You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Best New Orleans Drummers (feat. Geoff Clapp)

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

Peter's gone, but that's okay because we have a special guest (Geoff Clapp) joining Adam today. Adam and Geoff give a rundown some of their favorite New Orleans drummers.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Pete, you look different. Yeah, I actually lost a little weight and got a chin job. You sound different, too. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Jeff Klapp. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Brought to you by Open Studio this week. This week, we have a very special guest in the Podcave.

We have friend of the podcast, friend of Open Studio, friend of Peter Martin, friend of mine now, the great Mr. Jeff Klapp. And a big fan of you both. Oh, man. Thank you for being here. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Oh, man.

So Jeff is in St. Louis. We're playing this opera, Terrence Blanchard's new opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Killing. Amazing. Amazing. And I thought we'd have them on. Because we have some relevant things to talk about.

Absolutely. And Terrence being from New Orleans, too. Oh, my gosh. So today we're going to dig in to New Orleans drummers, to drummers from New Orleans that Jeff recommends, because you live there. 20 years, man. 20 years, yeah.

And are deep into that scene. Love that scene. Still, my heart. heart's still there. So we did this episode, it was last week, I forget what it was about, but I'd mentioned that one of my teachers, Hal Galper told me to, you know, have a second line snare drum solo going in my head while I improvise and taking out most of it, but using that as sort of the basis of my rhythmic vocabulary. And then we got a flood of emails like, hey, who should I check out? And like, it's one of those things, like, I don't feel that qualified to rattle off a bunch of,

I mean, I know some bigger names, but it's cool that we have you here because you are a bit of an expert. Man, I used to follow hurling around like a puppy dog. Hurling Riley. Hurling Riley, yeah. And he is a master of New Orleans drummer. He could groove on anything and can be hit upon. And his snare drum solos are definitely the quintessential what is a second line drum solo on a snare drum. Yeah. Him, you know, it's amazing. So, okay, so could you, you brought your brushes here, which is convenient. Okay. Could you demonstrate a little bit What we're talking about when, for someone who might not know at all, what we're talking about, what are we talking about? We talk about the second line snare drum.

That's part of the parade procession in New Orleans, you know, and it's this second line. Yeah. I'm actually going to put you on the spot. There's two things in a second line. Okay. First, the second line are the people follow the people in the first line, which is the social club that has hired to ban to put, you know, for the funeral. So I'm going to have you played bass drum. All right, you're going to put me on the spot.

So what am I? All right. So you're going to be our bass drum player. Which is the king of the band, by the way. No pressure. I'm really nervous. Come on, man. Not, but you're great.

You're a percussionist. I mean, piano's percussion. So if you haven't heard him play, he's killing. So what am I playing? So you're doing, just doing this. A typical New Orleans, the big four. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that.

Yeah. And then you're going to be doing the second line. I'm going to be doing the second line on brushes. Okay. Trying to make it sound like a snare drum. All right, man. That was so grooving that it broke our microphone. And we had to replace my microphone.

The spirit of New Orleans. Folks on you. are now seeing a big red microphone instead of a small black one. It was such fire. Fire. But that is, I mean, you have such a great feel for that. It's just incredible to even get to play that with you. So you mentioned Hurlin Riley.

I like your list here because these are all drummers that are like modern. Like they're alive, they're contemporaries, you know, you can go check them out. That's the key. And this music is such an oral tradition, you know. Yeah. To do somebody tell you something person to person will give you it's like soul to soul, spirit to spirit thing versus just okay, I'm gonna watch this video

and I'm gonna kill it. It's like, no, there's some things that gets transferred from one person to another that I felt was so key to being in New Orleans and getting that experience. It's so funny because when we started talking about this and what did you say?

It was like when someone asked like, how do I get that New Orleans sound? Move there. Yeah, move there. Literally, drummers, I teach it all around the world on Skype. And they're all asked me like, how do I play in New Orleans?

My inner brain just wants to be like, well, just move there and, you know, literally sit behind these drummers, gig after gig after gig, go home and practice it. It's a lot of failing to succeed to get that group if you're not from there. Of course.

You know. And also, I do think there's something, I mean, I feel like this about New York, too. It's like there's something about the way the city feels, any city that rubs off on the music. That's a good point. The way it feels, the way it smells, the way the people talk there.

You know what I mean? Think faster. Their brains are faster. I mean, you think about the way people talk in New York City, the way people talk in New Orleans. It's so different. And you can actually hear it in the way people play music in those cities. You know what I mean?

Man, I remember the first time I met Hurlin, and he just would sing when he talked. It was just so beautiful. The way he was like, yeah, Jeff, I show you, bro. And he would just show me these brushes things on the, and everybody had packed up. And he just literally stayed around for 20 minutes with this little dude he had never met

and just showed me some stuff and went and said, yeah, you should go study with my daddy and I ended up going down there and just, you know, my first funeral was with Hurling and Shannon. Shannon Powell. Great.

Also, he was one of her, sorry, but, you know, that type of experience is, you know, you can't explain it, man. Yeah. And watching these guys make every band feel. It's more about a feel that it is like a chop thing. Agreed.

I mean, it's so funny. So we had Brazilian musician. in here this spring. Adieu Riviero's amazing drummer. Yeah. And like that feel, you know, it's like a language that I am not familiar with. I mean, I am familiar with it, but I can't speak it. You have to be enveloped with it.

You have to just live it. It's funny. You have to. You have to live it. So there you go. You really want to get this music. Go to the source. Great podcast, buddy.

We'll catch you on a next. But no, so let's give some, we have a Spotify playlist. Andrew's going to add a link in the description. So we'll start with Hurlin. This is from Witten Marsalis' album, Oh, but on the Third Day. And this is the title track, Oh, but on the Third Day. Happy Feet Blues.

Check it out. How great is that? I mean, that's it. Oh, my goodness. No word's going to tell you how to play that. It's a language unto itself. But he also grew up, he's part of the famous New Orleans Lasty family. And Joe Lasty's also a great living drummer.

Famous lineage of musicians. Yeah, and it's just he was telling me when he was, with a little boy, he would sit around with his grandma's table and play with his shaker. And he hit his grandma, be like, no, play it like this. So I'm like, and she was also a great tambourine player. Yeah, yeah, he's like, yeah, you don't play. He was like, Jeff, you don't play tambourine? Like, I was like, no, Carolina. Yeah, it's like, you don't, you don't breathe. Yeah, I was like, if Peter was here, he'd be like, I was pushing a pitchfork with hay. Yeah, like, fun of bats. Good times. Good times. But, yeah, I mean, he grew up doing what he does,

and just such a natural, beautiful, a lot of it is just your intent when you play is to make the band feel good. And if you don't, you're not coming back as the drummer. You know, they're going to hire some cat from New Orleans that knows how to make it feel right. Because there are a lot of cats. Yeah, a lot of dudes.

You'll never hear about who are killing. They all feel good. They're all killing. So our number two is Shannon Powell. And I love what you picked out here for us to check out. This is from Harry Connick Jr.'s record. What's the name of this record? Lofties Roach Soufley.

this is Mr. Spill. I mean, that feels all right. I can listen to that. It's amazing how that beat feels so wide to me. I mean, it just has this like expanding quality to it, you know? And Shannon is that type of dude. He's always, you know, a jovial yet serious musician. He always makes you feel at home, you know.

I got a great story if I could just interject real quick. I used to live in Tramey on Ursulines and Shannon lived around the corner where he grew up and then we did. So I'd drive by and I was like, what's that? Shannon and I just yell out and then I heard him from the right side because I hear a drummer playing yeah and I'd be oh what's up Shannon and keep going and he's like what's up clapa and I looked at right he's on the other side of the street I'm like well who's playing drums so I stopped and it was hurling giving a guy from Europe a lesson which a lot of times they do they'll come and they'll just double up because it's easier to get them both together at the same time and you know

so and I probably shouldn't say this but I put my video phone on the floor and we just kept switching off. Herlon would play, I would play. He and Shannon would sing, and it was just like the most soulful experience ever. And then I'm just sitting in there, you know, trying to soak up what I can. But the thing I thought of, I got from the video later was how efficient and very little movement Hurlund was doing in his group. It was all coming from, you know, your hip. That's amazing. You know what I'm saying? So actually, he's literally dancing with that. New Orleans drummers dance from the seat and the drums, they allow, they play through the where a lot of drummers play backwards the drums to them.

Yeah. Same with brushes. You saw recently is Troy Davis. Yeah. Does that same thing. It comes from the seat. Killer time, yeah. And you watch him, most of the time, and when you, every time you hear Troy or Shannon,

your foot, you just start doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What the crap. It's the thing, right? It's the thing. And I, man, early on, I caught Shannon at Joe's Cozy Corner, which is now an apartment complex on that corner there in Tramay. But he had me sit in,

one time and Joe was a dude who owned the place in a wheelchair he's dead now thanks to a gunfight oh my classic do all this crap just some ugly stuff but I sat in on that drum set it was a drum set that Harry bought Shannon to do the Harry kind of big man and it's like a 22 by 14 and you know only Shannon can get that sound from it oh my gosh and I couldn't control the sound it's like a thud I was rushing in your chest yeah so I played a few tunes and sat in and after that Shannon kind of and Hurling kind of took me under their wing and would give me a little advice here and there it would never tell me how I play just how not to play so a lot of New Orleans second line is what you don't do totally and it's what you edit out

that's some of the most important things right is like what not to do kind of like they live the life there it's just they just take their time and enjoy their day don't get in a gunfight on the corner of the one yeah all right this is going to sound familiar to probably all of our listeners. Let's check it up. That's the meters, of course, Sissy Strut. And you were saying that there's second line in that. Yeah, you can hear it. Oh, go, go, go. It's good, good. Yeah. And it's such a big part of that, yeah, when you play a second line, you don't, the last thing you want to do is think about what you're doing in the drums. You just think about community people dancing and you visualize. You're keeping people dancing. The whole point of the drums is a

communal instrument. it's a dance instrument. It's not like New York jazz where like, hey, check me out. Which is great. I love, I mean, I freaking love these guys, but it's a thing about, it's a community-based intent

when you play the drones. There's nothing better than playing for people dancing. For me. And it relaxes you. You're like, oh, I don't have to play all this. I mean, you could see what's happening. There's instant feedback as far as, like,

how it feels, and you just can just vibe in there. Right, exactly. It's amazing. You said it, man. Yeah, man. I play in a, I play in a tango band just so I can play for dancers. Really? I enjoy it so much. Like, you know, the tango music is so soulful.

Yeah. And, like, they're just so into it. And you can see how the music sounds. Like, you get to see it in, like, live motions. Exactly, man, you know. All right. So our number four, our final one, this is Johnny Vedakovich. And this was interesting because you were, as we were putting together this list, you were

saying, like, I don't know if I have one of his records. I just see him all the time. I saw him all the time. Or I go to his house. you know I took one lesson with him and we sat down at the drums I was there for an hour and a half we sat at the drums for three minutes and that's all it took we sat in the kitchen where he had all these albums instead of stuff on your counter he had albums on the coffee maker as we had like three cups of coffee just chatting he literally eats music for breakfast

you know he pours he's a soy milk guy and uh we sat down and he's like just play with me and i play with him and his beat was so strong and wide and secure I was like, oh, that's why he's Johnny Vodicvich. But you had to literally feel it. It was amazing. Let's hear that beat. Yeah, yeah, super secure. Now, let me explain something real quick for those who want to know the difference.

There's an inside second line, and there's an outside street beat. It's two totally different things because you're playing louder, you're playing more. But the second line when you're like in the club, you know, it's a lot more chill. It's much softer. And you typically... When you're outside, you've got to project you. You got to bring it in the snare drums, especially as young cats.

They'll set up and their snare drums are angled and tune really high so they get a projected sound. But in the club at Preservation Hall or wherever, it's so much softer, you know, saying with Ernie Ellie or, you know, Joe Lassie or any of these drummers that you can even see on YouTube now, Stanley Stevens was my first guy. And that was his funeral when he passed it.

plan. Oh, man. The funkiest most ridiculously eye-opening, soul-splitting, chill-bump-giving moment was when Hurland and Shannon went around in circles in front of the house because the mom was too big to come to the funeral. And so Mrs. Stevens came out. She's volunteers and there's hundreds of people from the neighborhood on Paulger Street. And they, I mean, you're just like,

is this really, am I actually watching this happen? The emotion, the emoting of just the rhythm and just it was really more of a community thing the spirit was so heavy it was scary in a way from me that's to me that was like art in the moment it wasn't about getting recorded you know it was just like for the family yeah the loss of that drummer it's moments like that when you realize like that's what music was invented for that's why we play the music yeah dude that's amazing well man jeff clap thank you for joining us you're going to stick around for tomorrow I sure will all right man Well, until then, you'll hear it.