After traveling around a good chunk of the southeastern US, I sat down at my drum kit earlier this week for the first time in what must have been at least 14 days. It's nice to get out of town for a while, but being away from my instrument for that long is aggravating and - at the risk of sounding like a tool - creatively frustrating. In the time away and then after playing for a while today, I had some realizations: 1. It's good to stay musically active, even when I'm not

Listening through recordings of my drumming from 5+ years ago, I sometimes feel a little pang like, "I don't know if I can still write stuff like that." On one hand, it's cool that I can look back at older stuff I wrote and not be utterly embarrassed by it. On the other, it does make me wonder if somehow I lost some chops between here and there. It's kind of a weird thing to think. I haven't taken any significant time off of playing. My musical tastes and listening habits

I'm not generally a fan of running with music. Running with podcasts is my go-to since it allows me to keep my pace totally separate from what I'm listening to while still keeping me engaged with something else (if you are looking for a recommendation for a podcast to try while running, I can't suggest Hardcore History strongly enough). Occasionally though, I will feel compelled to crank some tunes to get motivated for my runs and I've been doing so more lately as I feel st

All three venues were humming with people. This was my first time going to a show in one of the parts of the complex that includes Center Stage, Vinyl, and The Loft - the latter being our destination for the night – and it was clearly a lively Saturday night in Atlanta with shows going on at all three spots. Winding up the stairs that give truth to the name of The Loft, my girlfriend and I pass through the ticket booth with the scrawled words on the light up board “The Dear

The band that I'm in now, The Famous Slip Slams, has been growing into itself since I was in high school. I have been playing music with Brandon and Braxton for over 6 years and the three of us have always been able to play good stuff together owing to our similar influences and the fact that we've been around each other and played together so much. Recently, I've gone back and listened to some of the older music that I've worked on and it's awesome to see the timeline of ho

Musicians are cursed. It took me some time to realize this and longer to articulate it, but I have felt the sting of the affliction for years now. The curse isn't something that materializes immediately; the effects are a graduated process that takes hold over time until there's hardly any way to get around it. By the time, you realize what's happening, it's too late though. I am referring to the way that being a musician fundamentally changes the way you listen to not just

Last night, I was watching School of Rock with my girlfriend and it sparked an interesting conversation - that's a sentence I have to say I never thought I would use. There's a part in which Jack Black is making listening assignments to the students based on their abilities and he recommends one of the singers listen to the vocal solo from Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky. We got to discussing the story we'd heard about the vocalist nailing the improvised solo in one t

It's interesting to me to find the things in life that are so ingrained that it becomes hard to articulate your feelings about them. For some things, it's an easy task: I like to eat cereal because it's crunchy, filling, and gives me an excuse to ingest large quantities of milk. In other cases, it's a far more difficult task and I have found that to be increasingly true when it comes to talking about music. If someone asks you to identify what you like about a song, an albu

I have identified as a drummer longer than almost any other attribute that I have. My first drum kit was a Christmas present when I was four and it has been a downhill run ever since. Drumming really began piquing my interests about 11 years ago though and that's when I started taking it seriously. Before that, I had tried to learn guitar because I wanted to impress people and I had tried to learn piano for no real reason at all, but I stuck with drumming because it felt s

It has been a quite a busy, but enjoyable week and I hope your holidays were as fruitful as mine! As I've mentioned before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it centers around three Fs for me: family, feasting, and football. I handily accomplished all three this past week seeing all of my immediate family and some of my extended family, watching more football in a three or four day span than I thought was possible, and eating my weight in sweet potato casserole -