Coming to you from crash studios in Music City, USA, Nashville.
This is the rich Redman show.
What's your iPhone, your wash your clock on your wall of your
old fashion? It's correct. It's time for another exciting
episode of the rich Redman show. Yeah, where we talk about all
things like music, motivation, success. These are the things
that drive us, inspire us, inform us. Usually I have a co
host co producer, Jim McCarthy, Jim McCarthy voice overs.com.
Jim is doing some really incredibly important thing
today. He would always never choose to miss our guests. But
this is long time overdue. And we have such history. So I get
today's guest all to myself, and we're gonna get into it. Hailing
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, funky town, but calling LA home
since 2000. Today's guest is a drummer, speaker and educator.
He is also the world's first polyvagal informed professional
drummer, the first polyvagal informed professional drummer on
the planet. Our friend, Adam gust, what's up my friend? Hey,
Reg, rad man, good to see you again. What a history we have
man. We went to the University of North Texas at the same time,
I was there 93 to 90 Ba what were was that your exact exact
same? Yeah. And you were getting your undergraduate degree right?
Yeah, yeah, I never I man I was so in love with Keith Carlock, I
was like, man, he left I'm gonna leave. Yeah, I never graduated.
He never graduated. It was the Berkeley model.
Is that it? Yeah, I just wanted to practice all day and play
gigs every night and when that became an option, I really just
wanted to become the best drummer. I could and I saw that
as the best way to do that. So well dude, you put in the work
and a lot of us had practice rooms. We had practice room
North practice himself. I got back to campus. I don't know if
I told you but
it had been 28 years but last March or May I got the campus,
same brown brick. Not much has changed. Of course the city of
Denton has changed but that music business Oh, you get the
you get the willies. You know, thinking about oh, I got
barriers coming up. I got to play this excerpt on the
xylophone. I got to play this excerpt on the vibraphone. I got
to go in and I got to play this, this jazz piece for Ed sofa and
he's just going to be deconstructing me and fighting
me. And it was just got it so but at least 20 years later, I
was like, Oh, I'm an accomplished professional. I
actually wrote a couple of books. I'm actually gonna be
talking about my book today. You don't have to worry about any of
this stuff. But it was cool man to
the corrals. I remember the marimba corrals were nice. They
were really musical. Yes. I mean, it was all about stuff.
Yeah, we had to like did you ever study timpani mallets and
snare drum with Ron Fink? Yeah, so Ron Fink wrote one of my
method books. I'll never remember it. Never forget it.
Rich. You are like a great sportsmen always hunting and
fishing for the notes.
Get it but I wish I wish I had a little splash symbol.
So anyways, you left so but you were you were in the lab and
program and then you I believe you were in. Were you in the
zebras. The Fusion AI did that. Yeah, and bad. I've done all of
your audience knows. But I remember you having to be the
sub drummer or the practice drummer for the Zappa percussion
ensemble, which was extremely challenging music. You're in the
one o'clock lab band, you're also doing top 40 backbeat blues
gigs. I mean, you could have done whatever you want it and so
I know you definitely kind of facilitated towards being the,
you know, World's Best Country drummer. But yeah, I mean, I
just find your audience to know, man, when I knew you. You were
doing it all. Oh, thank you, man. Well, they, you know, it's
the same thing. My my model was like you were kind of modeling
yourself after Keith. And of course, I knew I had a practice
room next to Keith and I used to subform in Dallas, brass and
electric major shoes to fill. But I was like, Man, this kid is
going to go to New York City or Los Angeles is going to change
the world. Of course he did. My career model was just a guy like
the, you know, Gregg Bissonette, which is like prepare to play
everything and see where the world takes you in for some
reason. By just asking a simple question in 1997, I asked to a
guy named Dan Nelson who's playing a saxophone and a group
called Soul tsunami is one of those, you know, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, working strip ball, strip mall, top 40 funk
bands. It's like I need a I want a regional gig, a national gig
or an international gig. I got to get out of Dallas. And he
said, man, there's this chick named Tricia, your word that's
looking for a drummer and then that was it.
It's led me towards Nashville.
And your your, your path was you got as overeducated as humanly
possible. You got a lot of experience playing in Dallas,
Dallas has a healthy, vibrant music scene. You and I played in
the same band. I played in a band called random access, and
you did as well. Yeah, that's true. Luke Adams, who's in LA he
was in between us and yeah, I remember I started doing that.
And Keith Carlock and Wojo went out on the road, Keith moved to
New York, and suddenly there was more session work at the time.
And yeah, yeah. Oh, that was actually an ideal time to be a
professional drummer. Like a good Right Place Right Time.
Yeah, we'll put some money away and move to LA in 2000. I'm so
glad that you got to put some money away because I remember
those gigs. They paid like 80 bucks, and then maybe the
private parties paid like 175 or so. And of course, this was 25
years ago. But still, that doesn't go very far. You know?
My rent was stupidly cheap at the time I remember. Yep. So you
ended up moving to the LA area kind of with with Luke Adams and
Blair cinta and
who else correct PPE ILO. Yeah, all those guys. Everybody went
on to greatness playing with Atlantis Morissette or P yarn or
Frankie Valli. And so So you ended up moving to LA. And I
remember there was one gig that I believe you and Craig shared
it was called the Red Elvis's was tell us about that gig but
was your first gig in Los Angeles. It was the first
touring job. So I was doing the home studio recording and
playing I remember I was doing a lot of like salsa cumbia and
East LA which was great fun to watch Latinos dance, you know at
that time in my life. No, yeah. But yeah, they were touring
constantly and Yeah, crazy story. Right Elvis's they moved
to LA from Russia. And they started playing the Third Street
Promenade on the street and Star Search executive producer som
and had him on Star Search. And then they won and they took the
money and bought a van and started touring and bringing
this Russian surf rock music to the world. And yeah, I tour
toured with him for eight years US Europe and Russia crazy times
and Russia. Yeah, it was it was fun. I have never been to
Russia. I don't know if that's top of the list, but had to be
fun, especially at the time, right? Yeah, I played Live Aid
for 40,000 people in Red Square televised around the world. That
was a trip. Wow, that was probably the biggest gig I've
ever played. So yeah, coming home after that and seeing the
bills stacked up when I got home it was really kind of saw both
ends of the music life you know.
I got arrived to play this huge gig in Red Square. I remember
like opening the door and seeing the stack of bills like oh,
there's goes all my money.
So that's a roller coaster this life we have. Well, I'm also
very curious about this time where you I remember you know,
Blair has been on the show. I need to get Luke Adams on the
show. But he was talking about you know, playing smooth jazz
gigs. And you were playing this kumbaya music in East LA now
when you say like,
East LA are you talking about like this, like, dangerous parts
of Los Angeles where you're like drumset and a baseball bat?
Yeah, yeah, I was dodging bullets on a loadout one night I
remember. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, the hop in City of Industry. That
was a fateful night. But um, yeah, that was, I mean, I just
looked around for gigs and there was this band that was playing
that circuit doing weddings and casuals and club dates and it
was great, great band, and then like the band of brothers would
sit in and after their gigs and got to meet a lot of people and
ended up playing a lot of salsa kumbaya like wouldn't have
expected me that but yeah, it was fun
to read all of a sudden came around and really loved that and
they kept paying me more every year stuck with it for eight
years and finally quit that and yeah, had some fateful stuff
happened half Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's
right. Now I remember talking to you one time because I would get
to Los Angeles like once a year so without Dean I remember one
time we were fortunate enough to like we sold out the House of
Blues on Sunset Of course, that is now a gigantic
apartment complex, our business building a lot of glass it's so
sad that we lost it in another venue but I remember meeting you
one night for a cocktail there and I think you were with the
right Elvis at the time and we were chatting and we're you know
we're in the back room and the sun had set and we were looking
out at the City of Los Angeles was so sexy having a drink and
we were talking about you are about to film a drum DVD with
this
But in 2010 2011, or 2012, in my murky my memory? Yeah, that was
2010. I was putting together a curriculum, I was in the middle
of shooting it and editing it. And yeah, then I had this
accident on a gig and that really kind of halted that whole
process. I remember that. Okay, so so that was right before that
happened now. Now, let me ask you this accident that you speak
of, I don't know if you would like to discuss it. But it seems
to be the gateway the the hinge.
That is that set up all this incredible research and study
and this personal journey that you've been on? So is there
something you want to talk about? Or? Yeah, I mean, it was
really the doorway to what has opened up these dreams that I
never knew I had. So yeah, and there's just amazing things that
I'm really excited about that have nothing to do with drumming
that I'm more excited about that then like whatever gig I might
get now, so Right. Yeah, I mean, it's really Yeah, like you said
that doorway. So yeah, I'm open to talking about it. Yeah. Well,
I mean, I kind of assumed that we would spend a large portion
of this talking about your,
about this event that occurred and leading for you to become
now a speaker and an educator. And you're one of the now this
is so popular with drummers. I actually during I think during
COVID, we got together at Granville there in West
Hollywood, we had a little bit of a bite and a chat. And we
talked about head x's. And during COVID, I wrote a TEDx and
I just gotta get off my butt and do it in person. But you
presented one at the University of Mississippi called The
Science of groove. This was your first presentation about the
vagus nerve, which is our nervous system superhighway. And
I've watched it several times. And it's incredible. So tell us
about the event and or the TED Talk and this research in this
new system of drumming that you're coming up with somatic
drumming and the idea of the dystonia and the brain body
system that we have. And this concept of biometrics, I'm just
gonna let you have the floor for a bit because you're so so well
spoken on this. And if no one is watching this on the YouTubes,
or listening to this, I'll just say that Adam is handsome as
ever. He's wearing a pinstripe suit. And he looked, hey, you
know, you look much better with short hair. You look great. Oh,
well, thanks. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I've been reading a lot of
research papers. And it's funny, I was starting to feel more like
a doctor than a drummer these days. So maybe the hair suits me
this way. But yeah, that area of the wellness has really been
transforming lately, largely because of some technological
advances in research. And especially in the 90s, there was
a huge shift in how we were able to get imaging of our nervous
system and how it works, how neural transmissions from the
brain to the body work instead of just snapshots, were able to
actually watch it like movies. And there are a lot of
preconceptions we've had that are completely dismissed. And
now things that we used to think were woowoo and new agey, we
realize now Whoa, okay, no, we've had it completely
backwards for hundreds of years. So, yeah, and I've kind of got
into this through this accident that I had, I had a lot of
tension problems that I now understood. I understand to have
been symptoms of musicians focal dystonia, a neurological
disorder that only happens. And during certain tasks, which for
musicians, it's when you play music. So yeah, it can be really
frustrating because you're perfectly fine when you're not
at the drums and then when you sit down then this tension
happens which is a really kind of Yeah, as we would look at it,
you see a drummer playing with tension, it kind of can't help
but think, you know, the word amateurish comes to mind, you
see some kid got all tensed up playing like, oh, yeah, iron
grip on the stick, and like you make some judgments about that
as a professional. And so I started seeing that in myself
and started feeling amateurish. And yeah, it was, it was
challenging. So there was a six year period where this this
tension would manifest in your body when you would sit down to
play. And you were you were facing extreme frustration
because you have been, you know, practicing and perfecting your
craft, you know, all these years and you have a beautiful stroke
and touch and tone you achieve on the instrument. So to have
something that's taking you off course that you don't have
control over had to be incredibly frustrating. Yeah, it
just kept compiling. Felt like it kept getting worse, as you
know, I would hope it would get better over a six year period.
And it just didn't didn't actually it was interesting. A
mutual friend of ours, Mark Schulman. I remember him telling
me like, you know, I remember talking to him like man, I can't
believe it took me six years to arrive at this solution and Mark
is just like, dude, that six years I mean,
That is money. I mean, if you would figure out the solution to
this the next day, it would have been like, Oh, I've had this
problem got a solution I didn't. And I'm moving on. And he's
like, man, that grit, you know, that's what connects people with
what happened to you? Is that frustration? And he's like, You
should really relish those six years, because that's what gives
you the fire now that you have and well, that is great, great
insights from our friend, Mark. Yeah, things are easy. That's
really not really there isn't really a story, their
struggle in the grind that happened between the problem and
the solution.
And so
I'll, I'll just do the talking for you. Because I know it could
be somewhat emotional, and you were just, you just about
celebrated the 10 year anniversary of this thing
happening. But
2010, you're playing a gig in Palm Springs, you're having a
great time, you're getting ready to set up, you don't notice
there's a playground glass window, you walk through it,
there's glass, there's blood, it's a disaster, the doctor says
you got cast on both your hands, no drums for a year. And then
this tension problems start to manifest for about six years.
And it seemed like that in 2016, there was a turning point when
you took a gig on a cruise ship, and you felt like you wanted to
learn the language of your nervous system. Sure, that's a
lie.
But I've never heard somebody speak it back to me like that.
Thank you. Yeah.
You know what I know, it can be a very, you know,
tumultuous,
and traumatic thing. But this is what led to all this research
that you're doing in this whole beautiful chapter of your life
where you are a scientifically informed drummer. And now as
speaker, you're a speaker that happens to play the drums, and
you're a drummer that happens to be able to effectively
communicate on a very specific subject. So I applaud you for
setting yourself up for your next 20 years, because this is a
youth oriented business. And it's always something very smart
to have another 2345 irons in the fire.
And you're doing that yeah, what's
cheers Yeah, what's coming up for me the next three years,
I've never been more excited about anything in my life. It's
really a dream come true. Some opportunities that are happening
starting, can you tell us? Can you tell us right now? Yeah,
yeah, well, I'll set it up a little bit there. So there's
this misconception I've had about something we all
understand to be mental toughness. And so yeah, I mean,
you've mentioned motivation earlier. And we all think, okay,
you have to be mentally tough to be able to accomplish something
to be able to perform at a high level. And there was something
that I didn't quite understand about that, that I'm working on
now is like, what is supporting our mental toughness, and its
emotional toughness? I mean, there, I think there's a
threshold. It's hard to talk about sometimes, but there is a
threshold that we can become emotionally overwhelmed,
depending on the level of the circumstance. Absolutely. Yeah.
And so our emotional toughness needs to supersede the level of
challenge of our circumstances. And so it's one thing to think
of, yeah, you know, practicing hard and trying to get to the
top of the mountain. But what happens when that challenge
inevitably, inevitably confronts us? Do we have the emotional
toughness to overcome that? And so that I don't hear that being
spoken enough about? And that's really what I want to approach
that because I think real resilience is 50% looking at the
person at the top of the mountain, and 50%, looking at
the person at the bottom of the ocean, how did that person pull
themselves up? You know, they're, they're both using the
tools of their nervous system to achieve greatness, and to bounce
back from extreme adversity. And so I love Tim Ferriss take, you
know, what, what if he did the exact opposite? You know, like,
okay, we're looking at these great achievers, you know, what
if we looked at the exact opposite of great achievers, and
that would be people who are suffering the deepest traumas,
you know, what are the tools that those people are being
held, you know, facilitated what how are they pulling themselves
up and so that's really the research that I want to study
which is why I'm super excited to have been accepted into the
somatic experiencing trauma healing practitioner, three
years certification and the biggest hero in my life, Betsy
politan, an unbelievable embodiment worker is going to be
my contact for my case studies and individual sessions and Muay
Thai just can't wait. I can't wait not a master's degree or a
doctorate. This is something outside of the university
system, but it's a a training program. That's going to take
three years. Yeah, yeah. So there are eight different one
week trainings in person and then in between your work with
clients and
And then while you're working with the clients, you take those
that case study work and work individually with a mentor. And
to think that I'll get to work individually with Betsy is two
weeks. I mean, five years ago, when I came to learn about her
work, I was like, I want to be the Betsy politan of drumming.
And she was at Boston University at the time, but she recently
moved to LA. And so now the timing is worked out for me to
study with her, and I can't wait, that is incredible. And
see. So for me, I am I am over educated in the sense that I did
seven, at least seven years of higher education, I don't have a
desire to go back at all. But you bounced that year three or
four, and you lived your life for 25 years, and now you're
incredibly excited about something and you're jumping
into the deep end of the pool? And so and then will you make a
little money in the process? Or is this you're gonna have to
make your money elsewhere. And then this is a labor of love for
three years. So for the first year, you are a student, and
then for the second two years, you're in training. And so the
typical thing is you would do half the hourly, you would as a
completed practitioner, a somatic experiencing
practitioner, they tend to make 150 to 200 a session. And so I
would you know, the first year I've, it's going to be mostly
about building my program, which is going to be a focus on sports
psychology. So I really want to look at especially Gabrielle
Wolff, he's a sports psychologist, and there's
embodied cognition in sports psychology, MIT has a program,
and the big piece of it is rehabilitation, you know, these
star athletes that there's inevitably some sort of injury
that happens and how that's the big piece? How do they
rehabilitate. And so using that new research from the sports
medicine realm, and bringing it into a trauma healing paradigm,
if that's going to be kind of that's why I'd really, really
like this kind of metaphor, the top of the mountain and the
bottom of the ocean, like those same tools you use to get, you
know, pull yourself up and also get to the top. It's the same
nervous system, and it's the same tools of resilience. And so
that's what I want to be studying. All right, so what
now I have heard you say that resilience is essentially
healing in real time. Yeah, but what is this embodiment that you
speak up? What is that? Exactly? embodiment is mind body
connection. Gotcha. And so for hundreds of years, in
particular, since Rene Descartes said, I think, therefore I am,
there's been this privileging of the brain over the body. And
even to the extent that neuroscience neuro means nerve
science is the study of the science of nerves, you would
think it'd be the whole body, but neuroscience is the brain.
And so it's like, all this focus has been on the brain, and the
body has just been considered this kind of meat wagon that
hauls the brain around. And now we're understanding how much
information starts in the body. And that triggers cognition. So
the feeling happens in the body first, and then the brain
reacts. And that's really been tipping the paradigm. Wow. So
you I also have heard you mentioned that trauma, I love
acronyms you can have it as an acronym was essentially teaching
resilience and understanding mindful awareness. So you are.
So again, trauma is teaching resilience and understanding
mindful awareness. So this is going to be essentially the crux
of your work. You're in the right city for the for the
athlete thing, because let's face it, drummers are athletes.
And, you know, you're going to have all the paperwork to back
up the fact that yeah, oh my god, I'm going to be able to
work with all those any of the athletes in these famous sports
teams in Los Angeles, and they probably are going to love the
fact you're like,
my guy that works with me is actually a kick ass drama. Have
you seen this guy shred on the drums? I mean, you're like a
killer like fusion chops drummer. I mean, you can do the
hotel Cafe scene and backup singer songwriters and play next
to nothing, but you can play this the drops match, you know,
so I think that's going to be like very exciting for your
clients in the future. Thanks. Yeah, actually, you mentioned
polyvagal informed drumming there is this research of the
vagus nerve that has been really changing the outlook of a lot of
healing modalities and semi the vagus nerve, it stems up from
all of our internal organs and goes up to our brain and 80% of
it is sensory information. So when we talk about mental
toughness, like 20% is coming from the brain down to our body
through this incredibly intricate and highly kind of
influential nervous system and 80 percents coming up. And so
really, we need to tune in to what that information is. And we
used to think that it was
All nonsense for the longest time because right the brain is
the center of the universe, but we're seeing how easily this
brain is swayed by this thing called an effect. So an effect
is pure biological information before it becomes emotion and
feeling. And so you can you can understand the effect by through
biometrics and Neurofeedback brainwaves, heart rate
variability, blood oxygen skin galvanic response, how our pores
respond to stress. And if you remember anything from middle
school science class, there's the biology of the sympathetic
nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system
fight or flight, rest and digest. And we used to think
rest and digest was just this thing that was kind of kept us
calm, and then fight or flight is really the activation of
emotion. But that's not true. There are these two sides to the
parasympathetic nervous system. That one is really very deeply
embedded in healing, health, growth and restoration. And
that's what the vagus nerve does. Interesting. Interesting.
Yeah. Because the
am I right in saying that there's something to fight fight
or flight with us as these human animals
that, like it almost speaks to inform of like, people that are
positive, or negative. As a general rule, I feel like people
almost have to work so hard to be positive because our first
setting is the fight or flight. We're as cavemen we would be
like, woolly mammoth, Saber toothed Tiger run, and then 24
hours a day, we're on high alert to not end up being a meal.
Right. So that's kind of ingrained in our DNA.
Yeah, it is. But I would suggest that the Neanderthal or more
ancient humans, they had better access to their parasympathetic
nervous the non fight or flight attributes that we all have been
endowed with, I believe they could sink into that much easier
than we can now in modern world why I think I think media tends
to because we had no idea the Mandela had no idea what was
happening outside of his field of vision. And so and it did
wasn't worried about his bank account. It wasn't worried about
anything. He wasn't about comparison, comparing himself to
some other person on Instagram. Well, yeah, they're doing a Jew
huge recording session today, Capitol Records. I'm just
practicing Peridots.
Remember, I remember playing Bruce's steak house with my
cumbia band. And I was like, I wonder what Keith Carlock is
doing right now and looked up his itinerary. He's like, Oh,
he's at Royal Festival Hall.
Playing the Royal Albert Hall. Right? Yeah, ya know, just like,
Okay, I'm gonna play my Bruce and steakhouse gig.
Says, Keith know, what an influence he was on you. I've
talked to him a few times. He's He's a bit aloof of a guy. I
mean, he's a monster drummer. biggest, greatest respect for
him ever. But I'm sure he has people to tell him what an
influence he has all the time. So he is hard to get ahold of He
lives up.
Fit 20 minutes from me, and we never run into each other. You
know? It's crazy. Yeah. You know, but Okay, so you feel like
early man we had was more tapped into that.
You know, we never discussed this. But you know, this, the
trauma. And there's something Yeah, trauma, we talked about
the acronym.
You know, when our band was in Vegas, and we ran for our lives
at that festival.
There's really nothing but gratitude in our organization,
because there's 60 People that are completely healthy, that
were seemingly unaffected by that event, yet, there's 58
People that are dead, there's 546 people that are injured,
their lives are changed forever. They're in wheelchairs, they're
disabled, horrible. It's a horrible day in human history.
We just ran. And I'm sure that there is some sort of lasting
effects of PTSD. And I'm a very positive person, but there's
probably things that I'm carrying around with me that I
don't notice. Is that a possibility? Like for the guys,
for me, and the guys in my band that we're like, we're fine. You
know what I mean? There's this, they're like, maybe you should
talk to, I went and talk to somebody, I had two or three
sessions where I talked to somebody, I figured, like, this
is smart to do while it's fresh, go,
go talk to somebody. And you know, maybe there's a couple of
guys in my band that didn't because we as men are like, be
tough, man. You know what I mean? But maybe that's not the
way the best way to handle things. Yeah, well, I mean,
psychotherapy talk therapy has shown to be effective in healing
folks. And I would say that's, you've read the effected like,
what does it mean to be affected? Well, in Western
culture, that would be some Clearly observable sign. And so
Well, okay, well let's let's talk about this aspect, what is
an effect? What's going on in our body? That's unobservable.
So there would have been a more traditional view of it. Well, if
you can observe it, why bother? You know, if it's not something
that's immediately, you know, is some something like truth is
purely cerebral and like, unconscious. It's like mucky
muck. You know, that's kind of this, what Rene Descartes would
say. And that's been the paradigm that's been follow that
our education systems politics, everything kind of follows that.
But this this thing of an effect this go, that's what's going on
on our body, there's a, there's kind of a metaphor I've been
teasing out that I think drummers would get, especially
recording drummers, because so okay, I have some drums here, I
do online tracks, I have, like 12 microphones, there's all
these signals coming from these microphones, and they're going
through my interface and preamps and going into Pro Tools. Right?
Okay. Well, that's so that's signal flow. And so what's going
on in the signal, you know, there's also some noise, there's
a level of noise in every signal, there's the noise floor,
there's the signal to noise ratio. And so you might not hear
the noise, when you first bring it up up in Pro Tools. But when
you slap a compressor on it, you know, something that lowers the
highs and brings up the lows. Oh, when you bring up those
lows, suddenly like, Whoa, there is this noise? And there's like
a hum, yeah, yeah. And it's like that wasn't there before. And so
in an experienced engineer would say, Oh, well, my compressors
broken, the compressor is the issue. And an experienced
engineer will be like, Oh, okay, we found the noise floor that
was in the signal. And so an effect is kind of like this
noise floor, this thing that is coming up in our sensory
information. And we didn't, we weren't quite aware of it until
this external compressor kind of caused some compression in our
lives. And suddenly this, this tension came up, and then we're,
then we were aware of it. And so we think externally, we think
the compressor, the external circumstance did this. But it
was really in us all along. Because it's kind of a sad state
of affairs, we're only consciously aware of point
000 4% Of all the sensory information in our body, that's
all we can actually consciously be aware of one 2500, wait,
we're only we're only conscious of that small amount of
information, informational awareness in our environment, or
you're saying in our body, both. So anything that's external,
anything that six senses that we're taking in from our
externally and then all of the internal information, all of the
reflexes, all the kind of wisdom in our stomach, and our heart
and our lungs, all this is coming up to the brainstem. And
then it gets routed into the midbrain, the limbic brain. And
then these brain, Pete, these parts of the brain decide what
the cortex the conscious brain should be aware of. And so this
noise floor is always there. But it oh, we only become aware of
it, when it gets triggered by a compression by some sort of
stress in our environment. And so when we dig into an effect,
when we really start kind of sussing out what I'd like to
think of the SEO, like, you have 2500 search, you know, kind of
things come up in a search, and you can only see the top one,
like your SEO better be badass. And so I like to return the SEO
is sensory evaluation organization, you kind of have
to reorganize, like what do I really need to know about these
2500 pieces of sensory information, which is most vital
to me. And so exploring that is a deep exploration that I'm just
beginning to scratch the surface on and I started noticing things
and other people now that I understand neurology better and
all these kind of natural reflexes. And when you start
noticing Unnatural Reflexes in people, you know, that that's
some emotion that is imprinted in their nervous system. I mean,
like someone being snappy or grouchy, or
just having rage.
Yeah, of functional expression of stress, I would say. So I
mean, stress happens to everybody. And so we're having a
response that will elevate are kind of our I guess, our, our
bodies bank account, kind of like how we're allocating the
money, the resources of our effect, like, are we using our
money well, or do we have these subscriptions that are kind of
taxing us that aren't doing as well. And so I started noticing
things while you're kind of burning, this energy that isn't
functional for you, it's not serving you. And there's these
and that's really kind of the essence of somatic experiencing.
You start noticing these unnatural reflex patterns, these
on conscious reactions, and you make the make the pay of the
client aware of them. And are is the client able to desist like
is it because we should only be doing what we intend, right and
so forth.
Doing something unintentional, that's taxing our biological
resources, our money, let's say our aspect is our body's money.
And so how are you using our bodies money should be, you
know, you should be using it wisely. And when you see
somebody spending it unwisely, I want to help that person. And
I'm starting to become more tuned in to how to be a witness
like that. Awesome. And now, so you've been studying all this?
This is probably you're on what year four or five of this deep
research 17. So yeah, about seven years it was it was pretty
clumsy. At first, a lot of it was just an embodiment podcast,
and just realizing there was this entire world of
practitioners out there helping people to kind of use less of
their bodies money in a fashion inefficiently. And I was like,
wow, that's valuable counseling people to not waste their body's
resources. And so then I've started learning polyvagal
theory and somatic experiencing. And finally, I got certified in
polyvagal theory a few years ago, I've been mentoring with
the polyvagal Institute. And it was mostly with sports folk. So
the first cohort I was in it was people working with athletes in
the world cup. And so this fight or flight is interesting,
because right before you get to fight or flight is where you
want to be as an athlete. So once you go into fight or
flight, and you're activating the sympathetic nervous system,
you are burning your fuel inefficiently. Because it's
meant to be a short burn, like we were meant to get into fight.
And that fight should be over in minutes. But if like for the
duration of a entire event, if you're stuck there, by the time
you get to the fourth quarter, you're you know that you're
depleted more than you need to and so these trainers I was
working with, they help athletes to understand, okay, what am I
burning? And efficiently? How do I tuck in just below I get it to
activate the sympathetic nervous system. And so how can I still
be at peak performance and not burn my resources excessively?
And so then, so that's kind of the performance angle of that,
that sports psychology embodied cognition. And the trauma angle
is How can I not burn my resources and efficiently when
I'm trying to heal? How can I focus my energy on resilience
and kind of coming back from adversity? Yeah. So
and so it's all through the eyes of a drummer, which is
incredible. You saw something that was first a you were
looking for practical solutions to your particular problem, you
fell in love with the subject and along the way, you say, Oh,
my God, there's so many commonalities between this and
drumming, and you're like, Oh, my God, I can be one of the you
know, it's, there's not a lot of guys in your lane. So you are
going to be the torchbearer of something very, very special.
Let me ask you this, now that you're learning more about
psychology, biology,
all all that stuff, the scientific mind, when you sit
down to play your drums, and you just want to land into a?
Are you overthinking things or scientifically? Or is it
assisting your pursuit as a musician, a musician that plays
the drums, that's my favorite thing about it is that I love
playing so much more, because it feels better. Because I've
really understand these ways to find what my effect levels are,
how is my body functioning away from the drums. And so I started
to have a range of motion as important for this the
relationship between breath and heart rate, there's a really
crucial piece like I mean, if you take your finger and put it
against your jugular, you can feel your heartbeat. And so I'd
like try to tap your heels on the ground, along with your
heartbeat. And this is x, Taro ception, external perception,
your feeling your heartbeat. And the big piece is to be able to
pull your fingers away and still feel your heartbeat, and tap
your heels. So that's interoception as being being
able to feel your heartbeat inside you, which is really the
cue for your emotional state. And once you can do that, and
you can say, Wow, okay, I'm checking out my heart rate right
now, which probably like one in about 30 people roughly can have
that level of interoception. Or they can just focus attention to
their heart and know the pulse and be able to use that as their
metronome. And so that's something I've been working on
with breathwork and so when I bring that to the drums now I
realize oh, there are kind of these seven default things that
happen physiologically in my body that are a cue that I'm
kind of going into fight or flight and so I just like I'm
playing something simple. Okay, where's my heel? Where's my
shoulder and my shoulders up? Are they forward? What's my
heart rate was face is a heat the brain face connection is
very intense. It's hard to broadcasting emotional state the
vagus nerve that goes along well, expressions of the vagus
nerve go along our eyes and along our mouth fairing
laryngeal fare.
NGL and then ear is actually interesting. It's the vestibular
cochlear nerve, its balance and hearing are in the same channel.
And so what we hear affects our balance. And so yeah, and so a
loud noise is going to bring our heels up. And so anytime we get
past a certain dynamic level that might trigger a kind of
orienting reflex, we need to be as particularly sure Okay, where
are my heels? How what's the separation between how I'm using
my thigh muscle and my calf muscle, my lower abdominals and
well sphincter, it's a very important
sphincter for the man it is such a jump, man, if you can try to
compress all the air out of your lungs with your lower abdominal
and still make sure that your pelvic floor is the more polite
term for it. But if that's relaxed, and you can
differentiate tension in these kind of muscle groups that are
close to each other, that is really important in somatic
work. Wow. So what will be the definition of the of the
polyvagal theory and somatic drumming?
Oh, the definition of it. Yeah.
augmenting your resources, really maximizing how you use
your body and finding and finding cues that are
indications that you're in a physiological state that's not
appropriate for your conditions. I mean, there's sometimes there
is going to be a time where you need to activate. And you know,
you need to run or you need to fight but like the stage fright
is a big one for a lot of us like I think an imposter
syndrome. There's like this trigger from the body that goes
into fight or flight. And by the time it goes through our
brainstem or a particular activation system, the midbrain,
it gets to the cortex, the conscious expression of a
feeling of fight or flight is that I don't belong where I am.
And the brain often translates as I don't belong here. I'm
inferior. It's an inferiority complex. Did you? Did you ever
struggle with that and during your journey in Los Angeles?
Yeah, I mean, I always thought of myself as the low rent Keith
Carlock, and there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, I would
have taken any of his scraps, right? Like on a purely
objective level, it kind of suited me I mean, I didn't think
I'd ever be is I mean, that guy, man. Oh, my God, dude. Like, you
know, musicians like that come along, like once every 20 years
or so, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, you can't
really compare. Like when I had to go sub for Keith with the
Dallas, brass and electric, it's like, well, look at I'm gonna, I
can only do me, because there's only one me and there's only one
him. But that that embracing that. Is, comes with maturity.
Yeah. And presents like they're really how to deal and dive into
what is our physiological effect, what's happening
biologically is to be present. And what's your present, you
don't care about anything that's happening except the here and
now this particular millisecond from one to the next. And then
at that point, it doesn't matter who is doing what external to
being present in your task at hand. And so that's what's made
me love drumming so much more now is because I feel like
there's this really connection with the present. And that can
get muddled. I know, some folks say, Oh, I'm bad at meditating,
like meditating isn't clearing your mind, it's hyper focusing
on the activity of your body. Like, if you don't have a
breath, practice, if you're not trying to, like flex different
parts of your muscles without flexing others that it's really
challenging. Like trying to, I've noticed like, Okay, your
heel, and your calf and your thigh and your pelvic floor,
like try to like cycle through those muscles and do it slowly
and then speed it up. And once you can start really
differentiating them, then when you sit at the drums, you start
noticing, oh, I just triggered my calf muscle that didn't
benefit me at all. That's an indication that I'm overusing my
my money. My bio money. Yeah. That you mentioned the, one of
the expressions of the vagus nerve would be in the face. So
someone like me that is known to have the worst drumming calm
faces.
These are these are the worst drumming faces. I'm jealous of
you because you don't make crazy faces when you play.
I'm getting better at it. It's all about whether it's
intentional or habitual, silent mine is not intentional. I would
rather not do it. But it's just drum face it's it's like I'm
feeling the the subdivisions and the quarter note in the pocket
or whatever that thing is. The Muse is on my shoulders and I'm
going to that special place and so I'm not really controlling
what I'm doing in my face. It's just happening and no and I get
a lot of shit for it. John no one gives John Mayer shit. Have
you seen the faces he's makes? Is it just because he's the
front guy just because he plays the route to tu tu tu tu tu tu
To guitar, I mean, so what's the deal with drum face? What is?
Well is if it's intentional, if you are commanding the use of
the muscles in your face, then it's good. And if you're not,
it's it's, it's worth exploring. Yeah. And so I explore it with
my Oh, tape. So this is sleepers tape. And so I would take a
piece of it. And I would peel it off. And I put one piece here,
because this is where the nerve for the I mean, the kind of
controls are on the eyes. That's where the Botox people are going
to take your money right up there. Yeah, well wait, if you'd
if you do this practice that you don't need to, because the tape
will help you out. So the tape, the tape will clue you into when
you're activating these muscles involuntarily. And so then the
and then you take another piece of it, and you put it over your
mouth. And so if your mouth and you're able to maintain
composure, and not move these muscles in your face, then you
are in intention. So that's I practice with tape on my face.
And anything that I do that triggers an involuntary
activation of these muscles, then I go back, and I practice
it until I can remove that. And just make sure that what I'm
doing is intentional, because it's because our emotional
overwhelm resides in our tension habits. I mean, our nervous
system is a recording device, it records what happens to us
throughout our lives. And if something happens, it's
overwhelming. It's in our nervous system. And just because
we're not conscious of it doesn't mean it's not there. And
so we can kind of, it's kind of like ghost chasing, like we have
these ghosts that are in our nervous system, and you kind of
have to figure out the right filter to find out the
paranormal activity. And so I kind of look at myself as ghost
chasing, you know, these residual kind of memories in my
physiology. And after years of doing it with myself, I'm now
able to see it in my clients. And that's what I'm really
excited about the program with somatic experiencing is that's
the whole thing to see people's ghosts, how they live in their
bodies. Fantastic, man, I'm so excited about your, your future.
And I'm sure this is a no brainer. And it'll be pretty
easy to do since you have literally no competition in the
space. And you're such an effective communicator and you
got such a great smile.
You're gonna do the percussive Arts Society pay sick, right?
Please tell me I applied we'll see it's still fringe. I like
people it hasn't filtered into mainstream media like what
exactly the New Mind Body sciences, there's still some
residual idea that it's Frou Frou New Age? Well, yes, it
wouldn't be for the big room 500 You know, where the 2000 people
sit because it's just not there. As as because it's scientific.
It's not like make man Genie, I'm going to play every note.
You know what I mean? But it's going to be one of the smaller
rooms that you'll pack. And it will be so interesting. And it
will be one of the top talks of the of the convention. I
guarantee it. We just need to make it happen. I know people,
we can make this make this thing happen. But I think that would
be really, really widely received. And now tell me about
this. You have another acronym you and I live with these
acronyms. I literally
love him or you hate him. But you got one called Grace
grounding relaxation, awareness, centering and energy. Tell us
about grace. Yeah, then the next level of it is synergy. It's
kind of one that I've added a bit. So the graces and I have to
admit it comes from Esalen Institute, I've done a bunch of
trainings there, I really admired their program and saw a
lot of use out of it. And so it really kind of stacks up kind of
like the defaults of monkey, what's what's let's first just
get to a place where we're even comfortably knowing that we're
not going to face plant like, before we run out of air, we
could kill ourselves by falling backwards and cracking our head
on the cement, right. So our nervous systems, a number one
job is do not face plant and die. And so the very first thing
that's going to give composure to our nervous system is just
feet on the floor, balls of the feet heels flat, and having kind
of this for sitting as we are, it would be this tripod between
our kind of well, things are muscle and our feet. And so it's
this balance there and making them first like kind of shift
the pelvis forward and backward and find out where neutral is
they're kind of shift the shoulders forward and backward
and find out where neutral is there. And then bring the head
forward and backward and find out where neutral is there. And
so neutral is this balanced point where we're expending as
little energy as possible just to be relaxed. So that's that's
basic grounding. And then there's an orienting reflex,
which is just okay, there's no arrows flying in my head right
now. You know, just kind of looking around the room making
sure that I'm not going to die in the next five minutes. But
what I can see in my visual environment, it's kind of just
the nature of
grounding. And so there's a fact EMDR Eye Movement
Desensitization reprocessing, which is works with the
orientation reflex, and really is showing how important it is
just to be aware of what's in our immediate environment. So
grounding and relaxation is like kind of, like I've mentioned
before really differentiating our understanding of how we use
different muscles. And if you stack that on top of balance,
then it gets quickly into martial arts, I do a lot of work
with both staff, Japanese fighting staff, which really
find out how your joints work, how the right side compares with
left side and balance. Awareness is the relay race relationship
between breath and heart, inhale, the heart rate goes up,
exhale, the heart rate goes down that man that's years of study.
And centering is that it kind of get deeper and okay, I'm doing
this on my left, can I do it equally on my right, in martial
arts, this would be called flow, being able to go from right to
left equally well, that you are much better off being able to do
simple things equally on both sides, and to be able to do 100
Things only on one side. And that has everything to do with
brain lateralization, how we use the corpus callosum. And then
obviously, drumming, the applications are endless. So
leading with the eighth notes on the across high hat or then
playing with the eighth notes with the left hand lead, like a
sloppy rock beat like that was like that simple. Yeah, I would
say just both hands playing together. So both hands playing
together, and being able to do that, and then moving and both
the hi hat, and then just being able to bring each hand equally
over to the snare, yes, like just being able to do that. And
I've had some clients, they they're very uncomfortable doing
this. And suddenly like this starts flamming, they start
adding eighth notes in the rear left foot, and then all of a
sudden, this Unison between the three limbs starts flapping, and
that sets up evidence of some dysregulation in the nervous
system. To do that, and let me ask you this, when you say
clients, are you talking about
people that have been playing the drums that are having
trouble doing that, or you use the drum set for non drummers as
a form of okay, yeah, so both and workshops, I do very basic
coordination patterns. There's some systems and polyvagal
theory that apply very well to coordination patterns between
top to bottom left to right, and then cross coordination right
hand, left foot, left hand, right foot. And so and then for
drum said, clients there, there are some that just want a nice,
they saw me play a lick, they want to learn it, you know, not
do that. But the ones I'm really interested in are ones who are
experiencing injury, emotional overwhelm aging, losing your
identity as a drummer, that's a huge nervous system trigger
flame. So you're dealing with some clients come in to
professional drummers for 40 years there. They're facing
ageism. Yeah, well, ageism does, well, aging, I would say, you
know, they're getting older, and they can't do things that they
used to do.
And they see that, okay, on the next few years, it's just gonna
get worse and worse. And there's very many of them do this
breathing is an issue, there's so much ignorance about
breathing. And I've had some people say, Oh, I take deep
breaths, I'm fine. It's like, man, we all need to understand
that if we stopped breathing, we lose oxygen to our brain. And if
we hyperventilate, we're losing oxygen to our brain. So good.
There's such ignorance about this. So I mean, if we're, if we
breathe too much, and we pass out, it's not because we over
oxygenated our brain, it's because we under oxygenated it.
And that's not very intuitive. And so we really need to
understand as a culture, what the bore effect is, please look
it up B O HR, it's how our blood transmits oxygen to our tissues.
And there's a state where if there's not enough oxygen in our
blood at all, there's we don't get oxygen to our body. And if
there's too much oxygen in the blood, then the pH doesn't
release oxygen into our tissues. And so there's this very fine
gradient that we all need to learn about in our cell. That's
a huge part of an effect is really understanding how what
level of oxygen do we need because roughly 80% of us over
breathe, and it's very detrimental to us. It's a lot of
loss of fingertip sensitivity happens without over breathing.
There's a breath by James Nestor is brilliant book very well
written, dives deeply into this subject. I would recommend it to
everybody. It's kind of the baseline of understanding what
an effect is because oxygen is such an important what's the
James nesters book? Oh, called Breath. Breath. Now there's a
couple other pivotal
homes that were mentioned on your website. Books that you
have pictures of in your blog. Oh, yeah, there are Wow, there
are a lot Yeah, Betsy, politicians books are amazing.
Yeah, Hugh manual and the actor secret. It's a the same tools
that actors use are very applicable to drummers. Their
Body Keeps the Score
That is a great introduction, Introduction to somatic healing.
Yeah, that's kind of Cymatics 101. The it's great. And
yeah, I know. Oh, yeah, that's,
yeah, I want to open my eyes. Yeah, there's stuff. It's funny
because all we're talking about is sensation, like all of this
work, somatic work aspect. It's all digging deep into what our
body is telling us. And maybe like you brought it up, men are
kind of told, Well, no, macho means not feeling it's being
focused, mind over matter, smash things with my mind, vice, you
know, and sort of erasing this connection with feeling when
that's actually creates the greatest weakness, we can ever
have it or opens us to disease and lack of creativity. And it's
Yeah, so masculinity is, I don't know, it gets a little kind of
into this nebulous thing with wokeness. And I hate that
because I mean, I just want to get people to feel better. Like
I don't want to go down this rabbit hole of what politics of
it, I just want my clients to feel better when they play
drums, but And so but masculinity is often a barrier
to that. Wow, interesting. This is all cross pollinating. Now,
it seems like your work is started it is cross pollinating
with a lot of some of this. Some of the stuff that Davy Lich
teaches, are you guys in conversation? Do you guys talk
about this? Because there's, you know, he's going deep, you're
going deep? Are you getting some of each other students? Are you
throwing students to each other? Are you guys gonna do a big
event at the sunset Guitar Center? Am I crazy, I completely
respect what he does. And he's a monster drummer. And he is very
much into applying Alexander technique. And I've met I watch
everything he puts out. And actually bots, Betsy politan, it
uses a fusion of Alexander Technique and somatic
experiencing. And so I want to use more sports psychology, this
idea of climbing the mountain top and pulling ourselves up
from the bottom of the ocean being the same tools. And so I
mean, he's already doing that with Alexander technique. I
mean, I would love to work with him. We've, I've sent some
emails, we've kind of responded a little bit, I'm, I'm trying to
get a little further along. His thing is so well defined. I feel
like I need a little more definition before.
Hey, man, you're right around the corner. Tell us about this
TEDx man, you know, it's like this is on my to do list. I did
not want to do it during COVID, where it was going to be
virtual. I want to stand on the red dots. I want to do the
thing. You knocked it out of the ballpark. It was informative. It
was free flowing, it was well executed. There was comedy, you
know, you gotta have some comedic moments to break up the
seriousness. There is practical application stuff. It had to be
well received. Yes, he did it in Mississippi. Yeah, it went
really well. Anyone interested in doing a TEDx? There's the TED
Fellows program that has 16 questions that has you really
suss out your topic. And I think that it took me two months to
answer those questions. They're, it's they're all very similar,
but they all make you kind of tear things apart into different
categories. And so anyone who that my application is online,
Adam gus.com, forward slash TED Talk. And so that was actually
the webpage I designed for my TED application. And I applied,
applied to one place, and I made it to the final round. And then
I applied to the second place, and I was selected in the first
round. So I did something right in my application, and, and it's
all there. And it's preserved forever and ever and ever
figured I believe it up. Yeah. I mean, some people, other folks
that have done one, Jojo Mayer, I think is done one or two. Mike
Johnson has done one, our friend here
in Nashville, Harry Miry, has done one. So there has been
about four or five drummers that have done the done the TED
Talks. And
I would like I'd like to be next. It's pretty much written,
I hired a coach during COVID. And we had about six or seven
sessions to write the thing. But the big thing is the application
process and nailing that application process. So
I guess that's what I guess that's on the to do list. Yeah,
make a website for it. Yeah. Just take those 16 questions
from the Fellows Program and answer them. And that's like,
pretty much any TED or TEDx organization is going to only
ask a few of those questions. And if they see that you went
above and beyond that, they're going to be Oh, that's, this is
ready to go kind of so literally build a website that just
exists, you know, just free flowing for anyone to find, and
then direct those individuals to that site. Yeah, so in the TEDx
application, just Bansuri take draw from what you've already
written into the application and then put the TED
Then the website, the URL that you composed. And that'll
immediately put you above like, probably, you'll be in the top
3% already just having done that. That's incredible.
applicants don't have to do that, man. This is also so
exciting. I wanted to spend a lot of time talking about all
this research and where are you are, you know, with your career?
This is very, it's evolutionary, you're evolving. But I don't
want to miss out on any fun. Interesting, heartfelt stories
about your early days in Los Angeles. Did you park cars? Did
you have day jobs? Did you max out credit cards and eat ramen
noodle?
Were their takeaways? I mean, I saw you in like 2016, I believe
not 17, somewhere around there, playing with Paul valus, which
is his incredible blues band. And you were killing it. And I
think I got up and play two or three songs. Hopefully it was
alright. But it was great. It was a benefit for my acting
coach his wife. And we all ended up at this crazy little club
right in the heart of Hollywood. But yeah, am I missing anything?
Are there some takeaways that you would want to take some kid
that was grown up in Fargo and he's about to graduate high
school and he wants to move to LA and be a professional
drummer? What do you tell the kid? Yeah, there was the best
advice I ever got was your field starts when you walk in the
door. And that was something I really did not understand. I
always thought your field was when you kind of the tune off
and started playing. But the minute you walk in and look
around the room your feel is starting and your vibe and
energy. Yeah. And it's I mean, I'd say essentially, it's funny
now that I remember hearing that from Joel Taylor. And now I
think about well, that's everything about effect. You're
broadcasting what unconsciously what's happening in your body
and people can pick up on that particular people who have been
out here a long time and they probably can just resonate and
yeah, a vibe, you can call it that and our or you can even
call it your biosphere, this magnetic field that we all put
out that's about 10 feet away from us. This isn't
controversial. This isn't some woowoo idea. It's been
researched there. We have a magnetic field, and we are
broadcasting our physiological state and other people feel that
whether they're conscious of it or not. And the more conscious
we are of it, the better off we are feel. Is that and yeah, so
yeah. So when When did y'all Taylor tell you that llave Lee
watching Joey Heredia play with Marco Mendoza.
Yeah, that band was fun to watch
the back way, like, this was like, 2002 I'd been out here a
while like, man, I've been out here a few years. You know, I
hadn't had a good session yet. I hadn't toured. And I think even
he thought I needed to get
he could kind of vibe from me that I needed. This information
is like, amazing. Yeah, your field starts when you walk in
the door, silver driving home, just like Oh, fuck. pretty
profound. Now Jill Taylor, incredible drummer that can
cover all sorts of styles for the listeners that don't know. I
started hearing his name in the Dallas top 40 scene because Dave
Barnett from random access was pals with Joel Taylor. So Joel I
for the listeners was this cat that when
what was that game Guitar a guitar hero he did all the
recreations sound like yeah, that was songs. So it was
hopefully it was a big paycheck but I do know is probably just
one time because no one gives residuals to anyone. But so say
they had to rerecord that Bob Oh Riley he had to go research and
find out who what the drumset was, what the make was, what the
sizes were and then transcribe those performances note for note
and then recreate them. So you know, you got to be a great
drummer to go from like, Okay, I'm doing Charlie Watts. I'm
doing Keith Moon I'm doing Phil Rudd I'm doing and doing a great
job of it and playing
period instruments or modern instruments made to sound like
period instruments. Yeah, Blair center would be a great one for
that. Yeah, totally. Because Blair can get the sound and find
out like what preamp they were using on the overheads.
Which is really funny because
I love Blair and when I have to record in LA, I go to his place
and it's so fun because it's a drummer producing a drummer and
it's just such a great time. But I am not that guy. I don't want
to obsess about a preamp I just don't you know what I mean? So
but it does take too. It takes a lot to make the world go round
different.
So so that's what you would tell a kid and then what did you have
any day jobs are interesting, fun story.
He's in the early American movie classics. I did catering. So
yeah, yeah. So I was the catering person and it was
always fun. Whoopi Goldberg was real nice. Laurence Fishburne
was real nice. And there. Lauren Bacall was a bitch. And
it was interesting to see like, how much the person who was
being focused on how much their vibe trickled down to everybody.
Like I mean, when Whoopi did her thing like everybody was in a
good mood. The day went by like that. And if it was somebody who
was not fun it just like, Oh, God, Is it lunch yet? So
American movie classics in the sense that a classic film would
be shown and then a star would come in and do the interstitials
like this. This movie came out and such as and so when you say
catering, you're not talking about craft services you're
talking about you would bring the luncheon and I was serving
food for them. Yeah, doing those intermediary or those
intermittent pieces? Yeah. So they would film those and for
whatever reason I've got on those. Yeah, I was doing that
quite a bit. Food was good. Paid. Okay. flexible hours. Oh,
yeah. You got to I mean, some people give the live and die by
that craft service table man when the starving artists days.
You load your pockets up with that crap server, bro. Where
baby yeah, had a backpack with Tupperware in it. Yeah. Now he's
outside of the red Elvis's and just being a freelancer? Am I
missing some of your resume? Some folks that you've worked
with and the hotel Cafe scene or recording sessions or little
tours? You did? I did I did I miss things along the way. I
mean, select tracks I was proud of. I did like five man,
hundreds of pieces for TV and film. I mean, they were such a
shotgun blast of tracks. I don't even know what made it where I
think.
But yeah, Stuart hard. He was hiring me a lot on the west
side. And so that was always a regular. I don't know TV and
film music. It's feels good to be working on that. I'm sure
there are lots of drummers that would have liked that gig. But I
mean, mostly like I don't know, I love the gigs. I do. Like I
mean, it's tomorrow or the Roman Palacios is great crooner Frank
Sinatra style singer and Rodeo Drive. And then I'm doing this
burlesque show with really great band high end, dancers and then
leaving town with Laurie Marvin and she's great to play with.
And so I'm gonna knock people out here with but I mean, really
eclectic calendar and everyone I've kind of a prerequisite that
it's a cool gig for me, I don't have I can't deal with being
treated like a cog. So I mean, that maybe that has hurt me in
some ways, but in other ways, I love all the gigs that I do. So
that's nice. So what you're saying you don't like being
treated like a cog in the wheel? Well, I mean, you know, the
cattle call auditions. Gotcha. So you we need a drummer will
take anybody I typically get hired for what I do. And I and
that means that okay, we're gonna we're gonna walk in, and
I'm gonna play a way that they anticipated. And so I it's not
like fulfilling a role. And I mean, at this, oh, it's jazz,
burlesque blues. I do rock stuff. And then of course,
online tracks, there's always something different. And so
yeah, I really enjoy the gigs. I do. But yeah, I've definitely
been compared to you are probably most of the drummers
you've had on your podcast. I don't have a resume. Do you live
in sunny California, Southern California for all these years
since the year 2000. It's pretty incredible. And there's been
some hardships and some ups and downs, but you're a survivor.
You're a thriver and you're a drummer, that can read play with
a click and play any style. So you are always going to work you
know, that. We know you know, we're Mitch our mutual friend
Stuart gene, they're they great all around drummer was you know,
musicians used to do you do any of that West Coast? You know,
those those variety bands that he does? I was in one group that
would do like cocktail hour Leah Zeger. Man, unbelievable
musician, man, I should call her we shut down over COVID But she
was one of my favorite people to work with ever unbelievable
singer, virtuoso violinist sweetest person in the planet.
We do this French jazz thing. We'd go in for the kind of
cocktail hour and then split. It was the coolest gig. So yeah,
yeah, a bunch of stuff. agency work. Yeah, I do some subbing
for that, too. So yeah, Roman gets a lot of that stuff. It's
just trio, so it pays really well for him. So yeah, nice,
man. It's so exciting to be doing all those things, which
means you have to drive an SUV because if you're doing all that
schlepping around there, you got to have some it's right it's you
got to have the SUV.
See, what else did I forget anything about your national
your your Los Angeles journey. You're busy man. You did it,
Ernie. Yeah, it's been a roller coaster. But I'm really excited
that I found something that is separate from drumming, but not,
you know, something that still I mean, everything that I'm going
to be working on is with drummers as clients, and it's
stuff that I'll be using to benefit myself. I mean, all it's
basically the clinic
application of an effect regulation. That's kind of what
I'm working on. And the more I can understand it, and myself,
the more I can bring to my clients, and the better, more
fun I have playing, it just feels amazing. When I'm using
just as much effort as necessary to get what I want out of the
drums, and then to feel like I'm at that point and be able to
recognize other folks that aren't there. I'd really want to
help people to find that because it's such an emotional journey.
It's such a window into people's souls. And that's why man,
Betsy, Paulette, and I've seen some workshops with her like her
recognizing a person's personal story in their movement is mind
blowing. It's like, if I couldn't even touch what she's
able to do at all. I have no like, I would be blessed. It is
supernatural, what she's capable of. I'm so excited. And you're
gonna be working with her for three years right there. Yeah,
it's so so so cool, man. Listen, we're going to end up with the
fast. That fast favorite five, so I'll ask you five questions.
Oh, I usually like to try to make it fast but it never is.
Favorite color.
Purple.
Purple Auralex and purple curtain is in your drummer. I
love it. Man. You know I have a friend. I have a student Sara
car deal. We call her the real deal. Car car deal. She's in
Connecticut. She loves purple. She has got purple drum. She got
purple glows. purple hair. I love it. Favorite food or
favorite dish? Tacos. You've got to love it. You know it's so
funny. We got taco trucks here in Nashville, but I don't know
which ones are good. I don't know if I could trust him. In
LA, you could just eat it any taco truck. It's gonna be
fantastic. Probably yeah, the type of meat they use is
important man. If you're ever Northeast side, you gotta go to
V as tacos. It's the only Michelin rated tacos in LA. It's
unbelievable. You say like it's Pasadena area. Yeah, it's an off
Figaro and 52 vi Oh, it's also in Grand Central Market they're
just expanded Yeah, it's blowing up their stuff. Okay, you know
where I always ended up you know cactus Dockery at number one or
number two or three.
And then at home, ma'am, I my tacos are pretty damn good. I am
check Chicana approved my girl
you've been dating your Chicana for years. Yeah, seven. Yep. Oh,
nice. Yeah, my boy can make some tacos according to her. So I
love that. How about your favorite drink? favorite drink
out there any any drink whatsoever? I mean, if we want
to be exciting, we can have alcohol in it, you know? Yeah.
Reverse osmosis water. I recently got one of Yeah, one of
those super filtration systems for water and man it's
unbelievable. And then you know the carbon carbonated I love the
the Aqua Rushaga they gasm is in what you say in Russia.
Like water with bubbles like bleh you have I like it. Now
this is difficult for some people but something that just
keeps rearing its ugly head in your life. It comes on the
radio. You are gonna crank this sucker up your favorite song. My
favorite sign anything by John Mayer body is a wonderland. I
don't know if that first album of his room for squares. I've
it's so well done perfectly mixed. I admire the masterful
job that was done from beginning to end on that album. It is kind
of a guilty pleasure and is a masterpiece and it's so funny
that I brought up John Mayer today. Have you ever met near z
the drummer that played on that record? No. I listened to your
podcast with him. No, he's a monster. Yeah, his drumming is
flawless on there. You have Jason Mraz album, I remember
like who is this drummer? It's like, oh, yeah, right. Hit the
remedy. That remedy stuff. Yeah. Oh, good. Okay, well, that's
great. You'll meet near He's nice. And your favorite movie
man favorite movie? Favorite movie?
Inception. Oh, that's heavy. Yeah, it's really kind of
explains these layers of polyvagal theory in a deep way.
And that's why I like it so much. So yeah, these kind of
tiered this hierarchy of our emotional responses is very well
represented in sort of these dream states of the movie. And
so Christopher Nolan is not messing around. You have got to
pay attention.
Yeah, yeah. I even liked it better the second time. Yeah.
Yeah. No, it's repeated viewing. That is not a Beavis and
Butthead movie, man. You got it. You definitely have to pay
attention to that. Adam gus.com amazing resource you listeners
out there. Be sure to check out his TEDx talk. You could see it,
I believe on your website, but of course, YouTube. It's called
The Science of the groove and it is fantastic, man.
Congratulations on that. Thank you so much for spending this
time. I love being able to catch up in a public forum.
I'm gonna be in LA the first week of March. Maybe we get a
taco I'll text. You know, we'll do the thing but really
appreciate your time and talent, man. Oh, thank you for having me
on. I mean, man, the folks you've had on your podcast are
it is a high bar you said so yeah, it's an honor to be
included. Man, you're right up there. Congratulations on going
after your dreams and making them happen, man. Very, very
cool. And to all the listeners out there if you love the
podcast, be sure to subscribe, share rate and review. It really
does help people find the podcast through all those crazy
algorithms in maybe on the next episode, we'll have our
producer, longtime friend Jim McCarthy with Jim McCarthy voice
overs.com. Adam, I'll be seeing you real soon. Thanks for
joining us, man. Oh, so Yeah, cheers. Take care. You guys.
This has been the rich Redmond show. Subscribe rate and follow
along at rich redman.com forward slash podcasts.