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Darren Lyons
(February 2003 Issue)
The Day Gig That Kept
On Giving Darren
Lyons wasn't in a rush to quit his day gig as a New York City club
employee back in the early
'80s. One day Peter Erskine would be setting
up his kit. The next it might be Steve Jordan or Al Foster. Then, at
the end
of the night, when Darren had stacked all the chairs, he'd sit
down at their kits, all the while accumulating the impressive
chops he
now uses leading The Darren Lyons Group.
"That club was Seventh
Avenue South," Darren reveals.
"Sometimes it would shock me when I'd
play other drummer's kits. Erskine's toms, for example, sounded
padded
down out front, but they were very live behind the kit. And Jordan
really detuned a lug on his 10" tom, but somehow it
still had a nice
ring."
Lyons put this "learning by osmosis" to good use on his recent album,
Resonator.
In addition, he had conventional instruction from elusive jazzer
Michael DiPasqua. And years ago, when
Peter Erskine kept an apartment
on 23rd Street, Darren would stop by for master classes. "Mike Lauren
was also a very good
teacher," Darren adds, "as was Joe Cusatis at the
Modern Drum Shop."
As for Resonator, it came
this
close to being a train wreck, thanks to flawed engineering decisions
such as, in one instance, gating the
overhead mic's. Salvation appeared
in the form of engineer John Arrias (Jeff Beck's Wired, Little
Feat, and
Barbra Streisand). "He brought things to life in the mix,"
Darren enthuses. "And he's agreed to do our next disc." Darren
will
post progress on that front at www.darrenlyons.com.
T. Bruce Wittet
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