a luxury, uh, but it's just it would to grow up with another musician, like-minded, well, identical twin.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

First of all, but simultaneous, you know, side by side, uh in this all in this together, you know being able to have someone in the house. I mean, I grew up in suburban Northern California with not a whole lot going on. I mean, within striking distance of urban areas, Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, but not living in that immediate area. Uh so there's not a whole it's pretty quiet town. So to have, first of all, to have Alan there and to be able to sort of grow up making music together, checking out records, doing stuff, just even playing duos all the time was was huge. We didn't um and we also had a our school, uh, you know, and this is like the importance of music, music in schools, I think, uh all the way from junior high, well, yeah, junior high, high school, obviously college, but um, especially those those sort of younger grades. Uh we had a very strong music program in in all those great d inspiring directors, uh, music directors, and um in junior high and high school that really and actually actually my high school band director, first one, we had four and I think like four directors in four years, but my freshman year at uh in high school, I went to Campolindo High School in um in uh Moraga, California. And uh is uh yeah, my high school band director, Ken Bergman, was and still is a great drummer. And he was probably arguably my biggest, you know, he got me started, a huge influence on my development, early development, playing technique, all that stuff. Super inspiring teacher, too, like very animated, and uh he knew how to count off a tune, he knew how to get the students going. And so I think a huge part of how I started was was this sort of like positive infrastructure in schools, like this this importance of music and like playing every morning, 7 a.m. in the morning, jazz band, different charts every day. That's how I got my reading together too.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

It's just to be just chart after chart, different. Here's a Latin one, swing, uh boss, whatever, you know. And you're just you know, just the just the process of playing music at that age, just by ear, no, nothing else, and listening to music. I mean, you're not I wasn't really studying it per se, but just like having that music in school all the time to play was hugely important for me for my development. And in terms of just how I chose, we both wanted to, me and my brother both wanted to play the trombone, actually.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Uh, probably because we're twins, we wanted to do everything the same, but uh but they were like, yeah, we can't have two identical twins play the exact same instrument. That's just a disaster waiting to happen down the down the road. So um, and I think there was, I think they needed a I think there was a they needed a drummer in the section, so I was like, Yeah, I'll play drums, why not? So we never changed instruments the entire time. I mean, once we were assigned those instruments in junior high school, we stuck with those for the rest of our life.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

And were there were there private lessons at that time too?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Or not no, it's mostly just I mean, there were the only private lessons we had up to that point was piano. Um, but like I'm talking Suzuki method, like all kids or a lot of kids go through is just to kind of like have music in their lives and have it in their ear. It's really important. So we had a great uh piano uh instructor named Sandy Bowen, and she gave us weekly lessons just on piano, and those were great. I you know, I didn't really continue piano. Um once I discovered the drums because I became so obsessed with playing the drums that I just stopped that. But um and I resonated more with the with the sound of the drums and the physicality and the playing uh of the drum set anyway, and classical percussion too, that I just sort of stuck with that. But uh, but yeah, uh it was Ken, my uh band director, would give me some lessons after school, you know. He just were great, and then he recommended me for another guy. Uh once he was like, Okay, you're I want you to have more experience and different input. So there's a guy in Redwood City, California, named Scott Morris, who was a great drummer. He played with uh all kinds of people, he played with uh but most notably Richie Cole. He played with Richie Cole a lot. Oh wow and um and another guy, I don't know if you know Steve Terray, the trombonist, but I studied with his brother Peter Terray for a minute, and he also was great, great teacher uh who played with Ray Charles back in the day. Um and yeah, they all kind of, you know, you know how it is, they all kind of give you little different inputs and like give you different points of inspiration, different grooves and different things to check out, extra exercises, whatever it is. And it was, you know, it was kind of like cobbling all that stuff together. Um, but I would say mostly I played, I learned from them for the technique, and but for stylistically, just from me and my brother going to check out a ton of music and listening and buying a ton of albums and just kind of listening and playing, trying to copy it.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah, and who were your favorite musicians and drummers during that era that you were obsessed with? And were your brother and you aligned on that? Or oh completely.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Okay. Yeah, I know way too I I know way more about the trombone than I should about trombone players than I than than than is than is like normal for a human to know about the trombone. Uh but yeah, no, we started off because we were playing a lot of big bands in in uh high school. We were both checking out. Uh I mean, I was obsessed with all the you know, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, uh, you know, Count Basie, Duke Gallagher, all the all the Mel Lewis, Dad Jones, all those um bands that you were playing in school. Like it was like, oh, what's this um big swing face? Or you know, check that. Yeah, I'm gonna go buy that album. I I this is great. And then you hear Buddy Rich play it, and you're like, it changes your life in a little way. Right. Or I'm gonna, you know, we're gonna play um Little Darlin, or we're gonna play, you know, something by you know, what whatever uh uh you know, whatever tune it was, I would just kind of I'd want to find the recording of it and just you know, um a lot of how I learned how to play those tunes was uh through just getting getting those albums and and playing along with them. But yeah, my earliest influences were um first the big band drummers, uh like I said, all the drummers, Sam Woodyard, all the drummers basically with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, uh Buddy Rich, uh Krupa. My grandmother actually sang with Gene Krupa, weirdly. Oh wow. Um yeah, she was a uh actress. She worked for MGM and she she was also on Broadway and she sang.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I have a great picture, original uh picture of her sing on stage with Gene Krupa. It's an incredible document that my mom gave me. Um Mark Marquis with her name, Pamela Britton with Gene Krupa Orchestra. Amazing. Wow. I didn't yeah, that was cool. I mean, I was like, wow, I I didn't get to know her um because she unfortunately died pretty young, but uh that had to play into our music somehow.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Oh, sure, sure. And were you and your brother playing together a lot as you were discovering this music and going off and playing with records? Would you come together and all the time, all the time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

I mean, first of all, every morning with the big band at school, but also we were forming our own bands and like try to get gigs around town. Whatever we could do, we were playing all the time duo. Even if he was practicing, I would like barge into his room with a snare drum and just start playing along with him and just you know, annoy the hell out of him. Get out, get out of my room, yeah. Uh, but yeah, we were playing all the time together.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah, okay. And were you were, of course, practicing on your own too. Do you remember were you a lot of technical practice or was it mostly playing with records? What what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 20:34

I think it was Peter that kept a notebook for me, you know, and our lessons. And uh this is really important for kind of for me to discipline my practice so it wasn't like you know, totally unorganized and scattered, and you're not accomplishing anything. But he would, I remember you would just have like the first thing was just on hands, you know, and he would give me some uh what did we work on? I mean, it some of those books, you know, like the Haskell WH book early on, some of those little classical excerpts. Or uh I also studied a little uh classical percussion as well, uh, with at UCLA with uh Mitchell Peters, who wrote a ton of great books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, he but he would organize it in a way that I kind of still use today. Uh it's like hands, start with hands, like you know, good you know, that's pretty young, the attention span is shorter, but at that time it's like, yeah, like 10 to 15 minutes of just this uh exercise or this a tune. Now let's go to feet. Give me some bass drum exercises or bass drum hi-hat coordinated exercises, maybe out of um I can't remember. I mean stick control, all the syncopation. You can devise all those exercises and different you can use that book in so many different ways. So then you'd have that, and then you'd kind of do like four-way coordination and sort of put it all together hands, feet, everything happening together, and you run through, okay, you know, all the exercises that you work on for four-limb coordination, you know, rise symbol on the right, hi hat two and four, feather the bass drum, comping on the left hand, and those, you know, go through all that stuff and then Latin things and and then sort of do that. And then after that, you'd always have a groove of the day. So he'd like he'd write out like a different funk or rock groove or bassa or samba or whatever it was. So that was that was kind of the fun part of the lesson because you know, you just basically at that age you just want to kind of play beats and like you know, you don't you want to bypass all the all the laborious stuff and just go straight for the the the the funky beats, you know? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

You have to you have to have fun too.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

But he was good, he was good at like sort of disciplining my practice in a way where I can kind of got everything done technically. And then the end was always like that groove, and then also uh an album. And eventually I was like, I need to start um because I don't have many people to play with in this town of growing up, and I need to find some. So I bought, I remember the big beat, Art Blakey, he was my very first album, and uh okay, played along with that ten countless times and try to figure out what he was doing in terms of his ride simple playing and his comping and like how he shaped how he played behind different soloists, and then Alan got John Coltrane Blue Train, and then we got into that one, and then like and then we just kind of kept going on and on from there. But that's kind of how I organized my practicing at at that time.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Do you remember an album that you maybe got told to check out or found on your own somehow that just kind of blew your mind and you did didn't even know how to get into?

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Oh man. Uh there's it's hard to hard to point to one. Um yeah, because uh yeah. Uh let's see. Well, I mean, uh again, like the big beat, whenever I hear that album, it brings back so much nostalgia. It's like to me, maybe it's because of the very first jazz album that I heard. That to me is basically what jazz is. I mean, that's the sound that that to me represents kind of that and and Blue Train are like when I hear those, it still brings me back to almost that first. I was like, oh my god, it's like this mystical, magical quality to those the way they're recorded and just everything about them that really made a huge impression on me initially. As you go through, obviously, then you're sort of you're enticed by, you know, and then I s I got into some of the fusion stuff, and then like you go down that rabbit hole, yeah, forget it. You know, I got fully into Dave Weckle in high school, like totally obsessed, you know. Uh I you know, I wanted to grow a mullet, and I wish I could have, but I couldn't uh undress, you know, the whole thing. Uh went to a lot of c a lot of his clinics, have two signed posters of his. Um and I got really into the electric band. I saw the electric band a lot at that time. And uh and whatever albums I could buy, you know, you you were I mean, I uh my gen, you know, he was huge in the late 80s.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Absolutely. I I did the same exact thing, you know, wanting to dress like him. Yeah, the posters on the wall. He even signed a poster for my mom, you know. She used to take me to his drum clinics when he'd come through Minneapolis. So yeah, it it was yeah, he was like Michael Jordan to all of us back then.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, he was totally the Michael Jordan of of drumming for sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, and it's yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because one of the questions I have on my list was to ask you if you ever went through a fusion phase, because I was listening to um, I think it's your brother's most recent non-ette record. There's a tune called Ice Fall. And oh yeah, your solo on that reminded me, not not totally of, but it reminded me of Wackerman, Chad Wackerman in a way. Oh, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Some of the movement around the toms and yeah, no, I the artist that I played with most that resembles sort of that aesthetic in my that sort of brought that out a lot in my playing. I mean, it wasn't a fusion gig at all, but it's sort of some of the things he wrote were sort of fusion. It was Jonathan Christberg, the guitar player. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he he would sort of write in sort of a way that sort of could bring some of that stuff out, which is kind of fun, you know, like to bring some of that uh that aesthetic out. Um and I think that's what why actually we got along, me and Jonathan uh musically, because he he's hugely influenced by Holdsworth and yeah, well, uh a lot of the same people that I was influenced by in in high school. And um, we had that kind of that common language and uh you know, and also experimenting on odd meters and like fusing out on some things. And yeah, Chad Wackerman, I remember seeing him with Holdsworth a bunch at the yeah, at different places and oh wow, um, and also Gary Husband and uh Vinny and um so yeah, that that sound for sure for a particular point in my development was pretty pervasive and and influenced how I play. Um I kind of got out of that at some point. Yeah. I mean to get out of it, but I I kind of like just transitioned into something else as as one does. But that was a huge, yeah. I mean, uh I l like you said, it was generationally those drummers really inspired a lot of a lot of us, you know, in a in a great way. So I yeah, it's I'm I'm glad to have that sort of component in my in my playing because um yeah, it's it's it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, it was real yeah, it was a fun era to to grow up in too. It was kind of like having our own buddy Rich, you know, alive and in front of us, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Whether it was Wackle or Vinny or Chad or whoever, it's just it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

And you remember the at one of the I'm sure you got you had this, but Contemporary Drummer Plus One. Absolutely. That was what a great teaching thing. I mean, that was incredible, like charts and like reading, uh styles, like all kinds of styles. Jingle day. He had like a he had like a jingle thing, like a sports car jingle.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Yeah, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

And then he had the odd meter thing, and I was like, uh, you know, uh spur of the moment, like all the syncopated the 16th though these things, and I was like, wow, that that was great. I mean, that was talk about like limited resources during that time, like unlike now, but that was he's kind of ahead of his time in terms of um the teaching thing. He's always he's always been a great teacher, but but um with his videos and all that stuff. But that that to me was like a like a game change. I still like wow, like more people need to do that because uh Yeah, it was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

I even used um I used some of that to for my Berkeley audition.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

I took I actually took the cassette into a recording studio and recorded myself playing with Garden Wall was one of the tunes, and I can't remember the others, but yeah, it was a lot of fun, you know. The cassette, yeah. I live in the cassette exactly. Um since we're still on the topic of practicing, I heard I think I heard you talk in another interview, and you haven't done too many that I could find, so I was psyched to find a little bit about you. You talked about using the omnibook, the Charlie Parker Omnibook. Oh, yeah. And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how you use that. You know, were you reading it? Uh was it learning the tunes by ear and then referencing the omnibook? And kind of how did you work in your sticking stuff and all that?

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah, nothing, it's nothing too scientific. I mean, uh so there's this little clip. You remember that clip, uh Elvin Jones video, Tony Marino actually is interviewing a good friend uh who teaches at NYU. Um who he'd be great to have on if you haven't had him. He's he's uh I mean he's been around and he was basically Elvin raised him in a way. Okay, yeah. And he's the guy, he's the kid interviewing Alvin Jones in a different drummer.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

That video great, great drummer.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Still he lives in New York. Um, but uh I remember that that clip in that where he discusses three-card Molly, you know, where he kind of he kind of plays the melody just on the snare drum at first, and then he adds the feet, and then for the second round, and then the third round, he basically improvises around that melody around the drums. So, in a sense, um, I use that as sort of inspiration to, you know, for the omni book, it's like all these great melodies, you know, that Bird wrote, and also solos, you know, and concise too, so that you could fit them in a book. And so I was like, oh, what it would sound like if you just kind of work on they're so rhythmic and um active and uh it's a lot of cool little twists and turns. Um use it as like little snare drum etunes. So I started bringing that in, started checking them out, and then you're also using them for my students, because uh a lot of students don't know a whole lot of tunes these days uh for whatever reason. Uh because maybe whatever. But um, I'm not gonna get into that, but I just I've noticed uh that that's not a priority. So what better way to learn at least some bird tunes than go to the omnibook, check out these things, treat them as snare drum etunes, and then work them around the drum set, see if you can keep those heads and um especially the heads, yeah. Uh you know, orchestrate them around the drum set, whether you write you could whether you write it out or improvise it, and then put on the record and play along with it, see if you could do the same thing. And uh because they're coincide exactly with this the recording that it's coinciding to in the book. So it's a great way to sort of like learn those tunes. And at least in my experience, uh, when I was sessioning a lot um in New York, bird tunes, you I mean you probably play one or two bird tunes every time, so it's good to know those tunes just for you know just for learning jazz. Like you wrote great tunes. So that's kind of how I that's kind of how loosely how I would how I would practice them.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

And you you mentioned you mentioned writing out orchestrations or having the students write out orchestrations. Did you ever do that?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

I didn't do that because I would sort of just kind of mess around um because I I in a way have already gone through that process of kind of knowing how to read ahead a little bit and orchestrate things that way. But students don't necessarily have that ability. So you've got this line basically that um that bird is playing, right? The met let's just say the melody that has that that ebbs and flows and the rhythm and that also has um peaks and valleys dynamically. As it goes up, it goes down. It goes and and so sometimes if they're at a total loss on how to orchestrate it or the choreography around the drums, I encourage them to maybe, you know, okay, if he's playing a line that maybe descends, then maybe orchestrate something on the on the drum set that replicates that sound. And again, like so you can kind of get you you're working on melodicism too and shaping. Um, you know, it's a good good thing to work on, I think, for drummers for soloing. So I would kind of encourage them to sort of okay, well, you can write it out like this, you know, snare rack, uh, floor, bass drum. There's a triplet idea that descends, or or do it the other way. And so it gives them a way, it gives them like little things to to work on, uh to write out and then to practice. So they're kind of thinking creatively. It's like, how do I write this? Yeah, thinking compositionally, you're you're thinking musically because you're you're trying to replicate what bird is playing, the shapes, the actual melody that you're playing. You're working on comping because again, I I work on with those things like uh how the melodies kind of you know the strong points of the rhythm where they resolve and uh how to comp through it, like maybe if you're just playing time and use comping. So anyway, there's all kinds of different things you can I like to sort of do with it. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

In practicing that way, is that primarily how you worked on your melodic approach to playing? Because one of the things that I do like the most about your playing is yours the sense of melody that I hear. And I don't just mean that you can hear the tune as you're playing, but I just mean on the drums and using the different tones and colors. And you know, there's a I I think of it as a signature thing that you do. Of course, you're not the only one, but a lot of your fills go from low to high, you know, floor tom to high tom. And it's one of my favorite things that kind of stands out to me as like a fingerprint, like, oh yeah, that's that's gotta be Mark, you know. Oh, I saw cool. And I I'm I'm curious if you consciously worked on any of that kind of thing, or if it just came organically through you know, practice uh learning all the heads and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Um that's a that's a tricky one to answer. Um yeah, I would say that I work so I do work on like shapes on the drums, like different melodic shapes. So in and diff I like to work on them in in different groupings, so not necessarily as like drawn-out melodies. Um, I don't think in terms of creating a whole melody, but in terms of um how does one shape lead to the next? And then I also like to have fun with um, you know, that sort of idea of well, when you just kind of like yeah, connecting, connecting the shapes in a way that makes sense musically on the drums, but also like going in and out of different note pulses, you know, whether it's uh eighth notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, and kind of like work on. I I feel like you those things kind of you need to to work on. I mean, we talk about improvisation and and jazz, and it's like I feel like what that means is is stringing together ideas that you've already, you know, it's not no one's it's an impossibility to sort of come up with something new every single time, like some new vocabulary. That's that's not how it works. Right. It's like who can who can sort of like organize this stuff uh in a way that is musical and like but you know, you take any great jazz drummer and they do that. Elvin Jones, Max Roach is probably the best example. He's got recurring vocabulary that he organizes in different ways every time. And it's just like I think any anyone who's going to develop their own sound needs to find out what their vocabulary is for, you know, like what it is that resonates with them in the way they play and organize and find that stuff. You know how it is. It's like you go, I you I've gone through so much vocabulary, played along with so many albums, played with so many people, worked on a lot of transcriptions, played along, and you kind of whittle it down to maybe about four percent of that, and then the rest, you know, is like stuff that's inspired by those ideas, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

It's hard to yeah, like I said, it's hard to put it into words because music is so mysterious in a lot of ways, but like it's uh for me, it was like just kind of working on something every day and just all that stuff kind of accumulating over time, and then try to figure out how that stuff that you're working on translates and then playing a lot so you can trial and error all this stuff and and see what works and see how to connect those ideas. Uh that to me came with time, like uh with like actual time. It's like you know, that's why it's cool to hear a drummer over a long period of time, is just to hear how things change and and how they stay the same. And how and also, yeah, it's like it's almost like yeah, I mean, uh you you once you start recording, you have a sound already, you know, and then over time, I mean, that sound doesn't necessarily change dramatically, but it does morph a little bit. And like, and I and and but yeah, if you've got a sound, you got a sound. You know, you kind of play it, you kind of think about the architecture. That doesn't really change much, but like different input and different inspirations and uh ideas you're working on over time can sort of I like hearing those small little adjustments over time, you know. Uh it's kind of fun to it's not that's like Roy Haynes is a good example. It's like you hear that all early Roy Haynes, and it's like almost doesn't sound it sounds like Roy Haynes, but then like as he as he develops, his sound changes, his vocabulary changes a bit, it becomes more refined, it becomes more Roy. It becomes like until it like it solidifies into this thing that's like distinctly him. That's why I love listening to music still. I mean so much so much you can so much you can garner from these albums over time.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

And do you do you listen to your own records or records that you have played on?

SPEAKER_01 38:54

I used to. I used to a lot more to learn, uh I would say to uh to really dissect them. I was I think that's changed over time. Um but yeah, I would really get inside of them and try to figure out everything that it did wrong.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Yeah, did you ever have any major uh moments of feeling discouraged or I mean because I had you know you're on what over well over 200 albums at this point. Yeah, and I haven't heard one that's I would say is anything less than great, and most of them are really great.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Well, much like the you know, like you said, with this podcast, it's like uh you can edit. Yeah, right. Exactly. But no, I mean I feel like I'm in the studio, I'm fairly consistent in a way where I can get a what I play is not um yeah, I mean, it's uh no, I'm pretty proud of the output that I've uh recorded output that I've put out that I've been involved with. Yeah. Um no, there's nothing I'd be like, do not check this out. I mean, uh uh I think well, maybe there is, but uh if if there is, I won't tell you. Uh sure.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Do you do you have favorites? Do you have a favorite or two that you tend to steer people toward?

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Oh geez, the favorite thing. It changed it changes so much over time that I don't really I I I don't even like to go there. But um That's fair.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

That's fair.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Yeah, I just uh everything is such a I put every let's just put it this way, I do put 110% into every situation that I go into. Like if I'm gonna take a gig or take a recording, I'm gonna go in. I'm not gonna go in with the attitude of um this is a drag, why did I do this? This music sucks. You know, like I know. If I could if I say yes to something, I'm gonna go in and do it and do it to the best of my ability. And like that, so I think for that reason, I haven't like dive-bombed a recording. I haven't like sabotaged a session where it's like, you know, I'm that's not me. Uh, I try to be professional and like and give everything that I can. If I say yes to something, I think everyone should have that mentality because unfortunately, they, you know, in my experience, sometimes it's a drag, you know, when you get in a gig situation or a recording or whatever it is, or tour, worst of all, and someone's not into it for whatever reason, and it just taints everything, it taints the morale, it taints the music itself, it it's just nobody likes it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

So how do you so how do you prepare for well, first let me ask do you have a different approach uh to the live gigs you do to the recordings? And is there any different type of preparation that you do for recording days in terms of even like personal stuff like uh rest or diet or like do you have any rituals you do before recording sessions?

SPEAKER_01 41:38

I don't, no, no, I not really. No, I just kind of go about my day day in a in a in a normal fashion. Yeah, I'm not like Yeah, who was I? I was watching a Dodger game yesterday, uh part of it, and they were talking about uh Yeah, I think it was Freddie Freeman. A lot of athletes have this, Kobe, I think had it, where they have um their routine does not change. Like they do everything the exact they eat the same bowl of cereal every morning, you know, at the same time. Uh-huh. And they do, and I think that if that works for you, I think some people need that. Uh, that's great. But I've never been like that. I just kind of prepare, I just kind of keep the preparation ongoing in terms of just trying to stay consistent with my own practicing and try to keep my chops up. And like when I get to the session, I just treat it like because I don't like to put a lot of pressure on myself for anything. I like to sort of it's because it's not. I mean, it's just like you're making music and um it's not, you're not changing you know the world per se. You're just trying to have a good time, make some good music, and like uh that's it. I mean, and uh at least for me, if I put myself in a this preparation mode that yeah, maybe I can for me personally, you can psych myself out a little bit or like put too much pressure on myself. So I just kind of go into it, okay, or we're here and whatever it was concert hall or recording studio or just a normal restaurant gig, it's just all this it should all more or less be the a similar mentality, you know.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Yeah, yeah, that yeah, that's really interesting. And just you know, we talked a little bit before we started recording about how I get anxious for these recordings and stuff. And I and just hearing you talk about this, it it almost makes me think maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself and you know, cramming to do a lot of preparation and a few days or weeks, and then it's maybe building it up into something bigger. But then by the time we come online, it's oh hey Mark, how's it going? This is just gonna be a regular conversation. Yeah, it sounds like you have that approach for all your gigs and records too, though I know you prepare.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

I well, the like I said, the preparation is just ongoing. It's like um I'm almost preparing when I'm not even preparing something for something in particular and specific. So, but uh yeah, like I if there's a set of music that I'm gonna be have to play and learn and I've never seen before, I'll ask for the charts and I'll play along with the whatever they send me and I'll try to get a vibe. Because I like to go into something uh not cold. I'd like to kind of know what I'm getting myself into and be prepared for the music so time is used efficiently and we can kind of we can sort of uh especially in a recording situation, so you can sort of get through if you have the luxury of getting the charts in advance, then then I think it makes the pro the recording process just everyone's day a lot easier. Sure. As opposed to doing several takes, you're exhausting everyone because somebody hasn't done their homework and it's a drag, and like, but even on gigs too, it's like it's like takes someone three to four gigs to learn the book, and it's like, man, you had this sent to you like a month ago. Like you could have just look at it, open it. And that that that stuff kind of drives me a little not crazy, but I'm just like I I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that guy that it's the liability towards like learning on the gig.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

So you've talked about ongoing practice and keeping your chops up. What does that look like for you these days? Are you practicing every day or yeah?

SPEAKER_01 45:05

I mean, yeah, when uh I was talking earlier about you know, when I was younger and just your day is predictable and you have the same hours and you can sort of maintain a daily routine, but it's not like that anymore, unfortunately. It's like I'm moving around a lot. And so I love it when I'm home when I'm home. Yes, absolutely. I try to I hit the drums every day. I've been trying to get into different kinds of things. Like um, I just bought a a bunch of mics and like I have a this booth in my place um that I actually moved out from New York. It's a recording, it's like a a whisper room. It's a booth, yeah. Like and so that's been great, first of all, to not the noy the hell out of the neighbors.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Uh but also for my own, I could practice um 24-7. Uh, not that I do, but uh I had the luxury of uh being able being able to practice late at night without bothering anyone around me. And um and I have I bought some mics so I can do sort of recording stuff for different people if that comes up. Yeah, and I could just sort of uh that was a big thing for me in New York was like to practice in a way that's not psychological, you know. If I got people around me that I've potentially annoying, that was a huge block. That actually's prevented me from practicing for a while. Yeah, I hear that a lot from drummers in apartments in New York. Yeah, it sucked. And so I I had ended up getting a a studio in the Gowanas for a long time. Oh, okay. That was like over an automotive, like a transmission shop. Of course, that you're breathing in these like noxious fumes all day. So it's a whole other scene. But uh uh, but that at least that allowed me to practice in a way where I could just play full volume and do like those repetitive things that I feel like I like to do to keep, you know, to keep shops up. Uh but yeah, I keep I yeah, I keep a routine, not necessarily I couldn't tell you exactly what it is because it changes a lot. And it changes depending on what music I'm learning. So a lot of it is just kind of going through new charts and preparing for the next series of gigs that are coming up. Yeah. Um or also uh sometimes I even practice to prepare for my teaching. I want to like uh run through stuff that maybe would be effective for teaching, you know. So I I kind of work on ideas uh for that. So um, but yeah, it's a it's not like a set in stone kind of thing at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

One question I have while we're still on the topic of practicing, what has your relationship been with practicing with a metronome? Because your time is so strong. You you must know that. But it it's one of the things that has stood out to me so much as I've been doing a lot of research over the last month. You know, there's a couple in my I'm just looking at my notes here. There's that tune on the non-ette record. Um, in hindsight, that's a slower song with a straight groove. And your time is just rock solid on that, even while you're building up so much energy to and through the guitar solo. And then you know, on fast tunes too. There's uh The More I See You, uh, I think is the up tempo tune. And yeah, your time is rock solid, even even through the the drum solo when it, you know, it could speed up or come down to be more comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Again, like back when I was like listening to my records a lot more, that's one of the things I would check consistently is like, is this is everything in check? Is everything holding? And not always, but like um you know, uh, but but uh that was something that I was always trying to work on to try to keep the tempo more or less the same from start to finish. And how did you work on that? Uh yeah, with a combination of a metronome working on exercises. Uh if I'm working on exercises, I generally work on them with a metronome.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

So I can just kind of um but not everything because I think I felt like if the more if I just exclusively worked on things with a metronome, then I I didn't really know how to hold the time on my own, take the training wheels off, so to speak. So I'd record myself on gigs basically, and and that was the best way to check your yeah, your human, your your time, your get your sort of like playing time is like, okay, what what's influencing me to speed up? What's influencing me to drag? And and sometimes it could have been any number, it could have been my on me, it could have been the bass player, it could have been the soloist, could have been any number of things, and I'll and I'm always like, how do I make my time stronger so that that doesn't happen? And so I tried to pinpoint those moments where I would like maybe be influenced by someone else's time and try to get better at that. You know, I'm not a no one's a machine. Uh right, right. I tell my students this too. Like you be careful what you play along with because there's a lot of great because it's one of those things. It's like we we we we talk about the the great albums all the time, but most of them move. Oh yeah, yeah. Most of them are like I was just even just yesterday, I was just put on just to kind of get things moving. I put on uh the John Coltrane record with like uh uh things called Coltrane, you know, chim chim Curi and Inchworm and Miles Mode. And you know, Elvin, that first tune right off the bat, I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? Uh and it really picks up. I mean, it and it's like, and that's a great, you know, that's one of the great rhythm sections of all time. And so, you know, I just try to be aware, at least I think back when I was younger, I didn't know it was happening. Right. And I think it's I think it's one of those things you have to develop is like, okay, know when it's happening, like be able to hear when it's happening, and either go make that decision of strong arming it to keep it, or if if you can't, then just make it go with it, or but at least know this at least recognize when things are moving.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

You know, that's that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Did you work with the metronome in any kind of creative ways? I know there's a lot of apps now that'll kind of drop the metronome randomly for you, so you have to work on your own sense of time. Did you do any of that for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 51:19

The closest I got to that, I had this again, a cassette in the 80s that I think one of my teachers gave me. It was basically of standards. It was a terrible sounding, it was like a MIDI, but 80s MIDI. It was like a DX7 or something, like uh, but it was like Cherokee and it was like uh Soul Eyes, and it was like a few autumn leaves, maybe different kinds of tunes, different kinds of feels, and it was all metronomic. And they had every track had trades, but there was absolutely no click track whatsoever. And it was like there's no lifeline, right? And that to me was the hardest, especially on the super slow tunes. I was like, and I would, I swear to God, the amount of times I rewound that tape to try to get it right, it's like a lot. And I was like, oh, what's it? I'm gonna record myself playing along with this. And then I would, when you listen back to it from an audience perspective, you're just like, oh, that's right there. That's where I'm that's that idea right there is a problem. Like that's that's what's kind of causing me to push forward, and like, and that was a huge one for me. Like whoever made that thing was a genius. Um, but uh with metronoms, I generally would just put it on the downbeats or sometimes experiment every when I practice up tempos, I'll sometimes put it on every four measures. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

You know, yep.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Or like even slower tempos just to really challenge, you know, so it's really you got a lot of time before the next click, and that that is sort of like replicates what I was talking about before. But also I'll just put the metronome on two and four, and I I won't worry about it. But um in terms of like it's funny you mentioned that that tune of Alan's because um, you know, those tunes were initially recorded during the pandemic remotely uh with a click, and so I I ran through that tune so many times with a with a click like to a click. Oh, okay, and I just got to know that tempo so well.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Yeah, I bet.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

And so we've actually recorded it remotely, and then we recorded it live, and that that for sure probably helped.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so to jump topics here, uh one thing I wanted to ask you about. I noticed on the Mesrow show that you did with Alex Goodman, you did a lot of hand drumming, like literally playing the drum set with your hands, and it was really amazing. And it made me wonder if you studied hand percussion at all.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

No, not uh not really. Um, I remember seeing like Jorge Rossi do it, like a time. Um you get this nice softer texture. Mesro is also a kind of a um it's a lot of glass around, pretty reflective room. Um but uh but it it so a little goes a long way in a room like that. Yeah, right. But uh but I don't know. It's uh no, I've never studied uh like congas or anything like that. I just kind of like use it as an alternate texture sometimes here and there.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

Is it something you've practiced or you just start doing it on gigs and working it out that way?

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did it and um and that was that was pretty much it. Yeah, it wasn't not nothing calculated.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

Oh, okay, cool. Thanks. Uh another thing I noticed is that you were making some pretty big, exaggerated but graceful arm movements that reminded me of classical players, and you you touched on it a little bit earlier, and I'm wondering if that's maybe something that came from that time of your life, and if you can talk a bit about your classical study.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

Uh yeah, I mean that was mostly in high school, beginning of college. I studied with Jack Van Game, who was the he was he was in the San Francisco Symphony for God, for forever, for a long time. And uh and then I went to UCLA uh my first year on a scholarship with for for music, and I studied with yeah, Mitchell Peters, who we all know through his books, but he was the tympanist with the LA Phil at that time. So um, you know, I I believe he was a tympanist for the LA Phil. But uh we actually didn't study much timpane. I studied mostly snare drum, uh snare drum stuff with him and mallets, like for like uh Marimbo. Oh, okay. I mean he was a stickler on like execution. Um I'm trying to remember, geez, like uh I was I was playing mostly match grip then. I can't remember if he was a stickler on a particular grip, but um mostly on like interpretation. And that was that year was the the the the year it was like this is not for me, you know, this this way of playing because it was too much about a very particular kind of interpretation of the material that I wasn't I was more in the school, you know, of ex personal expression and like kind of interpreting the material and the way you're hearing it. And um, I don't think I'm I was ever cut out to do to be in that world. Um, but I certainly did um not necessarily from my classical studies, but this whole idea of using your arms, like that was maybe came from someone else where you was talking about like different breaking points, like your wrist and then your elbow, like using that motion, and then your shoulder, like using your whole whole arm. And I remember he this one, I think it was Peter, they had this whole thing with just your wrist first, and then the same upstrokes, downstrokes with your those three different breaking points. And I think that really stuck, you know, in terms of like how you play the symbol, go around and prepare your strokes, upstroke into the resolution. And uh, and that I think that really played into it. How I sort of like try to use my arms um in sort of a flowing motion. Also, it's it's a different attack, I think, on the instrument. It's a different sort of like flow that you can get on the ride symbol and different ways of moving around. And uh, and that's certainly things, you know, especially as you get older, it's good to work on it because everything kind of gets a little trickier.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Yeah, just a war a lot of um practicing is is calisthenic is like motion and like just keeping everything loose. It's hard, a little harder to warm up like on uh at first, but um, but yeah, it's like I think that that was a big thing for me. And and also those uh Gary Chafee like sticking patterns books. He talks a lot about like those uh upstrokes, up, tap, down, and and um upstroke, downstroke, tap stroke, full stroke, those four things and countless exercises and some that I would write out myself working on those different ways of preparing the stroke. So I think that also played into it, where it's just like and then uh uh and then this like kind of resolves over here. It helps you read ahead a little bit of the material, which is good for sight reading, and also helps you prepare your body for where you're headed on the drum set.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

Oh, interesting. That makes me want to check out those books again. Yeah. And uh, since you just mentioned uh a couple of teachers, there is something I don't want to forget to ask, so I'll just go for it now. Uh, did I read somewhere that you studied with Billy Higgins?

SPEAKER_01 58:26

In a way, yeah, I did. Uh he was uh so uh in college, I didn't really the only teacher teacher I had was was Mitch, my first year. And then I abandoned the major and got into a different degree altogether. But uh Billy Higgins, the last year, just when we were leaving, um, they were starting a jazz program uh my my senior year, and Kenny Burrell came in and brought all all his you know people in, uh, which were uh like a who's who of it was Harold Lann and Billy Higgins, and uh I think Billy Childs came in and uh Oscar Bashir and Gerald Wilson, a pretty impressive list of jazz luminaries, like legacy musicians. And and Billy was someone I'd already kind of following around. Um, but he's he taught a class, he taught a a drum class. And so that is in that capacity, I studied with him because it was basically, from what I remember, it was basically a bunch of frat boys that were kind of like halfway into it and that didn't even know who he was, and me, who was just come like, wow, this is incredible! Like I get right, this is amazing. I get to ask him about all this stuff I you know, Ornette and I get Lee Morgan, all this stuff I'm obsessing over, Charles Lloyd. And so in that sense, I I studied with him because I would I would play and then he would say, Oh yeah, try it this way.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Do you remember anything specific that you got from him?

SPEAKER_01 59:48

He wasn't like a John Riley type of teacher where you'd cut and dry, you know, here's an exercise you could do to help resolve this problem, here's a transcription you can analyze, um, which is a great way to teach, but he Didn't teach like that. It was more like, here's how I do it, here's how you did. I mean, I would play, and then here's how I do it. And then you just kind of like watch and and just kind of take it in in that way. And that's a great form of teaching if you have that kind of vibe and energy on the drum set, like which he did. It was just like, oh, okay. So he's got he's kind of doing it. It wasn't like do specifically this. It was like, here's how I play on this tune. Check it out. Yeah. Without really, and it was like, oh, okay. And then you watch him and then you're totally inspired. Um and you kind of you I learned things like how to play dynamically, like how to how to play under a piano solo, how to create a like a broad beat. Um, and he would just demonstrate things. I remember like brushes on the music stand. He would just kind of show me different patterns and stuff. Um, I don't even remember what specifically what they were because I was just freaked out. But he would just do it in a way where it just kind of made sense. But nothing you could take home on paper and work on. It was it was just in the moment, here's you know, and it was more of an energy than a exercise, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Yeah, what what an awesome experience you had. And then I also remember you speaking about getting to play with Herbie Hancock.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:19

Yeah, well, just once that was an amazing moment because it was he played with Billy Higgins, a trio. I was like, wow, this doesn't happen ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:27

Was that during the same period at college?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

Yeah, yeah. We played it's too towards my last year of studying at UCLA, and there's a concert at the Wazworth Theater, just a big band concert, but the guest artist happened to be Herbie Hancock that semester. Amazing. So and we'd had good, you know, we had Bob Mincer and we had um all these different Steve Houghton, different artists, great, but you know, it's Herbie Hancock. And I got to play a tune with him in the big band. It was and and that changed my life. I mean, it's just the way he played, I'd never experienced that kind of energy before. I never experienced that that sound that he can get out of the piano. And this is this is like mid-late 90s, Herbie. This is I mean, he was listening to those albums at that time. He was dealing. I mean, he was still he still is. I mean, but but I mean, he was extremely active, playing a ton with all kinds of great players, and uh, because they were all they were still alive then. He was playing Joe Henderson, and it's like you name it, and uh Michael Brecker. And so he's just a powerful experience, like the way you can almost carry an entire big band, and then just being able to play, and he was stretching out also on the tune we were playing to a point where it's like, oh, it's like old school, you know, it's like people like that's how if they're feeling it, they're just gonna keep going. And he was feeling it, and he just kept he gave like 10 core. I mean, it was like a lot of choruses, and it was just and the energy, and he just kind of brought you on this ride uh with him. And I was like, Okay, that's that was pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:07

Yeah, did you get to check out a recording of that, or does it just live in your memory? No, it just it's it's in the memory. Yeah, I don't that's probably because if it was recorded thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

Yeah, I think that's an under underrated, underestimated thing these days because everything is documented. It's like sometimes, you know, if if I if I heard it back, I'd probably just try to find ways that uh everything that was wrong with it. But yeah, right, right. The fact that I could just remember it as a memory, as a very impactful memory that basically made me want to become a musician. I think that's that's enough. I'll leave it at yeah. I don't want to I wanna know, I almost don't want to know how it sounds at this point.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:44

Was Alan playing with you in that big band at that time too?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

Yeah, yeah. We were all we were in. Oh, nice, nice, fantastic. Yeah, so we were just freaking out, and it was great.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

I have uh a few more questions for you. We already talked about Mark Copeland a bit, so I'm just gonna urge people to check out the album someday. And then there's the newer album that came out called Dreaming.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was cool because we're we did it. It was uh during a uh European tour. We had some days off and recorded in the studio in like Germany, and we lived in this studio, and it was great. It was very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:17

Yeah, I I'm obsessed with that tune. Um maybe I already mentioned this earlier, but I'm obsessed with that tune spinning things.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Oh, it's someday.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:25

Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, it's so great. What is that? Um you you use the symbol quite frequently, but it sounds like uh trash or swish or china or some kind of symbol.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:36

That's the uh the complex one. That's the original Bazild dry complex ride, if you know that ride symbol. It's the one that Bill Stewart designed.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:44

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, as the main ride. But then you use another symbol. Do you use like a uh or some kind of on that?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:51

I think on the far right was uh Istanbul, it's like a 21, was it a 20? Yeah, it's 21 inch Istanbul signature, you know, the ones with the green writing on it. Green stamp. Yeah. That one on the far right, and then on the left, I think was just a crash. It was just a if I remember correctly, I think it just like a sabi, like a sabian or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

Oh, okay, okay. So just regular symbols.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

I kind of used that combination of on a few different things that I always liked how they played together, even though they're all different companies and everything. But they I always liked how they interacted with each other. That's those sounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:26

Yeah, they're so great. And another thing that I found during the research that I wanted to ask you about is there's a video. You have very few videos of your own.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:35

Yeah, I don't I don't I haven't done the leader thing much, but um right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

But there is that one video, I think the tune is called Anemone.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Yeah, that's the one thing I was like, I need something for something.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

Yeah, so and is that a two and is that a tune that you wrote?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:49

And yeah, I wrote that and just kind of we did it in like 15, 20 minutes at my friend's um great uh I was just there, that's where we recorded with with Alex uh a couple weeks ago. But um, but it's got Matt Morance, great, great saxophone player, tenor saxophone player, and in their apartment, Matt Matt and Luke Morance. Luke is a great piano player, they they both play on it, and um and I just wanted a little bit of something, content uh for myself, um, maybe for my website or I'm not really sure for what, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling and eventually I want to do a some kind of a record. Who knows when that'll be. But um, cool. Uh but anyway, that was just basically um Matt recorded it. It was at their apartment under their apartment. You take a staircase down. They've got a whole recording studio down there. It's unbelievable. And right in New York, right? Like right in the city, in the apartment building. And um, he's got all his great mics and uh, you know, uh drums, piano. I think Luke was doing mostly analog synth stuff on that. But um, but yeah, we just kind of had fun. Uh I had a very limited time to do it. I think Luke had about 20 minutes. And uh my friend Matt Pavolka, too, great bass player. And I rarely get to play with him on electric. And I really like I really love how he plays electric bass. So anyway, that was fun little thing to to try to try out. I'm not really uh I don't really prioritize composing or writing, but it but it's one of those things where you know it would be love, it would be great to do more of it just because it's uh pandemic you had I had time to do it. I actually wrote a few different things, but um cool. But thanks for checking that out. That's uh it's not what I'm that necessarily I'm mostly just a sideman right 99% of the time. I was like, I'm gonna try this out. I gotta record something. So thanks for checking that out.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, it was very cool. And uh one small detail I wanted to ask you about. In that video, I noticed you were using uh a metal pearl snare drum, and then I saw that snare drum show up on a couple other gigs. I think I saw you using it out at Sam First.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

Is that yeah, metal, yeah, it's like crumb over brass, deep drum. I that's the same one I I play, I think, with uh Mark Copeland's album. And uh it's definitely like can be a rock drum, but it's a it's a weirdly sensitive drum as well. It's got like a it's not like a metal drum with like a ton of sound coming back at you. It's it's fairly it's like those hammered bronze drums. It's like kind of tempered mellow a little bit. So it's kind of fun, fun drum to play.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

Yeah, sounds great. And it was just uh you don't often see I mean you do see drummers bring their own snare drums to gigs with house kits, but not too often. So I wanted to ask you about that since I saw it out and about. Um I have one more topic if you're up for it. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about playing free music or free improvisation. You know, I checked out um the Tony Malaby Turnpike Diaries. There's that John O'Gallagher Live in Brooklyn album, and your playing is just so great in that context as well. You keep it interesting and moving, and I'm just curious when you started to get into playing free improv and um kind of like what you hang on to when you're playing that type of music and what you feel your responsibility is within the group, since you're not just you know keeping time and building. Well, I mean, you are building, but can you speak to that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

Yeah, I could scratch the surface. Uh that's a that's a big one, a big topic. Um it is, yeah. But uh again, like early on, me and my brother were just kind of getting into everything. And uh I remember we we we got really into like some of that stuff, like like extreme, like Evan Parker, some of those English free jazz cats, uh really kind of the noise more of the noise scene. It's got John Butcher, we would go see pretty extreme music guy would just like play his mouthpiece for 20 minutes, uh you know, with mixed results, but like uh when I feel if you it what it teach taught me um was you know, we have the certain comfort zone when we play music, especially when it's tune-based or like more in the jazz world, but like when it gets totally sonic and just about texture and sound, yeah, there's it there can be uh at least when you first start when I first started doing it, it's very little to grab onto, not really knowing how to inhabit that world, not really really knowing what to play, how to play, what to do, like should I play, should I not play? All these decisions you're posed with in that world that you're not posed with in a different world where it's like you you kind of like you have a role, you have a responsibility. So uh it took me, you know, a long time to kind of figure that out. And again, it was just being around people and try to put myself in positions to play with people that did that well, you know, that were in that world and committed to that world. Tony certainly is one of those people that I mean he can play, he's another guy, he can play whatever. He's got a he's got a pretty huge pedigree of um of of gigs from very down the middle to not. And so uh I think that's you know, Ralph Alesi is someone I play with a ton over the years. Lots of lots of different projects. Um uh there's this guy, you know, one of the first things, this guy Robert Regal, that nobody knows, but uh I mean he I wish he he was an interesting guy because he started with Albert Eiler. So you like he didn't even I think he was just that and like studied the music of Papua New Guinea. You know, this weird thing. It was like, whoa, you're coming from a different place. And he would do these free jazz, voluntary, like this free jazz ensemble every Wednesday night or something at UCLA and put us in positions to like totally unusual. Like one day we'd showed up and you just had a soap opera playing on a TV and said, we're gonna turn the sound off, we're just gonna improvise with the image. It's like, okay, all right, I'll try that. So the next week, turn the lights off, whatever, you know. Uh the next week after that, it was some kind of different stimulus that you happened to play, play off of. I'd never done that before, uh, but it was a good challenge. And um, that was kind of the beginnings. And then I, you know, again, after I LA doesn't really have much of a scene for that. So when I moved to New York, I was able to get involved with people that there was like a scene of read of like underground kind of improvisers that I was able to sort of tap into a little bit and go see and and sometimes play with. And I think it, you know, it was just a matter of like doing it for me and learning, just getting different input and like kind of learning how to do it along the way, and everyone sort of does it in a different way, and just sort of uh what it taught me is just to trust your instincts and to stay strong with who you are as a player, and also gives you it also forced me to think about space a lot more, like how to you can play really sparse, you can play, you can not play, you can allow by not playing, you allow other things to happen, and you can you can kind of shape the music in a different way when you're playing in that zone, and also it helped me explore the the actual instrument more in terms of sonically, so like finding different ways to to play the instrument using different mouths or hands or whatever it is, and finding sometimes like sonically, like um different ways to complement the whatever's happening in the improvisation, and that's again, it just it just depends on the moment and it depends on where the music is, and it's very unpredictable in some ways where where it's gonna go as opposed to playing Donnelly, like you kind of know what's gonna happen, um in a sense, but you know what I mean. So kind of open media to that world, structured at least, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:52

Okay, cool. Well, I just uh we should probably wrap it up. I have a couple of wrap-up questions that I'm gonna ask that are a little bit quicker. Um, the first one is what album have you listened to more than any other? And it doesn't have to be jazz and it doesn't have to be cool, but is there an album that you have maybe listened to more than anything else?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:13

That is a great question. Wow. This yeah, and this is this is definitely a question I've got before, and I'm never able to fully answer it. But let me think about this. Um, again, it depends on the uh like your different uh stages of development, but um I would say, you know what, uh one one that one that pops out consistently is uh Larry Young's Unity is one of those albums. I would say that I've listened to that a ton, and uh for whatever reason it's got this mysterious quality in terms of how the time is played and all this the blowing is great. I would say I would say that is pretty high up there. Like I said, the that Art Blakey big beat, I probably listened to that more than I think I've listened to it. Um just because it was it's right, right. It's literally how I started playing music. So I think especially early on, I probably played with that one hundreds of times, you know. That would definitely be an another one up there. Um I'll leave it at those two. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:15

Okay, okay, cool. And is there anything in your playing that you uh feel like you need to actively work to keep up on or to improve? Like are there any weaknesses that you have that you're always trying to stay on top of?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:30

Oh yeah. I mean, that's I mean, yeah, I mean, that's kind of how I gear my practicing. It's like what what do I need to work on? I mean, one thing always, and I think you probably get this from a lot of drummers, is is up tempos. Oh yeah, yeah. Up tempos are something, if I don't use them, I lose them pretty fast. So that's that's a weakness of mine. I can't just it seems like some people can just go to the drums and boom, just play every time and take a year off. And it's like, how do you do that? But those kind of tempos are is something that's definitely like I would say that could be a a weakness. Um, if I don't work on it, I'm gonna I'm gonna lose that. So like those kinds of playing quickly, playing super fast, you know, like like like those kind of those kind of things I I try to check in on and um always try to fit that in. Whatever else I'm practicing, I always try to get like 10 minutes of that in in my practicing. Oh, okay, okay. Uh whether it's that or brushes, brushes even harder to keep that that chop up is like oh yeah, it doesn't come naturally to me. I need to work on it on a regular basis or else I've been on gigs where I haven't been working on it. It's like it's a real slog. Yeah, it's like my art. Yeah, it's a fall off.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:42

Uh-huh. All right. Well, um, where's the best place that people can keep up with what you're doing? I know you're you're not really active on social media, but I and I know you you still record and tour a whole lot. What's the best way to keep up with your Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

Well, that that just that question makes me inspires me to try to get back on top of it. Um a lot of my gigs are posted via other people or myself sometimes on on Facebook. Uh I know it's a kind of an archaic um platform at this point, but nonetheless, that's kind of what probably is the most effective. Um I've got a website which isn't up to date, but I should do that. But that that gives you that would give people a way to find out what I've done discographical-wise and um, you know, just some different things to listen to and check out, um, and a way to get in touch with me as well through contact. So I'd say at the moment those two things would be uh would be the the best way.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:38

Okay, cool. Well I'll put some links in the show notes and I might even share my Spotify playlist that I'll put together with uh a ton of your stuff on it, and then uh I'm looking forward to seeing you here in Minneapolis next week, so I'll make sure to say hi.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:51

Yeah, I look forward to to meeting you uh in person for sure. Yeah, thanks for doing it. And uh, you know, what a great thing you've got going on.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:59

Ah, thanks. All right, well, I'll talk to you later and I'll see you soon. Awesome. All right, Greg. See ya. All right, thanks for listening. If you like the show, please subscribe on your platform of choice and share it with a friend. You can find the show on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram as Practicing Drummer, and I also have a blog at PracticingDrummer.com.