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Kevin Kane of Bad City
2010-08-24 
Hey, Modern Drummers! It’s a privilege to be asked to contribute to this website, as I’m a longtime subscriber—MD has afforded me a truly incalculable amount of inspiration. I still remember the issue where Joey Jordison said he ran like fifty miles every morning to get his calves in shape for recording Iowa. I’d do the same thing, but I look like an idiot when I run.
So anyway, speaking of privileges (and inspiration!), as I write this, I’m sitting in the House of Blues in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, listening to the Smashing Pumpkins soundcheck. And resenting Modern Drummer for making me miss SP’s soundcheck. Ha! Right now Bad City is on the back end of an East Coast tour with SP and Kill Hannah. Had you told me when I was a teenager wearing needlessly complex cargo shorts that I’d be on the road with one of my favorite bands by the time I was twenty-three, I’d have either LOL’d or sh*t my pants, or probably both—or maybe one and then the other. So how I got here is a story worth telling—worth reading, maybe, but definitely worth telling!
My modest saga began in the basement of my old house, when I first sat down on the red Mapex five-piece my dad had just bought himself. I’m pretty sure there’s footage of me playing along to “Maggie May,” but I was nine or something, so I don’t remember it. I kept messing around on that red Mapex for the next several years (I distinctly remember not being able to get through the latter half of “Freebird,” which came true a second time when I started playing Guitar Hero II), but I didn’t really get “serious” (relatively speaking) until middle school, which was when I started joining a bunch of school bands.
Which I think will end up being the only advice I have to offer—if all else fails, if you can’t find the inspiration to practice, join a bunch of bands. That’s really my only piece of hard-earned wisdom. Well, that and never use the phrase “kickin’ keyboard solo” when you’re on a date. In sixth grade, in the band room, they handed us a sheet of paper that instructed us to select two instruments, a first and a second choice. I put percussion first and trumpet second. They said my ego wasn’t big enough to play trumpet, so I wound up back in the percussion section, and from there I joined the jazz band. And of course I stuck with the concert band from sixth through eighth grade. This was right around the time when my friends were getting in trouble for saying the F word, just to give you an idea. One time our band director gave the cutoff right before my friend Ben said the F word. It was classic. We also used to throw mallets at each other from across the room. At around the same time my friend Rodney buried his trombone in the woods behind his house and switched to percussion, which was such a genius move.
High school’s when I really went nuts—all four years, I was in marching band, concert band, jazz orchestra, jazz ensemble, pep band, and pit orchestra. And by then I was in plenty of extracurricular bands—a Primus-inspired power trio (that could also play side A of Rush’s Moving Pictures, sloppily), an off-the-wall jam/cover band (with sixty-plus hours of recorded material and exactly one show under its belt), a jazz sextet named after a Magic: The Gathering card, a church band that I stayed with for two and half years, and an electronica duo. I spent virtually all of my free time in bands, and some of it playing Final Fantasy Tactics and StarCraft. I think the reason I found myself in all these bands is because I’m sort of shy, and being in bands has been a really great way to meet people and to have fun, as cheesy as that sounds. Actually, when I take a second to think about it, I’ve played in bands with basically all of my best friends. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t started joining bands in college, I would’ve ended up making one friend. His name was Paul and I remember that he had a nice pea coat. I’m serious. One friend.
In college I joined the marching band, during which I decided to join one of the jazz bands, in which I met Alex Nauth (who’s currently playing with Foxy Shazam!), with whom I played for a couple of years in a band called Sofapunch—ska with prog tendencies. We made an album in Chicago and played something like fifty shows in and around Ohio. Towards the end of the Sofapunch days, one of the guitarists, Tom, took me with him to form a band called Powerspace, with whom I recorded an EP that got the attention of Fueled by Ramen and landed us a record deal. The story ends up where I’m in this band called Bad City with my BFFs Josh and Max and Tom (aforementioned) and Jake, and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I’m on the road with the Smashing Pumpkins. Every night I watch their set from the side of the stage, shaking my head and thinking “Hmmm…. Nope, still doesn’t make sense.”
There it is, a pretty mundane story, no frills. I feel like I should cap off that sentence with a dash and then the phrase “just hard work,” but really, it wasn’t hard work—the drumming, anyway. (Lugging around that godforsaken hardware bag, on the other hand…!) Like I said, the only little nugget that I’ll even dare to suggest is that thing about playing in a bunch of bands, if all else fails. I tried taking the serious route—I went to tons of lessons, I watched instructional videos, I owned the book Stick Control, etc.—but none of that really amounted to anything, compared to all the hours I accumulated behind the drumset, playing in bands. Lots of different styles, too! Actually, if I may offer a second piece of advice for all the younger drummers out there (let’s say, in middle school or high school): Join jazz band! It sounds fishy, but it’s true: Jazz will teach you things about feel, grace, and touch. It’ll make you more solid, you’ll be more “in the pocket,” meaning, perhaps paradoxically, you’ll rock harder. Combine that with the fact that the vast majority of bands will take a solid 4/4 beat over a shaky 17/16 polyrhythmic beat any day of the week, and you’ve got a pretty compelling reason to get into jazz, no matter the style of music you play. Why do you think Jimmy Chamberlin is the greatest rock drummer of all time?
Man, just mentioning Jimmy Chamberlin makes me wanna compile a list of my all-time favorite fills (so many in “Siva,” “Snail,” “Geek U.S.A.,” “Jellybelly,” “Cash Car Star,” I could go on and on), but maybe the better idea is to save that for a future Modern Drummer blog. On that note, thanks for sticking with me in all my pointless long-windedness. Until next time, tide yourselves over by watching this video of a Vinnie Colaiuta solo at the Baked Potato, which to me is the greatest drumming video of all time. Dude plays smoother in 7/8 than I’ll ever play in 4/4. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAgfIF-QN3s.
For more on Kevin Kane and Bad City, go to www.myspace.com/badcitymusic.
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Jess Bowen of The Summer Set
2010-08-19
My name is Jess Bowen, and I play in a pop-rock group from Arizona called the Summer Set. I have been playing drums since the age of eleven, after my dad and older brother, who were both drummers, informed me that I was forced to become a drummer as well. At the time I was hesitant, however I am now extremely appreciative that my family encouraged me to become a drummer, as it has been a dream come true for me.
My band and I have been on the road this whole summer with the Vans Warped Tour. Right now I’m sitting in the front lounge of our bus, driving through the middle of nowhere, writing this blog. Before going into this tour, we were warned by other Warped Tour veterans of the brutality that we were getting ourselves into for the summer. With only two weeks left to go, I can honestly say that this has been the most rewarding tour we have ever been privileged to be a part of. We work hard to get through the long, hot, and exhausting days, but the results of all our efforts have been astonishing, and all of the friends we have made on this tour feel like family to me.
Speaking of family, I can’t thank these companies enough for taking me under their wing and helping make my life easier: SJC, Vater, and Sabian. Growing up in a household of drummers, I had always dreamed of one day being able to design my own kit. I was lucky enough to be able to work with the amazing guys from SJC to design my ideal kit. I went with a semi-girly, purple oyster finish, accompanied by pearl white wood hoops with the purple oyster inlay on the hoops. In my opinion, this kit sounds even better than it looks. I use a 20x24 kick, a 7x14 snare, an 8x12 rack, and 16x16 floor. My cymbal setup consists of 14" AAX Fast hats, a 20" Metal crash, 21" HHX Legacy ride, and a 22" HHX Legacy ride. To complete it all, I use Vater Universal sticks, which I consider to be slightly thicker than a 5B, but not too much heavier. These are the perfect sticks for me because they are durable enough to take the beating I give them each and every show.
I have been lucky to meet so many amazing and influential drummers on this tour. I grew up listening to bands such as Sum 41, the All-American Rejects, Motion City Soundtrack, and the Rocket Summer, so to be able to share the same tour/stage with these artists is mind-boggling to me. Every drummer has a different type of style/groove that they are known for, and being able to watch these drummers play live has helped with my own skills as well. It’s great to be able to share a tour with amazing drummers to learn and take notes from. I’m extremely honored to say the least, and all I can hope is that you all try to come out to the Warped dates to witness the same musical talent that I get to enjoy every single day of this tour.
Photo by Dan Gillan. For more on Jess Bowen and the Summer Set, go to www.myspace.com/thesummerset.
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Gordy Marshall Of The Moody
Blues
2010-08-19
Hello, fellow Modern Drummer readers, I am delighted to be asked to add to the famous Modern Drummer blog. Although I read through the blogs from time to time to see what people are up to, when I was asked to contribute I read through nearly all of them, and was blown away with the eclectic collection of drummers, and the amazing tours, gigs, and educational facilities being written about in these pages. If you are a budding drummer, and all you ever did was to read the MD blogs, you would get a comprehensive overview of the entire drumming community in more or less one sitting. It’s both entertaining and educational.
Twenty years ago I was booked as a session drummer for the Moody Blues, and have been asked back for every tour since then, which puts me in the “extremely lucky” camp of working musicians. I share the stage with the original drummer for the band, Graeme Edge, and we both play DW drumkits. Graeme has a 22" bass drum, 10", 12", and 13" toms, a 16" floor tom, and a 14" snare, and he uses Zildjian cymbals.
My kit consists of a 22" bass drum, 10", 12", 14", and 16" toms, and a 20" gong drum, affectionately known as “Big Bertha,” along with a 14" metal snare. Although I use a pair of 14" Sabian hi-hats, the rest of my cymbals are electronic. I currently use the Roland TD 20, which means I have a hybrid kit consisting of acoustic and electronic instruments. The reason for this is, with so much of the monitoring these days being in-ear, and many of the instruments running direct, often the only acoustic sound onstage is the drumkit. This creates a nightmare scenario for the front-of-house engineer when trying to mix vocals, because instead of a full band bleeding through the lead vocalist’s microphone, he has just a drumkit. Putting the drummer behind some of those big plastic screens can combat this, but I don’t like that, as it feels so isolating. Instead I use screens up to the top of the toms, and then electronic cymbals so I feel part of the band. As long as you have a good in-ear monitor mix, it works a treat.
The Moody Blues are a legendary band, and having sold seventy-five million albums, are enjoying a near unprecedented career spanning nearly forty years. We are currently between the American and U.K. legs of the 2010 tour, and I wanted to have a written record of my time with them to look back on, so this year I began writing a daily journal of about a thousand words for each day of the tour. I called each one a Postcard, and you can read them on my new website, which I just launched. It features twenty free video drum lessons, and of course all the usual accompanying info such as tour dates, photos, and the postcard blog. Enjoy: www.playdrumswithgordymarshall.com.
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