Ryan Hoyle Of Collective Soul Exclusive Interview: Modern Drummer Magazine

Web Exclusive Interview
Ryan Hoyle Of Collective Soul Cont'd

We're comfortable setting up the transitions from one part to another.

Exactly, making the song and total picture flow just right.

Let's go back to your early days. Where were you born?

I was born in California and moved around throughout junior high and high school. Coming out of high school, everyone talked about the University Of North Texas. I would read these articles about all these great drummers, and that's all I knew. My parents were like, "You have to go to college," so I thought, How am I going to do both—go to college to make them happy, and also play drums? So UNT was a perfect choice. I went there for a while and then spent four or five years working as a drummer in Texas.

Then I had an opportunity to move to Nashville to do some demos on a project that eventually got signed to Sony. I made a decision to settle there because I really wanted to be a studio drummer. I had no intention of being in a band or even really playing rock music per se. I was so impressed with Steve Gadd. To this day I'm completely blown away by him; a band guy makes a record once a year or whatever, and Steve Gadd makes them every day. That just sounded so attractive to me.

What made you start playing drums?

I found drumsticks, snooping around in my dad's closet.

Does he play?

He played in junior high in the school band, nothing super serious. He had a pair of sticks and an old Ludwig practice pad. And I found them and asked, "What are these?" So before he realized, "Hey, what were you doing in my closet?" [laughs] he was like, "Oh, cool—here's how you hold the sticks."

How old were you?

I was eight. To this day I've played traditional grip, even when playing heavy rock music. By the time I saw Neil Peart and John Bonham play matched grip, I was too comfortable with traditional to switch. To this day I don't play a whole lot of matched grip. I'm trying to get into it, though. I was checking out Jojo Mayer's video and trying to brush up on some technique, and he talked about traditional grip as far as symmetry versus asymmetry, and I thought that was an interesting take on it. It gives your playing a little spice.

I see you're a fan of Ludwig drums. What is it about Ludwig that you dig so much?

Well, there's so much. One of my first nice kits that I ever bought was a gold sparkle Ludwig Club Date kit, and I used that drumkit for many years. And their snare drums are unbelievable. It just seems like they have this sense about them, that they have a very simple approach to making drums. If you ever tear apart a Ludwig drum, for the most part it's not rocket science.

Ludwigs just feel and sound great to me. I love the fact that the maple Classics and some of their upper-line drums are made in America. It's kind of their own shell design, their own take on things. Of course I love the drums from the 1960s, like the Club Dates I mentioned. I also have some of the bigger sizes, the Hollywood kit from that era. I love those big, fat shells, 3-ply with the big reinforcement ring and the white paint.

I love the bite you get out of Ludwig toms. I get tons of fatness and sustain and resonance, but I also get a nice tail from it. They're full and ballsy, but they also get out of the way. Ludwig made me a Classic kit with birch shells. I've never owned a birch kit before, and I'm in love with it. That's the kit that I've got right now in my studio.

Is that the kit you use live as well?

No. Live I use an older Ludwig kit. This is the last tour I'll probably be playing it on, because I've had it out now for a few years. I have two bass drums—an 18" and a 26"—and they're both controlled with the right foot. I have a double pedal attached to the 26", which I use here and there. The 18" is on the side, still controlled with the right foot. So I can kind of switch my foot back and forth for different sections of songs. I've been trying to work them both within a groove—to have two real different durations.

Do you do that to make it sound 'loopy'?

Exactly! With a lot of music I play, and especially with this band, I think the art is in trying to create simple parts that are digestible, appropriate, and what the rest of the band wants to hear—but still be interesting and unique. So I'm always looking for ways to get "boom, pop, boom boom, pop" to be somewhat different. [laughs]

That's a cool concept. How did you develop it?

When I was in Nashville I was doing a lot of programming, and I was in awe of all these great studio drummers who could also do programming on the fly. They would listen to a song once, grab a chart, and just start whipping it up on an MPC or whatever. Next thing you know, there's this whole orchestra of rhythm that they're playing along to, with percussion tracks and everything. So I really got into that. But I started seeing a trend in recording as Pro Tools and recording software got easier to operate and people got the hang of it. It just became more commonplace, like, "Man, just become the loop." Instead of making it come out of a box, play it.

Drummers like Matt Chamberlain and countless others have come a long way with this feel. That is the ultimate loop and the ultimate human at the same time. I tried to get into that, and through the process of recording some albums like that, the challenge became, How do I do this live? So rather than just have stuff come out of a box, especially on stage—not that that's bad, but I just thought, How cool would it be if I almost had two kits, where I could be the box and the big chorus drummer too?

So my kit has two kicks, two snares, and three hi-hats. It's kind of a weird reversal. It's like the programmers are emulating a human and I'm emulating a programmer. I just felt like that would be a creative way to play simple things. Also, before I was in the band, Collective Soul's records featured programming by Anthony Resta.

You mentioned Steve Gadd. Who were some of your other influences?

Gadd still is number-one for me. Bonham, of course. I remember I was on a long school bus ride when I lived in Washington, and somebody said, "Hey, you're a drummer, right? Check this out." They put headphones on me, with "Bring It On Home" by Led Zeppelin playing, and I remember I was like, "What in the hell is going on?"


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Web Exclusive Interview Ryan Hoyle Of Collective Soul Cont'd

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Web Exclusive Interview
Ryan Hoyle Of Collective Soul Cont'd