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Stanton Moore
His Time Has Come One of the marks of
greatness in a musician is that you can
recognize him after the first
couple of notes. Take, for example, New Orleans legend Johnny
Vidacovich, who once showed a
young student named Stanton Moore a thing
or two about playing looser and more slap-happy. As soon as Vidacovich
lays
sticks to head, you can tell it's him. He's that funky - and he's got a sound.
Today that's
what everybody's saying about Stanton Moore. The instant
you hear one of Moore's monstrous grooves, stuttering
press rolls, or
"jalopy" tom fills, you recognize him. The thirty-one-year-old drummer
is that funky and, man, we
haven't even started to talk about his sound.
When Stanton gets behind his kit with Galactic, or with one of his
many
side projects such as Garage A Trois or Moore & More, there's no
doubt who it is. Call his sound infectious.
Call it part
jazz-meets-Bonham. Call it nouveau second line. No matter; whether he's
boppin' behind an 18"
champagne sparkle jazz kick or a battle-worn old
26", Stanton is serving up new-style funk.
Maybe it's a little
easier to be funky if you're born in New Orleans
and have the likes of Johnny V. steering you right. But it
takes
something very special to rise to the top, as Stanton has done, and
assume a place among the greats'drummers
who've risen from the melting
pot of Latin, second line, rhythm & blues, jazz, and funk. New
Orleans, after all, is
where Earl Palmer, one of the slickest drummers ever,
started out. It was also home to James Black, a multi-faceted
musician
people still talk about in hushed tones. And it was fertile ground for
the snappy grooves of Meters drummer Zigaboo
Modeliste. That's some lineage.
Moore is clearly next in line. His band Galactic has emerged
proudly
from the New Orleans scene, and after a slew of albums and relentless
touring, has become the group others
emulate. Without so much as
planning it, Galactic has managed to tap into today's pulse while
proudly hanging onto
yesterday's vibe. The band's latest release, Ruckus, proves just that.
The focal point of Galactic is
Moore. The Crescent City literally oozes
out of him. The life, the food, the marching, the sweaty nightlife - it's
all there.
At a live show with Galactic, all eyes are on Stanton. As
one fan proclaimed on the heels of the band's recent performance
at the
Roseland Ballroom in New York, "Stanton is the center of the Galactic
universe." He's a man in motion, his hands
freely traversing his kit,
clicking sticks on the rims or shells, beating a jingly thud out of his
de-tuned pandeiro, or even
standing up and playing the front side of
his ride cymbal. And when he kicks the groove into overdrive with his
auxiliary bass
drum, a 26" monster, it's a sub woofer from hell. The
crowd goes wild.
No question, Moore's time has
come. He's everywhere - on tour, on record,
and in clinic. Stanton recently won the Eric A. Bergquist award for
being one
of the top clinicians of the year. He's just completed
writing a book on funk and New Orleans drumming. (An accompanying
DVD
was just filmed and features Stanton performing with New Orleans music
royalty George Porter, Ivan Neville, and The
Dirty Dozen horns.)
Besides having already released two solo albums, Stanton recently
contributed a track to the
MD/Magna Carta collaborative CD, Drum Nation. And now he's receiving calls to produce other bands. It seems
everybody wants a piece of Stanton Moore.
MD: Let's start with Galactic's latest work,
Ruckus. The
first thing you hear is that strong descending fill, followed by
absolute bottom end. Observation one: Your
fills have changed. They
still swing, but you're so much more "on the beat" and nailing them.
All I can think of is John
Bonham.
Stanton: Cool! With this record, there was definitely a lot of
that. In the last couple of years,
I've been trying to think of ways of
adding intensity to a groove without necessarily having to play more
notes or play
louder. The main way of doing that is "straightening out"
the notes a little bit. I'm swinging a little bit less
and
moving a little more towards straight. Then every now and then I'll
play a fill that comes out swung, because
that's the way I play, and
the contrast works.
MD: That's really a John Bonham thing.
Stanton: Oh yeah, totally! That's one of the things I dig about
Bonham, Zig, Keith Moon, and Mitch Mitchell.
Those guys grew up playing
shuffled 8th notes and listening to blues and jazz. When they tried to
straighten this stuff out,
they couldn't help but swing it a little
bit. I'm always experimenting with that place between straight and
swung.
MD: I understand that you used a 26" bass drum on Ruckus. How does a larger bass drum affect your
style?
Stanton: That big bass drum enabled us to make everything super
fat. With that drum I was tending
to play less as a jazz player and
interactively, which is usually the way I play funk. I like to blur the
lines between jazz and
funk and improvise on the groove - just float
through it. The big bass drum made me think a little more from the
bottom up;
it's more of a meat and potatoes thing.
MD: It seems that you're hitting harder and using more
matched
grip on stage than earlier in your career. When I saw you with Moore
& More, I thought you were playing softer
and that you were using
more traditional grip.
Stanton: I tend to use traditional grip when I play jazz,
or
more of the New Orleans second-line stuff. But I like to play backbeats
with matched grip. With Galactic, we've
definitely been hitting harder,
but then I started backing off and making a conscious effort to play
quieter.
At the
start of the last tour, I was cracking my
maple 5As left and right, so I switched to hickory 5As. After I made an
effort to play
looser, though, I went back to the maples and could go
through an entire gig without breaking a stick. Again, it's
about
playing with intensity but not bashing. Bonham was a master of that.
Sure, he had bigger sticks and big drums, but he
wasn't really hitting
them that hard.
Watch Led Zeppelin's DVD.
When Bonham chokes up on
the right stick he's got a giant, gaping hole
between his thumb and forefinger. It looks to me as if he's using
the
thumb and middle finger as a fulcrum, which is what I do, and not the
thumb and forefinger, because there's less
tension. If you pinch the
thumb and first finger, you see the tendons tighten up. Pinch the thumb
and the middle finger and
there's no tension.
Lately, even
with traditional grip, I've been experimenting with pinching between
the
thumb and the middle finger. But the funny thing is that I was
looking at a picture of me playing - and there wasn't a single
finger
touching the stick! I was playing so loose, just using my thumb and my hand.
MD:
You're involved in a staggering number of projects. Any hints on staying sane when you get so busy?
Stanton: I don't know. I dig what I'm doing. I have a
girlfriend and I miss her when I'm
away, but I guess I've gotten used
to life on the road. Things have been good.
For more on Stanton,
check out www.stantonmoore.com, www.galacticfunk.com, and www.garageatrois.com
T. Bruce
Wittet
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