Listen To Myself

I was at a big jam session/bbq a while ago - it's an annual tradition put on by a guy I'm working with, and he gets some really fun musicians out to his place in France, where we spend about 10 hours playing, eating, and drinking.

It was fascinating for a couple reasons. First, I realized that while everyone else was interested in getting another drink, putting some food on the bbq, I just wanted to play. I ached for it in a way that most people wouldn't associate with wanting to play music, but it was inside me just bursting to get out. I'm a social guy, and love hanging out and relaxing with friends, but when there is music on the horizon everything else fades and I am compelled to create and pound my drums and celebrate...

Have you ever been so happy that you have had to express it physically - to dance around, to laugh out loud, to just put your head back and yell? That's how I feel when I sit down to play, but I have the mysterious joy of having the physical act not just celebrating the happiness I feel, but causing it at the same time, going on and on in some kind of tremendous maelstrom, feeding on itself and growing in power and intensity. There was another drummer there, but he didn't show up right away, left early, and was pretty happy to be at the table or bar, so I was able to play for most of the time - and I would have played the whole way through if I could have.

The second thing that I've realized is that, as I got the CDs of some of the session today, I love listening to myself play.

Is it just that I'm vain? I think that may be a little bit of it... listening and thinking, man - that is one MEAN groove. Maybe it's not vanity as much as just taking pride in creating something beautiful, and especially something that everyone else in the room could feed off of and ride on, a pocket that they could just fall into and have carry them along to create in total freedom and security.

But the other thing is that time is so personal, it's not exactly the same for any two people... where I feel like the beat should be and where you do are going to be a little different. I'm no solo drum monster, don't have fantastic technical skills, but after a lot of years, I can play well enough that, when I listen back to it, it sounds when listen to it like it did when I felt it, which, as anyone who has done some recording can tell you, is huge. It feels right, right in a way that I couldn't ever describe.

I love the Tragically Hip, a great Canadian band, but there drummer feels the beat a little ahead of where it actually lands... and I feel it a little behind. When I've seen them in concert it's almost like a kind of torture - it constantly feels like he's trying to speed it up. I'm sure it would kill him to hear me, too. But when I listen to tunes I've played on, it's like falling into a conversation with a long lost friend: it's familiar and comfortable, but at the same time still fresh and interesting, with nuances left to explore. Beautiful.