Shoutout To Drummers

"Who doing the drums? Man, put that [homie] on the drums, man! Yep, all day, 'Mortal Man' and 'Kunta.' Aight from the top." - Kendrick Lamar, "untitled 2 | 06.23.2014"

The drums make the genre.

The drums make or break the song.

The drummer makes or breaks the band.

We (the entire music-loving world) are overdue for a celebration of these hardworking and under-appreciated geniuses. There are so many local bands I wish I had video of to include here, but we’re just gonna have to make do with what’s on YouTube.

My drumming is not very good and I’m sure it’s gotten worse. It won’t surprise you, then, to learn I was the drummer in my Youth Group’s praise band. Anyway—I think about drums so much in the songwriting process. Drums are a band’s rudder, wheel, and sails at the same time.

JD Beck (DOMi & JD BECK Nord Live Sessions)

Two-piece bands are tricky because you’re usually doing without a pretty important element. When you don’t have bass, the whole sound is sonically empty. When you’re just bass and drums—I mean I know that’s a whole genre, but. Crucially, Domi is great at playing bass with her left hand without sacrificing melody or chords. But everything JD does here is so consequential.

The twitchy get-up-and-go as the song intros—he’s excited about the song, and you, the audience member, should be too. The driving, crisp beat behind the main riff. Switching to ride cymbal before the beat gets worn out. The buildup-y rim playing when Domi goes into that sneaky part at :53. All the times he’s filling in gaps she leaves for him—he plays drums the way Dwyane Wade does off-ball cuts.

Most importantly, he does it with a tiny kit. The correct number of toms is two. The correct number of cymbals is four. JD Beck does his thing with half that.

Rico Nichols (Kendrick Lamar Live on The Tonight Show)

I’ve talked about my love for this performance twice on Cracked (once errantly saying it was The Roots as the backing band—we uh, did not have fact checkers at Cracked when I was on my four-lists-and-one-column-per-week contract). Let me reiterate here how amazing it is. Kendrick’s untitled unmastered. is an incredible collection, but it’s a bummer he’s never done a studio version of the live version of this song. The music is so so so good.

This is not about Rico Nichols being the absolute wildest, most technical drummer. It’s about the intricacies of the arrangement. That song has roughly 7000 feel changes, and Rico is your shepherd through all of them. He’s tight, controlled, dynamic, pushing forward and pulling back. Even at the end, when all hell is breaking loose? He’s completely in control, holding a groove while avalanching down the toms. If anything, he’s supporting the bass and guitar players on their runs.

A perfect song. A perfect drummer. AND HE’S FROM CHICAGO.

(Also—Many years later, as Kendrick put another rapper on life support, do you think Drake was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice?)

Larnell Lewis (Hears Metallica For The First Time)

That halftime’ll get you. Every time.

Man I love this video. I’m not even a big Metallica fan. Put it this way: I’ve never heard a Metallica song I didn’t like, but I’ve also never heard a Metallica song that made me want to listen to another Metallica song. One of these days I’ll deep dive a couple albums, but I got a lotta tables, you know?

Something I am aware of: there is Discourse about whether or not Lars is a good drummer. From what I can tell, he’s at least a distinctive drummer, and that’s important. He put his stamp on that band and that era of metal without overshadowing the other members of the band, and that’s noteworthy.

Watching Larnell active listen is a revelation, even if I already know that’s what drummers do. It’s interesting to me, for instance, that he doesn’t reference the chord change when the halftime comes in. Love that part where he’s like, “there’s a cue there, and it might be on me.” Makes me think of Smags, and how many Solipse practices I would be hanging on to everything he was doing to inform where my bass was going. What Larnell does here is basic session player stuff, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive, and really showcases what a special talent Drummers Who Give A Shit have.

Let’s let Larnell carry us out:

“…understand that you don’t have to put yourself in a box. You can learn about all the different styles and genres of music that exist in the world. At the end of the day, it’s about respecting the music, and respecting the culture of that music as well.”

Not a drummer-specific statement, but a great one to end on.

For all artists.

Go read some poetry.

Sorry you got an email,

Chris