< PreviousModern Drummer September 2022 38 EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION Berklee College of Music Runners Up: Manhattan School of Music, School of Rock, University of Miami: Frost School of Music, University of North TexasModern Drummer August 2022 40 Rob Silverman August 2022 Modern Drummer 41 By Mark Griffith D rummer Rob Silverman and his brother pianist Michael Silverman are modern day musical entrepreneurs. They own and run a popular record label called Autumn Hill Records, produce jazz festivals throughout the midwest, lead bands, compose, record, and produce records, and write instructional music books. Rob is best known for his series of Drumology records where he plays drum duets with some of the greatest drummers in the world including: Dave Weckl, Steve Smith, Steve Gadd, Todd Sucherman, Gregg Bissonette, Gergo Borlai, Simon Phillips, Billy Cobham, Gavin Harrison, and many more. With Rob’s concept of recording drum duets, he has nearly put drum duets on the map as a recognized musical genre. Drumology took everyone by surprise, Drumology 2 is being released this month and is sure to turn heads, and Drumology 3 is being finished as we speak. Rob offers a unique view into some of history’s greatest drummers from behind the glass and as a collaborator. Mike offers a unique view from the composer and producer’s viewpoint because he is the one writing the music for each specific drummer to play. Most importantly, the proceeds from all of the Drumology projects go to the Neil Peart Cancer Research Fund. Modern Drummer was lucky enough to sit down with these two musicians and talk about their new records, label, hometown, the greatest drummers in the world, and of course… DRUMOLOGY ! Brendan Joyce PhotographyModern Drummer August 2022 42 MD : Rob, let’s talk about your background a bit. RS: I’m a drummer from St. Louis Missouri, for the last 20 years my brother (Michael) and I have led a band called Bach to The Future that transforms the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart into jazz, latin, and rock styles. Saxophonist Eric Marienthal often plays in the band, and we have a lot of fun. We play jazz festivals in the US, Canada, and next year we’re heading to Europe. Michael does a lot of jingle work, we own a commercial studio, as well as our home studios. All of that has led (in many different ways) to these Drumology records. My father played cello in the St. Louis symphony while we were growing up, so I started out with classical percussion lessons: tympani, vibes, and snare drum. At age 13, I discovered Neil Peart. I started listening to the classic albums 2112 and All the World’s a Stage, and that set a standard for me. Throughout high school and college that’s how I played, using the drumset as a melodic instrument, rather than just playing backbeat grooves. Shows and concerts were just a vehicle for the big drum solo. I began teaching at Fred Pierce’s Studio Drum Shop and have been teaching there for 25 years. My instructional books Drumset 101, and Drumset for All Ages are among Mel Bay’s best sellers. For the last 15 years my brother and I have run our own record label called Autumn Hill Records. My first solo recording for the label was a recording called Drums of the World. I grew up playing in a lot of Greek, Klezmer, Middle Eastern and Irish bands, and I am a percussionist that collects all sorts of exotic percussion, so Drums of the World was a natural thing for me to do. That record includes everything from West African drumming, to Taiko drumming, to Samba drumming. Those recordings have been used for TV many times on the HBO series Leftovers and So You Think You Can Dance, and on films including the Martin Scorsese film called Silence. Around that time, we became nearly full-time recording artists, and we started doing a lot more recordings. Autumn Hill now has a catalog of over 900 hundred recordings that include the new records by The Dave Weckl Band, and drummer Pat Petrillo’s Big Rhythm Band is being released next month. MD : What was it like coming up in a great musical city like St. Louis? RS : St. Louis has always been a great musical city. Tina Turner and Ike Turner are from here, so is Miles Davis. There are great jazz clubs here and lots of jam sessions. There are a few universities like Webster University and UMSL here that have very strong jazz programs. It’s a good scene. MD : How about the St. Louis drumming tradition? RS : There are a lot of great drummers who have come out of St. Louis: Demarius Hicks, Montez Coleman, Steve Davis, Kevin Gianino, and Dave Weckl. Kim Thompson was a student of mine. Gary Sykes is one of our elder statesmen of jazz drumming in St. Louis. He plays in a trio called Tracer with piano legend Ptah Williams and bassist Darrell Mixon, and they are on our label now. Of course there is also Fred Pierce’s Studio Drum Shop which is the oldest drum shop in the country. Fifty one years now. MD : So how did the original concept of Drumology come about? RS : We were recording a song in 2013, and I had the idea to have Dave Weckl and myself do some solo trading in a drum battle sort of approach. We had some mutual friends, I approached him, and he agreed to do it. We enjoyed the whole double drumming concept so much that we wondered if double drumming could become its own genre of music. That was how it started. I enjoyed the experience with Dave so much that I wondered if some of my other drum heroes would want to do the same thing. That one track with Dave started an entire journey that continues today as we are working on Drumology Volume 3. I approached Steve Smith and Simon Phillips Brendan Joyce PhotographyAugust 2022 Modern Drummer 43 next, and I was amazed when they said yes. Then I approached Gregg Bissonette, John Blackwell, and St. Louis drummer (and lifelong friend) Casey Adams. It really took off from there. MD : Michael, how are you involved in the Drumology recordings? MS : All of the music is written, arranged and produced by either myself or by Jay Oliver from the Dave Weckl Band. MD : Let’s talk about all of the great drummers that did these records. Dave was the original inspiration so let’s start with him. MS: Putting together the tune for Dave Weckl and Rob was the first time we had written a tune for two drummers so that was a challenge. Luckily, we had Dave’s own tune “Master Plan” from his first solo record in 1990 as a guide and inspiration. Dave and Steve Gadd played together and traded on that tune, so we could use that as a template. That template includes a big, open section in the middle for drum trading, sections where each drummer plays a groove his own way and panning the drummers a bit so you can hear them separately. That was a good way to get started. Eventually, Rob and I created some different approaches, but that provided a good launching point. Soon after, we created some songs where Rob and the drumming guest would actually play an interlocking groove with two drummers. RS : On our first tune with Dave, we wanted to feature him unencumbered, so we wrote a Montuno section and gave him free- reign and used that for some trading. MD : Double drumming is an interesting thing, how do you approach double drumming with these great drummers? MS : When we first started sending the tracks out, we would send them out with Rob playing and big open sections for the guest to play. That’s the most obvious way to do this. As we went along, we got more creative, and wanted to give more freedom to the guest drummers to make compositional choices about where they Brendan Joyce Photography From left: John Patitucci, Rob Silverman, and Michael SilvermanModern Drummer August 2022 44 would fit into the tune. We started letting the guest drummer play the track first, and with a few guys we even had them play over a click track without any music, and we composed a tune around what they had recorded over the click. Those tracks were (probably) the ones with the wildest, most interesting results! MD: That sounds like a pretty difficult (but interesting) compositional process. After Dave, you approached Steve Smith, how did that come about? RS : When Jay Oliver moved back to St. Louis, we found each other and started hanging out and doing everything together. Jay had worked with Steve in the past, and he had the idea to write a tune based around the Indian konnakol (the Indian rhythmic vocalization tradition) that Steve does so well. Jay and Steve worked together on the arrangement and Steve composed and performed the specific composing for the konnakol sections. Steve gave me a crash course in the concept and technique of konnakol so we could play those scripted passages together, and I have to say it was a dream come true. Eric Marienthal played saxophone, and Michael played a synth solo too. MS: Whenever we compose a tune for a drummer to play on, we really try to find the unique thing about that specific drummer and compose the song around their strengths and personal style. Each song is tailored to the drummer that played on it. RS : We would approach each song from a fan’s point of view. We would ask ourselves, what would the guest drummer want to play and what do drummers like to hear? RS : Jay and I mixed that tune in my studio. He is an absolute genius! I was amazed that (at the time) Jay hadn’t worked on ProTools much, he’s a Digital Performer guy. So I watched Jay learn and Brendan Joyce Photography Brendan Joyce PhotographyAugust 2022 Modern Drummer 45 master ProTools right in front of my eyes. Michael and I learned a lot from watching Jay work, he’s a great engineer and composer! MD: How did Simon Phillips’ tune work? RS : Michael wrote a song based on the sound of Simon’s first Protocol record from the 80s, where Simon composed everything on the keyboards. MS : Simon used a lot of pitched percussion sounds on the tunes on that record. He really likes the sounds of marimbas and kalimbas. I used those sounds as a starting point, and I tried to write the way that he writes. That became the tune called “Brave New World.” He asked if we wanted him to do anything specific, and we told him that we really wanted him to use the Octobans in a groove. He created this cool Protocol-Octoban groove that we really liked. In our minds, that is a part of his signature sound. RS : We approached Gregg Bissonette next for the track “Ten Times Ten.” He plays Dixon Drums, and they are a St. Louis company so there was a connection there through a mutual friend. We produced his entire session over Skype. Gregg is such a pro; he came in very prepared. He said he would play the tune three different ways. Initially he played it as if he was doing it for his own record. He then did a second take from a pure rock approach, and finally a third take that was much more fusion-ish. Each of the takes –– from beginning to end –– were brilliant ‘first takes’ and any one of them could have been THE take! Hearing those three takes honestly blew me away. Given that the main aspect of the tune is the odd 10/8 time signature, we opted to keep it there throughout, including his amazing drum solo, and an entire drumming intro with him and myself. MS : That tune started out as a sort of “sequel” to a tune by violinist Jerry Goodman. We had done some gigs with Jerry, and he had a tune in 13/8 called “Tears of Joy.” When we played that with him it was really challenging, so I decided to write a tune that was equally as challenging for him, and that’s where “Ten Times Ten” came from. Jerry was kind enough to play on the tune with Gregg too. MD : You got to feature the wonderful late great John Blackwell on a song. What can you tell me about that? RS: I met John in Florida at an open mic night at a popular beach bar. I was about to play a song, and a friend came and whispered to me that John Blackwell had just come in. I looked up at him in horror as they counted in the song “Play That Funky Music.” I survived that experience, and we ended up hanging out that night. We became really great friends, and I took some lessons with him. I think his recording on Drumology might be the last recorded performance that he ever did, but he was at the top of his game. He and I went into a studio in Florida, and I got the opportunity to produce him, he did three takes, then we took the tracks home and I edited together a final take. We were honored that John liked the track so much that he began using it in his clinics around the world. MS: Rob might not even remember this, but years ago I played keyboards with John at a clinic in St. Louis. We played Chick Corea’s “Spain,” and it was a thrill. During his clinic, he mentioned that one of his biggest drumming influences growing up in the 80s was playing the parts that were created with drum machines. His bass drum foot was super precise, and every note From left: Jay Oliver, Dave Weckl and Rob Silverman mixing a track From left: Matt Bollinger, Tracy Silverman, Eric Marienthal, Michael Silverman, and Rob SilvermanModern Drummer August 2022 46 was exactly the same, just like a machine. I was thinking about that when I composed “Drum Duet in C Minor.” MD : Speaking of drum duets, tell us about the next tune on the record with Casey Adams. RS : Casey is a consummate professional drummer who can play with anybody and play anything. Jay Oliver wrote that track and it is called “Inferno.” Jay, Casey and I are always hanging out and having fun together, and Jay has (sort of) mentored us. Jay was kind enough to write a song for me and Casey. MS: Actually it was written and inspired by an older tune that Jay wrote with Dave Weckl back in 1990 called “Tower of Inspiration,” (originally featured on the Master Plan album). So for fun, our working title was “Tower-ish,” which later became “Towering Inferno” which became “Inferno.” It’s a typical Jay Oliver fusion masterpiece. His writing with Dave Weckl over the years has been a huge influence on my own writing so working with him on these albums is pretty seamless. RS : Eric Marienthal played sax on it, along with Larry Kornfeld giving us a great bass track. Eric, by the way, played on every tune from the first Drumology record, and of course John Patitucci has been an important figure in the Drumology series as well. MD: Drumology 2 is being released this month, correct? MS : Yes, it will be available by the time this MD issue is released! The first song we wrote had lots of those anthemic Styx type of keyboard melodies combined with fusion… RS : So we called Todd Sucherman, the tune was just a natural fit for him. He’s one of those guys who can do anything. We sent him the track and when we got it back the mix and playing was absolutely perfect. We asked him to play anything he wanted to play, and he did. The one thing that made his track different is when we were trading, he went first. All of his trades sounded like drum ideas that needed a musical response, like a question and an answer. He was so intuitive to what the song needed - it was perfect. MD: Mike Mangini and the song “Victory” was next, how did that one go down? RS : I have a friend that claimed he knew Mike and John Myung, and though I was skeptical, I wrote up a proposal, and he sent it to them, and shockingly… He actually DID know Mike and John from Dream Theater. Even more shockingly, they were up for recording! After Mike heard the song, he actually got involved with composing it. He made some suggestions and changed some stuff around. He got very involved and actually rewrote one of the melodies. He helped with production and was just incredible. Mike played through the entire song and I had to decide what parts to replace and play with or instead of him. That was a tough process - every note he played was pure genius! MS : Once we got Todd and Mike to do their tracks for Drumology 2, we decided that Volume 2 would be more of a progressive rock record instead of August 2022 Modern Drummer 47 Courtesy Gavin Harrison more of a fusion record. The first Drumology was a very jazz-fusion, saxophone, and keyboard-oriented sound. The second one became much more guitar oriented, with a rock feel throughout. MD : “Timber Falls” features Kenny Aronoff, who we usually don’t associate with a very progressive approach, but he can do it. I’m sure that was a fun track for him to stretch out on. RS : And speaking of guitar, Dweezil Zappa played on that track too. Again, Kenny went in and recorded the entire tune, and then with some creative editing, I added my parts. We also traded on it as well. There were lots of peaks and valleys in that tune and Kenny played them perfectly. MD : With someone like Kenny who has done everything from The Smashing Pumpkins to John Fogerty to Joe Satriani how did you go about writing a tune for him? RS : This particular song existed before we knew that Kenny would play on it. MS: I thought it would be a good tune for Kenny because it has two different meters. One is a triplet thing, and one is a straight rock thing. And it switches back and forth between the two feels. As a studio drummer, I know that Kenny is very used to playing pretty straight tunes, so I didn’t want to throw any heavy fusion at him. MD: But believe me, if you did, he would have killed it. He can play very busy if you ask him to. He’s got a Billy Cobham hat hidden somewhere in the back of his closet. MS: You’re right! He’s one of the most recorded drummers out there, and it’s because he can do anything! It was a thrill to hear him play a really nice, wide-open solo. He’s really not known for that, but it was an incredible solo. MD : And speaking of Billy Cobham, you created the song “Sea Spray” for him to play. RS: I wrote a long letter to Billy and explained the whole project, I didn’t think he’d do it. MS : The reason we had the nerve to ask Billy was because it was during the pandemic. We gambled on the idea that he and other top drummers, might like to do some studio work, and the gamble paid off. Billy is a unique talent, and it might have been impossible to get his attention in normal times! RS : For “Sea Spray” we wanted to reunite Billy and Jerry Goodman and write something that was a 21st Century version of the sound of Mahavishnu Orchestra. MS : I created a through-composed section with a whole lot of unpredictable angles and a wide- open solo section. Those are the two things that you can typically expect in Mahavishnu or Weather Report type of music. The melody had a bunch of tricky accents, I wrote it with Jerry Goodman in mind. RS: We were surprised by what Billy played. I was expecting funky stuff with obtuse backbeats, but instead what he played was a main groove with the snare drum as the main sound. It is kind of a marching rudimental type thing. That was eye-opening. Then I went back and did the hi hat and the backbeats over his intricate snare drum work. We created a cool double drummer thing. MD: Casey Grillo from Queensryche was next. RS : Yes, but he used to play in a prog band called Kamelot, and we have known each other for years. I brought Casey and John Spinelli (of Spinelli free floating drums) into the studio and had them play freely to a click track, and then I composed a song around what they played. John and Casey have different styles that somehow work perfectly together. I had no preconception as to what we would compose, but that track might be my favorite tune from the record. They gave me such nice stuff to work with, Casey is a double bass master, and he created some great stuff for us to write over. John played his huge sounding Spinelli custom drums and gave it a huge backbeat and big Rock fills. We created this classical shred song that needed some guitar and we wondered who would be a perfect fit? MS: Besides Yngwie (of course.) RS : John called Michael Angelo Batio, and he took it to another level. Larry Kornfeld played bass and did some wonderful unison melodic parts with M.A.B. Actually, Larry played bass on most of the tunes on Drumology 2 and 3 and was the recording engineer for most of my tracking sessions. I couldn’t have done this without him. MD: The next tune features Modern Drummer’s owner David Frangioni, how did that happen? RS : David is a fantastic drummer who shares so many of the same influences as me. David and I did a podcast about Drumology together. Afterwards we stayed on ZOOM and started talking about studios, and drumming, and we found out that we had a lot in common. He invited me over to see his drum collection at The Modern Drummer Hall of Fame Museum and I wrote a song based around the experience of going to the museum and being surrounded by all of those iconic drumsets. The tune “Drum Dreams” was the result. The tune was based on the idea of dreaming to play on all of your drum hero’s drumsets. He did his drum tracks at the Hit Factory in Miami, and they came out great. We made a video for the tune, and you get to see us playing all of these famous iconic drumsets. It was a dream come true in so many ways. David is one of my really good friends now. We are like drum brothers! Felipe LaverdeNext >