First off, what are you up to now?
Well, Fountains of Wayne have reformed -so we’re prepping for shows now. I also have a home recording studio and do remote drum tracks for people. I’m doing album producing and engineering so I’m still busy.
Since Covid I haven’t toured for years – but with the production and engineering work I get to still stay busy and be at home, which is nice.
I know you moved away from Pittsburgh as a teenager but did Pittsburgh influence you back then? How if so?
Absolutely. Much of my formulative years playing music weren’t in Pittsburgh – I moved to Prescott, Arizona when I was 14. I grew up in Bethel Park – that blue-collar, hard-working work ethic of Pittsburgh served me well. I applied it to all I’ve done. I remember it being an idyllic place to grow up where kids played sports in the street and we’d play in the woods. It was a good place to grow up.
Were you parents on board with your career as a musician?
I didn’t make the decision to be a musician early on. I had a lot of friends who got into it later and my brother’s friends were playing music – that got me interested in it. But I didn’t take it seriously until later.
How did you get started and what were those early days like- less glory then? I read you sat in for your teacher to play in clubs but weren’t old enough to stay between sets?
Ha that is true! At 14 or 15 I decided to get serious. I took lessons, and a couple of lessons in my teacher asked what I was doing Friday night. I said “Nothing” and he asked me then to cover for him for a gig. That was in the big central area of Prescott – Whiskey Row – where they had literally dozens of bars in a row.
Like Nashville?
Exactly – there was always music playing and pickup bands. Most of it was country top 40 stuff. I was too young to sit inside but I was allowed to play. So when we took breaks I had to go sit in the alley until they opened the door and let me back in.
Was it daunting? I spoke to Bobby Blotzer who said he was too young to feel nervous when he started.
It was good training for me. I was quite cognizant that I was playing in front of people – it was scary at the time. There were maybe 30 people there but it felt like 30,000!
Were there bands/drummers that influenced you the most over your career?
I was into rock and roll and the British invasion then. Judas Priest and Iron Maiden….but the work then was top 40 country. Later on I realized how much it helped to be listening to one thing and playing another.
I wanted to get into that but I had a question first. I was reading about the 80/20 Pareto Principle Rule -focusing play mostly on core skills like timekeeping, groove etc. versus the flashy stuff. It seemed to me that described you somewhat – a drummer who banged out great stuff without wanting as much flash. Is that a fair assessment – did/do you like showman style of drumming you see in some bands?
I think that’s right yeah. I think it’s appropriate for some people but I didn’t see myself that way. When I was younger I felt like drummers weren’t the lead – that’s what the singers did. We were in the back holding things together. That went to that blue collar show up with your lunch pail attitude for me. Just show up and get the job done.
How did you end up playing for the Posies and Fountains of Wayne- and why choose those bands to play with when they were all so different?
After high school I moved to Los Angeles – I put my drum set in the back of my car and drove out there. I met some guys and we formed a band – that’s when the Seattle grunge sound was starting to happen. We had a record label interested in us so we moved to Seattle to create a home base for ourselves. Of course the band fell apart right after that.
So I was playing some gigs out there when I met the guys from the Posies. They were touring and invited me to join them. How could I say no? They were really big at the time and were touring all over Europe, Canada and the U.S..
That’s when the Fountains of Wayne publicist called and told me they were looking for a drummer. They were Posies fans and learned about me that way. I met up with them and jammed for a while – we just hit it off. The Posies had been touring for five-to-six years heavily – they were ready to pull back and take a break and I was just getting ready to take off, so I said “yes!”
So you were overlapping then?
Musicians often play with a few bands yeah. You can often schedule things where they don’t conflict and I was able to do both.
How do you adjust your style to so many different types of bands like the America, the Posies, Fountains of Wayne and Jesus and Mary Chain – even the Monkees – that were all so different?
It’s what we do. Touring with The Posies and Fountains of Wayne – there were maybe 30 to 40 songs that were in their core repertoire. The Posies were more rock – like the Kinks – there was more freedom to improve with them. We would bring the session down and back up again and have big crescendos at the end of songs. Just go into cacophony. It was exciting stuff. Fountains – they were more song oriented. There was less improv.
More intentional?
Yeah – we did the three to four minute song and then did the next one.
America was fantastic – I played with them during my Fountains days. Their drummer Willie Leacox had a family emergency and had to leave mid-tour. They called me and asked what I was doing tomorrow and if I’d join them. I said “Yeah, let’s do it!”
They flew me to Miami that day to finish the tour – they sent me a CD of the previous night’s concert and I took the whole row of the plan with my notes and charts for the show. From cage to stage, they say!
How did you manage to not just learn everything so quickly but t be able to jump in and adapt to their play on stage?
I had enough training to be able to count bars and write figures – and I could recall that when needed. I had good rhythm notation skills – that is something I recommend to anyone who plays. It really helped me in the long run.
The funny thing was, America had been playing that stuff for 40 years. I thought I knew it well already. Then I listened to the CD and the third verse of Ventura Highway went into this reggae thing. The intro to Sister Golden Hair was different. You couldn’t just listen to the record and get it.
When I got to the venue I hadn’t even met those guys. I got on stage and shook hands with the bass player and introduced myself on stage!
Jesus and Mary Chain was one of my go-to bands in college – what made you decide to step in and play for them – and with such a driving format how did you adjust your style to that?
Yeah they were fantastic. Everything you read about them was true – and more.
They had this sequencer and drum machine sound – they were like New Order but with a rock context. I was able to being an electronic element to them with programming and playing along to tracks. They were the loudest band I had ever seen or been a part of. They were just incredibly loud. They sound guys told me they were putting my snare drum in the front of the house ti hear it because the sound was so mind-numbingly loud. Those guys were real-deal rock and rollers.
How did you get that gig with them?
They had broken up 10 years before. I met their lead guitarist William Reid when I was in L.A. He was doing a solo record then and his manager called and asked me to play on it. No audition – they just flew me into London and we rehearsed and went from there. William remembered me from that.
You got some movie creds too – working with the Posies and Bert Bacharach for Austin Powers, Emmy-aware winning songs for My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and even being on the Wedding Band show. How did get that foray into on-screen stuff and as it as enjoyable as being on stage?
Yeah we got to play with Bert Bacharach! That was quite fun – it was really cool. Bert was super-eccentric. Very professional and quirky – in a cool way. You could see how steeped he was in the process and music industry,
The Wedding Band was really fun. I recorded all the drums for all the numbers. It was about a wedding band of course so they played weddings every episode – so there were numbers for every show – hits from that era. There was one episode where it was an Indian wedding so they performed a Black Eyed Peas song with tabla drums.
Derek Miller was the drummer on the show – I taught him how to play drums so it looked like he was really playing the song.
I also got on camera a couple of times as the one-armed drummer for their rival band – a Def Leppard cover band called Armageddon It! They had t tie my arm behind my back to do it!
As a producer now with your own studio – what is the approach you take now on that side of the music business and why? And how has playing across so many genres helped you now as you run a studio?
My approach is that drummers make good producers because they listen so well. You have to process it all. Being in the back watching it all – my approach was to observe and listen. It’s the band’s record not mine – they are the ones who have to live with it. I wasn’t coming into it like a musical svengali who knew everything.
I spoke to a soccer goalie who said he felt goalies made the best coaches because they are watching the players and the game unfold in front of them all the time. Your approach sounds similar.
That’s exactly it! That’s great. The forward worry about what they are doing, but the goalies see it all an have to know what everyone is doing. It’s really similar, yeah.
Any fun stories that stand out to you from all those years of playing?
I remember with the Posies, the publicist was setting up all of these interviews. They got me and one other on the band an interview with ESPN’s morning show. We were I guess the biggest sports fans in the band. But they were brutal. They were sports professionals – we were musicians who were sports fans of our own teams. They kept killing us with intricate questions about college football teams we knew nothing about. It was pretty much a disaster!
Are you a sports fan still?
Pittsburgh is still my hometown team – those ’79 teams – it was the City of Champions then. It was such a great time to be a kid in that city, But to be honest I lost touch with it all when I moved away. This was before the internet so it was hard to stay on top of it. But I do remember as a kid pretending to be Willie Stargell with that crazy wind-up swing of his!
The NFL actually used our song “All Kinds Of Time” in a series of commercials in ’05 and I ended up with 50-yard line tickets!
Looking back – any other fun memories you can share playing with America, the Posies and Jesus and Mary Chain – any good “behind the scenes” stories you can share about those guys?
I think some highlights include getting a gold record, two Grammy nominations and meeting David Bowie after a festival we once opened for him at in Germany.
One fun story – once meeting Alex Lifeson from Rush backstage, who was good friends with our manager Cliff Bernstein, he asked me what the band had been up to, when I said, “Well, mostly touring a lot” – he stuck his elbow in my ribs and said, “Hey, what’s that like?”