Music coming to you from crash studios in Music City, USA,
Nashville. This is the rich Redmond show. What's up, folks?
It's that time.
It's time for an exciting episode of the rich Fredman
Sure. We talk about all things like music, motivation, success,
and, of course, so much more stuff. Always happy to be joined
my by my co host, co producer, longtime friend, Jim McCarthy.
Jim McCarthy, voiceovers.com What's up, Jim? How are you,
sir, doing great. Hey, this, this mic got all sorts of roomy.
It got roomy all of a sudden. I
think it's kind of like it doesn't like the being yelled
at, oh, I
just need to just stop yelling into it maybe, oh, that's I'll
work on it warmer right there.
It's a continuous, I
think it was picking up from other mics, maybe, yeah, kind of
sounds like
we're getting some input from our guest today, because he's
not only a world class drummer, but he's a fantastic engineer,
hailing originally Fort Smith, Arkansas, calling Nashville home
since 2006 he's an ACM award winning drummer of the year.
He's played with folks like Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire,
Luke Bryan, Jimmy Allen, Ronnie Dunn, Keith, urban, Steven
Tyler, Toby, Keith Maddie, and just the list goes on and on.
Our friend Evan Hutchings, What's up, pal?
What's going on?
I'm sorry, man, I am so excited to be in the room with you,
because we were just like our thumbs are sore from texting.
Because you're such a busy guy, it's like herding cats,
literally. We
got you here talk to my wife.
You blow me away because the fact that you know you make the
hall every day to work on Music Row. You got your own projects
going on, and you're a family man, yeah. So that's a lot. It's
a lot going on. I
appreciate you making making time for us,
absolutely. Man, I'm glad it worked out. Yeah, I'm
glad to be here. Thank you for having me, of course.
Now tell us, like, you know, we could go back, we could start
with what you're working on now, we're there's so much stuff that
we can talk about, but you moved to Nashville in 2006 so we can
start there, or you can, kind of like, take us back. I know for a
fact that so many drummers start their journey playing in church,
and I think that was your journey that,
yeah, that's where it started for me, two years old, so young
a kid, I know. So the story goes, my dad tells is that they
were having worship band practice. This This was actually
in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the drummer wasn't there yet.
And or he had went to use the restroom or something like that,
I don't know. And then I hopped up on the kit, and they just
thought he was there, you know, they thought, Oh, the drummer's
here. And they look back and couldn't see anybody. And it was
a little two year old me. And to me, that means maybe the drummer
wasn't that good.
Do you remember who this guy was? I'm sure he
was a great drummer. But anyway, yeah, so I was just always drawn
to the drums. And during church every Sunday, you know, we were
at church, it was Sunday morning service, Sunday night, Wednesday
night, you know, so and I was there all the time after school,
go to the church, hang out, play drums, me and my sister and
cousins, they were always there. So we formed bands together. The
preacher, he was the pastor. Yeah, wow. He was the senior
pastor. Just retired, actually, two weeks ago. Wow. 42 years.
Congrats, a long time. Yeah, amazing. That's
a lot of pressure. Every Sunday, you got to come up with a new
message, yeah. And
he so he would preach at 9am 10am, 1045, 630, on Sunday,
radio show, TV show, Wednesday night, at seven. All different
sermons, all different things. Yeah, busy talking about getting
your
speaking reps in
literally, yeah. And plus, you were probably just like, raised
to be like a very respectful young man. Yeah,
I knew how to pretend to be,
but, uh, but yeah, so I would always sit behind the drummer at
church, during the worship time, and just soak it in. And then
after church, he would show me some cool stuff, a guy named Sam
Smith, who's the guy that really kind of taught me. He was
teaching me really cool stuff that I was, like, I didn't
realize was way more advanced, you know, like, Mozambique grew,
oh yeah, like, Steve gad stuff, picaro kind of stuff. And I was,
like, literally, like, four or five years old, that's crazy
exposed to that kind of stuff. So I would, I would hang out at
the church all afternoon in between services, and just
practice and practice and play and play and play. Sunday night
rolled around. Whenever I got older, I was able to play in the
band at church and stuff, and so, yeah, it was just kind of
non stop playing, which is great for me, terrible for the people
that worked at the church,
but thankfully, they put up with it, yeah,
and so, so your parents saw that in you, and you didn't
necessarily have to go and get proper lessons right away,
because you were just immersed in this culture.
Yeah, it was just all the time. I got one drum lesson from. A
lady in our hometown, and I hated it. Didn't do your
Connect. You're too young, yeah, I was too young, yeah, yeah. And
I had my own kid at that time. It was just always playing. I
joined band, like, proper band and seventh grade, but I was
also playing football, and that music was just, it came easy to
me. It wasn't something that I, like, worked too hard at, you
know? Yeah, so sports was, like, really, where I was focused on,
like, extra time and things like that. So I quit band because I
didn't want to march in my uniform, my football uniform,
that's right. And when we were playing, I was, like, kind of a
cocky little kid, you know, and I knew, I mean, I was already
playing everything that we were supposed to be learning. And,
yeah, you know, the band director didn't like that, and
we just didn't really, we didn't jive, you know. So what
was the football your football career did? Did you, did you get
hurt? Or was it looking like, Hey, I
might do this. So we, I played my whole life, up until, oddly
enough, my senior year of high school, I quit. But we, like,
won state championship. We were the best, like, high school
football team in Arkansas, you know, yeah, incredible team,
great coaches, and that really taught me how to show up and
work really hard when you don't want to, you know, just Yeah,
before school, 5:30am in the weight room, like that kind of
stuff, yeah? So you just learn how to grind. You learn how to
work. Get over it, just like, toughen up and show up, you
know. And I feel like a lot of that stuff still, I have a lot
of those traits still today that still connects with me today,
which is cool, but yeah, so senior year of high school, I
joined a different band that I was in Fast forwarding. There's
a bunch of other bands in between that, and we started
touring the country. We would book shows via MySpace. Back
when MySpace was around, was this the band? The exception,
the exception, nice. So, yeah, we just, we busted out an atlas
and just said, Okay, I've got family here, here and here.
Let's book shows around that so we can stay places for free.
Smart. So we went to Denver. We went to like, Cheyenne, Wyoming,
Chicago, Minneapolis, St Louis, like, just kind of all around
playing rock clubs, playing rock clubs, yeah, like 1617, years
old, with the dudes that you go to the bathroom, and it was like
a trough, yeah? And everybody else, remember those gyms.
You're like, hey, we weren't old enough to be in the clubs we
were playing. Yeah? I mean, yeah. Which was great. It was
great experience. Kind of learn how to tour with people at a at
an early age. Yeah, and yeah, we moved to Nashville together in
2006 that band did. And Mike rinse, the bass player here in
town, he was in that band. We still do sessions together all
the time. Beautiful. Yeah, really cool.
Maybe you guys were the only ones in the band that had either
the aspirations or the skill set to potentially be session
players. Yeah, there's
another guy, Scott Hundley, was also in that band. He's doing
sessions mixing. He does a lot of mixing, nice, fantastic
mixer. These
guys have a band house together. We did, yeah, Eighth Avenue,
eighth and Wedgewood, eighth and Wedgwood by Zanies, right across
the street from Zanies in the back there, behind the dry
cleaner. Kind is, yeah, so
if you were to turn, if you were to turn this corner, yeah, like
on that side Douglas corner, there's like a pocket of three
houses right over there. We were one of those houses. It was like
900 bucks a month. Amazing. We're a three bedroom, three
bathroom, full basement where we could practice. It was stupid
cheap.
Yeah, I remember all my bills for like 500 bucks. Yeah, it was
like, what I could spread. I can spend that before breakfast.
Now,
that's a lot, you know,
on a pair of drumsticks at that. Yeah, right.
So yeah, I miss that old Douglas corner. Douglas corner. So many
great acts have been signed there. So much great music has
happened there. His 80s is a magical place, too. I mean, any
comic, who is, anyone has played
that room, Yeah, huge. You know, saw Mark Marin there, like, a
couple years, Oh, yeah. Like that, longer that. Just
like, you know, the food is good, the sweet potato fries,
the veggie burger I'm overdue for his Jim. Let's do it. We
gotta. We're overdue for a Zanies hit.
We totally need to do it.
I had an ex wife. She was a psychic, and she still does
Zanies, occasionally psychic, not a sidekick. She the
sidekick. The subway sidekick is the footlong cookie, which does
look good, but no, me and Billy Hahn. Billy Hahn was Colby
Calais percussionist, and now he is Brett Young's touring
drummer, awesome. And we had, we had a little group called strike
that where we would basically play household objects or office
supplies, and we would make music. Oh,
cool.
I thought it was, I'd hit that. I thought that's what it was.
No, I
hit that as a warts and all podcast that you have done,
yeah, with Dave, yeah. He has a in he has a he has a a habit of
setting up the interviews many time in the most loud, busy
places like restaurants, sirens going by other people. Yeah,
all. All the stuff. He's awesome. It may it does make it
charming. So anyways, so you guys all come here and you're
right there. Eighth Avenue.
We're right up in the middle of it, yeah, all up in it, yeah.
And so I was going to MTSU at the time, Lalo, right, yeah.
With Lalo and Julie, you know, teaching, yeah, you know, yeah,
connections, right, yeah.
And another teacher there, Tommy G, Tom G and Pietro. His name,
life changing teacher for me. He was like, he was my guy that I
really connected with and worked with a bunch. Where's
Tommy now? Because I used to run into Tommy all the time on the
tower records on West Avenue, yeah. So he's teaching now at
UMass and Amherst, okay, and doing great things there with
that program. Good for him. He's
amazing. Yeah. We still talk, like, at least once a week, say
hey for me, please, I will, yeah. I will, yeah. So I went
in, like I was saying not a not a lot of formal training for me,
like, not a great reader, but a great ear, great feel, and could
just kind of play anything, but just couldn't read that well,
yeah, which you need to do when you're going to music school.
Shockingly, so I went as a music production major and and then a
music minor, and then after a semester, switched that around
and just kind of busted my tail reading marimba for mallet
stuff, Tiffany, like, all the the classics, all the stuff,
yeah, yeah. And then went from, and then, you know, switch
majors, which was kind of like a jazz studies major with a
minoring minor in recording engineering, which is great. He
played in a big band at the MTSU band, yeah, like salsa band went
from not being able to read to just like could read anything
nice, you know what? I mean, yeah, just a lot of
time that leveled out the your skill sets now you now you had
everything going for you, practical stylistic knowledge,
practical experience, playing in a band, traveling with a band,
then you're in an academic environment, and you're like,
okay, just need to get the reading together. You
did together? Busted it. Yeah, it moved. I moved to
Murfreesboro. I quit the band that I was in. We played one
show at the end, you know, right over there, off on Elliston.
Cash only, yeah, beer only. The sound guy there, legendary,
Legendary Cat, Bruce, Bruce, yeah. S 10 truck, yeah,
Bruce. I hope he's still around. I
think he might have passed away. I know you know what, no Adam,
he would know. He would know. He would know. He would know. Yeah,
we played one show and with some great local bands, and I just
thought to myself, we are not that good. That's we were great
in our hometown. Yeah, classic story, yeah. And so I thought to
myself, You know what I'm gonna I wanted to be a studio musician
when I moved here. I just didn't know what that looked like, or
how you do that, or what that is, you know what I mean. And so
I decided, You know what, I'm just gonna go basically live in
a practice room for as long as I can, and keep networking,
hanging out with folks in Nashville, try to try to, like,
hang on some sessions or whatever, like, just do that
whole thing. And then started touring. Shortly after that,
left MTSU in 2008 the fall of 2008 was my last semester. Okay,
yeah. Then started touring with a guy named Griffin. How?
Griffin house, then toured with a girl named Katie HERZIG, yeah,
and just a bunch of other artists. And at that time,
started to work in some studio environments, you know, like
working with a producer, Nielsen Hubbard, over in East Nashville,
and, you know, just building up those studio chops. And then it
just kind of grew and grew and grew right and took off. Yeah,
yeah. Because, because you say, I want to be a studio musician,
but you don't know the pathway to do it. So there had to be a
couple of experiences. There was like, Oh, this is, this is
coming into focus. Yeah,
I'm figuring this out. Yeah, absolutely. There's
a drummer will sales, who I met while I was in high school. He
was playing with a guy named Derek Webb. And I was a fan of
their music. They were kind of Wilco ish, but like a Christian
band too. You know, so interesting. It was interesting.
Really cool stuff.
Um, I'd like to put, people are always asking me, do you play
local rich? You got any other projects going? I'm like, I want
to, I know I would love to put, like an Americana type Wilco
thing together. But you know what the most challenging thing
is, is finding that fantastic, charismatic front person, yeah,
that doesn't want to just be their own solo recording artist
with invisible players, right? Like a band concept, yeah? You
think it would be easier to do. It is not, not easy,
yeah? Because if someone is great, they're probably already
doing, you know, someone's found them, right? You know, right?
Which is also tough for artists to keep musicians around in this
town too, you know, younger, younger artists, because if
someone's really good, they're gonna go get it to a ring gig or
whatever, you know. Yeah? So, yeah, we'll. Sales was hugely
influential to me, and was kind of like a big brother mentor to
me, even though he probably didn't think so. He just, like
this annoying kid is just asking me questions, will sales is
amazing, great, great drama played with Matt Carney for a
long time. Tons of like session work. He Yeah, he's great. And
so he would actually let me come and hang out with him on
sessions, you know, and I, I wouldn't say anything or just be
in the back. I wasn't, you know, wasn't annoying, trying not to
be like that annoying young kid, yeah. So he would teach me like,
this is how you tune drums for sessions for the studio, because
it's different, you know, live, if you're tuning more to the
microphone than you are to your ear necessarily in the room, you
know? And so I learned that at a pretty young age. I was like 19,
maybe 1819, or whatever. And so yeah, and then he would kind of
like help me out of like running tracks, like learning how to
build Ableton sessions and things like that, just cool
stuff, like recording at home and and so, yeah, he my first
master session, actually was with him. It was a double drum
session for an artist named Aaron McCarthy on universe,
drummers
tracking at the same same
time. Yeah, wow. So it was kind of like a Jim Keltner, Matt
Chamberlain type of vibe. Yeah, you know it was, it was at House
of David, which I think is still there on Music Row, but yeah, so
we would have, we had two kids set up in two different rooms.
One was sort of the weird, bigger kick drum, kind of
concert bass kick like weird, funkier one, and then a more
traditional kind of kid, because we would swap. That's awesome.
Yeah, it was great. It was amazing. I love that. So I was
still in college at that time, I think. And so, yeah, just like
all these experiences started to add up, and then the, you know,
word kind of gets out about you, and people go, Hey, why don't we
try this guy out, which is really difficult for drummers,
you know, I feel like it's one of the harder instruments to
break into in the studio world, because it's the most expensive
thing to record, yeah, if the and if the drums aren't right,
the whole thing just kind of done. It's
one of the toughest chairs because, you know, the
expectation is all right, we're doing five songs in three hours,
and we got to get that drum take Yeah? So it's the hot seat, and
if the drums aren't right, then the bass isn't right, or the
guitar or whatever.
So you have to, like, rerecord everything. Yeah, I
always thought the drums were just easy. I mean, obviously
getting into them and playing them, because I was just a
natural, you know, draw to it, yeah. But I guess that's kind of
interesting to hear at that
yeah, it is, yeah. Like, for a producer or an artist, whenever
they go into record, they want to feel, I mean, you have to,
you just have to have that ease. And you want to know
everything's going to be good that I don't even want to you
shouldn't have to worry about the musicians that are there.
Yeah? You know that's just like your your comfort zone, yeah?
You know, the foundation every
rock band producer in the world is saying to themselves, this is
a band, please, let the drummer be good, right? Because if he
doesn't, it gets awkward, and then they have to bring in a guy
that do behind the scenes stuff, yeah,
if you have a because the thing is, you could tell, can you tell
if a guitar player is bad or a bass player? Yeah, for sure,
tone,
I mean, toning, time, regular ear, yeah? But then drummer,
it's, it's obvious, right? Yeah. And if you need to re record the
guitar, you really only need like, one microphone, right? Or,
like, maybe, you know, so you could go over to that at your
play. But with drums, you need the room. You need like, 12 to
15 mics, or whatever it may be. It's just a lot more expensive
to fix.
It's an organism. Yeah, it's a it's quite
the operation. Have you
guys heard of the movie dream wild?
It's with, oh gosh, Casey Affleck, Walton Goggins is in
it, Beau Bridges, pretty big cast, but my wife and I watched
it last night, and it's a true story about these guys, these
brothers named Emerson. His last name, Donnie Emerson, yeah. Does
that ring a bell? No, there? Well, one the brother, Walton
Goggins, one of the brothers was a drummer. They made, like a
self produced record back in the 70s. Okay? And it like got
discovered. These guys were out of Washington State, yeah, and
somebody, you know, back in the birth of the Internet, they had
these, you know, chat groups and stuff like that. And they
discovered their record that they put out in the late 70s. It
then would became relevant in, like, the late 90s, early
millennium. And, you know, these guys just blew up, and the
brother who wrote all the songs, the front man, started be taking
it very seriously. But back then, his brother, who was on
drums, was never, now all that good. And that was the tension
throughout the entire movie. Gotcha, you know, trying to,
okay, you gotta, you know, step it up here if they want to put
us on a tour. I
remember seeing the previews for that. I put that on my my watch
list, did you? Yeah, it's insane the amount of content we have,
like an. So it's like, you put you have your favorites, I think
Amazon Prime, and it's my watch list, or it's my stuff on you,
and it's just loaded with stuff stressful. It's giving me
anxiety, the amount of things I have to watch for fun,
yeah, and then I just put on SportsCenter. Call it a day.
Watch like, a million. Is that your favorite battery? Like
Arrested Development in the office, like that era,
yeah, you know, so Arrested Development is just hilarious.
So good, yeah, it really is still funny.
We lost him. Oh my gosh, no, no, we don't know where he is. We
lost,
yeah, he's gonna be all right.
No, he lost his left hand, he's gonna literally be, all right
now, all right, get it just dumb. Leslie Nielsen, right
there.
That is actually the same sample that they use on Sirius Radio
XM, the the comedy station. Oh, really, yeah, that's
funny, because we're using these the rodecaster too.
Hey, come on, folks, free plug.
Yeah, all night. So, so what was the name of that artist and that
album, that was your first master, so
that was Aaron McCarley, and we did two cover songs. One was, I
can't even remember, actually what the names of the songs
were, which is crazy. I should remember that. And I don't think
it ever came up. There's
been many songs since, yeah, so that gives you the confidence.
Hey, I can do this. Yeah, yeah. I
was like, Okay, this is cool. This is fun. I love it. Yeah, I
can do this. Like, sign in a card, a union card. Had never
done that amazing, and didn't, you know, I wasn't. It wasn't
really one of those stories of like, okay, I did that one time.
Now the floodgates are open. It was still a grind, still, still,
like figuring it out and like working on this record and doing
another record and doing this and that led to that, or
whatever. You know now,
you did a little bit of touring, so when you were, like, working
with Katie or whatever, did you kind of have an epiphany, like,
Hey, this is cool, and this is always an option, but it's like,
I do not want to be on this bus right now. Yeah, yeah.
And that was kind of always my thought. I never wanted to, I
always wanted to be in the studio. Like, I mean, everybody
says that, but it's like, like, for real. I really, I was drawn
to it at an early age. I was recording myself in my bedroom
when I was a kid, you know, like, on a crappy little Tascam,
four channel tape recorder, you know, yeah, it was just always
enamored with that, like how to get drums to sound good to a
microphone. And once I started to make a little bit of money,
touring would buy some gear, buy by a couple mics I still have
today, actually, yeah. And so the touring was sort of a means
to get to meet more people, to float myself, like financially,
to be able to finally be able to turn down tours because I was
booked in the studio.
Did you ever have to go do the low brewery thing? Did you ever
do never,
did you know I never did, but I was I did some odd jobs, like I
was a maintenance man at an apartment complex Charlotte
playing Mr. Like, early, like, straight up, wow, Craig's, like,
January, super slow touring schedule. Like, Well, I gotta
make money somehow, you know. And I done,
were you married this time? No, okay, I wouldn't. Um,
so my overhead was low, but, and that was valeting cars, you
know, like, doing that kind of stuff, and like, still and doing
gigs around town, but just not enough to, like, fully, you
know, make the bills happen. So yeah, couple weeks did that, and
then got another tour and said, Peace out. Yeah,
now you say you moved here 2006 that's interesting, because that
would have been like, that would have been like, maybe into
Jason's, like, second or third single, and I was, I wonder why
we hadn't crossed paths until just, you know, I know it's
great, another decade later, right? We must have just been
like we were working the road. We were doing like, 200 shows a
year, yeah, and I would come into town on Mondays and
Tuesdays and do my, do my sessions, yeah, time I was about
your age right now, yeah. And that was just a very, very
vibrant. I remember, you know, having my drums with Harry, or
whoever the heck I was with at the time. And yeah, you do it 10
o'clock at one place, then you'd have a another kid over for a
two o'clock. It was, it was robust. Yeah, you know, it's
beautiful, man. And then you get on the bus, and yeah, the music,
yeah,
come back Sunday.
But you're stay, you stayed in town. And, I mean, this is a
great body of work here, very, very robust discography. You got
anybody on here that you are just like, that is like, wow.
That was,
you know, Steven Tyler was kind of a wow moment in taller Rico,
yeah, yeah. Like, I actually recorded, so recorded some for
him at my studio, at my own place, doing overdubs and, like,
having his vocals going through your headphones is insane. Yeah.
I mean, it's just like, you're an Aerosmith for like an hour.
You know, it was incredible. Yeah, it was, it was. Saying, I
mean, I remember taking, like, videos of it and sending it to
my parents, being like, check this out. Was that was that his
country solo records the country, and then Sarah Tomic
went to go do the tour. Yeah. Now I got called originally when
I actually, before Sarah did that, I was playing with this
man loving Mary, which is basically the Stevens
background, almost. But I hear I can't be in two places at once.
So there's a reason for every season in like. So Sarah
killing, we got to get more female drummers on this show.
Jim, there's some great we really do. Great. Yeah, I think
people are going to look at the episodes and be like, where's
all the chicks?
The women drummers are slim picking so
well in this town, we've got Sarah, yeah,
Megan Coleman, we've got
two. We're just,
we're just going blank right now,
Evelyn Glenny and Sheila E and,
Oh yeah, yeah, right. Zoom her. You
know? Blackman, yeah. Cindy Blackman, incredible. She's
working here, right? Cindy black Yeah, pushing, yeah.
She married Carlos.
She gets to play the smooth drum fill like all the time.
She married him.
She is Miss Santana. Miss really? Carlos Santana. Good for
her.
That drum fill cracks me up. I play it kind of as a joke all
the time, because it's so hooky, like you immediately know what
song that is,
the drum fill, but it's also the conga congas, doubling it
up, yeah? Just
like when you're like, checking your drum sounds, I always do,
like, some version of being cracking, yeah, or I'll do the
jaded version, which was kind of inspired by that, where you make
sure that you can test both times being I tell the young
kids, when you got to get drum sounds live or in the studio,
don't do a drum solo, just play a pattern that incorporates the
sounds of the kit, Yeah. So things can breathe, and you can
actually see how the kids go, yeah, exactly,
which is hard
to do. Look what I can do. Nobody
does. Everybody wants some.
You know what? I'm sorry.
John hits. Know what?
I'm sorry. Yeah, incredible. So much fun.
So Steven, Steven Talarico, was great, and Keith
Urban, that was awesome, attracted at my studio as well.
So
this is happening more often. So, so yeah, we'll just tell
people. You're in a suburb of Nashville, and you've got your
man cave above the garage filled with great drums, great gear.
Yeah, you go up there with your cup of coffee in your skivvies,
yeah? And do the drama shorts,
whatever. Yeah. And I tracked the Barbie movie. One of the
songs from the Barbie movie at my it's called push the Matchbox
20 song that Ryan Gosling did. Track that like before a
session, 8am at the house, and I didn't know, I didn't really
know the vibe of what the scene was going to be, or what the
whole deal was. The producer just hit me up, like, I think
maybe even the night before, and said, Hey, do you want to record
on this song is for a movie? Yeah, absolutely. A national
producer. National producer. Amazing. And, sure, yeah, send
me the files, go up, check it out. And I it was Ryan Gosling
singing. And in the movie, it's sort of a funny thing. It's like
him, kind of, he says, I'm gonna sing at you Barbie, you know.
Oh, he's playing the guitar, yeah? It's like, on the beach,
yeah. And so it's kind of, it's meant to be funny, but I didn't
know that, yeah. So I'm just thinking, like, God, this is
terrible,
like playing on a movie soundtrack, but
it's Ryan.
I didn't, you know. I just thought it was like a demo
session singer, kind of making fun of that Rob Thomas kind of
style, you know, like, because it was over the top and all
that, you know. And so did it and sent it off. And even the
mix, Jim Cooley mixed it, and none of us really knew the the
context of the song, which was meant to be funny, yeah, but we
didn't know that, and we were just kind of like, what Cooley?
Yeah. So
you remember now Jim Cooley has become an award winning mix
engineer, and he's back off the mic just a tad, okay, but for
about a decade, we worked together non stop, because when
we had new voice in new voice entertainment, second engineer,
he did. He mixed a lot of the tops. He tracked square stuff,
the panel and stuff. Yeah, so dude. So never leaves his man.
Case, he never does. He's in there. I'm like, Dude, that's
how do you not go crazy locked up. He's
got a special skill to be able to, like, stare at a screen for
hours and hours and hours keep
your ears fresh. I mean, I guess, right, I guess you have
to maybe step out and you know how, like when ginger is a
palate cleanser in between bites of sushi. I don't know what a
mix engineer would do to kind of like, just, just silence some
birds or something. Yeah, every once. Struggle. We'll see him,
like, pop out of his cave. And,
I mean, he listens pretty loud, too sometimes. I mean, it's
like, and he's, he's, he's one of the best mix engineers I've
ever worked with. Her. Now, you dabble with that as well, right?
Yeah, I
also mix a little bit, you know, and produce and produce session
lead and session, which is great, yeah, the great thing
about you must have a great ear, because, you know, when I get
called a lead session, sometimes, like, I will get the
charts done, you know what I mean, but I am so slow at Yes,
you know it's, you must be just really fast to be able to do
that all the time.
Yeah, I grew up, actually, guitar was my first instrument.
There you go. So that's kind of, yeah, yeah. Started on guitar.
Well, it wasn't my first it was the first instrument I got.
Drums were my first instrument, but I never didn't have a drum
set till I was nine years old. Yeah, got a guitar when I was
really young, and would just play along to the room my dad.
My dad kind of plays everything, just like, good enough, you
know, to kind of get behind he must be proud, right? Your
folks, oh yeah, they're super proud. Just like, Look at this
kid is done. He's doing it. It's
amazing. He bought a house,
yeah? Exactly, playing drum, raising a family, playing the
drums,
crazy, yeah. So he taught, he taught me, like, just basic
guitar stuff, when I was young, piano. He sings, as well as my
mom, my sisters all sing. One of my sisters plays guitar. So it's
a real musical fan. So it was just kind of the ear was always
in there, yeah,
you know now, now, since Evan session leads, Jim, his, his
retirement, his, his pension from the union will be bigger
than mine, because he gets double scale a lot, because he
get double scale by session leading. He he takes on the
responsibility of getting together with the artist and or
just, you know, being entertaining the rough demos.
And then he does the number charts, and he gets them all
copied up, and he passes them out with the coffee to all the
players. And he had, just has to kind of make sure that
everything is going smooth. Yeah, more responsibility. But,
you know, like, I
love it, yeah, I really enjoy it, honestly. And like, I
remember doing, you know, triple demos, like, multiple days of
triple demos with, like, Eric leg over at Ocean Way Yeah, and
factory Yeah, and just tones the songs, which is, it was great,
yeah. And sometimes, like, I would have to just write the
chart out there. They would switch out the song, and so no
guitar in hand, just like writing it out, just ear
training kind of stuff. You know, Tommy harden
is really good at that, too. Jim Riley's really good at that. But
usually it's a keyboard player or a guitar player, because
you just have more of a harmonic, right? Unless it's a
Christmas song, I'm good. Lot
of chords in those Christmas songs.
Who's the guy on your sessions for Jason? Oh, that's
Adam Schoenfeld. Yeah, Adam Jones. Adam was telling me what
his um thing is, and it's, yeah,
not bad. It's
bigger, yeah, bigger.
But drums are more fun. Let's be honest. It's the best chair. So
it's the best seat in the house. It really is. Yeah,
it's the sweatiest seat in the house, for
sure. Gear, bro.
So I don't have a kid endorsement. I was talking to
Gretch for a while, but pulled out of that, I played Gretch. I
play Gretsch, usually in the studio, Gretch or Ludwig and
Zildjian symbols, Vic, first six, Evans, drum heads,
you and I can never do a clinic tour together. A
lot of banners, so many, so many banners. You
guys remember the D drums? Yeah,
they tracked great. They were the sensitivity, the tracking,
yeah. And they weren't, like, it was a, it was a really nice
feeling head, much more than the mesh,
not the, not the electric drums, the acoustic drums that they
had. Oh, I
do remember those, but those weren't as good as the as the
electronic drums that they I
momentarily had a kit of D drums, yeah. They were really
nice. They rock,
they're great for, like, heavier rock, like, real punchy, Yep,
yeah,
they're great, really long shells, yeah, kick drum shells,
Yeah, beautiful. Very long,
very long compensating. That's right. Like, like, when you pull
up with your Porsche and you're like, Yeah, okay, yeah. Someone
always told me, they're like, Hey, you can always check out
and see, like, how a session player is, like, how well
they're doing depending on, like, what they're driving. So
like, when Alia pulls up with his like, Porsche grocery
getter, yeah. The thing is, if I look, if I have a Porsche, I
don't want it to be a grocery getter. I want it to be like a
look at look at me. Demon. Yeah. You know,
totally Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Ever drive one slow rocking?
No. But you know, you know, I'm an Audi man. You made me an Audi
man. Thanks.
You understand that Porsche is a high end Audi.
It's like a step above, right? Yeah. What do you think like the
luxury version of an Audi? But an Audi is luxury enough. I
mean, it's,
those are great. They're great, yeah? Amazing? Does? I. So,
you know, for a high end Volkswagen, they're
fantastic. But some people just don't want to put their money
into cars. You know what? I mean, it's like some people
like, are proud owners of Hondas. You've discovered that
you're somewhat of a car guy. You
got a taste. I
did get a taste of it. But right now, I'm back in the in the
grocery getter. Yeah, that's what? Yeah, I'm
Acura MDX guy, nice. And I'm just gonna drive, you know, for
a high end,
those are great cars. It is.
It's the, it's the luxury Honda. It's a luxury Honda, and it will
go for hundreds of 1000s of miles. Yeah.
So back to the drums. There's no reason for you to really take on
an endorsement if you're not touring, other than if you would
like to, you know, align yourself with the company
culture. And then you could, you know, probably get some more
gear. Yeah, more often, yeah,
which is great, yeah. I mean, I'm not opposed to it, for sure,
it just hasn't presented itself in a way that seemed like the
right choice. Yeah, for me at the moment, are
you a beefy stick? 5b 5b 5b Yeah, 5b I get some people that
are just like, how wide the 5b I'm like, well, the five A is,
is it is nice, but it's just not big enough. It's not enough,
yeah? And I like to, I mean, I don't hit super hard, yeah, but
if I want a bigger sound, I feel like the stick can get some of
that for you around and use the butt. But that has this
different sound. Yeah, it has a certain sound to it, which is
cool sometimes, but not all the time. And, I mean, all you can
see on my left, because I usually rim shot, like, just all
the time, yes, no. Left stick is just frayed to, like, no end,
you know? I mean,
and then the shank of the right stick, yeah, from the high Yeah,
exactly, yeah.
So I'll kind of enter, you know, yeah, interchange them up, but
yeah, 5b man. I love it.
Now. I love that. And I know I've seen your the Carter Drake.
There's a lot of snare drums, and they all have personalities
and characters. You got to be able to pull things up really
quickly. But am I right in saying that you could probably
get through just about any situation in life with an
acrolytic, super phonic and a black beauty?
Yeah, you really could, right? Yeah, even just a black beauty,
really. And I mean, it can do a lot. And that was the first
eardrum I bought.
I don't have a piccolo, but I want to call I've been listening
to, I listened to, we just had a Jason Hartless in here, so, oh,
cool. He's Ted Nugent's drummer for the last nine years, and he
just has made Nashville home, so he just moved here. So like,
Come on, let's have a conversation. We were just
talking about a one he had downtime with uh Ted. He went
out and played with a sponge. So my new thing is now that we have
this Spotify thing that we pay $10 a month for all the music in
the world when, when, when I'm reminded of a band, like
someone's the other day, was like, helmet. I was like,
helmet, oh. So then I went on like, a helmet, deep Yeah. So
the other day I go on a sponge, Deep Dive. It's all Piccolo,
right? It's 90, that was the thing. I'm just like, I don't
have one right now, so I want to maybe get one of those, like DW
carbon fibers or something. They're cool. Just to
have one, you can crank it up and kind of do the Steve Jordan
thing with those, you know, like, it can be funky and cool,
you know,
you do the large thing from st anger,
yeah. Everybody,
everybody makes fun of that sound on that album. It's,
it's arguably the worst snare no offense Lars, if you're
listening to this, he's like, I
don't care. I am laughing all the way to the worst snare drum
sound I've ever heard. He sure is on a record, yeah, but, I
mean, didn't stop him from selling millions of records,
right? We're Metallica, you're not, yeah, he's playing
stadiums. I'm not, yeah,
right? He's laughing now, yeah, we
should be getting him on here soon, right? Yeah,
if they pass through, yeah, we have to go through so many
layers of red tape. He's
not on your cell phone. No,
I know his drum tech. Yeah, there you go, yeah. I
mean, maybe that's that would be a convo. I
would want to be a fly on that wall.
Yeah? Maybe we need to have a drum tech round table. That'd be
really, really fun. Yeah,
tell all, spill the beans. Kind of thing. Start talking. Liquor
them up.
Whatever you say, there's no backsies.
Yeah, right. So, you know, black beauty. So like a kid, you know,
I tell the kids, like, look at if you use a moon gel, a drum,
dot, a drum, tack, the snare weights the big fat snare drums,
gaff tape and different patterns,
typing paper,
uh, wallet, all of it is going to make the drum sound
completely different, totally and absolutely, you know? So,
yeah, I mean, I you could the Black Beauty was the first snare
drum I bought based on will sales. The guy I was telling you
about, I was like, hey, what snare drum should I get that
could be kind of a do it all type of thing, yeah, six and a
half black, beauty, cool, done. Still use it to this day. Love
it. It sounds incredible. Isn't
that kind of what I have upstairs, the black, it's a
chrome over brass, right? Yeah, yeah. Black chrome over brass,
yeah. So I have the DW version of that. They're great. Did you
buy that? I traded in? A like a snare drum and a symbol. And it
was an even exchange through forks. Love at times, the drum
was on sale and it is just
swap. How about the three? We a city this size. We have three
World Class drum shops.
It's incredible, beautiful. It's amazing, really, well
time. I mean, for decades, up until, like, what, like, the
last five or six years, maybe,
and now they have the reputations like,
what they do, but like forks is like, is more like new gear, you
know, and they have a repair department, and there is some
youth stuff. And then you go to Nelson, it's like, well, we go
there for the the espresso machine and all the vintage
stuff. And then you go to see Andy, because he's got all the
weirdest rattly, totally things. And
his snare drums that he makes are incredible, man. They're
great. I want to treat myself to one. They're called Hello, hello
drum. I kind of helped name that. Did you? Because they used
to be called Best drum, yeah. And I have a couple of those,
and whenever I hit one of them, I just said, like, hello. That
sounds like incredible.
What's the one to get? Oh, man, you
get a hello snare drum. So
the six and a half steel is great. And if you get it with
the no flange hoops, it's it's a beautiful thing, like, where
it's single flange, like the straight up and down, yeah, it
sounds better choppers, yeah, yeah. Like those. That sounds
incredible, man. I use that snare drum on a bunch of Luke
Bryan number ones actually, like that very one on a ton, ton of
stuff. And so that would be the one that I would probably go to
first. And then he also makes, uh, I've got one of his five and
a half coppers. That's really cool.
Yeah, I think that's when our friend Larry aberman was like,
Oh, I like this one. Plus you can get the wood rims on them as
well. You
do the wood ramp thing. This is great,
yeah, Andy sauce
yacht. Remember a yacht? Yeah, great. And they're also,
I had a snare drum from a company called L company called
Allegra love.
But love them. I
think they're still in business. I
think they are barely Yeah, but yeah. But they niche. There are
they in, like Vancouver,
in our we had a the great flood of 2010
and I lost a gorgeous sonar, 18 inch floor tom, which goes for
like, $4,000
Yeah. What about the kick drum you had,
it turned into a coffee table or something.
I lost those things, like a 26 inch
kick drum that you had red and black sparkle, and
it made it. It made it. And I sold that Kip when I filmed
drumming in the modern world.com which is already coming up on 10
years.
Oh, wow, wow, that's awesome and good for you. But, but, um,
you know, it's just, I, you know, I don't have kids. You
guys that have kids, you have this instant legacy. I'm like,
What can I do?
High Definition drone,
a huge legacy
that's amazing. He downplays himself. So it's
better to be aw shucks than look at me. Yeah, I think.
But the Allegro stuff, was
it a master craft? It would Yeah? Was like, Andy blonde with
the wood rim killer, and I use it for the
Yeah, the kind of thing
birthday in
the studio. Does anybody really tell No, yeah, you can eat more
than anywhere else. I mean, if you play, if you record a song
with a CB 700 kit and you just mic it and tune it the right
way, can you really tell just
all about how it sounds? I think that was even for like a to make
a weird loops,
getting wood from the bottom of Lake Superior and then putting
the kit together. Can you really tune No no, and you know, Lake
Superior would, you know, charging $15,000 for a four
piece that kind of,
I mean, John good gets these brilliant ideas, you know, it's,
they're a for profit business, so, you know, right
money, yeah, yeah, you
gotta, you know, innovate and try and collect your collectors.
I would always say, I'm like, Dude, you can put a pearl export
kit on stage, Mike it, and once it comes out the fronts, you're
not going to tell
Yeah, live is different than the studio, because, like in the
studio, you are hearing every single over nuance, and it has
to be versatile. If they go we like the toms, but it's kind of
doing a Boing thing, you know? And you're like, well, that's
just in the drum because it's this crappy drum set, yeah? So
if you have a good drum set, you can change it. And it and make
it sound like anything.
These are the only drums I have. Okay, 700
you want this, you got to take that. I've
actually got some old CB Uh, hi hats. That sound incredible.
Really trashy, real trash. Yeah, trashy. They're looking for
loops.
You look up like Wuhan China's, yeah, those are great. China's
Great. And there's, they're cheap. Yeah,
it doesn't have to be expensive to be good. That's, that's for
sure. Yeah,
upstairs, actually, yeah,
you know they're they don't last very long. They crack, but
they're awesome. I
beat the crap out of mine. I watch me watch my freaking crack
at them.
I remember that song by the out the outfield, Joe. He's on a
vacation. We're far away, and I'm in my garage in my early
teens and twirling my six just waiting to
exactly could not wait getting after it coming up. Here we go,
Dude, I
love it. So hey, so I want to might as well steal some info
from you, like you're you do a lot of great loops, something
like, say, Keith Urban's, you know, wild hearts, super high
fidelity loop. And then you've got, like, some other kind of
strange, trashy, Lo Fi stuff. What, you know, Greg uses the
AKAI MPC thing. Some guys have just got the a physical machine.
Other guys have got the machine app on their iPad. What's your
go to? Well,
I've got, right now, I kind of just switched it up. So I've got
a hybrid of a bunch of a couple different things. I usually
whenever I'm traveling, or whenever I'm my go to that comes
with me all the time, or that goes with me all the time, is
the machine, the micro machine, the little guy, yeah, because
you can set it up wherever, and doesn't take up a bunch of
space. And I've got a bunch of samples and stuff in my laptop
that I can drag and drop and pull into that and build
something. And then I also in my car to rig I've got, kind of
almost like another recording setup, you know, where I've got
an interface, I'll set up a couple microphones, record
myself into Ableton, live, yeah, chop that up, do some effects,
and then send that out the same loop lines that the machines
going out
of. Just, you just tell the guys, hey, I got it. Yeah, let
me just record this real quick, and then I'll edit it, and then
throw some effects on it. And it takes like, 10 seconds. Yeah,
that's awesome, yeah, because, you know, Ableton super fast.
And then I've also got the SPDs X Pro over to my left. Okay, so
I'm kind of going in this hybrid thing. We'll see how long it
lasts, but triggers on kick and snare, which is awesome. And
then I've also those are going to their own outputs from the
from the pad, triggering my own samples or other samples that
I've got, you know, and then I'll use the pad as well to to
play loose. So I've got a kick drum trigger, like external
trigger pedal, yeah. So I'll play loops on the pad into
Ableton, chop it up, send it out, or I'll just play it live.
You know it's like because you can switch over play left, and
then here comes the chorus, Phil, and now the feeder back on
hi hat and kick drop, yeah. So three options. So there's a lot
of options. Yeah, that's great, yeah. And then whenever I'm
tracking at home, I usually just a lot of times I'll just drag
and drop in samples if I'm building a loop, or I'll just
play it on my kit and then kind of affect it more, spend some
more time with certain things at the house. Yeah, I love it.
Okay, so I gotta get faster at Ableton. So this is always, you
know, you don't want moss growing on you. You gotta, I
know it's all about workflow. And so what I tell people is,
just spin that. Like, I would practice this kind of stuff at
my own studio when I'm on my own. So you're fast, yeah? So
like, whenever I get to the studio session, they're not
sitting around waiting on me, and it's more like, All right,
we're creative. We want to be the moment. Let's go cool. And
so sometimes, actually, while we're listening to the song,
I'll leave a little bit earlier, if I kind of get the gist of the
song, I'll leave around chorus two or bridge, start building.
Go into the room. Start building something. So by the time
everybody's sitting down and tuning and got their thing. I'm
ready to go. We printed the loop. We're ready to rock.
You're thinking, you're
thinking an efficiency, yeah? Efficiency
and so, because even
on a master recording, like, it's a luxury to have, like,
say, one song every three hours, right? Yeah, master recording,
it's more like, every
90 minutes, two songs a session. Yeah? It's usually two songs a
session. Some guys still do one song a session, which is great,
yeah, um, sometimes it's three songs one hour, baby, that's
moving, that's moving, that's usually, if they're going to do
overdubs later, yeah, guitar overdubs and things. But, yeah,
two songs a session's a good pace.
I like that. It's pretty much the L That's the Aldean pace.
Yeah, we do one song every 90 minutes. So it's a, it's a four
song day, yeah? So we record 15 tracks for the record. So
really, we're done in about three days. That's great, you
know? And yeah, it's
a lot of music. Adam
comes in, does the does the guitar over Dubs. I might come
back on another day and do shaker tambourines or whatever,
kind of what a funky stuff we got to do there. And then Jason
sings at his own pace. Yeah. It's
amazing, man. Keep her tracks. Yeah. And in Nashville, I mean,
that's so that doesn't really happen in other cities, which we
don't we, we kind of forget in Nashville how quick and
efficient we are in the studio and just like on it, you know,
in the engineers too, like, across the board, not just the
musicians, but it's the engineers, the assistant
engineers. It's everybody, like, the gear works, you know, like,
yeah, all that's been tested out. Mics are tested out before
we get there, yeah, so that we can just go
and the punching, like the engineers that, like, you know,
working with Cam the other day, sounds. So fast. I get you, I
got you, I got you in, I'm gonna get you out. Boom, boom. Richie
going all the way down to the top. Yeah, I'm going down with
Adam again. Let's go.
He's built different. He's built different. Man, he can hear five
different people talking at one time. Encode it all, internalize
it while he's doing other stuff. Yeah, you know, it's wild.
I'm relatively patient, like, from being an educator, but,
like, if I got five people talking at me, like, Whoa, yeah,
that's how I would be, yeah, one at a time, please. Yeah,
yeah. So what about the stuff that you're, uh, producing.
You're looking for talent all the time. Yeah, scouting you?
Are you looking at tick tock? You just out on the town
watching showcases? Where do you Where are you finding these
folks that you want to work
with. For me, producing usually comes from writing. So whenever
I'm writing with an artist and I'm working on the demo, if they
like the demo, they go, Hey, let's do a record together, or
we'll write some more, or whatever. So a lot of the a lot
of the production stuff I've done has stemmed from just
writing with people, and so it's a natural progression. I'm
producing a record right now for an artist that's actually in
Egypt, and they just hit me up, like online, and it's really
close to how we wrote the whole record together, lot of doom
back in there. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's interesting, because
it's like more of a pop record. Yeah, the artist is from
California, but has lived in Egypt for a little while. Yeah,
and yeah, we wrote the record remotely. I would send her
tracks and stuff, and she would write and sing on her phone,
melodies and lyrics. Send me her vocals. I would chop that up and
arrange it all, you know. And then she flew here, and we did
the record last week. So cool. It's amazing. Yeah.
Now, do you have your like, your ear contracts, like, here's my
production contract, boom, yeah,
yeah, get it out of the way, yeah, yeah. We usually talk. I
like to talk about that stuff beforehand, just so it's not so
everybody's expectations are set, you know. So you know, you
know what you're getting into. You know, everybody knows what's
up and yeah, so do all that. And I enjoy producing. It's just a,
it's a totally different hat to wear, because, you know, in the
session world, when you're done, when that in that three, six
hour, nine hour block, you're done, you know, you go home and
you don't see those sessions ever again. When you're
producing, it's like, so I'm, I'm like, cutting vocals,
editing vocals, tuning vocals, doing harmonies with the artist.
I might sing some as well, playing extra synth parts,
guitar parts, incredible. Man, yeah. So it's kind of like
renaissance man building it all, you know, and then yeah, and I
enjoy it. It's just a different creative outlet for me, yeah,
you know? And well, you're still so young and you're already
doing a lot, yeah?
Just like, Yeah, do it again.
Do it better, yeah? But,
I mean, yeah, you're in, you're not even 40 years old, so, like,
this is a town like, you can just keep working out, just keep
growing and adding these skill sets. And I can't imagine where
you're going to be, like, 55 years old. I mean, you probably
winning Grammys.
That would be, that would be awesome. Yeah, that's, that's
the goal, yeah, yeah. And so I just enjoy it. You know, if I
was doing the same thing every day, I'd probably get bored,
yeah? Even tracking, like, if I was to track at home every day,
I'd probably get bored with it, yeah? And if I wasn't tracking
at home at all, I would be like, Man, I want to, I want to do
that. Yeah? So it's nice to mix it
up. And we were covered the same, if you know what I mean,
we're, yeah, we're recording the same song,
six or seven songs, yeah.
Is it a six eight? Is is it the cute little thing with the bar
four and the bar two, right? Or but, you know, the bar three and
the bar two, they kind of go back and forth with each other,
yeah? Is it the definitely not a shuffle, because we're not doing
shuffles anymore. It's rare. Unfortunately, you know, is it
the trap at the
75 beats per minute? Yeah?
Like that pattern probably a probably 100,000
times. Yeah? And humans actually pull that off.
Oh yeah. Pat stuff,
if you got the SPDs right next to
you, little five stroke rolls. Yeah,
right, yeah, exactly.
Man, yeah. Jim, what comes to mind for you? What do you want
to know from this? This young man is on fire. I mean, he's
like, you know, winning the awards. He's doing the thing
he's booked. What's, what's the schedule? I mean, you get into
like, scheduling conference, like, Oh no, I'm with dad this
week. And then like, Can you wait till the end of the month?
Awesome, crazy. It's exactly what I was gonna ask. Sorry,
Jim. Thanks.
Thanks for while I asked you. I thought something that I just
wanted
to check scheduling, I think, is one of the more difficult
aspects to juggle in what and what I do like, because
sometimes, you know, you'll be booked out for however long with
somebody, and then you get a master session or something that
might, it's, you know, that might just pay more, you know.
And you kind of, there's back end money with those things too,
that you have to like, Can. Sitter and so. So for me, yeah,
it's just juggling personalities. Who can I smooth
this over? Can we look at maybe another date? Or, if not, I'm so
sorry, but I can help you find somebody else that will do a
great job. You know, if
you get hired for a custom recording for some guy you know,
Joe from Montana that comes in, and he's got a whole day booked.
Yeah, and then, and then Dan Huff calls. Yeah, you
have to do the Dan Huff thing. You try to send somebody else,
yeah, yeah. And, and everybody gets it. Like the people that do
this a lot totally understand, yep, it's only the people that
aren't really in the business, or aren't necessarily. And this
sounds bad, but like doing it at a high level, you understand?
And you've had to do that same thing, like, Hey, man, something
else comes up. People bail on me. Like, if I'm producing
something like that. Just happened recently. Hey, so
sorry. Had a day of masters come up. Can't do no worries.
Totally. Get it all good. We'll find somebody else. Yeah,
there's so many great musicians in this town. You know you're,
you're gonna be, they're gonna be okay, yeah? I
hear it's a music town, yeah, yeah, big music town.
Well, somebody amazing will be available to come in and help. I
mean, the pool is deep.
Hey guys, I'm all I'm always available if you want something
to sound bad, let me know, Jim's
got a nice, natural feeling. Let's
go. Come on,
Jim. I cut you off. I'm so sorry, buddy. What? What were
you thinking about?
I was going back. I took a note on you have like you noticed
that the guy, Bruce drove an S 10? Are you one of those guys
who memorizes the cars that people drive?
I've never thought about that, but I kind of Yeah,
you see why you do the same thing rich. I mean, when you I
have
a weird thing, I memorize people's email addresses. Really
bizarre. Yeah, man, yeah, you're like, AOL, right?
Yeah, if it's, if it's unique and just odd, then it's hard to
forget. But yeah, I feel like sometimes with it's like
musicians, they play a lot of times, like their personality,
you know, yeah, and a lot of times someone's car is kind of
like their personality a little bit too. And so it just whenever
that's really connected, and it goes together really well. It
sticks in my brain. When you
pull up to a session, you see a beamer there. You kind of like,
um, yeah. Oh crap,
Beamer. Here they are. They
must be leading the session.
Yes. Mercedes guy, yeah,
only because, but I was never, I never thought I'd be one, a
Mercedes guy. I sold cars once upon a time, and I first started
selling Honda, which made sense, because we drove a Honda Odyssey
for the family. It was our, you know, the the the family
truckster, and I had a customer tell me that you need to be
selling Highline. And at the time, the company that I worked
for had Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes. Mercedes had an
opening. I put in for a transfer. I'm like, Sure, I'll
give it a shot. I never knew I would fall head over heels for a
German vehicle. I know, right, crazy. They're meant to go fast.
But no, Mercedes is comfy. That's comfort. You're you're
going to be comfortable in it. BMWs. You feel it in the
steering wheel. You feel the rise in the seat. Yeah, and
Thomas Lang and I, we kind of went head to head with our
conversation about about the cars. Yeah, really, he's a
beamer guy, and I was a Mercedes. There you go. And I
told him, I say no, BMW backwards stands for he goes,
No. I said, watts, Mercedes Benz.
Hey, come off, bud. Just whenever they
start to sound bad, yeah, um, Greg Morrow, he's like, he's
like, I like to keep those tones.
They've been on forever, for decades, and they still sound
great. Man smooth whites that he uses, yeah, yeah, for me, it's
maybe once. It just depends, like, on my Cartage kit,
probably once a month. You know, snare drums more often, for
sure, yeah, I could just hear it like, whenever I can't tune it
how I want to, or if it starts to sound a little too Slappy
bounding, then it's like, gotta
go. Do you use lug locks for your rim shots?
I do, yeah. Drone, lifesaver, the tama makes some that are
incredible, yeah, yeah. They're like, black and red, and they're
kind of like diamond shaped, ah, they work the best of anything
that I've ever used. Like, yeah, they're awesome. Speaking
of drum kit endorsements, are they going to be? I mean, who
here endorses Tama? Tama is not too much of a country. Lonnie
Wilson,
Tama guy, they're a great drummer. Others, they're great,
yeah, they're incredible. And like Peter Erskine said Tama.
Tama guy, I always say Tom, yeah, I don't know tama,
Tama potato, pasty feisty, yeah, exactly. But
they, they've kind of come into a different market recently,
yeah, where it's like, not just rock stuff, because they've kind
of been more known as, like, Rock Metal, yeah, but they're,
they're making, like, Great kits that sound a little bit more.
Into G or coming to more open. Uh, Ronnie CASP is another
drummer, so I did this Zildjian event last year, last fall, up
in Boston. Yeah, honoring Eddie bears. They're doing their it
was their 400th year anniversary of being a company. Zildjian.
Zildjian, Yeah, crazy. 1623, like, wow. Oldest music company
in the world, yeah, anyway, um, and they were also inducting
some of their drummers into their Hall of Fame. Eddie Bayers
was one of those. So they hit me up and said, Hey, can, can you
come up and play in honor of Eddie? You know, absolutely, of
course, big time. So there was some, like, it was just a ton of
incredible drummers. I was just like, why am I here? You know,
like, what am I? I'm, like, going up to Antonio Sanchez,
going, like, you're a god, I love what you do. Birdman, yeah,
yeah. Birdman, which, like, talking about music bed stuff
earlier. Oh, yeah, I got that idea to do an all drum kind of
cinematic project from him,
like, musicbed.com has been piquing my interest. It's, yeah,
it's licensed music you can license. But instead of, like,
full songs for films, it's more of, like, the bed, yeah, no, not
no lyrics. Well, there
are some on there, yeah? Production, like, there's a
bunch, yeah. So they have everything, anything that you
would ever want, like, musically, like, if you were
wanting to put it in a commercial or a film or a video
for a wedding or whatever, you know, you can find that on
there. And, yeah, so I had the idea to do just drums because I
had seen, you know, Birdman, obviously that movie, Antonio
Sanchez scored all the music for it, and most of it is just
drums. And it's like some at a time, kind of free jazz ish
stuff, which is really piqued my interest, just because it's so
different than anything that I do, yeah, you know. And then I
would watch, like, some commercials I would see there
were just drums, and I'm going, Okay, this is, I've never
noticed that, but this is a thing. So reached out to them,
and they were interested in it, and did a project for them, and
it did really well. And, I mean, there are companies in Paris,
France, like clothing companies, that will use my drum songs, you
know, drum songs, like, for their ads and stuff. Yeah,
really cool. Like,
did you have to call them to do the project? Or is it a thing
where, like, basically, you, you sign up an account, and you load
your stuff up, and you throw your hat in the ring, right?
Anybody can do it,
not anybody can do it. They kind of have to approve the idea. And
so I had some, I had produced some things, produced some
records with artists that had a relationship with that company.
And so I was already involved in the company. And so that, I
guess, kind of helped with the relationship was already there,
and I just had the idea and said, Hey, would you guys be
interested in this? And they were, yeah. So I've done like,
four or five different projects now within nice and it's great
because I can, I can do it for my place, and mix everything and
do it all myself. I kind
of use that Birdman thing as an inspiration, because this actor,
Larry Romano, reached out to me last year, and he was on this
show called King of Queens, yeah, and he, but he's also a
film director, and he has a movie coming out. It's going to
hit the festival circuit called Saturday in the park. And he
goes, I want this score to be almost all wrong. That's
awesome. So, you know. So we went over to Tony Morris house,
and, you know, because Tony has way more outboard gear than I do
these, yeah, and it's nice to work with another drummer,
right, you know, because we can get each other inside each
other's head, yeah, absolutely, you know. And so, so hopefully
that'll see the light of death. That's so cool, man. A lot of
drums,
it's such a different way to create than what we normally do,
because you're kind of, you have to think a little bit more like
you're like, punching certain spots, you know, like you're not
necessarily playing a form of a song. I mean, you kind of are,
but it's just like a different style of a song, yeah? And so I
would think, like, sometimes, honestly, like, I would throw up
movies from YouTube and have it with no sound, and then play to
the movie. That's smart. So it would like, kind of create
certain hits or certain peaks, emotion on the drums, you know,
and I did a lot of that stuff with Tommy G at MTSU, like he
would go, I want you to play like clouds. And I'm like,
that's cool.
What is that? Lot of symbol swells, maybe, yeah,
or like, mallets on the Tom swells, or just like a certain
thing, he's like, okay, now I want you to play like fire, or I
want you to play like rocks, or I want you to play like you're
mad or you're sad or whatever, you know, evoking a certain
emotion, because that's what music is, is like conveying
emotion through your instrument. And you know, you want to, you
know, have somebody react to that. We're not
just playing patterns. And then the occasional Motown. Phil,
right,
yes, if you want to make money, yeah,
that's the money. And then you have some samples that you got.
So
I just did a sample pack a couple months ago, and you can
get it at my website. Evan hutchings.com nice, yeah. And I
made that for. For writers and producers that want just good
sounding drums to play to, you know, there's samples, like,
there's one shots in there of, like, just kick snares toms,
like, with a tight mix and with a roomy mix, you know, and then
grooves and all different tempos, dry mix where it's real
tight, and then a big rock kind of roomy thing, and fills and
swells. I mean, it's the whole, the whole shebang, smart. It was
fun. It was a blast to make. Man, I'm actually working on
another one right now. It's really cool.
I got, I got a couple of packages with yurt rock, I don't
know. Yeah, those guys are awesome. That's a great company.
Man, they're, they're like, the biggest Ryan. He spends a lot of
money on advertising, and he gets the word out, yeah, you see
it all, all the time. But practical, I'm always thinking
practical, because there's so many loop packages and things
out there that are just, they're, they're almost too
smart and almost unusable. Yeah, let's do some knucklehead things
that somebody that wants to play a three court country song two
can just immediately pull up absolutely,
sounds great, feels great. You don't have to think about it.
Yeah, and so, and then, ultimately, too, like, I'll be
on sessions where the demo was made with the drums from my
sample pack. I love it. They're like, well, you can just go grab
some coffee if you want, or record it. You know, amazing,
but it's cool, you know, it's cool. It's kind of connecting
with people. And, yeah, it's the same thing, like, what you're
talking about. It's not overly processed. So many sample packs
are, like, the guys were just bored. It sounds like, you know,
and just like, throwing every plug in on here, and, like,
we're gonna blow this up and, like, all those, which is fun to
do, right? But then in like, a practical setting for what we
see in this area code that's not really usable, you
know? It's kind of like scrolling through a Roland
electronic drum kit. Yeah, the TD kits, and like, 90% of the
sounds on there are completely unusable, right?
They're fun to play for a minute, right? But then, if you
want to, like, actually use them practical, you're gonna go with
the classic,
you know, this,
I guess that could be used. That was a bad example. That was
great sample
that, yeah, something like that. Could, you know, hey, just throw
it in. Just, you know, give him as many as we possibly can,
yeah,
yeah. That's fun. It's funny. Guitar Center. That was me when
I was a kid. Man is on that electric kids on Saturday,
Saturday morning, I
want to hit the stadium setting.
Yeah, that's very inspiring. So are you? What are you?
Who are your favorite rumors coming up? I was just sitting
there, right?
Oh god, yeah. I mean he's like the recording goat, you know,
we're just holding it down. And he died,
tragic, like one year older than you get that entire body of
work. It's
nuts. Man, crazy. No, he's 30. He wasn't 3838 really? Yeah,
it's so crazy. Yeah, crazy. So yeah, him. Jim Keltner, early
on, was like a big influence. Matt Chamberlain, nice, um, a
lot of lot of jazz guy like Stanton Moore was a big
influence on me. Early on, he took some lessons with him,
yeah, whenever you know, he'd be here doing clinics. And then,
teacher, great. Teacher, yeah, like that that I had a little
like, New Orleans second line band in my hometown, and we
would play at this Cajun restaurant like every Thursday
night. That's cool. It was super cool. So it was like, just kick
drum, snare, cowbell, ride and a hi hat, and so just, and I was
like, all over the Stanton Moore stuff, like, had his book, and
was just like, eating it up, yeah? So I just go there and
just kind of like, practice all
that stuff down to a sticking it really
is, yeah, and it's really basic. It's not anything crazy. It's
just, and then what you do with that, you know, is what makes it
music. But, um, yeah, Matt Chamberlain, he was a big
influence on me, early on, just kind of looking up online,
what's he using? Because I love, always love the sounds of his
drums on records like Fiona Apple stuff, or, you know, the
wall flowers, all, I mean. And then, you know, spanning that
from like Kanye West, and like all these the, the his
discography is crazy, yeah, yeah, confusing him with the
drummer from Pearl Jam, that's right, Matt Cameron. Cameron,
yeah, that's right. Also a great drummer, yep. And there's also
Jay Chamberlain, too,
yeah, Jimmy Chamberlain,
Matt. Matt's a big risk taker, real out of the box thinker, and
a man a few words. He looks the drums do the talk. Yeah,
he is. And he kind of, he was always, it seemed like he was
always recording himself too, which was interesting to me.
Yeah, so it's okay, like, what mice is he using? What's and, I
mean, it couldn't buy any of that stuff, but I would just at
least see it, you know, and go, Okay, maybe that sounds like
this, or this is before YouTube, obviously, right? You
know, you know, I'm glad to see getting their due a little bit
lately, at least on social media, is Brooks Wackerman,
yeah, he's amazing, incredible.
The whole Wackerman family, they're all crazy. Good
drummers, yeah, um, family business. He just needed to get
that job. That's a. Big job and put them. It's like, here, it's
a big platform for sevenfold. Yeah, yeah,
incredible.
Is there any, like, sleepers in there where they're like, Oh, I
wouldn't think that would be an influence, like some weird rock
metal dude or something. Oh,
yeah. That's a good question. Well, I grew up on, well,
Christian music. I wasn't really allowed to listen to anything
non Christian when I was for a while, yeah, wow, until I
discovered Led Zeppelin, there's, like, a lot of Sonic
flood DC talk. Yeah, it was, like my first concert ever. Was
DC talk, yeah. So I grew up hearing Chris McHugh, Chad
Cromwell, Dan Needham, Scott Williamson, you know, Steve
Brewster. And I didn't know it, you know, I would look at the
credits, but I didn't know who those guys really were, yeah. So
that's just all in there. It's all in me, you know, just
ingrained in there. So whenever, whenever I work with slows. It's
just like two peas in a pod because you've been listening,
or like, Mark Hill, yeah, oh yeah, been listening to his bass
playing since I could walk. You know, Scott's
son works for us here. Oh, really, that's
cool, yeah, video producer, that's
awesome. He's made a nice he made a couple of nice videos for
me. Great kid. Yeah, it's cool. The
movie, that thing you do, that's what made me really want to get
a drum set, really, yeah? Kenny, yeah. So after I saw that movie,
I'm like, Okay, I want to be that guy. Yeah, that's what I
want to do. My parents, like, all right, you got to clean out
the garage, and then we'll get you a kid. So did it, and they
did nice first kid it was, it was actually a knockoff of a
pearl export. It was just an expo
by Piero, by
Yeah, Pierre, I don't
even know. I mean, it was just, it was like, yeah, just
probably, like, 200 to 300 bucks, and the kids sounded
amazing. Like, what we were talking about, did you hold onto
it? You still got it? Yeah, folks, place, the Tom, the kick
and the Tom sounded incredible. Do some new heads on it. And, I
mean, I could, you could record with it, you know, like a
certain sound, you know, had all my favorite band stickers on the
front and stuff with that tour of that kid, a bunch. But was it
brand new? When you got it, it was, it was brand new, and a red
bow on the front, yeah, and I annoyed the crap out of my
sisters. I got that kit.
I had dictionaries, dictionaries and encyclopedias for my first
drum kit on a bed. Yeah, nice. Hey,
that'll work, man, that worked for Dave Grohl. That's right, he
learned how how to play on pillows. I learned how to play,
I will say probably he's, he's my number one, yeah, influence
wise, right now, at least, yeah,
he's not underrated, though. Like, if you have to pick out
who is an underrated drummer right now, and you're like, Who
comes to mind right now?
Uh, Ronnie caspy, the drummer I was just talking about. She was
a girl, she from Israel, and a monster, monster drummer,
Ronnie CASP,
Ronnie caspy. R o, n, i, k, A, S, P, I check her out. She's got
her own stuff. She's got her own records. She plays with Avi Shai
Cohen, Israeli jazz guy, yeah, Trio. And she went to Berkeley,
like, just a couple years ago, left Berkeley and is, like, now,
like she played at the Zildjian event. That's how I met her. I
didn't, I didn't know of her before that, and we're all like
me and Aaron spears and Adam deitsch and all these guys
hanging backstage. And you could see at rehearsal, there was a
TV, you know, broadcasting what was going on on the stage. And
when she started playing, everybody shut up. And was like,
Good, yeah, she has
interesting choices,
interesting phrases, like her chops, her energy, just like,
ferocious on the kit. I mean, she sits up. She's tiny. She's
probably, like, five one, you know, and like, 100 pounds,
hairs, like pink, you know, like she gets on the kit and she sits
up super high and just demolishes the drum. Wow. Check
her out. It was amazing, yeah, check her out.
Annika nillis,
Annika Niles. Niles, she's
amazing. She's incredible. She's incredible. Yeah, absolutely.
What
about maytal Cohen,
you know, haven't heard from her in a while now,
she kind of, like started a family, yeah? But she was
playing, you know, like metal covers and stuff like that. She
had
a lot of eyes for a long time, pretty much
for a reason. She was wearing, like, lingerie while she was
playing.
That is a trick that the girls use sometimes. I
You don't want to see me doing that.
I try to pull the word off.
That's funny. Get off the drums, yeah, put on a shirt. But yeah,
she, she's kind of on, like, the radar for me. Of like, I'll,
like, just look her up on YouTube and she'll blow your
mind. Like, instantly, yeah, whatever she's doing, it's
amazing.
Was there a jazz phase when you were at MTSU with the.
I think that's all I did, really, when I was at MTSU. Was,
like, it was a jazz snob kind of guy, like, like, studying the
big band drummer, Big Band drummers, yeah. I mean
everything, like, going all the way back, you know, like to the
early dudes, yeah, and then modern guys as well. Brian blade
was a huge influence on me, like, so much so that I was
like, trying. I was like, subconsciously looking like him
when I was playing, and kind of moving like him, because he's
really animated when he plays. And Tommy G, my teacher at the
time was like, Dude, you gotta take a break. Stop that. No more
Brian blade for a while. No more Brian blade. It's affecting your
playing. Yeah. And then not a good way, yeah.
Topical things as at the moment, the Alex Van Halen auction, did
you pick up anything
I didn't know? Have your eye on anything I didn't even know was
going on? Should have asked that first. Yeah, no, I didn't know,
but I'm sure. I mean, there's some great stuff in there. What
a legendary drummer. You know,
I'm still shocked at the 1981 Gong, 40 inch pisti Gong with
the stripes around the the rim. I guess the holder went
for like 300 grand or something, 286,000
that's a lot of money for a
gun. But were you gonna put that? I guess,
yeah, that's true. It's probably a doctor or lawyer definitely
purchased that
damn doctors and
lawyers. Isn't it cool that our parents never said be a doctor
or a lawyer. They're just, you wanna play the drums, okay?
Yeah,
they didn't say that. We just didn't listen. Yeah, right,
yeah. I'm super thankful my parents let me pursue this for a
career, and they let me go out on, like, do tours when I was a
teenager, you know, like, leave home and we, I guess we had cell
phones at the time, but, you know, we didn't have GPS or
anything. We just print off Mapquest direction, math quest
direction. I mean, this is back
in the day. Yeah, that's what I used to do, to go do my
substitute teaching. That was my day job around here when I moved
here, substitute teach during the day, then playing the clubs
at night. You know, that's awesome. Yeah, just grinding to
that.
The last time I ever seen you wear khakis, right, right,
right, right, right.
What are you wearing? Khakis?
You should. You should actually do one of these episodes dressed
how you used to teach with my
roller briefcase. I had a briefcase
gotta do it. Had to do that. We should actually do that.
We should swap looks for one episode, I should dress like you
and you should dress like me. I could, I could put on
my valet jacket,
park cars, the sunset grill or something like, yeah.
It was like those restaurants Hillsborough, like private
parties, yeah, like restaurants, overfweston's, places like that.
I hated it, man, I couldn't even drive a stick. Did
you ever get those douche bags? They were like, Hey kid, be
careful.
Thankfully, no. But there was one time at a private party with
the owner of the company. I was like, you guys, I don't drive a
stick shift. It's just, it's not, I don't, you know, I'm
just, if it's so standard, I'm your guy, you know, or automatic
whatever. Um, cool. Got it? We'll make a note of that. No
worries. It's all good. So we're at this private party, and it
lets out and there's like, couple 100 people there. It's
super nice, like, you know, black tie event. And we're just
running. We're just running. And gone in and going to get cars,
whatever. So I get a BMW, that's a stick shift, super nice car.
And I'm like, oh God. And I can't, like, go, Hey, can't you
know, you got to come back. Yeah, yeah. So got it in
reverse, doing the thing, pull it up. And, like, I just staying
in first gear the whole time. But pull it up to, like, the
entryway of this, like, giant mansion where the dude standing
there and waiting and like, totally stalled the car.
Your clutch in, the brake didn't hit, and it was like, you're
topping out of like 6000 RPMs on the wheel.
Yeah, that was me, and the guy was super nice. He was like,
hey, almost, that's fun, but yeah, and he still tipped me,
which is great. That's great. At least you gave it a shot. Bad.
You felt bad for me. Yeah, that's right.
Have you ever learned since, no,
oh, man,
they don't make them. It's yeah, millennial. It's the millennial
car security system. It is, get a get a stick shift, yeah, yeah.
No, nobody knows, yeah.
I mean, I did. I practiced, I guess more after that. But you
have to, like, live with that, you know, it's got to be a car
that your dad or somebody has, that you can actually,
I learned the concept of stick on a motorcycle, a dirt bike,
oh, yeah, yeah. Like, with a clutch, yeah, clutch on the left
hand, and the throttle and the, you know, you went through the
gears on the left foot. And I would actually, my first car was
a Suzuki Samurai, Samurai, 1988 There you go with a five, five
speed stick shift. And I'd go back and forth in the driveway,
just getting used to it. Yeah, yeah. Way to learn I was, I was
a really boring kid.
Yeah. My dad taught me the stick. Shift, and there was a
lot of profanity, oh, I'm sure,
vanity and like smashing the invisible brake on the right
side of the
car. I had to teach Courtney because we bought her a car when
we were still dating, we were living together. Her car got
crapped to bed, and then we traded that in, got her a Nissan
Sentra that was a stick shift. That was a fun car to drive,
yeah? And she just, she had no idea how to drive him, yeah. And
we took it to a Costco parking lot, all right? That's how you
learn love it. That's how she learned,
I wouldn't want to live in San Francisco
and have to learn how to dress when I like. I had a I had a
stick out in LA and you'd be up there right on, dohee, going up
to sunset, and that this the hell's like that, yeah? Just
like, and you're like,
Oh my God, no one pulls up behind me, please.
Out of your bro crazy,
yeah? Well, you know what, it's time for the Fave Five. Don't
think about it. Favorite color blue. That's high. We
get a lot more blue.
New York Giants blue, even though I don't like the giants
as a football team, but color blue.
Love drums. Get a set of drums like that.
I should, you should, actually should call it like a great
green olive satin flame kit. That's pretty sick, nice. Yeah,
how many kids you got? Oh, God, I think 11. Yeah, 11 kids, yeah,
seven at my place, and then four in guarded, nice,
favorite drink,
tequila, yeah straight, just wow,
yeah, chilled or anything.
Oh no. On the rocks, okay, yeah, that's good tequila on the
rocks. Just a little bit. I don't like hot tequila. Oh god
no, no, yeah. I used to be a bourbon guy, but then that's
just, I can't do it. It's just random, course, yeah, it sticks
with me. You mean the next day, yeah? Just don't feel don't feel
good. Yeah?
They do say, do the white
liquors? Yeah, yeah. But that and just literally water, I mean
cold beer, guys, sodas, not I used to be, not as much anymore.
You know, oddly enough, yeah, like, if I'm gonna have anything
to sip on at home after a long day or something, just a little
bit of tequila, that's
nice. PB and J beer.
Oh yeah, Jim and I, Jim and I had a PB and J beer. It was
out incredible sour. Oh, a sour. Yeah, interesting. Oh, it
tastes just like the bread the peanut butter took me back to
being six drinking. I
put it up. Oh, nice, yeah. On a beer podcast, on the Ailes and
tails podcast.com, Instagram page, yeah.
Everybody, check out
another podcast. We do. Jim's got a
mostly Middle Tennessee business podcast. He's got his production
company. It's your show.co, yeah. He's got his hands in a
lot of things. What about, um, favorite dish, or
food? Pad Thai? Yeah, my wife's Pad Thai. She's an incredible
Cook, wow, yeah, she's amazing. Like, every year for my
birthday,
you don't do native tie, do you? No, yeah, I
don't mess with that, man. I'll do like, one star spicy.
My colon would be like, yelling at me. I
just feel like it's so inconsistent wherever you go.
American, zero, Americans, it like, yeah, like the opposite of
spicy zero. And there are guys like, you know, Mike Johnson,
obviously, yeah. And he'll get like, five star or native hot
sometimes, and just be fine, and then we'll go still work. Mike
Jefferson, Mike's lessons. Mike Johnson, no. Pedal Steel player,
okay, yeah, incredible. Pedal Steel player.
Plays a steal. And a lot of the Aldean stuff. It's either him or
Russ Paul, depending on the attitude and, yeah,
the vibe needed.
This is a tough one sometimes, but it could be based on, oh my
god. I love this producer, I love this band. I love this
drummer, this melody is incredible. I can't escape this
thing. It's favorite song.
Favorite song would be, uh, there's a John Bryan song called
strings that tie to you. Yeah? That was on. It was on a
soundtrack for what was that? Jim Carrey movie, Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, yo, yeah. And it's only like two
and a half minutes long, maybe one of the most beautifully
written simple songs, and Jim Kellner plays on it, actually
beautiful. The Count off, even on it, they left the count off
in and the song, it's just everything about it is just
music, just beautiful music. Like, if I'm on an airplane or
something, that song out, throw the song on, stare out the
window, and it's like, all is right?
My version of that is Jeff Buckley hallelujah, yeah. Oh
god, so good. Man, so great, so good. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's
one for me, yeah, man, movie on, favorite movie, favorite movie.
Oh, wow, that's a Interstellar. Oh,
yeah, yesterday,
did you really? Yeah?
We got that with someone yesterday or the other.
I bought a surround sound system at my house just to watch that
movie.
That's so good, the Christopher Nolan movies in life, it's so
good, the
writing and it's great. And the theoretical, the, you know, the
theoretic physics of that movie is all accurate, yeah, like,
they worked with a physicist. Yeah. I was really big into
like, like string theory and like the CERN, like Large Hadron
Collider and all that kind of stuff at that time. String
Cheese theory, yeah, string cheese theory, yeah, quantum
physics, yeah. I mean, just, are you a reader?
Do you like? Yeah, I don't, not as much anymore.
Reader, until I met my band and my my IQ just dropped.
It's weird. Yeah, it was crazy. My wife is a huge reader. I
mean, she could read all day, every day. She reads like, over
100 books a year. Wow, insane. That's cool. Hand me downs,
yeah. And I just like, What are you doing? She's like, reading.
Like, cool. I figured that a book. Okay, great.
How long have you been married?
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing, four years. See that?
Wow. But how long did you guys
date? We dated for three years before that's good time. Yeah,
she's just she would know that. You'd have to explain the whole
thing. How many kids, one kid, one kid, yeah, one and one and
done.
Are you gonna get snips? Snip already? Did
he do that? Done? Get
the peas on the balls? It was, yeah,
it's perfect. Actually, it's the like, that's the cliche for a
reason. Yeah, it's like, truly works. That's what the doctor
said. So you guys, you guys said, this is where, this is
where.
Yeah, we had, we had tried some more, and just had some
complications and work out. And even after we had our boy's
name's Wyatt. He's a drummer already. Wow, obviously, two
years old. Yeah, already has his own little kid, and he can
actually match tempo with you. Like, I'll sit up. I'll set him
up on my lap. He'll play the ride or the hi hat, and I'll
play everything else, and he'll keep time. Wow, it's crazy. It's
in his DNA. It's in the DNA. He plays piano, like he'll kind of
just pluck around on it, yeah, sings too, like we'll sing along
to songs. And it's wild. It's great. It is. It's cool, it's
cool, yeah, so we, we lucked out. Huge blessing. He's the
best kid ever. So even after I was like, Man, I'm good, yeah, I
always wanted two kids or three kids, or whatever. But whenever
he showed up, I was like,
we could be just spoiling good, yeah,
this is it. You know, rotten, spoiled, rot, spoiled. Jump,
yeah, he's a ham too. He's a performer. Yeah, he's gonna go
get in the middle of the room and do his ABCs for the whole
family. He's gonna be
entertainer. I relate. Spider Man,
yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Still do.
What do you mean, use that you're right. You're right.
Whenever we got
him his kit, we bought him his his grandfather, one of his
grandfathers, bought him a kit, like just a little, you know,
Amazon, $200 toy kind of kid kit, but as heads, you know, and
symbols, he got it for his second birthday, and we
surprised him with it. Set it up. We had a, you know, party
with the family at the house, set up the kit, and he was
surprised, super surprised, when we sat him down on it, and he
was locked in, like, locked like, started playing, got the
big cheer, everybody's clapping, and he just kept playing. He
didn't stop. That's your job. Okay, we're good now, buddy,
yeah, let's take a break. Get off the drums.
We have had enough. Oh, my God,
hey. So Evan hutchings.com Evan hutchings.com and then you're
active on the book of face, the Instagram, yeah, all the
socials, some on there. Yeah, I love that. And then, folks, if
you are listening to country radio, Kenny Chesney, Reva
McIntyre, Luke, Bryan, Jimmy Allen, Ronnie
Evans on the drums, yeah, it's
good. Thankfully, it's really good. Nate Smith, he's Top 10
right now. His latest single, bulletproof. Brian Martin,
actually, too.
Brian Martin, yeah,
that's top 10. I think he's eight or nine right now. Yeah.
So,
so you occasionally follow the charts of being like,
I do, yeah, I like to see, I just like to see what's up,
where, how it's going, like, what's climbing, what isn't
climbing, and not just songs I played on. Just kind of, it's
interesting. Muso.ai,
yeah, hey. So sometimes I'll be in the top point zero, 1% of
drummers in the world, you are like, in the point. I mean,
it's, it's like, you're always like, in the top,
it is crazy. I don't know how accurate that. There's no way
drummers on the planet. You
know what? I mean, yeah, it is wild.
When I looked it up, and it's like, if I'm in
the mix somewhere, I'm like, that's cool. But, I mean, the
first couple of guys are like, yeah, you and near and yeah,
McHugh and it's cool, yeah, it's a cool studio, tans, and
everybody's just the community, as you know, in this town is so
tight, and everybody's cool, you know, like,
I'll hit up Chris or whoever. Like, Hey man,
you know, let's grab lunch. Or, yeah, you know, let's just hang
or, Hey, man, can you do this session for me? Or he'll do the
same thing. Hey, man, can you fill in? Or. Whatever, and, and
it's the the ego. I mean, you have, everybody has an ego,
like, in a healthy way, usually, and some more than others,
polite competition in Nashville, Yeah, everybody's got each
other's backs, which is cool, you know, how long does it
take to you feel like you're part of the community? I guess
there's a lot of I
think it's different for everybody. You know? I think,
like, once you play on a number one song, you're kind of like,
okay, I'm I'm in the mix, you know, school, not everybody's
done that, you know. And you know, you people just start
being more friendly to you. If you're like, a drummer hang or
something, meritocracy, you get a little bit more respect from
people. Yeah,
right? This way. Mr. Hutchings, yeah, right. Preferential
treatment. Brick tops, yeah.
Don't you know who I think I am
for us by preferential treatment at Brix,
there you go. That's our treatment. Hey, man, I'll
take that. Yeah, bricks pizza,
the deviled eggs at brick tops. What about
the bacon on there? Dear god, yeah, and they've got those
Shanghai shrimp. Oh, with a martini. I'll probably do that
tonight before bus
you should call that's our restaurant of choice. When we go
meet people. I know it's my spot. That's
a good spot, guys, if you want to buy us a drink, you want to
run into us just the brick tops right there in Cool Springs.
That's it, man,
you'll see us there. Oh, my
God. Do you have any fun, like, like, hobbies, or things like,
you know, cigars or,
yeah, I do golfing. That's kind of really the only other hobby
thing that I do that I have time for. And it takes, it can take
up a lot of
time. Hey, my dad plays four days a week, and he has four
hole in
ones. That's amazing, man. My old memory four holes in one is
that four holes ones actually got a hole in one on my bachelor
party weekend. That's a great golfing town. It was amazing,
yeah, with my brother in law and like some best friends, Scott,
yeah,
I'm so happy that we finally got to do this. And it was worth it.
Man, it was worth the wait. Evan, thank you so much. Thank
you so much for having me. Man, yeah,
congratulations on your work. Well, you do likewise. Man, an
honor to be here. Man, fantastic. Thanks for being
here, folks. That's Evan Hutchings. Evan hutchings.com,
you listeners. Thanks for watching the show. Thanks for
listening to the show. Be sure to subscribe, share, rate and
review. It helps people find the show. Jim, as always, thanks for
your time and talent. Thank you, sir, and we'll see you guys next
time, thanks, Evan,
this has been the rich Redmond show. Subscribe, rate and follow
along@richredman.com
forward, slash podcasts. You.