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Geoff Dugmore
(September 2005 Issue)
From Pub Bands To Studio First Call As a youth from a
small town near Glasgow, Geoff Dugmore sat
between a rock and a hard
place, namely the barren Scottish highlands to the north and the
impenetrable English music
scene to the south. Despite Geoff's
consuming love of drums and a strong start in pub bands, the odds
pointed to a job
clerking in a record shop or firing bricks--certainly
not to a thriving London session career backing Stevie Nicks, Heather
Nova,
The Thompson Twins, Tina Turner, Dusty Springfield, Dido, The
Gypsy Kings, John Paul Jones, Gary Clark, and Danny Wilson.
But Geoff
Dugmore had discovered something: the missing link between the much
maligned cover band and the recording
drummer.
"When you're in
pop bands," says Geoff, "you go through so many styles that inevitably
they rub off
on you. I don't understand the phobia about playing
covers. If you're not taking other musical influences onboard,
you're
blinkering yourself!"
When Geoff arrives at a recording date, he makes it memorable, first
for the
truckload of gear he carts: DW drums, spare snares, scores of
Sabian cymbals, Roland V-Drums, a cocktail kit, and a
percussion trunk.
Then he casts his spell. "I place candles around the drumkit and in the
control room," Geoff explains. "For
Natalie Imbruglia's new album, I
brought Persian rugs so that everybody could hang out on the
studio
floor."
In a declining session scene, Dugmore stays busy. For example, Sunday
he finished a string of
Ronald V-Drum clinics with Omar Hakim. Monday
he was packing for a well-earned vacation when he heard the phone. "I
got
a call to do a session that night for a new Warner Bros. artist
named Fahan," he recalls. Okay, just one
more!
T. Bruce Wittet
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