< PreviousModern Drummer September 2022 68 speak to your process of developing your own voice on the drums? DJ: A lot of younger drummers are doing things and playing ideas that have already been played, but because they haven’t done their homework, they don’t realize that what they think is new, has already been done. They think they have developed “their thing” but they are playing something because they already heard it somewhere. MD : Yes, but it is pretty hard to put the pressure on yourself to always be playing “something new.” DJ : I agree, but if you widen your influences and your sounds, you will come up with new combinations of things that already exist. For example, I can take something that has already been played by one of our heroes, and leave a few notes out. Or I can play an idea that someone else has played, but play it on my different drumset. If I do those things, the identity of the vocabulary with become mine. MD : How were you influenced by the older R&B drummers? DJ : I really dug the intention that they played with. You could hear every little note that those guys played. Whether it was a little ruff in the groove, or some ghost notes in a fill. They were very clear with what they were playing, and how they played. They also taught us how important repetition is in groove. Those guys were human loops. Every bar was the consistent and very similar. Their beats felt so good, but they were wonderfully repetitious, which is what helped make the music groove. Listen to a couple of the greatest grooves ever, Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer” and Bernard Purdie’s “Purdie Shuffle.” Those guys don’t add that much to each bar when they play those grooves, but that repetition is infectious and funky. MD : Did you ever listen to James Gadson? DJ: He’s a little different. He would move notes around to coincide and stay out of the way of the lyrics. When I worked with producer Pete Rock, he wanted me to do that. Pete liked when you would create variations on the groove to compliment the lyrics. MD : You had mentioned gospel music in a previous interview that we did. What gospel music did you grow up hearing? DJ : Chris Coleman and I came up together we grew up playing gospel music. I don’t mean “fusion gospel,” and this was before “Gospel Chops.” I’m talking Andre Crouch with drummer Bill Maxwell vibe. He’s one of my favorite drummers. I still listen to all of the Winans records that he did, all of the Andre Crouch records that he did. Bill Maxwell is a genius in my eyes, he’s really special. MD : Have you ever heard him on the Koinonia records, it’s groove heaven! DJ: Dana Davis was one of my biggest gospel influences from Detroit, and he was the Winans touring drummer. We Also become good friends. He would always tell me about Bill. Although Dana was always playing New-Jack Swing in church, he always had an island sound or influence in his playing, and I think Bill does too. There was another drummer named Michael Williams who played with Commissioned. That was the group that Fred Hammond was in, and then Fred went solo and started his own group with… MD: Marvin McQuitty! DJ : I was crushed when Marvin died. MD : That was right when the “Gospel Chops” thing began to take off, and he just never seemed to get the appreciation that he deserved because he had died. But he was an amazing drummer. MD: Did the “Gospel Chops” approach have a strong influence on your playing? DJ : I always want my, for lack of a better term, “real” Gospel roots to come through in anything that I play. To me that means letting the true spirit of playing from within, and letting the creator come into me and use me as a vessel to uplift, spread joy, and connect with people. The Gospel attitude of “say what you mean and mean what you say” is a big part of my playing. But the way the Gospel Chops guys would just go for it did influence me too. But it was more from the “go for it” attitude of “how” they played, more-so that “what” they played. There is another drummer from that same style that never got the attention he deserved named LaDell Abrams. LaDell played with John P. Kee and Usher, and he later played with Cece Winans. The drummer that played with the Indiana State Mass Choir is named Kenny Phelps, and I love his playing. He was probably the first Gospel drummer that I heard playing with a double bass drum pedal. It sucks that guys like Bill, Marvin, Dana, LaDell, and Eddie Heyward and Jeff Davis who both played with Hezekiah Walker kind of got overlooked from a certain standpoint. They are some of Gospel’s biggest drumming influences that also had an impact on me as well. David SwansonSeptember 2022 Modern Drummer 69 MD : I don’t know why some drummers have become more famous and more well-known, and some drummers haven’t. DJ : Maybe those drummers I mentioned didn’t have an interest in industry-wide recognition. One thing that any young drummer can do is to go to the NAMM and PASIC conventions. People get comfortable playing in their own environments, but (in my opionion) you have to keep expanding. It’s always a great idea to meet people face to face and shake their hands. There are a lot of drummers who haven’t paid a lot of dues, but they have gone to these conventions and shaken some hands, so they wind up getting more attention and the spotlights. MD : Speaking of drummers that haven’t gotten enough attention, I want to ask you about J. Dilla. You came in as the Slum Village drummer for their live band, and they were a group that J. Dilla was producing and creating the beats. I have always dug J Dilla’s “thing,” but I don’t know much about him. Tell me about Dilla? DJ : J Dilla was a great drummer. He wasn’t the most technical drummer, but he could play enough to compose and produce, and he had an identity. He became known for those drunken sounding, glitchy drum beats and patterns. Back in the day when drummers like Bernard Purdie were playing and they would get a little sideways because something got a little messed up. I believe that was the stuff that inspired Dilla, and he started to try to play like that. I’m guessing that when he programmed things, he wouldn’t want to quantize them, and he started to try and actually play very un-quantized. He would actually practice that stuff. From what I have heard when he would sample, he would sample anything and make music out of it. But when he sampled music that was identifiable, he would cut it up and manipulate it so much, that it became un-identifiable. Then there was his stuttering drum patterns. Other producers did this stuff too, but Dilla took it to the next level, and it became his musical identity. All of the groups that were part of the “Boom Bap 90s” like De La Soul, Common, A Tribe Called Quest, and Busta Rhymes were all influenced by J Dilla. He wound up producing a lot of those groups, but just when that started getting big, he died at the age of 32 from Lupus. He was truly ahead of his time. Dilla’s influential style was passed along to Detroit’s Kareem Riggins, who is killin’ and he is carrying the torch. When I was playing with Slum Village I had been a fan of Dilla’s production’s, and that made it easier for me to absorb his approach. You know, the “You are what you eat” type of thing. I couldn’t write it down, and I don’t even know if I could explain it, I just heard it all of the time, and I was forced to figure it out. No YouTube, no books, just listen and figure it out. MD : What are some of the best J Dilla recordings to check out. I have had my copy of Donuts for a long time, and I’m ready for something new? DJ : Slum Village Fantastic Vol. 1 and 2, his own projects called Welcome To Detroit, Ruff Draft, De La Soul Stakes is High, Tribe Called Quest Find My Way, and the Busta Rhymes stuff is killin! You mentioned Donuts, that was the first project that he did with purely samples and loops, there was no additional drums on Donuts. But every time I listen to Slum Village, it sounds like it was released yesterday. MD : If we are talking about rap and hip-hop drumming, and guys that died young, and guys that have gone virtually unnoticed, I have to ask you if you are hip to Pumpkin? DJ : Wow, I just recently learned about Pumpkin, he was one of, or maybe the original, hip-hop drummer. I have a band with guitarist Marcus Machado and Doug Wimbish the bassist from Living Color called DMD The Vibes, and Marcus and Pumpkin are first cousins. Marcus told me that Pumpkin was playing mostly Simmons drums on a lot of the old Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash records. MD : He does have a record out of his own, but if you want to talk about OG of hip-hop drumming, Pumpkin is it. Unfortunately, he died a while back, and no one has really championed him, so he is a little forgotten. The only thing that I could ever found out about him was that the springs on his bass drum pedal were so stiff and tight that you could almost stand on it without it moving. He has a record out and on the cover of the record he is playing a big Pearl bass drum, what looks to be 13” and 14” Gretsch Toms, and what looks to be an 18” floor tom DJ : I just want people to know that when they hear me play, I’m bringing a small piece of influence of all of these drumming greats to the table with me: John Bonham, Bill Maxwell, Clyde Stubblefield, Stewart Copeland, Dana Davis, Vinnie Colaiuta, ?uestlove, J Dilla and more, along with my own gospel roots and original vibe.. Those guys are a part of my drumming DNA. When people don’t talk about their influences and who inspired them, they just aren’t being truthful. MD: When you are playing live hip-hop drums these days, are you using your traditional kit? DJ : I just got some of the new Paiste flats and I love them. I had never played a flat ride, then I played them at PASIC and thought that was a sound that I could really use in my set-up, and I love it. I was using a 22” Dark Energy for a while, but it was a little too dark, but the brightness of the new flat will be a nice contrast to my other rides, and I am going to put some miles on the new flat. MD : It makes sense that a flat could work in a hip-hop setting. They won’t wash out the vocals. I really love how it sounds when you lay into and crash a flat too. DJ : That’s a really funky sound, I agree. MD: I’ve heard that the next time that we talk we can talk about some other new equipment that you are using too. DJ: Maybe.... David SwansonModern Drummer September 2022 70 Joe Franco Double Bass Drum Renaissance Man By Mark Griffith Cheryl SmithSeptember 2022 Modern Drummer 71 T his year is the 40th Anniversary of one of the best drum books ever written, Joe Franco’s Double Bass Drumming. In 1964 Colin Bailey published Bass Drum Control. That was the first book that dealt with the subject of playing the bass drum, bass drum control, and speed. It is a legendary book written by a legendary teacher. By 1982 a musical change was happening. Jazz drummers like Louie Bellson, Ed Shaugnessy and Dave Black, and rock drummers like Ginger Baker, Carmine Appice, and Aynsley Dunbar had all started to utilize two bass drums and had started to create a new vocabulary for what was being called “double bass drumming.” At the time, drummers were using Bailey’s book for developing their double bass drumming. Louie Bellson had written a book on double bass drums, but there were no books that dealt specifically with the powerful sound of double bass drums in rock music. Carmine Appice’s book Realistic Rock had a short section on double bass drumming. It was a fantastic primer that laid the groundwork for how Baker and Appice were playing with two bass drums. Carmine had also started to develop a concept of how to develop new beats and a specific double bass drum vocabulary. With the inspiration of the aforementioned drummers and books, drummers started to take the new idea of double bass drumming very seriously. But there was a need for a good book to support and nurture this new approach in drumming, and 40 years ago, Joe Franco filled that need. Joe Franco is a New York City drummer that has made a name for himself playing with The Good Rats, Chilliwack, Fiona, Doro Pesch, Leslie West, Jack Bruce, Widowmaker, Steve Walsh, Magellan and Twisted Sister. Joe Franco’s book Double Bass Drumming is the most important book in developing a strong concept in double bass drumming. His approach (called The Single Stroke System) brought power, control, and a new vocabulary to double bass drumming. And today, 40 years later, Joe’s book is still teaching and inspiring drummers to play double bass drums. Modern Drummer has been sharing some of Joe’s most important concepts from the book. And in upcoming months, Joe is going to show us some new ways to apply and work through the book, as well as some new double bass drum lessons. But before we do that, we wanted to re-introduce Joe Franco to the younger world of drumming, because (as you will read) he has had a very interesting and successful career. However, it is a career that (throughout the last 20 years,) has not had him on the front pages of drumming magazines. But that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been out there working, making music, teaching, playing in front of big crowds, and inspiring musicians. Joe Franco is a truly renaissance drummer and musician. MD : I must admit, that since your book and success with the various rock bands, I have lost track of your career. When I watched you on the Modern Drummer Podcast with John DeChristopher I had no idea what you had been doing for the last 30 years. JF : I’ve had a very interesting career and being a drummer has led to everything else in my life. You begin as a young drummer in a bar band, and that (hopefully) leads to other things. MD: In your case it has led to many other things! JF: Indeed! My musical beginnings were like most musicians my age. Seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, then the British Invasion bands. Soon after I became very influenced by the local New York version of that scene with The Rascals, Vanilla Fudge, and The Vagrants (Leslie West’s first band). The difference was that those bands were from my area, and the guys were local and approachable. Dino was a cooler version of Ringo, and he played at my high school. Carmine was Dino on steroids and I saw his very first drum clinic in Hempstead, Long Island. I’d never seen that kind of power on a drum kit from up close, and I was blown away. I asked him if he taught, and he gave me his number, so I started taking lessons with him while he was writing Realistic Rock. Carmine’s influence really stayed with me and inspired me to write Double Bass Drumming ten years later. I was impressed seeing a “Rock Modern Drummer September 2022 72 Star” putting tons of energy towards education through his clinics and lessons. Carmine noticed that my left foot was lazy, so he suggested playing time with my left foot on the hi hat to build strength and coordination. My left foot started “dancing” and when I started playing double bass, I played the way that Ginger and Carmine did. I took my left foot which was pumping eighth notes on my hi hat and moved it to my left bass drum. No matter what I was playing (a duple feel or a triple feel,) my left foot always either kept time on the hi hat or led my double bass rolls and shuffles. I did that for ten years from 1972 until 1982. At the time my band, Good Rats were opening for bands with cool double bass drummers from Rush with Neil to Journey with Aynsley and Steve and I had a bird’s eye view of their playing. At the time, late 70’s, whenever the Rats weren’t touring, we were mainstays in the thriving NY club scene. In the early 80’s that club scene changed for lots of reasons, and I saw the writing on the wall, so I took a touring gig with a successful Canadian band, Chilliwack. After I came home from that tour in December 1982, it was the first time in ten years I wasn’t constantly gigging, and I decided to write a drum book. At the time, I had developed fast double bass drum rolls and shuffles. Audiences were impressed, but I wanted to do more. I wanted to do something different with my bass drums, something more musical. Playing fast sixteenth notes was cool but I wanted to play patterns and wanted to have an organized way of playing the patterns so my ideas went directly to my limbs without having to use my brain. That’s why I developed the Single Stroke System. MD: So what is the Single Stroke System? JF : The Single Stroke System is a simple concept. You lead with your right (or main) foot on the down beats, so you play downbeats with the right foot and upbeats with the left. The body stays in motion, and everything sounds fluid. It’s very much like strumming a guitar where you have down strums and up strums. MD : That might seem a little “obvious” to drummers today. JF : Yes, but at the time it was different from how everyone was playing double bass. Seasoned drummers were comfortable playing time with their hi hat foot and adopted the approach of moving the hi hat foot to the left bass drum. As I said, that’s how Ginger, Carmine, and Aynsley Dunbar played, so my concept of The Single Stroke System was a new thing at the time. When I started teaching Cheryl Smith Steve PaceSeptember 2022 Modern Drummer 73 this system to beginners, it was totally “obvious” to lead with their main bass drum. In the book I have different rhythmic patterns in the first section, I have a linear section, and then I have a third section based on playing a bass drum roll and being able to coordinate your hands to play accents and different permutations of singles and doubles over the bass drum roll. With this system, you can take notes out of patterns to create different grooves. But what’s important is that if a note is left out, the footing doesn’t change. For example, in a sixteenth note roll, if you leave out beat three (that would be played with the right foot) the next note that you play is still a left. Picture a blackboard where you have RLRL RLRL RLRL RLRL for all of the sixteenth notes in a bar. If you erase any note, the footing still stays the same. That is the subtractive way of thinking. But you can also think of an additive approach. If you start with the right foot playing 1& and 3&, then play the e’s and a’s of 1 and 3 you get an embellished groove, but the main kick drum still plays 1& and 3&. All of this works and sounds fluid because your body stays in constant motion MD : And it sounds musical. Which is sometimes a downfall of double bass drumming. JF : Yes, and one of my favorite things about this system is when you come out of a linear fill, you’re set up to crash on the downbeat with your right hand and right foot together. MD : So simply put, if you start out by playing RLRL sixteenth notes, no matter what notes you leave out the sticking stays the same. JF: That’s it. In the early 1900’s, there was a guy who taught sticking this way named Ed Straight. He was a founding member of NARD (The National Association of Rudimental Drummers). He developed what he called the “Straight System” of sticking and called it “a natural way to play the drums.” When I did some research while writing the book, I talked to every double bass drummer and picked their brains. I remember approaching Terry Bozzio at a PAS show and asked him why he led rolls with his left foot and if it bothered him to have to crash at the end of a phrase with his left foot. He thought about it for a second and said, “No it doesn’t bother me as I just play a double right at the end of the phrase and still crash and play with my right bass drum.” Ha! Recently, I’ve been listening to a few European metal bands like Soen and Gojira, and those guys are doing exactly what I envisioned drummers doing when I wrote my book. I’m really digging Soen’s new record Imperial, it’s like Pink Floyd meets Tool, they’re a cool band. MD : What were your original double bass drumming influences? JF: When I first started playing, I wasn’t aware of Louie Bellson, who is usually credited as the first double bass drummer. I heard Cream’s “Toad,” and that’s what did it for me. I noticed that Ginger had two different pitches happening in his bass drum roll. MD: Because he had the two different sized bass drums. JF : Yup, the 22” on the left and the 20” on the right. However, the first time I heard “Toad” on Fresh Cream, I didn’t even know it was double bass, I thought he was playing a roll between his floor tom and kick, so I practiced playing a sixteenth note roll with my right hand on my floor tom playing the down beats, and my right foot on my bass drum playing the up beats. I had that down!!! Then I saw a picture of Cream, and I saw the two bass drums, and it blew my mind. Two bass drums hadn’t even occurred to me. Then I watched Brits like Michael Giles, Barriemore Barlow, and Jon Hiseman. Eventually I saw Terry Bozzio with Zappa and was blown away. Then (of course) Billy Cobham with “Quadrant 4,” and Simon Phillips with “Space Boogie.” I was hooked! What’s interesting is that at the time I wrote my book, if I only Steve PaceModern Drummer September 2022 74 Chris Coleman wrote about what I was playing on double bass at the time, the entire book would only be the third part, which is soloing over the double bass roll. That’s what I developed first, and (as I said) impressed audiences. But I wanted to explore a little more. I started teaching and while teaching, I developed concepts that were more musical. That’s where the Single Stroke System came from. While I was exploring these concepts, I was trying them out with students. MD: That is such an important aspect to a great book. The fact that you were teaching these ideas while you were writing the book. I believe that is how ALL of the greatest drum books have evolved. A great drummer teaches, and through teaching, he devises his own processes and concepts, and then he puts them into a book. It shouldn’t happen in reverse. Can you talk about the importance of your teaching on the book? JF: Teaching was an important part of the process as I was teaching concepts as I was developing them and getting feedback from my students was rewarding and assuring. MD : I always like to ask drummers who teach about their old students. Do any of your old students stick out in your mind? JF : I have a student who I started teaching when he was 15 named John Macaluso. He played with TNT and Yngwie Malmsteen, and he’s a killer drummer with a brilliant imagination. He studied with me while I was writing the book. Greg D’Angelo from White Lion was studying with me when he was a teenager as well. John Tempesta reminded me that he took a lesson with me way back. I didn’t remember but we’re now buds. He’s such a great rocker! The teacher student relationship is very personal. I’m proud of many of my former students. Some of them are still my best friends, much like the relationship I had and still have with Carmine. He used to take me out to clubs to see jazz drummers like Roy Haynes, and then I did the same thing with my students, and today hopefully the tradition continues. So many drummers would come to New York and just take a lesson or two with me to see what my double bass drum thing was about, in the same way that I took some lessons with Tony Williams. I knew that no matter what happened in the lesson, I’d come out inspired! MD: I know there were others, but I think it’s nice to see how drummers like Carmine really created the template for guys like you and I and many others. Working drummers who do some teaching, develop some concepts while teaching, write a book or two that describe those concepts, keep working as musicians, do some clinics, and develop entire careers emanating from the drums. JF: I agree and like I said, being a drummer led to everything else in my life. I met my wife 30 years ago on a session that she was producing. My “second career” in audio for television started when I was asked to play drums for a children’s TV show. MD : Let’s talk about that interesting twist in your drumming career. JF: Well, I did a lot of programming in the late 80s. I had already done some programming for offshoot projects for the TV show Sesame Street. There was a new Sesame Street type of show in the late 90’s called Between the Lions which had a bunch of former Sesame producers and writers. They were putting a band together for the show and invited me to play drums. I had just put together my studio, Beatstreet and asked if they’d consider recording me there as I was always mic’d up and ready to rock. They came to see my studio and said they’d love to record the music for the show there. That led to even more work for children’s TV and since then, the studio has tripled in size. We do a lot of work for Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop. But now it’s not just music, we do sound design, foley work, 5.1 mixing and all things audio. But again, how did it start? It started 25 years ago with me being asked to play drums for a kid’s TV show. MD: It’s so interesting to see how careers develop. Your main focus has gone from playing in hard rock bands, to teaching and publishing a book on double bass drumming, to programming, to owning a studio, to kids TV, and then back to playing in hard rock bands. JF : Yup, in my mind, I’m still a hard rock drummer. One of my favorite bands I played in was Widowmaker. Dee Snider asked me to play in Widowmaker after I played with Twisted Sister. However, because it took five years to get going, music tastes had moved on and we were playing 80’s music in the grunge 90s so the band never took off. One of the coolest experiences of my career was with Leslie West and Jack Bruce. That was probably the record I played on that I’m Steve PaceSeptember 2022 Modern Drummer 75 Virgil Donati the proudest of, (for obvious reasons.) While we were recording the album, we got a phone call from a theater in Poughkeepsie NY called The Chance. A band had cancelled last minute on them, and they were wondering if we would come up and fill in for that night’s show. Jack and Leslie agreed, and I was on cloud nine! Before I knew it, we were in the dressing room and Jack was writing out a set list on a paper plate. That was one of my happiest days as a drummer. Thankfully, they recorded the whole show, and parts of that show have surfaced in many forms. MD : You mentioned that you had started doing a lot of programming at one point. JF : Yeah, in the mid 80’s, studio work was slowing down as drum machines were becoming the norm. I detested their whole existence (like everybody else.) I hated the original Linn Drum but when the EMU SP-12 came out it really changed my life. With the SP-12, you were able to personalize the machine with your own sounds. Then with the evolution of samplers, I started sampling a ton of hi hat sounds and played them on an Octapad and eventually, a Drumkat. My hi hat sampling and programming made drum tracks sound very realistic, and that caught the ear of a producer named Ric Wake, which led me to do programming for records by Taylor Dayne, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Diana Ross, all the divas! Meanwhile, in the rock world Mutt Lange was creating humongous drum sounds on all those Def Leppard records, and everyone wanted their drums to sound like that. By then, I was way into the electronic thing, so I started getting gigs replacing drum sounds. At the time, I was in Twisted Sister, then Widowmaker playing metal while I was programming drum parts for the pop divas and replacing drum sounds on rock records. It was a busy time. MD : Were you in Twisted Sister before or after AJ Pero? JF : I was in Twisted Sister after AJ and I miss him dearly, he was a good friend. All the guys in Twisted Sister are still close friends of mine. MD : AJ and I met later in his career, and his humanity made a huge impression on me, he was a GREAT guy, I learned a lot from him. It’s always fascinating to see how careers in music develop. JF : You would like to think that you are in control of your career but you’re not. The phone rings and you try to seize every opportunity. I’m lucky to have grown up in NYC where there were opportunities galore. MD: You just mentioned living in New York City, how much has that contributed to your career and education in music? JF : When I was young, I lived at the Fillmore East, I saw Hendrix there, I saw Jethro Tull, Procol Harum and Traffic two or three times a year. You couldn’t do that anywhere else except perhaps San Francisco or Los Angeles. We used to have a routine where we’d go to the early show at the Fillmore, and then go around the corner to The Electric Circus. It seemed like this band called Sly and The Family Stone was playing there every other week. They would play covers of the old R&B classics, I thought they were a local band. This was way before “Dance To the Music.” They had records out before that was a hit. MD: That was probably around A Whole New Thing, and the tune “Underdog.” JF : Yup, “Underdog” a great tune! Gregg Errico was playing drums, they were amazing. I found out later that they were from San Francisco. The Electric Circus would bring all these great bands in: Sly, Deep Purple, James Gang, Alice Cooper. MD: You mentioned Jethro Tull, was that with Barrimore Barlow or Clive Bunker? JF : Clive Bunker was their drummer in the Fillmore days. The four records that he played on were my musical formative years. Barrimore came later when they were playing big venues like Madison Square Garden. MD: I don’t know much about Clive Bunker, tell me something about seeing him. JF : He was a little like Mitch Mitchell, he was a jazzer. You can hear the beginning of Clive playing double bass on Benefit. Both he and Mitch played double bass for a bit, that was Ginger’s influence, but it wasn’t really their thing. In fact, I remember Ian Anderson introducing Clive at the Fillmore after a drum solo when he first added a 2nd bass drum as “that’s Clive Bunker on his Ginger Steve PaceModern Drummer September 2022 76 Baker drum kit”. So back to your question. Yes, New York was very important because you could see everybody, but also because you could study with everybody. MD : You had mentioned studying with Tony Williams, how did that come about? JF : Tony Williams used to put an ad in the Village Voice advertising for drum lessons. I simply called and booked a couple of lessons. During lessons, I couldn’t help but notice all the vinyl hanging around and at the top of the stack were The Ramones and Pink Floyd. This was 1973, and Tony Williams was listening to The Ramones, how cool is that?!? Let me back up a bit. In my high school years, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were a religion. After they both broke up, I followed the players. When Cream broke up, Jack Bruce started playing with this guy, “Tony Williams.” I didn’t know who Tony was, I wasn’t listening to Miles Davis at the time. But I went out and bought Tony’s Turn it Over because Jack Bruce was on it. As soon as I heard the first tune on the second side in 6/8, my mind was blown. I immediately started checking out all the jazz-rock guys like Alphonse Mouzon, Billy Cobham, Lenny White and Narada Michael Walden throughout the 70s. This was also around the time that Tony was putting the New Lifetime together with Holdsworth. I have always been a sonics guy and love great sounding records. When Tony put out Believe It, with the 24” kick, he sounded huge. Ditto for Billy on Spectrum with Ken Scott engineering. Both of those albums blew me away. For me it was about the drumming and the sonics. Speaking of Narada and sonics, I have to say that his newest record Immortality is amazing. Killer playing and what a drum sound! I would put it up there with Spectrum and Believe It, it’s that good! MD : So what were lessons with Tony like? JF : We sat down with a pad between us. He asked me to play some on the pad. I was probably playing with my pinky’s out, and he stopped me and said, “You gotta play with your hands!” He got me to grip the sticks with my last two fingers. He told me, “That’s where the fulcrum is, forget about your front fingers.” I recently saw a video of him giving a clinic in Dallas on YouTube, and he was talking about the same stuff. MD: Before you wrote your book and were teaching, were you thinking of double bass drumming as a separate entity or was it just a part of what you did. Because you eventually became the “double bass drumming” guy? JF : It was always a part of what I did, but when the book came out and I started doing drum clinics, it became a predominant part of what I did. I love talking and teaching double bass. Most of the clinics and drum shows I’ve done, I talk about double bass. I also like talking about phrasing as I’m a math nerd and like exploring the ways you can mix up groupings of notes in a measure or in multiple measures. MD : You mentioned some of the Brits, how into them were you at the time? JF : Michael Giles really caught my ear. Both Bruford and Peart gave Michael Giles a lot of credit for his inspiration. His approach to drum parts on the first King Crimson album is legendary. He did a cool record with Ian MacDonald called MacDonald and Giles and it had a Steve PaceSeptember 2022 Modern Drummer 77 song called “Turnham Green.” MD: I LOVE that record! JF : So do I! Giles played cool double bass patterns as opposed to just playing rolls. MD: I ‘think” he might have used two different size bass drums too. JF : I’m not sure, it’s possible. MD : Aside from you, were there any other drummers at the time who were leading with their right foot when playing double bass drums. JF : Yes, Steve Smith. Good Rats used to open for Journey when Aynsley was in the band a lot. When Steve joined the band, we were still doing openers for Journey, and he and I really bonded. Steve was ditching the tradition of left foot lead and showed me how he was using the Colin Bailey book to work on his right foot lead. He interpreted that book for his linear stuff. I tried talking to as many double bass players as I could, and Steve was the only cat I knew who was playing right foot lead. These days so many drummers are playing doubles and Stick Control patterns with their feet, which is amazing. I gotta say I’m totally old school when it comes to double bass. I keep it simple and I like to move air! MD : How do you tune and muffle to get more air moving? JF : I tune medium tension and use the DW adjustable pillows that lightly touch each of the heads. I also use two holes in each front head to get a little more air moving. I’ve been playing DW drums for 20 years or so. When I started doing the TV shows I had to lose my 24’s as I needed a more versatile kit. So DW and I put together a kit that I could use on either a metal gig or a children’s TV show recording by simply changing the snare. I can use this same DW kit consisting of 10, 13, 15, 18 toms and two 22 kicks for everything. For the rock gigs I use a 5.5 Edge snare, and for the TV gigs I use a 13 x 4” Aluminum snare. The 13” snare really sits nicely in a mix, and the Edge takes over a mix! I love these tom sizes as I can tune them in fourths. I like the spread between the 10 and 13 and with the 15” floor tom, the 18 is an inch closer. The 15 is a great sounding floor tom. MD : I agree, I love 15” floor toms, they should be a standard. JF: When we discussed the drum sizes, I didn’t think I would like the 15, so DW made me both a 15 and a 16. Scott Garrison told me that after I tried the 15, I would never use the 16. He nailed it! The first time I had a 15” tom was in the early 70’s and it was a rack tom. I had a Ludwig Maple kit in the 70s that was a 26, 15, 16, 18. I then switched to 18 and 20 floor toms, making the kit 26, 15,18, 20. MD: DAMN! Talk about moving air! JF : Ha! Those Ludwig Maples were great drums with nice thin shells. My DW’s actually sound very similar to them, I still have the Ludwig’s. Eventually I traded in the 26 for two 24s. MD : How is your body holding up after a lifetime of drumming? JF : Well…I had issues with both hips recently but thanks to modern technology and titanium, I’m back on my feet. This all happened over the pandemic, so I guess it was timely. During my down time recovering from surgeries, I started taking stick technique lessons with Bill Bachman. MD: How has the process with Bill gone, and where and why did it start? JF: I had a bit of tendonitis on the top of my left wrist, and I read an article in Modern Drummer that Bill wrote on the topic, so I looked him up. He has changed my grip from a very palms down German grip to a sort of American grip where my thumbs are halfway between French (thumbs up,) and German (palms down.) Now I can practice for 3 hours, and my butt hurts before my hands do. Bill is a really good teacher. After going through his Extreme Hands Makeover, he got me into hybrid rudiments. I’ve also been going through Steve Gadd’s Gaddiments, which is a challenging book. MD: Did your hip issues come from drumming? JF : I’m pretty sure they did. I used to sit 20 inches off the ground, and that’s too low. I’m now sitting higher now with my butt higher than my kneecaps. MD : It’s strange, as drummers we are always concerned with our hands, backs, and rotator cuffs, but no one really ever mentions hips. But I know quite a few drummers who have had hip issues and hip replacements. JF : It’s an issue, I’m glad I got mine fixed, I feel great now. MD : Did you ever think about writing a second book on double bass drumming? JF : Yes, I started a Volume 2 but then things got busy so when I did my Double Bass Drumming Video, I took the ideas that would have been in Volume 2, like sextuplets, thirty-second notes, 3 & 4 Stroke ruffs and put them there so the video covers some cool concepts that aren’t in the book. MD: I use it today to teach double bass drums, and I can’t find a better book to help people develop their double bass drum sound, power, and control. JF: Thank You! And thanks for celebrating the 40th anniversary of the book with this interview. I’m proud of the book and can’t believe it’s been 40 years! Steve PaceNext >