Sometimes people say, “Man, I’m stealing all your licks.” And to them I say please steal away. I didn’t invent any of it. My longtime drum instructor Grant Menefee used to say, “Anything you play has either already been played or will be in the next five seconds.” That’s not to suggest there aren’t unique voices in drumming, and it doesn’t discount individual musicianship. What I understood was that we don’t own any of it. We all take in influences—musically, philosophically, environmentally—and the result is what we put out there. Music is a language. Even though we might all be saying something different in a unique way, ultimately we all have the same vocabulary at our disposal. If I get to be a conduit through which other players hear this or that and choose to incorporate it into what they do, well, that’s pretty amazing. I’ve always only ever tried to make music, and that’s what I’ll always strive to do.
Posted on: Fri, 02 May 2014 20:54:46 +0000
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