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Grant Collins
(August 2005 Issue)
Another Monster From Down Under As the saying goes,
it's not what you've got, but what you do with it that counts.
Australian drummer
Grant Collins is proof. Many drummers have a big kit
like his. But not many players can audiences amazed with their
drum
compositions for two hours straight. And Collins performs at clinics
and solo concerts without the benefit of backing
tracks.
"It
all started when I saw a video of Alex Acuna playing timbales and
noticed him playing left-foot clave on a
woodblock," Collins recalls.
"Then he played kit, soloing over a clave pattern that he played on the
hi-hats. I thought,
That's what I want to do."
Further inspiration struck from a less conventional source. "I saw
Australian pianist
Michael Keiran Harvey play an ostinato with his left
hand while soloing with his right," Collins says. "I knew I had to try
that on
the drums."
Experiments with the hands ended up at his feet. Soon the drummer was
playing complex independent
rhythms with all four limbs, switching
between pedals while soloing over them with his hands.
A conversation
at the 1998 Ultimate Drummers Day in Melbourne inspired Grant to take his playing to yet another
level. "Dom Famularo
saw what I did and really dug it," Grant says
proudly. "He said, "Man, you've got so many great ideas. What you
should
do is think in terms of verses and choruses, and write a song
about something.? So I took that idea and began composing all
these
drum songs."
Now Grant floors audiences with his intense and
complex compositions. To perform these
compositions, he employs
twenty-five Pearl drums, twenty-eight Zildjian cymbals, and fourteen
pedals connected to five bass
drums, woodblocks, a cowbell,
tambourines, a snare drum, bells, and an oriental crash. And Collins
says this setup is likely
to get bigger. "I'm writing ideas at the moment for which I've had to order two cable hats, another foot snare, and
hand percussion."
Collins' two CDs, Primal Instinct (1999) and Dogboy
(2001), contain
no overdubs. What sounds like three or four players is
only him. But it's not until you see Grant play live that you
really
comprehend what he does. For those who can't wait for the drummer to
come to their town, though, live footage
can be seen at the drummer's
Web site, www.grantcollins.com.
Mark Gladman
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