Aksel Coe: A Career in Home Recording, Gear Talk, Sample Packs, Avoiding Burnout, Springsteen Movie

Welcome multi‑platinum Nashville session drummer, Aksel Coe! Since moving to Nashville in 2018, Aksel has quickly made a name for himself as one of the city's most sought-after session drummers, having recorded on many of today's top country, pop, and indie tracks. Recent recording credits include Ella Langley (ACM Song of the Year 'Choosin' Texas'), Role Model, Holly Humberstone, Zach Bryan, Sierra Ferrell, Willow Avalon, K. Flay, Margo Price, Orville Peck, Sasha Alex Sloan, Cody Jinks, Sam Barber, Wyatt Flores, and Joshua Bassett, among many others. We dive right into Aksel's diverse musical upbringing and his journey from the West Coast to Nashville. Aksel shares invaluable advice and perspective on the home recording process — from creating efficient workflows on and off the drums, when and when not to cheap out on gear, and how to create and effectively market your own sample or loop pack. We discuss avoiding burnout, Nashville's shifting studio landscape, and of course, his acting debut in the 2025 biopic 'Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.' We hope you enjoy!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:45 Welcome, Aksel!
5:25 Breathwork For Drummers 
10:54 Engineer vs Drummer Hat 
14:07 Practice? 
16:55 Early Life and First Kit 
25:46 Buy Cheap Or Buy Twice 
27:52 Too Many Snares? 
28:44 Session Preset Workflow 
29:46 Rezo Custom Drum Heads (Sponsor) 
30:49 First Drum Kit 
33:23 Mentors and Vintage Pearls 
37:42 Drum Box (Sponsor) 
38:23 Vintage vs Modern Recording 
39:23 Recording Trends 
40:33 Burnout and Identity 
42:10 Tracking 537 Songs 
49:15 Live Band vs Studio Players 
55:32 Free Jazz Influence 
57:35 Recording As Improv 
1:07:53 Session Nightmares 
1:20:42 Splice Packs Strategy 
1:25:26 Sample Packs Explained 
1:34:15 Record Yourself More 
1:35:06 Flaws vs Tendencies 
1:40:40 Overdubbing Cymbals 
1:43:31 Session Communication Skills 
1:47:44 Low Boy Beaters (Sponsor) 
1:48:25 Home Studio vs Commercial Rooms 
1:55:19 Scarlett vs Apollo Debate 
2:02:47 Drum Supply (Sponsor) 
2:03:44 Aksel's Acting Debut (Springsteen Movie) 
2:11:32 Music City Audiology (Sponsor) 
2:12:48 Rapid Fire Questions 
2:20:37 Outro

Thank you to our Episode Sponsors:

Rezo Custom Drum Heads
https://rezoheads.com

Drum Box
https://drumbox.space

Drum Supply
https://www.drumsupply.com

Low Boy Beaters
https://lowboybeaters.com

Music City Audiology
http://musiccityaudiology.com


Connect with Aksel:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akselcoedrums
Website: https://www.akselcoe.com

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's less about like, oh, what drum part are you gonna play? It's more like, what do you need drums to do to this song? It's crazy. It's like I'm that's one of the things that I'm so grateful for. I still am like, wow, I can't believe that this is my life.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Welcome everybody to episode 88 of the Nashville Drummers Podcast. We're kicking off June with none other than Axel Co. Axel is a multi-platinum session drummer and engineer who works out of his home studio and commercial studios in Nashville. His recording credits include Ella Langley, who of course won big at this series' ACMs, including Song of the Year with Chews in Texas. And you can thank Axel for the drums on that one. Additional credits include Role Model, Holly Humberstone, Zach Bryan, Sierra Pharrell, Marco Price, Orville Peck, Sasha Sloan, Cody Jenks, Sam Barber, Wyatt Flores. I mean, the names just go on and on. For anyone interested in recording and producing, this is the episode for you. Axel doesn't shy away from sharing his thoughts, advice, and the detailed processes of being a working session drummer in 2026. We get into topics like technical facility versus musicianship, when and when not to buy cheap gear, avoiding burnout, his take on new Nashville, what is a sample pack and how to create your own, and we even dive into Axel's acting debut in the 2025 biographical drama Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere. Really appreciated Axel being so open. I know I walked away from this one feeling super inspired myself to dive more into recording. And we hope you feel the same if that's a goal of yours. Either way, we hope you enjoy episode 88 with Axel Co.

Welcome, Aksel!

SPEAKER_00 1:45

You're a Dillinger fan.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

I am a Dillinger fan. Dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

What's your what's your favorite Dillinger album? Album, I think Calculating Infinity. Is that the name of the record? Yeah. Yeah. It's that one or the I'm not gonna remember. It's been a while, but um, it's I think it was it's like the green cover one. Oh, uh um this is like deep lore for me. Like I'm accessing like maybe middle school or high school.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, why can't I think of it? Why can't I think of it?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

But um it wasn't Chris on drums, it was the next guy and the new vocalist. Oh, um something infinity. One of us is the killer? Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'm not sure. We yeah, but anyway, but yeah, um, but yeah, calculating infinity was was a huge one for me. And like I feel like there's sometimes, especially like when you're first starting out playing, like you can hear stuff and not actually comprehend it, I guess if that makes sense. Like that stuff if you're hearing Dillinger in general and comprehending it, right? Then kudos. Yes, for sure. Yeah, but like I there's a couple records like that. Like when I first started listening to stuff, there was like uh uh Herbie Hancock Empyrean Isles or Empyrean Isles, Tony Williams on drums, and I would mow lawns because I was saving up to buy like a set of dream symbols at the time. I was like getting into jazz, and I, you know, I knew that was like a good option for like hand hammered symbols and stuff. So I would mow this lady's lawn for like push mower for like two or three hours, and I would be listening to that record on my like green iPod nano. Yeah, and I you couldn't tell me where the downbeat was. Like which now it's like as you your ear gets trained and you know you get older and play more music, it's easier. But there's some stuff like that where I would listen to a whole record and literally just not know what was happening, but I knew I liked the way it sounded, but but Dillinger's like the number one, like just like the clusters of the the China symbol, maybe or whatever, but it's just like these flurries of linear, crazy stuff. Yes, and I I still find that like it's good to listen to stuff that's very different from what you play because it's a palate cleanser of sorts. That's so good. Yeah, like I'm you know, if I only ever because like I feel like right now, especially like I record so much quieter, you know, I'm not necessarily hitting super hard, it's more like muffled 70s vibe stuff, but like so. Therefore, I'm like, well, I gotta go listen to Norma Jean or something, or Lil' Uzivert, like some SoundCloud rap because it's it's not it has no like form or function to what I do for work. So but it's still music, it's still like organized sound. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, don't you're sick. Do you ever do that before?

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Because I used to I used to have a little bit of a practice of doing that before I would do a performance. I'm like, I want to actually palette cleanse before I do the thing. So I'm not maybe being informed by something similar.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yes, that's actually a good point. I don't know if I ever do it specifically before. But I guess like these days, just because I record more, everything's kind of improvised. So, but I think back when I would tour, there'd be a lot of times where you're trying to find newness and playing the same set every night. And sometimes you play with artists where it's celebrated to, you know, like, oh, on this bridge, I'm gonna play halftime, even though it's full time. And sometimes it's like, hey man, if you do that again, like we're gonna get a different drummer, or it's like, that was awesome. Like that you breathe new life into it. Yeah, yeah, right. A lot of the stuff that I would do, especially like when I first moved to town when I toured, I wasn't doing a lot of tracks, gigs, or even country stuff. It was a lot of indie rock tour tours where you're out for six weeks and you play almost every night. And you after a certain point, you have to find something inspiring. So but I think that maybe is the opposite where I wouldn't listen to something. Or I guess maybe sometimes you do listen to something and you go, like, how am I gonna incorporate this into the set? And then you probably, if you're thinking about it, doesn't happen very well. But or it sneaks in naturally.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

If you try to force it, it might not work.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah.

Breathwork For Drummers

SPEAKER_01 5:25

That's like one of like a very interesting thing about drumming that I feel like you can kind of tell sometimes. Like, if especially if I look at old videos of myself playing back in the day or whatever, is like you can tell when someone's thinking about what they're about to play. It's like so you can you can tell it's like, oh, the there's a thought process of they're trying to play a fill, or there's a part that's coming up, and you can feel the like songs start to speed up, or like you can tell, like I'm grabbing the sticks harder, holding your breath, yeah. Holding your breath.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

That's you tense up, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

You tense up, you hold your breath, it's like, and and then can can I pull this off? And the breath work thing is huge, which I have zero thing to say about because I haven't really worked on it, but it's something that that's in my mind of like how can I control that? Because I know what it feels like to not be breathing properly, but I'm like trying to process all this information and I haven't figured out a way to like you know, catch up, I guess. Yeah. So do you guys have any tips for that?

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Man, I mean, we've talked about breath work on this show a fair amount. Uh I remember Drew Marshall. Shout out, Drew. We talked about that pretty early on. What's that guy's name? Like the wizard behind um, like that well-known YouTuber.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Oh, Wim Hof?

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Wim Hof. Oh, yeah, Wim Hof. Yeah. I've I've honestly, I mean, I'm I can't say I've been super religious with that practice, but like I do find myself, if if it's before a gig or just any kind of stressful situation, I will, you know, whether I'm I'm in my car or behind stage, I'll like I'll breathe in very heavily and like literally think of all the things that could go wrong, all the things that are causing me stress. Right. Suck it in, hold it for like 10 seconds, and then breathe out and just physically relax.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So you're almost visualizing the stressors and yeah, like the mechanism.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

It's all gonna be okay. Yeah. Even if those things happen, like I'm yes. That's something that I've I've done.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah. For for me, I I guess I would say if you're if you're just thinking breath work as as it applies to the drum set, I would say do your chops. Right. Super like crazy slow. Crazy, crazy slow. Oh, I see. And just focus on your breathing. Fo focus on using the least possible energy to do all of that stuff. Right. And just making your breathing totally relaxed. Cool. It's like uh it just you press you process the whole thing differently.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So you would almost take something that you know that you have facility of, but maybe is on like the higher end of the spectrum of like your headroom, I guess. Yes. And then use that as the thing to like practice. Yes. Yeah. I I know people have talked about it so much, and it's like one of those things that because anytime I get a chance to practice, I want to like get back to the things that I was working on last. Yeah, but the idea of like, well, you're not gonna learn anything new, but you're gonna get better at everything actually sounds like a pretty good deal to me. That sounds great. No, I said that way. I'm like, I should probably do this.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Checks out, yeah. Yeah. What are you working on right now?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I mean, I would love to be practicing more. I had like a I had a I guess the last time I had like a consistent time where I would actually, you know, play drums with the intention of getting better and it wasn't in a work context or, you know, because I would say there's a lot of things that might seem like practice, like even if you're making Instagram videos of your playing for the purpose of posting them or whatever, like I would not even consider that practice. Like, cause you're there's still some sort of medium that you think someone's gonna consume it in. But just sitting behind a drum kit and you know, am I gonna work on, you know, like my left-hand independence against a ride symbol or like something like that, where you're just trying to get better at something and you're not there's no like quantifiable place where it's gonna be consumed by people. Sure. I think the last time I was doing that, I just I'll put together a playlist of feels that are maybe more physically demanding that I don't feel like I'm good at.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

It's I I what's the name of the playlist? It's something funny. I like use like Animal from the Muppets as like the Spotify cover, and it's called like Get in Shape or something. So it looks like it's a workout playlist, but it's a drum workout playlist. Yeah, same thing, yeah. But I think it's Georgie Porgy by Toto. Like, so that's like fast 16th, and then I think it goes into uh what is it? Maybe it's like Tush by ZZ Top, like a really fast shuffle, like and like the and it's like the your mat button mashing as far as like jing. It's not so it's like that shuffle is really hard for me to play. I think um What Can You Bring Me by Charles Wright. So it's James Gadson on drums. And it's probably I think it's one of the fastest right hand 16th. They it's possible that they sped it up on tape or something, but I mean they they probably just played it. I don't know. There's some lore there, but yeah, it's like it's like maybe like 110 BPM and you know, nasty. Gadson's playing super quiet and the song speeds up over time. I think it's three minutes long, but it's like if I can get that, if I can play that, then I know my like I'm in in shape per se. Yeah. So it's that, it's uh Hank Mobley tune. Like maybe it's this I dig of you, or it's off of Soul Station, that record. So it's Art Blakey on drums. So there's a lot of great shuffle feels. But it the list goes on, but it's less like practicing stuff and it's more like trying to lock into a groove or feel for four minutes because that's something that for me, I'm lacking that because if I'm not playing shows all the time, you really lose a lot of the facility of actually just being able to sit and play drums for 45 minutes. Because recording so much, like, oh, what's the snare drum sound like? Or let me do this, and then you do a take and then you stop and you talk about it. Like you're not actually playing drums very much.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

Yeah, that's a good

Engineer vs Drummer Hat

SPEAKER_03 10:54

point. What percentage would you say is like the engineering pre-production versus like the performance tracking?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Right. I think at home there's a lot of there's a lot more, you know, getting sounds and messing with stuff. And because I'm engineering, you're almost doing two jobs. And sometimes when I have people over, because I track remote a lot, but when I say remote, I mainly just mean like people come over to my house, which is very lucky that I live in Nashville, because if I lived out somewhere not in the music industry town, it would be a lot of true remote stuff. But a lot of times people come over and that way there's I I always prefer the person to person, but I'll I'll do audio movers and stuff. But a lot of times I'll do all the engineering stuff, get sounds, and then I'll be like, all right, this is a moment now where I'm officially taking off the engineer hat and I'm putting on the drummer hat. So I'll even say, like, hey, let's not worry about like the part, because you can sit down and be like trying to decide your snare drum, and someone's like, oh man, that's that's not the right groove. Or like, what if you tried this? And if you do that, you'll start going down the rabbit hole of working on the part, but the part might change based on what sounds you're getting. Yeah. So I'm always like, I'm just gonna play some stuff. And it's not gonna be good. So don't think about me as a drummer right now. And I'm just getting phase, and then once we get there, and I'm like, all right, we feel good about this, and we're getting the sounds that we feel good about. I'm gonna like, you know, take a deep breath, and then now I'm the drummer again.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

You know, so but yeah, so I think at home there can be a lot more engineer stuff. It just depends. I think like a typical Nashville music row, like a 10 to one or two to like when you do like union time blocks, there's uh it's a three-hour session, basically. So a lot of times with that kind of stuff, people are trying to maybe track four songs in a block. So there's not a lot of downtime at all. So that that's one where you might actually be playing and break a sweat, but there's other stuff where you know you might do one take because you're playing with an artist that doesn't really use click and you get the take them out. You're sitting around for four hours while they do pedal steel overdubs and you're just sitting in the lobby and like, you know, not doing anything. Right. So for how much you work, you might not actually be playing the drums very much. So that's a good point.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

So it's that's one thing that I feel like I'm not jealous of, but that's something that I miss is when you play, even if you're on tour and you play a hour-long set every night, you're still getting a consistent, you know, regimen of playing something, a consistent degree, and you're in front of people, so you're gonna you're not gonna just like play super quiet, like you get your chops up. But sometimes with recording, I'm like, I spent all day going. Like, I didn't really get better at drums today, but I got better at music, which is more important. But yeah, well yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

I would I would argue that you're getting better in a really hyper-specific domain, yes, which is which can feel like it doesn't have it may not have carryover to the rest of your playing, but it reality is it probably does. It doesn't say for sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

And maybe that's my own bias of feeling like you know, if if I'm not, you know, playing like a fast samba or whatever, like I wouldn't get better at drums. And the truth is, I think you always get better when you try something or work on anything. I think it all it all adds together.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

But you know, obviously, as as a working professional drummer, you're getting hired to do the thing. Obviously, it's working enough for you. So that's there's something to be said just for that, you know, like if it's yeah, yeah.

Practice?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

And I know there's some people that say they'd never practice anymore. And I can see why you would, because your life gets busy and you know, different things, there's different priorities. That's something that I really feel grateful to like have gone to music school. Not because I liked getting a music degree, really, but I had so much time to practice my instrument and feel like I could kind of catch up to where I wanted to be, and you could spend that time and not feel bad about it because you're in school, versus you know, if you're just you know, like I mean, I never practicing's fun to me. Like I actually really enjoy it. Yeah, but I agree. That time is like that's the time that you really spend in the shed. And looking back, I remember people being like, Man, just enjoy it, just practice as much as you want. And I'd be like, ah, but you like I gotta do other stuff. And it's like, well, your whole life you're gonna never have this much time again.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

Yeah, exactly. That's the time to do it.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

I would kill, I would kill for six months right now to just do nothing but practice. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

And it's the this thought of like you're you know, in in middle school and you're like, summer break's coming up, I have so much time to do whatever, you know, practice or just be a kid. Play in 64, yeah, play video games, just live life and you know, go you know, scooter around the neighborhood for five hours. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

But also not wasted time. Not waste, none of it's wasted time. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

Especially if you're scootering, you know, you gotta work on the tricks, but yeah, but like um the amount of nights like growing up when I was younger, like on my street, we had a bunch of little kids, we were all friends. We're just really lucky to have that. And like the amount of nights where I would just like be outside running around and like shooting bat, like shooting hoops, yeah. But I could have been getting better at my instrument again. Like, not time wasted. In the moment, I wasn't like, yeah. I mean, I think I think that balance is time machine you go, just go to your kids.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

It could have been freaking Matt Garska at this point. I will say that that is something that like in the NBA.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Well, I'm like playing basketball.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

You're like, You gotta optimize your time, kid. Like, but I will say that that is something that I do think about. And you know, you can't, you know, we don't have time machines, and ultimately it's just you're on your own journey. But I do remember, like, if there's like a graph, well, I guess it'd be this way because of the camera, but like when you start out, like the it's an exponential curve, I guess this way, maybe. So the opposite of like uh, you know, the way you want your stocks to go. It's like this, like you start out, and you're every time you practice or work on something, you get so much better. And then after a certain point, I don't know if that's like neuroplasticity of being young or if that's just the learning curve of anything. Probably. But sometimes I wish I could go back and be like, dude, I know you're like practicing a lot, but just do even more. But you know, it's fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Yeah, but yeah, there's but even just having that time, you know. I think back, you know, when you're a kid, you think, well, someday there's my whole life is gonna be summer break. And that's like a very nice fantasy to have. And then you get older and you go, Oh, well, I'm a full-time drummer. All I do is drum, but I still don't have time to practice like I thought I would.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Yeah, I'm doing my taxes now. Shit.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Oh, yeah, I gotta do those.

Early Life and First Kit

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, all right. So, well, then let's talk about your whole journey to the drum set. And yeah, how did you get involved in music? Was it a you grew up in a musical household, all that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I did not grow up in a musical household. My parents love music. Um, it's interesting. My mom actually worked at Warner as like a receptionist, slash, you know, she was kind of in the mix there and did a lot of music stuff there. But my family, like, my parents kind of had like a come to Jesus moment in their early 20s and kind of threw out all the cool records. So growing up, we were like a little bit in like a music drought, which you know, now it's funny as an adult. You know, I'll be talking to my parents about music, and they're like, man, we really kind of went super hard into like just throwing away all the Zeppelin records. And I'm like, man, that would have been sweet if I had those brutal. So they love music and I love my parents. I had a great childhood, but it just wasn't. We we had piano lessons, which was good, but there wasn't a ton of you know, music just being played in the house or or the radio. We you know, we had some like you know, Steven Curtis Chapman or DC Talk, like some early, you know, CCM artists.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

And where's home again?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Um, home for me was in a military family. My dad was in the Marines, so we moved around a bunch, but got you. Most of my childhood was in Camas, Washington, which is like a it's a small like paper mill town outside of Portland, Oregon. So basically in Portland. It was like maybe 20 minutes to downtown Portland. Cool. So But you're so you're West Coaster as well. Yeah, okay. West Coast, yeah. I mean, it's so funny, like right after I graduated high school, every my whole family left there. So I haven't really even been back to that little like city. But um, but yeah, that's that's kind of where I grew up. And um, yeah, I started playing drums really just because in sixth grade you have to pick between choir or band. And in my brain, I was, you know, like I was a sixth grader. I was like, well, if I join band, I can just play the like bass drum because that's easy. And you know, I I wasn't like a lazy kid, but it just to me, I didn't really think either of them sounded that cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

So I joined band and you know, got on the snare drum and started getting lessons from this guy, Keith Abbott, who's a who's like my first drum teacher. And you know, he was an awesome teacher and he was really good at he played bass too, and you you know, he played drums, but uh initially it was hey man, like I just need to learn. Like my mom basically probably told him, like, hey, we're just working on snare drum stuff for sixth grade band. So I was working on that and it was fine. I had my little remo practice pad.

SPEAKER_04 19:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

And then near the end of the, I guess, the semester, there was a concert, and there was, you know, basically three songs that had drum set. So my teacher was like, Do you want to play We Will Rock You on drum set? And I was, I was like, Yeah, sure, that sounds fun. Fuck yeah, I do. Yeah, so I the next lesson I went in, I was like, Hey, I think like I need to learn the drum set because I have this, you know, sheet music of we will rock you.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

So yeah, it's not just snare, mom. I think I I need more drums.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

I need more drums, but I I remember that was the day that I I like took the paradiddle and put it on the hi-hat, and he taught me like if you play the kick drum and the paradiddle, it's like this cool kind of linear groove. And I remember my I was like, Oh, this is I actually I like this. And then I learned the jazz beat, which is funny, thinking of jazz as like, oh, that's also a you just play the jazz beat, and then you can play jazz, which is kind of true, but yeah, but that was kind of that's how you start. Yeah, you just play the jazz beat, but that was like the the door was opening a little bit for me in that way, and then yeah, from there I kind of just became obsessed with it. And but yeah, I was not very good, I will say. Like I it wasn't like I was a prodigy or I started out. Um, like it wasn't like I picked up sticks and I was a natural or anything. Like I there's just old videos of me playing, and I wasn't bad, but it wasn't like I came from a super just like talented, you know, whatever you're I had.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Young and scrappy, learning. Yeah, young and yeah, just learning stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

But um that's like the very early basis of my playing was yeah, we will rock you. So love that.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

At that time, rather, who were you starting to listen to?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

At that time, it was a lot of me and my older brother, we figured out what lime wire was. So we would let's go. Yeah, it was I was a lime wire kid. Oh, yeah, it was. I mean, that that probably got me. Uh it was lime wire, and then I think someone burned uh They're only chasing safety by Underoath and gave it to my brother. So like my parents were like out for a walk or something, and we were like, What's the CD? We like put it in and uh just heard the craziest stuff and totally blew our minds. Hey, mom and dad, this is Christian music. Exactly. And that's that's kind of how it worked was there's all this, you know, Christian metal or hardcore, and it was Christian, so it kind of was the loophole into this, you know, and now growing older and realizing a lot of those bands weren't even Christian, yeah, anyways. But you know, it's Christian themes and it's fine and it's aggressive and exciting. So for me, that's kind of what got me excited about playing drums, is I was like, I want to be able to play the breakdown and like so. I started trying to do that, and I, you know, I for Christmas one year I got the the Gibraltar single chain double kick pedal, and I immediately just started trying to work on that instead of working on the basics.

SPEAKER_04 21:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

And I think I had a moment very early on where I just I just was like, I'm not good at double kick. And at the time it was I was doing the jazz band thing and I started learning about. Buddy Rich and Max Roach and you know all those guys. And I was like, I think I love metal for for what it is. And I that's still what I listened to. But I I realized, I was like, I think I the jazz thing is really like exciting to me, which I think, you know, that was probably the path of depending on if I was good at double kick, I'd probably be a lot different of a drummer now. Yeah. But yeah, for sure. But that was kind of the the the the fork in the rope. Yeah, so I I you know grew up on a lot of the, you know, I basically coming home from school and I would just get on YouTube and look at old videos of Art Blakey playing, or you know, like Max Roach, you know, Elvin Jones drum battle, or all those classic old YouTube, you know, you basically like teach yourself things on YouTube, and it was crazy, just the wealth of information on there.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

So having that access at our fingertip is was huge.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, I feel honestly really lucky that I was in the era where I didn't have a smartphone, but I had the enough stuff on the internet, but it wasn't algorithmic yet. So I would have to just search, like, oh, I want to look up, you know, John Coltrane with Elvin Jones. You search it, but there's not a million things trying to pull your attention. Right. You're like, actually, Fortnite. And then you're like, oh, now I'm distracted, and and something that's like algorithmic that's designed to distract me. 100% right is there. But um the good old days, yeah. Yeah. You're a 90s kid too then? Yeah, 95. Okay. 93. Yeah. Yeah. I've crested the hill of my 30s. Oh boy. Very nice. Welcome. Yeah. It's it's not bad so far. It's you know 30. I think 30s are great. Yeah. Yeah. Is your back starting to hurt a little bit more? My back's hurt for a pretty much my I've always had one.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Yeah, as a studio drummer, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah, and just you know.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

Posture, yeah, we'll get into all that.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah, posture. I'll I'll take any breath work stuff, any posture stuff. I'm I'm all ears. We'll we'll fix me.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Somewhere Dave Eolich has just gotten your email address.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

I think I got the airlift thrown because of what he talked about was that. I was like, he was like, this is the best one. And I was like, well, this is the guy that then has the truth to it.

SPEAKER_03 23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

So but it squeaks. Squeaks. So yeah. Yeah. Yep. So I'm I'm here to say airlift is out. There you go. Contra first controversial take. Yeah, it sucks. I love it. That's just that would just be one of the that would be one of the smaller things.

SPEAKER_02 24:14

Oh, yeah. I gotta set you guys up.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

That the the uh we'll not be hitting the DW up for a sponsorship. Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Um, that would be one smaller thing on the list of of things that I disagree with Dave Dave Elich on. But is the that throne? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah, I I bought into it, and then I was uh, you know, I got my sweetwater guy. That's um one of my hot takes is I I'm fully into sweetwater now. You're like there's let's go. How was that a hot take? Well, I think there's years of it was kind of a meme of like your sweetwater guy always calls you, and it was a little pushy. It's the best. Yeah. Have you seen the one of the guys standing at the urinal at the fourth of the one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. Hey, we've been trying to exactly. And you like have like an XLR cable in there. He's like, hey man, how's your music career going? And he's like somehow massaging your back, even though he's in Indiana. Yeah, he's like, How's your music career, man, going in in Nashville? How's that going out? Do you need that cable, man? We'll send you some candy. But I realized on Sweetwaters, you can just make a shopping cart and you just text your or email your rep and be like, hey man, see my shopping cart? Like, can you give me a deal on any of this stuff? Yeah, and they'll give you a deal, but it's a little bit less like you know, like it's just whether or not they can give you a deal or not, and it shows up really quick.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

So they're they're the best.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, so so you so you just kind of lean in a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

I lean in a little bit, yeah, yeah. But I don't have like any cray, I've never like had, especially not playing live, like it would be awesome to be like, I'm with Yamaha and I get all their hardware at cost or whatever. Um

Buy Cheap Or Buy Twice

SPEAKER_01 25:46

but I've generally just always just had to buy stuff and I do the the major mistake. Three things you shouldn't do as a drummer is buy a bunch of used stuff on Facebook Marketplace that's like some there's been so many things where I just buy something used because I'm think I'm saving money, but it's kind of used already and it's not that great. And if you just buy it new, it's just done. Even microphones?

SPEAKER_03 26:09

No, okay, yeah, because that's a different that's a different ball game for sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

That's I wish it was like that. I mean I was just talking to a guy at the studio earlier today, and I'm not I'm not into vintage gear because I'm it's like I'm a total hipster, which I probably am, but like I would love it if you know the new 414s were just as good as the old ones, but certain things are made differently, and it's kind of annoying because I like the idea of like, yeah, this is a mic that no one's smoked any cigarettes in or spit in or tried 15 times, but it's like maybe it's not made as well as the old ones, so you have to buy three of the old ones to find the one that sounds good. So that's a good point. That's why you gotta have a sweetwater guy because sometimes you just need it shiny and new and exactly it just works.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

I was having a thought literally like two days ago, I'm just like, I I find myself, you know, in the moment, maybe buying something cheap. Like I feel like in life, not to get too deep with that, but like in life as a consumer, we always have obviously we have choices of like to get the high-end thing, whether whatever it is, whether it's a microphone and a new snare, yes, or like especially like any sort of any like audio cables when you you know if you want to get like the third-party cables on Amazon cheaper or the Apple version from Apple. I find myself like maybe in the past, um, I would cheap out and buy like the the thing that works, but then like I find myself replacing that same thing with the higher end version that I passed on years later.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

I that's kind of what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

So if I can go back, if I can go back in time, it's like just buy the high-end thing up front and like and then you have less stuff, it's more reliable, less stuff.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Because we all we just by nature, if you have a drum set, you probably have a couple, you have a lot of snares, and if you record, it's like there's so many things. Yeah, yeah. And I've realized, like, oh, well, it's better to have the higher quality thing and just don't maybe don't buy as much stuff, yeah, but just have stuff that you know works really well. Yep. Easier

Too Many Snares?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

said than done, because you know, you go into Nelson drum shop and there's a cool crazy snare for 200 bucks, and you're like, Well, this I might use this, and then you know, you buy it and you use it. But you know, then you have 30 snares or whatever, and you're like, how many snares do you have, Axel? I I don't know. Uh oh I probably have I probably have like 20, 25. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Which is a lot, but it's that's a healthy amount.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

It's a healthy amount, but it's but once again, it's not like every snare is like a thousand dollar snare. For me, and this I found this this is not just because I'm like, you know, love fine used stuff, but generally I I find that I get a snare and if it sits well in a certain spot, I just leave it there and I don't really tune it. So yeah, it's better to have multiple stuff than like I love the idea of like, well, you could get everything done. Well, I believe this, you can get everything done with three snare drums.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

Yeah, if you know how to tune and use accessories, exactly.

Session Preset Workflow

SPEAKER_01 28:44

But but in the world of sessions, you don't have time to go, oh well, if I take that black beauty and put a different head on it and tune it this way, it will sound awesome. It's like, well, we're trying to say, well, we don't have another hour. We're already getting, we're already getting takes, so like you it's too late. Just grab the drummer. So it's better to have your it's almost like presets, you know. You're like, yeah. So yeah, it's probably like 25 snares, which yeah, maybe less, maybe 22. I don't know. But I've also like never really like I I find that you know a lot of the things that I use are somewhere between the 300 to 600 range, you know. Like, like I bought a Keplinger once and I was like, I'm just not this guy. Like, yeah, this just like the way I play doesn't necessarily like warrant having this drum, even though it's awesome. You know, I kind of have like a rule too where if I don't put it on enough tracks, it's just gets sold, you know. And I'll just, you know, move on and get something different because hoard stuff if you don't ever use it.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

Yeah, yeah.

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SPEAKER_00 29:47

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First Drum Kit

SPEAKER_03 30:49

One question we always ask our guests uh what was that first drum set? Just kind of back to you as a drum drum set.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

First drum set was it was at Trade Up Music in Portland off of what it was right next to where the original Stumptown coffee shop was. So Stumptown used to just be like a single, it was like a single room. So there was the roaster in there, and you know, so it was right next to that, and just you know, setting the scene here. Yeah, but uh it was a Ludwig accent CS combo. Nice. So you can envision the like super chunky tom arms that just fully stabbing. There's no suspension mounts or anything. Yeah, so it was that it's like 12 by you're like a kid, it's like the toms, it's a 22-inch kick drum, and then toms are up here, so you can't even really get the angle right. Yeah, because like 12, 13, 16 with uh ZBTs. So I had 14-inch ZBT hi-hats, and I can still remember what they sound like. Oh, yeah, and then like an 18-inch crash ride. That was it. So you got you know, just two symbols and make it work, yeah. And I I, you know, went pretty hard on that. And then I think the next thing I bought was a Sabian AA seven 17-inch fast crash. That was my first pro symbol.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Yeah, the AAX, right? Is that the I think it was just just a regular AA?

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Okay, I don't even know if they make this this specific symbol anymore, which I still have. Yep. And I'm not like I still use it all the time. Really? Where it's just a bottom high hat, and then I have this 17-inch projection crash that has a huge chunk out of it, and that's like my seven big, you know, 17-inch hats or whatever, yeah. Which I used like primarily for many years for some reason. I thought that was a good idea. So that symbol has stayed with me. And then the first pro snare was a Pearl Sensitone, like a you know, 14 by six and a half, whatever there. I think it's probably aluminum or something, but it's it's like they're yeah, yep. And I still use that snare like all the time. That's great too. It was like on this record I did, like, I guess in 2022, called American Heartbreak by Zach Bryan, which was very huge record. It went like triple platinum, which is crazy, but it was that snare.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

That is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

I mean, obviously, I I changed the snare, but it was like that was a fun full circle moment of like, oh, like this the first snare drum I used, like that's pretty special. Made it on this, you know, record, and I'm like playing with brushes or or whatever. So shout out Pearl. I'm not I don't have a drum endorsement, but they make great drums.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

So I I can I could uh lib you in on that.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, we can talk afterwards, talk offline.

Mentors and Vintage Pearls

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Actually, speaking of Pearl, the second kit that I got, so in Portland, there's Revival Drum Shop, which is you know, the the prototype of vintage drum shops, and they were awesome. I would go there and hang out like in high school and with Jose and Jake. And never been, you know, just yeah, it was amazing. Um, but I learned about there's this drummer there that I was getting lessons from. His name's Gabe Katz, and he was like in a lot of cool like do you know this guy?

SPEAKER_00 33:47

I love Gabe. Okay, you know Gabe. Yeah, that's that's my boy. Gabe's Gabe's a savage.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

He's insane. Yeah. So he was, I was getting lessons from him in in high school. I think we did like two or three, but he was, you know, like he taught like told me about the band battles and like totally hipped me to all this crazy stuff that was very outside of my sphere.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

But there's this I just start sorry, I I'm nerding out because I just I just started listening to battles again after so so many years.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

There's like that the ticket ticket, whatever that like he taught me that beat and stuff, and he had he was such an accurate player. And I think this video still exists, but I was in revival when they took this video, but they had a Pearl President, which is like the phenolic resin.

SPEAKER_03 34:27

I was gonna ask you about that because you had that snare, or you have the full kit. Yeah, I have a full kit.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

I haven't really used the full kit for a while for whatever reason, but um, they had one of those and it was like the yellow, you know, I don't know what you call it, like strata rap. But he's playing that kit in it, it's like on their YouTube, but I'm like in the video, like in the back. I don't know if I'm in it or or or whatever, but he's playing it, and even in this video, it's like it just came into the shop, it's probably not even tuned or whatever, but like it's insane how good it sounds. Yeah, and yeah, uh, he was like one of those people that you know, like I met when I was young and had a really big impact, and also just a great dude. So I haven't seen him in forever, but you know, the beat of the internet is you kind of keep in touch with people and see what they're doing and stuff. So yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, that's wild. I've played a few shows with him. Um well, at first I saw him play. Shoot, it was a two-piece. Oh, and then it was it was the how do they um they combined their two names. I can't remember. Oh, it was like him and a guy named Jamie, and I think it was just it was just called like gamey. I like that. And then I played a sh uh some shows with his band hoarders, and they had Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Awesome. Wow, small world. Yeah, another cool thing about music is that if as long as you're not a weirdo, like you know, because if you're weird, then everybody knows you're weird and career's over. But if you're not weird, then like you get access to this amazingly small. God, I'm fucked. Yeah. Or you're weird. Yeah, you're we're fine. Everybody's fine. But yeah, um, but yeah, I actually still use a lot of those Pearl Presidents. I it's kind of one of those things, like there's certain things, speaking of hoarders, I'll buy if I know I like something, I will just buy it every time it comes online. So, like those snares, like I actually there's one I think for sale on Reverb right now. So if someone's out here that's listening to the podcast in the future, great recording snare. Can't really it's also one of those things where you can't really do what that drum does with anything else. Like certain things are like that where it just has that proprietary, it's kind of like a wood fiberglass, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

So it's like you're talking about the phenolic. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. Yeah, I think it is.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

It's like it's like fiberglass, but it's it's it's almost like particle board or something. But like a fiberglass, just a pure fiberglass, is maybe just a little less warm, but you get a little bit of warmth, I think, just because there is wood in it. But it's not like a wood fiberglass where there's wood and fiberglass together. It's just still like a resin, basically. So they're for snares, it's like you you get the uh the immediacy of whatever the thing is. It's not like it's not like the drone takes time to like like uh like I don't know, like a brass or bronze versus aluminum. Like aluminum is such a quick metal versus you know, the reason why I like Black Beauties is because it kind of I don't know if this is scientific, but it almost feels like the transient slower on certain shell materials. Yeah, I'm sure that's true. I think so. Like uh Luan mahogany is very porous and very, you know, so you get an old, you know, Japanese stencil kit and it's the warmest thing you've ever heard, versus you you get a recording custom and you're like, wow, it's kind of like brittle and you know, like which the they're just different tools or whatever, but yeah, that's one of those drums that just does a specific thing that I don't really know how to do with anything else, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

Yeah.

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SPEAKER_00 37:42

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SPEAKER_01 38:22

Honestly,

Vintage vs Modern Recording

SPEAKER_01 38:23

like once again, vintage versus new. Like, you get a new kit. Generally, you're not gonna have to like pack all the lugs with, you know, what I don't know, like I guess like cotton balls or whatever. You know, you get the spring rattle, or you're in the middle of a session and something now is making like a little metal sound and you're trying to track it down.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Like a million moon gels and all this kind of thing. Yeah, it's it happens.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

But yeah, there's always that.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

What is that? I was playing some. I I think it's a certain era of Rogers where the springs are so wow tight woundly in the in the snare lugs that if you do a cross stick, it's like but it's cool, it's almost like a spring reverb. Yeah, literally. If all your drums are muffled and everything's really dead, you hear the mechanical nature or your drum throne squeaking if you're me. You hear those things more when you muffle stuff. Yes. Which is what everybody well, not everybody, but that seems to be more of like the way that we're trying to get sounds, I guess, these days.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

Yeah, for sure.

Recording Trends

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Which that there's another way of doing it, which is don't muffle anything and just tune everything really well and be in a good room and use less mics, and you know, it's if if nothing's muffled, then you can just kind of bring up the faders and there's so much energy that you're either trying to find that later on if you're everything's taped up and dry and dark and stuff, but then you're gonna compress it all a bunch. It's like you almost can achieve a similar energy, not tone, but you can achieve the same energy just depending on what path you're on. And I think like the pendulum of recording right now is very in like 70s world, which is fun and I enjoy. But there's a whole nother side that I think is really exciting that I I'm I'm excited to get better at because I think it just depends on where you're at. And it's like you might be doing something a bunch, and then it, you know, in five years there could be a different flavor and you could be learning that or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

But um, but the but the thing that you've uh I won't say per perfected, but the th the thing that you have um leveled up in and that will will not become a useless skill at any point. No, no, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

I don't think any I don't think anything you level up in ever is a useless skill. Yeah, it's good. It's you know, but at the same time, I think you're right.

Burnout and Identity

SPEAKER_01 40:33

It's like I found that, especially right now, it's like really good to have a a certain idea identity or I feel like a lot of my friends, like we talk about this concept of like, so you work and your th your favorite thing to do is now your job, and it will become work no matter what. I mean, this is a philosophy that you guys like not everybody will agree with this, but I think I have a job and it just so happens it's a really cool job and I love doing it, but I still work and I work almost every day now, which is awesome. But it's like, okay, well, how can you shape that or spin that in a way to where it's still fun instead of getting super jaded and not liking it? Because sometimes your reward for being really busy and doing well or people liking what you do is doing more stuff, and that can lead to a road where you're like, oh, I'm kind of feeling burnt out, and I don't now I just have a job that I don't really like, and it's I almost resent it because it's the thing I used to love the most. And I think a good way to combat that is if you find your identity of something that you feel like you're good at, and that doesn't mean that you don't push yourself, but if there's a world where you are being yourself and you kind of stay over in that corner instead of trying to grab every single opportunity, if you wait a little bit longer and people start coming to you, if you get called to do something that you feel really comfortable with and you feel like you're contributing and it feels awesome and it's pretty easy, and if you do that like, I don't know, 60% of the time, that doesn't feel like you're working as much, if that makes sense. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 41:53

So yeah, as Nana said, like every yes is like a thousand percent all in yes. Like you're not spreading yourself tooth. Like every every every work, every session is like, I'm so in for this session.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yes. I would love if that was true, but I'm not that I'm not there. But man, let's I mean, I I love this conversation so far.

Tracking 537 Songs

SPEAKER_03 42:10

Let's let's just dive into you as that working session drummer in Nashville. Yeah. Um, I mean, just a freaking workhorse here. I mean, I was doing some research, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I wrote down, I don't think I am. Uh in 2025, you tracked 537 songs.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah. That's real, by the way. I've had people read five days. Hey man, that's not real, right? Like you're just lying to get gigs in my child. But I'm not. And I don't recommend that to anybody, honestly. I believe it.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Don't lie to get gigs. That's a that's a really dumb way to do things.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

One easy thing to not do to keep work is don't lie. Don't lie. All right, podcast is over. Actually, everybody. Just don't lie. It's easy.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

It's easy. And then yeah, I mean, you know, some of the some of the credits is kind of a who's who. I mean, we've got you mentioned Zach Bryan, uh just reading some of these guys and women, Sierra Pharrell, Sam Barber, Ella Langley, uh Holly Humberstone, uh Sasha Sloan, one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

Oh, yeah, she's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

Uh Conan Gray. So I mean, yeah, there's you've been busy.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

It's been, yeah, it's been awesome. And and you know, like it's crazy. It's like I'm that's one of the things that I'm like so grateful for that I'm like getting into do all this stuff. I I still am like, wow, I can't believe that this is my life and it's really amazing. Even when it's really busy and it it can feel like burnout or whatever. Like, that's a good thing to remind myself to kind of push up against that because I think you know, that's you know, like it's it's crazy. So um, but yeah, um, it's been that kind of all happened just because I I I was lucky to be doing a lot of remote stuff before the pandemic. So I feel like that kind of shifted a lot of things for a lot of people. And for me, that was I I kind of realized, oh, like I'm already doing this, and now this seems like this is almost like I'm a barista on the side of my live job as a live drummer. So, like, you know, like if you have multiple streams of income or whatever and you're trying to get more gigs, it's like, well, if I just keep doing this little side thing where, you know, if I Do two tracks or whatever. It's like I went and did a shift at a coffee shop or whatever. And I'm getting better at building my little like side business. And then hopefully someday I can do this full time because this is what I really want to do. So I think like I hear all those credits and I'm like super stoked and like it's crazy. But there were so many years of doing this for a long time. Because I feel like now that things are like, I've kind of pushed the, you know, the momentum wheel has spun enough to where now it's like, whoa, dude, overnight success. You're playing on all these crazy records. I'm like, well, just like just to give context, it's like I've actually been doing it for a really long time. And yeah, and honestly, like the slow grind and building up was really great because it's so much better to like have a natural progression because the worst thing you can do is be like, dude, how do I get like you, man? I'm trying to play on these things. I'm like, well, if I played on any of this stuff right when I came to town, I wouldn't have done a good job and then I wouldn't have gotten hired back. And then now your path is way longer because you were in the room and didn't cut it. And that's worse than having 10 years of developing your craft of what you want to do.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

It's like winning the lottery. Like how most people who win the lottery end up broke. Yeah. Because, well, you didn't have the infrastructure mentally to deal with the having all the money. Right. For sure. Like, and then the same way I'm like, well, if you get handed all this work, you get like, well, now I don't know what to do with all of this. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

And I can't keep up. Because I still will get on sessions because now I feel like as there's been certain things that have crossed over into more of the commercial, like not even pop country, but just more of like general union country work. Those sessions are not easy at all. You're working with people that have recorded every day of their life for 20 years and are have been doing it for so long, and their efficiency is so crazy. And for how much recording can be really fun and you're hanging with people and you're being creative, some of it is like there's still a little bit of that, like not cutthroat, but it's like a very quick quick machine in Nashville. And I'm lucky that I'm really now dipping my toes into that world. Cool. And I feel like I'm still, I'll still roll into sessions and be like not nervous necessarily, but really want to do a good job because I'm still like unearthing new rooms to get to be in that are that are very challenging and are like, oh wow, like this is actually like I actually have to like play good and like this matters.

SPEAKER_04 46:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

But if that was, if I was like, you know, five years ago during the pandemic, like, you know what, I'm ready to be a full-time session player or whatever. And someone's like, all right, man, cool. Here's this session that like I did last week or whatever. Yeah. I would have gone there and not done a good job. And then every single person in that room goes, Oh, like that guy's nice, but like he's probably not gonna like be in our world. And it's almost like you don't want to do you don't actually want those gigs yet.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

I don't think that's a really good point. You almost want to have those early years to go and figure things out. Or even like the remote thing.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

It's like, I'm so glad I had so many years on my like focus right scarlet and my star not right now. That's what I'm saying. But but that stuff, it's like reps. It's like, okay, cool. You if you want to be an NFL football player, but you're 14 and you're good for your pop warner team, but hey, you know what? You can suit up. You're gonna get like absolutely you're gonna die. You're gonna go play an NFL game and die. Yeah, not blame.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Just literally murdered on the field. Yeah, it's a really good analogy.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

And it's like, well, you physically shouldn't do that yet. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's also yeah. So I think that's like a good thing to remember. And and I'm now in a position, this is crazy to me, but I I feel like I have more people like ask me, like, how do you do this? And it's like, well, first, like, there's this, I can talk about the path and what I've done or whatever, but that the thing that I used to feel of like, man, like how do I get there? Like, I want to do that. Now I feel like I I can have a little bit, not that much, but I can have a little bit of a like experience to say, like, well, you don't actually want to like rush that process because you want to actually get you want to level up in a you know, you want to get sequentially better at the thing to where your talent or your ability matches the gigs that you're doing, and that's actually bet way better, I think.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

You know, yeah. You get into the room and then you belong in the room.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Yes. And and you still in that is still pushing yourself.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

That's not me saying, oh man, just chill and like just do whatever things you get offered and don't push your. I'm like, no, that is the you pushing yourself will be the the session world is like a weird pyramid where it like naturally kind of vets people in a certain way, like skill levels or whatever. And you know, it's like I think that's actually like a good, it's maybe exists because of capitalism, but it's like almost protecting the investment of how much recording costs for people or whatever. So it's like there's like a natural hierarchy of the way it works because it's so much different to be like, hey man, can you sub on my gig? I can't make it this weekend. Just gonna say that. It's like the worst case scenario is someone like, oh man, he was like kind of behind the click and he got like hammered and like we got like bar during the set. It's like, oh, that's like a funny story of our, you know, my long career as an artist, and I played you know, 80 shows this year versus oh well, I just spent like you know, five grand on this major label union record, and like we can't use any of these drum tracks in plot twist. They're still bleed and stuff because that's why we have to hire the next guy to redo it all. Yeah, or or whatever, you know, it's like it's the stakes are a lot higher. So 100%. So it's it, you know. I I'd love it to be like, nah, man, the sessions are chill. It's like I'm like, no, it can be a lot of pressure. It can be there can be a lot pressure.

Live Band vs Studio Players

SPEAKER_03 49:15

Do you think that's that's why uh I mean a lot of times, obviously, like the live drummer for a tour for the artist is not the same as the drummer. Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Oh, that's a great thing.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

Sometimes you know maybe we're seeing that more. It obviously depends on the drummer.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

Um, I'm thinking like Jake Summers and Lou Combs versus like Jerry Rowe. Or uh Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 49:33

You know, or I'm thinking of uh you know, like Alexandra Kay, a younger artist, and like Lou Becchio in that situation, she she did bring her live band into the studio.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 49:41

So it kind of just depends. Well, I what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 49:44

I think first thing I would say, like that's something I didn't understand initially in Nashville. And I was like, well, that's you're not being loyal. And I I think as a session player, like I love when that works. Like I think Jay Joyce is a producer that will use a lot of the live band guys because he likes doing that process. Um it really exists because there's a certain way records are made, and maybe it's like kind of like a chicken or the egg, like, how did how did the process exist? But I think a lot of it has to do with a producer. Like when you're an artist, you hire a producer to make a record.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

And there's a certain, like, well, if you want me, I kind of need to have my tools at my disposal. And my tools are these people that know what I mean when I say this. So that's one of the things is like we have this working relationship, or I have this working relationship with different producers where we kind of understand a language. It's almost like insider trading sometimes, where you have an artist that's in the room, and I know the producer's trying to tell me something to do to protect the artist's energy. Because if if someone's like, hey man, this artist is way off click and they can't play with the click track, and they say the producer says that, it can like, oh, like, I guess I suck. Like, it can totally throw off. Right, right, right. And once again, losing tons of money in that situation.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

And so you using that example, then, like, so the the opposite of that would probably be the MD for the live band when he would bring that band together, understand the players. So a lot of times it's not even the artist that's making these decisions.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

No, it's not that it's it's usually not the artist.

SPEAKER_03 51:14

Yeah, at the bigger scale.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

And I I think it just depends. And then maybe the other side of it too is sometimes, and this is something that like I this is not controversial, but I think this is just kind of like a natural thing. Um, is that I think if you play live with someone, especially for years, you inevitably have a certain sense of ownership because you know that you're gonna be playing these songs live every night, or you've already played them live a bunch, and you're like, yeah, man, like I know it's like just like a really good song, but like we do this crazy like halftime breakdown in the bridge, and they're like live ideas and they crush live and they're amazing, but you come with all this preconceived notions of how the song is supposed to be because you've experienced it so much in a very real setting, which is live music, yeah. But I think it's really hard to separate that. And then also you're dealing with a lot of interpersonal dynamics, which some can be good, but there's inevitably just so much more stuff happening. And I think once again, like you're making records and you're spending a lot of money. A lot of times it's like, yeah, we can just bring in this impartial team of people that aren't emotionally attached to this and their feelings aren't gonna get hurt. It's like, hey, Axel, man, like I don't think think this song needs drums. Like, I'm not gonna be here, like, well, you said that I but I'm gonna have to I'm not gonna be able to play on this song live for the rest of my life because now there's no drums on it. I'm like, okay, even if I wanted to play drums on the song as a session player, like that's not really my place. Yeah, so you're kind of also buying like this impartiality, which I think can be really helpful. That being said, a lot of the music that I listen to, I love bands. I love when there's skin in the game, and I love when the drummer sucks. Yeah, like I listen just because I just a hot take. I love it. That is the hottest, that's one of the hottest takes I've ever heard.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

I love it. I love the drummer.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

I love I love music that like this rushes, this drags, this singer's got kind of a weird voice, but like there's emotion and energy in it. Yeah, like I love music like that. Or you just or it's not polished or whatever. It's like I don't feel like, you know, and another hot take is I don't know if I should say that. Oh man, okay. Nothing specific, but I think in history of music, there's certain times where session players get together and make records together, and they make these super polished, insane playing. I'm not talking about anything in Nashville specifically, by the way, so no one killed me, but it can be feel very sterile because if you it's not like one thing's bad, like it like being in a punk band and barely knowing how to play drums isn't morally or there's not like a value on either one. It's just the way it all combines. So if you have a bunch of people that are so good at just playing music perfectly and accurately and doing this, it will sound super polished. So generally it's like nice to have like a combo. But yeah, the hot my hot take is like maybe not every like session all-star band record from like you know, whenever we started recording music, like that stuff is not super interesting for me to listen to. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Yeah, you you said the right word. There's a lot of there's a lot of that that can be very sterile. For sure. It's it's not uh to me, a lot of that stuff lacks any risk. Yeah, for sure. It's just like, well, this is this is like what we should play here. This is this is the thing that it's not like oh, I this is a great thing in my heart.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

That's a great point. Like, I think I like music that does feel like it has risk. And I think maybe something about recording that's always been more enticing to me personally is I think there's way more risk in doing normal stuff when you record versus playing live. Like to take a risk playing live is being like, you know what, I'm cutting the tracks off and we're gonna like do so like like the the risk is a little bit different. Live.

SPEAKER_03 54:53

Yeah, I'm gonna do halftime without telling anybody, and the band will pick it up and yeah, they'll pick it up and it'll be fun.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

And like everybody like, but at the end of the day, like you have to do something more drastic for there to be risk in live stuff. Yeah, but in recording, you can take a risk by being like, you know what, I'm gonna change the ride symbol out on this next take. And if this is what I end up using, they might not be able to punch in the bridge if they end up wanting to use a different section because the ride will change.

SPEAKER_04 55:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

So it's almost like the little things become a bigger risk, yeah. Which is maybe feels more exciting to me, I guess. And it or not more exciting, they're both, but yeah, there's yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 55:27

Every decision is is very intentional and for sure. But you have to be so detail focused, yes.

Free Jazz Influence

SPEAKER_01 55:32

And I think like tying it together, I think like something that is cool about like recording music is when I first moved to town, I didn't, I really had only I mean, this is not a hot take, but it's like a fun fact. Like I had not played, like I was in college and I was playing free jazz, and I was playing traditional grip, and I was like playing like Paul Motion trio style, like like a lot of the stuff would be like a jazz standard, but you're not even playing in time, like very impressionistic kind of stuff. And I loved doing that, but I knew at some point the music that I listened to was songs, so I was like, I know at some point like I'm gonna move to Nashville because I love songs and I like songs more than I like being a crazy drummer or whatever. But I moved here and I was like, all right, cool, time to flip the traditional grip around and work. And I like my first gigs were with like a wedding bands, and I didn't really even understand the concept of a kick pattern. I would be like, okay, cool, like 24 karat magic is this tempo, and like it's like bum, scat, bum, bum, bum, kind of, but I would just I would I would never think about keeping the same kick pattern the whole song. I would just kind of freestyle it, yeah. Which kind of going back to our earlier thing, it's so great that no one offered me an amazing gig at the time because I wouldn't have done a good job. Sure. And then I would have had this failure, and and you know, like not which failure's fine, but yeah, but I was able to, you know, in a wedding gig, it's more like people would be like, Man, like you're so fun to play with, like, you just don't care about the kick pattern. And I'd be like, Oh uh oh, and then I was like, what a what a national way to say that thing, yeah, not in the mean way, you know. I was like 23 or something. It was like, man, you just like don't care about like the drum parts, you're just kind of going for it. Yeah, but I wasn't trying, I it wasn't like I got in the gigs and I was playing these wedding band things and I was trying to like chop out, like I was trying to do a good job, but I just didn't have the concept of pop song form yet. Yeah, so a lot of this stuff I would you know not know that you're supposed to kind of play a part or whatever. I'm like playing Sweet Caroline, and I'm like just like playing a shuffle over the wrong part or whatever, because I just I was like, I'm just trying to get through this four-hour gig. This is crazy. Like, I'm so used to playing like jazz and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Recording As Improv

SPEAKER_01 57:35

But I'd say the biggest thing for me very early on, and I knew I always wanted to record, I just didn't know what the clear path was, but I knew recording is improv. You're making the whole thing up every time. You don't listen to the songs, no one gives me songs like the night before. I don't sit on my drum set and like, all right, tomorrow when I go in, like I'm gonna already have an idea of what I'm gonna do. Like, I listen to the song once and I make a chart and then I go make something up for it. Now it's very like rigorous improv of like, all right, whatever like the kick pattern is, I do need to keep that consistent. And now in verse two, it changes by one beat, and I need to remember that. Yeah, but it's still you're still improvising.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

Well, that's see, I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that. I mean, I'm I'm even a little bit surprised to hear, and maybe it depends on the artist in the session, right? Of yeah, because I mean I would think that like if you're on a session, you know, if you if you're if you know you're gonna track something, um, like you'd have the songs weeks in advance. Like for me, like on a gig, no, I'm gonna know the material weeks in advance.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

Never I and if someone sends me music to record to and they're like, hey man, like here's the songs. I I mean uh maybe people will hear this and be like offended or whatever. Like, I never listen to it. Because not because I'm like, I don't want to do any extra work, it's not that, but if I have a thought or an idea, I want to have it while I'm in the process of making it. It'd be like, all right. You want it to be fresh. Like you're gonna do this portrait of this person and you're a painter, but here's like a here's a picture of them, but you can't paint yet. But just like look at this picture, like you'd already start making ideas of like, oh, well, like what color is their skin tone? Like, I wonder what palette I'm gonna start setting up, but you can't do it yet. So you're like, oh, cool, I've just mixed together all these paints, but now they're drying and they're all getting all caked on my like whatever the paint.

SPEAKER_03 59:16

You want to be in a completely open headspace to be as creative as possible.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

I think that's part of what you're paying a session player to do, is you're not getting, once again, not a bad thing to have. There's multiple ways of doing it, but you're paying for a clean slate. Because my goal with recording something for somebody is not to like, my goal is just this is their song, they're investing in this song, they're paying money for it. It's probably gonna come out and they're probably gonna play it the rest of their lives if they're gonna be an artist for a long time. My goal is not to think about like what's the drum part. It's like really like how can I just help this song? And I found like it doesn't help me to think about it as a drummer the night before and art start, are you like, do I go to like the ride and the bridge, or like do I hit the ride bell, or like you know, now kind of missing the point for sure. Now, now references of like we're going for this vibe. Here's some songs that we like the sounds of.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

Okay, so you typically will get some references, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

So like setting up a kit beforehand or or picking mics and doing the engineering thing. That's you need that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:13

It's that that is some valuable prep. That's but different from the actual.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Yeah, but I don't want to ever, I don't really want to hear the songs before unless it's like, hey, you're tracking drums for a fusion band tomorrow or or next week, and here's the arrangements, you should familiarize yourself with them because they're technically challenging and you're actually gonna want to rehearse this stuff. Yeah. I'm I I guess what I'm saying is like in the form in the world of like songwritery music, I don't want to have like an uh preconceived notion, I guess, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:42

How about um do artists or clients ever give you like a demo of like, hey, like this is kind of what we actually do want? Like, here is kind of the part. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

And this is this is a I mean, if there's like a tip that I could give people that would be helpful that I wish I knew is like never trust someone when they say, like, do your thing. Like, hey man, like we really love your plane. Like, we just want you to do your thing. Yeah, like I get that a lot. Yeah, it's just it's sometimes it's true, and when it is, it's awesome. But like I've been damaged by that before because someone's like, Man, we really love what you do, do your thing, like we trust you. And it's like sometimes that's someone that hasn't done the production work yet to know what they want, and they know they want something, but they want you to take three or four spins at it to figure out what they want, and then it's like, oh, well, you're asking me to produce in a certain way for this because you haven't done the work yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:37

Yeah, so that's almost like yeah, you're they're asking you to almost step into another role for sure. From just the recording session drummer, but yeah, as you said.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:44

Right, and not in a way where I was like, hey, I actually am the producer now, but like it's more like, hey, like I don't want to just take a bunch of shots in the dark. And that's a great reason for why, like, when you do true remotes, it's like you should have limits on editing and stuff. But I think the the thing that I've learned to really try to avoid to preserve my personal, like, you know, try to try. I'm always trying to find ways to protect myself from being jaded. And one of those things is hearing, man, like we love what you do, do your thing, because you could be like, oh my gosh, yay! But what they really mean is, man, like you get cool tones. Can you just play our demo part exactly like it is? But like just play it as a human. Yeah. But that doesn't mean do your thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:23

No, it does not.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:24

That means play this exact part and play each fill exactly. So anytime there's a demo, yeah. If I get sent something and I'm listening to it, once again, I'm not doing this the night before or whatever. I'll, you know, I'll be listening to the song. And if there's a demo drum part, especially like a program part or whatever, I'm very like, hey, you're not gonna hurt my feelings. Do you want this exact demo part? And sometimes it's like actually, yeah, we'd love an option of the demo part exactly the way it is, and then do a couple takes doing your own thing. And another tip I'd say is if that's the case, I always say, hey, if you if you're gonna like hit me with the hey man, do a crazy take at the end, have me do that at the beginning, because yeah, the more I work on trying to work on whatever your part is, and sometimes the part is not necessarily like a part a drummer would play. And I'm trying not to, I don't, I generally am not emotional about it. I don't go, wait, well, you can't technically play this because it's like it's a program drum part. I'm just like, I'm just gonna do my best, but I can't do like 15 takes of trying to do some crazy program drum part that doesn't really make sense. Yeah, and then they're like, all right, man, now just go have fun with it. I'm like, well, it's gone now. Yeah, totally. So if you want the, if you want the like off the cuff crazy thing, like throw me in first. Do that first, then you can kind of dial it back.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

So it's I think those are these are some things that like, you know, if we're circling back to like how many tracks I did last year, which I don't recommend once again to anybody. But once you learn these little things that make the expedite the process easier, it's not like every single song I worked on took me six hours. It's like a lot of this stuff. I I work with the same producers, and we have established a language and a workflow to where I know what they want and I can do it in, you know, 30 minutes and then move on to the next song. And that's not me rushing through it, you know. That's another thing I'd say is like definitely like volume is not the goal with recording, you know, like I just so happen to have like a very busy year, and that's awesome. But like that's not the goal, I don't think for me it's quality over quantity, but you can have both, great. Yeah, you know, and it's like you know, I think last year I just kind of wanted to see how far I could take it or whatever. But but I yeah, to me, it's a lot more important to make sure that people are stoked with what they're getting from you instead of you know, like, all right, I I gave you one take and that's all you're getting. It's like I'm if someone works, maybe this is too much, but like if someone works on a track with me remote, I'll send six or seven takes because I don't know how to edit or time align, I know how to like comp stuff. But I'm a I always just assume that like someone's gonna get this and it they have to be able to make whatever sounds good from the raw material. So I'm not gonna send one take and be like, yeah, well, I kind of dragged that one fill, which I'm so aware of myself, which is not fun. But I will like, well, I'll do another take just to make sure that fills good because if they're gonna listen with a critical ear, I don't want them to have to grid it. Now you can grid stylistically or whatever, and no one's perfect, but I want there to be a comp in there that has everything that I would want to hear if I was producing it. Yeah. So that can mean, you know, it's not like I did a ton of songs and also just like did one take for all of them. It's like most songs are like on average four to seven takes.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

So it's like that's you know, I was gonna ask uh with regards to fills, do you ever uh comp in like here's some crazier fills, like and just give them fills for them to kind of I've done that for a couple people.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:40

Some people will say just play some fills out in open air in the back, which I don't necessarily love doing because it feels unnatural as a drummer, but I think that can work. So I will I will do that for people sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:52

But they ask for it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:53

It just depends. It's like if I'm in logic, it's a lot easier for someone to get a session from me because they can see the end of the session where I play the. The crazy weird fill, like seven times, as opposed to like bouncing out just a dead file with one fill in it, which I'll do for people. But um, but yeah, so it's yeah, it can I will punch stuff, but it's fun to do a full for full performance, but yeah, it's you know, it just kind of depends on what the song is or whatever, but but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:21

Well, as you said, I mean it sounds like efficiency is obviously the name of the game.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:24

Yes, yes, for sure. But also, like you can't be in this your studio and you can't like go to Nelson and buy a new kit, and you can't be sitting there and going, man, let's just EQ the kick like in post. Like, we should probably get something boomier, but like I'm like, I'm always like, if I have all the drums, if I have 25 snare drums or whatever, I should count. But if I have all these drums, yeah, I want to count. I want to know. I I'll I'll count. Maybe I like over. I'm like, I actually have 500 snares.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:53

It's probably 20. I don't know. Whatever number over you have, you can split it between us. We'll take the rest. Okay, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:58

Honestly, yeah. I have this, I have this crazy D drum from from Nelson that I bought as a joke that I still still have. It's pretty sick. Yeah, it's like a it's just like a blue wrapped D drum. Oh, yeah. The white hardware. That's awesome. Well, it was, yeah. I've used it on a couple things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, what was I saying? But yeah, like you can't have, you know, you can't be sitting by your kit and have your rack of six snares and not be willing to go, all right, let's try a different snare, or like let's change the mic out. Like if you have, you have to, if I'm getting to the point where I'm like, I'm not gonna change anything because I just have too much stuff going on. It's like you've lost the plot. Like you gotta, it's not always fun to be three songs into like a session and have to move the kick drum and move the mics and stuff, but I think that's kind of like my litmus test of like if I'm getting burnt out, I'm like, am I willing to change the kick out or whatever? You know, and like I think that's a good thing to be aware of.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:51

Yeah, I was gonna ask quick on that.

Session Nightmares

SPEAKER_03 1:07:53

Yeah, give me if you're if you can recall, like a sort of a session nightmare or fail, or something that happened, where you're like, well shit, I'm never doing that again.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:00

Ooh, oh wow. Session nightmare or fail? Like plane-wise fail.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:06

Anything, you know, it could be like your five takes in and you realize the mics were in a bad position.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:12

I mean, there's a good one. It's like you use outboard gear, which is like it's awesome in a lot of regards, but like, okay, cool. Like I bought a 1178 because I found a good deal on one in Japan on this weird bidding website. So I get an 1178, which is a stereo, it's not really an 1176, but it's you know an old Yuri compressor. It's they're expensive. I got a great deal on mine. Put it in the rack. I'm using it on overheads, just barely compressing, it's not really doing much. And I'm like, six takes into the song and one of the sides dies. And I'm not gonna go, all right, well, I'll just do one more take and just take the compression off. I'm like, well, if they want to use the last take, it's gonna change the mix. Right, right. So that can be something that can be frustrating is like, you know, that, or like you grouped your tracks wrong. So you're at the end of the session and you're trying to bounce stems out to people, but the playlists don't line up. Like, that's a hard one. I'm trying to think of like nightmares though.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:06

Like, I mean, those are good examples. Yeah, again, it goes back to just being as prepped. Some some of that stuff you want to do ahead of time, like sending up the template and the mics and the drums.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

And I think the biggest nightmare is getting into a room where you're you know you don't have what it takes to do a good job, and you're like, I just need to get through this. Which goes back to the whole like it's better to advertise or or put out the thing that you're good at because you're never gonna like like get called, like, no one's gonna call me for uh like metal core session. Like, I don't play kick, I don't play double kick. I can actually have a good story. I played on a metal record once, and it was at Sonic Ranch, and it was that it's in Texas, it's in Tornillo, Texas, so it's like an hour kind of southeast of uh El Paso, and it's on a pecan farm right on the border. And I got hired by my friend Eddie, who's an amazing producer, and you know, like I a lot of my first big projects were with him, and he was like, Hey man, I'm doing this metal record. I I'm working with this country artist, Cody Jinks, who is doing a country record with his live band, but on the side in between, like he's gonna be there for a while. He has these metal songs that he's written. He wants to bring in a separate metal band to work on these metal songs. That's sick. He's like, Can you play double kick? And I was like, honestly, like, not great. This was in like 2021. So I'm like, I need money, I want gigs. I was like, man, I was like, when's the session? He's like, it's in like two months. And I was like, what speed are we talking? He's like, man, like maximum is like Pantera. It's like it's like it's like groove metal, it's not like you're yeah. So I bought an iron cobra or like the speed cobra pedal, and I'm practicing, and I practice so much for this thing. And I got there, and it's the bass player's name's Calvin Knowles, and we've worked together a bunch, but he knows metal, and then the guitar player's name's Jake Lentner. I I don't I might be saying his last name wrong, but like the most insane, like shred guitar player, craziest chops and pocket, and they're both set up, they're already nerding out about stuff. We're setting up in the big blue, which is this studio out in at Sonic Ranch, and they're immediately both just like like they're not playing groove metal, they're playing like thrash, like and I'm sitting there being like, okay, if this is what the record sounds like, like I'm in trouble. It's not like, oh, like I'm I'm gonna lose out on the gig. I'm like, they flew me out, like we all got COVID tested to be here. Yeah, like it's just there's a lot of variables back then to like do something. I was like, I feel so terrible, like my stomach sank because I was like, I'm I wouldn't have even pitched myself as being able to do this. We're like getting sounds, and I like there's for some reason there's a megabell ride there. I'm playing on an old radio. This is the most hilarious thing, is Eddie picked drums out of Blackbird and he picked a Radio King that apparently was Matt Chamberlain's. So they put they put black dot heads on a Radio King. So it's not even like a metal kit, but it sounded awesome. But it's like that, and then like a bronze, like a copper phonic that's cranked and like a megabell ride. And I'm trying to get sounds for this, but I'm like, I'm literally like, oh, and the whole record is is no click to Pro Tools. There's no grid where there's like there's gonna be like two or three takes of each song, and that's it. So super high stress. But, anyways, long story short, um, you know, Cody comes in for the first song and it's like it's like groove, it's like slow, and it's basically just rock. It's crazy. Yeah, and I was like, oh, okay, I'm gonna be okay. But the but the record is on the internet, and there's there is double kick. It's like it's not super fast, but there's some double stuff. There's some like triplet. Yeah. I want to hear that. The album's called Canned by Nod. It's an interesting name. It's like an anagram of like him and a high school buddy that wrote the songs together. But it's, you know, it's it's a metal album that I played on. But so that was almost a fail, but luckily, you know, I I made it through.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:02

But that's a good point, is like I think what you're also kind of getting at is like stay in your lane, know what gigs are you should be saying yes to, and like why people you know know you to hire you for that specific thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:13

Because yeah, it's like I wouldn't wish that feeling on anybody to be like, oh, I finally got a gig. I'm so excited about this. And then you're like, oh my gosh, this is so stressful. Yeah. Now a little bit of that actually makes you better, it makes you more resilient, you get better at being in these situations where you're a little bit out of your comfort zone, but you you grow. But once again, it's like you don't want to be so far out of that to where like it doesn't work out. Right. But you got to take risks.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:37

Well, I would say that the same thing applies to a live, a live drummer, right? Absolutely. I think yes. I think a little bit less to a less of a degree. Like it's you know, you can get away with it more. There's less pressure to to maybe fill in on a gig that's not super in your comfort zone. But like if you're gonna take a recording session where it's like like I would never do a metal gig. Right. Could I maybe pull it off? Sure. But like Yeah, it's I'm not I'm not the guy for that. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:00

And and it's okay. Like a sad thing we realize as we get older is like you don't have enough time to do everything on planet Earth.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:07

And you don't even have every enough time to master the one thing that you do the most. We just don't have enough time. So it's better to like, you know, divide and conquer, I guess, or whatever people say. It's like instead of like, I'm gonna do every single thing my, you know, I'm just gonna learn all of it. It's like I've like, you know, I've give given up on my, you know, I don't think I'm ever gonna move to New York City and you know, play at smalls every night and be like a super in-demand jazz drummer. And that's not saying I could, if I really wanted to and I wanted to practice, maybe that's something that I could have done. It's not that's not like a selling yourself short thing, but it's more about like you have limited energy, and instead of being completely like, you know, overwhelmed by the possibilities and like how you know how how many things you could do. It's like, well, what can I do good at that allows me to like work on stuff and you know, be a part of something, you know? I think things that I'm really stoked about.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:55

Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of moving to New York and and playing at Space, uh, I want to I want to hear about your time studying and playing free jazz and in college. And I and I specifically want to know what skills do you think you developed doing that that you're still using and that are that are relevant? Because I know there's there is a I've even like joked about this subject here with some people. Like some there's there's like a like, oh don't, don't tell them, don't tell them you you study jazz. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:27

Oh yeah. I mean I I moved to town and so I went to Berkeley College of Music, which you know it's a it's a school that has it's obviously very popular for its thing, and there's a lot of pros to it and there's a lot of cons to it. And there's also like a name association. Sure is. So I I went to I had previous college experience, both in high school and I did a year at University of Denver. So I had a ton of transfer credits and stuff. So I when I went to Berkeley, I was only there for two years. So I graduated a lot sooner than a lot of my peers. What what what years were you there? I was there, uh I think 2015 and 2017. So I did that. And then when I moved to Nashville, I didn't tell anybody where I went to school. If someone said, Hey, where'd you go to? Like you went to college, I was like, Yeah, I went to the University of Denver, or I went to Clark College, which is a community college in Vancouver. Not not like obviously if someone like really asked me, I wouldn't like lie to people, but I did not advertise Berkeley College of Music. Not that it's Berkeley's bad, but I just didn't want that association.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:23

We've heard that from so many in Berkeley gods, or they would say, Oh, I went to school in Boston.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:27

Yeah, I wouldn't even say I wouldn't even say that because they're not. Yeah, and it it I'm so grateful for my time there, and I learned so much. It was insane. I remember moving here and in the first six months of being in Nashville, the way I was making money was just playing local gigs at like the East Room or Five Spot for like, hey man, you want 70 bucks? Um, we're gonna do two rehearsals and we can pay you 75 bucks for the show, and just stacking up as many of those random local gigs, and you go to college and you spend an entire semester learning one set list for like a jazz recital, and you spent all semester like studying these like six songs or whatever, and then you go move to a music town and you realize like I'm gonna play 10 shows a week of original music a week. And you're like, oh, like the pace that I thought I needed, or like the focus on like my jazz independence or whatever, like that stuff's all great, but that's done. Like we're now we're now focusing on learning people's sets and like starting the career part, yeah. But um, to your question about the the free jazz stuff, I think like a good like an example, like because free jazz I think is like a kind of like a interesting, like that could be a lot of different things. Like I guess free jazz, maybe it's more like like the Paul Motion trio or like the bad plus or like stuff like that. That's like it's not necessarily like maybe you call it like uh I don't know, like improvised acoustic music. But you know, a lot of it was did get pretty artsy and you know, but I think a lot of the stuff I learned from that kind of stuff was like textures and dynamics and feel, and a lot of there's a huge amount of parallels of of okay, we're gonna play this jazz standard that you've been playing since you were in middle school, but we're now gonna completely remove the thing that you were most worried about or you think about the most as a drummer, which is time. Like, and that's such a powerful exercise for people because we spend so much time and have so much baggage of all right, you're playing this song, like, all right, there's a click and there's tracks. Like, are you ahead of the beat? Are you behind the beat? Yeah. How's your time feel? Are you like, what's your micro time? Like, people have all these words and things about pocket and stuff. And it's like, all right, you're gonna play all the things you are. There's no time. You're gonna play like the song, and there's melody and there's there's rhythm, but it's not attached to this grid. It's like, it's almost like um, like, I don't know, it's like a weird, like, it's a complete like it reframes your entire thinking of, well, I'm a drummer though, I keep time. Like I'm the guy in the band that like keeps everybody together. And like, yeah, might you know you have this whiplash moment of like, is the band director gonna tell me I rushed or dragged? Like, that's all I ever thought about. Yeah, and now it's like, well, are you still a drummer if there's no tempo?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:09

Well, that's such a good question.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

And it's like, well, what else do you have? It's like, well, I have this crazy palette. I have this instrument that makes the lowest pitch and the highest pitch out of any ensemble, pretty much. And I have sticks and brushes, and I have this whole palette. Like, what does my instrument mean if not keeping time? What else do I have? And I think that really helped me think of the instrument in a different way, you know. And that's so cool. And it also it's like, okay, cool, there's no time. So I'm not, I can't just sit here and like play the swing beat or whatever. Right. I'm listening. Like, what's the bass player doing? It's like this thing happening, it really like perks your ears up to listening in an ensemble and like just all these skills that you wouldn't get if you were just like thinking about how fast you or slow you're playing or if you're rushing or dragging the whole time.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:56

So for me, it it helped develop a lot of those skills. And you know, yeah, I guess that's that's the main thing is like maybe separating yourself from like the thing you care about most as a drummer, which is being a timekeeper, I guess, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:09

But it does, yeah. Thank you. That's a great answer to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:13

Yeah, so I you know, if you want if you want recording gigs, you need to play free jazz. That's maybe another another another bumper. Hey, that's I love thank you so much. You're just giving us all these like you're like, here is the clip, and here's this here's the if you want to be a recording drummer, you need to stop playing on the click, just completely abandon it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:32

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:34

It's like, listen, guys, here's my three tips.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:36

I'm gonna get a lot of heat for this in the comments, but yeah, don't buy DW throws. Don't buy DW throws and totally.

Splice Packs Strategy

SPEAKER_03 1:20:42

I want to go back to kind of what we were talking also about identity. Uh, because you've done these cool like splice, like loop uh in more of like a shoe gaze, like indie.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:52

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:53

You've kind of dived into like that genre, right? Right. Talk to us about that project and the motivation behind that.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:58

Totally. Um, I think well, the splice thing was interesting because there was kind of a need in like the loop community of like there's so many drum loops that are like like drummer loops that are super cool as drummers, but I had so many songwriter friends being like, dude, I there's nothing that I can just like there's no country loops on Splice that I can just use. So the whole idea with that was like, well, I should partner with them and try to make stuff that's like a little bit more just usable in a song that you can just drag in and like or write a song to that's you know just a little bit simpler for the everyday like singer-songwriter.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:34

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:34

So that was kind of the idea with that stuff. Um, and then I think at the time there wasn't really like a huge presence of country specific drum loops on splice. So yeah, that was fun to do that, and I think it got a lot of use. And for me, it was like, you know, I think I was able to meet a lot of different producers because they might have used my splice pack for something, and then we're like, who made this pack? And the nice thing about the splice thing is I was specifically like, I'd love for my name to be on it because if I don't make any money or whatever, not that it's all about money, but you are licensing something to a company that now the whole world has access to it. So you are saturating, you're you're maybe like watering down your presence a little bit, doing stuff like that, which is an opportunity cost to a certain degree. But I was like, well, if I can put my name on it, if it does really well, it's gonna come back to you, at least I will get to make connections with people. And if people want to work with me, they have an idea of what kind of thing I do. So that to me was super valuable is just meeting more people. Yeah, I think that's a big reason why I was so busy last year and this year is because I think that was kind of like a really big net to cast for people to kind of become aware about stuff, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:40

So if you feel like now, like do you do you think uh these sample packs, I feel like everyone's got a sample pack now. That's like become the cool thing to do if you're a session drummer and a national. It's like here's my pack.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:49

I I encourage everybody, I mean, even if you think even if you're like, oh man, I don't think I have good gear or my room isn't super treated, or you know, I don't have any expensive mics or whatever. I'm not, I think everybody should do it because it's not like one person makes a sample pack and it's done. And it's like, all right, cool. It's like people want the beauty of recording music is everybody has a different flavor. And I think that's valid. And sometimes people want to work on stuff from someone that like their friend made it or whatever, you know. And I think I would encourage anybody, like just start small, make a pack with like five tempos and do like 10 loops per tempo and learn how to edit it yourself because you'll learn a lot about editing, practice, right? Mixing stuff and do one-shots and have it for sale for 10 bucks. You know, I'm not saying like the thing is you're not undercutting a competition because it's just you're creating like here's like a little taste of something that I would do, and you can make a little video about it and it's fun. Or, you know, what I did originally when I made packs is I just made a pack and I sent it to producers that I had written with or I knew prior. And I was like, hey, like here's kind of some tones I'm working on. If you want to use any of this stuff, like I'm sending this to people for free just because I think you're cool. And I think that was a good way for me to kind of establish some relationships with people is like it's almost like a business card of like, yeah, here's a free sampler of like the tones I'm working on. And that might make you more money, not that it's about money, but that might have a way better return on investment than being like, all right, I just spent a week working on this sample pack and I hated editing it, and now I'm gonna sell it for 50 bucks and no one buys it. And now you've created this negative feedback loop of working on something and you're frustrated about it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:28

So sometimes you have to give something away. Yes. In in order, in order to you can get something else back, yes, in in a roundabout way. It's it's weird.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:40

That is the music industry in a nutshell, though. That is and you have to be careful not to give it all away. Yes. And it's a lot of it's not even just your time, it's your soul, it's your energy. It's you know, we are artists. We have even as you know, side men or whatever, it's like we all are in here because we're creative to a certain degree. So it's like you have to give something away. And it's like, all right, how much how much percentage do I have? You know? But you're you're so right about that. It's like I sometimes that's a way better way of thinking about it. Yeah. Like, what can I get from people? Is it gonna make me money if I make a sample pack? Like, is it worth it? And it's like, that's not what you should be thinking about. It's like, well, what do I have that people might actually like to use? And you know, if you it's like almost like just like being an optimist about it, I think is helpful.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:24

Opportunity for sure.

Sample Packs Explained

SPEAKER_03 1:25:26

Um, for the young drummers listening, I mean Nate and I know what you're talking about, but when you say sample pack, kind of go into like for sure. What is a sample pack? What is a one-shot? What is sort of like best practices for creating a sample pack?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:37

Yes. I think um, so like a sample pack or a loop pack, they're two different things. Like a sample pack is ideally like one shot. So like I'm a pro a producer and I have my drum machine and I've loaded in a kick sample, a snare sample, whatever. It's just one shots, but a one shot could be like me opening a can or whatever, you know. And you could maybe put that in your your just like any sample pack any singular sound. Yeah, it's any singular sound or a combination of sounds, you know. If maybe it's like a hi-hat and a snare being hit at the same time, it's just any one single note played. You just opened up Nate's brain.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:12

I just had man, I just had an idea. I'm gonna keep it, I'm gonna keep it to myself. I don't need to totally derail things.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:23

It's like empty crashes with like a hi-hat being played at the same time. Five drums set it. Here's all the toms together. Here's me dropping all 20 of my snares onto my concrete floor. Here's me with using the phone.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:34

Here's me trying to imitate that scream from from the Macarena. You know what I'm talking about? I think so. There's like a scream in the background.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:45

Yeah, that that could be a one-shot pack. Totally. But with a good example, yes. So that's a one-shot. And then a loop or a sample, I guess like a loop pack would be more like you're performing stuff. And I think if you're thinking about doing something, I think you do both because a lot of people can just hit drums singularly and make samples, but your identity is kind of your relationship between your limbs and your space.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:08

Here's a groove.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:09

Yeah, and it's it's you know, it's like it's it's the combination of yourself as a player. Yeah. And that's what a loop is, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:17

Any any groove that you just I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you up. I'll say it again. Yeah, I'll say it. I'll say it again. Any uh any groove that you would just play, that's like it's a it's a statement you're making. For sure. I've that's how I feel about it. Like, well, you sit down and play a thing, like, well, I play it because I like it. Totally. So here's let me just record that.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:37

And everybody can do the the simplest beat. And everybody's gonna record it differently. Yep, different space. Everybody has differ that you're using different sticks, you're holding it to different places, your mic placements are different. So there's never it's never gonna be an oversaturated world, I don't think, because there's you're always gonna have your own flavor to it, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:58

Yeah. No, I was gonna ask. Um are you also doing different dynamics, especially with the one shots?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:03

Yes. I generally do like three I I mainly like I mainly do loot packs. I tr I try to not that I won't do single shots, but the single thing, I'd rather have someone make something that's like, oh, that's like in drummer playing versus oh, that's my favorite snare drum that like I love playing on records and anybody can just sample replace their drums with to me. If you were at not worried, but if you wanted to like maybe preserve a little bit of like the sauce of what you do, I'd say leaning into the loops is a better way of making sure that your identity is there rather than like here's like that snare that actually uses the most, and now I can just put it on every single production of mine. Right. So I'd say like in the world of it, it's probably better to do more loop packs because you're really focusing on your feel and your overall makes sense tones and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:51

So you're doing sing uh single one-shots, you're doing grooves. What about do you ever do fills in these packs?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:56

Yes, yeah. I'll do fills and yeah, it's like maybe there's like three fills per tempo. So ideally, when I first started making packs and I didn't know what I was doing, the idea was that it was like this isn't just a drum loop that's just exists outside of time and space. It's like if you were writing a song, specifically in Nashville or any place where there's a writer room happening, like person on the laptop can pull up this, you know, this package of all right, we're at 90 BPM and here's the verse groove, but this feels like a chorus, and this feels like the bridge, and there's fills that can connect them. And then there's also here's a this is a good thing, it's like maybe called a topper or something. Like, here's the same groove, but there's no kick in it. So maybe you're layering that on top of a different program drum part, but now you have this hi-hat and snare relationship happening on top of it. Yeah, there's just different levels of options and stuff that you can give people. And a lot of times I found that people will use loops either on Splice or they'll use stuff that they bought from me personally or whatever, and they'll use it in their song and they're like, wow, like this has been really awesome, but it's so close to being a finished idea. But I think we want you to now play this again because there's just it's feels really real and human, but like we're missing a couple fills, and we kind of want just want to see if there's just a tiny bit more variation in it. So a lot of times, like I've found like a lot of tunes that I'll play on are like are loops that I played, like I'll be in a session and I'm like listening, like, I think this is my drum loop.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:25

That that's like that should give you so much gratification. It's like that that's why I did it. It's like here's the free trial of my playing. If you like it, if you really want the full thing, like I'm available, you know. I know here's the breadcrumbs. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:36

Yeah, and sometimes it works, or sometimes they use the loop and it comes out and you didn't play on the song, and that you're an unknown drummer that played a. I'm sure there's so much stuff now that's just out on the internet that's just that's just has your loops, you know, and I'll never know. And it doesn't, and that's the whole thing, is you like that's giving away without expecting something in return. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure about this, but I'm pretty sure that like choosing Texas, that really big Langley song. I think if I remember correctly, I'm pretty sure that was my loop that was on the demo. And I don't know if that's why I was there.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:06

I was gonna ask if that's you.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:07

Yes, that's yeah, but uh in this session when we were tracking, I was I I think that they wrote it with that loop. So that's like a good example of being like, Oh, I'm so glad like this worked to create this vibe, and now like I'm here tracking on the song and like replacing this loop. Like this is awesome. Like, there are instances where like that kind of became a part of the sonic identity, and then I got to like be a part of it in like in the flesh, you know. So that can be really cool. Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:34

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:34

It'd be hilarious if it wasn't, but I'm like 99% sure. But in my brain, like, wait, no, it's not. You didn't do that. But I'm yeah, I'm pretty sure we can ask.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:43

Well, we're getting Howie on here soon. Yeah, we're tight with Alec Parish, of course, is now drum tech and doing players. Oh, sweet, yeah. Super cool. Yeah, that's awesome. You see that? No, no, no. That's his new gig. Oh, no kidding. Yeah.

unknown 1:31:54

Well, that's more.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:55

Um do you tight with uh Jake Reed? You know, Jake?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:57

Um, we've never, I think we've talked online a little bit. Yeah, I was just thinking of other guys that's like. I feel like he's crushed the the sample package.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:04

He's got like the super dead drums pack that we've all played.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:06

Oh my gosh, and like every time I open my phone, it's like the the the ad, and I'm like, like this must like be killing it because you you put ads in it and everybody sees it.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:16

Yeah, right. It's like you know, we're getting back to like I mean he's very clearly defined his identity and like yes, for sure. I think he has other packs that are not super dead drums. Right. Now it's like if I want that sound, I'm gonna I'm gonna go to go to him.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:27

Yeah, totally. And it's like and it's a really well packaged and professional version of that thing that you could be like, oh well, I mean, the Beatles did dead drums in the 60s. Why does anybody need to do it again? It's like that's a really good example of everybody can have their own special take up on something that you could be like, oh yeah, like people have been doing dead drums forever. Why do you need to make a sample pack about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:46

But oh, that's that's crazy. Uh would you say that we have enough Beatles songs?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:52

Well, like you you wouldn't want to hear something else that reminded you of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:55

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's an interesting take. Yeah, exactly. That's it, yeah, that's a good way to put it. So it's like I I just think in general, it's like there's the more the merrier. It's like, let's all make stuff, and you know, I think it's it's amazing, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:08

Like that, yeah. Couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:09

There's a lot of songs put being put out every day, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:12

So it's like, you know, back to the uh high tides raises all ships kind of idea. For sure. You have all these sample packs, and they're all they're all gonna get used at some point, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:20

Totally. And I even just like with drummers and stuff, and like every drummer, it's such a physical instrument, like everybody has their own thing. Like, I truly believe that. And I don't think there's like, oh, well, they're just that's one thing about the recording industry that's interesting, is like it seems like there's like a select group of people that work on a lot of the stuff. And I think part of that's just due to the nature of the thing. But I'm like, I just think there's so much recording that happens in people's houses now and and studios that aren't commercial studios. And I just think like if you're recording a drum set and you're catching the air around it and you're putting the drums in the computer or whatever, like it's not another programmed thing. It's not, you know, it's not a Suno demo. It's like we're all like, we're all doing this really amazing thing, and recording a drum set is such a crazy complicated like phase relationship in the room. It's it's like like we everybody should do it, I think, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:12

So everybody get a get a setup and start recording.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:14

That's

Record Yourself More

SPEAKER_03 1:34:15

good advice for just a young drummer. You would say just start, just get some.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:17

I'd say, even if you're like, dude, playing sessions, because I think so, like I always thought, like, oh, playing sessions, like that's what everybody wants to do. And there's a lot of people that like playing live more. And I'd say, even if you're like, man, I want to move to Nashville or LA or whatever, and I want to get a big gig and I love the energy of playing live, I would still say record yourself because you're gonna learn so much about your playing under that microscope, even if you play live, you know. So I think it's always worth it. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:45

We've talked to so many drummers that are maybe on a touring gig, but they come they come home and they record now, and yeah, they've been able to take you know different skills from both and for sure improve both uh both skill sets.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:57

Yeah. I mean, it can be also brutal to always record yourself and be like, I'm so aware of my flaws. Yeah, but that's how you get better. It's like the gym, you

Flaws vs Tendencies

SPEAKER_01 1:35:06

know? It's like what do you consider your flaws? Ooh, good question. I think, and this would be I would spin that around and say, I don't know if any of them, not to be like woo-woo about it, but I don't know if any of them are flaws necessarily, not just for me, but for anybody. It's just tendencies of certain things that you would do that maybe wouldn't achieve the result you'd want in the world that you're being hired in. So for me, I would say like I noticed like there's certain times, like I think any drummer can feel this way. Like, there's certain times when if I change a pattern, I might lean back on certain things, or I might lean forward on certain things, depending on, you know, and that could be like, oh, well, that's bad. You're a bad session drummer because you played a fill and you dragged, you know, as you went from the snare to the toms to the floor tom, the literal tension of the drum head rebounds at different rates. So when you go duck duck uh ducku dug go, you literally slow down because the tension of the drum heads rebounds slower, and therefore, like that's a pretty natural thing. But technically that's bad. And it's like, well, if you're playing live not on a click, that chorus would hit so hard because there's just a little bit of anticipation. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's an important thing is don't frame everything as like I suck or whatever, which you know, I think we all know how we suck in certain ways, and it's true. But if you really break it down, it's like, well, why don't I like that about my plane? And it's like, well, I live in the world where I'm recording to a click and there's a bunch of programmed material, and I need to actually line up with the grid. Therefore, that natural tendency that isn't bad or good isn't helpful within the realm of what I'm being hired for, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And it's a good way of sidestepping the negative self-talk, yes, you know, which I'm not great at all, always, you know. And I also picked a career where being super like vigilant and self-critical actually makes you better. So like that worked for me because I am actually like pretty hard on myself as a player and stuff. But in the recording world, being willing to like kind of beat yourself up does make you better in that way.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:09

You want to be, you have to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:11

You do, but I think it's also good to like recognize like I think there's a lot of stuff like that that you could, you know, you could reframe it in a way to where you could the face value thing could be like, yeah, well, I rushed or I dragged or or whatever, or like I did this thing wrong. But if you really think about it, there's a natural explanation to why you feel that or that thing happens. That's not good or bad. It's just like it's just explainable, I guess, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:37

Would you just say you're a perfectionist when it comes to recording?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:40

I mean, I don't think I don't think I'm a per a perfectionist because I think the nature of recording drums is you don't actually want it to sound perfect. And I'm lucky that I feel like when people hire me, they're not actually looking for perfect. Because you know, and this is not like negative self-talk, but like I don't think I'm the most like like I said, it's like I feel like I have a certain swing to certain things I play, and like I I I'm definitely accurate and I can play to a clicker really good and stuff, but I don't think that's my strong suit. And I I feel like people, I can only, you know, I'm maybe trying to project what I think people think of me, but I think generally like I'm not getting hired to like sound like a robot.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:17

Right. So I I freaking I'll just say I love your feel. I've gotten to see you play guys, yeah. I think maybe just once. Um I was where was that? Oh, the Easter room. Oh yes, I love that place. Which is also the best floral rap on a kit. Dude, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:29

Like a Mapex Mars. I love that. I love those kits. They're awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:32

Yeah, and I love playing there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:33

But yeah, I think, yeah, it's like uh what was the original question we're talking about?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:38

Perfectionism um weaknesses you were asking about.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:40

I think like realistic perfectionism and pushing yourself and being willing to be very, you're not gonna, you're not rewarded for being like, oh, that's good enough. Like you definitely want to be a perfectionist, but also to a certain degree, you have to let that stop and say, someone recorded, someone wants a live, like real drummer to play on this, and it's not gonna sound like it's programmed. Yeah. And I've had stuff, it doesn't happen all the time, and I feel like people hire me for stuff that generally I can achieve very well. But I think maybe there's like been two tracks in my life where someone hit me up to do a track and I listened to it, and it was such like you know, early 2000s, like huge, like nickelback sounding drums, and they're like ultra programmed and smashed and huge sounding. And I was just like, I can try to do this, but I'm not gonna like I'm not the best at that. Yeah, I might not be your guy for this. I think you're gonna probably be disappointed, and like I can try to do it, but like I just think there's so many other people that can do a better job of that, or literally know how to use Steven Slate trigger and will trigger drums over there and make it sound like that. But I'm just not gonna do that today because that's just not my bag.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:50

So I think like that's it's good to explain.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:53

Know your bag.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:54

Yeah, know your bag and not like now if they're like, no, I really want you to try, then it's like, all right, well, I'll try and now I'm gonna learn. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:00

And you know, and that's awesome. And that's something I I would love to keep getting better at all aspects of it, but it's good to save people time and also save your energy of like, okay, am I gonna like grid every take today, even though I don't really know how to grid stuff? And am I gonna like download Steven Slate trigger and like get some huge sounding samples? And like, am I gonna do this today? Or am I just gonna work on a different track that someone like just wants me to do this? A little bit more in my wheelhouse. Right. Not saying I'm not gonna play some big rock drums. Like, I do I love doing that, and I get to do that a lot, but I'm like, there's certain times where you're like, oh, like this is this is maybe a little bit outside of the like realm of possibilities of what would make sense with my time, I guess. Sure. But yeah.

Overdubbing Cymbals

SPEAKER_03 1:40:40

Something unrelated I wanted to ask about. Um I've been seeing um, and I'm not super into the session world, it's something I want to get into more for sure. But like I've definitely seen some professionals do uh you know, like record um, let's say just the kick and snare of a groove and not the hi-hat, or like just record things separately. Is that something that you do? And what do people do that?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:00

Ooh, that's a great question. Um, I think if someone hit me up and said, hey, I we want a drum sound that sounds almost sampled, we want this larger than life sound, a lot of times what you're doing is you're compressing a lot. So you hit a drum, like it snare drums, you know, it's its decay is about this long. Kick drums maybe longer. It just depends on how you have it tuned. But a symbol is all high-end and it just goes. So a lot of times I think like a good happy medium, if someone was asking me to go for like a bigger rock sound, what I would start with is well, let's sacrifice playing symbols as part of the take. And then that way you can compress the drums and make them feel a little bit a little bit bigger without having to use samples.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:42

So it makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:44

Now, overdubbing hi-hats would just be a feel thing to me. Because I think as a drummer, part of your whole deal is like playing this. You're playing, I mean, the drum set is a collection of instruments. It's not just it's not a piano. Yeah, it's you know, it's not an instrument, it's a bunch of it's a bunch of instruments. You got some metal metal circles. Hey, fun fact, a piano is a percussive instrument. We we count piano players, yeah. But um, but yeah, so I think like playing hi-hat separately, you might be able to achieve you are almost changing the dynamic or the relationship of your limbs by doing something separately. I see.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:21

I don't feel like that happens less usually, but so just it's just another intentional choice for a specific for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:26

And sometimes that's like a really cool effect of like, well, we want it to kind of sound like a drummer, but like if we overdub hi-hat separately, it's gonna have a different feel. And you know, it just it's something that you can experiment with, I guess, which is fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:40

Well, you can you can do outrageous things that you would that would be either either air quoting impossible or you know, whatever, very, very challenging to do. Like even just even just on a dynamic level, yes, very very, very challenging to do. For sure. But if you're if you're doing it one instrument at a time, it's you know child's play.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:01

Yeah, totally. And and you might be opening yourself up to a different sonic palette. Yes. And that sometimes, you know, as much as I'd love every drum recording I do to be like, man, we used Glenn John's as the overheads in a kick mic, and it's just like we push the pre's and it's just sounds so natural. There's some times where it makes sense to build a different sound, and maybe you sacrifice a little bit of the like, this is all one take and it's super loose. It's like sometimes you're the sound is maybe more important than the drum

Session Communication Skills

SPEAKER_01 1:43:31

part. And I think that's a big thing, is like there's a lot of amazing recordings where the drums on the record are the producer playing, and they're maybe not a full-time drummer, but they might make a better part because they're like, Well, I know what the vision of what I want. It's less about like, oh, what drum part are you gonna play? It's more like, and I'll ask people this on sessions that have a demo part that sounds good, or they have a song that's beautiful that doesn't have drums yet. And I go, I don't say like, what do you want me to play? I say, What what do you need drums to do to this song? I'm here and I'm playing on the song. What what's missing, or what do you want to achieve by adding a drum set? Because we could sit here and clap our hands and you have a backbeat, and that's not a drum set, and you don't need me to do that. But so, like, what what's the drum set gonna provide in this?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:22

Yeah, I love that. It's a subtle uh mentality change. Yeah, you would never ask the artist, like, oh, what snare do you want? But you'd ask him what sound do you want? Yes. And then you're gonna make those intentional choices.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:31

Yeah, and that's that's one of those skills that's not uh a drummer skill necessarily. Like, I don't think session drumming is always about like how good of a drummer you are. Sometimes it's like how good are you at interpreting someone's vision and how can you kind of funnel that into what you do? Because they're not a drummer, and sometimes you can be with an artist, and the really easy thing to do, especially if you the longer you're in the in the game, you're gonna keep getting older, but there's still gonna be artists that just started writing songs and they're amazing, and they don't they don't have as much experience as you do talking about music. And you can sit there and be like, oh, they don't even know what a hi-hat is. Like this kid doesn't know how to describe something. Or you could be like, How do I get better at interpreting what someone that has an artistic vision? How can I get better at interpreting what that means instead of just being like frustrated that they they don't like? Do you want eighth notes or sixteenth notes on the hi-hat, man? Just tell me. And they're like, What's a hi-hat? And like you're you're being kind of intimidating, and and this is their first time in the studio, and now like they're shutting down.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:35

And is it so much of it is uh interpersonal relationships? Totally, yeah. It's like skills, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:40

Yes. So there's there's so many things that aren't drum set skills that matter, maybe more than playing the drum set, but you gotta be ready to also like play well. So it's it's it's an interesting career, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:53

It really is, yeah. Gotta learn to communicate, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:56

And you get and there's like little, little like you know, you start picking up, especially with like the guys that have been doing it a long time. Like, I will watch them interpret something that I have no idea what it means. And an artist will say something, and I'm like, what does that mean? And then like someone's like, just play the ride symbol on the bridge.

unknown 1:46:12

I'm like, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:13

Again, same, again, parallel um back to like live drummers. It's the same thing, right? It's like some of those guys are not the best drummers, but they're they get the job done, but they're good, a good hang, obviously. We talk about a lot. They it's they can interpret what the MD wants, what the artist wants. Absolutely. So important, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:30

Yes, yeah. And that's that's a you know, it's not it's we're working in the arts, so it's not all about just who's the best at the thing. It's a people business. We're not just like it's not just like I don't know, like what a different yeah, it's not just like a business where you're just making money and whoever makes the most money wins. It's not like it's not as qu tangible as that. There's a lot of swirliness about the about the job.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:56

Totally. There there are some objective measurements you can take and and almost none of them are the thing that's going to get you hired. Exactly. Like almost almost never. Right. But though those might be like tough sometimes. Oh, very, it's very tough. Oh, we're so hard on this. Why why aren't I on yes? Why aren't I on records?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:17

And that's totally a fair thing. Like the thing is is like though that make it totally makes sense. I feel that way. Sometimes I'm like, man, I'm like a lot of it's just like luck multiplied by years applied and effort.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:29

You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's well, what do you know? The harder, the harder you work, yeah the luckier you get. Yeah. That's true. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:37

You gotta max out the luck stat in the video game of life. Yeah. That's right. We're getting deep here. I love it.

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SPEAKER_00 1:47:44

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Home Studio vs Commercial Rooms

SPEAKER_03 1:48:25

Well, I mean, maybe to tie some of this together, I had written down like we've kind of touched a little bit about like commercial studios versus the home studio world. Um, the competition in Nashville, especially. I want to discuss that a little bit. And then the future of you talked about Suno, like AI. Right. Oh, yeah. So I want to touch upon like maybe all three of those topics, if you can. Yeah. All at once. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:46

Okay, all right. Rapid fire. Well, I will say something that's beautiful about home recording is that sometimes you have more time to go down the rabbit hole of a tone than you would if you were in a studio tracking, especially if it's a tracking day where it's a full band. If there's a full band, I'm not gonna sit there and be like, I'm not gonna press the talk back and be like, what snare do you guys like? It's like the amount of conver, if every this is another thing. If you want like an easy tip for session plan that I've learned that I could pass along that's you know pretty foolproof, but just don't talk very much. You know, and though right now we're talking a lot, and like this is the important thing. You know, it's super easy, and I'm like this. So I'm saying speaking this from experience and something that I've learned. It's easy to be eager because you want to do a really good job, and you're stepping on the talk back and be like, hey, did you guys like what I did in the bridge? Do you like the snare drum? Is the snare drum right? Is it like and you're you want to apply all this stuff because you care, and that's actually a really beautiful thing. Yeah. But imagine there's five different players there's an artist, there's an engineer, there's an assistant, and now there's ARs in there, and they have a feedback, and you're at Blackbird, and time is the time. Every minute is a lot of money, you know, and you're multiplying that by this. Many people, if every single session player on a session pressed the talk back after every take and ask the producer what they thought about what they did, the plot plot twist, the producer can't listen to every single thing. You're partially there because someone trusts you to just do the right thing. Right. And they're not going to police every single single thing you do. So there's a lot of times when I have to just make a judgment call of, man, I think this snare has got to be the right thing. And we're going to get four takes on the song and move forward. And I just hope it is. And there's a risk. And that's a risk. You have to take the risk now when you're at home. You might actually have the luxury of time to really dial in something that you like. And you might do four takes and send it to somebody. And they go, Man, the snare's like a little bit too long. And I want to change the kick. And I also want to change this pattern. And you can actually curate the parts and the sound and the performance a lot more at home, which I think is really awesome. Not saying that you shouldn't have the ability to run and gun and do the live band cutting thing. I think that's a super important skill. But sometimes you can get a better sound at home because you have more time to read it.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:03

You have that luxury to if you're going to waste time, it's your own time. Right. So you get away.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:07

So and that's sometimes why I like having a producer come over because then I there's still an enforced like someone's here. Like I can't just like stop after the second verse and be like, I I was rushing. It adds a little bit of the pressure. But uh that's good point. Yeah. So that's home studio versus recording in studio. I think both are important.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:26

How about just quick, like in terms of like specifically to Nashville? I mean, yeah, since you you've been here what, like seven years?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:31

Yeah, seven or going on eight.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:33

Yeah, I mean I'm sure you've even seen like some of these studios closing, which is obviously like pretty sad to see.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:39

But you know, what do you what are your thoughts on like the the evolution of the home studio and yeah, I I not to not to minimize studios closing because yeah, what every time a cool room closes, you lose a room sound, you lose a history there, you lose a vibe. And that stinks. But I will say, like in Nashville, the amount of people that are building like legit like ADUs in their backyards with amazing gear and their you know engineering there and stuff, like for every studio we're losing, we're also gaining stuff. It's a good positive way to think you know, you could definitely be like, oh man, I remember back in the day you could go to Fletcher's and Donaldson, get pizza there, and now it's gone. It's like that's like the legendary spot, but like you could be bummed out about that, but also like, but hey, there's also like new spaces, new places that are opening up, and like right we're building just less like light new spots, yeah, totally. So you have to like have reverence for the old spots and like omni closing, for example. Like that room was so awesome, such a cool location, and whatever like park happy lot or whatever dumb things going there, like that crush is park happy. Oh my gosh, I know it's no one's having truly, yeah. Yeah, hot take also, like just let me pay X amount of money to just have a one-time pass, just so I don't have to spend the time doing the thing. Yeah, you mean like, oh, here's my license plate. It's not even the money, it we're not complaining about the money. It's the well, I don't want to go stop at a local business now because I'm gonna have to get out my phone again. Yes, I've been getting my phone out all day.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:05

I'm so sick of having to get my phone out for fucking everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:08

I don't want to get my phone out, and and now I'm not gonna go to the local coffee shop because I'm gonna get a ticket if I go in there and I have to get my phone out. And it's I I think uh I don't know if Lemuel's been on this, but I think he told me the phrase death by a thousand cuts. It's not he said that on our show. Yes. Well, I'm stealing that from him, but that's what it is. And I'm like, I just don't want to get my phone out. Let me pay the park happy subscription for a year, whatever it is. Like, I will gladly just not ever worry about that. Yeah, that's a good point. But that being said, so yeah, when a studio goes and there's a parking lot there, my blood boils. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we have to look at the positives, otherwise, yeah, I would hate living here because or any city, like I you know, lived in Portland and I watched that city get gentrified and things change and stuff, and it's like you have to you have to still appreciate the good things about stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:53

So yeah, and again, like look, you know, the opportunity for all these younger drummers to be able to kind of start their careers in their backyard. Yeah, it's versus like the bar the barrier to entry is so much lower now. Yes, right, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:04

Which I think that rising tide, you know, it's it's that concept. Yeah, it's a lot better to for everybody to be able to develop the skill rather than, you know, it'd be like if you wanted to be a fighter, you know, a fighter plane, you know, jet pilot or whatever. You can't just go out and buy a jet plane and practice. So it's a little bit harder to get into that career. So there's less people that can do it. And you know, people are incredible, but it's like a very niche thing. Yes. But and I think back in the day it used to be that someone needed to pay for a recording studio, and now you can set up your two-input scarlet and put a, you know, you know, like an audio technica above your kit in a kick mic, and you can start learning about phase relationships. And I think that's pretty awesome. So go on there.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:45

Shout out to our our lovely sponsor, Drumbox. Uh the other day I just went to drum, you know, drumbox, right? Yeah. I just I brought my this interface here, four inputs only, uh, stereo overpair uh overhead, and then you know, XY, and then kick snare.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:59

Yeah. And that was awesome. It's like you're getting better, and the and you can make a crazy record. Like the the records that were made on Mboxes that were just like a very early, like I think avid. It's like, yeah, the gear is not the limitation. It's obviously good to invest in gear and get better, but it's pretty crazy that we can just record stuff everywhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:18

Pretty rad.

Scarlett vs Apollo Debate

SPEAKER_00 1:55:19

I want to ask a specific question that we that you we kind of touched on a little bit earlier, and I think I I think I know your answer, but I just want to have a definitive response from the definitive. Uh so uh recently I was going back and forth with some uh drummer recording buddies and a few of my other engineer friends, and basically I was having a debate. Okay, should I get a Scarlet Focus right and start just getting some rep reps in, or should I save my money up for a while and get myself an Apollo? And good question. I want to I want your full take on this.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:58

Okay, full take, I will say, and this will apply not to those two things, and I can give my input on that specific thing. But what I'll say is if you're wanting to record for a long time and you're willing to make the investment, I always vote for buying individual things that do one thing only. So I buy a converter, but it also has preamps, and it comes with amp modeling sims and an auto-tune as part of it. Like that's great, but the value of it that's within that box, you can't take the preamps out of an Apollo and sell those. So you can buy, you know, Neves or whatever you want when you're ready to upgrade, if that makes sense. So there's a certain level where once you're really ready to like step it up, I would almost say, well, what you should do is you should buy a Motu that's just line ins. And that box, all it does is talk to your computer and it converts line level signal to digital and then back out. And those are, you know, pretty affordable. Like there's there's you know, you're not gonna blow the bank on something like that. And then start buying outboard preamps because the combination of an outboard preamp, once you're ready to upgrade, maybe you buy cheaper preamps to start. But once you're ready to upgrade, you're not going, oh, well, I have this Apollo and now I spent money on this Apollo that has eight preamps in it, but now I want to upgrade, but now I'm just not using the preamps that are in the Apollo, right? So having a modular system, you know, it can be very expensive to buy the top of the line of the line of each thing. But I can buy, you know, a pre uh converter by itself and I can get some cappies and I can get different flavors. And every time I want to change my preamps, I don't have to change the entire interface, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:37

It does.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:37

So if but if you're ready to start and you need to do it, I'd say the thing that you can buy with that has eight inputs, mic pre's, that connects to a computer, that's great. That's awesome. That's totally worth it. I'd say once you're ready to step up from a Scarlet or something like that, I think you start looking at standalone converters and preamps. Because you can buy a cool old Yamaha mixer with 12 preamps and a 20 uh MoTo 24i or whatever, and that's way cheaper than buying a Apollo that is gonna just depreciate in value. That old Yamaha mixer, it's gonna appreciate in value. And that's actually your the financial investment's better. And now someone comes over to your studio and you have this cool mixer next to you with EQs and you met a tech who modded it for direct outs, and now you've met a tech and you've learned more about stuff than just buying like, and I'm not saying Apollo's are bad, I think they're great. Yeah, I used them for a long time, but you're kind of you're losing a lot of the joy of recording by just having everything be in one rack space, and it does everything, you know what I mean? Yeah. So does that answer the question? That answers the question.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:40

That's a great answer, and hopefully you're now not regretting your purchase.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:44

I don't regret anything.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:45

Well, the funny thing is, yeah, he he already he he bought my old Scarlet.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:48

Yeah, but he was having that debate, and uh, and I was recommending and it was a heated I I had several engineer friends just be like, don't get the scarlet. And I'm like, a bunch of my friends who play drums for a living and record drums for a living are saying the opposite to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:07

I don't think it's a wrong or right answer, but to me, like buying an Apollo is like a couple grand, or you could buy a used Scarlet start working on it, and now you're buying better mics, right? That you're gonna hear things better from that. And then now when you're ready to upgrade your interface, you didn't buy a bunch of mid-level mics that you now have to upgrade because you bought mid-level everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:28

Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's like your first car, you're not gonna buy a Lambo. You'd you know, you guess something. Yeah, it's the sick though. It'll be sick though. It would be sick. But to bring it back to what we were talking about earlier, it's kind of it's interesting because I think the uh in terms of like buying the high-end stuff first, maybe. Right. But I think with audio, it's actually maybe not the case, is what I'm hearing. Right. You want you you want to maybe kind of work your way. It does depend. You don't want to be stuck, you could, as you said, buy something high-end that's not modular, and it's you're then you're kind of stuck with this really cool piece of gear, but then you know when it's time to advance. Well, I think advanced from that.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:01

I feel like I'm always giving bad or good analogies, but like if you were into cars, the perceived price, the price difference of like a budget vehicle, like a you know, like a Kia or something, to the luxury of a Lamborghini or something, the price difference is so major. But if you are into coffee and you go get a K cup versus a $6 pour over, you're getting probably a similar luxury spread for, you know, a $4 difference. And within recording, the perceived difference between a cheap budget made in China tube condenser to a U47 is a very large gap. But the perceived luxury or or or quality difference between a cheap dynamic microphone and an expensive one is actually not that much. So I'd say, okay, well, if you're gonna start investing in recording gear, you can actually buy the best dynamic microphone, the most vintage, you know, it's probably like a original SM7. And those probably go for around 1200, which you don't need to buy that. These are amazing. But there's certain areas where you can actually start getting things that you're gonna keep your whole life for not that much money. Yeah. But if I wouldn't start with like, all right, what are your tube condenser overheads? Like, save that one for later. That's the big spend. But you can go buy, save up a bunch of money and buy it, you know, a Kohl's 4038 or a buyer M160. And that's gonna be a mic you could keep your entire life, and you're never gonna need to upgrade that. You might want something different, but there's certain things like that where the price difference is, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:32

That's that's a great explanation of it. Yeah, yeah. That that perceived value difference is really important.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:38

Yes. Yeah, that's sick. And microphones are great because as we were talking about with taxes, this has been my hack, which is not like a plot twist, but if you love recording and you love music and and getting, you know, gear and stuff, you just it's all write-offs. So if you buy something and you use it, you you A, it's inspirational to you and people that work with you. It's you know something that you're learning, it's educational. You also use it for your job and it's a tax write-off. And plot twist, you buy an old microphone, it always goes up in value. It's like a stock market. It's like that there's never, I'm always like, just buy mics. Just buy as many mics, even though they're more expensive now, it's still a good, still a good deal.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:17

So I feel like it mics are always, even if you outgrow it, there's someone that's gonna be before you that's gonna buy that off you. Totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:24

Like wasted, yeah. Yeah, but like your interface, you know, your Apollo or whatever, all in one thing, like that's a piece of tech that will depreciate probably forever.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:35

Because it's not doing one thing. So good point. So yeah, stocks.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:42

Stocks, man.

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Aksel's Acting Debut (Springsteen Movie)

SPEAKER_03 2:03:44

Well, last thing that I had, at least on my list, uh, before we do some you know, more closing questions. I think we'd be remiss to not mention the Springsteen movie. Oh, yeah. Great. Of course, yeah. I mean, you you're only you were not only uh recording some of those tracks, but you're actually in the business. Yeah, yep. Incredible. Tell us about how that experience came up. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:01

Um, I work with Dave Cobb from time to time, and he, you know, obviously is an amazing producer, but he will also produce music for movies, and he asked me to record for it and also, yeah, he just basically called me to do that and he felt like that.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:15

Are you familiar with Davis Eden Nashville?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:16

Dave Dave Cobb is a Nashville producer and he's worked on like a lot of Americana stuff. Um he also did uh uh you know, like Chris Stapleton. I mean, he's he is he's you know like one of the biggest producers in the world, so it's working with him is like an honor, and it's also like holy crap, this guy's a legend. Yeah, and also plays all the instruments really well, and so it it working with him is always like a a treat and also like a huge learning experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:40

But um that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:42

So yeah, so he was um he was uh doing like the production of the music for that stuff, and he also put together the band to be in it. So I had to like do an audition where I basically in my basement pretending to do the scene, which is hilarious. Like, you know, you're like setting up this camera, and you're just by yourself, and you're like, one, two, three, four, like doing the whole drummer thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:02

I haven't seen the movie, I want to, it's been on my list as it came out. Who are you portraying?

SPEAKER_01 2:05:05

Bruce, now um, I I don't remember the name, but there's a band that Bruce would basically, you know, Bruce is from New Jersey and he would go to Asbury Park, and even as a star, he would go back to this place called the Stone Pony where they there's a you know a couple bands that would play and he would sit in and kind of get back to his roots. So the movies about Nebraska, which is interesting. That was a record that I loved like in high school because I would I was researching different records that were made on four track because I was being a Portland hipster kid, and I was like, wait, this I was like, I didn't really know much about Bruce Springsteen or listen to him, but I was like, wait, Bruce Springsteen made like one of the first lo-fi records. So I listened to a bunch of Nebraska, so it was really interesting that the movie is basically about that time period.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:48

Yeah, it's a very specific track.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:50

So um, but yeah, so basically it's this band that is playing. And the interesting part was we recorded it all live at the power station in New York City. And I remember Dave specifically when I was making the audition tape, I was being way too much of a session player, and he'd call me or or or voice message me and be like, hey man, I want you to get this part. These people aren't looking for you to play this well. They want you to, they want your crazy energy. It's a movie, yeah. It's a movie, and also you're recording for the movie. We don't want it to sound like a session player is playing Lucille really well. We want it to sound like you're hammered and you're playing as hard as you can. So when we did, when we recorded the music, we were in the power station, like Jeremy Allen White's there singing with us, and like the whole band is giant stacked, like huge amps. Every amp was on 10. And I'm trying to play a drum set like loud enough to compete with this stuff. Yeah, it was so loud, and like my hands were bleeding. Holy shit. Because it was you're playing this. So if you listen to because there's a there's a the soundtrack is on Spotify, you can just listen to the tracks. If you listen to it, like I'm totally like I'm not trying to play well. I'm trying to like play every weird fill. And like I'm trying to like hit rim shots on toms and like hit the rim on accident. Like, I'm not trying to sound like a I'm trying to sound like a fun bar band drummer.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:04

Yeah, the opposite of what you do. Yeah, was that a challenge?

SPEAKER_01 2:07:08

No, it was it was so fun. I mean, it was you know, it was obviously like this is crazy. Yeah, but the funniest part was, you know, you think movies are super organized, but they didn't tell me that when we were gonna shoot the stuff, that we would have to originally it was that we were gonna get pre-pro and then redo it live, but the scenes are actually us playing to our recording. So they didn't tell me that until like three days before, and I had to relearn all these parts of stuff that was not like it's like a through composed thing of like some random fill that was like kind of off or whatever. I had to like relearn it. Oh wow. So it was it was a pretty pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:41

It's pretty chaotic, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:42

Yeah, but honestly, so such a fun experience. What an amazing experience, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:45

It sounds like very full circle to you.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:48

Yeah, I was a big fan of that record, and yeah, so that was like the first time I've like been in a movie and so first I credits now. Yeah, so if you fly southwest, you know, they they have it on on there now. So next fly date, you know. That's a world team.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:01

You pretty much always do southwest, so I'm on a surplus plan.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:05

I'm gonna watch it. Sweet, yeah, sweet, yeah. But yeah, that was really crazy, crazy thing. And yeah, so didn't really ever see that on my bingo card of you know, and I'm like approaching it as a session, but I'm like, all right, what do I need to do? Like, what's my task in this movie? And my parents are like, You're in a movie. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I guess it's like pretty cool. Yeah, but I'm like very like not stoic, but like you just try not to like get too wrapped up in whatever you do. Just so I'm just like, oh yeah, like this is cool, I guess. Like it's you know, and they're like, No, you're like in a movie, like this is crazy. And I'm like, I guess it is pretty crazy, huh?

SPEAKER_04 2:08:36

All right.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:36

It's nuts. You don't have to share this, but like in general, was that a good paying gig?

SPEAKER_01 2:08:41

It yeah, I I'd say so. Basically, I didn't have a line or anything. I think once you have a line in a movie, you get paid like it's more like not life-changing, but it's a bigger thing. But for that, basically, the way I'm billed for that is it's like the SAG scale, which is the union for actors, and it's basically like you're billed as an a background singer. So there's a certain like base pay, and you can look it up, it's somewhere around like $5k a week for a week of work. But they basically, when they were hiring me, they were like, Hey, we're just gonna pay you two weeks of work maximum, but you're only gonna be shooting for like three or four days. So it's like super solid paycheck. I don't know if I'm I'll maybe I'll double check to make sure that I'm allowed to say what it is. So I'm for sure. I don't think I think that's all like public, like you can look up Sagrada. Standard rates, yeah. So I think it's fine.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:27

But I'm just curious, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:28

But yeah, so it was cool. Now, if I was like, you know, the camera panned in on me and I'm like, yo, hit it, Bruce. Like, then that's that'd probably be like way more, but I didn't do that. So so but you know, like, hey man, kick it off. And then it's like, all right, you just made four million dollars. So you just count it off. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:45

You should have been like, hey, I don't know if y'all know this, but music is a language. Well, actually, that means I'm having a quite quite a prominent line, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:54

I think the count off would have actually see if I had a manager or something, like I think they would have been like, hey, can he count off?

SPEAKER_03 2:10:00

He maybe play his best when he yeah, my client needs to count off.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:04

And then I could like I I could get on their the their health insurance because if you like have a line you can get on the health insurance, and that's like apparently awesome. But no, just out in the marketplace, baby. Yeah, again, that's very cool experience. Oh, yeah, it was awesome. So yeah, that was yeah, pretty crazy. So no other movies yet in the works. So, you know, it might have been a one or one and done.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:25

Any any derivative works from that? Is that anything else? Or no, not not yet. Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:30

You never know.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:30

You never know.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:31

I don't I don't think it will, but you know, I like what I do. Yeah, but that'd be hilarious if there's like I got a call and someone's like, hey man, I saw you for like that five-second clip in the Bruce Springsteen movie, and we need you to also play drums in this other movie with a drummer. That would be so funny.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:46

He could be the guy now, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:47

Or could or it could be unrelated to drums entirely, right? You could migrate a main character. That guy's got something.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:54

I could tell like when he didn't count that song off. He's got an image that we need. Yeah, it was funny though. They they they did the whole thing with like mesh heads, and then like the bottoms of the cymbals are so gaffed up. So you're like hitting, and they had period correct vintage drumsticks that are so weird to hold. Sure. And you're playing for like hours because they're getting different shots and camera angles, and it's like the the amount of like if I did this all the time, like I would totally like mess up my wrist because you're just hitting like a 16-inch crash that's completely duct taped and just like you can feel it just like resonated back in your hand. Oh god. But yeah, crazy, crazy experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:30

But um, yeah. Hey

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SPEAKER_00 2:11:32

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SPEAKER_01 2:12:14

Yeah, hopefully it's helpful. I mean, yeah, that's that's I remember like, you know, when I was coming up in the in the world of drums and stuff, I it always feels like it's so it's so collaborative, and drummers are so helpful with their like knowledge. And I remember listening to podcasts, there's different drum podcasts through the years, and I would listen to people that like lived in cities that I wanted to move to, and I'd listen to it and like try to get ideas about like the path or whatever. So it's like that's the fact that you guys wanted me on here, like means a lot. And of course, hopefully it was helpful to somebody out there.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:43

I I know for a fact it will be.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:45

It was helpful to me already. Okay, sweet. Good, yeah, good. Yeah.

Rapid Fire Questions

SPEAKER_03 2:12:48

You wanna just do some quick uh sort of rapid fire questions? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:51

Like Vader or Pro Market?

unknown 2:12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:54

I was thinking more along the lines of what's your least favorite continent?

SPEAKER_01 2:12:59

Ooh, least favorite continent. Hmm. I haven't traveled enough to really have a fairly yeah, I can't I can't say that because I haven't been to all of them yet. Okay, that's that's fair.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:09

Let me partial. Let's scrap, let's scrap that question. If we had to have one planet in the solar system become our enemy, which would you choose? Probably Pluto, just because it's small. Hates Plutonians, got it?

SPEAKER_01 2:13:21

Oh, wait, are they are there are there beans out there?

SPEAKER_00 2:13:23

Oh, there might be.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:24

Coffee beans? Maybe Mars. I don't know. Mars, I'd say let's be enemies with Mars because if that's where all the rich billionaire billionaires go to abandon us, they're gonna be our enemies anyway. Yeah, that's true. So I'll say yeah, Mars. Yep, yeah. Great answer.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:37

Favorite meal in Nashville?

SPEAKER_01 2:13:39

Ooh, favorite meal in Nashville. I'd say I do love hot chicken. So I would say uh He has been watching the podcast. Red 615 by Springwater. I don't know if you all have been there. I have been there. That place is fire.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:50

So good. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:50

Have you not been there yet? No, but I love hot chicken.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:53

I don't I I mean I can't do I do zero spice basically. Oh, I go, I go hard there. You go hard.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:58

This is this is my favorite spot. It used to be called Hog Heaven. I think it's a different ownership, but it used to be a barbecue place. It's right by the local. But it's just a little shack there, and it's it's amazing food. Red 615. Red 615. That's so good. Yeah, so good. Um, yeah, I mean, I could go on about food. I could talk about food for coffee.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:16

You drink coffee? Yeah, coffee spots, coffee shops.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:18

Coffee. I mean, I you know, if I had a little time machine, I'd just go back to the Portland brew on 12th South. I'd go hit Forks and I'd walk to the Portland brew and get a cold brew. The good old days. Yeah, I'd smoke American spirit on the porch while I was still smoking and have zero gigs and just be like, I'm in the city, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:35

I'm here. Portland brew and old forks is an elite. I know a percussion hall. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:42

I think like coffee-wise, like if I had to pick like Portland Brew's like amazing daily driver, cold brew, but I'm trying to think of like my favorite. There's this place called Petricor that's like a sump variant. Yeah. Oh, it's right. I I this is a hilarious TMI, but it's funny. But like some I got like a bunch of checks, like union checks stolen from my mailbox once. Like someone stole them and cashed them. So cool. Somewhere, yeah. So that sucked. So I had horrible. So I was like, well, the thing you need to do is you get a P.O. box. That way, like anytime you get paid, you go there. But that little spot is right by my P.O. box. So if I want a fancy little espresso, I go in there. It's pretty, pretty good. Yeah. And big, I like espresso. That's probably my favorite coffee drink because I don't know how to make it at home. So yeah, that's that's my answer. Or Osa cold brew. Osa, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:31

Other croissants, also.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:32

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:33

What non-uh musical hobbies? Ooh, non-musical hobbies. Take my next question.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:40

Not very many last year because I worked too much, and that's something I'll say straight into the camera is you have to enjoy your life. And if you make music your job and do too much of it, it you could just do anything. But back in the day when I had more time, um, I still like I ride motorcycles a lot, which is also dangerous. So maybe don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:57

Street bike or dirt bike.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:58

Um, I ride dual sports, so they're street legal, but they're dual purpose. So I'll go out to Hickman County where there's a lot of county roads that are basically like gravel or dirt, and they go through like creek crossings. So you can go out there and ride off-road, but it's you know, it's public land.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:13

That's sick.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:13

So I'll do that. I was really into fishing for a while. I don't fish as much now, but I I love going to the Harpeth and like floating with friends and you know, catching smallmouth and doing that, or like trout fishing and you know, the smokies is pretty fun. Used to mountain bike a lot also. All all these things kind of are like a little bit like at odds with drumming just because you like break your wrists, but cycling's good. I think that's that's a pretty fun one. Yeah, I I work on my bikes sometimes too, so I get a little mechanical with it. But yeah, that's probably like the main stuff. It's cool. High hike. I think it's good to exercise. You gotta like, you know, make up for all the hot chicken you're eating. That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:51

Well, yeah, a lot of outdoors activities, it sounds like it's probably a good balance from just being locked in your home studio.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:56

I think it's it's really healthy too. Some vitamin D. Yes. Yeah, which we haven't had a lot of recently. But this weekend though, yeah. Tomorrow's gonna be like 70. Yeah, all right, let's go. There's sometimes I'm just in my basement, I'm just looking out the window, and like, you know, I have people come over and they're like, all right, well, see you later. And then just in there sending their files, and I'm like, I should be, I should like figure out a way to be able to like do all the in that my invoice day should just somehow be outside or something like that. Outdoor computer. Yeah, I like that. I think it's starting new business. Oh my god. They're waterproof, outdoor computer, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:27

Somehow unstealable. It stays here no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:31

Yes, yeah, yeah. And it's just a stone that looks like a computer, but it doesn't actually do anything. You're like, no, no, no, I had to go work. And you're just like out in the sun, just chilling. You're like, no, no, I'm working. I'm answering emails. Carb, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:42

Carb and stone keyboard and a monitor out of out of granite. Yeah, you're like, no, this is Pro Tools. I'm working. Yeah, yeah. I'm just I'm just sending a couple files right now. Yeah, I'm on the clock. Where do you want people to find and follow you?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:56

Ooh, um, that's a good question. I'm on Instagram um uh at Axelco Drums, just in case you weren't sure what I do. Uh it's Axel Codrums. Um, I think that's really about it. I don't really have any other crazy things. I have a YouTube channel that's all old videos of me that like maybe I should delete because they're not good. But I think that'd be a good thing. Is like some of that stuff I'm not like you know, you you I've gotten better, but I'm like, I'll just leave all that stuff up there so you can go on there and see me playing jazz bad and in middle school. I love watching old videos.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:26

So that's that's out there if you want to creep on the your website I was looking at earlier, it's pretty cool. It's okay, and it's like very minimalistic, which is yes, which is that's it, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:34

Yeah, well, I I I'm like, you know, maybe like I I just like hate how many subscriptions there are. Yeah, so I have a Tumblr account that I've never used Tumblr, but you can host you can host a website on Tumblr and then attach a website link to it. Okay, so it's technically a Tumblr page, and I don't really know how to edit it or anything. So it's like kind of just this clunky basic website. It works though. I mean, there's nothing really on there that you're not gonna see, but I think the Instagram's probably the the place that you know I get on there. I'm trying to be on off the phone a little bit more, but I mean honestly, like even today I was like, hey, like my drum throne's creaky, and like had like 20 messages from people like telling me, and I think that's one of the coolest things about Nashville and just the drum community is like every like we all like kind of know how sick drums are and stuff, yeah. And it's it's the best. So I don't think I'll ever get off Instagram just because that's still there. I just have to wade through all like the crazy bad stuff or just like the absurd you know, just distractions or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:32

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:33

But but yeah, it's easy to get sucked in.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:35

Oh, it's terrible. I mean, I have like the brick app on my phone, and I like I I use that, but like you still gotta get on there to post. And it's like, of course, I'm like, it's not even bad stuff. It's like I get on there and I'm like watching like Volvo 240 rally videos, and like people are driving these old Swedish cars through the snow, and I'm like scrolling for hours. I'm like, what am I doing? Like, but this is sick, but also like I just just watch TV, yeah, just pick a show and watch TV instead of like your little micro TV or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:01

Totally, it's the same. It's maybe maybe worse.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:04

Yes, and then when you do it, you're contributing to the thing. Yes, then like maybe don't find me on Instagram, but you know, maybe just throw your phone away. Throw your phone away and just practice for a year. Hey, I'll be so jealous of you. Yeah, man. Love it. Yeah, that would be.

SPEAKER_03 2:20:20

Well, yeah, good way to end it, obviously, with the the national community, like you said, is so open and and obviously you're here.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:25

Yeah, and thanks for what you guys are doing because this is awesome. People are learning from each other, and yeah, we love that. I think it's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 2:20:30

So super glad to have you on, man. Yeah, thanks. Amazing. Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:34

Awesome.

Outro

SPEAKER_00 2:20:37

Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Drummers Podcast. If you liked it, please consider leaving us a review on the Apple Podcast app. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. For $5 a month, you can help support this dream and keep the ball rolling for us. Believe it or not, it's not free or even necessarily cheap for us to make this thing go. To sign up, go to patreon.com slash Nashville Drummers Podcast or click the link in our Instagram bio. All of your help is greatly appreciated.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:04

Visit our website, National Drummers Podcast.com, where you can listen to all past episodes, learn more about myself and Nate, and buy all your favorite National Drummers Podcast merch, including t-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, hats, and drum heads. Connect with us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube at Nashville Drummers Podcast. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.