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Jonas Brothers’ Jack Lawless

By On 01st Nov 2020

New Jersey native Jack Lawless started out as the drummer of Joe Jonas’s chart-topping alternative-pop group DNCE. When the Jonas Brothers got back together, Lawless got the call for that tour as well. We were able catch up with him prior to when COVID hit, at a show at Anaheim’s Honda Center, to talk about the gear that he chose for this tour. “For this kit, I just took Steve Ferrone’s sizes,” Lawless says. “I think he’s amazing, and he’s got the greatest feel ever. I knew I wanted a Gretsch kit with a 24" kick.

“During the first couple weeks of this tour,” Lawless continues, “[my tech] Jerry and I were experimenting with a bunch of different heads. We’re more like a pop show, so we went with nice-sounding and resonant drums.” Johnson doesn’t like to use gel dampeners, so he cuts up pieces of old drumheads and tapes them onto the drums. This deadens the head but is a little more resonant than gels. “It’s a little easier to maintain, too.”

Lawless and his bandmates and musical director communicate to one another via monitor-only microphones. “We all have [vocal] mics onstage that aren’t for the house but for our in-ears,” he says. “So we can have conversations that only we can hear. At one point in a rehearsal, our music director, who is positioned at the front-of-house mixing board, was like, ‘Hey Jack, on that one part, choke the crashes. That’s how we worked everything out.”

December 2020 Issue