Behind the Kit: John Bryant’s Journey From Ray Charles to SMU | YDC Ep 221

Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder, sports talk. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Oh, with the big mic. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it. We got a lightning strike, boys. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano late teams. Don't do it. Wait. You said tip. Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. I would Keep jamming. The ticket, colon, If I if I didn't like her, I wouldn't use her. I like that she massages your head and all that good stuff. Well, no. She really doesn't do that. That sounds a little weird. But no, she just or what? Both. Yeah. I mean, just a haircut's a haircut. You go in there, you sit there, and she cuts your hair. And the difference is it's in a salon, not a shop. You're the only one getting a haircut at that time. She's a one woman operation. It is not a shop. There is is a woman in there, not all guys like there used to be, and you don't walk out of there if you got a flat top or something like that. You don't walk out of there with a white stick of stuff to put on it to make it stand up in the front. So, yeah, I like that. Is there anything wrong with that? Is that so bad? No. It's great, Shoopy. You support me in this? Of course. Support you in everything. Well, thank you. I need to feel supported today. Oh. I definitely need to feel supported today. It's kinda rainy and gloomy right now? Yeah. It is. Here in the D, it's kinda chilly and it's kinda rainy and kinda cloudy and and it actually has come up a cloud a couple times today, but they don't last very long. No. It rains ass for about ten minutes and then goes away. Yeah. Well, this is Mhmm. Your dark companion. To one and all, we hope the day is going well for you no matter where you may be, no matter how or even when you may be consuming this podcast transmission. Or why. Or why. We don't ask those questions. We just hope you do it. Today is what's the day? The sixth. The May 6. Cinco de Seys. Yes. And this is episode number which 221? 221. Nice. 221. Gonna make it. Are we? I don't know what number we're shooting for but we're gonna make it. Man, I don't either. A thousand. There you go. Well, today Me and Ashley got car payments. Yes. Is that fun? No. This is a fun day for you? I mean, I'm having fun talking to you and everybody else here, but yeah. But you got car payments. Yeah. And Mhmm. Every life a little rain must fall as our friend Norm says. Yes. He does. Today on the presentation, we are going to mind the musical vein a little bit. Music being one of the most oft mind veins we have here at YDC. And today, we're gonna talk to a guy that I've been aware of for a very, very long time. And only in recent times have I gotten to know him. And as I did, I decided there must be a story there. So when I run into somebody where I think there's a story there, I only know one thing to do. That is get them on YDC. So it is with the great John Bryant. Now, if you like drums and you like drumming, you are in for a real treat because John Bryant is one of the best we've ever seen or that I've ever seen anyway. Apply the craft around here and I think just about everybody who's ever seen him play would agree with that. I've been aware of him for a long time but only in more recent times have I actually gotten to know him a little bit And it's really nice to talk to you and thank you for doing YDC. I'm very happy to be here and always great to talk with you. John, as we say, is a drummer, percussionist, music producer, teacher. Anything else in there we should mention? That's a pretty good range we could start with. That's a pretty good resume. What are you doing with yourself these days? What's taken up most of your time? Well, it's funny. I've been teaching at SMU for twenty years now going on. And so that has been really a great experience because I started off teaching drums, just teaching drums to drummers there at the university and they've got a great percussion department, mostly orchestral percussionists. So the drum set playing popular music a little bit different thing at SMU. It's not their forte or their main concentration, is classical music. But they need a drum set player because percussionists need to know how to play drum set. And then from there, I worked with him on expanding the program of music production. And I created a class for music business and history of music production. And then came up with a second class of in the studio production techniques. So I've been doing that at SMU for quite a while now and our semester is just ending. And so that is kind of it. I'm not playing as many gigs as I used to, cutting back some. And I think we all kind of, as the years go by, figure out, well, how do I want to spend my time? What do I want to go looking for next? What rocks can I kick over here and there? And it's funny because the latest rock I've kicked over is I decided I wanted to do this for a while but I've taken up playing the banjo. Five string bluegrass banjo because I grew up in Virginia and the first music I ever heard was bluegrass and I love bluegrass music. And I've always loved Earl Scruggs, three finger picking kind of style of banjo playing. And I just thought, hey, I'm gonna do it. So I got a banjo and looking at tutorials on YouTube and I'm having a ball. And I'm just really, I haven't been practicing drums that much. I've been practicing banjo more just for fun and it's great. So what other instruments besides drums and banjo do you know? Or what did you know before getting on the banjo? Obviously Well, you know I've never played a string instrument and never really And had the desire I took piano lessons when I was young. Didn't take to it. Know, just did not feel like Stuart Copeland says, I did not have the pianitude. That's that's one of his phrases. And but Okay. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Which means I just can't play that piano. I I have a piano and I I do go to it nearly every day to find a chord and work out a melody or an idea. So but I would never call myself a piano player. I just have the piano there to go to, you know, to find what I'm trying to find harmonically or melodically or or that kind of thing. But percussion, being a percussionist, that's such a wide range of instruments. And and to be a real percussionist in a classical sense, then you're going to play marimba and timpani and snare drum and bass drum and glockenspiel and all of these different instruments. So that's kind of enough right there. And then when you throw into it world percussion, then you're really talking about a whole other depth of field because percussion is everywhere in the world. Everywhere. It's the first instrument that anybody plays anywhere except for maybe a flute. Every region of the world has their own percussion. Yes, it's a different language and it's just never ending study and revelations about what you can do in the world of percussion. So I don't have time for anything else. That's it. I wanna go back in the day with you a little bit here because this is when I first became aware of who you were. You were a very intimidating figure back then. And I didn't think that I was worthy of troubling you for a conversation so I never did. But I knew full well who you were. And I heard you play many times. This was back in the, I guess the mid to late seventies. Mhmm. And at that time, Our Fairburg, I know people are gonna find this hard to believe, but Our Fairburg had a little bit of a burgeoning funk band. Yeah. Yeah. With the Buster Brown band being one. Yeah. And a band called Pyramid, which you were in. That's where I first became aware of you. What are your memories of that time and that space and Pyramid and Buster Brown and all that? Well, it's really prominent in my head right now because like I had told you that I keep my journals from all the way back to 1974 when I first went on tour with Paul Winter Consort and then with Ray Charles. Because I I I had to have a haven't had a you know a a journal and a calendar and I never got rid of them. And so fifty years ago is when I put together the band Pyramid with Randy Lee, a fabulous saxophone player here and my partner Frank Hames. And The keyboard player. The keyboard player. Now you you were the three that were on the Ground Floor playing Yes. Yes. Right. And we all knew each other at North Texas. We were all in the 01:00 lab band. So, that's where that seed was planted. Yeah. And for those who may not know, if you're in the 01:00 lab band in North Texas, you are a badass or you're on your way to being one anyway. It's an incredible institution and brotherhood. It's something that, people aim for and, and if you're fortunate enough to to get in that that group, you know, then you, all kinds of things happen, all kinds of doors open. You kind of realize through a fraternity of people that have played in that band what your possibilities are better, you know. So so I, you know, I had after school, I'd gone out and toured, like I said, for a couple of years. And then I came back all the time knowing while I was gone that I I wanted to put this band together because I had been playing and working on songs with Frank and I'd been playing with Randy. And so, you know, timing is everything. And so we put it together in seventy six and fifty years ago, this past this March, we played our first gig in Denton at a club called Doc Holidays, a nine piece horn band. Steve Howard who went on to play with Paul McCartney and all kinds of people and Randy. And there were a couple of horn players that I toured with Ray Charles with who also went to North Texas and great rhythm section. And we put that band together and rehearsed hard and played our first gig. We played a week at this club and made $81 apiece for a week's worth of work driving to Denton. And so and you know, we were we were just bound and determined to to get going, you know, so it didn't matter what it paid. We had to get in there. You'd have probably done it for 41. Anything. We had to get it going. So that was, yeah, that was fifty years ago we started that. And we're still playing the Denton Jazz Festival every year. We've, the same group from 1976 gets together. Really? Yes. That's what's astounding is that everyone's not only still alive, but healthy enough and playing their instruments. And our fabulous lead singer Clarence Pitts is singing in the same key. And here fifty years later, we're still performing those songs and hopefully we'll do that again this October in Denton again. Like exact same lineup and everything? Same lineup. There That's were people that came in and out. Sure. But we have over the last three or four years, we've put the same lineup together. And it is crazy just to look around and see, God, we were doing this fifty years ago. And everybody's on stage playing their ass off and still getting it. It's crazy. That's great. It is. It's just such a gift, because we were together eleven years. The band was together eleven years. And we initially were Pyramid. Then we got a record deal with Mercury Records and we had to change the name for legal reasons and we changed it to Firework. P H Y R E W O R K. And then we started playing at this club called Popsicle Toes with Buster Brown. They would play two weeks, we would play two weeks back and forth. And that went on for seven years. So it was quite a scene. I remember it well. Remember Popsicle Toes well and you guys and all of that. It really was just kind of an oasis for that kind of music. It was. And that kind of music drew all kinds of people. Yeah. It was a completely mixed race crowd with don't remember one incident, one fight. I don't remember anything but great times at that club across seven or eight years. And it was all kinds of people came in there. Eric Clapton came in, Gary Busey, Lenny White, great jazz drummer. All kinds of people would come in, sit in because they heard about that's the spot to go to, Wow. It's amazing. That really was an amazing time Yeah, back was. It was just great. Now later on, I'm looking at this list of people that you played here, played with along the way, and was it would stun a mastodon indeed. Can I just throw out a few names at you? Yeah. Can you talk about your experience with them? Sure. Alright. The one that really jumps out at me, mainly because I was hearing the music of this guy when I was very, very young. My parents were into him. They played it. And I just kind of soaked it all soaked a lot of his stuff in. And I remember he put out a music called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which I thought was a very strange title. But years later, I came to see exactly what he was driving at because he was not country, but he could take a country song and make it his own. I mean, make it like nobody else had ever done it before. We're speaking, of course, of the great Ray Charles. Yep. Yep. What was your experience with him like? Guy Mike is just so deep and wide. I'm just going to start where you started with Modern Sounds and Country Western Music. Which by the way is an album I still love today. Yeah. Oh, it's incredible. And I heard Ray talking about it with Terry Gross on Fresh Air one time and Ray said, I'm not a country singer. I'm a singer that can sing country. I'm not a blues singer. I'm a singer that can sing the blues. Yeah. So he could do anything just about. It was just incredible. Excuse me. And when I when I got with him, of course I knew Ray Charles, he's great, he's a legend and all of that. But to me it was like, how do I keep this gig? How do I play this gig and he be happy and keep me around? What do I have to do? Mark, can I stop you right there? Yeah. How did you hook up with him to begin with? Well, back to North Texas. There were the musicians at North Texas in the school who were jazz musicians but they were all pointing to Dallas and kind of saying, well if you're gonna go hear the jazz in Dallas, here's where you need to go. And I had a friend I had just recently met, a great bass player named Mike McKinney. And he went on to play with Michael Jackson and he played with just all kinds of great R and B players. And he said, man, we need to go down to Woodman's Auditorium and the Aranda's Club in South Dallas, which is a black part of town. It's where all the black jazz musicians were jamming and playing. And I was really eager to do that. I had been at the school and we had been playing the kind of stuff that's been playing in the big band at North Texas. So we went down there, we went to a Sunday afternoon jam session and the players there are really the ones that Ray heard because when people don't know it, the movie got it wrong. They made it sound like Ray lived in Houston, but Ray lived in Dallas. Yes. And his first two children were born in Dallas. He wasn't around. He was out on the road when his wife had those babies, but it was in Dallas. And his house, Fathead Newman, the great sax player, was playing with Ray. Ray wanted to move to Dallas. He said, help me find a place. He found a house two blocks away from this area where these jam sessions were going on. So Ray would go there when he was playing with Lowell Folsom. I went to this same place, went in, I think I was the only white guy there and James Clay, great jazz sax player was leading the session. Roger Boykin was playing, Claude Johnson, these are all names that just, know, the, some of the greatest jazz players anywhere and especially in Dallas. So on a break, James Clay came straight over to me and he said, You must be a musician. I said, Yeah, am. I play up in North Texas. And he knew all about that. He said, Well, you want to sit in? And I said, Sure. And so I sat in and got to know the musicians. They got to know me and there was a few months of that going on. Then out of the blue one day I came home and the fellow that was my roommate said, hey, you got a call from Ray Charles. And Clay had been playing with Ray Charles for years. So it's funny, I wasn't completely shocked by it because I heard him talking about Ray all the time because they'd be going off and play with Ray. I'm talking about the musicians of from South Dallas. Leroy Cooper, Fathead Newman who I also played with, Claude Johnson, many musicians from South Dallas where Ray had a house. He that was a pool of talent that he drew from. So when I heard that, I was like, well, I know these guys. Maybe, maybe. And there was a phone number. I called it. Ray answered the phone and I couldn't believe it. And he said, John, need a drummer and James Clay told me about you. Can you be in Denver tomorrow? And I said, yes. I believe I can. Yes, I can. Threw the drums on the plane, flew up there, played a rehearsal that was actually an audition. He said, Great, you got the job. We leave for Connecticut tomorrow. We went to Connecticut and played a week with Gladys Knight and the Pips. Geez. Wow. Yeah. Just out of the blue like that. Out of the blue, yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. How did your roommate tell you the news? He's like, Ray Charles called. Yeah, yeah. Well, he was a drummer too. So he knew what I had been doing. It wasn't a shock to him either. Mean, names float around and all you can do is hope that you'll be in the right place at the right time and your number of the queue will come up. So anyway, that's what I did. That's an amazing story. Yeah. But Ray, so in that audition, what you find out really quickly about Ray is all the musical styles he plays and going to what your point was about the country stuff. So when you play with Ray, the first thing he looks at is can you read music because you've got to be able to read his charts. And are you a really good jazz player first? Because his idea was if you're a great jazz player and you can read music, he can coach you through the rest of it. Here's how I want you to play this rock thing. Here's how I want you to play this country thing. Here's how this Latin thing goes. Because he taught me how to play the beat What I Say, which is a very famous, as he said, written in stone, kind of a Latin sort of a beat. Yeah. You're to play that song, you got to have that groove. You got to have that thing. And he taught me what he wanted. He said, play this. There it is. God, I must have heard this song a million times. And you know what? Every time it comes up, the volume goes up. I love this. Now listen to this. Very specific beat. Not easy either. No, it's not. Paul McCartney has a good story about when they the first time that Ringo played with the Beatles. They played What I Say and Ringo played it right. And Paul says, you know, like a light bulb went off. It was like, oh, this guy, this is the guy. I mean, he specifically said they played that song, Ringo played it the way it's supposed to be played and they all knew. Yeah. I always heard that Ray insisted that his drummer watch his left foot or something. Yeah. That's right. Is that a real wives tale or? No, no, it's true. It's true because he conducted with his feet. And his left foot was the downbeat because his left hand's on the bass and his right foot's up here. So yeah, he would cut off the song with that foot. He would give you the tempo. He would mess with you sometimes because if he was figuring, if he thought you weren't watching him, he would pick it up a little bit or he'd slow it down a little bit just to make sure you were with him, that you were watching him. And one time, I remember one night we were playing somewhere and you know, the band was kind of laying back. They were a little too relaxed. Ray was on top of it. He was a little too excited. I tried to sit right in the middle. I thought, well, I've got my job is to keep it all together, right? So I'm watching Ray, I'm listening to the band and I'm trying to sit in the middle tempo wise and feel wise. And Ray kind of blew up. He didn't like that. And he called me back in his dressing room after the show. And he said, John, listen. He says, I don't care what those other 18 are doing. You stay with me and they will stay with us. That's all that matters. And I said, all right Ray, I got it. I'm with you. And that was like a commandment. Wow. What about Joe Walsh? Yeah. Another gig I got from my good pal, Greg Bissonnette, same kind of thing. Joe called Greg to play with him and Greg couldn't do it and he gave me a call and Greg so respected that Joe and I also did it with Don Henley, played a gig with him that they trusted Greg and that it was something. So Joe had a new record coming out and he wanted to have a big CD release party at the Troubadour in LA. And so I went out, rehearsed with him two or three days. Jeff Lynn had produced that record and Jeff played the gig with us. And so it's funny, we go to the Troubadour, we're setting up that day, we're doing a little sound check and Joe comes over to me and says, hey listen, Ringo's coming tonight. And I said, great. Because they are brother in laws. They're married to two sisters, Ringo and Joe Walsh. They're Good like one know that. Yeah, they're like family. He says, Ringo's coming tonight. He wants to sit in on a song. Is it all right if he plays your drums? And I said, yeah, he can play my drums, but I want to stay on stage and play percussion next to him. And he says okay that's fine. So that was the way I was going to get my time in with Ringo. That's what happened. It was really incredible because that night I look out in the audience and it was a star studded crowd, know, it was like David Crosby's there, you know, Dan Aykroyd is there, all these people. And, and I look out there and my pal Greg was sitting there and I saw Greg and then Stuart Copeland was there. And then I look off to the side of the stage and there's Ringo standing there watching me play. So that was kind of a pressure situation. I can see where some people might have been made a little uptight by all that. Was gonna say, did you keep tempo? Yeah. But it was great. Joe was great to work with. He really knows what he wants just like Don Henley. These guys, they don't bumble around with instruction. They know what they want and they tell you very directly, very quickly what they want. This is John Bryant, the noted drummer. We're talking drums, drumming. His wide span of experiences along those lines today. And a little banjo. A little banjo too. No. A little banjo. That's whoo boy, what a mountain to climb. We will have more with John in just a short snort here, so you can relax a little bit and slump back in the chair if Because you right now, I've got to tell you about the dreaded and feared mid show read. It's gonna be okay, John. It is gonna be okay. Yeah. It really is. It's just commercial read. You don't have to worry. I know it sounds very foreboding. It's really not. What do we got here today, Shupi? I would assume the CBD House of Healing, Shupi. Okay. Well, if it's the CBD House of Healing, then we need to show you this because this is the full spectrum salve stick from the CBD house of healing. Now you may be thinking, okay. What are you doing with that? Here's what I'm doing with it. I'm roaming around this world these days in a little bit of pain. Things aren't feeling right. I don't know what it is, but I need something to make me feel a little bit better. And I've found that if I rub a little bit of this on these problem areas, it works. Doesn't make it go away, but it makes me feel a little bit better. Now if you were roaming around this world in a little bit of pain, there's no reason for that. What you need to do is go to the CBD House of Healing and talk to the folks over there. Tell them you heard about what I said about it, and, they will give you this or they'll talk to you a little bit more and maybe figure out something else they have that can make you feel a little bit better. Regardless, you'll find them to be very helpful. I know this because they have helped me. If they can do it for me, they can do it for you. The CBD House of Healing is located at Northwest Highway in Plano Road in the northeast quadrant of that burgeoning intersection over there. Go by, tell em you heard about em from us here on YDC and let them fix you up. Let them start you on your road to healing at the CBD House of Healing. Is that it? Is that it? You got it. That's all we got? No, you got it. You got it. We got something on there apparently. Oh, I I do. Okay. I can't see your prompter. Alright. Now we need to tell you about the Eric Nadel birthday benefit concert. It's celebrating its fourteenth edition. This features two of Eric's favorite bands. Now, I don't know I don't know if you know this about Eric, but he is a real dyed in the wool music nerd. And I say that in the most loving way that I possibly can because he is always on the lookout for bands that he likes that nobody knows about. And he has found a couple of them, and he's getting them down here to play at his birthday party. One is Brooklyn based Sammy Ray and the Friends and Bay Area favorite, Chuck Prophet and the Cumbia shoes. They will be playing at Eric Eric Nadel's birthday party. Thursday, May 14 is the date. Doors open at 06:30. Showtime, 07:30. The location, the Longhorn Ballroom, the newly reworked and fantastic Longhorn Ballroom. You'll enjoy the music if and only if you can pull yourself away from the fantastic array of memorabilia that they have in the Longhorn Ballroom. It's just incredible. Just incredible what they've done with it. This benefit supports the work of the Grant Halliburton Foundation. That's a local nonprofit that provides mental health education, training, support to teens and families. To learn more and purchase tickets, go to grandhalliburton.org/ericnadell. Sponsor tables and suites are also available. Come see the YDC team on the purple carpet. Eric Nadel's birthday benefit presented by Haynes Boone and KXT ninety one point seven FM featuring Sammy Ray and the friends with special guest Chuck Proffitt. That's groundhalliburton.org/ Eric nadel, or go to stolenwatermedia.com slash our community. And, of course, at stolenwatermedia.com, that is where you get YDC and all of the other podcasts that we have here at Stolen Water. That's our new website, stolenwatermedia.com. There you will find everything we we have. It's a very convenient one stop shop for you. Is that it? Yes. Mhmm. Alright. I don't wanna wanna get back to some of these other situations you found yourself in. Okay. You say that some of these people are very, very specific about what they want. I would imagine being a drummer himself, Don Henley is one of those. Yeah. Yeah. He's you know, being a singer and a songwriter and a drummer, all those things really define form, tempo, key signature, expression, meaning. I mean, all of those, if you do those three things, that's kind of the package right there. Yeah. Because the drummer really in any band, I like to think I like to say is kind of like the barometer, you know. The drummer is taking the temperature and looking which way the wind is blowing and who in the band needs help, who in the band is doing just great by themselves, queuing things, what's the tempo, what's the dynamic, what's the volume, the emotion, what's the form across the song. So somebody like Don Henley who is, does all of that stuff as a singer, a songwriter, and a drummer, he he knows. I mean, he he he knows where all the commas should be. And do you use a colon or a semicolon in this musical expression? He knows. So he's gonna tell you. He wants it to be that way. And like Ray, he wanted to be that way every night because this is a work of art. It's not like jazz where you got, okay, we got a few little markers here and in between it's your personal expression. It's just not that way with the music of iconic legend type figures. Just Yeah, not they want it how they want it. That's right. That's the only word. Sorry, are they shooting for the album feel or do they have kind of a separate live feel that they go for? I think they start with the album and then from there they're smart enough to know what's doable and not doable in a live situation. And then they construct, okay here's the perfect live version. Nice. Like that. That's why so many bands use click tracks when they play. I mean even, you know, I did an audition with the Doobie Brothers one time. Didn't get the gig. I came in second or third maybe, but I was really surprised when I got to that audition rehearsal that they were using a click track for most of their show. That's rock and roll and they're using a tick tick tick tick in the ears. It really shocked me. But that ensures that that show is going to be exactly the same every night. They know how long it's going to be. They know what the tempo is. They're not going to mess with that formula. I mean, lot of bands just very serious about it. I guess if you're looking to get it the same way and exactly the same way, night in night out, then that's the way to go. Yeah. And that doesn't appeal to me. Now Ray would never do that Cause Ray is a jazz musician first. I mean, he wants that flexibility. Know, there's absolutely no way. As a matter of fact, Ray didn't use monitors. You know, we would get to a stage, the monitors were all over the stage and Ray's road manager had the directions. You you go in, there's gonna be one and mics everywhere. The direction was strike all of the mics except for Ray's vocal mic and the mic out front for the railettes. Do not mic the band, do not mic the drums, or don't do that. And of course, they would still try to and it would cause Ray to go ballistic because he could hear it. He could hear, it confused him on stage to not have an acoustic natural sound. And he did not want somebody else like a sound man in charge of the sound on the stage. That was not going to work. So that didn't happen, you know, with him. Now a few years ago, I recall you doing something with Stuart Copeland. Mhmm. You were involved in some project with him. Yeah. I think this was at a time when I was intimidated by you. Oh, gosh. Oh boy. And probably wouldn't have wouldn't have have I'm sorry I would have given that vibe off at all. I would been too shy to come up and talk Oh goodness to gracious. Do remember the project. Yeah. Tell us about that. Well, I've been working with Stuart since 2008 and this project you're talking about came about then. It was, I had a world music percussion group called D Drum and two of the members were in the Dallas Symphony and the Dallas Symphony commissioned a major work, a concerto for world percussion group and orchestra, to be performed by the Dallas Symphony. And they said to us, find a composer. And we chose Stuart Copeland because besides being one of the most important drummers of the last fifty years with the police. And boy he is too. And just an incredible, incredible drummer. He is also a fabulous composer and producer. And he knows his way around everything. So it was a really good fit. And we just hit it off and we started working together. I was I was essentially the producer of the the project along with playing in the group. And Stuart was the composer. And so he composed a work, it was called Gamalan to Drum and it had a lot of Indonesian Gamalan music in it, is a very exotic element right in itself. And we performed it with the Dallas Symphony. That's a whole other story there. The two year, two and a half year preparation. And I made a documentary film about it called Dare to Drum. And it's on Prime and Apple and it's out there. It can be seen. It seems like, and tell me if I'm wrong here, Shoopey, but it seems like Stewart Copeland came up to the radio station to talk about He did. Yeah. Was there. Yeah. Yeah. He sure did. And so since then, we've worked on other projects together. And he's got a great project that he's touring called Police Deranged for Orchestra where he took the police hits that Sting wrote and arranged them for Symphony Orchestra and he takes a rhythm section and three singers, three female singers to the orchestra and performs the police hits but with this orchestral arrangement and he's playing drums. And so in this concert, there's like three or four songs where he comes away from the drums and he'll conduct or play guitar, do something else. So, I've played a few concerts with him with different orchestras around the country where I would, when he leaves the drums, I jump up and I play his drums. And so that's been a lot of fun and it's great. And, and I just talked to Stuart today because, we have coming up in August a revision, a new vision, a reimagining of that piece that he wrote for our group and orchestra. Now it's been rearranged for expanded percussion, and it's gonna be premiered at the Aspen Music Festival this August. And my film Dare to Drum is going to be featured by the Aspen Film Festival. And so we're all going to meet up there in August for that. Boy, it sounds like fun. That's going to be fun. Let's go Shoopy. Let's go. Let's go. What is Dare to Drum like? Dare to Drum is a ninety minute documentary that tells the story of the group, Dare Drum, how we traveled around the world collecting instruments, learning how to play these exotic instruments, how the Dallas Symphony said we like this, we're going to commission a work, and then how we found Stuart Copeland, this rock star, and fashioned this, three movement concerto over two and a half years and all the ups and downs of the whole thing. What did you think when you found out, hey, Stuart Copeland wants in on this? I'll tell you, man. I didn't think it was going to happen because it was right on the tail end of that reunion tour of the police in 2008. His agents, I said, was talking to his agent who represented a lot of different composers and she said, How about Stewart Copeland? And I said, Well, he's out with the police. And she said, yeah, I think he's getting a little sick of sting and that whole thing. And that's about to come to an end. And then one day my phone rings, like with Ray Charles, and it's Stuart land saying, hey, John, this is Stewart. It sounds great. I'd love to do this and and within about a month, he had come to Dallas and had already written the majority of this work. Wow. Yeah. He's incredible. Stuart's something. Boy, ain't you you see somebody like that and you think of him as just a drummer but no, much Man, he's a force just touring. He's coming here June at the Kessler Theater and he's on a tour where all he does is sit in a chair like this and talk about his career. And he's selling out halls all over the country. Shoopy does that too. Yeah, in my dreams. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Let's see, I was looking at this list of people that you've opened for back in the day with Pyramid or Firework Yeah. The average white band, Herbie Hancock, Gino Venelli, Kool and the Gang. Yeah. Remember anything in specific of about any of those? Yeah. Let's see. What about Gino Vanelli? Gino. Because I I I've seen Gino Vanelli several times and man. Man. He is phenomenal. He was it back then. Oh yeah. I mean his band, his look, his sound, it was so sophisticated. I don't remember anything specifically about us opening for him except to know that we were really excited. Know, and Herbie Hancock too, we were really excited about that. And we got a record deal because we opened for this group called Confunction, who had a big hit called Fun Fun Fun. The guy that wrote that, his name is Mike Cooper and he heard us open for them and he said, I love you guys. I think I can get you a record deal. And he was like, that's what we were looking for, right? So sure enough, he goes to Chicago, goes to Mercury Records, calls me up, says, hey, I got a deal for you. Get on a plane, get up here. And we signed a major record deal, just like that because this right person heard it and made it happen. That's the business right there in a nutshell. Who's your buddy being in the right place at the right time? Yep, you gotta be the right guy in the right place at the right time. All of it. With the right stuff. That's it. That's really it. You that and who knows what might Yeah, happen yeah. For I'll tell you a funny little story from again this thing fifty years ago. You remember Mother Blues? Oh yeah. I played with Lightning Hopkins three nights at Mother Blues. Now was this on the first at the first Mother Blues? The second one, the Lemon Avenue. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And it was crazy because see he didn't carry a band and he was coming there and I knew the people that ran Mother Blues and my band had played there. He called me up and said, hey, I need a drummer and a bass player for Lightning and Hopkins. And so I said, Yeah, I got a bass player. We'll go. So it was so crazy because he just, you got to follow him. He has no, he doesn't care what the tempo is or how many beats to the bar or any of that. When he changes, you change. And it was so funny because they announced his name and he comes walking down the aisle, coming up to the stage and he takes his guitar strap and he had one of those little derby kind of haps, so with a small little brim and he pulls the strap over and it gets caught up on that brim and he didn't know where it was and he starts going around in circles looking for it and the bass player had to come over and take it off his hat and put it back. It was great. So the gig go alright with him? Oh yeah, it was fine, it was fun. You feel like you've been through the ringer after it or did you feel pretty good? It was alright. Well, what are you busying yourself with these days? Well, besides playing banjo, I'm really working on trying to get this new piece with Stuart working. What has happened is the the leader of our group, Deidra, Ron Snyder passed away about five years ago and the group kind of fell away and we've been very fortunate that this piece has been picked up by a really well respected percussionist out of New York University named Jonathan Haas. So Stuart and I are working with him with rearranging it, getting it ready and so now students are gonna play this. So it's great, it's the legacies being passed on to students and a great university we're really pleased about that. So I'm fairly busy with that and I'm writing my stories, my memoirs. I'm trying to get an idea about how to put all these different stories together in a form at some point. Giving some lessons, playing some drums on some gigs every now and then. All right. You got it going on, man. I've been very fortunate. I'm very grateful. It's really been great talking to you, man. You too, Mike. Thank you. Really been great that we finally know each other now. Right? You're not intimidated. No, no, no, no. Boy, I wish. Okay. Just making sure. Alright. He is the great John Bryant. This has been your dark companion for today. Now, if you like what we're doing, what you need to do is get on your social media, get us out there, share us, like us, tell your friends about us, go to your go to a friend's house tonight, tie them up Woah. That's fucking aggressive. Get broke, tie them up Let sit them down and play today's episode of Your Dark Companion for them. Tell them that they are not getting up until they watch this. They're not gonna have a choice. Yeah. And they're in their own house though, so Maybe on a maybe on a very, very temporary Coercion? Basis. We breaking anything? Well, I don't know if we're we're breaking the law. We're just trying to, you know, talk them into something. That's all. Coercion. Yeah. Yeah. That's what coercion is, right? I guess. Yeah. All right, you do that, we'll keep doing this, and it'll all work out for everybody. Thanks to the great John Bryant, thanks to Shupee, thanks to Ashley. Thanks to you, until next time, bye. For legal perp Alright. I'm gonna go take your pants off. You're Dark Companion is a stolen water media presentation.