The Secrets to a 500+ Episodes w/Matt Crouse of The Working Drummer Podcast :: Ep 208 The Rich Redmond Show

Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
For anybody moving down here, you are starting a

(00:02):
business, whether you like it ornot, which means you have to
have some magnitude of businessacumen, definitely a good sales
approach. That's what I thinkmade you rich, is that you
understood all that you knew youwere somewhat of a master
salesman. You could back it up.You had, you know, you didn't
have the clout yet. You only hadthe clout coming from Dallas and
what you did, but you certainlyhad the education, but you had
biz, you know, you had asalesmanship to you, you know

(00:24):
what I mean? And that made a bigdifference. So a lot of these
people that are coming in, yeah,you gotta do a lot of stuff. You
gotta spread yourself thin. Howmany bands did you play in one
year that didn't have ascheduling clock? 2929 bands.
What year was that? 1999 right?You remember the year you were
playing the lottery,
totally playing, right? 27 ofthose acts do not exist anymore,

(00:50):
but you still had this. Youknow, you can't win if you don't
play. This is the rich Redmondshow.
What's up, folks? Yep, it's thattime. It's time for another
exciting episode of the richRedmond show. We talk about
things like music, motivation,success. Drummers. We love the
drummers. They're everywhere.They're all over Nashville. This

(01:14):
is used to be guitar town. Nowit's drum town. Everybody's
coming from New York, LA,they're coming from all the
schools all across the nation,and they know that they can buy
land here, they could put theirkids through school, and they
can make a living playing thedrums. And we're gonna talk to a
great drummer today, but first Iwant to catch up with Jim
McCarthy. Jim McCarthyvoiceovers.com, Hello, Jim. How
was your holidays, buddy?

(01:35):
It was busy. I take that back.Maybe it wasn't so busy. It was
relaxing. We got to pull theplug a little bit. Yeah, we got
to smoke a cigar recently.Today, cigars, which is no one
has done that. I'm feeling veryMark Marin right now because
he's always bragging about howpeople bring him gifts. This is
the first gift that we havegotten on the show. Oh my god,
actually,

(01:55):
no, we had the keyboard player.He brought us some some gifts to
Ray luzier brought us somecoffee.
Oh, yeah, some nice coffee.Yeah. And I didn't have a
grinder, a bean grinder, so thenthe I gave the coffee to John
hull on the road, Paul, Paul,Brother Paul. Brother Paul.
Brother Paul is always actuallybrother Paul and his band, the

(02:18):
water boys, just had a big writeup in Rolling Stone magazine,
yeah, they put out this amazing,like, conceptual album that took
five years to make, and thecritics are all raving about it.
So he's a, what an amazingperson. Shout out to Brother
Paul. So positive, so positive.And I still have his you know
how he was in really into tea?
Yeah, he brewed his own tea. Istill have his tea pot. I had
him on my podcast, the mostlyMiddle Tennessee business

(02:40):
podcast, mmtbp.com, check itout. It's actually, he was on my
podcast.
You're a promo sexual he did thesame exact thing. Yeah, yeah.
Well, hey, listen, this is thattime of year in Nashville where
the stores are empty. Everyoneis robbed of milk and water,
everyone's bread, French toasttomorrow apparently. I mean,
it's crazy. It's that timeeverything's getting salted. And

(03:01):
it's also, if you're the kind ofperson that gets fever blisters,
maybe you kiss the wrong personin college, and this thing just
keeps following you around. I'msporting a major one right now,
so if you can't see it,
the concept of TMI,
I just kissed the wrong person.Jim, hey, this is a great
drummer. This is like timing is,you know what the secret to

(03:24):
comedy is? Jim,
timing, timing,
where's the splashable? So ourfriend, born and raised in
Columbus, Ohio, he graduatedwith a music business degree
from Capital University. He is aworking drummer. I mean,
actually, he has a podcastcalled The Working drummer
podcast. He's played all overthe 50 states. He's played all

(03:46):
the cool spots in Nashville, therhyme and the grand old Opry,
all the hipster rock and rollrooms. He's played with guys
like Mark Selby, Eddie, Raven,Billy Dean. We're talking
Michelle Wright, Julie Roberts.Recently, most current gig, he's
been playing with the front menof country, which is Larry
Stewart of restless art, RichieMcDonald of Lone Star. You know
Richie, our friend Tim rush lowof little Texas. And what else

(04:09):
do I want to brag. He works withproducers like Eric Fritz, Jim
Riley, um, we have that incommon. Great people. And his
podcast, the working drummer.Working drummer podcast, working
drummer.net. Started in 2015 hehas a sidekick, a co host, Zach
albeit, he does an amazing job.And today is very special,
because they're celebrating 500episodes. Our friend, Matt

(04:33):
Krause rich, What's up, buddy?What an intro. Man, good to see.
Yeah. Man,
oh, he's got some new soundsover
there. Oh, they're not new. Oh,I
just never used it. Jim finally
labeled the buttons toiletflush. Oh,
remember some of the old ones?Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, the
pooping and puking. Yeah,
we're children in adult skin.That's good. I'm feeling

(04:55):
inspired. You know, we weretrying to go organic and create
our own sounds, but I didn'tknow. What if you want virus,
man, I, you know, I you have toextend a thank by proxy to Kevin
rappilo, Angela Lisi, ourfriend, Chad Melcher, Canadian,

(05:15):
great Canadian, and I'm tryingto think of
these. Are all guests on yourpodcast,
guests on our podcasts that havebrought Justin Amaral was very
kind, brought, uh, somewonderful gifts that I'm just
I'm just blown away by theirkindness. And I'm and it's one
of those things that you learnthat you're like. It sometimes

(05:38):
only takes that one time to makea really good impression. Yeah,
I was in a band that worked witha an investor, and he sat down
and he told us, look, listen,after you do this gig, maybe
take a picture with the personand then develop the film, put
it in a frame, sign it. Thanksso much for hiring us. Send it

(05:59):
off. And we're all sitting theregoing, what? Yeah, and it's
those relationships, becausethis business, yeah. But
that was just, that was justvery thoughtful. And you brought
us some coffee, some blackcoffee, which is great. Thank
you so
much. Is there a possibility tomake a good second like a bad
first impression, but have a anability to make a better

(06:19):
impression on the second round.You believe in that? I
I believe that it's always bestto do it on the first time
around, because that isingrained in people's minds. But
I think a lot of peopleunderstand that everyone has a
bad day, and maybe you caughtthat person on a
bed. Yeah, here's another funnything to to your point that you

(06:40):
must have said about likesomebody sending you a special
gift which made an indelibleimprint in your mind. Check this
out. So I keep this card behindme, right? It's a picture of me
that is the most handsomepicture of you. Thank you.
Because, you know, as we getolder, it's much tougher to take
good pictures of ourselves. AndI was sitting in a hotel room.

(07:00):
We were going for orientation atmy daughter's college at UTC
Yeah, and I looked up, I wasgetting some work done, and I
looked up in the mirror from thelaptop, and I'm like, you know,
I actually kind of look good ifI could take a picture with
like, and I put up a thing onFacebook talking about, like,
you know, as you get older, youjust kind of, you're not in love
with some of the pictures youtake. As you get older and
older, I'm, at least me. I'mthat's probably because of the

(07:22):
weight, but, you know, I'mworking on it. And this one has
a great picture, and I just kindof put up a post about it. Got a
lot of cool comments. This guyprinted it out. I'm not even in
his industry. Yeah, he does likeF and I for training for the car
business. I pray that yourspecial day brings an abundance
of happiness. Is my birthdaycard. We went and sent me a

(07:44):
birthday card. Peace and truejoy to you today and always have
a happy birthday. My friend,velko to Kyiv, so velko, kudos
to you. Yeah, it's sitting on mydesk now. Yeah, it's like, I
will never it's like, Dude,that's awesome. I
need to start being more superthoughtful like that, you know,
because, you know, you know, wehave our companies, or, you
know, our company relationshipsthat we meet everybody at the

(08:06):
NAM show. And next thing youknow, you're endorsing a drum
company or something. And youwant, you know, at the holidays,
you might want to send themsome, maybe a some Harry and
David cookies or pears orsomething. But a lot of times
it's like, you know, it's aStarbucks card. You know what? I
mean, it's just like, let'sit's, let's just cover our
bases. I can buy everybodyeverything right now at this

(08:27):
counter, but it's not verythoughtful. I mean, this is
thoughtful.
Thank you. Well, and also, Icould, I had lunch with a friend
of mine years ago, and it wasour first time meeting, and he
sent me a handwritten thank you.Yeah, that showed up at my
house. Wow. And I've held on tothat. It
makes an impression, yeah,because somebody put effort into

(08:49):
that. Yeah, you know, it'scrazy,
you know, I used to do, and thisis some shame on me. I guess
things have either gotten busieror I've gotten lazier. Is that
every time I would do a drumclinic, I would write a
handwritten thank you card, andI would send it to the store so
you are thoughtful. Come on. Iused to do it, and now I'm now
just like, it's like a text,thanks so much for having me,

(09:10):
guys. I'll see you next time. Imean, I don't know. I think it's
just a product of the timeswe're living. Well,
yeah, well, it's easy to reallystand out, because if you do go
analog, you can certainly makean impression
Exactly, exactly. I thinkthere's so many times I have got
two young son, well, young adultsons, however, yeah, they're 19
and 22
oh my god, yeah. They don't lookold enough. That's a lot of cool

(09:32):
testosterone in the house. Man,
it is. But they're mostly out ofthe house. Yeah, one's getting
married. But anyways, I remindthem I said. It doesn't take
much these days to stand out. Itreally does, if it holding a
door, looking, not staring atyour phone, but paying attention
when using correct
grammar and just English in atext message and not text speak.

(09:56):
I like I'm trying to break mykids of that, not luv. Or, or,
oh, you know what drives me nutswhen people refer to people as
ppl? Pupil, Oh, yeah. Oh, thatdrives me
purple, all those little things.And I think that I see it paying
off, yeah, little things thatthey
do. So, man, you're a worldclass drummer. You've been here
26 years. You're in thetrenches. Everybody knows

(10:19):
Nashville is you know, a placewhere you come to move the
career floor forward. It's NewYork, it's LA or it's Nashville.
Of course, I always talk aboutthe tertiary markets. Those are
great your Austin's, your Miamisyour Seattle, they have great
music scenes. But really,there's, there's, like, three
big ones, and Nashville isbecoming the favorite, right?
Yeah, where it's like, wow. Youknow, I just moved here to

(10:41):
Spring Hill, Tennessee. I tookmyself. I used to live right by
you. Was this from our oldneighborhood, Starbucks corner.
So convenient, yes, soconvenient. But, you know, you
can, you know, for the moment,you could buy a home here, and
there's dirt and and, and, butat the same time, you know, we
could be, we could challengeourselves. There's classical
music here, there's rock androll music here, there's

(11:02):
contemporary Christian all typesof Country and Western music.
Busses are leaving this townevery single day. Songs are
being written right now. It wasa game changer for you to move
here right as far as like, whatyou were aspiring to do and what
you did, you did it, yeah, well,
it was, for me, it wasn't movingto Nashville. It was moving out

(11:23):
of Columbus, right? It wasmoving away from home, yeah?
Because, as we were discussingoff air before we started, I
went to school. I went tocollege, studied at a university
level in my hometown, capital,university
with Bob brouthype, brighthope.Brighthope, sorry, yeah, sorry,
Bob, because I saw Bob last twobasics ago, because I went to

(11:45):
one of those Yamaha sounds ofsummer drum set camps. And it
was Ed So Bob and SteveHoughton. They
used to do that every summer atCapitol University, every
summer, yeah. And when I workedfor Bob one summer, he's like,
Listen, if you just want to hangout at some of the sessions
while you're working for me,we'll, you know, do that. That's
how I afford it, to kind of hangout, yeah? So we both kind of

(12:08):
went there, right, yeah, right.And there was one other Ed Soph,
Ed Soph and
Steve Houghton. Steve Houghton,that was where Steve Houghton
was like, Hey, kid, you know,you're up tempo swing. You
gotta, like, double down onthat. That's an Achilles heel.
Like, you know, he wasn't, hewas great. He just cut to the
point your reading's Great.Style is great. Use it then to
get down to Cadet and get getthat going here, you know? I was
like, All right,
thanks, Steve, yeah, andColumbus is another one of those

(12:30):
towns with the talent. Isamazing. I was so inspired by so
many of the musicians and thedrummers that were there. Yeah.
I also, after college, startedworking at Columbus pro
percussion. Nice, Jim Rupp shopowner, yeah, okay, that's right
time. Okay, yeah, not anymore,but so I got to meet and got to

(12:51):
know all these players that Iwas aspiring to be more like.
And when you're a kid, you thinkall you got to do is get good
and you'll be successful. Well,we know that's not true. Yeah.
And it was more profound to mewhen I saw some of my favorite
players struggling to buysticks. Whoa. And I had friends

(13:15):
that had moved to Nashville andwere saying, When are you coming
down? When are you coming down?You know, mid to late 90s, they
were here. They were doing it.Listen, musicians are treated
with respect. It's a legitvocation. I don't know. I mean,
I was feeling comfortable. I wasstill in my hometown. I knew the
lay of the land. I was gettingto know the community. I was

(13:37):
playing with so many people. Iwas subbing for my heroes, yeah?
And I was working in a rockband, pop band, deadhead band,
Brazilian Brazilian band,fusion, uh, plan and a 22 piece
Big Band every Monday night.Nothing like with my former
teacher, yeah, but learning morein that moment than I did when I

(14:00):
was in school
in an academic environment,yeah, yes, yeah. So I felt like
I had more
to do. Yeah. And then myrelationship with my now wife,
was growing, and it's like therewas just a lot going on. I
wasn't ready to go. Meanwhile,one of my high school friends,
Jay Demarcus, had moved down. Idid not know that. I did not
know that. Yeah, okay, so inhigh we went to a vocational

(14:21):
school together. You start toschool, studied piano and bass,
and he was in a Christian rockband, and he's like, come play
drums with us. And so I playedin that band for a little while,
and then right out of highschool, he was like, I'm going
Nashville. And I'm like, whatyou're supposed to go to
college? That's what you doafter high school? He's like,

(14:41):
not me, yeah. A lot of myfriends, yeah. And just that was
just hardwired in me to do that,which I'm still very grateful
that I did. So Jay was one ofthose people. So Nashville had a
draw for all the organicreasons. All those reasons you
knew people. You knew that itwould be a respected thing. It

(15:05):
didn't have the scariness ofhailing taxis, learning the
subway system, living on the405, and yes, and that makes
sense. But I could totallyrelate to that, because when I
was in Dallas, kind of, myfinishing school was in Denton,
and you're getting all sorts ofacademic experience, and then,
you know, it's like me and JimRiley and Carlock and Luke Adams

(15:27):
and Blair Simpson, all of us. Wewould work in Dallas. And Dallas
had such a beautiful, robustscene. It was like, Well, I want
to play in that fusion band, andI want to play in that and I
would play in a 22 piece BigBand on Monday nights, and then
another one on Tuesday nights.And it was like, my finishing
school was like, I really wantto check this box, yep, and then
I'll make this move. So I was 26when I moved here, and quickly

(15:48):
turned 27 and my first personthat I saw and met here was Jim
Riley, wow. Who was your firstperson that when you moved here?
You know, did you run intosomebody at the at the Lowe's or
the Starbucks or the
who was the first hand you shookthat?
Oh my gosh, who was the firstperson you networked with?

(16:09):
Yeah, man, right. Well, I think
I needed to start working andpaying rent, because I was still
traveling from Nashville toColumbus, which is a seven hour
drive, and still playing withsome of the bands in Columbus
and coming back, and thenputting my rent on my credit

(16:29):
card and just oh, gosh, anotherfriend, Josh Berkheimer,
elementary school friend, wow,Columbus that I've known longer
than anybody alive. Right now, Ihaven't talked to Josh in
forever. Is he still at it? He'sgreat, yeah, he's back in town
and just, yeah, staying reallybusy. And but I needed a job,

(16:53):
and I think I went to a tempagency and worked in an office
for like, two weeks in officespace, the real office, the real
office. I mean, I did the jobfor two weeks before I got off
for the job at forks, drumcloset, all right, Gary, so it
was, it was an easy transition.Gary knew Jim, one of their key
employees, was leaving, alsonamed Matt. It was a easy fit,

(17:15):
yeah, and but I quickly learnedNashville is not Columbus. And
from a retail point of view, youhave Touring professionals a lot
with endorsements. You don'thave the weekend warriors. You
don't have the people with realjobs just, I mean, selling in
Columbus at COVID propagationwas easy. I was probably the

(17:36):
worst salesman at forks, drumcloset, really. Yeah, a lot of
those guys to this day stillmake fun of me and laugh at the
live opportunities. Why
did they think that?
Well, I think someone would comein and say, I think I need a new
pedal, and I'd take it, and mygym rep sensibility would be
like, well, let's take a look atthis. Oh, well, just need a new

(17:59):
spring, and let's clean this andoil it up. And there you spend
$5 and off you go. Oh, instead
of setting so instead of takingadvantage of the opportunity,
you just figured I would just,
yeah, and Gary's like, what areyou doing?
You gotta, I mean, forks doeshave a beautiful repair
department. They do.
They do. And, I mean, I'm beingsomewhat hyperbolic, but at the
same time, they weren't angry.They were just like, man, you

(18:23):
could have is
your training? Does Gary put youthrough, like, a day or
something where it's like, thisis sales 101, it
was Marcy goosey, where Columbuspercussion. It's like, well, we
have these seminars through Nam.We're going to send you guys off
to do this. I was the presidentof the Student Association of
Nam because of my degree inmusic business. So I was doing

(18:45):
that. I was I was not focused onworking in the retail industry
or doing music business per se.I wanted to be a player, which
is why I moved to Nashville.Yeah, it was interesting. So I
mean, love forks, love Gary, andwe got to a point where I was
getting more and more calls todo gigs and could not sustain

(19:06):
the workload he needed from me.And
when, what year was this? 20002001 Okay, I think
before my time. Yeah. And sohe's like, You need to make a
choice. Either I need you hereor can't have you working here.
And I was like, Gary, thanks forthe opportunity. I moved down
here to play, yeah? And we had,you know, probably a day or two.

(19:28):
We were just not happy with eachother. And then we're like,
quickly
reestablish. I'll come back andshop here, you know, because, I
mean, that was around the timewhen, you know, I'm sure I would
come in and chat with you, yeah,down in, because now that
original Gary is so he was soforward thinking. It really did
start as a drum closet, and thenhe was able to open the closet

(19:51):
up a little bit more. Then hegot that space next to corner
music, which is now a, you know,high dollar athleisure V A
store. So bougie, yeah. Mean, itis, it is the best athleisure.
If you like Lulu Lemon, you willlove viori. Anyways,
is it kind of like a knockoffbrand, or is it the superior
brand, Lulu Lemon?
It's a little bit more, I thinkit's a little bit more

(20:12):
expensive. Does it have the vava voom with the ladies? Yeah,
oh yeah. But actually, theirmen's line is, is nice. So if
you want, like, nice workoutpants that like taper and make
you feel sexy. You go and youdrop them why? Because you had
you. And I would always teacheach other to why. And I at the
YMCA on Old Hickory Boulevard,and I miss it. They closed it
down. I miss it too. It was sogreat because there was a lot of

(20:34):
it was like an older communitythat would go there, and a lot
of times there would be no onethere, and you and I would just
have the run of the place, and Irealized you were a serious, you
know, serious about maintainingyour playing career and staying
healthy and wanting to behealthy for the rest of your
life. Because you weren't doingall these, just like standard,
all right, let's do some squats.We're doing, do some burpees.

(20:54):
I'm out of here. You were doingall sorts of things with
kettlebells and stretching andall that stuff to Yeah, you
know,
stretching is like the elixirfor age, right? Do it every day?
Yeah, it's the science is stillout. We just can't slow it down,
right? I mean, it totally and,and again, at forks when I was

(21:14):
there, that's where I met peoplelike you, yeah, and, and drummer
Jim Riley, and such a hub, yeah,and I'm trying to think of Trey
gray. Trey gray. We became closethere, and I got to know so much
about what country music was. Iknew nothing about I knew Garth
Brooks and Dolly Parton andKenny Rogers was, yeah, but I

(21:35):
just knew there was somethingabout Nashville that could offer
that. So I'm trying to thinkplayers like Greg Morrow on a
very unassuming, so quiet, yeah,and just sweet. And I'm like,
wait a minute, I know. I nowknow who this is. This guy's a
badass, but his personality sosweet. That's the key. I just

(21:57):
got to be really nice and sweetto everyone, and they'll think
that I'm great. But
the funny thing is, to yourpoint, and I was, you know, when
you brought it up before aboutyour selling ability, that's a
sales technique. You know, youyou asking, the only thing I
would qualify because I spentsome time in sales, your your
Integris nature came out. Youknow what? I mean, that's a

(22:17):
relationship builder that I knowthis guy's not going to take
advantage of me, yeah. But Imean, I the only thing I would
say before that me, like, Okay,are you interested in getting a
new pedal? You just want to fixthe old one? Yeah, that would be
a good question to ask goinginto it. But I mean, that
approach is very relational, theway you went about
it, yeah, I don't want to takeanything away from what Gary No,
no, no,
absolutely still got to be abusinessman, yeah. But if you

(22:38):
were to in there for the longhaul, you would have built up a
book of business, as
did Gary and Melissa, right?Because it was based on that.
And I had that scenario with BenCaesar earlier, when I first met
him, yeah, and as a salesman,helping him find a new double
pedal and a new company. Andthen, like, Man, I like this

(22:59):
guy, hearing him try out pedalsand like, Wait, whoa, who does
he play with? This is great. Andthen expanding those little ways
of expanding my world and underbetter understanding what
Nashville was yeah and is Yeah,but Nashville was in 2000 2001
my new world. Where do I fit?I'm not the kind of medium fish

(23:21):
in a small town, I'm a verysmall fish in a big town. And
how do I manage that? And
now you're a big fish in alittle, big town. You really
are. I mean, you're a big fish.I mean, somebody needs a
drummer, your name's going to beon the list. That's the thing
is, you got to get on the listright? And now you're on the
list. You put in 26 years, youshould be on the list. Thank so,

(23:42):
thank god, that's amazing. So,yeah, you got to meet a lot of
the tastemakers and the guysthat were doing it totally, you
know, totally. And so before Icame, I kind of knew, all right,
you got to get to know GregMorrow, Chad Cromwell, Lonnie
Wilson, Eddie bears, there's aShannon forest kid, Paul lime,
Steve Brewster, is doing theChristians? Like, where are

(24:04):
these guys? Where do they hangout? Can I shake their hand? And
then you realize, well, I couldbe a fly on the wall. I can ask
them questions, but they're notnecessarily gonna get me work.
I'm gonna have to get work fromband leaders, bass players,
keyboard players, contractors.Yeah, you know they could. They
could. They could show you theway. Totally, yeah, you know,
but at
least you know the to yourcredit. And this came up in a

(24:26):
recent conversation on a podcastthat I produce, the people
coming to town now, especiallyin the songwriting arena, they
don't seem to have a reverencefor those who came before them,
understanding that they'restanding on the shoulders of
giants. Three chords in thetruth. Yeah, no, but Harlan
Howard, apparently that's athing now, like there's just
they have no idea who peopleare, the people that wrote the

(24:46):
biggies. You know that they're
trying to, you're right. I mean,I think it's, is that say, is
that the same nuance than that?Because I know you have people
that reach out to you and say,Rich. I don't know if you know
who I am, but I'd love to havecoffee. Yeah? And meet river of
coffee. I had, I had thatmeeting with, with a great young
drummer about a month ago. Yeah,and one of his inspirations was,

(25:12):
you, wow. So it, I mean, thereare young people that are, you
know, finding, but I do haveconversations with people, and
they're like, I, don't, I don'tknow who that is. Wow,
what Eddie bears. You mentionedEddie bears or something like
that.
No, no, no, wasn't Eddie, but,you know, could have been even
somebody like Greg Morrow orsomebody like that, Jim
McCarthy.

(25:34):
That's understandable, so, but,I mean, I Jim played in
Connecticut white bread, though.I mean, that's, you can't deny
it. That is a good
I mean, that's, that's, youknow. I also
wonder if access to informationis so easy now
there's no excuse for it thesedays, you know. But I'm
wondering if that would be
the excuse is like I can accesseverything I need to know
through the pot, through apodcast, through YouTube

(25:56):
interviews, through all thisstuff, where, if you wanted to
find something out, even assimple as how to get from point
A to point B, you had to pullout a map. You had to do, we're
from that generation, so not tobe the old guy on the lawn, but
how do you kind of repurposethose skills? Yeah, in a way
that's useful

(26:17):
is there, is there a reverencefor the amount of access to, you
know, again, standing on theshoulders of giants, those
giants that are in town, likewhen I first moved here, was for
radio, yeah. And moved here inoh, five, having a heavy
drumming background. Once upon atime, I would go to forks and
see, you know, hey, you can getlessons from Chester Thompson

(26:38):
and Johnny Rabb. And I'm like,Oh, my God, right, really? Yeah,
that's so cool.
And, and how do you, how do youhave that reverence? But how do
you make that transition fromit's time for me to go, it's
time for me to workprofessionally, and, you know,

(26:58):
share the space or have my gigas well. Yeah, that reverence
has never gone away, ifanything, it remains. And after
doing the podcast, which I'msure we'll talk about, yeah, uh,
I've learned that I thatreverence is transferable to my

(27:19):
peers, to younger players that Ifeel inspired by and and kind of
see it as a as a community thatgives me more peace of mind, as
opposed to, where do I fit? Howwill people see me, and the
competitive that you know,competitive nature is in and
shedding that, yeah, so that youcan then get back to what

(27:41):
inspired you to pick up thesticks. Well,
as we know, the drum communityis the best, you know, you know,
back in the day, you know, whenI said,
Thanks, bye See, ya
know, I'd go to The Great Escapeand and it was like a comic book
store, but it also had usedrecords and tapes, and I would
just get, you know, you know,uh, Tammy wynette's Greatest

(28:02):
Hits and Merle Haggard'sGreatest Hits and Gene Watson's
Greatest Hits. And so that'swhat, how I started to learn the
vernacular of country music. Andthen we could look at the actual
written credits and go, oh yeah,Jerry crew, and oh Tommy wells,
oh my God, oh Eddie bears. Andthen so you I learned these
names, and now we just keeptrying to buy records. Now, if
you have $13 a month forSpotify. You have all the
world's music at yourfingertips. So then you could

(28:24):
just Google top Nashvillesession recording drummers.
Boom, it comes up. Those are allthe names you can go to drummer
world, right? You could readabout the guy. Then you could go
to their allmusic.com you couldlook at their discography. Then
you could start to go on Spotifyand put playlists together by
style, by artist, by Tempo, orby drummer. I was like, so all
the kids that come with studywith me, I'm like, hey, put

(28:45):
together an Eddie bearsplaylist, a Lonnie Wilson play.
You're gonna now you're covering80s. You're covering 90s, the
early 2000s you got theseplaylists and find out what
makes these drummers ticks. Dothey do they like high pitched
snare drums? They're the do theyprogram loops a lot, what's
their their vibe and theirswagger, and why does Lonnie
Wilson never play the ridecymbal? And you know what I

(29:07):
mean, but, but there's a lot ofcrashes, and everybody has this
thing that they brought to thetable, right? Which is so cool,
and
I think you're making me realizeand telling us that about what
inspired me to start thepodcast. Because when I was
working retail at Columbus or inNashville, I had this really
organic way of discovering whothese players were, yeah, and

(29:28):
then using that as a launchingpoint to then go down those
rabbit holes. And, you know,it's like, oh, so this is Greg
Morrow. He played on thatMontgomery Gentry record of all
those songs that I've I have tolearn for this week. This is my
town, right? Yeah. And it'slike, as I'm learning those
songs for gigs and writingcharts, I'm like, wow, that

(29:49):
that, or when I was one of myfirst big artist gigs, well,
artist gigs. What a musicalartist gigs was Mark Selby,
yeah. And. He was kind of like arocker, yeah, for sure, but we
were, you know, opening up forcountry artists and doing
different things like that, andand Chad Cromwell played on his

(30:10):
record that we were touring on.And so I got to dig deep into
that, his style, his approach,his sound, and then talk to Mark
about that experience. What doeshe do and then meet him
personally? So when I left thatI I missed that interaction,
that that actual match, asopposed to just like, turning on

(30:32):
YouTube or whatever, and kindof, like, no, I need, I need to
know more, not because I'mlooking for gigs from drummers,
but like, how does it? How do Istay dialed in to the
vernacular, to Gosh? DeepBrewster is such a great example
of a drummer that's been on thescene for decades, yeah, and a

(30:54):
seasoned player, but knows thathe has to stay current with drum
tones, sounds, styles,approaches, because he's in the
studio, and young producers,young songwriters, are going to
be like, Okay, here's the song,let's go. And he's going to be
like, I know what to do forthis. As opposed to, well, this

(31:15):
is what we used to do, and thisis how we did it, and this is
how I did it, yeah? He knowsthat doesn't fly. Yeah, he's a
perfect example of that. And sothat, I don't know, again,
drumming community the best,yeah, and it's, we're, we're in
a practice, right? Like, like adoctor, like a lawyer. It's,

(31:36):
it's forever, yeah, it's, it's,it will continue to be, you
know, that type Yeah, totally.
And now, now, I'm sure you haveyour Nashville family tree where
it's like, this, be got that. Begot that. So you're working with
Mark Selby, and then then maybeyou get a call from Billy Dean,
and you're working with MichelleWright, and you're touring
Canada, and maybe you're playingwith Julie Roberts, and you get
to play the Grand Ole Opry. Now,this last gig that you did for a

(31:58):
while front men of countrymusic, yeah, that to be fun.
Tell us about that experiment,because those are three. I
because those are three iconicvoices, yeah,
yeah, yeah. So again, that allstems again. I love the way you
refer to it as the family tree,and I can see the base of it,
and then it branches off. You doa gig, you meet somebody, you
really connect, and it branchesoff. And then on a next gig, you

(32:18):
meet somebody else. So one ofthe scenes that I've been in and
out of in the 2526 years hasbeen lower broad, yeah, like so
many people, I don't live downthere. There's been moments
where I've gone five, six yearswithout stepping foot down
there. But in working down therewith players that I adore, I met

(32:40):
a bass player whose close friendwas a guitar player who was
really close with Larry and dida bunch of stuff with Restless
Heart. And so he was starting toform a core band that would go
out and support these guys doingsolo or dual acts. So we did a
Tim rush low show. Yeah, we did,you know, Larry and Richie

(33:04):
together. We did those. And thenthey're like, over time, it
started to get more and more,and they're like, Okay, they're
gonna combine, and we're gonnado a super corporate, call it
the front men of country. So Iwas on the ground floor of that,
yeah, and so it was exciting,but I had just left a road gig
after, you know, oh, is this thesavannah jack man. Savannah jack

(33:25):
man, after 15 years feeling goodabout working from home, doing
more home studio stuff. Okay,work, building my network again,
diversifying my portfolio, ifyou will, gotta make
sure you have gold and you gotto have art, gold bars and art,
that's right. And Doge, no, and

(33:47):
crypto, were you in the crypto?No, you're not okay. I do. I got
to get in the game, man, I think
I have some Doge somewhere on alost app.
Oh, you might want to find that.Yeah, I think so.
So especially after tomorrowwhen Snowmageddon hits. Anyways,
I but I found myself, we'regoing to Texas, and it was like
it was all fun and exciting theway it is. You're I'm back on a

(34:10):
bus and but before I get to thatpoint, I can say, lead singers
can be tough. It can be great.It can be the worst
Tim. Tim knows what he
wants. Yeah, he'll tell you,Well, you got three lead
singers. Yeah, you
got three. You're like, thiscould be a nightmare. I think,

(34:30):
canceled each other out. Theywere the sweetest to work for,
and gave me a lot of power andcontrol from the drum throne,
nice and so, like, this isrecord tempo. Do we want to move
it? Uh, I feel like you'repushing. Do we want to do this?
No, no, you let us know. What doyou where do you want to go? How

(34:52):
do you want I mean, lots ofcollaboration in those early
rehearsals. They're so chill,yeah. And
I'm like, I like this. Did youhave two clicks as a general
rule from the studio recording?Or no, I
did not. I don't rememberexactly. I think it's when I
hear where they're putting themelody. And each one of those
guys has one singing right downthe middle, one's on top, and

(35:15):
one's behind, or, you know, soit's just trying to treat each
one differently. Now they wouldsing each of their hits, 40
number one hits between three ofthem, you know, 30 million
whatever. And so playing some ofthese hits with the playing
bluest eyes of Texas, with Larrysinging, yep, was goosebump.

(35:36):
What did they sing in yourhouse?
Front Porch, looking in No, didthey sing
from your house? Though? Jim,did you have a home concert?
Yeah, why? Because back in theday, I have a story. That's why
I resonate on this is okay. Whenthe front men were getting
started, Tim reached out to mebecause I was doing the vid SIGs
at the time. You can recallthose, the white background

(35:58):
videos. That's how you and I mettotally and they saw yours, they
saw Reggie hams and stuff likethat. So I think I don't know if
Tim reached out to you and youpointed him my way, or maybe he
reached out to Reggie. Butanyway, he called me up, told me
who he was. I'm like, Oh, hey,how you doing? He's like, So,
hey, we want to do a video, muchlike you did for Reggie and
rich. And I said, Okay, youknow, I said, I shoot him in my

(36:19):
front room, man, you know, areyou okay with that? Are you guys
are used to hide budget musicvideos, and I've seen the Lone
Star videos where they're onglass floors and all this. I'm
like, It's not that. It's myfront room and it's your front
room, looking in my front room,looking in, yeah, and he, we
ended up shooting the video withall three of them. And it was,
it was one of those things thatwas kind of so profound. Because

(36:43):
when I moved here in oh five, Ijust always had this impression.
I said, you know, Courtney, mywife, Courtney, I said, I just
have a feeling we're gonna havepeople of note, like artists in
our house. And that happened, Ibelieve in oh nine or 10, four
years after we moved here. Imean, literally, it was a night
where she, like, made all thefood and everything, and like
catering, if you will, andLarry's trying out the pizza she

(37:06):
made. And so great, Richie'sasking which tie he should wear.
He's asking Courtney for advice,and I'm looking at her, and
Richie starts playing,
amazed, yeah. And you know,
already there, and all theseamazing songs in our living
room, and it's the voice, andI'm looking at Courtney, I'm

(37:27):
like, can you freaking believe
this is in our house? Yeah, very
intuitive. You made it
happen, buddy. I just, I justknew, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So
that was, that had to be fun.Yeah, it
was, it was fun, and it was, Ifound myself back out, and it
was, and still, those guys, aslegendary as they are, they were

(37:47):
starting a new band and a newproject, yeah. And so their
budgetary concerns and so, youknow, it was great. They leased
a bus. We weren't in a van andtrailer, and that was beautiful.
She'd leave on a Friday, go toTexas, play on a Saturday, be
back sometime Sunday. Yeah,there's three days in town. I
was missing. And, you know, theywere taking care of us, yeah,

(38:09):
but I was still missingopportunities, and I So, long
story short, it just got to apoint where, like, I felt like I
was re establishing myself froma home base, and I was missing
that. I was missing some regulargigs that I had worked really
hard to build up to. And if Iwas, some of those gigs were on

(38:33):
Broadway, but they were covedgigs, and if I couldn't make
them, then a lot of thesepeople, like, you're never here.
We've got somebody that can behere. Love you. We're gonna call
you for this and this and this.And I'm like, makes sense? Thank
you. Awesome. I'm glad to be onthe list. I just wasn't first
call. I got bumped down, second,third, fourth, yeah. I'm like,

(38:55):
this helps me main juggle manythings. Yes,
well, you're doing you're doingthe podcast, and then you're
doing your home recording,whichever, which is an
expectation nowadays. And I'veseen your setup. It's down
there. It's all, you're alloralex and software, it up and
you're ready to go, which isawesome. What are some of the
places down on lower Broadwaythat that are COVID? Are there

(39:17):
more room? Are some of the roomsthey pay better, or there's
better crap,
you know, I think, I think it's,it's sometimes it's the shift.
It could be the environment,could be the crew. So places
like old red, what used to bewild horse, is now category 10.
Luke. Combs is place. Combs isplace. And so the pay, the
opportunity, with some of thebands, some of the talent that

(39:41):
is working down there that iseither does really well when
they play down there, so theydon't have to play eight days a
week, no. So they're playingthere a couple times. They also
have other plate spinning, whichled to the front man game, yeah,
you know, yeah. So, like, Idon't like that place. I don't
want to go. Ever go down there,it's like, man, that's great.

(40:02):
That's fine. If you can, you cando that. But again, I see it not
as an ending, an end game. Imean, it is, it is a it is
another piece of the pie. Yeah,you know, it's another so you
can go down there, you can meetpeople, and they may be
producing and so one of the oneof the groups I work down there

(40:22):
with, the guitar player, has hisown studio and works with other
I mentioned, there's a producerhere, spring two blocks away,
yeah, from here that has kept mebusy for the last four and a
half years. Nice as a as aresult of the relationship that
I built with another musiciandoing some of those slower
Broadway games. Yeah.

(40:43):
Well, so old red, that's not, Imean, I've been down there.
That's nice. It simply seemslike the kid is well maintained.
It seems like more than ever thekits are little bit more well
maintained. Back in the day, wasthere be, like, it was all Thai
kits, or it was all maypex Kids,or like that, you know, these
companies, and now that thenthere was, like, a pearl period.
I mean, I have my places that Ilove to go down there, like
when, when tourists come intotown, or friends they want to

(41:06):
see lower Broadway, I alwaystake them to Roberts. I just
think Roberts is the holy grailof honky tonks. Like you're
walking into 1950 right, andpeople are swing dancing and
they're line dancing, and yougot the crinkle fries, and then
just the spiders and the bootson the walls, and everybody on
stage is wearing the pearl snapshirts. And it just feels so

(41:27):
nostalgic. And then you couldwalk right next door, and then
they hire the entire bandsplaying to clicks. They got
iPads and in ear monitors, andit's like, Oh my God. It's like
a robo band. It's like,completely different from the
you know? It's just a differentenergy and vibe, and the two
places are right next door,right amazing. And
I think my interest especiallywhen one of the first places I
played is the stage, and it wasjust been a home base for me for

(41:51):
a long time, and I wanted to usethose experiences in the early
days of in ears, differentthings like that, as a way to
acclimate to what was expectedfrom a live drummer and a studio
drummer when I was first here in2000 the early 2000s I'd never
played live with a click. Myexperience in the studio was
limited, but I was on the fasttrack to figure out what it was

(42:13):
that I needed to do to work inNashville. So then, when I got
the call to play with somebodylike Billy Dean. They're like,
we play to a click. Gotcha. Noproblem, you know. And listen,
can you learn all these songs bytomorrow? And, yeah, yeah. And
we have number charts. Can youdo that? Gotcha? Yeah, I'm good

(42:34):
to go. I was ready to do it now.It's a little bit more common.
We know drummers who grew upwith laptops and playing the
clicks and yeah and all thatstuff. But that was not common.
Now I'm in a place where I'mtrying to learn how to play
without clicks.
It's just, it's part of ourthing. It's so crazy. Yeah,

(42:55):
going back to that. So is thatreally happening?
They're actually going away fromclicks.
No, no, no. I'm just saying,personally, like, I probably
more comfortable with a clickthan without, which it was
really funny that after 25 yearsof it, yeah, yeah, yeah, you and
you do a lot of times, you'rejust doing gigs, you're doing
playing songs on the fly, andit's like, there's no click,

(43:16):
there's this, like, with, thinkof the chorus, you know, like,
big counting off, Big Bandtunes. Think of the shout
chorus, think of the melody andlike, get your tempo from there.
That's how I played every gig,whether it was the big band, the
Brazilian, the rock band, yeah,it's like, there was no
reference. There was we couldhave played it too fast. Could
have played it too slow. Couldhave been different from night

(43:37):
to night only. But we, when welisten to our heroes and our
band, the bands that we love,were like, yeah, there was no
click on that, but it sounds sogood.
New York, New York, one,
two. You know, you get the feelfor it, yeah, yes. Here you go.
Like, what's the template?Nobody has time for that. Some
of those tributes.
I mean, Nashville has moretribute bands between, you know,

(43:58):
Tyson Leslie and Brian RussellCollins and all the, you know,
the Nashville drummer jam stuff.He's like, Okay, we're gonna,
we're doing a Van Halen night.So it's like, one two, it's
just, so it's, but I'll usuallybring a little light, and all
goes red, green, red, green, offone two. So these are, there's a

(44:19):
reference from something. Andthen halfway through, I'm on the
belting thing on red, gray andred, green, you're checking
yourself. Always check myself.Halfway
through, I don't
think Alex did, Alex. Alex didnot. Sammy Hagar, when he was
here, I was there, too rich.
You were somewhere, and I, I wasgoing to invite you to come

(44:41):
along, because tickets weren'tthat expensive, yeah, but it was
the second night that Aronofffilled in. Yeah, nice. Just
hearing him play, you know, Ijust knew he was running a
click. And there was a couplesongs when they're like, oh, it
needs to be faster, and he's,this is the reference, but I
felt for him, and I'm
like, oh, there was a couplelittle. He had a little, like, a
rhythm watch or something.

(45:02):
I don't know exactly what hehad, but he had stuff running,
and he had his iPad with
dude. Had to learn a two hourset over 24 hours, yeah? But if
anybody can do it, I mean, it'sYeah, so deep into the pool, you
know? Yeah. Circling back to to,sorry, I'm used to hosting. This
is great. It's not so mucheasier being a guest. No, you

(45:22):
don't think so? No, well, I lovebeing a guest because I
like being No, hey, this is fun.I like being a guest. Yeah?
No, no, no. I mean, it's, it's,that's, that's an interesting
concept. I mean, we could talkabout that later we get to the I
mean, also your, your yourinterview style is, it's, I'm
not going to call it buttonedup, because you're not a
buttoned up guy, but it's, it'smore in the Actors Studio, it's

(45:46):
very like, you have, it justseems like there's certain
things you want to hit, andyou're very well communicated,
very eloquent, and you'rehitting those things, and
they're, they're more of like,this is more of, like, a wacky
radio show where yours is, like,these are time capsules that are
people are going to be like, oh,like, refer to working drummers
podcast episode 497, that are inthese archives, because you've

(46:08):
captured these things, andthey're very informative. And
not that we're not informative,but we just do it in a wackier
way. No, I
get that, and I think it changesfrom guest to guest.
You think we're wacky? I don'tthink we're wacky. We're just
conversational, ineptdescriptor,
but his show is very it is it'sit has wacky

(46:29):
moments. It depends. Yeah,sometimes when Rich is on, it
can get a little wacky.
Well, I'm lucky you had me ontwo times.
We should do it like the both ofus. Guess not his
Oh, here you go. I was going tosay one of the things that has
been beneficial about doing clubgigs like on Broadway is when
the band was out, when the frontmen had an opportunity to open

(46:52):
up for Alabama, was one of thefirst few times. And we're
playing this arenas in Texas,and they hadn't thought about
like, wait a minute, they'regonna bring us on this large
stage. We need to have somestuff going. We're not just
gonna walk out there. We're notplaying a small venue. Oh. Like,
walk on music. Walk on somethingthat's gonna lead into the first
big song. Kick it. I think itwas, was, you know, Lone Star or

(47:17):
something, got to Yeah, andthey're like, can you guys do
something? So the three of us,the bass player, guitar player,
and I were like, yeah, no. Whatif we vamp on this, go back and
forth, back and forth, be like,a four bar jam, and then when I
do this fill, that'd be, ofcourse, we have very limited
sound check time, so we had tokind of like, construct this
really quickly. Like, we'll dothis and then that. And like,

(47:39):
let's run it real quick forsound check, and then we'll
just, we'll do that. When theguys came up for sound check and
we showed them what we had,they're like, that's That's
perfect. That's amazing. How'dyou guys do that so fast? I
mean, not taking anything awayfrom what these guys have done
in the industry, what they'vewritten, what they've done over
the years, you know, but betweenthe three of us, we've learned

(48:00):
and played 1000s and 1000s ofsongs and had to improvise and
had to create on the spot, andthat serves you well in those
scenarios in the studio. Anotherthing. So I just, I just want to
put a button on that whole thingas we're referencing Broadway,
Nashville, and for all the shitthat it gets. Yeah, that's fine,

(48:21):
but this is what I've taken fromit and just seeing it as an
opportunity for growth. And howdo I use those skills and apply
that in other places?
Are you finding people to comeinto town or reticent to play
Broadway?
No, I find people coming to townto think that that is the holy
grail,
really? Yeah, that's a highlycoveted thing. It

(48:43):
is. But I'm like, guys, that'snot the end all. It can be a
source of income. It could be asource but you also see it as a
source of experience. It's likethe big band gig that I used to
do every Monday night. We'd walkaway with maybe 10, $12 in our
pocket. But the Learn, theexperience that I learned from
it, the reading, the pressure.
I couldn't, I couldn't put aprice on

(49:04):
it. Yeah, Dallas Jazz Orchestra,
$8 and the collection JazzOrchestra on the Tuesdays,
$24 and how much would you spend
to get a lesson? Yeah, you know,do
you remember your first timegoing down Broadway when you got
here, and as a tourist, no, butyeah, just you're prospecting

(49:27):
Nashville, and you were kind oflike, you know, these guys were
at a whole different level fromwhere I am.
Yeah, no, it was, I think it waslike 1997 right? My girlfriend,
I were driving down toPensacola, and we wanted to stop
in Nashville, so we went walkdown Broadway, and it was
interesting, you know, but itdidn't really blow me away. But
certainly, when I startedplaying there in the 2000s I

(49:49):
would see other bands and, and,and I think continues to this
day. I mean, it's, I
mean room to room, but I meanthe quality of the musicians is,
yeah, is different. It. But
I mean, very much is different.I mean, I see on the first floor
at kid rocks, sometimes I'mlike, Whoa, good, bad, really. I
mean, I hear drummers likeplaying the shit out of certain

(50:12):
journey songs, not necessarilynote for note, but like, nice.
That's really good. Yeah, thatsounds really Pro.
But coming from Columbus, likemy coming from Connecticut, it's
just a different level. I mean,I guess I was, oh yeah, I was a
little tempered from Vegas,because you had a really good
quality musicianship out thereas well. But, you know, coming
here, it's like, oh, these guysare good, you know, because, I

(50:33):
mean, Connecticut, it was like,you know, we had, I surrounded
myself with good players, butthey were few and far between.
I there was, it's hard for me toanswer that in a really concise
way, because the level ofmusicianship in Columbus again,
so pretty was still so good, butmaybe not in the rock world that

(50:55):
I experienced, but like in inthe jazz world, in the Latin
world, in the funk world, yeah,there were guys that used to
play with George Clinton thatwere in a band that still exists
now in plays like once a week,and there's some of the baddest
ass musicians on the planet. Butagain, the
machinery doesn't exist in thosekind of markets, the places that

(51:16):
rehearse, the recording studiosper capita, the tour bus
companies, yeah, the wholemachinery that we have,
the focus of musicianship,doesn't exist in those areas.
And
like, Connecticut is like, youknow, if you have, I lived in
Connecticut, I would probably bein the best, you know, wedding
corporate circuit band in a tristate area. That would be
easier. It would be easier to

(51:37):
rise to the top, yeah. And
you hear that, you hear that.You hear people in other towns
where you're like, man, they'rea really good player, but
there's just something missingabout their touch, about their
approach, about their time, feeltotally they're set up to
interact their gear. That isjust like, there's just
something it's like, it's likethe TP stuck to the bottom of

(51:59):
the shoe, like it looks great.You just got to lose the toilet
paper, this stuff at the bottomof your shoe, your zippers open,
and you're Yeah, exactly,exactly. The last thing I'll say
about the transition. Whatinspired me was I was at
Columbus Pro and Kenny arnoffwas on tour with Fogarty. And
he's like, Hey, I got a day off.Could I come in and do a clinic?
So there were, like, literally,six of us sitting there. And one

(52:21):
of the things he said, and I hadthe opportunity to tell him this
later, and he was like, I dolike three things really good,
and I've been able to make aliving at it. So I implore you,
you can have 10 c minus grooves,or you can have three a plus
grooves. And at that point in mylife, I'm juggling all these

(52:42):
different bands, and I wasfeeling a little bit of a draw
to Nashville, and I'm like,That's it. That's it. I know
what I want to do. I'm going tobe a backbeat drummer, and I'm,
I'm I'm doing this, and I'm notgetting rid of the John Riley
books and the things still wantto work on that. I want it to be
a part of my personality, but Ineed to focus on that, because I

(53:04):
want to be a full time playerand own a house, yeah, and maybe
have kids.
What did he say the three thingswere, were they three skill sets
or three beats? I think it
was. He was referencing three,like, grooves, three, not
necessarily three beats, butlike, this is, like, if you want
me for you, I'm your dude. Yeah,if you know, I mean, Erskine has

(53:28):
stories of being in the studioand being like, I don't think
I'm your guy for this track. Ican, I can, you know, suggest
somebody. And we think of theseplayers as just like, right?
Everything, yeah. But that wasanother eye opening experience
in a time when information waslimited, yeah? So

(53:51):
he, in a sense, is telling you,chop at one tree. Don't chop at
multiple Yeah? Because you'll,you'll go, after a while, you'll
have a forest of on, you know,half chopped trees.
And I was cool with that,because, um, specializing
something I wanted to I was okaywith being specific. Yeah, yeah.
I
think that's, it's wonderful tohear that even, you know, like,
Kenny will throw it out, there'slike, Hey, I got a day off. I'd

(54:11):
rather do a clinic for sixpeople than not do because I
have, I've had those where youdo, you make a booking last
minute, you commit to it, andthere's like, four people in the
room, and you just do itanyways, and you're just like,
well, I'm working my craft. I'm,you know, continuing my skill.
I'm making a difference inpeople's lives. I always love
that about him, and he's stillthat way, you know, which is,
which is fantastic. What is yourgear, man, do you have your

(54:34):
alliances, your gear? Before
we go that? Let me just ask realquick and just to there was one
thing that kind of to your pointthat you made earlier. I get
what he's saying, but I thinkthere's a lot of you still have
to put air in the tank, right?You still need fuel. Cash is
oxygen for any business, foranybody moving down here, you
are starting a business, whetheryou like it or not, which means

(54:55):
you have to have some magnitudeof business acumen, definitely a
good sales approach, that. WhatI think made you rich is that
you understood all that. Youknew you were somewhat of a
master salesman. You could backit up. You had, you know, you
didn't have the clout yet. Youonly had the clout coming from
Dallas and what you did, but youcertainly had the education, but
you had business, you know, youhad a salesmanship to you, you

(55:15):
know what I mean, and that madea big difference. So a lot of
these people that are coming in,yeah, you got to do a lot of
stuff. You gotta spread yourselfthin, you know, right? It's,
it's like in the business world,like, what, even what we're
doing here, we're doingeverything from podcasts to
lighting for, you know, carwashes to video walls. Now we're
kind of getting into otherspaces. We're in garage doors.

(55:37):
We're doing everything just tosustain. You're the art of the
Renaissance, but you have to,yeah, you know, there's until
the one it's like, how manybands did you play in one year
that didn't have a schedulingclock? 2929
bands. What year was that? 1999right?
You remember the year you wereplaying the lottery? Totally
playing, right? 27 of those actsdo not exist anymore,

(56:03):
but you still had this. Youknow, you can't win if you don't
play two.
Two remained, Jason Aldean andConnecticut white bread. Big
Kenny was rush, low one of thebands, no, in 99 No, I hooked up
with him in later. 2001
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy, Imean, and
there was a lot of differentpersonalities come down and

(56:24):
again, like, like, meeting you.And it's like, there's so much
more than just because I justwant to spend I just want to
hole up in my practice room,yeah, you know. And it's like,
no, it's not that you need toget out and see people and meet
them and, you know, press theflag. You gotta
do it. Yeah, networking is sucha bad word, but guys, you gotta

(56:46):
do
it. Touch grass thing. I thoughtit was no,
well, it's, it's, you know, we,we all know our friend, Keo, you
know what I mean. It's like, Ialways refer to because he's
such a man about town. It'slike, if there is a lie norm,
he's just like, the basementeast. He's gonna be there if
there's something at the exit,and he's gonna be there, he's

(57:07):
gonna be at the coolest thing.He might have be at multiple
things, you know, and, and, andhe's smart, you know, he didn't
move out to Spring Hill. He'slike, he's close by. And if he
hears about something lastminute, he is there, yeah. And
that's, like, a great businessmodel, and he's because he's
never out of people's minds.He's always fresh on people's

(57:29):
minds, because he is always outsupporting the community.
He is, he is, my workaround is,start a podcast.
Yeah, I was gonna say that's,that's a good pivot, yeah,
because
I have, especially as I getolder, I have a hard time
leaving the house if I, even ifI have a gig, I'm like, what
time is load in? What's my mapapp say? What is I got five

(57:53):
minutes before I even have
to walk out of here, like I'malready in my jammies and my my
slippers, and you want me tocome down and play Mama Tried
for us $50 in which version. Sojust just to talk a little bit
about Savannah Jack, I rememberthat they're still together,
right?

(58:14):
The singer does maybe a handfulof gigs 15 years. That's a you
played with him for 15 years,pretty much. I mean, it's it,
you know, it started as it wasDon Ellis Gatlin. He and his
brother, Don and Daryl Ellis,were on Sony in the 90s. They
they were the band. They werethe duo that famously lost to
Brooks and Dunn every year. Damnamazing singer. It started out,

(58:38):
you know, doing bar gigs, butthen the writing, the singing
between the three guys, theywere kind of like the rascal
flats, and I was the Jim Rileyof the band. I wasn't in the
band, but I was the drummer forthe four piece. Yeah, that
eventually became a five piece.So it just one. Was one of those
groups that we were doing gigs,you know, opening up for the

(59:02):
Doobie Brothers and Vince Gill.So many amazing opportunities.
Honky Tonk state fairs kind of athing. All
everything these guys love toplay casinos. Would would, yeah,
would travel and then would workwith an agency that would put us
on and off cruise ships as theartists, the featured artists,

(59:23):
so we weren't contracted. We'djump on these ships. We'd
perform as a band, yeah, youknow, the 45 in the main
theater. People were like, didyou bring charts for our event?
No, no, we're self contained.Yeah. We were the only ones out
there doing it. So got to travelall through the Caribbean, you
know, the Italy, differentthings like that. So I probably

(59:46):
stayed on a little bit too long,because when you're in that
close knit of a group, I don'tknow if you know this, yeah, if
you've ever been in a band forreally a long time, but let me
tell you. It's like when yourparents split up, and you
actually become closer with yourfather after he moves out. You
know, I still keep in touch withit. So many amazing

(01:00:08):
opportunities. I can tell youone thing, I wasn't because I
wasn't technically a member.They wanted for their first
studio album to be like JohnJorgensen on guitar, yeah, David
Santos on on bass, who thesinger knew really well. You
know who we would love to haveplay drums, Steve Ferroni. I'm

(01:00:29):
best friends with Steve Roney.Let's get him so at Blackbird,
there's John David. SteveFerroni, I was let me tech, let
me, yeah. Oh, and we want you toplay percussion. Oh, thank you.
Great. Hey, because I didn'tfeel like I needed an
explanation of why they gotSteve Ferroni to play drums on
this as we know many of ourfriends who played in touring

(01:00:50):
bands, who you know, ChadCrowell was the drummer, or
whoever was the drummer on therecord, the record, because the
goal was to get on the radio,and if it was Keith Urban
Savannah, Jack, Jason Aldean, wehad to compete. We had to sound
sound just as good as you guys.Yeah, on the radio. So I'm like,

(01:01:13):
no, no, it's good. The moresuccess that you have, the
better it is for all of us,including me. So that was great,
great connection with Steve, andincredible experience. And then
the second record we did, I wason it still got John Jorgensen,
and I'm really proud of that,nice and proud. But you know,

(01:01:34):
the band went through enoughcompromises and had its moment
on a label, got, I think, number40 on the charts with a song
with a head
top 40. I mean, Casey, Caseywould be like, Hey, this is
great, right, right, great
experience. But it came to itcame to a close for me and and
my family needed more attention,and it's not like I was moving

(01:01:56):
back to the middle of nowhere.Yeah, it's moving back to Music
City, yeah. And people werewaiting for me, and it took
about a year to get back up tospeed, and then I was rolling
again, yeah, and the front menhit, and I'm like, I've already
been here. I'm missing out.Yeah, I wanna, I gotta, you
know, it's
the it's that classic, you know,are you a road musician or a
studio musician? And that was abig deal in 1997 now the lines

(01:02:20):
are just blurred. I mean, I'msure guys that you know, like, I
just, I don't hear about SteveBrewster ever jumping on a bus.
But for me, it's like the phonerings, if it makes sense. I
just, I just go, do you know
what I was interviewing? MichaelGrando, yeah. And he goes, I
love them. People are like, Oh,I only do live or only do studio
goes, we're all studiomusicians. Yes, if you get a

(01:02:42):
call for a session, are youturning it down? No, you're not.
What's
so, what's your your setup? Areyou advertising? I always ask
all the because, you know it's,are you do advertising? Your
wears on sound better and airgigs and all that.
Yeah, I have and air gigs hasworked out, okay, uh, it's, it's
become so competitive and oversaturated that it really what

(01:03:06):
we've seen as the industry haschanged and home studios are
growing. It's almost like thesame way you get live work, you
build it upon relationships andto do a single song for a
songwriter overseas, or whateveris cool, but to establish a
relationship with a songwriterthat wants to use you
constantly, or producer that hasa stable of clients that I feel

(01:03:32):
makes it profitable, yeah, to dothat because we all wanted to do
home studios, COVID hit, we allupped the ante. Yeah, took our,
you know, our money, whateverhelp we got from music cares or
whoever, and bought a newinterface and did all that
stuff. Yeah, I should have donethat, but still, it's like, Man,
that's a lot of work to do thisone song. I should be charging

(01:03:56):
more. How much do I charge? Youknow, it's this constant. And I
just played for two hours andgot so much more than that. So
it's a constant battle. Yeah,
hamburger and steak. I'm sorry,hamburger and steak. Yeah,
yeah, and but, but it's, it's,it's, it's a, I'd say it's about
30% of what I do now, yeah,where I know we have friends

(01:04:19):
that it's probably more like 70or 80% of of what they do. But
we always, and we talk aboutthis a lot on the podcast. We
have a lot of people that aredoing it more full time, and
it's trying to streamline thework. Time is money, yeah. So
how do you manage that in such away that doing that one track
goes by, templates, filemanagement, all that, all

(01:04:42):
those things. Because when yougo to a session where you're
hired as the drummer at a studiowith an engineer, guys, we're
good, moving on. Okay, to do onemore good. All right, moving on.
Moving on. I love that. And thenyou're like, you're home by
three, and you're like, Man, Ijust did a record. Yeah, and
maybe in a year I'll see it orhear it where, when you're at

(01:05:03):
home, you're like, Yeah, I gotthe file. Okay, put it in here.
I've got my template, but still,listen to it. Did you have a no
chart? Okay, I'll write my ownchart. And then Mike's, where
was that my I use that mic foranother thing. Okay? I gotta
engineer. Then I got tuned. Igotta be more than drummer doing
everything you're doingeverything. And so then here's

(01:05:24):
your 100 bucks,
yeah, when you're charging thesame as if you were in a so
yeah, every year I've givenmyself a little bit of a raise,
yes, and then establish thoserelationships with the producers
that I spoke with Ken Coomer,yeah, not that long ago. So
Jim, we're gonna have Ken on theshow. He is the original drummer

(01:05:48):
with Wilco, and now he justproduces crazy, mad numbers of
records,
yeah, yeah. We played them onthe radio back in the day, yeah.
And,
um, Ken Coomer, you were talkingto Ken about, probably, about
recording himself, right? Yeah,because I listened to the
interview, it was, yeah, yeah.

(01:06:10):
I think it's
like,
Ken, why would we be talkingabout you, just because you're
amazing. I mean, I love Wilcoand we love the fact you become
an amazing producer and,
well, it's just, it's all aboutjust, kind of just managing that
time, oh, just doing one song ata time for somebody just doesn't

(01:06:32):
work out. But having havingthose relationships with people
just really kind of, again, it'slike having a little bit of
this, a little bit of that, sothen all of a sudden, that
person's out of the business orleaving. You're like, okay, no,
I'm still good, yeah, so becauseit's, it's creating a certain
amount of security, because wehave those friends that have
gigs, and it's like, man, ifthat artist is like, Guys, I'm
done.
Yeah, you have a very radioesque intro. Oh, thank you. The

(01:06:56):
Working drummer podcast,
I can tell you that we've had acouple people do our intro. Nick
graffini Did our intro for awhile. Resource, a good friend
of mine who was in broadcasting,and then a few years ago,
gosh, oh, the dude from Atlanta,the voiceover guy,

(01:07:19):
Jack White. Jack White, thedrummer ragas his soul, who just
passed away. He was,
uh, Rick Springfield's originaldrummer. Oh, yeah. He battled
for 10 cancer for 10 years.Gosh, he was married to Peggy
Bundy.
Oh, really, yeah. So he's thevoice of our intro, and it's
just an honor to have him.
I didn't know that because it Ican hear it now. Yeah, yeah,

(01:07:43):
we had to speed it up a littlebit. But I'm so honored to have
him. That's amazing.
We miss you, buddy. Okay, yeah.
So very timely. We'recelebrating 500 episodes of your
podcast. Working drummer. Youstarted it in 2015 you've had
everyone, I mean, the big dogs,you know, your Chad wackermans,
John Robinsons, Steve Smith,Joel Rothman, Cindy. I want to

(01:08:07):
hear about Joel Kenny, NickBucha Cindy Blackman, but you
also get guys that are, youknow, doing touring productions
off of Broadway or, you know,New York cats, European cats. So
tell us. Tell us about thepodcast.
So I have to show you all thiswhile you're doing the camera.
This is title Warner. I think Ihave some extra ones, but I

(01:08:28):
couldn't find them, so this hasbeen stuck on my fridge. On the
side, it's probably got greasestains on it. More than 65
episodes available. Workingdrummer. Podcast is the resource
for education, entertainment andbeyond one episode and you'll be
hooked. Rich Redmond, JasonAldean, sessions and clinic, you

(01:08:49):
offered a quote for me that was,I was ever one of your first
guests. You were one of my firstguests. But this we were going
to summer Nam or winter Nam, orsomething like that, and I
wanted something to hand out.And this is, like, 2016 this
came out, and it's been sittingthere. And I've got a, you know,
an iTunes review, got our, youknow, all that stuff, more than

(01:09:10):
65 episodes
available. Amazing.
You know, that's, that's a bigmilestone. 50 is a milestone,
because a lot of people will hit20, and they'll
be like, This is work. How good?
Yeah. So, this is, you know,back in the days when when
podcasts were rare, if you don'thave a podcast, you're in the
minority, I know. But atmidnight, Episode 500 posted

(01:09:31):
last night, nice. So when youcalled, I was like, this is
going to be good timing. I'vetaken a little bit of time off
for the holidays. Amazingtiming. Very excited about it.
We did not do anything big thistime around. The podcast for my
co host Zach Alberta and I hasbeen again, a piece of the
puzzle of what we do. He is afull time touring musician,

(01:09:54):
drummer that does musicals. He'sout now with the touring company
of and Juliet. He's. He did theink too proud to beg, proud to
beg. That was 16 months of hislife. And amazing player, uh,
Atlanta, cat, right? Atlanta,originally from, well,
originally from New Mexico,studied in Kansas, lived in LA
for five years. When we firstmet, he was moving, I thought,

(01:10:16):
Oh, great, off like a West Coastguy, and he goes, Oh, and I'm
moving to Atlanta. I was like,Oh man, how's that gonna work?
But really, after I did this thefirst year, he joined and met
him through Nick Ruffini, yeah,and just a great fit, yeah,
just, I couldn't ask for abetter partner. Just that

(01:10:37):
perfect yin yang. He jokes thathe's the party of no, I'm the
party of Yes. I'm like, weshould do this. We should do
that. He's like, Whoa, how aboutwe do this instead? I'm like,
Oh, that's a good idea. It seemslike he gets more jazzers. He
does. And I feel like we don'tnecessarily pick a lane, but I
think it's more organic, becausenow he's in the musical world,

(01:10:57):
he'll pull from that. I'm inNashville. I can pull from that,
but we try and not pigeon holeourselves. Yeah, but I had the
lead on wel once, and I waslike, and I'd met we call a few
times, and I thought, Zach. Iwent, can you do this? Would you
mind? I'd feel much morecomfortable if you did it. You
guys can get into the weeds withthe short amount of time that he

(01:11:19):
may be available. We've taggedteam a few times, but again, I
feel so blessed that not onlycan we create a consistent
episode every week based onsplitting the workload, but also
we're on the same page as far asremaining true to the brand, if

(01:11:39):
you will, of showcasing the inthe trenches drummers, the
lesser known names, but stillimpressive body of work. Yes,
something that we can all takeaway from, it's nice to have we
call on. It's nice to have ToddSuperman on. But within those
conversations, what can Iextrapolate that is relatable to

(01:12:00):
somebody that just maybe isplaying on Broadway in
Nashville, or is playing aweekend gig, or maybe at their
church or whatever, to engagethose listeners, those that are
curious to even the non drummer,yeah, you know, so really
casual. I love that you knowyou're saying, you know,

(01:12:21):
describe our conversation asthat, but you know it would try
and Zach prepares differentlythan I do. I think I over
prepare. Got my outline just incase, because I might have a
guest that is short with theiranswers, and I may have to lead

(01:12:42):
the charge. I may have guessedthat I don't get a word in
edgewise, but over time, I'velearned to edit in the moment.
In other words, I think we'redone with this topic. Yeah, time
to move on. I call it passingexit ramps.
It's a skill set, this, this,this hosting thing, yep, is a
thinking on your feet thing, andit's so good. Some people love

(01:13:06):
Sudoku. Some do crosswordpuzzles. This is how Jim and I
keep our brain sharp, becauseyou really have to jib and jab
and think in the moment and andwe had to get our sea legs
together. As far as having twopeople that could give and
take, well, it helps that youhad somebody who worked in the
business. No,
totally. Jim's a great coach,and then I'm a I'm a good

(01:13:27):
student, and I'm sure you are inthe sense that I always go back
and listen to an episode, maybetwo times, maybe one for
enjoyment, and then one for howcan I improve my hosting skills?
And do I need to remove anythingor edit anything on behalf of
the guest?
Well, Matt, you do that, right?You probably listen to it two or
three times before you release.Well,
I go through and edit and overtime, and, you know, probably

(01:13:47):
not two times, but, but it doesgive me an opportunity to hear
when I am maybe not allowing theperson to fully, you know,
finish their point, or otherthings like that, happens. So I
think there's, there's ways thatdefinitely I again, it is a
skill set that I feel like hashelped me. And consider it's

(01:14:09):
like, what else can I be doingwith this? How else? Because at
the end of it, I do feel like,man, I've, I've, I feel like I
just left a gig. Yeah, you know,it feels good. There's a
lot of there's a lot going on uphere, yeah, in the head and the
heart. So the first thing thatcomes to mind for me is you
could be a panel moderator. Youcan be an event host. You can

(01:14:33):
create your own events. I mean,there's now that you have this
organizational ability, and youknow how to cut to the chase and
keep people engaged, and it'seducational, but it's also
entertaining. It's fantastic.I've
got, I got a lot of earlyencouragement, yeah, from
friends and different people.The very first guest was our
friend David Black, yeah, youknow, I thought I need to start

(01:14:54):
off with somebody we're justcomfortable with. Comfortable.
Know him. Great resume, greatplayer. Good. Personality, and
he was just a great and myfriend Mike Jackson helped me
get started. And he is in theindustry, as far as voiceover,
he's like, so he was able tocoach me with that stuff.
Totally
now, now what tell us about thisPatreon thing? Are we missing

(01:15:14):
out? What? What is that? SoPatreon talking about
the monetization of it? I'm kindof curious. Yeah. Have you been
able to do that? Somewhat?
It took us a while to get to thepoint where we could put money
in our pockets, but to makeenough money to keep the lights
on was our goal. Because forZach and I, the money we made

(01:15:35):
was from for him, teaching andgigs and touring. For me, it was
playing and touring, recordingand all those things. So the
podcast still needed to be undercontrol so that we continue to
enjoy it. But after a while, wedid. We're doing some
advertising that helped. Butstill, you've got the website,

(01:15:55):
you've got we're on megaphonenow that costs us a little bit
to subscribe to some of theseplatforms, if it's gear, we use
you that
when you say ad, and were youactually doing ads on the show?
Yeah, okay. Do you still? Yeah,
we still do nice so through
megaphone, which so about threeyears ago, we joined a network

(01:16:16):
called the drum click. And solet's get the big fat five and
all that big fat five they'verecently drumming, drummers on
drumming, I think is the newname. I
think Ben is brilliant, becausedoes a great job. He took the
first several episodes, turnedit into a book, yes,
and we're having him on as aguest, and coming up soon. Chris

(01:16:40):
mazzaritzi is from Big Fat snaredrum. I love Chris. He had the
idea to do this like comediansdo with podcasts. We'll start a
network, and we'll, you know,work off each other. So, uh,
Bart van der Zee drum history,which is an amazing podcast as
part of that network. Nice and,uh, drum candy with Mike Dawson.

(01:17:01):
Mike Dawson, thank you. And soright now, those are the ones
that are a part of that. And sowith with we with megaphone.
What's megaphone? So megaphoneis a distributor that when you,
when we first started, you hadto do all the code on your

(01:17:22):
website to get it to upload toiTunes that now there's services
that you when you just dump yourmp three in there, it goes to
all the aggregates, like Libsynthat we use. Libsyn, okay, that
type, and I'm trying to think ofdynamic advertising is the
thing. So when you listen topodcasts, and you and you hear a
little and all sudden an adstarts because they can see that

(01:17:45):
auto audible marker. Orsometimes it could be like Conan
O'Brien, and it could be in thein the middle of some sounds,
and it
goes, drives me up that, like myradio sensibilities are off the
charts. When it happens, it'slike, mid sentence and it cuts
out. I'm like, why?
What happened? What that is,what that is is, I know that's
dynamic ad player, right? Sowe've got two spots that we you

(01:18:09):
program it in. You've got at thebeginning of the episode and
somewhere in the mid roll andsomewhere at the end, and each
one of those spots has a certainvalue to that you can assign to
the the advertiser. So gettinginto the, you know, can you
actually the donuts here? But
can you actually assign because,like, when I do a lot of
podcasting for clients and stufflike that, and I'm just, like,

(01:18:30):
if they have an ad, I'm justbaking it into the file. At some
point we got to get to dynamicads, but in the software I use
where I'm able to actuallydesignate the time. Okay, stop
here, and I might have aproduced piece that ramps up.
Hey, we're gonna be right back.Boom, because let the listener
know you got, you know, you got30 seconds. I even tell my
clients, well, they could skipforward. I said, I understand

(01:18:52):
that. But what if you were toprep them like, Hey, this is how
we pay the bills. Just make sureyou're listening to these. Some
of those words from oursponsors. We're gonna be back in
a few make sure you check themout, give us some love, because
you know, if you enjoy thepodcast, this is how we're
funding it.
It's an evolving industry. Yeah,that when we now, everyone
listens to podcasts, they reallydo. And as a result, we've

(01:19:14):
actually seen our listenershipgo down, because it's like,
there's just so much out there.Wow. So we now have tried to
find new ways to, you know,invigorate that and bring
attention back to it, because wewere the only ones. There were
very few out there. Very fewpodcasts, very few drumming
podcasts. Now there's more ofthose. Yeah, we're, you know, as

(01:19:37):
a result of of of Nick slowingdown his output and some other
people. We're probably thelongest running podcast. And,
you know, again, 500 started. SoI also feel like it's still
super fun. Grow so much from it.It's helped Zach and I on this
episode 500 talk about, I mean,it's all in. The episode we talk

(01:20:00):
about, you know, just how it'sit's helped our our careers,
it's helped our growth as asdrummers and as as business
people and just all thesethings, and my connections with
people within the industry,whether it's playing or where
the retail industry that remainsintact, but it's not through

(01:20:22):
somebody else's business. It'sthrough mine, yeah. And I say
mine, Zach, and I Yeah, youknow. And so that feels really
good. I feel like I ownsomething. And one of the
inspiration for starting thiswas like, I'm in a band, but I
have no say in this. And it'slike, but I'm not a songwriter.
How do I I want to create? Iwant, I want something that's
mine, and so that was kind ofthe start of that you

(01:20:46):
actually, I mean, looking atyour your Instagram page, are
you guys doing clips from theepisodes, like short form
content, things like that?
Yeah, not as much as, like someof our young podcaster friends
that are super tech savvy, Zachand I always checking in with
each other. It's like, Should wedo that? I see this and I see
that. I'm inspired, but yeah, dowe want to? Because

(01:21:08):
I'll tell you right now. Likeyou again, my radio
sensibilities, yeah, to promotethe other shows on the radio
station. For my years in radios,spent when talk radio always
running promos, throwing back tothe morning show. And hey,
here's what you could expectcoming up on blah, blah, blah.
That's what those are. You know,getting people a little bit of a
taste that they may not havefound you, it's removing the

(01:21:30):
hoops. You know what I mean,well, and
I just worked on one today forChad Wackerman. And so getting
back to doing that, we actuallyhired Dan ainspan from the
National drummers podcast to doa bunch of clips for us. So
again, it's a reminder of whatthe drumming community is, the

(01:21:50):
podcasting community is, andalso, like some of the tech
stuff, that is a necessary evil,but also maintaining and
managing it in such a way thatit remains fun. That's why we're
at 500 because Zach and I haveput some limits on how demanding
this thing is. Does it remainfun? Does it remain and can it

(01:22:15):
pay for itself? Now, in recentyears, we've been able to put
some money back into ourpockets, but going back to your
Patreon, Patreon is, you know,it's crowdfunding at its core,
yeah, and so there's a lot ofdifferent ways to do it, but
Patreon has grown and it haschanged with the industry as

(01:22:36):
people are, you know, like, wow,I can do this. I have now, I
have computer, I have internet.I can create my own business. I
can create my, you know, it's,it's endless, the opportunities
to create whatever, yeah, youknow. And so Patreon is one of
those things that has come up asa result of this changing
industry. And
that's, it's like, again, goingback to how I coach clients in

(01:22:57):
the podcast space is, you know,coming up with rate cards and
stuff like that, and differentthings that you can do to make
it affordable for one businessversus another, identifying
those audiences that make sense,because there are a lot of
people I could do the dynamicads that are controlled, and
they'll get a couple of pointson it, but at the end of the
day, it's like, you know, theycould start dictating what they

(01:23:20):
want you to Talk about, and allthat kind of stuff. And it's
typically not a good place to bewith certain kinds of podcasts.
In this case, you're kind oftalking about, you know, you
know, the kind of identifyingthe advertisers that make sense
for a drumming podcast would bewhat it would be, you know, you
got national reach so you can,you could appeal to maybe some
insurance companies, things ofthat nature, coffee, coffee

(01:23:44):
style brands, those fashionbrands, you know, yeah, I'm not
exactly sure if you're gonnahave, you know, drum
manufacturing companies, youknow, clamoring for advertising,
but they are really because theyhave a they have an advertising
budget in a print market thatwas always their MO, right? Is
going away. So they still havethe budget that needs to be used

(01:24:07):
somewhere. Yeah? And when youhave, like, an in ear company
that doesn't get a lot ofvisuals, they need testimonials,
right? They need that. So a lotof times we're guinea pigs with
stuff, yeah? Or we're like,we're the beneficiary
forks will advertise with, Ibelieve, Nashville drummer
podcast. Yeah,
they advertise with us for quitesome time, but there's, there's

(01:24:30):
just so many different ways. Andbecause of the dynamic
advertising, you can do it byregion. Yeah, you can do it by
the Yeah. So, so JC, reached outto us about the Music City drum
show. JC, Clifford, yeah, I'veactually
you were there right this pastyear, yeah? Just talk about
community, yeah, because I wasactually set up with my own
podcast where you were, you wereout of town, yeah? And, you

(01:24:54):
know, it's something that we youand I should probably at least
try and make an effort to bethere, get a booth this year,
possible. Yeah. I talked to JC,and I can't remember the guy's
name, I'll be home.
I'll be home for that Sunday,but yeah, we should check on
getting a booth. We
can get a booth, and maybe I canjust have a presence there, you
know. But I mean, JC and I, andI the guy who Landon Hall.

(01:25:17):
Landon, yes, thank you. Sorry.Landon, yeah, they are talking
about making, like a podcastrow. And I've suggested that. I
said, you know, get partneredwith one of these drum booth
sponsors. See,
we were there year one. I waslike a can, and we had a couch,
and we had people sit down. Butit's got to
be hermetically sealed, right?It's,

(01:25:38):
I was able to do it, yeah, I wasable to,
we know we were there, but wedidn't, we didn't. We weren't
going to record anything, but wewere going to do is we had our
chiropractic friends that.What's his name? Cheyenne
Gaffar, yeah,
he's a great guy. He's been onanother podcast that I produce
sales until so he,

(01:25:59):
you know, it's one of thosethings where we were able to,
like, bring it's like that waskind of our excuse to be there
and share this service and buildcommunity. And a lot of times we
do stuff in this industry, we'renot really quite sure what the
end result is. It's not going tobe cash in your pocket at the
end of the day, but it's goingto be just a little down the
line. Yeah, a little bit downthe line. And again, it's just

(01:26:22):
you gotta constantly be doingthings. And so, you know you
were talking about, like, how dopeople know who you are? Keogh,
what a great example. It's likegrassroots marketing at its
finest. When I tell people thatI'm an introvert, they're like,
really, but you do a podcast,I'm like, I know, but that's how
I that's how I work around Inever see
you as an introvert. Let me tellyou this. I was just, I'm sorry.

(01:26:42):
I'm sorry. I'm sorry being rude.I was just texting our friend
Luis esbaya, former guest on theworking drummer. He's, you know
what, and because drummers loveLuis and he's just a drummer's
best friend, great guy. Listen,I'm learning so much.
Congratulations on 500 episodes.Working drummer.net. Anywhere
there's podcasts, you can getthe working drummers podcast.

(01:27:03):
We're gonna do the Fave Five,Fave color, blue. So fast.
Everybody loves blue. So manydrummers. But do you have blue
drums?
No, I don't. Now, my first dw,my first pro kit, was a royal
blue dw, royal
blue favorite food or dish,
man, my wife says, anything?Pureed, um,

(01:27:25):
pureed, like, like, like, babyfood. Okay? Smoothies, yeah,
like, Joey eating the baby food.Yeah,
come on in. You're
up next. Fight. You're up next.Should
we put him right here? We cansit down. My
friend. We're doing we'rewrapping up. We don't have
a microphone for you, butsomething tells me you're low

(01:27:47):
enough. Thank God. What's up,buddy? All right, so we're doing
the Faye five. So yeah, whatwould be your favorite dish or
favorite food? Probably eggs.Eggs are the nature's
multivitamin. Yeah, I'll havefour a
day. Let me ask you this,though, can you eat for a day?
For a day, really? Yeah, becausethey said that it's bad for you.
No, didn't been debunked,really. So I should eat more

(01:28:11):
eggs. Eat
four eggs in the morning and awhole avocado, and you will be
crushing this
paleo I've got tuna fish andcanned chicken.
Jim, oh my God, you're going tobe bench pressing
legs in there. Favorite drink?
Oh, coffee,
coffee, yeah. And then this,these last two are so hard, and

(01:28:31):
Jim hates me for asking this,but what is your favorite movie
of the moment or of all time?
Gosh,
like this sucker comes on andyou're like, sorry, babe, I'm
gonna be here for two hours, orat the moment. Yeah, it could be
at the moment, like some people,like, Step Brothers, yeah. Of
course, some people are, like,JAWS

(01:28:52):
fit anywhere that
I've seen multiple that I willwatch every time is probably
Saving Private Ryan, oh god,yeah. I mean, I cannot not watch
that
you get teared up at the end. Mydad and I watched
it together for the first time,and at the end, he was
like, on the
football game, what's yourfavorite song of all time, or

(01:29:14):
something you're digging rightnow? Um,
what I'm digging right now isRosanna, yeah. And just trying
to get back into wrapping myhead around that as a huge
picaro fan and not a toto fan,yeah. Sorry, not sorry. This is
big. I

(01:29:34):
mean, this is, this iscontroversy in the making. So
not, you're not a fan of theirbody of work overall, not,
not compared to some of ourfriends that worship the entire
but what are some bands that youfreaking love? Well, I mean,
grew up listening to Rush and soyou know all that. Okay,
so Jim go,
what the question?

(01:29:55):
The question, so if you had topick a tribute band for the rest
of your life? Life. You cannotdo anything else. Yeah. What
tribute is it going to be? PaulMcCartney?
Wow,
yeah. Paul McCarthy,
because I get we did a tributeshow at third and Linsey, yeah,
and and at the moment with, withthe band Savannah jack, and we

(01:30:15):
were playing a ton of McCartney,and we'd go and play Broadway
and open up with jet and band onthe run and stuff like that.
Everyone over 35 was like, yay.And everybody else was like,
where are these guys? Yeah,who's this guy? It was so fun to
not only play Ringo parts andAbe liboreal Junior and try and
cop what he was doing. I'm like,I could do this for the rest of

(01:30:36):
my life. Nice. It's I was in aJames Taylor tribute band for a
minute last year, fire and rain.Yeah, the Kunkel. So who would
have thought to do that,
that? That was amazing, becauseyou're covering everybody from,
you know, Gad
Carlos Jordan, Carlos Vega.It's,

(01:30:58):
it's, I mean, my heroes,literally, my heroes. I think I
have an aversion towards beingin a tribute band, of bands that
I really, really love, becausethen I'm like, I would hate this
by the end of it, you know,seriously, I mean, McCarthy,
just it's covers so much, fromthe rock to the, you know, 60s
rock to all throughout.
We need more journey tributebands, really, do

(01:31:23):
we being totally sarcastic?Matt, what's the best way for
people to find you? Do youpersonally have a.com
matthewcross.net,
sorely needs to be updated. Butyou know, I I think that it's
hard to say social media is in aweird spot right now. Again,

(01:31:44):
that's what I love about thepodcast. I've had a lot of
people reach out to mepersonally through the podcast,
as they have Zach too, not justfor pod their podcast needs, but
for drumming and personal andother things like that. So I
love that. So workingdrummer.net. Yeah.
Great, nice. Hey, you are havebeen a fantastic guest. I mean,

(01:32:06):
your your hosting chops aresharp, 500 episodes, but isn't
it nice? Just let your guarddown and just be like, yeah,
man, it is. Man, I've notunbuttoned this shirt. That's a
great shirt. Many years that is
a great western inspired shirt,ladies and gentlemen, that's
Matthew Kraus, matthewcrows.net,also check out working
drummer.net you can patronizethe site. You could give them a

(01:32:27):
little money for their time andtheir efforts and their talents.
500 episodes is a majorcommitment. Congratulations, and
you're a backbone of thedrumming community here. It's
just a pleasure to know you, andI'm so happy for you, man, thank
you, man, dude, thanks for beingon here. Thanks for being here.
Yeah, Jim, thank you for yourtime and talent, buddy. Thank
you, Jim. You're welcome. Hey.And I do want to say this jacket
that I'm wearing, everybodyknows I'm a sucker for dead

(01:32:49):
cows. Very thin dead cows. Thisis a company called last Wolf.
And my friend Rob ricotta. He'sa drummer. He opened up for us a
couple years ago with John notJohn Edwards, uh, John Morgan,
what's up, John? And he was niceenough to get me this coat from
this company, and even embossedmy initials on the jacket. So I

(01:33:09):
just want to say, what's up,Rob, just want to say, what's
up. Last Wolf, I really likethis brown bomber jacket that
you have, and there's also abrown Cafe Racer jacket that you
guys have. But, uh, Anyways,guys, hey, there's this company
called DW. I really like yourdrums. They sound really good.
There's just one drum set, andapparently you got the wood from

(01:33:30):
Lake Superior. I mean, come out,I don't know. I think they're
sold out of that gym or whateverhappens next. All the doctors
and the lawyers buy those. Theguys that make big time bucks
buy those kits. Right? Totally.Hey so guys, thank you for
watching, thanks for supportingthe show. Be sure to subscribe,
share, rate and review. It helpspeople buy and follow the show
and buy this. This is my bookhere, right here, Crash Course,

(01:33:51):
success, I know, but this is theyou're like, hey, just promote
this stuff. I'm a drummer with aproduct. There's my practice
pad. By the practice pad. It's,it's made in America. Yeah, go
to Starbucks
and check out the mostly MiddleTennessee business podcast.com.
That's right, and it's just likeGeorge Burns used to say you're
that. They say, Hey, George,what does your doctor think

(01:34:15):
about you smoking 10 cigars aday and drinking copious amounts
of whiskey and chasing youngwomen, and he said,
I don't know he's dead. Ah,we'll see you next time. Folks,
thanks, Matt.
This has been the rich Redmondshow. Subscribe, rate and follow
along@richredmen.com

(01:34:37):
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