On the Drum Solo

I don't consider myself much of a soloist. While most every drummer I've ever known or read about likes to go absolutely bonkers crazy from time to time, the ability to organize all the madness into something performance-worthy is a whole different issue altogether.

When I'm in the practice room, I tend to focus more on becoming a better supporting drummer. I realize that 95% (if not more) of what I get hired to do is to bolster of the rest of the musicians in the band, so that's what I spend the majority of my time working on. My job is to establish and reinforce the feel of the songs through groove, dynamics, and time. The drums are the heartbeat of the music; the framework around which everything else is built. But they are not the primary focus of the music.

All well and good until Tyler asks for a drum solo so he can catch a quick breather (after going bonkers crazy himself on 'Pennybags'). Great. Now I have to be the focus of what's going on for at least a few minutes.

So we craft the solo. In doing so, we need to consider the audience, the overall vibe & flow of the show, and what we're looking to accomplish. There are few things worse in a live concert than a drum solo that defies all musical context and goes right over everybody's heads (imagine a big rock show and right smack dab in the middle of it, the drummer launches into a bunch of crazy, polyrhythmic jazz licks with no sense of muscial time or connection to what's been going on during the rest of the concert). Ick. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

So, let's keep it musical. Let's keep it short. Let's make sure we give the audience something they can grab onto, something they clap along with, something they can feel so that I'm not just up there slamming away on my kit while people in the audience are checking out and falling asleep in the middle of the show. To help me out with such a task, I turned to my trusted low-end confidante, Joshua Corbett. We decided to start with a few tricky licks and then launch into a song throughout which we can craft some more cool drum stuff. But not just any drum song. The drum song: 'Wipe Out' by the Surfaris.

The great thing about this particular solo is that it goes back with me all the way to high school. I used to rock this tune during halftime at basketball and football games with the ol' CSCS Pep Band, and even then I used the same basic idea: floor tom groove during the melody riff and solo stuff in-between the hits. It's great because it works. It doesn't necessarily give you the time or room to prove you're the absolute greatest drummer in the universe (which I am definitely not), but it keeps things fun, lighthearted, and musical (which is definitely what you want after a Tyler Ward rap song).

So, thanks to WardHeart for shooting and posting this video and thanks to all the fans for hanging on while we played it. It was different every night and some of those nights were definitely better than others. But the following video was shot in Cologne, Germany, the night of Mr. Ward's birthday, and I think it came out pretty well. I hope you all dig it.

And, hey, even if you don't like it, at least it's not this.

Or this.

Haha. Drums rule.