Modern Drummer Magazine

While the current members of Cheap Trick used the run-up to the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction to promote a new album and take potshots at former drummer Bun E. Carlos in the press, the famously bespectacled sticksman seized the opportunity to make the solo album he’d been forever threatening to release.

The future was a mystery for Will Kennedy at the turn of the millennium, after he announced that he’d leave the high-profile electric jazzers Yellowjackets to focus on other projects. Now, after returning to the band in 2010, he’s sounding fresher than ever all over the group’s latest release, Cohearence.

Charles Haynes is a true drumming multi-talent. The forty-year-old Boston resident has toured the globe with the pop stars Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, and Queen Latifah.

The era known as the ’80s, roughly the period between the dawn of punk and rap in the late ’70s and the rise of indie rock and hair metal in the middle of the next decade, was a time of great change in pop culture.

The modern-day hit-making machine has all the chops you’d want, grooves like a feel-good metronome, and programs drum parts that make you think, Are those real drums…or is it programmed? Most of the time, it’s both.

After taking time away from doing the band thing to focus on his solo electronic project, Navene K, the multi-instrumentalist is relishing the struggle of leading a group again.