Deane Ogden talks about being born into a musical family and moving to the other side of the world

Lots of interesting stuff happened in between and stick around because Dean has some great advice and a very interesting item to leave in the music room. But first, music stories. Music Room alumnus Daisy Cool and composing partner Tom Nettle ship are scoring a brand new drama series for Channel five. The four part thriller for her sins which stars Joe Joyner and Rachel Shein started yesterday. That's June the fifth at 9:00 PM Massive congratulations to Daisy and Tom.

I'm looking forward to seeing that It's on my watch list. Next I ask the music room community on Facebook, a big question. What's one quality you look for in a collaborator? Hmm, rod, this is going to sound lame, but honestly it's way more enjoyable if you get on to some degree socially and can have a left together. Criticism will always sound more palatable when coming from someone you trust. I like, I agree with that.

Rod Toby says, someone who will force me to bring my A game or more a air quotes, you only get better by playing a better opponent. Okay. Yeah. Herman these days. Someone who commits and actually sees the collaboration through em. Brackets, size, ply. Oh dear. Sounds like, uh, Herman was let down a little bit there. Uh, still we try these things out, don't we, Marco? Fun and commitment first and foremost. Yeah, great stuff. Marco.

Uh, Anique to me, organized and reliable are equal to creative and nice these days. I agree with that. To an extent Anique. I think maybe if you can have all four, that's even better, isn't it? Organized, reliable, creative, and nice. that's a winner to me, Neil A Pulse. Okay. Looks like Neil's looking for collaborations. come and say hello to Neil in the music Ring community on Facebook.

You too can take part in wonderful discussions within the Music room community via the Facebook group or via the Instagram feed or subscribe to the newsletter. It's all there to help. And links are in the show notes or head to music room.community to find out more. And if you like this section, I mentioned the music room newsletter there, which you can read. Share, subscribe to whatever tickles you're fancy. And the link, as they say, is in the show notes.

Dean Ogden is an American record producer session and touring drummer and co-founder, songwriter, drummer of the band, stone Cold Killers over a long and winding career. Dean has worked as a recording and touring drummer with the likes of Stevie Wonder. Robbie Williams and Seal written the music for feature films and primetime tv and produced some of Indonesia's finest musical talent. With no further ado, let's hear from Dean himself. Dean Ogden, composer, producer, rocking drummer.

Welcome to the music room.

Uh, but then composed the music for feature films, primetime tv, as well as producing for a lot of artists. So for those listeners who are trying to figure out where they fit in the huge tapestry, that is the, the music business, how do you see yourself

so it's kind of been a career of just, I guess, you know what, what a lot of musicians probably do is just, you do whatever you can to survive. You know, I've, I've, I've played with a lot of people. I've produced records, like you said, I've, I've definitely, there was a period of time, I don't do it so much anymore, but definitely a period of time where a hundred percent of my energy went into film scoring. And, you know, when I was living in Los Angeles, I was really pursuing that.

And I kind of thought that would be the thing that, that I was most interested in, you know, after playing drums my whole life and, sort of trying to, you Carve out a career doing that is, is pretty difficult, or at least it was for me. and, and it, and it, it never really materialized into anything permanent. You know, I was a jobbing drummer, which I loved, you know, and that's really what I wanted to do from the time that I was a little kid, you know, was just be a studio musician.

And I achieved that and it was great and I loved it. And then where I lived in Los Angeles, you know, that, that, that industry kind of dried up and everybody bailed and went to other places. so I, you know, I was al I always loved movies, always loved film music. growing up I was a huge John Berry fan and loved James Bond and, you know, of course Williams and, you know, all the, all the, all the greats, right? but also on the classical side. I mean, I was a huge Aaron Copeland fan.

I just loved John Cage, of course, being a percussionist and a drummer, and, just loved that kind of stuff. but I never was really as in love with that as I was with playing drums despite, to sort of like sidewind myself into a second career, being a, a film composer.

But I did it for a decade, you know, and I, and I did a lot of fun stuff and I don't have any regrets about it, but I, I. Have since kind of found myself sort of drifting back to my first love of, you know, playing drums and, you know, being on the road, and being a touring drummer and being in the, spending a lot of time in the studio, doing a lot of sessions and, so that's kind of how it's been.

It's been, it's been 30 plus years of touring studio sessions for a time, television and film, and then sort of full circle back to touring and sessions now, you know? with my band.

And so I finally just, I sold everything in la, moved over here and, you know, off to the races and started a family and all that kind of stuff. And so, and then we moved to Bali when our first son was born. Three, three or four years later. But while I was in Jakarta, I met this, this kid, he's a guitar player and we, I don't remember exactly how we met. I think we met from maybe through a mutual friend or something.

But anyway, he was playing in a band over there and I went to hear his band at a jazz club over there and just really switched on. Kid man, Indonesian kid, didn't really speak much English, but, just a, an Alan Holdsworth type, John McLaughlin kind of guitarist. Just really, and really young, you know, he was, I, I guess at the time he would've been, would've been about 20 and in mid twenties, you know, and, um, single guy and just, you know, working in studios over there.

There's quite a bit, quite a few high-end studios over in Jakarta, cuz that's where if, if, if there is a music scene in Indonesia, that's where it is. You know, it's where the work happens. he was there from his village. Kind of a transplant, sort of an LA type thing, like for me, you know, and I met him and we, we jammed together a couple of times and I, I sat in with his band once and, you know, that was a lot of fun. And we just became friends and we had a shared love of Level 42, the band.

And when I, when I was a little kid, they, they, Phil Gould has always been my drumming idol. He's, he's like the Mount Rushmore for me, if you know. And so Pfizer, this kid, and I realized that we were both huge fans of, the founding, founding era of level 42, the Gould Brothers and Mark King and Mike, Linda. And so we kind of shared that passion. And we just stayed in touch. You know, I moved to Bali and he stayed there and kept working and doing his thing.

And over the course of 10 years or so, we just stayed in touch and, you know, through Facebook and all that. But we were always talking about, man, we gotta do something together. You know, we gotta do, we gotta do a project or something, or write some songs or, you know, something. I mean, we just, we just played together those two or three times and that was awesome. And I could feel there was something there. And I had a, I had a medical issue about a year ago.

I was in, I spent, you know, a couple months in the hospital, and while I was in the hospital, I got this text from him and he goes, Hey. He goes, dude, I moved my family to Bali. We've been here for two months. Where are, where are you? I go, well, I'm laying in the hospital, man, like, I just had double surgery, you know? And he's like, whoa, what? So as soon as I got out of the hospital, we got together, you know, he came and visited me and we talked and we hadn't seen each other in 10.

We literally had not seen each other or spent any time together in the same room in 10 years. And he's a grown man now. He's got a family, two kids, you know. I said, you know, when I, when I can, when I can hold food in my mouth again, you know, we're gonna, we're we're gonna do one of those projects we keep talking about. And he goes, yeah, it would be great. It would be great. And he was over here doing resort gigs.

There's a tons of resorts cuz it's a tourist island, you know, it's a, it's basically the, the Hawaii of Australia, you know, so all the Australian tourists come over and there's tons of resorts and for musicians over here, if you're, if you're a resort. Uh, player, you can really make a great living. And that's what he was doing. He was over here doing that and just providing for his family.

so I got better over the course of about six months and good enough to get together with him and, and have a, have a play at my studio. and it was just like, we just picked, right? I mean, you know how it is. Musicians get together, it's just, we just, it, it was like we didn't miss anything. It was just like we were finishing the sentence from the day before, you know? and I said, man, we gotta do something.

Let's, let's find a couple of cats and build something and, and you know, have a go at this. And he's like, okay. And at the time I was just kind of thinking, you know, maybe we could just do some gigs around the area or something, you know, just for fun, just on the weekends or whatever. Cuz we're both doing other stuff, but we. We got really fortunate. We, we had a, we had a singer for a while, for about a month that was really talented, but he wasn't the guy that we wanted.

We wanted, uh, this kid who had, been, been a, a finalist on the voice, Indonesia over in Jakarta.

But he was super busy and not available and just couldn't lock him down. And we couldn't find anybody who played horns. We really wanted a horn player and we couldn't find anybody. And we tried a couple of keyboard players, and those people didn't really work. You know, we just have just kind of fumbling over ourselves for two or three months. then one week it sort of all came together. The bass player called me and said, Hey man, I've canceled all my contracts and I'm, I'm ready to go.

And I was like, whoa, okay. So he came and he joined, and then the singer that we would, that we had originally tried to get, uh, he goes, well, let's just get together and see what happens. And so we got together with him and we wrote a song on the first day. It's probably one of our, you know, better tunes. and, and by the time we were done with that, he is like, yeah, I'm just gonna tell my lawyer, get me out of this thing. You know, I wanna, I wanna go do this with you guys.

And then a band that I had produced a record for, uh, they had a friend from Sumatra who's, what, what, you know, it's about four or five islands over from Bali, towards Singapore, who's just this killer, just wonder kind, just prodigy, saxophone player. Just a, just a, just a, complete anomaly over here. There's not very many, you know, really soulful players, especially, sax player, you know, and his name was Cham. And he, coming over to visit this, this band that I had produced.

And, and Paul, the lead singer of the bar dogs, this band that I worked with. He goes, man, you gotta meet my friend, you know, he is killer and he is gonna sit in with us this weekend up at, you know, the gig we're doing. And so I went over to the gig they were doing and as soon as I heard this kid play, I just made a beeline for him to the stage right after they were done. And I just totally stole him from those guys. Man, I just, I, I told Paul, I'm so sorry.

I, I know you just introduced me to Chm, but he's not gonna play with you again. Play with me. You know, I just totally, I just totally ripped him off and as soon as I pitched the vision for the band, he, he said, I'm totally in, I'm, I'm 100% in. So, like, the next day, all five of us got together and we just, we've been going ever since. That was about five months ago, six months ago.

And, uh, because of, you know, I'm, I'm a little bit of a, A commodity here, I guess, because there's not a whole lot of, there's not a whole lot of, of western musicians here. And then of course, our singer, who is a national television star for two years. So, and then, and then our guitarist, Pfizer, the, the kid that I, you know, had the history with, he's played with some really big Indonesian names, um, as a studio player. And our bass player was in a big band, a big touring band here.

So we're all sort of like, it's, it's, it's almost like a super group in a way, at least over here, you know, in Indonesia it is, it wouldn't be anywhere else, but over here it's, you know, this really strange mixture of, of, of cats. And so we started writing and we found that we write really quickly and, and it's, it's pretty hooky stuff and, you know, kind of a cross between a, you know, funk rock and, and, and pop rock and.

with a lot of real, you know, kind of crazy musicianship and odd time signatures and sort of progressive, you know, flavors kind of thrown into it. We're all big Yes. Fans and Genesis fans and level 42 freaks and, you know, so just kind of this hodgepodge of, of oddities, you know, um, king Crimson, you know, that kind of stuff. it's kind of taken off on us.

You know, we, we got booked at all these major festivals over here, Southeast Asia, and it's just, it's moved way faster than I think any of us ever thought it would. It's just, you know, we, we, we played a couple of big shows and that got us a lot of national notoriety and we just, it just kind of took off from there. And so we're just, we're sort of riding the wave. We're not really sure where it's gonna go,

He's 26. But the rest of the four of us have had, you know, a couple decades at least of, you know, real solid experience and touring and recording and, and so for the first time really in my career, like, you know, I'm part owner in something that actually means something for the future, you know, that's what it feels like. At least, you know, like I'm not, I'm not working for somebody else. We're writing all the stuff together. I'm producing most of it for us.

And, you know, we kind of do it together, sort of like in the room. Um, but I'm definitely mixing and engineering and mastering everything so far at least. you know, we, we we're, we're we're doing crazy things. We're, we're collab. I can't really reveal it cuz we're not, we don't have a hundred percent nailed down yet. But we're, we're, we've kind of hatched this plan to do some collaborations with Western artists.

I mean, I've, I've been in tons of bands my whole life, but never my own, you know, so this is like the fir this is a real first in a lot of ways,

Dan Fogelberg and, um, Bocas and Kat Stevens and, you know, that kind of stuff. Sort of the hippie generation, singer songwriter, you know, Joni Mitchell.

My dad was the, uh, rhythm guitar player and there was a shake up within the band. And they basically told my dad, Hey, you need to buy a bass cause we need a bass player and we have another guy who plays six string. You know, we don't need to. So my dad hurried up and bought a bass and learned it. And then when they figured out my mom could sing very well, um, they sort of pulled a Phil Collins and she came out in front of the band and they hired another drummer.

So that's kind of how it all happened. And I was kind of like conceived in the middle of all that. You know, they were, were, they were, they were a regional act. It wasn't anything huge, but they were pretty busy up, up and down the coast of Oregon, which is where I'm from. And, um, they were kind of a thing in our geographical area. and in the midst of the three or four year run they had, I was, I was born somehow, you know, in the middle of all that.

And so there's pictures of me like, you know, in asleep in bass drums and, you know, sleeping in the back of band vans and bandwagons and, you know, speaker cabinets and all this crazy stuff. and so my mom's side of it, you know, was more Neil Diamond, uh, Willie Nelson. Dolly part and a lot of country, country rock. and so I kind of got that sort of flavor from her. And then my dad was kind of more on the band side, you know? so I, I was just constantly around it.

I was around it, you know, with their gigs. I was around it in the car all the time. I was, it was, it was a situation where all my, all my quote aunts and uncles were musicians cuz they were band members and road crew and all this, you know, kind of stuff. And it was just sort of like, it was like the jackass movie except everybody's a musician, you know? So that's kind of how I grew up. You know, I grew up in, in the, in the middle of all that. and they never encouraged me to do it.

They never encouraged me to follow that path. they never said, oh, you need to do this, or, you know, do what we're doing or anything like that. But they also never discouraged me from it either.

Uh, I was, I was nurtured around musicology essentially, you know, it was just a, I got a good friend who's who, both of his parents were lawyers, and he's just a brilliant, he's not a lawyer, but he is, he knows everything there is to know about law because he just grew up in that atmosphere, you know, and he just decided for whatever reason to be in real estate instead of being in law. But he could have very well got shot to the top of his class in law school had he decided.

You know, it's kind of one of those kind of deals I think, you know, I just. I never really knew anything else. You know, um, after I came along they, they buckled down and had real jobs, you know, cause they had to provide. And then where, where I lived, there was no music scene other than, you know, kind of what they were doing just on weekends, sort of weekend, warrioring it, you know.

so my dad, you know, started his own business and kind of became a family business and with him and his, and his father, my grandpa, and they did that. But, but it was still a huge part of my life. You know, it was, I, I I, I, I don't remember a time, and I know it sounds cliche cuz a lot of people say it, but I really don't remember a time where there wasn't music playing in the car at home, on the way to school. You know, I mean, it just was just was was always on.

I would come home from, you know, it was the era of M T V and I would come home, come straight home from school on the bus. I'd let myself in. I was a latchkey kid cuz my parents were at work and I would let myself in and I'd make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sit down on the couch and watch m t v for three hours, you know, at, its at its peak, you know, when it was still actual music videos and, you know, just that kind of culture. So I just, I just, I just was never without it.

I mean, you know, they had, they had rehearsal like Tuesday nights, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were my rehearsals, you know, on his drums. And he, I remember he was always coming up, yo, who played my drums? This was moved and blah, blah. You know, it was always me. And so I just got bit by the bug. You know, I just, and then there was a series of, you know, uh, radio Discoveries, you know, my Sharon in 79 and that huge drum intro.

I'm, I, I'll, I'll never forget the first time I heard that my mom brought the 45 home and gave it to me, and I went upstairs and played it. And, you know, five days later she's banging on the roof with a broom. You know, can you please change the record? You know, but I just wouldn't stop. And my dad, you know, my dad said several times, we couldn't have stopped you if we wanted to. you just wouldn't quit, you know? It just, it was the only thing I cared about.

I didn't wanna be outside playing with my friends. I didn't wanna, I wasn't interested in sports in any way. I wasn't interested in anything but just playing drums and playing music, you know, really until I graduated from high school, you know, I was, I worked, worked, worked in high school in really one band, primarily with my best friend, who's also a session player in Nashville now. You know, we kind of went, I went to la you went to Nashville when we graduated. He's a guitar player.

Just played with a lot of people and. still talk to 'em all the time. We're still really super close. But we were in a band together. It was like a funk band that we, original outfit that we put together with a couple of students from the college that was in the same hometown that we had. So we were the young guy, we were the 15, 16 year olds and they were the 20 year old college kids. And we played frat and sorority parties every weekend.

And we were sort of the IT band in town for that kind of stuff. so that's kind of what I cut my teeth on. And then when I graduated from high school, you know, I moved to LA and

It was still, even, even though the Seattle sound had kind of taken over by that point in Nirvana and Pearl Jam and you know, s TP and bands like that, you know, so Sound Garden, you know, that that thing had happened already in 91, 92 when I was still in school, but it was still La la was the place, you know, if you wanted to be a session musician, you moved to la you know, and if you wanna be a jazz musician, you'd go to New York and if you wanna play country, you'd go to Nashville.

You know, it was just kind of the thing that was the understanding, right? Unspoken understanding. And so I kind of bumbled around and sort of, you know, probably wasted a couple of years kind of deciding whether or not to, to really go down there permanently. But by the time I finally did in the late nineties, um, there was still enough of a scene down there mostly pop. Where I could get involved. And, you know, it took a few years.

I, I did a lot of stuff for free, you know, to, to, I mean, hundred hundreds of sessions for free for people just trying to network and get to know people and, and understand, you know, the lay of the land and LA's a big place. And I was, I was scared. I was young, you know, I'd never lived in a place that was larger than, you know, 23,000 people, which is the town I came from in Oregon, you know, just a little, little coastal town in Oregon.

So, moving to, you know, the metropolis of la, you know, seemed pretty daunting. And first couple of years was, was real interesting. made a lot of mistakes and moved to the wrong area several times and didn't realize, oh man, I'm, I couldn't be further away from where the action is, you know, and God, now I'm stuck in this six month lease type deal, you know? But I, I navigated through that and, um, just got real fortunate, you know, I met a lot of people.

One of the, one of the smartest things I ever did is I got a job at Guitar Center, which, you know, in the in am in America is like the biggest music retail chain in America. I think it still is.

Maybe Sweetwater might be bigger and bigger now, but back then Guitar Center was the brick and mortar place, you know, and they had a huge flagship store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, but they also had another flagship store in Sherman Oaks, which was just over the Hollywood Hills in, in the basin, in the Valley. Um, on Ventura Boulevard, and I just happened to move just down the street from it. So I walked down there and I got a job immediately.

I, became really good friends with the general manager who was a pretty high up guy in the, corporation. he made me a store manager. He made me an assistant manager of that flagship store, like within weeks. so I got super fortunate there.

He really took care of me and gave me a huge opportunity and just, and running that store or helping to run that store him and his, and the other associate managers taught me a lot about business and how to deal with people in LA and how to deal with professional musicians and how to deal with tour directors. And people would come in, I mean there's, there's tons of stories from that place. I worked there for about a. Two and a half or three years.

And while I was getting my career going, you know, kind of on the side. But, you know, one of many things that happened is I installed a pro tool system at Steven Spielberg's house. I, and I didn't know, I didn't know it was him, and they just sent me up there in a van with a bunch of gear and they said, yeah, this guy bought this stuff. You need to go hook it up. He's a V I P client. I'm like, okay, cool.

And I go in this big gated giant, you know, compound and he answers the door in his U s C ball cap and sweatpants and was like, what? You know? So I spend an afternoon crawling underneath his desk with him sitting there, drinking coffee, watching me, you know, stuff. Just weird things like that. and I just learned how to network with people and how to, you know, stay in touch with people and.

Know who they knew and research and do all that stuff that you do, you know, when you're trying to build. so it was a really great opportunity for me and I still to this day, I have clients and relationships that are from that time in my life that now know, 20 years, 20 years ago, you know, that, that I still, I still collaborate with people from that time. And, you know, it was really a great, great time in my life. I hated it at the time cause I didn't want to be there.

But in hindsight, it was the greatest move ever. You know, it was just, it was, it was awesome.

You know, I needed to learn how to run a business, for instance, how to handle my finances, how to keep myself secure enough so that I could pursue the drumming career without having to take every single gig because I was starving to death. You know? So I had this great job on the side. know, it didn't, it didn't make me rich, but I didn't have to worry as much as I would have had, had I just been like, ah, screw that. I'm just gonna go full tilt.

I'm gonna go down to the gloves every night and find out who needs a drummer. You know, if I would've done that. I probably would've had to go back to Oregon to my folks, you know? and, you know, that wouldn't have been a bad thing either. I mean, I, I say that a lot too. When I talk to young musicians. Having a place to go back to the security of that is worth a lot. You know, my parents would've taken me back in a minute, and knowing that I couldn't lose was a huge asset.

You know, if I failed in LA the worst that was gonna happen is I have to go back and eat my mom's cooking every night, which isn't a bad thing, you know? And I know a lot of people don't, you know, some people don't have that. So I feel real fortunate that I, did, you know, that my parents were, they were, they were a hundred thousand percent supportive. They, they just never, They never questioned anything. They never looked at me like, man, are you sure this is a good idea?

You know, none of that. They were just like, yeah, dude, go try it. Who, who knows? you, you're probably just as good as anyone else is doing it. So, yeah, go for it. Who knows? You know? They were just totally open about it. So there was a lot of things about it that, that really, I think, set me up for success. And I just felt like it, that there, there was nothing to lose by trying, you know? So that was kind of my initial entrance to Los Angeles and that whole scene down there.

And it was, it was a weird situation. It was like sponsored by a hotel chain, and it was just kind of this strange, but it was fun. But it was, when I came back off of it, LA was kind of gone. It was like no one was really there anymore. It was, it was like, while I was gone, something happened and everybody bailed to Nashville.

I think I wasn't really paying very good attention but man, when I was gone for six months, or, you know, it was about about seven, seven and a half months, by the time I returned home, the place was a ghost town. At least in my circles.

You know, there was probably a lot of stuff happening that I wasn't involved in, but in my circles, everybody had kind of been like, you know, they'd kind of seen the writing on the wall and they, they, they went, they went to Nashville where a lot of recording was still happening and still to this day is really kind of the hub in America for live, for, for actual recording musician. Um, so I came back. And thinking, well, I'll just go right back into session work.

You know, this was a great tour. It was a nice diversion for a few months and, you know, made, made some, some good money doing that. And, um, yeah, I'd been out with her once before, so it was kind of the same team and it was familiar and it was easy, not, not easy, but familiar and I kind of knew where things were, you know, it wasn't like a reinventing the wheel type deal. And when I go back, I'll just, sail right back into what I was doing before.

Well, that didn't happen because the recording business had literally moved to Nashville while I was gone. and I contemplated going over there. I went and visited my buddy who I spoke about before. You know, my high school friend, uh, Rob Isler. And, and thought about, you know, maybe go hang out with him for a few months and, you know, see what, what I could drum up over there, no pun intended. Um, but, but I just, I don't know.

I, I decided instead to take a gig, uh, a touring gig over here in Southeast Asia with a, with sort of a circ dule type production that was happening over here. A friend of mine, uh, was directing it and he asked me if I'd be part of it, and I'd never really spent a ton of time on this side of the world. So I, said, yeah, man, I'll come check it out.

You know, I mean, I, I, I don't have anything going on, you know, and, and my lease in my, condo was almost up and it was just kind of like the timing was, was great. So I came over here and I did that production, and that production ended up being a couple of months. It was like three, three and a half months that I was over here. and Verina, my wife, uh, we just celebrated a few days ago, our 12th wedding enver 12 year anniversary. Um, thanks.

she was working for that company that was doing this production as a PR consultant. And, um, so I met her, you know, I got to hang out with her for a few months and, you know, that was, that was awesome. then the thing finished and I went back to LA and when I got back to LA my dad, who, my parents got divorced when I was a kid. So my dad, wherever I would move to, my dad would move there, you know, to be around

But she's there and I, I don't know, man. He goes, dude, he goes, why don't you just sell everything and move over? There? He goes, you can do what you do from anywhere. You know, it's to the point. Now, if, if somebody said to you, Hey, next week, can you record this record here, you know, in, the village in New York, you could tell 'em yes and you could just take the deposit and spend it on airfare and fly over there and do it.

You know, he goes, so, so you take a thousand dollars bath, who cares? You know, you're making, you're making, you're making good money. If it's a six or $7,000 gig, what's a thousand bucks for a plane ticket? You know, you can, you can still do the, the stuff you wanna do, and you can live where you want and there's no pressure and you don't have to be here, and you don't have to pay, pay the, the crazy prizes of living in LA and maintaining your condo and all this stuff.

And, you know, and I started thinking about it and thinking about how wise that was, and I thought, yeah, maybe, maybe he's right. You know? So I put all my stuff in storage and I thought, okay, I'll try it. I'll, I'll give it like a trial time, you know, maybe three months or four months, whatever. Put everything in storage. Got rid of my condo, sold my car, you know, put all my drums at, at the Cartage place, in la and I went to Jakarta and tracked her down and,

So, so, but when I actually showed up and made good on it, she was shocked, you know, she was really shocked And you know, that introduced a whole bunch of other things cuz their family is, is Muslim and like I'm not, and you know, all this other stuff came into play and, you know, so we navigated through that as best we knew how and we just started dating and just taking it really slow.

And I ended up being over here for another four or five months and then I had to leave because my visa was up. And so I just packed my backpack full of stuff and decided to just kind of backpack around Asia and see this part of the world. You know, I didn't have any gigs back home. There was nothing in LA to go back to except for my dad. and he had come over here once already to hang out for a few weeks, you know, and see what it was real, what was, what the big deal was, you know.

And so I took off and ended up being gone for about eight months. And I went to Japan in Sri Lanka and, um, I, I went to Tibet. I snuck into to Tibet in the back of a water truck with a bunch of other people. Um, and I went to Hong Kong for the first time. I'd never been there in Singapore and Taiwan and Vietnam and a whole bunch of places over here. and I recorded a lot of the stuff that I was doing with street musicians and stuff.

I would just roll up and play with people and, you know, and have fun. And at one point I ended up back in Japan because part of my airline, uh, like I got this ticket called Under Round the World Ticket. And it was like you could pay it, like, you know, a pretty, pretty hefty fee, but you had like 10 or 12 different stops. You could, you know, use it over the course of six months or whatever. So I did that. And it began and ended in Tokyo.

So I had to go to Tokyo to, you know, get my own way to Tokyo and then start my trip from there, kind of, and then it, it was just, you know, full circle back to Tokyo. So I wound up back in Tokyo for another month and a half, two months, and I just got a hotel room and I just mixed all of those performances that I had encountered into an album, into a world music album.

But it was sort of like a deep forest, kind of, uh, you know, um, world music, Peter Gabriel kind of thing. And I played a ton of instruments that I didn't really know how to play. Probably played 'em all wrong. It was, it was just, it was this experimentation time of, you know, just this, this time of experimenting with things and figuring out how things worked and cool sounds that I'd never heard before.

And just, just, just a, a really fun, amazing time in my life that I'll never be able to repeat. It was just, it was just a phenomenal time. And so anyway, I ended up with 12 tracks and organized him into an album. And then I had a friend at DECA in the uk and he turned me on to some people at Warner Brothers that, that he thought might be interested in it. And so I got a publishing deal, a limited publishing deal with Warner Brothers, which they, the, in, in, as part of the part of the deal.

They agreed to help me promote the album. I could release it independently through They had an independent program at the time and they, they might still, and so I released it through them and it didn't really do anything, but it was just a fun thing to do, you know, I didn't tour it or anything, or play live or, you know, you really couldn't because all

I was really involved on Twitter and I would link up with people and kind of set things up. I met a choir director over there at a church. It was a very dear friend now. And, and I stayed at Hi his house with him and his wife and their two kids, uh, for the majority of the time I was there. And he really helped me a lot. He introduced me to a lot of musicians. So that was my second solo record qua. that was fun too.

It was just a completely different flavor and, you know, so that sort of got me in the studio again, except in a different role, you know, not, not, I mean, I played drums on everything, But I also engineered it and recorded it and learned a lot about Mike placement. And, you know, learned. I, I, I had no idea really, cuz my whole career people had engineered for me.

You know, I'd go to a session and there was already engineers and they'd have everything set up and they, they knew how they wanted the drums to sound, but this time it was me making the decisions, you know, and I, I had to really learn quickly, you know, what polar patterns were and, you know, how to eq things properly and, and what compression was and all this stuff.

You know, stuff that I'd, I'd really listened to engineers talk about over the course of my time in studios, but never really had my hands on it myself, so it was sort of, those two albums were sort of a crash course between 2012 with Eastern Chronicle in 2015 with Qua. That was sort of like a three year, Kind of a, a crash course masterclass and how to record, you know, properly without board gear and, and plugins as well. You know, I just really had never, really dived deep into that stuff.

You know, I knew enough to be dangerous. I knew enough to score a film, didn't, I didn't really, you know, scoring, scoring a film with orchestra is vastly different than actually mixing band a, a full band toge, you know, a a rock band or a pop band together, which is essentially what this stuff was. You know, it just was foreign language pop. I'd never done that before. So I learned that, and that really kind of got me interested in production.

and really since then, that's kind of what I've been doing. I've been producing, producing for other people, both over in the States and then the uk and here now too. and then recently with, with Stone Cold, you know, we just put out an EP and we've got another one coming out next month. And I engineered and produced all of that in the room, you know? and that's really what I, it's it's, it's been so much fun, man, the last few years of, of learning how to do that and, and trying to do it well.

You know, I'm, I still have a long way to go. I mean, I, I have so many things I wanna learn, but, you know, it's just the, the process. When you say journey, that's exactly what it is. It's just been a long journey of learning, you

And sometimes the wrong way to most people is the best sounding way, you know, and, and your ears will determine whether or not you ought to do it that way, you know, even if it's wrong. but I think there's a right way to be a human and there's a wrong way to be a human, you know? And especially in this business, First of all, You got about 60 years before, you gotta really start worrying about, man, I'm running out of time. I mean, look at John Williams.

You know, he's, he's announced that he's gonna do one more score, you know, he's gonna do the, in Indiana Jones thing. And then, and then that's it. You know, what is he 90, you know, like,

And I think it's easy to get really worried and, and full of anxiety about, oh, it's, I'm running out of time, you know, I'm 26 and I still don't have anything going. Or I'm 30 or 35 and I still don't, I still have not scored a big film or whatever. I mean, I know, I know people in their sixties who've just done indies their whole career and they have a nice house and a great family and a couple of cars and vacations, you know, every winter.

And I mean, they do, well, you know, and they're not Han Zimmer, but they can call themselves a professional composer, you know, they can call themselves a professional musician because they are, they're earning a living, making music.

Move, move to where there's work, you know, or create your own work, But I guess the point is, don't feel bad about what hasn't happened, you know, or what society or the industry has told you should have happened by now, because it's not true. Everybody's got a different path. You know, my path has obviously been a, a crazy rollercoaster of weirdness. I'm sure yours have too.

You know, when you look back on what you've done and you're just like, man, I don't even, I don't even know how I got here, but here I am, you gotta enjoy the ride, man, because it's, that's where the fun is. That's where it's at. You're never gonna get to where you're going. I've accomplished a lot. I've accomplished pretty much everything I set out to do, but I'm still not satisfied. You know, I wanna do other things and I mean, look, I'm in, I'm 15 years old again in a band, you know,

And it's basically a, I don't have one here in my office, but it's a little dial that has a little ball, kind of like a, a cam ball on the bottom of it that kind of moves around and it's on a spring and you set it on a drum head while you're tuning it and it ba and you kind of move it around the drum head. And it measures the tautness of the area of the drumhead that it's sitting on so that you can get even tension all the way around the drums.

And probably as a drummer, when I do clinics and stuff, the biggest question I get from drummers is how do you learn how to tune drums? a lot of ways to learn how to tune drums, but that is probably the best and fastest way to learn how to do it, is to use a a Tom Attention watch. And they're like, they're like 20 bucks, you know, American, uh, U s D, they're not that expensive. I have two of my, have one in my drum bag and I have one just floating around my studio usually, but.

It's just the greatest little device you can, you can learn how to quickly, cuz cuz you, you know, you just basically dial it to the same spot on every point of the, you know, and on, on every lug, right? Every parallel to every lug. You just make sure that whatever number you're on, if it's five or 15, that you're five or 15 all the way around. And it's just a great way to learn how to tune drums if that's a mysterious, you know, thing to you, which it was for me for a long, long time.

Yeah. So that would be what I would leave for everybody is a tension watch.