by Michael Dawson

Session ace Matt Chamberlain has played on dozens of hit records since first bursting into the limelight with the Texas-based singer-songwriter Edie Brickell in 1991. In his January 2012 Modern Drummer cover story, we dig deep with the drummer into the mentality of what it takes to be one of the most in-demand session players of the past twenty years. Here we ask Chamberlain to comment on some of the things he learned early on in his session career, during the making of two hugely successful records, the Wallflowers’ breakthrough album, Bringing Down the Horse, and singer/pianist Fiona Apple’s moody debut, Tidal. Both of these albums were released in 1996, and together they reveal the fresh, creative, and musically supportive style that would go on to define hundreds of tracks baring Matt Chamberlain’s credit.

The Wallflowers Bringing Down the Horse

“Making this record was more of a band situation,” Chamberlain says. “I basically moved to L.A. for four or five months. We’d rehearse, and we played some gigs. T Bone Burnett produced the record. T Bone is great because he doesn’t get in the way of what you’re doing; he lets you do your thing. But he’ll steer you in a way that makes what you’re doing sound really good. And he’ll suggest things to you, but not necessarily tangible, specific drum patterns. He’ll say, ‘This song needs to sound like the sky,’ and stuff like that. He’s like Yoda. He comes up with these things that take you out of your head when you’re racking your brain about parts. He distills it down to the feeling of it. It should feel like this, or it should make you see that.

“I learned a lot about grooving and different concepts. The bass player and I were sitting around listening to Tom Petty’s album Wildflowers, and on the song ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’ we noticed that Steve Ferrone didn’t play a single crash but that it works somehow. When we recorded ‘One Headlight,’ I was initially hitting crashes going into the choruses and at the usual spots. Then we did a couple takes where I applied Ferrone’s concept and didn’t hit a crash, and it worked because the groove just flowed from one section to another.”

Fiona Apple Tidal

“The guy who produced Fiona’s first record, Andy Slater, was the manager of the Wallflowers, so he called me up. We got together with Jon Brion, who’s basically a mad scientist. He plays everything, and he has a bunch of freaky old keyboards and guitars and tons of drums. Jon was a major influence on this record because he had so many sounds sitting around that I could just grab, like old Radio King drums with calfskin heads and a ’60s Premier kit with metric-size heads.

“I had my DW kit there, and I thought we were going to try to rock out and make it sound like a PJ Harvey record. That failed miserably, so we had to search to create a sound for Fiona. It wasn’t just playing drums like it was with the Wallflowers. It was about making her songs sound unique. We discovered that if you place a bullet mic—like the ones blues harmonica players use—in front of the drumkit and really muffle down the snare and compress the hell out of the signal, you get a great sound. That was the drum sound for the song ‘Criminal.’

“When I heard that sound in my headphones, I realized that I couldn’t play my cymbals too hard because they would take over the whole drumkit. I had to have that super-compressed sound in my headphones and play off that so I could be aware of how what I was doing was affecting the sound.

“These two records were the beginning of people recognizing something in my playing that they could use on other things. That’s how it goes: If you play on a couple records that do well, then all of a sudden you start getting more calls. At that point, all you have to do is make sure that you can deliver the goods. If you have the skills and keep exploring and keep trying different things, and you’re open-minded and don’t get a big head about it, you’ll continue working.”

Be on the lookout for a follow-up In the Studio feature with Chamberlain in Modern Drummer magazine, where we discuss several other landmark recordings from his extensive discography.