September 23, 2025 • 47 mins
TrulySignificant.com presents Marshall Kummer.
We first listened to the extraordinary backbeat and drum fills of Marshall Kummer at Sonic Guild in Austin that featured his band Go Machine.
Impressive, original, quirky, rhymic, Marshall stole the show with his bounce.
Enjoy this interview that unpacks his "brain on fire," discovering how his ADHD is use positively to explore new sounds and drum beats.
Hear his philosophy on "weaponizing ADHD" for good.
And open your ears to Go Machine's newest single-Black Sunday. It moves to a new groove.
Visit Go Machine on Instagram.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
We first listened to the extraordinary backbeat and drum fills of Marshall Kummer at Sonic Guild in Austin that featured his band Go Machine.
Impressive, original, quirky, rhymic, Marshall stole the show with his bounce.
Enjoy this interview that unpacks his "brain on fire," discovering how his ADHD is use positively to explore new sounds and drum beats.
Hear his philosophy on "weaponizing ADHD" for good.
And open your ears to Go Machine's newest single-Black Sunday. It moves to a new groove.
Visit Go Machine on Instagram.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, welcome back to truly Significant dot com presense. I'm
Rick Tokeeney. We hope that you all had a great weekend.
About one in every twenty five or six of our
shows is with a percussionist, and it's because I'm a
drummer and I have a particular interest in talking to
professional drummers. We have the wonderful occasion of meeting Marshall
(00:35):
Komer at the Sonic Guild in Austin, and I sat
there going, oh my gosh, this guy is amazing, and
he played in two different bands that night at that event.
Not only is he a great drummer, but I think
that he's a great listener of music and an improviser. Marshall,
(00:56):
it's an honor to get to honor you today.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Thank you so much. I'm happy to have a conversation.
I love to talk about music and drumming and all that,
so I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Well. Great, now you're wearing a Yankees hat.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
So that's a great introduction to tell us about your
hometown where you're from, and and you can throw in
anything else that you love about the Northeast in this introduction.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Sure, okay, Well, so my parents are from New Jersey,
so I've never you know, I've never lived in New York,
but up in that you know, up in that area.
My wife actually got me this hat when she was
visiting a friend up there. But yeah, that's that's where
my folks are from. I was actually I was born
in Pennsylvania, but I grew up overseas. My folks have
(01:44):
been working in Europe for the last like thirty five
years or so, probably more than that, probably close to
forty years. So I grew up in Italy and Germany,
and I moved back to the US. Actually this past
July it was my ten year uh, I guess anniversary
(02:05):
of of living back in the in the US again.
But while I am American by birthday, I I still
often feel like a like a foreigner here in my
own passport country. But I guess I would say the
place where I have felt most at home in the
US is up in the northeast and kind of Pennsylvania,
East eastern PA kind of area. But I've been living
(02:29):
in I've been living in Texas for the past six
and a half years or so, and it's you know,
starting to feel more and more like home.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
But yeah, Italy and Germany.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So in Italy it was my my folks worked at
this They work for a nonprofit. They worked at this
kind of like a retreat center up in the mountains
in uh in Tuscany. So the town that we lived
and only had like three hundred people that lived in
(03:03):
that town. And then uh so, yeah, we were we
were about an hour and a half away from the
closest city that had like a hospital or something like that.
Uh So we were. We were up in the up
in the boonies. And so I lived there until I
was about seven, and then we moved back to the
(03:25):
US for two years about an hour outside of Philadelphia,
uh in eastern PA, kind of an Amish country. And
then uh and then they moved, well, we all, we
all packed up and moved to Germany. And that was
the We were in the southeast, sorry, southwestern corner of Germany.
(03:46):
We were like twenty minutes from the Swiss border and
twenty minutes from the French border. So right there in
that in that little uh in what they call the
Rhyane Valley in the Black Forest. Oh yeah, so yeah,
I grew up. I spent fourth grade through my first
year of college in the black forest kind of where
(04:08):
where Grim's fairy tales take place in all that.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So, okay, Marshall, with that colorful background, how did living
in Italy, then moving to the US, and then move
to Germany, how did all that play into your musical
brain and skills as a percussionist.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Well, my folks have always been just encouraging of music.
Like my mom when she was in like middle school,
I think she tried a bunch of instruments when she
was younger. She had tried like the clarinet and the
alto sax and I want to say she marched, but
(04:54):
with a field drum type thing. I don't think she
really did full on like marching band, but she did
do some she was in like a club or something
like that. I don't remember exactly what the details of
that were, but I mean she's always been very supportive
of me. Uh, you know, she with both of my folks,
it was kind of like, well, if you if you're
(05:16):
gonna do this thing like you know, you like, if
we're gonna have these that are in the house, like
you better be practicing, you know. So it was kind
of the and that was fine by me.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It was Drumming has always been a you know, thankfully
when we were so I started playing drums when I
was about ten, and that was when we were living
in Germany, and it just so happened that we had neighbors.
We lived in a townhouse, and we had neighbors on
one side that were like kind of older, like artsy
(05:51):
folk that they didn't have kids, but like the wife
was like a visual artist and the husband was like, uh,
I think you know there he was like a hobbyist
kind of acoustic guitar player, you know, but they just
kind of had this like no children should play music.
(06:12):
You know. It was like okay, you know. And then
on the other side, it was it was a family
with two two like twin boys who were a bit
younger than me, and they were like, you know, like
we make noise. You can make noise, you know. And
in Germany it's very much like it's like quiet hours
are between like eight pm and eight am, and uh
(06:37):
and you must respect the quiet hours. And so I did,
you know, and as long as I was practicing, you know,
between between eight and eight, uh, you know, everything was fine.
And I didn't you know, I didn't really try pushing that,
you know, I kind of saw it as like, you know,
I get to play as much as I want during
this time, and and so I'm not gonna Yeah, I'm
(06:58):
not I'm not gonna push it with the neighbors here
because I know that there are days when you know,
it may not be may not be after eight, but
it'll but it's been the last four and a half hours,
So try to be nice.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah, the drummer, it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, So growing up, who were your musical influences and
more specifically favorite drummers.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, so let's see.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
When I was first kind of the music I was
listening to, when I was like getting into drumming, I
would say was like, I mean, it's funny. I wouldn't
even like necessarily consider them like a musical influence now,
but I would say that, like there was this there
(07:48):
was this kind of like Christian alternative rock band called
Reliant K and it was like it was like pseudo
anyone who's into punk music would like be very upset
for me called pump but it was like all it
was kind of like high energy, like alternative rock. I
have two older sisters, so they were kind of into
that and that sort of trickled down to me. And
(08:09):
I think there was just something about the like the
raw energy, you know, liked to get to get to
to get and like even though I couldn't really like,
you know, play that super well, Uh, it was like
there was just it was this idea of like, there's
a lot of energy in this music. And so by
the time uh, I started playing along really with I mean,
(08:32):
I was listening to like van Halen and uh and
Alex van Halen is like, in my opinion, one of
the I mean, I know people have given him his flowers,
but I still think that Alex van Halen is one
of the more underrated rock drummers. I mean, the man
is you know, he was more than just hot for Teacher,
you know, like all of those songs. He's got such
(08:54):
got an incredible feel and just like just like attitude,
you know, like packs punch and always going for blood
and that's so yeah, there's that. I mean, Neil Peert
from Rush there's a big influence on me and uh
and uh, yeah, it's funny. There's there are times when
(09:16):
you know, I don't listen to Rush for whatever several
months or or even a couple of years, and then
and then I go back to listen to something and
I'm like, man, like, I hear so much Neil in
my playing. You know. It's like whenever I go back
to listen to Neil Pierre, it's like, Oh, that's where
I stole that from. Oh that's where I stole that from.
(09:38):
Oh that's where I stole that from. You know, it's
just like it's so ingrained and ingrained in you know,
even though I don't really play a lot of like
progressive rock or anything. You know, I don't play much
of that these days. It's just like there's certain elements
where I'm like, oh, yeah, that like ride bell pattern
is like that's that's a real thing, you know. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
So when I heard you play in Austin, and it
wasn't the amount of wind that I had consumed, but
I thought I heard a little bit of John Bonham
and your triplets in your.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Back beat, and then I was amazed.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
At your ability to and folks, for if you're not
a drummer, you may not appreciate this, but percussions have
four different things going on, and if you can imagine
a drummer who can sing. That's a fifth thing that's
going on. But in Marshall's.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
Case, he has got some wild action going on with
his left foot and his right foot much less this
beautiful beat and the ability to play your ride symbol
is just I just think it's an amazing feat.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
That you pull off. So what I'll try to squeeze
out a question here? Who taught you how to do
this below the waist action and have all this left
foot right foot beauty going on?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, first of all, thank you for that. That's uh,
It's something I'm working on all the time. So so
I I appreciate. Yeah, I appreciate you know, I appreciate
a little bit of the validation. You know, it's not
why we do it, but it is nice to but
it is nice to know that progress is being made.
So with the left foot, I mean, I got there's
(11:25):
I'm trying to see. I'm trying to think of like
how far back it might go. I'm sure that there,
I'm sure that there is plenty of that. But I
would say, like my first like real conscious okay, okay,
So I would say the first time I was really
blown away was there's this song and I'm not even
like a really big fan of the band per se,
(11:46):
not that I don't like them, but it was just
my buddy made me a mix CD and there was
this song called Man behind the Curtain by Valiant Thor
mm hm, and and again I'm I'm not like, I
don't know anything about this band till this, but they
had the But there's this there's a breakdown in the
song where the kick drum.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Is going doom doom doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom,
doom doom, and my hat's going so stoom stood stoomdoom,
stoom stoom doom, and he's got a snare roll going,
and I was just like, how the heck is he
doing this?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Like this is like I can do. I can do
any two of these things, but all three this is insane.
And so I remember working on that. But as far
as like really like solidifying this concept of like I
need like the left foot is really a part of it.
I have to give a shout out to Dave Descenzo,
who's a teacher up at Berkeley College of Music and uh,
(12:47):
and he's got this. He has kind of this legendary
uh modern drummer performance. It's on YouTube. It's it's two
thousand and six Modern Drummer, two thousand and six Dave Descenzo.
And I mean, honestly, if you watch that, that'll tell
you everything you gotta know about the left foot, because
not only is he doing high hat, he's also got
(13:07):
a great double pet like double bass pedal thing going on.
The way the fluidity with which he has that going
on is great. And then he has this other thing
to the left of his high hat, which is like
it's the pedal is like hitting a cow bell, and
then on the other side of the cow bell is
a tambourine. So you've got you have the cow bell
(13:28):
impact sound and the like the jingle of the tambourine going.
And so you see what he's doing with the rest
of his body and what his left foot is doing,
and it's everything from keeping you know, an astinado to
like to doing like a pattern, you know, like a
(13:48):
clave type pattern, and it's just it's like David Senzo
is the man, truly it. Every time I've shown a
drummer buddy of mine, Dave Descendo, They've been like, wait,
what is who does this guy play with? I mean,
he played he played with like Duran Duran for a
little while, he played with Josh Grobin for a little while.
(14:10):
He played with a couple of like rock bands from
the northeast, two Ton Shoe and and stuff like that.
So it's, you know, he's but mostly what he does
is teach, and I think he's I mean, I think
he's one of the best, one of the best, most
like enthusiastic teachers out there. But yeah, Dave Descenzo really
has that left foot independence thing going and another thing
(14:31):
that he sort of instilled. It's something that I think
about as I try to work on the singing thing,
because I'm you know, I enjoy singing. But you know,
as you can imagine, not not only is the independence
part of having four limbs going and and trying to sing,
but it's but it's the breathing. You know, you have
to have your you have to have your posture right
(14:52):
so you can you know, breathe with your diaphragm so
you can get a note that projects. And so it's
so Dave talks about and it's something I got to
keep working on. But he says, like everything starts from here.
So if you can keep the time and like the
groove and the feel in your mind. And what he
(15:15):
makes you do is he has you do all of
these complicated patterns or whatever, and he makes you count
out loud while you're doing it, or like if you're
doing you know, he has he has this thing called
the one bar clave, which is just a which is
just a pattern that when you permutate it over eighth notes,
it kind of it switches around, right, It's it's the
(15:36):
same pattern, but it feels different depending on where it's starting.
But he'll have you do this thing where it's like
just at it. For instance, the first permutation is if
you're if you're counting like this, it's b b b b.
But so what he has you do is if you're
(15:57):
if you're counting it in sixteenth notes, he had you
going one in and three fouri in one and and
a three four one, two and three, and it's like
and so and then the next one when it's permutated
is and four you well, you know, you know, so
it's just like and that's how he has you thinking.
He's like, and you got to be saying it and
(16:19):
you're playing it, and then he takes it to a
whole other level where he's like he's like, okay, now
seeing the second permutation while you're playing the sixth permutation,
and that's like to me, I'm like, Dave, this is incredible.
I'm gonna need like six more years working on this
before I can plumb those depths. Like he's like, Dave
(16:41):
like really takes it in. But like the way it
has like affected my independence in this idea of keeping
the left foot going the the other just from a
musical standpoint, not just like keeping the time right, but
from a musical standpoint. Lewis Cole, the way that his
left foot is going. I don't know if you've ever
listened to Nowhere or Lewis Cole his his uh nowhere
(17:04):
as in like a like a person who knows things. Yeah,
it's spelled spelled like this, it's his His left foot
is relentless. I would say Lewis Cole is one of
my biggest influences as far as you know nowadays, in
the last you know, if I've been playing drums for
(17:26):
nineteen years, the last like six, I would say Lewis
Cole has been like a huge influence.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And Lewis Cole and sput Sea right from ghost Note
and and you know he used to play with Snarky
Puppy and then Robert sput sea right.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Those are just broken drummers. Hey.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
You know where I'm going with this is that I
want you to ponder this deeper philosophical question and we're
gonna get to it your answer after they break.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Here. When you.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Or other drummers are taught at a young age to
be doing four different things at one time, how has
that shaped your brain and wired your brain to where
you live a different life from everybody else. That having
been said, we're going to cut to commercial. Tell people
where they can contact you or listen to any of
(18:26):
your music, especially here in Austin.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Okay. Cool, So if you look up Go Machine music
on Instagram, or go Machine with a little dash in between,
Go Dash Machine on Spotify or Apple Music. That's me
and my best buds here in Austin, Rye Dill and
Dave Orr and we rope in some of our other
(18:50):
friends too on saxophone and on keys whenever we can.
But that's our original music, Go Machine. We actually just
dropped our lap last single of our first EP on Friday.
It's called Black Sunday. Yeah, I imagine that was probably
one of the tunes that you heard at the Sonic
(19:10):
Guild event. That's that's one of our as we as
we say, one of our barn burners. It's it moves
along pretty quick. So yeah, but definitely to check out
Go Machine. We play all around Austin all the time,
so you can.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
You will sink right back with Marshall Komer after this
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Speaker 1 (21:16):
Okay, we are back with Austin's elite drummer, Marshall Komer.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
It's interesting because I think a lot. I think a
lot about how my brain works differently, just in general
because I have pretty pretty deep ADHD and uh, not
always so much the like hyperactivity part of it, but
the but just my brain's moving really fast and it's
(21:45):
not always moving in it's moving really fast in a
bunch of directors. They're just there're in general, there's there's
a hum going on. Uh, and so to like focus
that is well, here's here's here's what I'll say as
as a as the way having all four limbs moving
(22:08):
and the brand and how the brain works. I had
this I had this revelation a couple of years ago
on a gig, and I'm and I'm I'm getting to
the answer of the question. But but but if you
ask any of my friends that, they'll tell you sometimes
there's a little bit of a walk to the well
before you can get the get the water comes. So
I'm looking. I'm looking at the bass player, and I'm
looking at the guitar player. Dave and Rye. You you
(22:31):
saw that, You've you've met these guys, yes, And I'm looking.
I'm seeing for them. The point of the the point
of contact between them and their instrument is their fingers,
right it's out in front of them, right here, and
then their amp is behind them, and that's where the
sound is coming from, is behind them. On drums, I
(22:56):
hit it, it's all it's in front of me, and
I hit it, and the feedback, the response is right
in your face. It's right there, you know. And you
know I've played within years, you know, I you know,
for a for instance, for Skateland, the other project I
played with that night, we're all on in ears, you know,
we're playing with a click and tracks and stuff like that.
(23:18):
And so I do have the experience of hearing my drums,
you know, in my ears instead of just right in
front of my face. But that experience of like the
tactile physical thing that's happening is right in front of
me here and then the sound is coming from behind
me to me. Just in that moment, for whatever reason,
(23:38):
I was like, I cannot fathom that like to have
for me. The drums is such a immediate response of like,
And it's so again with the ADHD thing, It's like
it is so the drums are so engaging because it's
all right out in front of you and and uh
(24:04):
and yeah, and it's all four limbs. It's like there's
something about it kind of quiets a lot of like
drums for me are something that's really fun and it's
a way to like, it's it's a fun craft to
pursue excellence in because it's just the more I learn
about it, the deeper it goes, the more I realize
(24:25):
I don't know anything, and so which is which is exciting?
You know. It's like as as it's it's humbling, it's
always humbling. As soon as I feel like, hey, you
know what, I'm on some stuff? This is good, It's
like I hit something and I'm like, oh man, I
have so I gotta get back in the shed. Like
that is a consistent feeling. But but the thing that's
(24:49):
like another part that something drumming has always been to
me has been a therapeutic you know, release, right, And
part of that, I think is because you know, with
eighty eight, with my brain always always kind of racing
with this hum kind of always going and like and
(25:09):
also part of that hum, part of that like foggy
sort of white noise, is that chasing one train of
thought is can be difficult because there's so much like
the way that my brain works is that I'll I'll
connect a bunch of different things constantly, so things that
seem unrelated and uh. And sometimes when I'm having a
(25:33):
conversation with someone and I start talking about something, they're like, wait,
how did we get here? And I forget, Oh, I
didn't let you in to the like you know, the
like lightning, you know when you see lightning come down
and it splits. I don't always remember to like connect
this thing, like to see, hey, it all came from here,
you know it connects, yeah, But to try to make
(25:54):
the jump from here to here is tricky sometimes, so
it's like uh, But with drums, it's like because it
is so physically demanding. The you know, each limb is
each limb is separate, and you want to be able
to keep your limbs separate for dynamic purposes. You don't
(26:18):
always want your symbols to be as loud as you're
hitting your snare drum because it's gonna wash things out,
especially in the room that that you came and saw
us in. That room was like that's where at KFMA
here in Austin, that's where they record, like the classical
radio station. And so if you were to come to
(26:38):
a show that we were playing, say like at the
Continental Club, I'm gonna be laying in a little bit
more than I was in that room because in that
room it's like, oh this is it's pretty live in here,
and the symbol they're gonna run away if I'm if
I'm just going crazy. So it's like that your limbs
(26:59):
need to be separate because you need to be able
to control your dynamics and the sound, but they need
to work together or else it's not going to feel right.
So the the you know, and it does, it does
become second nature. But for but anytime you start stepping
outside of your comfort zone of like of like, Okay,
(27:21):
I need to focus a little bit on the independence
of this thing. I need to focus on all of
my limbs doing kind of different things but still working together.
And in many ways, your limbs are kind of like
the band, right, Like they're they're they're just different elements
of the band where it's like, yeah, everybody needs to
be paying attention to their thing to make sure that
their sound is good, that they're in time, that they're
(27:44):
you know, their intonation is good. But if they're not,
if we're not listening to each other, I don't really
have any interest in making music with people who aren't
listening to each other, like I've played. That's actually something
I realized when I first moved to Austin was the
(28:04):
style of music. You know, I have my tastes. There's
stuff that I like and don't like, but I I
would rather play music where the genre is not something
I necessarily would pick to listen to. I would rather
play that type of music with a bunch of musicians
(28:27):
who are listening to each other and interacting and like
and like playing together, like we we sometimes we forget that.
Like when we say we're going to play music, it's like, yeah,
we are playing together, you know, we're at the same
time and taking turns like this is this is a
this is like a social thing that we're doing. It
(28:47):
is I'd rather do that than play funk music, which
I love with a bunch of folks who are just
completely zoned into their part and are not paying attention,
and like.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
That's not me, that's not fun for me.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
You know, you may be one of the first drummer
polymaths that I've ever met.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Polymaths, what do you mean? What's that?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
A polymath is Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci.
There's somebody that goes into their domain and they solve
problems and they have epiphanies while they're in the middle
of playing. Einstein figured out part of his theory of
(29:34):
relativity while he's playing violin. Da Vinci wn't name any
other polymath they are. They are domain experts, and when
they get into the flow or the flow of science,
they start to actually see answers to things. Nobody ever
(29:56):
has ever observed the drummer. The sound coming from a
drum is in front of us and the bass guitarist
sound is coming.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
From behind him. Crazy, right, you are a polymath.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
What's that's cool? I get Yeah, I appreciate that to me.
To me, it's like to me, it's like, I can't believe.
It's like because you played drums, Like, can you imagine
if you were like banging away and the sound was
coming from a speaker behind you. No, you know, it's crazy.
It's like, it's insane. It's insane.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
There's an immediacy to playing drums. It's so it's exhilarating.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And then I want to make it one other point
of come in on your the band situation. Having played
in jazz bands m HM, that created and and molded
me to be a keen listener of every musician. And
(31:04):
even though there's lots of jokes about jazz music and
the people play the wrong notes and get away with it, right,
there's something golden about having watched your band, the first
band that performed at Sonic Guild, and how you were
listening and improvising with each other, and you turn your
hat on around backwards and you were you were looking
(31:27):
and listening, and I was watching how you watch the
other musicians and listened at the same time. Tell our
listening audience how you have built your own listening skills up.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Sure, well, I appreciate that. I'm i am always I
realized this. It's funny. I've had different like like step, like,
what's the word I'm looking for? Incremental. I've had many epiphanies. Actually,
it's funny that you say this. I've had multiple epiphany
(32:00):
is about listening. Over my years of drumming, I would
say from the beginning, my strength was like I'm I'm
I'm bad at sight reading. You know, I went to
school for music, but even then, the site reading was
always a big struggle for me. You know, but I
have I have my degree in drum set performance, and
(32:21):
I still have terrible reading chops. Part of that is
the ADHD. My eyes are always bouncing around the page.
Part of that is a little bit of dyslexia of
just like wait, where where am I in this collection
of notes? Whatever? But for me, what's always I've always
played by ear. I've always like and from an early
(32:43):
age at my church, Uh, there was there was a
guy who was older than me who was playing on
the church team and uh and uh, the the worship
leader had heard me play in a different setting, and
(33:04):
you know, auditioned me basically to see if I you know,
just to see where I was at. There was going
to be a conference coming through to the school that
we were, so, yeah, there was a conference coming through
the church, and and he was going to see if
I could play at the conference because this older guy
wasn't gonna be there, blah blah blah. Well he pretty
quickly after playing together, was like he basically fired the
(33:26):
older kid. Even though that kid, that guy was in
like junior or senior year of high school and I
was in eighth grade. He fired that kid because he
was like, a he doesn't want to get better, and
you clearly are like pushing to get better and be
like you are always listening and reacting and like that's
(33:50):
but because to me, it's like that's again, that's one
of the most fun parts about music is the listening,
is the interacting, the like we're building this thing together,
you know.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And and I will say that while that is a
really good quality to have a good starting place, there
are times when it has worked against me in the
sense of, you know, as the drummer, your sense of
this is the time, and this is the feel like
(34:27):
needs to be like like absolute, you know, like you
need to have confidence that like that like listen, like
of course we are all listening to each other and interacting.
But you know they talk about the drums being the
heartbeat of the band, right, so but it's like it's
like and and so for me, there were times when
(34:49):
I was so reactive and so listening to what was
going on that if someone's time started to get a
little wonky, I would go to fill that that sort
of position to make it sound like their time was fine.
You know, I would sort of I would sort of like.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Change rescuing the other musicians.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yes, and and my rescuing was was less like yo,
here's the time, catch up, and it was more like, oh, no,
we can, we can kind of take it there, you know.
And so I had to I've had to work on that,
you know, over the last again, dang near twenty years
of playing drums, I've had to like work on my
(35:32):
confidence of like here's where it is. But sorry, I
lost I sort of lost my train of thought a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Listen thinking about that, I've got to I want to
wrap this show up.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
And I and I want to talk. I want to.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Make sure that we get across I think one of
the most truly significant comments that you made, I'm going
to purge across America that we have all we all
have attention deficit disorder of some sort, and social media
and TikTok and all the other forces are at large
(36:16):
out there affecting our brain and our attention and sometimes
our attention to detail. You've recognized your own attention deficit,
and you've poured yourself into a profession. What advice can
you give to America at large today about how to
take their disease of add and leverage it going forward
(36:42):
to do something like you, even though we're not all drummers,
But how can we take what's the reality of having
attention deficit disorder? How can we all take that forward?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
I would say there is a way to weaponize it,
and in a good way, not in like, not in
a you know, not in an aggressive way. But there's
a way to make there is the same way that
there is a time and place for everything that I
would say that my simplest answer to this question is, uh,
(37:24):
in the car like like this disconnect like don't don't
listen to a podcast in the car, don't listen to
or you know whatever, maybe pick a day of the
week or whatever it is, whatever rules you make for
like I would, But in my opinion, the car is
a great place. And I would say, when you're in
(37:46):
the car by yourself, start talking out loud to yourself.
Doesn't matter. People are gonna think you're on like that.
It doesn't matter what people think anyways. But the car
is a good place because people are just gonna think
you're on your phone. But whether it's talking to yourself
or talking to God or talking to the universe or
whatever you believe in. For me, I sort of oscillate
(38:07):
between praying and talking to myself and just like externalize
your thoughts and sometimes these like you start to pull
together some of these ideas that have been like flashing off,
(38:28):
and you know, the different things that are whatever in
the sort of spaghetti of you know whatever, the electricity
in your brain, the stuff that's sort of like seems disconnected.
If you start sort of verbally processing it on your own,
you'll start to pull different things together. And you know
(38:49):
the same way that people talk about there are no
I was just listening to Zach Danziger, who's a great drummer.
He's talking about there are no original especially in music.
There are no original ingredis anymore. But there are original recipes,
is what he said. And so you know, these days,
you know, it's hard to find something that's new, right.
(39:10):
But it's like it's like we're a lot most of
us are working with the same ingredients. But if you
are by yourself in the car and you're just like,
I was thinking about this and that made me feel
like this, and you know what if I was doing
you know what if I took this sort of you know,
Lewis Cole type drumbeat, but I put it with like
(39:33):
a real arrestive guitar type thing, you know, whatever, whatever
it is that you're thinking, it's like if you can
sort of compartmentalize, like, okay, for the next i've got
a thirty minute drive, I'm not going to put on
a podcast. And I think podcasts are great, but I
also think that they can just be this like, if
we're constantly taking things in, we're not always able to.
(39:56):
You need time. Once you've taken the ingredients in, you
need time to to arrange them and to classify them
and put them together. Like if you're if you're constantly
going and picking up legos but you're never taking the
time to like play with them and put them together
(40:16):
and turn them into something, then all you have the
big old, you know, bed sheet full of legos that
you're not doing anything with. You know. So it's like
we need to have times where you know, I'm not
gonna say you should totally get off all the stuff,
although I think there's an argument that could be made
for that, but I would say that, like, our constant
(40:38):
state is consuming media, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or
YouTube or whatever it is. But if you if you
can take a break from that in order to just
like think about all of those you know, examine all
the pieces that you have, and then just start putting
them together, you can start to make a lot more
(41:00):
out of it. And again for me, and I would
encourage people to try this, but for me, it's actually
talking out loud in a place where there's no judgment.
You can say a weird thing. You don't have to
film yourself, you don't have to record yourself. You could
just say it for you know, maybe if you if
you do distill an idea. You can say, oh, okay,
(41:21):
hang on, let me pick up my phone. Circle back
to this idea. You know, the Smurfs play John Coltrane. Okay,
I'll come back to that, you know, or something like that.
You know, just like whatever the like funny idea that
comes that comes to you from from the brainstorm. It's like,
let's let's get this, Let's get the water from this
(41:42):
brainstorm into some buckets, you know, and see what we
can do with it.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Brilliant, What a great observation. We've got to have you
back on the show again. You're riff about philosophy because
I think what this turned out to be brain surgery
today and we got inside the brain of a great drummer.
Before I leave, you tell me what Zach Danziger said
(42:06):
about recipes versus ingredients.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Repeat that quote.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, he said, we're all trying to do something original, right,
We're all trying to find something new. But there are
no new ingredients. There are only new recipes. There's nothing
new under the sun. Blah blah blah. Like we're all
we're all pulling from the same All of us are
just a manifestation of the collection of our influences, right,
(42:34):
and so and so, but and so each of us.
What makes us unique, what makes us original, is which
influences each person takes in and the amounts of which, again, yeah,
the recipe, the amount of which of each thing that
is in your playing is what makes you, is what
makes you different. Because in my playing, you're gonna hear, Yeah,
(42:56):
you're gonna hear John Bonham, You're gonna hear Benny greb
You're gonna hear Laurna Lewis, You're gonna hear Lewis Cole,
You're gonna hear Uh, You're gonna hear Calvin Rodgers, You're
gonna hear you know, it's it's gonna be. It's gonna
be a whole, a whole mess of different stuff because
my interests are yeah, I mean it's and my interests
(43:17):
have changed over over the over years. You know, I
used to be a whole lot more into the classic
rock and metal type thing. Nowadays I'm a little more
into the funk and gospel type thing, and and then
everything in between.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
So you're you are one evolving percussionist. It has been
an honor to honor you. We wish you success, but
as we always say, on your way to significance.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Dancing off a hurricane, spinning like a wheel.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
You saw a trouble rainbow while you were such a
trou a field.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
You know how to be back again, come home through
the night like looking for something real.
Speaker 7 (44:27):
You will retreat sing your desirables and.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
Now they're never that to heels.
Speaker 9 (44:33):
But you know I'll be back again.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Don't let me catch you hot.
Speaker 9 (44:39):
From a black Sunday.
Speaker 6 (44:47):
Dada set the microphones, Wandma gets us.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
The skins sinking. See comes you the front gul.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
We looked at new lab again.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
I'll be back again, so that may cast you.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
From the vessel.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
Before. It's not running from your themes.
Speaker 9 (46:16):
Being a house with a back door, And when you
think it's home, I called him, it's a mom. You
just said stoushouldn't gone there? Will I ever free the
same again? You don't help me back again.
Speaker 6 (46:46):
You don't I'll be back again.
Speaker 5 (46:52):
Do you know me back again?
Speaker 9 (46:57):
Because on a black Sunday you don't have me back again?
Then we catch you from the black Sunday
Hey, welcome back to truly Significant dot com presense. I'm
Rick Tokeeney. We hope that you all had a great weekend.
About one in every twenty five or six of our
shows is with a percussionist, and it's because I'm a
drummer and I have a particular interest in talking to
professional drummers. We have the wonderful occasion of meeting Marshall
(00:35):
Komer at the Sonic Guild in Austin, and I sat
there going, oh my gosh, this guy is amazing, and
he played in two different bands that night at that event.
Not only is he a great drummer, but I think
that he's a great listener of music and an improviser. Marshall,
(00:56):
it's an honor to get to honor you today.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Thank you so much. I'm happy to have a conversation.
I love to talk about music and drumming and all that,
so I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Well. Great, now you're wearing a Yankees hat.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
So that's a great introduction to tell us about your
hometown where you're from, and and you can throw in
anything else that you love about the Northeast in this introduction.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Sure, okay, Well, so my parents are from New Jersey,
so I've never you know, I've never lived in New York,
but up in that you know, up in that area.
My wife actually got me this hat when she was
visiting a friend up there. But yeah, that's that's where
my folks are from. I was actually I was born
in Pennsylvania, but I grew up overseas. My folks have
(01:44):
been working in Europe for the last like thirty five
years or so, probably more than that, probably close to
forty years. So I grew up in Italy and Germany,
and I moved back to the US. Actually this past
July it was my ten year uh, I guess anniversary
(02:05):
of of living back in the in the US again.
But while I am American by birthday, I I still
often feel like a like a foreigner here in my
own passport country. But I guess I would say the
place where I have felt most at home in the
US is up in the northeast and kind of Pennsylvania,
East eastern PA kind of area. But I've been living
(02:29):
in I've been living in Texas for the past six
and a half years or so, and it's you know,
starting to feel more and more like home.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
But yeah, Italy and Germany.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So in Italy it was my my folks worked at
this They work for a nonprofit. They worked at this
kind of like a retreat center up in the mountains
in uh in Tuscany. So the town that we lived
and only had like three hundred people that lived in
(03:03):
that town. And then uh so, yeah, we were we
were about an hour and a half away from the
closest city that had like a hospital or something like that.
Uh So we were. We were up in the up
in the boonies. And so I lived there until I
was about seven, and then we moved back to the
(03:25):
US for two years about an hour outside of Philadelphia,
uh in eastern PA, kind of an Amish country. And
then uh and then they moved, well, we all, we
all packed up and moved to Germany. And that was
the We were in the southeast, sorry, southwestern corner of Germany.
(03:46):
We were like twenty minutes from the Swiss border and
twenty minutes from the French border. So right there in
that in that little uh in what they call the
Rhyane Valley in the Black Forest. Oh yeah, so yeah,
I grew up. I spent fourth grade through my first
year of college in the black forest kind of where
(04:08):
where Grim's fairy tales take place in all that.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So, okay, Marshall, with that colorful background, how did living
in Italy, then moving to the US, and then move
to Germany, how did all that play into your musical
brain and skills as a percussionist.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Well, my folks have always been just encouraging of music.
Like my mom when she was in like middle school,
I think she tried a bunch of instruments when she
was younger. She had tried like the clarinet and the
alto sax and I want to say she marched, but
(04:54):
with a field drum type thing. I don't think she
really did full on like marching band, but she did
do some she was in like a club or something
like that. I don't remember exactly what the details of
that were, but I mean she's always been very supportive
of me. Uh, you know, she with both of my folks,
it was kind of like, well, if you if you're
(05:16):
gonna do this thing like you know, you like, if
we're gonna have these that are in the house, like
you better be practicing, you know. So it was kind
of the and that was fine by me.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It was Drumming has always been a you know, thankfully
when we were so I started playing drums when I
was about ten, and that was when we were living
in Germany, and it just so happened that we had neighbors.
We lived in a townhouse, and we had neighbors on
one side that were like kind of older, like artsy
(05:51):
folk that they didn't have kids, but like the wife
was like a visual artist and the husband was like, uh,
I think you know there he was like a hobbyist
kind of acoustic guitar player, you know, but they just
kind of had this like no children should play music.
(06:12):
You know. It was like okay, you know. And then
on the other side, it was it was a family
with two two like twin boys who were a bit
younger than me, and they were like, you know, like
we make noise. You can make noise, you know. And
in Germany it's very much like it's like quiet hours
are between like eight pm and eight am, and uh
(06:37):
and you must respect the quiet hours. And so I did,
you know, and as long as I was practicing, you know,
between between eight and eight, uh, you know, everything was fine.
And I didn't you know, I didn't really try pushing that,
you know, I kind of saw it as like, you know,
I get to play as much as I want during
this time, and and so I'm not gonna Yeah, I'm
(06:58):
not I'm not gonna push it with the neighbors here
because I know that there are days when you know,
it may not be may not be after eight, but
it'll but it's been the last four and a half hours,
So try to be nice.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah, the drummer, it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, So growing up, who were your musical influences and
more specifically favorite drummers.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, so let's see.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
When I was first kind of the music I was
listening to, when I was like getting into drumming, I
would say was like, I mean, it's funny. I wouldn't
even like necessarily consider them like a musical influence now,
but I would say that, like there was this there
(07:48):
was this kind of like Christian alternative rock band called
Reliant K and it was like it was like pseudo
anyone who's into punk music would like be very upset
for me called pump but it was like all it
was kind of like high energy, like alternative rock. I
have two older sisters, so they were kind of into
that and that sort of trickled down to me. And
(08:09):
I think there was just something about the like the
raw energy, you know, liked to get to get to
to get and like even though I couldn't really like,
you know, play that super well, Uh, it was like
there was just it was this idea of like, there's
a lot of energy in this music. And so by
the time uh, I started playing along really with I mean,
(08:32):
I was listening to like van Halen and uh and
Alex van Halen is like, in my opinion, one of
the I mean, I know people have given him his flowers,
but I still think that Alex van Halen is one
of the more underrated rock drummers. I mean, the man
is you know, he was more than just hot for Teacher,
you know, like all of those songs. He's got such
(08:54):
got an incredible feel and just like just like attitude,
you know, like packs punch and always going for blood
and that's so yeah, there's that. I mean, Neil Peert
from Rush there's a big influence on me and uh
and uh, yeah, it's funny. There's there are times when
(09:16):
you know, I don't listen to Rush for whatever several
months or or even a couple of years, and then
and then I go back to listen to something and
I'm like, man, like, I hear so much Neil in
my playing. You know. It's like whenever I go back
to listen to Neil Pierre, it's like, Oh, that's where
I stole that from. Oh that's where I stole that from.
(09:38):
Oh that's where I stole that from. You know, it's
just like it's so ingrained and ingrained in you know,
even though I don't really play a lot of like
progressive rock or anything. You know, I don't play much
of that these days. It's just like there's certain elements
where I'm like, oh, yeah, that like ride bell pattern
is like that's that's a real thing, you know. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
So when I heard you play in Austin, and it
wasn't the amount of wind that I had consumed, but
I thought I heard a little bit of John Bonham
and your triplets in your.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Back beat, and then I was amazed.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
At your ability to and folks, for if you're not
a drummer, you may not appreciate this, but percussions have
four different things going on, and if you can imagine
a drummer who can sing. That's a fifth thing that's
going on. But in Marshall's.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
Case, he has got some wild action going on with
his left foot and his right foot much less this
beautiful beat and the ability to play your ride symbol
is just I just think it's an amazing feat.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
That you pull off. So what I'll try to squeeze
out a question here? Who taught you how to do
this below the waist action and have all this left
foot right foot beauty going on?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, first of all, thank you for that. That's uh,
It's something I'm working on all the time. So so
I I appreciate. Yeah, I appreciate you know, I appreciate
a little bit of the validation. You know, it's not
why we do it, but it is nice to but
it is nice to know that progress is being made.
So with the left foot, I mean, I got there's
(11:25):
I'm trying to see. I'm trying to think of like
how far back it might go. I'm sure that there,
I'm sure that there is plenty of that. But I
would say, like my first like real conscious okay, okay,
So I would say the first time I was really
blown away was there's this song and I'm not even
like a really big fan of the band per se,
(11:46):
not that I don't like them, but it was just
my buddy made me a mix CD and there was
this song called Man behind the Curtain by Valiant Thor
mm hm, and and again I'm I'm not like, I
don't know anything about this band till this, but they
had the But there's this there's a breakdown in the
song where the kick drum.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Is going doom doom doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom,
doom doom, and my hat's going so stoom stood stoomdoom,
stoom stoom doom, and he's got a snare roll going,
and I was just like, how the heck is he
doing this?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Like this is like I can do. I can do
any two of these things, but all three this is insane.
And so I remember working on that. But as far
as like really like solidifying this concept of like I
need like the left foot is really a part of it.
I have to give a shout out to Dave Descenzo,
who's a teacher up at Berkeley College of Music and uh,
(12:47):
and he's got this. He has kind of this legendary
uh modern drummer performance. It's on YouTube. It's it's two
thousand and six Modern Drummer, two thousand and six Dave Descenzo.
And I mean, honestly, if you watch that, that'll tell
you everything you gotta know about the left foot, because
not only is he doing high hat, he's also got
(13:07):
a great double pet like double bass pedal thing going on.
The way the fluidity with which he has that going
on is great. And then he has this other thing
to the left of his high hat, which is like
it's the pedal is like hitting a cow bell, and
then on the other side of the cow bell is
a tambourine. So you've got you have the cow bell
(13:28):
impact sound and the like the jingle of the tambourine going.
And so you see what he's doing with the rest
of his body and what his left foot is doing,
and it's everything from keeping you know, an astinado to
like to doing like a pattern, you know, like a
(13:48):
clave type pattern, and it's just it's like David Senzo
is the man, truly it. Every time I've shown a
drummer buddy of mine, Dave Descendo, They've been like, wait,
what is who does this guy play with? I mean,
he played he played with like Duran Duran for a
little while, he played with Josh Grobin for a little while.
(14:10):
He played with a couple of like rock bands from
the northeast, two Ton Shoe and and stuff like that.
So it's, you know, he's but mostly what he does
is teach, and I think he's I mean, I think
he's one of the best, one of the best, most
like enthusiastic teachers out there. But yeah, Dave Descenzo really
has that left foot independence thing going and another thing
(14:31):
that he sort of instilled. It's something that I think
about as I try to work on the singing thing,
because I'm you know, I enjoy singing. But you know,
as you can imagine, not not only is the independence
part of having four limbs going and and trying to sing,
but it's but it's the breathing. You know, you have
to have your you have to have your posture right
(14:52):
so you can you know, breathe with your diaphragm so
you can get a note that projects. And so it's
so Dave talks about and it's something I got to
keep working on. But he says, like everything starts from here.
So if you can keep the time and like the
groove and the feel in your mind. And what he
(15:15):
makes you do is he has you do all of
these complicated patterns or whatever, and he makes you count
out loud while you're doing it, or like if you're
doing you know, he has he has this thing called
the one bar clave, which is just a which is
just a pattern that when you permutate it over eighth notes,
it kind of it switches around, right, It's it's the
(15:36):
same pattern, but it feels different depending on where it's starting.
But he'll have you do this thing where it's like
just at it. For instance, the first permutation is if
you're if you're counting like this, it's b b b b.
But so what he has you do is if you're
(15:57):
if you're counting it in sixteenth notes, he had you
going one in and three fouri in one and and
a three four one, two and three, and it's like
and so and then the next one when it's permutated
is and four you well, you know, you know, so
it's just like and that's how he has you thinking.
He's like, and you got to be saying it and
(16:19):
you're playing it, and then he takes it to a
whole other level where he's like he's like, okay, now
seeing the second permutation while you're playing the sixth permutation,
and that's like to me, I'm like, Dave, this is incredible.
I'm gonna need like six more years working on this
before I can plumb those depths. Like he's like, Dave
(16:41):
like really takes it in. But like the way it
has like affected my independence in this idea of keeping
the left foot going the the other just from a
musical standpoint, not just like keeping the time right, but
from a musical standpoint. Lewis Cole, the way that his
left foot is going. I don't know if you've ever
listened to Nowhere or Lewis Cole his his uh nowhere
(17:04):
as in like a like a person who knows things. Yeah,
it's spelled spelled like this, it's his His left foot
is relentless. I would say Lewis Cole is one of
my biggest influences as far as you know nowadays, in
the last you know, if I've been playing drums for
(17:26):
nineteen years, the last like six, I would say Lewis
Cole has been like a huge influence.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And Lewis Cole and sput Sea right from ghost Note
and and you know he used to play with Snarky
Puppy and then Robert sput sea right.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Those are just broken drummers. Hey.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
You know where I'm going with this is that I
want you to ponder this deeper philosophical question and we're
gonna get to it your answer after they break.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Here. When you.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Or other drummers are taught at a young age to
be doing four different things at one time, how has
that shaped your brain and wired your brain to where
you live a different life from everybody else. That having
been said, we're going to cut to commercial. Tell people
where they can contact you or listen to any of
(18:26):
your music, especially here in Austin.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Okay. Cool, So if you look up Go Machine music
on Instagram, or go Machine with a little dash in between,
Go Dash Machine on Spotify or Apple Music. That's me
and my best buds here in Austin, Rye Dill and
Dave Orr and we rope in some of our other
(18:50):
friends too on saxophone and on keys whenever we can.
But that's our original music, Go Machine. We actually just
dropped our lap last single of our first EP on Friday.
It's called Black Sunday. Yeah, I imagine that was probably
one of the tunes that you heard at the Sonic
(19:10):
Guild event. That's that's one of our as we as
we say, one of our barn burners. It's it moves
along pretty quick. So yeah, but definitely to check out
Go Machine. We play all around Austin all the time,
so you can.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
You will sink right back with Marshall Komer after this
quick commercial break from Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
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of you to make your next chapter matter and be
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Speaker 1 (21:16):
Okay, we are back with Austin's elite drummer, Marshall Komer.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
It's interesting because I think a lot. I think a
lot about how my brain works differently, just in general
because I have pretty pretty deep ADHD and uh, not
always so much the like hyperactivity part of it, but
the but just my brain's moving really fast and it's
(21:45):
not always moving in it's moving really fast in a
bunch of directors. They're just there're in general, there's there's
a hum going on. Uh, and so to like focus
that is well, here's here's here's what I'll say as
as a as the way having all four limbs moving
(22:08):
and the brand and how the brain works. I had
this I had this revelation a couple of years ago
on a gig, and I'm and I'm I'm getting to
the answer of the question. But but but if you
ask any of my friends that, they'll tell you sometimes
there's a little bit of a walk to the well
before you can get the get the water comes. So
I'm looking. I'm looking at the bass player, and I'm
looking at the guitar player. Dave and Rye. You you
(22:31):
saw that, You've you've met these guys, yes, And I'm looking.
I'm seeing for them. The point of the the point
of contact between them and their instrument is their fingers,
right it's out in front of them, right here, and
then their amp is behind them, and that's where the
sound is coming from, is behind them. On drums, I
(22:56):
hit it, it's all it's in front of me, and
I hit it, and the feedback, the response is right
in your face. It's right there, you know. And you
know I've played within years, you know, I you know,
for a for instance, for Skateland, the other project I
played with that night, we're all on in ears, you know,
we're playing with a click and tracks and stuff like that.
(23:18):
And so I do have the experience of hearing my drums,
you know, in my ears instead of just right in
front of my face. But that experience of like the
tactile physical thing that's happening is right in front of
me here and then the sound is coming from behind
me to me. Just in that moment, for whatever reason,
(23:38):
I was like, I cannot fathom that like to have
for me. The drums is such a immediate response of like,
And it's so again with the ADHD thing, It's like
it is so the drums are so engaging because it's
all right out in front of you and and uh
(24:04):
and yeah, and it's all four limbs. It's like there's
something about it kind of quiets a lot of like
drums for me are something that's really fun and it's
a way to like, it's it's a fun craft to
pursue excellence in because it's just the more I learn
about it, the deeper it goes, the more I realize
(24:25):
I don't know anything, and so which is which is exciting?
You know. It's like as as it's it's humbling, it's
always humbling. As soon as I feel like, hey, you
know what, I'm on some stuff? This is good, It's
like I hit something and I'm like, oh man, I
have so I gotta get back in the shed. Like
that is a consistent feeling. But but the thing that's
(24:49):
like another part that something drumming has always been to
me has been a therapeutic you know, release, right, And
part of that, I think is because you know, with
eighty eight, with my brain always always kind of racing
with this hum kind of always going and like and
(25:09):
also part of that hum, part of that like foggy
sort of white noise, is that chasing one train of
thought is can be difficult because there's so much like
the way that my brain works is that I'll I'll
connect a bunch of different things constantly, so things that
seem unrelated and uh. And sometimes when I'm having a
(25:33):
conversation with someone and I start talking about something, they're like, wait,
how did we get here? And I forget, Oh, I
didn't let you in to the like you know, the
like lightning, you know when you see lightning come down
and it splits. I don't always remember to like connect
this thing, like to see, hey, it all came from here,
you know it connects, yeah, But to try to make
(25:54):
the jump from here to here is tricky sometimes, so
it's like uh, But with drums, it's like because it
is so physically demanding. The you know, each limb is
each limb is separate, and you want to be able
to keep your limbs separate for dynamic purposes. You don't
(26:18):
always want your symbols to be as loud as you're
hitting your snare drum because it's gonna wash things out,
especially in the room that that you came and saw
us in. That room was like that's where at KFMA
here in Austin, that's where they record, like the classical
radio station. And so if you were to come to
(26:38):
a show that we were playing, say like at the
Continental Club, I'm gonna be laying in a little bit
more than I was in that room because in that
room it's like, oh this is it's pretty live in here,
and the symbol they're gonna run away if I'm if
I'm just going crazy. So it's like that your limbs
(26:59):
need to be separate because you need to be able
to control your dynamics and the sound, but they need
to work together or else it's not going to feel right.
So the the you know, and it does, it does
become second nature. But for but anytime you start stepping
outside of your comfort zone of like of like, Okay,
(27:21):
I need to focus a little bit on the independence
of this thing. I need to focus on all of
my limbs doing kind of different things but still working together.
And in many ways, your limbs are kind of like
the band, right, Like they're they're they're just different elements
of the band where it's like, yeah, everybody needs to
be paying attention to their thing to make sure that
their sound is good, that they're in time, that they're
(27:44):
you know, their intonation is good. But if they're not,
if we're not listening to each other, I don't really
have any interest in making music with people who aren't
listening to each other, like I've played. That's actually something
I realized when I first moved to Austin was the
(28:04):
style of music. You know, I have my tastes. There's
stuff that I like and don't like, but I I
would rather play music where the genre is not something
I necessarily would pick to listen to. I would rather
play that type of music with a bunch of musicians
(28:27):
who are listening to each other and interacting and like
and like playing together, like we we sometimes we forget that.
Like when we say we're going to play music, it's like, yeah,
we are playing together, you know, we're at the same
time and taking turns like this is this is a
this is like a social thing that we're doing. It
(28:47):
is I'd rather do that than play funk music, which
I love with a bunch of folks who are just
completely zoned into their part and are not paying attention,
and like.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
That's not me, that's not fun for me.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
You know, you may be one of the first drummer
polymaths that I've ever met.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Polymaths, what do you mean? What's that?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
A polymath is Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci.
There's somebody that goes into their domain and they solve
problems and they have epiphanies while they're in the middle
of playing. Einstein figured out part of his theory of
(29:34):
relativity while he's playing violin. Da Vinci wn't name any
other polymath they are. They are domain experts, and when
they get into the flow or the flow of science,
they start to actually see answers to things. Nobody ever
(29:56):
has ever observed the drummer. The sound coming from a
drum is in front of us and the bass guitarist
sound is coming.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
From behind him. Crazy, right, you are a polymath.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
What's that's cool? I get Yeah, I appreciate that to me.
To me, it's like to me, it's like, I can't believe.
It's like because you played drums, Like, can you imagine
if you were like banging away and the sound was
coming from a speaker behind you. No, you know, it's crazy.
It's like, it's insane. It's insane.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
There's an immediacy to playing drums. It's so it's exhilarating.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And then I want to make it one other point
of come in on your the band situation. Having played
in jazz bands m HM, that created and and molded
me to be a keen listener of every musician. And
(31:04):
even though there's lots of jokes about jazz music and
the people play the wrong notes and get away with it, right,
there's something golden about having watched your band, the first
band that performed at Sonic Guild, and how you were
listening and improvising with each other, and you turn your
hat on around backwards and you were you were looking
(31:27):
and listening, and I was watching how you watch the
other musicians and listened at the same time. Tell our
listening audience how you have built your own listening skills up.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Sure, well, I appreciate that. I'm i am always I
realized this. It's funny. I've had different like like step, like,
what's the word I'm looking for? Incremental. I've had many epiphanies. Actually,
it's funny that you say this. I've had multiple epiphany
(32:00):
is about listening. Over my years of drumming, I would
say from the beginning, my strength was like I'm I'm
I'm bad at sight reading. You know, I went to
school for music, but even then, the site reading was
always a big struggle for me. You know, but I
have I have my degree in drum set performance, and
(32:21):
I still have terrible reading chops. Part of that is
the ADHD. My eyes are always bouncing around the page.
Part of that is a little bit of dyslexia of
just like wait, where where am I in this collection
of notes? Whatever? But for me, what's always I've always
played by ear. I've always like and from an early
(32:43):
age at my church, Uh, there was there was a
guy who was older than me who was playing on
the church team and uh and uh, the the worship
leader had heard me play in a different setting, and
(33:04):
you know, auditioned me basically to see if I you know,
just to see where I was at. There was going
to be a conference coming through to the school that
we were, so, yeah, there was a conference coming through
the church, and and he was going to see if
I could play at the conference because this older guy
wasn't gonna be there, blah blah blah. Well he pretty
quickly after playing together, was like he basically fired the
(33:26):
older kid. Even though that kid, that guy was in
like junior or senior year of high school and I
was in eighth grade. He fired that kid because he
was like, a he doesn't want to get better, and
you clearly are like pushing to get better and be
like you are always listening and reacting and like that's
(33:50):
but because to me, it's like that's again, that's one
of the most fun parts about music is the listening,
is the interacting, the like we're building this thing together,
you know.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And and I will say that while that is a
really good quality to have a good starting place, there
are times when it has worked against me in the
sense of, you know, as the drummer, your sense of
this is the time, and this is the feel like
(34:27):
needs to be like like absolute, you know, like you
need to have confidence that like that like listen, like
of course we are all listening to each other and interacting.
But you know they talk about the drums being the
heartbeat of the band, right, so but it's like it's
like and and so for me, there were times when
(34:49):
I was so reactive and so listening to what was
going on that if someone's time started to get a
little wonky, I would go to fill that that sort
of position to make it sound like their time was fine.
You know, I would sort of I would sort of like.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Change rescuing the other musicians.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yes, and and my rescuing was was less like yo,
here's the time, catch up, and it was more like, oh, no,
we can, we can kind of take it there, you know.
And so I had to I've had to work on that,
you know, over the last again, dang near twenty years
of playing drums, I've had to like work on my
(35:32):
confidence of like here's where it is. But sorry, I
lost I sort of lost my train of thought a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Listen thinking about that, I've got to I want to
wrap this show up.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
And I and I want to talk. I want to.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Make sure that we get across I think one of
the most truly significant comments that you made, I'm going
to purge across America that we have all we all
have attention deficit disorder of some sort, and social media
and TikTok and all the other forces are at large
(36:16):
out there affecting our brain and our attention and sometimes
our attention to detail. You've recognized your own attention deficit,
and you've poured yourself into a profession. What advice can
you give to America at large today about how to
take their disease of add and leverage it going forward
(36:42):
to do something like you, even though we're not all drummers,
But how can we take what's the reality of having
attention deficit disorder? How can we all take that forward?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
I would say there is a way to weaponize it,
and in a good way, not in like, not in
a you know, not in an aggressive way. But there's
a way to make there is the same way that
there is a time and place for everything that I
would say that my simplest answer to this question is, uh,
(37:24):
in the car like like this disconnect like don't don't
listen to a podcast in the car, don't listen to
or you know whatever, maybe pick a day of the
week or whatever it is, whatever rules you make for
like I would, But in my opinion, the car is
a great place. And I would say, when you're in
(37:46):
the car by yourself, start talking out loud to yourself.
Doesn't matter. People are gonna think you're on like that.
It doesn't matter what people think anyways. But the car
is a good place because people are just gonna think
you're on your phone. But whether it's talking to yourself
or talking to God or talking to the universe or
whatever you believe in. For me, I sort of oscillate
(38:07):
between praying and talking to myself and just like externalize
your thoughts and sometimes these like you start to pull
together some of these ideas that have been like flashing off,
(38:28):
and you know, the different things that are whatever in
the sort of spaghetti of you know whatever, the electricity
in your brain, the stuff that's sort of like seems disconnected.
If you start sort of verbally processing it on your own,
you'll start to pull different things together. And you know
(38:49):
the same way that people talk about there are no
I was just listening to Zach Danziger, who's a great drummer.
He's talking about there are no original especially in music.
There are no original ingredis anymore. But there are original recipes,
is what he said. And so you know, these days,
you know, it's hard to find something that's new, right.
(39:10):
But it's like it's like we're a lot most of
us are working with the same ingredients. But if you
are by yourself in the car and you're just like,
I was thinking about this and that made me feel
like this, and you know what if I was doing
you know what if I took this sort of you know,
Lewis Cole type drumbeat, but I put it with like
(39:33):
a real arrestive guitar type thing, you know, whatever, whatever
it is that you're thinking, it's like if you can
sort of compartmentalize, like, okay, for the next i've got
a thirty minute drive, I'm not going to put on
a podcast. And I think podcasts are great, but I
also think that they can just be this like, if
we're constantly taking things in, we're not always able to.
(39:56):
You need time. Once you've taken the ingredients in, you
need time to to arrange them and to classify them
and put them together. Like if you're if you're constantly
going and picking up legos but you're never taking the
time to like play with them and put them together
(40:16):
and turn them into something, then all you have the
big old, you know, bed sheet full of legos that
you're not doing anything with. You know. So it's like
we need to have times where you know, I'm not
gonna say you should totally get off all the stuff,
although I think there's an argument that could be made
for that, but I would say that, like, our constant
(40:38):
state is consuming media, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or
YouTube or whatever it is. But if you if you
can take a break from that in order to just
like think about all of those you know, examine all
the pieces that you have, and then just start putting
them together, you can start to make a lot more
(41:00):
out of it. And again for me, and I would
encourage people to try this, but for me, it's actually
talking out loud in a place where there's no judgment.
You can say a weird thing. You don't have to
film yourself, you don't have to record yourself. You could
just say it for you know, maybe if you if
you do distill an idea. You can say, oh, okay,
(41:21):
hang on, let me pick up my phone. Circle back
to this idea. You know, the Smurfs play John Coltrane. Okay,
I'll come back to that, you know, or something like that.
You know, just like whatever the like funny idea that
comes that comes to you from from the brainstorm. It's like,
let's let's get this, Let's get the water from this
(41:42):
brainstorm into some buckets, you know, and see what we
can do with it.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Brilliant, What a great observation. We've got to have you
back on the show again. You're riff about philosophy because
I think what this turned out to be brain surgery
today and we got inside the brain of a great drummer.
Before I leave, you tell me what Zach Danziger said
(42:06):
about recipes versus ingredients.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Repeat that quote.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, he said, we're all trying to do something original, right,
We're all trying to find something new. But there are
no new ingredients. There are only new recipes. There's nothing
new under the sun. Blah blah blah. Like we're all
we're all pulling from the same All of us are
just a manifestation of the collection of our influences, right,
(42:34):
and so and so, but and so each of us.
What makes us unique, what makes us original, is which
influences each person takes in and the amounts of which, again, yeah,
the recipe, the amount of which of each thing that
is in your playing is what makes you, is what
makes you different. Because in my playing, you're gonna hear, Yeah,
(42:56):
you're gonna hear John Bonham, You're gonna hear Benny greb
You're gonna hear Laurna Lewis, You're gonna hear Lewis Cole,
You're gonna hear Uh, You're gonna hear Calvin Rodgers, You're
gonna hear you know, it's it's gonna be. It's gonna
be a whole, a whole mess of different stuff because
my interests are yeah, I mean it's and my interests
(43:17):
have changed over over the over years. You know, I
used to be a whole lot more into the classic
rock and metal type thing. Nowadays I'm a little more
into the funk and gospel type thing, and and then
everything in between.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
So you're you are one evolving percussionist. It has been
an honor to honor you. We wish you success, but
as we always say, on your way to significance.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Dancing off a hurricane, spinning like a wheel.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
You saw a trouble rainbow while you were such a
trou a field.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
You know how to be back again, come home through
the night like looking for something real.
Speaker 7 (44:27):
You will retreat sing your desirables and.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
Now they're never that to heels.
Speaker 9 (44:33):
But you know I'll be back again.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Don't let me catch you hot.
Speaker 9 (44:39):
From a black Sunday.
Speaker 6 (44:47):
Dada set the microphones, Wandma gets us.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
The skins sinking. See comes you the front gul.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
We looked at new lab again.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
I'll be back again, so that may cast you.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
From the vessel.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
Before. It's not running from your themes.
Speaker 9 (46:16):
Being a house with a back door, And when you
think it's home, I called him, it's a mom. You
just said stoushouldn't gone there? Will I ever free the
same again? You don't help me back again.
Speaker 6 (46:46):
You don't I'll be back again.
Speaker 5 (46:52):
Do you know me back again?
Speaker 9 (46:57):
Because on a black Sunday you don't have me back again?
Then we catch you from the black Sunday
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