Drums...Lots And Lots Of Drums

An update on the album!

I spent three days at Sage And Sound Recording Studios in Hollywood with an arsenal of percussion. 8 of the 12 songs on Calling All Dawns require percussion of some sort, ranging from African ashikos and udus, Brazilian surdos, Middle Eastern dumbeks and frame drums, Japanese taiko...in other words, the works.

The bulk of the percussion was played by Greg Ellis; session musician (check him out on this summer's blockbuster Iron Man), drummer for Juno Reactor, former founder of Vas, and all around talented guy. We spent two and a half days laying down all manner of raucous noise.

Day three, the neo-taiko group On Ensemble came in to record the Japanese percussion, as well as to add some low-frequency bottom end for the entire album. Shoji Kameda, Kris Bergstrom and Maz Baba came in and played well into the night. Shoji, Kris and I go way back, actually; we all attended Stanford together, and played in Stanford Taiko as undergrads (those two were a helluva lot better at it than I was!).

In addition to their guest appearance on my album, they've got a great sophomore album in the works right now. Keep an eye out for it!

The session was engineered by the incomparable John Kurlander, of course. My album's in good hands with him.