Skip to main content

A music director, producer, session drummer, composer, and mix engineer. He has worked with the likes of Scott Weiland, Bebe Rexha, Tori Kelly, Hailee Steinfeld, Nick Lachey, Disney, and many others. He has appeared on TV shows such as Good Morning America, The View, The Arsenio Hall Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Last Call with Carson Daly. He has achieved multi-platinum success as a drummer and engineer as well as music directed multiple major label tours. And, he has composed, recorded and produced songs for feature films, movie trailers and TV shows.
Send your questions or comments about this episode via https://featuredup.com/nhte

Notable Guest Quotes

“I had been touring with Ruel, playing drums, prior to working on any of his records and got hit up by his producer, M-Phazes, to work on the track.”

“I'm not one to use the same thing. I change everything I ever do for every song, meaning preamps, compressions, routing, like, however I end up doing it, it's always different.”

“I think I slightly have an advantage in the way that I'm also a producer and mixer, so from the sonic picture, I know how to get there.  I try to deliver stuff to people already done. You know, I'm not planning on giving people raw drum files that they load in and then they're like, ‘Okay, well now let me shape the thing.’  Like, I'm trying to deliver it that when you pull it up in your session, it's done.”

“I'm a big supporter of, like, trying to hire the people that you know are going to give you something really interesting to listen to.  And there are so many musicians and producers and people like that out there that have an amazing sound.  It's like, let's hire them to give me that.”

“Two weeks after I finished high school, I was on a plane coming out to America after I did all the auditions and stuff.  And then was at Paramount making a record for like three or four months.”

“I ended up playing in a band named Porcelain that had a record deal with Motown through Universal.”

“This first Randy Jackson gig I ended up booking… it was for a, like, very famous Russian rock artist.  And that ended up being my first like kind of big U.S. run.  We did Warped tour that year and a bunch of other things and opened for Nickelback and it was like a really amazing experience.”

“I booked that gig you know, and that gig ended up being great.  I probably had about two years’ worth of touring from them, maybe more, three years, and met some great people on that.  Max Bernstein was the music director on that gig and Max is, like, one of the premier music directors in the world, I'd say.  He's Taylor Swift’s guitar player, among every other major rock star person that he's worked with.”

“I sent in a video audition that led to me getting called to go to the studio and actually have, like, a playing audition with the band – and this was for Scott's solo project, which was called Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts – and went and played with them and essentially, like, got the gig and was in Houston 24 hours later playing the first show.  And, you know, then toured with him for essentially up until he passed away.”

“I had a doctor be like, ‘You’ve got to leave and go home because you're never going to be able to play or walk if you don't go get some serious rehabilitation.’  So, I ended up having to leave that tour and, long story short, I didn't play – or couldn't really play – for about a year after that.  It destroyed me, like, mentally, physically, everything.”

“You need to be lucky in the way that you meet the right people that are going to help you.  But you still need to be able to back it up, you know.  So, you can't be lucky and know people and suck at your job.”

“I built a show that went to Broadway for about four months last year and that entire show was automated from playback, like, literally everything: vocals, timecode, the monitor console, the front of house console, the visuals, every single patch change for the electronic drums, the guitar player, the bass player, the keyboard player, like, everything was being controlled via midi.”

Songs on this episode

“Painkiller” (by Ruel)
“Technicolor Honeymoon” (by Maisy Kay)