Drumgab Podcast

“I was meant to do it.” Tony Royster Jr. is a household name in the industry and has been famously recognized by drummers all over the world since his drum solo that he performed at the age of twelve during the Modern Drummer Festival. He has since been mostly a touring musician with some of the biggest musical entertainers in the world, including Jay-Z and Katy Perry. Times are changing though and with musicians essentially being pulled from touring, Tony has begun pivoting in his career. Private lessons, YouTube, and so on have been on his mind as things continue to change.   You Will Hear About…. Tony’s decisions lately regarding his career. Whether he believes in natural talent and his experiences in the early years of his life with music. What it is like for him teaching when considering his innate abilities. Tony’s thoughts on the generation he was born into. Bowling. What that Modern Drummer Festival solo meant to him. A nerve-racking experience on Dave Letterman. How social media affects our ability

VIP is made in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today's episode deals with the importance of experiencing joy playing the drums, why I love drumming, and to encourage you to just play.   Try Drumeo for free for 1 week!

“One of my youngest memories at four years old was him quitting drums in 1979, literally destroying his drum set.” Jeremy Taggart is a household name in Canadian music due to his twenty-one-year career with the iconic rock band Our Lady Peace. Taggart began playing with OLP at the age of seventeen and from there on out he experienced life on the road playing packed venues and making records. In 2014 it all came to an end for him with OLP and he decided to reinvent himself. Enter Taggart & Torrens podcast. Their podcast has been downloaded (at the time of writing this) over four million times! They have toured their musical/comedy act, wrote a best-selling book titled “Canadianity: Tales From The True North Strong And Freezing” and they even released an album this year titled “Bahds”. They have managed to create a buzz with their show by infusing strong Canadian flare that we Canucks can strongly relate to and a serious dose of comedy.  On a more personal note, to record this episode was an absolute honour

VIP is made in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today's episode is the second half of me covering my favorite modern drummers over the last fifteen years.   Dan Weiss Bandcamp   Clips used: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP4fwwHpYZM 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-e4YJ-3Cb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHmnR4OXUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqH_jK48slE 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcr2f1l7aDE&t=190s 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYooD58N0Lg&t=231s 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6muS5lg-9B8    

“I’m curious how many people are good at saying, “I like this. I don’t like this”, no matter what someone else says.” It is always a good time chatting with Aric Improta. He’s the extremely energetic drummer for Night Verses and Fever 333 that you may have seen hanging off of speaker cabinets, rafters all while performing backflips and pulling 360’s off his drum throne. Aric is an absolute beast of a showman. Of course, many drummers have watched his Guitar Centre Drum-Off video which was riddled with tricks and stunts. Beyond the tricks, Aric also has a way of paving his own lane. He has a preference for remaining focused on his own creativity and not taking in very much outside influence. Aric is the kind of drummer who incorporates technology, ingenuitive techniques, radical showmanship, athletics, and then all of the other “normal” stuff we drummers usually do. No one is like Aric. A dedicated craftsman who is among my favorite drummers of his generation.    You Will Hear About…. The quarantine, habits,

VIP is made in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today's episode is covering my favorite modern drummers over the last fifteen years. This is the first five.   Clips used: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhtcG79kPNw 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlxe3EpJDLk 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUSvp6qg2A&t=122s 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZKpAPpHm2Q 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJDARjzHhZE

“A lot of drumming fans are just that.” Chris Paprota is a multi-instrumentalist who experiments with making his own recordings, such as his latest project “Riff Tapes” which is due for release on October 1st of this year. He is also the drummer for the Philly based prog-fusion band “Gnarbot”. Click this link to a sample of their work from a performance at Meinl which was released as a four-song EP titled “Meinl Sessions, Vol 1” which is also available as a vinyl release.  Chris was scheduled to perform this year at the Meinl Festival in Germany but due to Covid it has been canceled for this year. Chris is hopeful that due to the fact that he was invited this year that he will be performing next year assuming that it is in fact happening next year. Chris is a drummer who I feel falls far below people’s radar and I have been asking myself why that is and what makes a drummer rise to fame or social media fame?  It is interesting to hear how he aligns with his own creativity and how people assume the worth of s

VIP is made in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com.   Opening music by @ianhitsdrums and @elotium   Taggart and Torrens Podcast

"Creativity stems from the mind.  Feeling stems from the heart.  When you combine the two together you get character." Maison Guidry is a multi-instrumentalist who may not be known to many people. He is an extremely advanced drummer who pushes the boundaries of what is possible. He commits himself to thirteen hours of practice per day, however, due to a recent injury to his shoulder he has had to take some time off.  To find a conversation in a podcast with Maison is rare and therefore it is a great honour to feature him here because he has some incredibly compelling thoughts regarding how people may want to pursue their life in order to gain a fuller experience day to day. He is uncompromising with his art. I hope that in the future his name becomes more widely recognized because there is no one else like him.   You Will Hear About…. Progress report on Maison’s injury. The uncertainty of life. Why we should embrace ourselves. Standing by your vision. Where creativity comes from in Maison’s words. How someti

VIP is made in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Follow Tim Baltes and check out his Vol.6 Drumless track packs.   Today we are talking a bit about music and whether it was better in the good ol' days. These are just ideas and conversation. Don't take this as gospel.

“You can never forget that a technique book is someone else’s ideas that they actually put on paper. Those aren’t your ideas.” JT Bates is a drummer from the Twin Cities area, Saint Paul to be specific. He was recently informed that three tracks that Aaron Dessner from The National asked JT to perform on earlier in the year were actually for the new Taylor Swift record titled Folklore. That seems like an opportunity that could potentially heighten JT’s career. So, naturally, I had to feature him on the podcast to discuss this massive opportunity. But this is just a small part of what JT is about. It is really JT’s skills and fortunate networking situations that made this opportunity possible. JT has the incredible ability to add the human touch of drum set playing to music featuring programmed drums. He is a very conscientious drummer who knows exactly how to fill that space. I also encourage people to check out the drum duets that he has performed with his long-time friend Dave King on YouTube.   You Will He

VIP is created in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Opening drum clip performed by Dan Mayo   Ambient music for the episode by JT Bates   Today's episode was a bit different. This past week has been triggering a lot of thoughts and feelings about the world we live in. I wasn't sure what I was going to say and this is completely improvised but I ended up talking about.... - My lack of trust within the system - Will masks be a new way of life? - Are we being consumed by fear? - Is social media taking over our lives? Those are just a few topics in this messy, off the cuff episode. I was listening to JT Bates' ambient tune "Round" over and over while I recorded this. I ended up asking JT if I could use this music in the episode because my thoughts were being driven by the music and I felt that it conveyed the right feeling if the music was included in the podcast. So, huge thanks for JT's creativity fueling my own. I hope that everyone is living well during this uncertain and dif

“Four on the floor. This is the most important groove in the history of drumming.” Yoni Madar is an Israeli multi-instrumentalist. He is known well by the drumming community online as “not human”, “alien” and many other other-wordly descriptions. Truth is, Yoni has been practicing a lot over the last thirty years or so. He has mastered four instruments (Guitar, Bass, Keys, and Drums). As a side note: if keys could be played both on the left and right side he would have mastered that too because he can with the other three. Yoni has chosen a path that does not involve himself with celebrities. Instead, he writes, performs and records his own music, performs locally, and teaches his methods to students. He recently released his video course and book where he presents his methods of teaching that he claims are unique.  Yoni has taken the art of drumming to an incredibly high level. If drumming was featured as an Olympic sport, I would imagine that Yoni would be Israel's shining star to win the Gold medal. There

VIP is created in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today we are talking about making a statement with music.   Opening drumming/tune is performed by Ash Soan   Check out "Voodoo Or Die" on Spotify   Comment reads this week are from   @chris_hornbrook @genestix.drumming @claus.hessler @milowicdrums @laurenzodrums @robert__brennan @phoenixkatewale @bigpopapump__ @__jaydenhall__ @mrkatiegraham

“I feel like this industry is always in upheaval and so you always have to be light on your feet.” Dylan Wissing has a very unique situation brewing in his studio in the small city of Hoboken, NJ. He runs a multimedia based service called “Getting The Sound” which is based off of his immense knowledge and experience in recording drums but also re-creating drum breaks for current artists, mainly in the rap/pop genre. While this embodies a small amount of hired work in his entire career, it is still incredibly noteworthy.  There are laws in music that prevent artists from sampling pre-recorded music or drum parts and Dylan is capable of recreating these drum parts the way they originally sounded making them virtually identical to the original. From what I understand, this is an absolutely painstaking affair to create and costs the artists a lot of money and therefore, it doesn’t happen much. However, this expertise has given Dylan quite an edge for providing the right sound for the song. Of course, Dylan is pri

VIP is created in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today we are talking about perfection.   Here is the link for Drums for Parkinson's   Opening drum clip performed by Brody Simpson   Email reads this week are from   Andrew Gaudet Guilherme Maranhao   Comment reads this week are from   @tommyigoe @sugarpercussion @stevelymandrums @ojaugustine @claus.hessler @greghersey @groovru @lynetteokoroike @madmaxv1.1 @aaronlevydrums @loncaricdenis @mitch_thedrummer @a.d.reger

“To me when you blackout, you zone out. That’s when you come into your own and then people can feel that.” Daru Jones is a genre-bending drummer based out of Nashville who has worked with a large variety of artists over the course of his career. Whether it is rock music with Jack White or hip hop with Black Milk, Nas, or Pete Rock, Daru has proven over and over again how effective he is. Besides the drumming, he is also the owner of the boutique label RUSIC Records and a producer as well. Daru has deliberately branded himself as a drummer who brings a certain specialty to the table. His touch and style are instantly recognizable to the ear and his drum setup is unmistakeable to the eyes. His approach to the industry has worked out well if you look up his credentials.    You Will Hear About…. How Daru is maintaining during the pandemic. Daru’s experiences playing these virtual concerts lately. Knowing your worth and when to assert yourself with confidence. Building an identifiable brand for yourself. The last

VIP is created in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today we are talking about groove and chops.   Opening drum clip performed by Maison Guidry   Voice memos this week are from   Karl Grohmann Rion Smith   Comment reads this week are from   @chris_paprota @joelturcotte @yoni_madar @stanbicknell @carbonedrums @currencyaudio @instantnoodlez__ @jrosenbeats @eduardog.a.r.r.i.d.o @__jadenhall__ @marcustsouniasdrummer_

“I’m not gonna wait. I’m gonna work for it.” Greyson Nekrutman is an eighteen-year-old drummer from Long Island, NY. Like everyone, this year has been a bit strange for Greyson. Having eleven graduations at your high school with no prom is not something people are used to hearing about. However, with time off from school and completing classes online in the meantime means that he has been practicing drums a lot more these days. He was rejected from one music school he applied to recently and so he took that as a sign to work harder. Since then, he has been endorsed by Vic Firth drumsticks, Meinl cymbals, and most recently, Pearl drums.  The quote from Greyson really is what this one is about. He has worked really hard and it isn’t something that is necessarily celebrated among his peers. At the end of the day, he has made a choice to commit himself to music. It will be interesting to watch Greyson evolve and I am very excited to have been the first to host him on a podcast.    You Will Hear About…. Graduatin

VIP is created in part by YOU, the audience. Submit your media to Seamus@drumeo.com   Today we are talking about comparing ourselves to others.   Opening drum clip performed by Joel Turcotte Taken from Dimitri Fantini's YouTube video "Impossible Hi-Hat Licks"   Drum madness midway through is by Forrest Rice.   The 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc. song by @soytiet   Voice Memos this week are from Jacob Evans (his YouTube video on comparing process instead of results) Greg Hersey Joao Lebre   Email reads this week are from Scott Amitrano Curt "KIRKEE B." Bisquera   Comment reads this week are from @dan_smith_music @dunnettclassicdrums @soundslikeadrum @akhamie.music @davidstanochschoolofdrumming @rewellmusic @ryanthomasmusician @gregveachmusicalyeets @jthomp10 @rolandjericlintag @benedictlimbrey @migueld.drums @jon_on_drums