U2 in Chicago

Hey blog readers… I have a situation. I was planning on attending the U2 show in Chicago next week (7/5), but now I don’t think I will. I have two general admission tickets that I will sell for face value or even a little less. Anybody want them, or know someone who would want them? Post a comment here and we can get in touch.

UPDATE: The tickets are spoken for. That was fast! High fives all around…

Yamaha Club Custom

Yamaha’s got some cool new drums in the Club Custom series, and the main attraction here is a “new” wood called Kapur.  And then we have the Brady guys using exotic woods from Australia, and the recent popularity of non-maple kits (birch, mahogany, bubinga).  It really seems like drum manufacturing is going through a material evolution, following the design evolution in the late 90’s. I’m super interested to hear these new Yamahas, as well as anything else that may come from this new direction in drum-making.

Justin Bieber vs Sigur Ros

Is this for real?  The maker of the video claims this is a Justin Bieber track 8 times slower than normal, but not pitch shifted.  The result is basically the first Sigur Ros record.  Will Sigur Ros sue this guy for discovering their secret?  Will they sue Justin Bieber?  Will they give a horrible interview about it?

Regardless of whether this video is what it claims to be, it’s beautiful.  The internets, obviously agreeing with the Sigur Ros resemblance, churned this out… which has since spawned a LOT of knock-offs.

New MONO Snare Case

I am really loving this snare bag. It’s the perfect blend of soft bag and firm case. Thank you, Pat, for sending me one fo these, andMONO, for being awesome.  Note: be sure and check out the killer stave shell RD snares in this clip…

 

Another Paul Mabury Interview

I mentioned Dustin Ransom’s great blog last week, and right on cue he releases another wonderful interview, this time with the incredible Paul Mabury. I feel like Dustin’s interview is better than the one I did with Paul a couple years ago, but I’m secure about it.

Backline Kits

I was out all week with Go Fish doing some fly dates, so I posted a few pics over at my Tumblr page. 60’s Ludwig 13/16/24 in California! What the…

epic Dogs Of Peace fill

The first installment in my album of the week series was the Dogs Of Peace record, a slamming 90’s power trio album made by some slamming Nashville session players.  I recently got in touch with drummer John Hammond on Facebook, and he was kind enough to spell out his intro fill on “The Truth,” and with great detail!

The first thing you need to do is listen to the track somehow.  I couldn’t find the individual track streaming online anywhere, but you can find the record on iTunes or whatever.  Here’s Hammond giving us a how-to for a pretty complex rhythmic structure:

Thanks for asking about the DOP thing. The intro fill from “The Truth” was inspired by the fill into the choruses of an old, really weird King Crimson song (link below). The song is freaky, but I always loved the idea of that fill. Anyway, on “The Truth,” the first four beats are a 16th note triplet between floor tom and kick: R-L-R-L-K-K, etc. The fifth beat is a little trickier. You need to end with the left hand on the snare on beat six, so you have to squeeze a “seven” in the space of the six. It’s sticked like this: R-L-R-L-K-K-R-L, the last left being the snare on the downbeat of beat six. I hope that makes sense.

“The Court Of The Crimson King” by King Crimson

John then emailed me the next day with this awesome geekfest follow-up…

“OK. Call me OCD boy, but for some reason I woke up thinking about my explanation of the fill, and if you’re going to post it somewhere I think it needs one little bit of clarification in terms of the approach. The last bit is not an even seven. It’s more like you make the last 2 16th notes of the sextuplet a triplet. The first R-L-R-L (on the floor tom) of that beat is exactly the same as the the others. Then what was the 2 kick hits at the end (of the first 4 sextuplets) is a triplet between the kick and floor tom that ends with the snare on the downbeat.  Hopefully that doesn’t cloud the water even more.”

Thanks for the explanation, John!  I’ve got some thoughts about this fill and John’s explanation that I’ll post tomorrow.

Nashville Drummers Project

Hey everybody.  We had the first Go Fish show of the summer at the KTIS festival last weekend and it went great.  The award for sounding super good at the festival goes to Brandon Heath’s band.  They played right after us, and my man Josh Robinson was making it happen and looking good doing it.

I grabbed drinks with Heath’s band afterwards and had a chance to meet and hang with a very good dude named Dustin Ransom, a multi-instrumentalist from Nashville who was playing keys with Heath.  Dustin runs a Tumblr blog called The Nashville Drummers Project, full of interviews and information on some of the lesser-known players in that town (i.e., not McHugh/Needham/Cromwell/Leim/etc).  I’ve been reading these for the past couple days and learning a ton, not to mention getting inspired.

PS… Speaking of McHugh, he posted this picture on FB a few weeks’s ago.  Um, that’s just the LEFT SIDE of his kit…

Letterman’s Drum Solo Week

This probably isn’t news for those of you that frequent late night television, but I just realized that this week is “Drum Solo Week” on Dave Letterman’s show. Anton Fig, the 25+ year house drummer for Letterman, opened things up on Monday night, and Sheila E brought some heat last night.

Tonight’s artist is none other than the great Roy Haynes (who will undoubtedly be sporting the hippest thread while also laying waste to the other performers), and the week caps off tomorrow with the grand finale of Neil Peart.

I mean, it’s probably worth watching.