Adam Silverman : Nashville Session and Touring Drummer

The past couple months have really transformed from a time of fear to a time of great excitement. As I’ve made the transition from being out on the road full time, to trying my best to start making music as a session drummer, it’s been challenging but also so exciting for me. I’ve had the opportunity to do almost as many sessions as I did the entire last year in the last 2 months. Scary isn’t it… well for me it’s super exciting. I’ve been able to work with a few new folks out in L.A recording at “The Vault” here in Antioch. I’ve also done some new songwriter demos and plan to add some new pre-amps into the studio really soon. I’ve also been working in other studios in Nashville, Joelton, Franklin, and Brentwood as well.

It all started by just beginning to put the word out to my friends that I was actually in town for the first time in 3 years. I was thrilled to work on Chad Jarnagin’s new EP at Beech Creek studios. The final mixes are being done for that right now. I’ve  also had the chance to work with Anthony Mazza for more tracks, and I got to make some new friends cutting some country tunes. Last week I got to work with Paul Buono and Steve Bisher on some tunes for Paul Reter, Karen England, and Julliana Cole. That was a pretty sweet 9 hour day and I loved every second of that.

It’s really tough to be a session player in this town, the playing demands are extremely rigid, the songs come at you really fast, and you just have to do what you do best and make it fit the song… quickly, but it’s my passion and it really makes me thrilled to know I have a real shot at doing this. It’s been my dream forever to just be a drummer, and any opportunity to cut drums, play live, or practice is a blessing. Like Steve Bisher said to me last week… “it’s awesome to make great music, even better when we’re getting paid to do it…”. That outlook could do many of us a lot of good!

Anyway, that’s the update for my drumming world as it stands right now. This file just came in from a producer I’m working with out in L.A. It’s a really cool 6/8 tune where I got to be a little bit busier than my usual session work allows for. Check it out!

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Last night marked the end of Winter Fest 2011. For the last 2 month in a half I’ve been out on the road playing for 33Miles, Jason Gray, and Kerrie Roberts. We’ve done about 12 or 13 shows in the tour, and it’s really been another amazing experience for me. I had the great pleasure of continuing to work with 33Miles and being challenged there to keep playing like crazy. But it was also really cool to work with Kerrie and Jason. Both of them are extremely talented at their art and musicianship, but they are also extremely different.

I think the challenge for me each night was being about to go from playing Kerrie’s style, into Jason’s style, into 33′s style. If you haven’t heard their music it’s definitely worth a listen to be sure. Kerrie is really cool pop style with lots of drum trax, while Jason is very singer/songwriter or what I like to call the new Folk, it’s awesome. This was my first experience with Jason and Kerrie. They were both absolutely amazing people, and I definitely loved getting to work with them! Then you have my normal gig with 33Miles who is like a crazy mix of country, rock, pop and blues. All of them couldn’t be any more diverse, but as a drummer, having to use the same kit for them all, the challenge was to make them all sound like they were supposed to sound. I think I did a good job at it, I know I sure enjoyed it.

So now that the tour has come to an end, what’s next right? haha. Well when I figure that out I’ll be sure to let you guys know. Seriously, the next month I am really on the hustle. Continuing to try to bring in as many sessions as possible, maybe doing a little teaching, and doing a lot of meetings with new friends and catching up with old ones. Then I’ll be back with 33Miles on their next tour in the Spring. Oh yeah, and of course, practicing like crazy!!

This past weekend I had the awesome pleasure of playing up in Edmonton Canada for a huge festival. As I walked into the venue that night for sound check I had this overwhelming sense of fear going on inside my head. I don’t think it was the crowd, I’ve done many shows where there have been at least that many folks, and played for over 18,000 with Casting Crowns last year, so it wasn’t the audience, it was the other musicians I was worried about. I started wondering how I would stack up in comparison to the other drummers there, would I stand out as being really good, or really bad, how would the other players look at me? It totally got into my head, and I felt myself having a little panic right before the show. The question that comes to mind here is … why??

After talking to Jason Barton of 33Miles I think it sunk in that it’s because I am still growing as a player, and in moments like that, I feel how immature I really am at this stage in the game for me. I am still so worried about what everyone else is doing. If there is another good drummer there I feel threatened somehow, that I won’t be noticed, that people won’t find me to be talented, and that fear of loss of affirmation terrifies me to no end. But I think it only scares me because I scare myself into worrying about such a silly thing. It’s trivial to think about it at best, but I bet if we were honest with ourselves, many artists and players feel the same thing, they just don’t wanna admit it like I am doing here. My wife always tells me “never underestimate the insecurity of an artist”, and I’ve added “or a player” to that quote.

To overcome this fear I’ve realized a few things. There is only 1 Adam Silverman, for the bad and the best. So the good news here is that I am literally the only person that can do exactly what I do on the drums. I get hired because of my playing, my personality, and my price point. That’s the God’s honest truth about it. So while there are other players that are also good at playing, everyone has a weakness. For me it’s always been my chops that have stood out as being really strong, and the way that I approach a groove, but I am very weak at showmanship. I barely smile when I play, and I tend to ignore the crowd. When I see another player twirling their sticks I feel sick because I can’t do that as well as they do. Call it competitive, but I’ll call it immaturity right now. Instead of freaking out about it, I just need to learn from the experience, and figure out what I can do to improve the things that I notice I am weak on. That’s all, no panic needed here people.

I think we all struggle with this in our lives in one way or another. I just continue to learn and fall back to the fact that God made me how I am to accomplish a specific goal that He has set out for my life. In the meantime, instead of being afraid of what others do well, I just need to do what I do the best that I can possibly do it, and continue to grow all the time. The rest is not really up to us, so the faster I start focusing on what I do right, the easier it is to go out there and let it fly on stage. If I’m reserved, people will notice, if I am confident and happy to be there, they will notice and feed off of that excitement, and that’s really what I wanna bring to the stage when I get up there. Fun, not fear.

These are my confessions. Hope they encourage someone out there!!

So I’ve spent the last several weeks digging into the drumming of Motown Music. I’ve found a new personal favorite drummer named James Gadson. He played on a ton of albums, and sang on them too, and he really has an amazing feel. It’s like the groove just never slows down or stops, and I know those were songs that were cut from top to bottom, no punches, and that’s just amazing to me.

One thing that I’ve noticed about James and other drummers of that time period is that you really rarely hear a cymbal crash in a verse, or really even leading into the chorus. You do hear fills and groove changes, but cymbals just weren’t used like they are today. It’s made me start to wonder if I am hitting my crashes way way way too many times. I think the next few shows I play I am going to keep more focus on the kick, snare and hat, and spend a little less time blazing around the cymbals. haha. In all seriousness, playing to Motown cuts played by Gadson, Uriel Jones, and countless other players has stretched me into another dimension as a musician I didn’t even know existed.

All thanks to Zoro for pointing me in the right direction on what to be listening to. It’s really opening up my ears to some amazing subtleties in the groove and in the music of that timeframe. Back to the drawing board again right :)

Here are a few tracks that I’ve done in the last few months with Anthony Mazza out in LA. I think these really show that I’m making progress as a session player and I am so exited to see what’s going to happen to my career in 2011. Hope that you guys enjoy these tracks!!

Track 1 – Thank You

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Track 2 – Girl Next Door

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Track 3 – Never Too Late

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In drums, if there is one thing that I LOVE to learn, and one thing that I love to hate, it’s technique. A good technique can make a drummer sound amazing, while a bad technique can make an amazing player sound bad. I hear a lot of drummers while traveling that are fundamentally pretty good musicians. They keep good time, they play the parts correctly, but there’s something in the way that they play the parts that make it sound a little off.

Usually I’ll hear it in the dynamics that people play with. One thing I’ve learned to be hyper-aware of as a session player, and through my lessons with Zoro, is that dynamics make the groove. Your dynamics come from your technique. You should really be mixing your own drums while you play. Some grooves are killed by too loud of a hi-hat. Sometimes players will be all over the snare drum, hitting middle, then the rim, then the outside of the snare, etc. All the sudden that groove that is played with the right notes sounds really off. That’s why when you hear Steve Jordan play a groove, it’s with all this feeling and with dynamics, it just sounds different, it’s all about the way he plays.

I think as musicians we need to spend time on technique. Yes, we need to play music as well, that’s very very important, but we do need to work on the “way” that we play everything because it has such a huge effect on how what we choose to play sounds. I’ll admit, sometimes I spend too much time on my techniques, but the more I play the more I realize that even a simple groove can sound amazing or terrible, all because of the technique by which the groove is played.

Keep grooving!