Session Drummer | Studio Drummer | Touring and Worship Drummer for Hire | Dale Baker | Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, NC

Merry Christmas!

I've been hard at work re-designing my blog here.  It's slowly taking shape.  As I was updating my pages, I came across this Sixpence rarity recorded back in 1995 or 1996.  Enjoy!

You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch
Artist:  Sixpence None the Richer
Produced by Matt Slocum
Engineered by Russ Long at The Carport in Nashville, TN
Vox: Leigh Nash
Guitar:  Matt Slocum
Bass:  JJ Plasencio
Mellotron Strings:  Phil Madeira
Drums and Percussion:  Dale Baker

Floratone and Influences

I'm listening to the new Bill Frisell album, Floratone, and marveling in it's simple complexity.  As I'm listening to Matt Chamberlain do what he does so well and the textures Bill and everyone else is laying down, I started to think of some of my formative influences from my college days. 

First off, I was really amazed at Dan Wojociehowski's playing the first time I saw him play, and then later fascinated at how fluid Randy Drake was, and how his left foot danced on the high-hat pedal.  Then there was Matt's playing, and alongside him - Earl Harvin.  Both magnificent and wonderful players.  Just watching them there was this poetry that you couldn't help but be captivated by.  We'd gather in Matt's practice room after drum line rehearsal and watch him read through transcriptions of various Zappa tunes and stuff he had written out.  Another formative influence was Jim White.  When he played me some of his influences and showed me where the groove was and what it meant to "lay it down," I'd never heard someone speak so passionately about playing a solid backbeat.  Other players that influenced me, were Chris Brown, and Leann Harris, with her wide ranging knowledge of percussion and styles.  And then there was that summer at Disney where Danny Gottlieb showed me what it meant to "drive" a band and play with conviction.  When I returned to school the next Fall my drum teacher could see a noticeable difference in my playing as I auditioned for one of the many schools "lab bands." 

Well, my iTunes player has moved off of Floratone and now I'm hearing Imogen Heap.  She brings up an entirely different set of memories (one of which I think was a showcase at a dark club in Vegas? where she played a few songs on piano and Sixpence played a few of our songs...)...anyway...ah memories, I thought I'd share a few with you today.

Jon Rajewski

My friend Rob Seals hooked me up with some great music that I'm now just getting a chance to listen to, and one of the artists he turned me onto I've really been  enjoying.  His name is Jon Rajewski and the disc I've been checking out is called "Still Yes."  Rob did an excellent job producing this, and I've really enjoyed the arrangements and the blend of instruments on this.  Jon's stuff reminds me of a mixture of Dave Spencer, Josh Rouse and a little bit of Jack Johnson thrown in for good measure.  There are some wonderful string arrangements and mighty tasty drum beats and percussion on this as well...(I think the drummer was Billy Hawn - but there might have been some other folks involved as well...)  Actually I found the following blurb on Billy's site:

Still Yes" was produced by Rob Seals and features a great cast of players such as: Jeff Coffin (Bela Fleck), Sean Hurley (Vertical Horizon), Sheldon Gomberg (Ryan Adams), David Henry (Ben Folds), Brandon Bush (Train), Beth Balmer (Fielding).

Give it a listen if you get a chance, the disc is available on iTunes and via Jon's website as well.

 

My new favorite song

Thanks Able!

Work

This past week has been full of some fun stuff...I played a session for my friend Kelly and recorded with Mike again up in Greensboro.  We tracked 5 songs, and I was able to play a bunch of fun stuff.  I've already heard some roughs from the session and I'm really proud of the work I did and can't wait to hear the final project.  More than likely it'll end up being a 5 song ep available on iTunes, as some of the songs were recorded specifically to pitch to HBO, and some independent media companies...

I played on a track for a new friend Bill this week at my house.  My friend Mark came over with his mobile rig and we tracked the drums in my small little studio room.  I used my Blue Premier Kit and we mic'ed it with some Earthworks condensers and a D112. 3 mics baby!  It was fun to record this way, and even though my room doesn't sport the best acoustics, I think we still ended up with some great sounds.  It seemed like Bill was fairly pleased with the results, so hopefully we'll all get to do some more work together in the future.

I played at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh on Sunday and had a wonderful time.  It felt like I was in a studio, because they have the drums enclosed in a booth, and everyone monitors via in ears or with headphones.  I used my trusty Studio Kans and really enjoyed the freedom of mixing my own monitor that the Aviom system they use allows.  Mike Passaro led worship and Shelly Moore was one of the singers...so it was fun getting to play with them again.  Mike programmed some awesome loops and I had a blast listening to the loops and playing with them during worship.  I hope I get to play there again.

Max Roach, RIP.

Another great one passed along to the big 'ole jam session in the sky.

Local music blog, The Oak Room did a great write up on the man, and posted some videos and a song as well.  I won't try to out do that blog's wonderful write up, but I did dig up some links you can follow if you want.

Quote from the NYT:  "Over the years he challenged both his audiences and himself by working not just with standard jazz instrumentation, and not just in traditional jazz venues, but in a wide variety of contexts, some of them well beyond the confines of jazz as that word is generally understood."

--"Max Roach, a Founder of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83," by Peter Keepnews, August 16, 2007"

You can also find out more about Max via Wikipedia, Drummerworld, The Hardbop Page, and read the excellent article over at the New York Times.

While at the Times, look for the wonderful "Topics" article about him as well as his official Obituary. 

The Eraser

Transcribing songs and arrangements is fun for me.  I wish I could find a job that paid me to transcribe drum parts all day.  Man that would be awesome.  I've started charting out all the songs that I get asked to play when I "fill-in" at the various churches I play from time to time.  And I'm starting to amass quite a library of charts - so after my gig with Nathan back in June, I compiled all my various charts and alphabetized them into their own designated folder, so that now when I chart out a song, it goes in the folder.  And then when I do a gig, I just go to the folder and pull out the songs I need for the services.  I've even got more than one chart for the same song, for those songs that were recorded by more than one artist. 

Anyway, today and tomorrow, I'm doing ALOT of transcribing...I've got charts to create for this weekend's services at Hope Creek Church and I've got anywhere from 2-3 hours of songs to transcribe for "The Approach" worship experience that is taking place at Crosspointe Church in Cary on Friday night.  We've got rehearsal tomorrow night, so I've got to get the rest of these charts together.

Well, as I listen to these songs in iTunes, once the song is over, it goes to the next song in my library.  Today one of those songs happened to be Thom Yorke's, "The Eraser."  I took a break and decided to transcribe the rhythm of that (seemingly) random piano part that creates the bed for the song.  I did this once before with The Pyramid Song off of one of those later Radiohead albums.  Thom has a knack for creating these somewhat random repetitive phrases, but upon closer inspection make complete and perfect musical sense.  For instance, the phrase for "The Eraser" is a typical 8 bar phrase, but because of how the piano is played it sounds alot weirder.   There is a delay to the piano as well, so what follows below are the beats (in bold)that the initial piano chord falls on in the verse phrase:

Count along if you will:
| 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3  4 |

| 1 2  3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | repeat

I love digging into songs like this.  It makes them come more alive to me.  Fun stuff.  Well...back to work!

Oxygen 8 is now working...

Wow.  This seemingly took forever, and I almost gave up but my friend Mark Williams gave me hope.  He said it was possible to get the keyboard to work, even though it wasn't the newest version of the keyboard (mine still says Midi-Man on the back) by using a Midi interface. 

So I pulled out my old MOTU USB Fastlane and downloaded the new drivers for Intel based Macs, did some fiddling and got it to work.  Woo Freakin' Hoo!  All the sites I visited last night, made it seem that if you don't have an Oxygen 8 v.2 your basically out of luck, well thankfully that's not the case.  I played through most of the synths and keyboard sounds in Garage Band this afternoon and then took a little snooze. 

Iron Chef: Beat Box Edition

I just saw this clip over at Music Thing...I'm sure it's already been all around the internet, but I still thought it was cool, even if I'm late to the game.  Let's see if I can get the video to properly embed here in my site...

Studies and Etudes

I finally laid down some initial tracks for a potential solo album I've had brewing in my head for awhile.  Last night and tonight I spent a few precious hours with my friends Perry and Alex from The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers, and we assembled some ideas of mine into a couple of percussion/ drum set vignettes.  Not quite Thor and not as polished as this guy, but still it's something. Hopefully, I'll continue putting together this record of drum songs/ beats/ rhythms and someday will have a collection that's worth sharing with you...until then, I'll post my sonic experiments for you when I can. 

Stuff...

I was working at home tonight and got a chance to finally check out some music I'd been wanting to listen to.  Thomas Dybdahl, Thor Harris' solo drum/ percussion record, Lhasa, and Jose Gonsalez made great companions while I compiled my numbers and figures.

I also took some breaks and found myself over on Matt Chamberlain's site...man his drumming is just so perfect!  His site is cool too...real funky with it's Napoleon Dynamite lettering and great music.  And then I opened up my email to see that my good friend Mark Keefer had included me in his latest blog entry, which was an honor considering the other drummers featured in that post.

Oh, and I hope to get some pics posted soon from the session I did with Daniel Hart (The Physics of Meaning) at 's place in Raleigh.  Mark has a real funky house with high ceilings and a killer collection of mics...I'll let you know as soon as I get those pics out of the camera and onto the web...

Oh, have you seen what Alice Cooper's drummer is up to these days?

And I'm excited to see Strictly Background.  I just found out that Frank Lenz did the music for the movie...

Alright, that's enough for now...hopefully it won't be another month before I post again...

 

Aimee Mann on IFC

I'm not sure how old this clip is...but this is brilliant music performed at its best. (Check out the guy playing keys, I'm wondering if he's triggering different patches from the drum pads on the keyboard - it's amazing how many sounds he's going through on the song)...

Somehow I stumbled onto Brightcove - which is a hipper, slicker more professional version of You Tube and ended up watching a couple of Rodale videos before noticing that they have a lot of the music performances from the Henry Rollins show on IFC.  Awesome stuff to browse through if you have the time...I'm hoping to get back there to watch Daniel Johnston and Ben Folds.  (all right...I just did - Ben was awesome as usual and Daniel, well let's just say he's an acquired taste but well worth the effort)

Buhanan Article

My family and I went to Elmo's tonight for dinner (our kitchen was a mess and I was too exhausted to make dinner), and while waiting in line we looked through the stack of newspapers near the front of the restaurant and to our surprise we saw that our friends were on the cover of the Independent, highlighting a feature article on them inside. Written by Grayson Currin, it's a story:

"...about Chapel Hill’s Bu Hanan collective, a collaborative cache of five songwriters who play in each other’s bands and record each other’s records. Perry Wright of Bu Hanan’s The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers was at the antifolk festival, and he loved it (See Perry sing along to Billy Sugarfix with Bowerbirds’ Perry Wright here). But Bu Hanan doesn’t let much hang out. As the story goes, the bands in the Bu Hanan collective criticize one another in some asymptotic pursuit of perfection. When something isn’t right, they raze and reassemble. It’s a system that works, even if the participants occasionally get their feelings hurt."

This is what Grayson wrote about his cover story on his blog, thus the reference to the Anti-Folk festival at the Duke Coffeehouse this past week. 

Anyway, I was excited to see my friends in the Buhanan Collective featured in such a well done story chronicling their past and giving glimpses of their future together.  I've been a part of the "fun" over at the Buhanan house, having played on a bunch of Perry's, Prayers and Tears records, Daniel's Physics of Meaning records, and recording and playing live with all of them at one time or another.  I've had some wonderful times with those guys, and I hope to have more.  (on a side note, just last Sunday I recorded some tracks with Daniel for his new Physics of Meaning record...)

You can listen to a mix tape the Independent put together specifically for the article.  I'm on at least 4 of the tracks (described below via the Independent):

• 1. "Rotation of Crops," The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers

  Contemplative but driving, "Rotation of Crops" is a blooming rock song with unexpected details. Notice the production on the drums and the reverse vocals undercutting Perry Wright's lead line. Text painting, anyone?

• 4. "Lisa," The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers

  "Lisa" is a tale of loneliness as told by an estranged imaginary friend. For premise, illustration and execution, it's all but perfect. Recorded last year for Esopus Magazine, it's also one of the collective's best moments.

• 6. "The Sad Lives of Hollywood Lovers," The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers

  The coda gets full and cascades outward like a piece from OK Computer. But Perry Wright's ruminations-in-verse are entirely human, watching two people cast their misery into one another.

• 9. "Down at Columbia and Cameron," The Physics of Meaning

  Hear two Bu Hanan stamps: David's thick, goading bass and Daniel's string polyphony clinging to every surface.

It's possible that my playing is on more of the tracks as Alex will occasionally re-use some of my drum stuff. If you hear a 16th note shaker somewhere, it's probably me... :-)

New Loops posted

I just posted a bunch of new drum loops.  Check them out and let me know what you think.  I'm pretty sure these are better than the first batch, so much so, I deleted the original post and files and replaced them with these new and improved versions.  There are also some single hits over there now as well.

For those of you without audio equipment to properly assemble the loops and listen to them in some sort of a context, you may want to try the online audio/sequencer tool "Splice" over here.

Happy programming!

Long time, I know.

I know it's been a while.  Sorry to those of you who frequent my site.

I've been debating whether or not I've got the time to keep my blog up and going.  It may be that I scale back a bit and concentrate my energies more on Durham Drum Lessons and keep a blog over on that site related to my gigs and professional engagements.  I've also debated porting all my blog stuff over to Google and let them host my blog for free via Blogger.

Anyway, I'll be sure to keep you posted should anything change.

Today I was thinking about how back before I joined Sixpence (in '93) I had all these dreams of playing and recording music and at the time they seemed ridiculous and a little bit crazy, yet most of them came true within and during the time I was with Sixpence.  Who would've thunk it?

So, today I thought it's time for me to dream once again, and so for your amusement and my sanity and whatever...I thought I'd list out people I'd love to play with/ record and or tour with again, or maybe for the first time:

• Kevin Killen
• Chris Walla
• Buddy Miller
• Patty Griffin
• Michael W. Smith
• Amy Grant
• Over the Rhine
• Leland
• Jars of Clay
• Victoria Williams
• Steve Hindalong
• Mark Byrd
• Nathan Fancher
• Russ Long
• Martin Baird
• Steve Taylor
• Mark Nash
• Alex Lazara
• Perry Wright

Oh well, that's a partial list.  Crazy though it may seem, I figure what the heck.  Maybe by putting these dreams in writing, they'll come into reality.   I still get a thrill each time I get a chance to play drums and I feel I've continued to develop, grow and mature as a player over the past few years. 

Anyway, that's about it.  Nothing much to say...just me rambling on and dreaming out loud.  Take care everybody!