Adam Silverman : Nashville Session and Touring Drummer

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!

We’ve had several local opening acts play before us on this tour. I usually find myself very curious about what the band will sound like, look like, what their songs will be like, etc. So usually during their sound checks, or at least during their first few songs of their show, I try to sit out front and take a few mental notes about the group. In most cases, these groups are younger talent, usually inexperienced, and that’s totally okay, we are all inexperienced to some degree at something that we do in life, but what I find is interesting is the growth process of most bands, and where I see so many groups getting really hung up.

I notice that a lot of bands lack cohesion. That’s all around. They either don’t sound tight, they don’t look tight, they don’t feel tight, or they just are plain loose on stage. I think bands don’t sound tight because they refuse to either practice with, or play with, a click track. That’s huge in becoming a tight band, if you can’t play in time, you’ll sound super loose, and it won’t be the cool kinda loose that’s on purpose, it’ll be the, “do these guys know what they’re doing” loose. Definitely not what you want when you know the closer on the tour has Pro Tools running. haha.

Some bands might sound decent, but they have no cohesive look. Now I don’t really believe in matching outfits or anything like that, but sometimes a little work on the look can make you even sound better. I usually see bands where it’s not their clothes that make them odd, but it’s the way they interact, or don’t interact on stage. Anytime a band of players don’t look up away from their hands, don’t interact with each other, or look terrified, it’s really a bummer, especially when they sound good. People in the audience hear with their eyes a lot of the time. So it’s often better to look like you know what you’re doing, than to actually know what you’re doing. I learned that from many tour rehearsals with show producer Tom Jackson. If you want people to notice a part, look like you’re working hard… people will know to listen to you. If you want the audience to have fun, smile a lot. It’s simple stuff, but it makes a huge difference in your live show.

I guess what I take away from all this are ways to make sure that 33Miles stays super tight. I think at our level, a lot of it is warming up together, sound checking together, jamming together, and really just being friends off stage. It’s work all the way around to get your band rocking on all levels, it’s really worth the work when you hit the stage. Keep rocking peeps!