Darius Rucker – Learn to Live
Today I bought Darius Rucker’s record called “Learn to Live.” This is his first real attempt at a country record, and if you recognize that name but aren’t quite sure where you’ve heard it before, he was the lead singer for Hootie and the Blowfish back in the day. I’ll preface this by saying I think they were an amazing Pop band, so if you hated Hootie this wouldn’t be a good buy for you.
Overall I think the record is an amazingly introspective look into life. It seems to be a really personal record for him, and surprisingly his voice does really lend itself to country music. The songs tend to be story telling or life lessons types of songs, pretty typical of modern country music. The hit single “Don’t Think I Don’t Think” is one of my favorite songs of 2008. I think pretty much anyone can relate to the message of the song about looking back on a point in time of your life. Of course you think about it :)
I love the musicianship on the whole record. As an aspiring session drummer it’s really great for me to sit back and listen to songs like these. I felt like I could have played through most of them the first time I heard them. So yeah, they are pretty predictable, but when you spend 30 hours a week listening to songs I guess that just comes with the territory.
I think the lesson to be learned here as a drummer is that simple and perfect is something to grow into. It’s much easier to be busy, sloppy and non-musical than it is to play a simple musical groove absolutely perfectly. This has been a huge change in my playing perspective since I moved down to Nashville. I used to be a terribly busy player, and though I admit I like to throw stuff into 33Miles songs just to say “yeah good luck figuring out how I did that…” it’s become more and more important the better I get to simplify and keep it super dooper tight. So those are my words of wisdom for today. Go get this record, listen and learn from it, and play simple and perfect!!
