Things have been all sorts of busy here, both with my “professional” life and my personal one as this wedding thing is starting to need things like, say, attention and planning. So…things are going to be quiet on the web front for a bit. I’ll also be doing a little redesigning in the next month or so…hopefully that makes it easier for me to add small things easily rather than a big write-up at a time. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy tinkering with this website, although this time I will try very hard not to erase the whole damn thing like the last time around.

In drumming news…great sessions around town with Ray Barnard, Jason Shannon, and Jim Walsh…gigs with the usual suspects and a few new ones…working way too hard on finding a new rehearsal/recording space…also picked up a few new goodies including an audio interface (MOTU Traveler) for my laptop. Getting sounds into and out of the laptop has been a blast and I’m coming up with all sorts of fun ideas—I really haven’t been this excited by making music in a long time!

‘Til next time…my next entry will be my first as a married man. (did I say “holy crap” yet?!)

One thing I’ve been really enjoying lately is playing with Iowa City transplant Dave Olson…in part because Dave is a great songwriter and a nice guy but mostly because I also get to play with my great friend and bass player Atom Robinson. Atom and I played together with Teddy Morgan and Kelly Pardekooper for a few years through Europe and various places and in the process became really good friends. Atom is only occasionally playing bass these days so it’s a treat to get the rhythm section back together again.

I’ve also been playing a few shows here-and-there with Drew Peterson of Forty Watt Bulb…very laid back sorts of gigs, just acoustic guitar and drums. The combo works surprisingly well and the sparse instrumentation lends itself to Drew’s witty vocal delivery. We also played a full-band-type show at his “Big Outdoor Festival” in Santiago, MN…other than the fact that tornados were touching down miles away and the entire show quickly became a “Big Indoor Clusterfuck,” we had a great time and the band (Drew, Atom on bass and Erik Koskinen on guitar) sounded great. Special props go to Donn Ganske for keeping it together and saving the show.

In the “ohgodwhyisthishappeningtome” department, forty-five minutes into a two-hour drive with swing/rockabilly guitarist Robby Vee I get the increasingly worrying feeling of something being horribly wrong. Sure enough—the moment every drummer fears—my stick bag was left behind in an equipment shuffle. Ah, jeez. [There’s a little Minnesota for you!—Ed.] So what is a drummer without sticks to do? Cancel the show? No sir! We stopped at a local Wal-Mart, where I bought two dowels from the craft department and proceeded to whittle my own goddamn drumsticks like God and Nature intended. Beat that, suckas. Not only did the show go on, but those things actually sounded great! I mean, really, really good. If the drumming thing doesn’t work I might have a future in this. There is photographic evidence of my handiwork in the Photos section.

June’s highlight was playing a few shows around the Upper Midwest with Austin-via-Los-Angeles songwriter Randy Weeks. Randy is just plain crazy good…his songs have the catchiest melodies with upbeat, danceable grooves but are sprinkled with dark—almost cynical sometimes—lyrics. It might be an odd combination in lesser hands but it sounds so natural coming from him. I’ve been wanting to play with Randy since I heard his Madeline album so this mini-tour was a real treat. He’s working on a new record as I write this; you can keep tabs on him via his personal website or his MySpace page. Sign his email list and tell him Richard sent you.

My next “big” summer project is going to be in the studio…I’ll be locked away producing a record for, and with, Erik Koskinen and I am really excited about it. Erik is very talented and has this cool “J.J. Cale meets Daniel Lanois” sort of thing going…it’s a blast to play and I’m looking forward to the challenges of getting it on tape and eventually on an album. Erik is a great producer—I’ve been playing on a few tracks for him on an upcoming Ray Barnard record—and drummer as well so we’ll see how much I’m actually involved. I could use the free time to, say, whittle up a few more drumsticks.

The best part about the my time here in Minneapolis so far? Turns out that the great band I saw my first night out on the town needed a full-time drummer. So I’ve been playing with Molly Maher (along with Erik and Paul Bergen on guitars and Steve Murray on bass) fairly regularly around town, as well as most Wednesday nights at Nye’s in downtown Minneapolis. Molly is a fantastic performer and singer and, quite frankly, if you don’t like her music then there is probably something wrong with you. She’s also responsible for coordinating most of my wedding so far…thanks Molly!

I met Chris while playing in what was to become the Hacienda Brothers. Born from an “all-star” band of sorts, the early version of the Hacienda Brothers featured Chris Gaffney, Dave Gonzales, and Teddy Morgan. We had a lot of trouble settling on a name…Chris’ suggestion? The Axis of Evil. Perfect. I think up until the day he died Chris was a little disappointed that name didn’t get picked.

Chris was always a lot of fun, even when he wasn’t. He loved music but hated being in the studio. I like to think that listening to that first record I can hear the difference between the first takes—when he still wanted to be there—versus anything later. Chris was the kind of guy to wear his heart on his sleeve, no matter what shape it was in.

I had a lot of fun talking with Chris on the road. He would tell me completely random stories about his boxing career or his war career or his music career…stories that, looking back, make me realize that it’s surprising this is the first time Chris has died. He’s lived enough lives to have done it a few times, at least.

One of the sweetest and most meaningful things ever said to me was by Chris Gaffney. “Richard,” he said, “I know I’m not your real grandfather but if it’s okay with you I’d like to be your musical grand-dad.”

“You can’t be my grandfather,” I said. “You’re the same age as my dad.”

“Well,” he said. “We’ll work something out.”

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush. Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

Full article…

There is just no way of getting around it — it is very cold here. It is so cold that before I moved I was getting all sorts of pissed off because no one could talk about my upcoming move without pointing out just how cold it was going to be (“Oh, really, wow, so astute of you to notice…”), and now that I have moved here I am all sorts of pissing other people off by complaining about how cold it is (“Oh, really, wow, so astute of you to notice…”). Needless to say it took a little getting used to. All kidding aside, after a few weeks here I’m enjoying the cold and the change of living in a winter climate for once. Actual snow!

The music scene here is very interesting so far and it’s a fairly drastic shift from the industry culture of Nashville. My good friend — and fantastic guitar player — Paul Bergen has been showing me around and helping me get acquainted…as a result I’ve been very lucky to have met some great players and wonderfully nice people in just a few short days. The first night I ventured out of the house I found myself in the back bar of Nye’s Polonaise listening to Molly Maher and her band — Paul Bergen and Erik Koskinen on guitars, Steve Murray on bass, and Matt Novachis on drums (a great drummer, btw) playing the hell out of some country and soul. A nice way to start a new life in a new city.

The next night found me in the 400 Bar playing with Drew Peterson of 40 Watt Bulb…Paul and Erik on guitars once more with Paul Manske on bass (one of the best bass players I’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to—he made it way too easy to find a pocket). Drew is a great writer and lyricist and his songs were making me laugh out loud while depressing the hell out of me. That is a good thing and a compliment, in case there were any doubts.

Last night was spent hanging with the better half and friends; later in the night we went to Memory Lanes to watch the Hillbilly Voodoo Dolls play a stage erected in the middle of a freaking bowling alley. Bowling on lanes 1–16, band playing on lanes 17–20, bowling on lanes 20+. This town is totally alright with me.

What, exactly, you ask? Well, let’s see…

• After a lot of deliberation, my ladyfriend and I decided the time has come to move on—not from each other but away from Nashville and on to something a little different. So, Twin Cities, here we come…St. Paul, MN to be exact. I’m a little sad to leave some of my oldest and closest friends as well as some great new ones but in the end I’m excited about trying something new. Nashville, to me, is like a girl I’m happy to date but just can’t see myself settling down with.

• Went down to St. Paul to visit friends and get acquainted with the neighborhoods. Over the weekend my car was stolen. It was abandoned less than a block away and towed to the St. Paul impound lot. So, we got it back—minus one iPod, a few personal things, an ignition system, and $156 in impound fees. Fuck you, car thief. Fuck you. There are so many levels of fuck I feel for you right now.

• Celebrated Christmas in Phoenix with family…drove down to my old home of Tucson for a day and got to sit in on a show with Cathy Rivers. Lots of thanks are due to Michael Serpe for letting us steal some time from his setlist and to Erik Truelove for loaning me brushes. Ate (real) Mexican food for the first time in a few years and saw a cactus or two.

Somewhere in all of that I also managed to get engaged! Holy crap. I actually asked this woman to marry me and she said yes. Apparently a lot of people are more surprised by the car getting stolen than this, so I think that’s a good thing. New city, new jobs, new friends, new music, and a wedding—2008 has its hands full.

Update: The first day of 2008 was spent in a semi-rollover car accident thanks to black ice. Everyone’s okay—we are now minus one 1996 Ford Ranger, though. Maybe 2008 is the year of public transportation…

The whole day was pretty spur of the moment…construction was going on up and downstairs; air-conditioning repairmen were working on, er, the air-conditioning thirty feet behind me while I was tracking…in other words it was just about perfect. I got to try a setup of my 12” vintage hi-hats and a tiny 8” snare from a cocktail kit—lots of fun and totally loopy. Stoll has an amazing voice and very cool, honest songs…it’ll be cool to hear what happens with these tracks.

I did manage to take a few photos, which is really what this little post is all about—I finally added a little photo gallery action to this site. I’ve only got a few online at the moment but I have a bunch from the past few years I’ll be adding sooner or later. You can check them out here.

In the studio, I’ve been recording demos with Park Chisolm and Teddy Morgan for a new music project by, er, Kevin Costner. That’s Kevin Costner as in the Kevin Costner, as in Crash Davis. His new band, the Modern West, has been playing festivals and select shows and is going to be featured in an upcoming movie, Swing Vote. The whole thing is a little surreal but very fun, although I don’t know yet if anything I played will make it to the big screen…my Hollywood career might have to wait!

I’ve also been working a bit with B-3 bad-ass Jon Coleman, finishing up tracks for his upcoming album, Make it Fast. I love playing with Jon; he’s a hell of a player and songwriter—quite frankly, that man could make a bowl of rocks groove. I also tracked a tune with Bekka Bramlett, whose scratch vocals sound better than most singer’s finished takes…Bekka is totally wild and crazy and fun as hell to work with.

Live, I’ve been playing with blues/rock guitarist Danny Torroll for the last few weekends; the gig is the standard blues/sports bar thing, but it can be a lot of fun—plus, those who know me know I like playing for as long as I can get away with much more than doing 25 minute showcases.

And finally, in gear-geekout news, I’ve been playing a new, satin oil tobacco finish DW drum set with a 24” kick that could play my gigs by itself. My 20” days might be forever behind me…

For the most part, when drummers want to make some sort of radically different sound they need to go out and get something new to shake or hit…by nature that makes us somewhat gear-oriented. Go to any drummer’s website and there will almost positively be a steadily updated inventory of drums/cymbals/heads/sticks they are playing complete with photos and running commentary (I haven’t gotten to this point yet but it might be inevitable). Not all drummers are prone to the gear geekout…there are drummers who will absolutely out-cool me in every sense of the term and play any ol’ thing that happens to find its way under their drum stick—and sound really good doing it—but I will be the first to admit I am not that guy. No, I am the guy who obsesses at night about whether or not the additional cymbal stand will allow breathing room for the possible third snare drum, or how to run the most efficient chain from sequencer to sampler to DI to mix.

So when this opportunity came to play a few gigs with Jessica Maros, I jumped at the chance and immediately broke out the grid paper and layout tools for the forthcoming drum set extravaganza. Ok, not quite, but really, really close. I’ve been dying to play with Jess for some time; she plays a very quirky-yet-cool style of pop/electronica that I’ve been really wanting to approach for awhile—it’s the sort of gig with music that’s fun to play and that I enjoy listening to AND lets me go nuts on the gear front trying to emulate the sounds on her records.

My plan was to get a sampler/sequencer of some kind (which I had at one time but never used) and set up a couple of different snares and hi-hats to try and emulate processed drum sounds. Snares I have, but I needed an extra hi-hat stand and a few assorted goodies, so off to the music store I went.

Let it be known that in my entire career of playing drums I have never once looked down at my hi-hat foot and thought, “man, I could play so much better if I had just a little more floating rotor action in my heel plate,” but holy moses and god almighty when I played this new tricked out DW 9000 (even the name sounds hi-tech) pedal with a double eccentric cam my left foot might as well have been having sex with the thing. No, that is not disgusting, because it is that good. It also costs just a little more than my monthly food budget, so needless to say I am not the proud new owner of this contraption. (DW, if you’re reading this, the sensible thing to do at this point is to take full advantage of my sizable reader base and offer a full hardware endorsement. I’m just saying.)

I did end up with an interesting cable hi-hat stand, a very cool and trashy pair of vintage Italian hi-hats, and a Roland SPD-S sampler which I’m having a blast with so far. The setup was fun…one hi-hat and snare for choruses and rock and roll moments; another hi hat and snare for verses, loopiness, and the occasional goofiness; the sampler set off to the side for me to trigger loops off of on-the-fly.

And the gig? The gig went great, although as a showcase during a music festival it clocked in at just under thirty minutes and made me wonder if any of that was even necessary. Honestly, I think a lot of those sounds are so subtle they probably don’t add too much, but I’m willing to bet they would be missed if they were gone. Either way, they sure were fun to play.

Hopefully I get a chance to do this again soon enough…in the meantime, you can check out Jessica Maros here.

I don’t even remotely know where to begin. Do you know that feeling you get when you go up to a cute girl for the first time and try to say something sensible like, “Hello, I thought you have a cute smile,” but it comes out something like, “Hi, you’re so pretty we can date and maybe marry and have kids and I hope you like Chinese food ‘cause I do.” No? Maybe that’s just me. Regardless, the point is every time I try to mention something about my trip my brain shuts down and my mouth starts uttering every wonderful and amazing thing I experienced, in no particular order, and with no sense of timing or concern about whether or not anyone wants to listen.

That being said, here’s some of what happened…

• We stayed in Bogota, with my aunt and her two sons—my cousins [Note: I’m leaving everyone’s names out of this for the sake of maybe they don’t want their names plastered all over the internet.]—in a six-floor walkup apartment. The six floors didn’t faze me except for when I walked up or down them. Every day, at least three times a day. Did I mention that Bogota is roughly 9,000 feet above sea level? Needless to say, I didn’t do much smoking while I was there, although I did manage to bring a carton of red-label Mustangs home with me.

• A lot of people—including me, I have to admit—were a little worried about our safety. For some time Bogota (and Colombia in general) was one of the more dangerous places to visit in the world. Nowadays, things are fairly safe and some areas are surprisingly touristy. To be honest, I’ve felt more unease at places here in Nashville than walking around the city. It was interesting to see some of the security measures in places—heavily armed policemen complete with dogs at the entrances to shopping malls and bus stations, security tape placed on doors of buses, etc.

• Cars are pretty expensive in Colombia so when we travelled to another city to visit friends or family (usually every day) we would take a flota, basically a small bus. The flotas are a trip…the biggest challenge is squeezing into one, especially on a busy day. Each flota has a conductor (if you can call the guy who hangs out of the door hawking tickets to passersby a conductor) whose job is essentially to promise you that yes, there are indeed seven seats available for you and your family when he actually means something like, yes, there are three seats available and still room under the luggage racks where the rest of you can squeeze. Bus-ticket salesman are, quite possibly, the most aggressive salesmen on the face of the earth; for fun, wander into a terminal in downtown anywhere and sigh out loud, “I have a lot of disposable income and wish I knew where to go…” Do this in español but make sure you are wearing your best gringo-iest shorts and sandals for bonus points.

• Speaking of aggressive, the taxi drivers in Colombia, I think, are all bored veteran F1 drivers who lost their endorsements and are now looking for something to prove. Holy crap. Taking a ride in a taxi in Colombia is the best dollar-for-value entertainment since Six Flags.

• The food in Colombia is fantastic; lots of grilled and fresh foods…every morning we started with the most amazing cup of hot chocolate…it seemed every street was filled with vendors selling fresh fruit or hot arepas or empanadas. Surprisingly, the coffee isn’t really any better there than you can get here, which I guess makes sense since they send us all the good stuff anyway. The chicken…oh my god the chicken…the fast-foodish, rotiserrie-style chicken is the best chicken in this planet. If someone asked me to commit an unspeakable crime, with the payoff being some of this delicious chicken, I would seriously sit down and consider it. I am not kidding about this.

• Our first night in Bogota was spent with virtually our entire family from Colombia crammed in the little three room apartment. Thirty-plus people in an apartment built for three until three in the morning equals good time. I learned (as best as I can learn) how to dance the Cumbia, listened to great music, and drank, oh, say, about half of a bottle of aguardiente, (essentially the national liquor of Colombia—it’s clear and tastes not unlike black licorice), setting a precendent for the rest of trip, or, at the least, a personal goal. Kidding! (No.)

• Colombia is beautiful. It’s visually beautiful, but it also has the most amazing and warmhearted people I’ve met in a long time. There’s this sense of national pride that is apparent everywhere. I know we Americans love our country and all, but I always get the feeling it’s more of this sort of, “my dad can beat up your dad” sort of thing. What I felt there was a little more…honest? Real? I don’t know, but it was certainly inspiring and made me proud. If you look close, though, you can feel a general insecurity in the air—brought on by the years of conflict and the realization that there are still problems of violence and internal struggle. Someone told me there, “Colombia is a beautiful country loved only by its children,” which made me sad, mostly because I didn’t know if it was true.

Looking back at what I’ve written so far, I realize I a) haven’t scratched the surface of what happened, and b) haven’t touched on what I really experienced while I was there—my wonderful family and friends. I can’t even begin to describe how important they are to me and what it meant to finally be able to spend some time with them.

Sooner or later I’ll get some photos up here and maybe finally get this photo gallery thing happening. In the meantime, lots of drummy stuff has been going on since I’ve been back…more news later but now I have to put on my Lucho Bermudez records.

—R