Jim Donovan Interview

"From the Garage to the Gig"
By Harriet L. Schwartz
2/98

The lights dim and the small enthusiastic crowd waits patiently for the show to start. You raise your sticks in the air, count off the song and launch into the opening moments of your first gig. Seconds later, you realize you can't hear the singer very well and are having trouble feeling in sync with your bandmates. You've practiced though and that preparation and the focus fueled by the adrenaline surging through your body gets you from song to song.
You play through the set. You know that you are nailing some songs and feel like you are stumbling through others. Later your bandmates will say "great job," but mention that you should try to slow down next time - you wonder what they mean. Regardless, you made it out of the practice space and onto the stage - welcome to the exciting, spontaneous, and sometimes scary world of live performance.
Playing live is often one of the most challenging and exciting aspects of drumming. Gigging can also be a stressful experience for those who are in the early stages of transition from the practice space to the stage. Looking for advice on playing live, Modern Drummer interviewed four young veteran drummers - Jim Donovan, Hannah Fox, Todd Sucherman, and Kim Zick -- who shared their wisdom on steps every drummer can take toward a more successful live show.
A Spare Snare
Obviously, the first thing every drummer should do to get ready for a show is practice - nothing compares with knowing the material well. Beyond good preparation though, one of the other foundation pieces to playing well is taking good care of equipment. In addition, when leaving home to perform, every drummer should take along spare parts.
"One thing I try to do is bring an extra snare head and maybe an extra set of all the heads," says Kim Zick of the Milwaukee duo Mrs. Fun. "I always travel with spare parts for my bass pedal. And I constantly check the mechanics of my equipment. Also, make sure to bring a rug (to place under your drum set). If you get to the club and the stage isn't carpeted, your drums will move around."
Hannah Fox, of Babe the Blue Ox, adds one of her golden rules about what to do after the show. "I've had a fantasy about publishing a book on drum etiquette," she says. "It would be one sentence, 'if you are not the last band of the night, don't break down your stuff on stage.'"
While equipment maintenance is important, so is protecting your gear. "I always recommend that if you have drums you care about, get cases," says Jim Donovan of Rusted Root. "If you can't afford hard cases, get padded bags - at least your drums won't get scratched up. Also having handles makes things easier to carry. And, get a case for your hardware."
Todd Sucherman, who has played with a variety of rock and jazz artists including Brian Wilson, Styx, and Eric Marienthal, also suggests that if you have more than one kit, you may want to think twice about which one to take to the gig.
"There may be four or five bands on the bill and you'll have to leave your drums over in the corner of the club," he says. "It's easy for someone to bump something or spill a drink. If you are playing the club circuit, you may want to get a kit that you don't care about so much, so you don't get upset if something happens to it. And whatever kit you take, once your drums are in the car - go home. If you leave your drums in a parked car unattended, they will be stolen."
Donovan also suggests making sure your transportation is reliable and getting a membership with AAA or some other service that will provide roadside help for everything from a dead battery to keys locked in a car.

How to Make Friends and Influence the Sound System
Playing well is obviously the key to a good performance however understanding the impact of the sound system - in terms of what you hear and what the audience hears - will also influence the gig, as will your efforts to make allies in the club.
"It's good for you and good for the band for you to say hi to whoever is working at the club," Fox says. "Introduce yourself to the guy who owns the bar, say hi to the bartender. Say hi to the soundman. They will remember you when some great band comes in and they need an opener."
Sucherman agrees. "Be cool to the sound people," he says. "Go up and introduce yourself and be friendly. No matter what's happening or what the time constraints are - be cool to them - they can ruin your evening in a lot of ways. Often the sound guys are a disgruntled lot. Chances are they'd rather be playing than putting a mic in your bass drum."
The configurations and quality of sound systems will vary from club to club. In a smaller setting, the drums may not be miked and you, as the drummer, may or may not have a monitor (a speaker that allows you to hear some or all of the sound being projected to the audience). "A lot of times it can be stressful in a sound check if you've never had a monitor, you don't know what to put in there," Donovan says. "What I recommend, and what I'll even do now if I'm tight on time, is to talk to the monitor guy and tell him, 'I need my kick drum, I need a tiny bit of snare and hat,' -- though you don't usually need much of that because it's usually loud. 'And I need the bass and I need the guitar and the lead vocal.'"
Overall, each drummer will learn what he or she needs in the monitor based on experience. "I ask for the drums first, and build from there," Zick says. "I like to have the monitor on my left near the high hat - that's a good place to help me focus on the groove with the hihat and snare. And make sure you get a sound check and that you are hearing everything you need because once the show starts, it's harder to fix it."
Though Fox adds, "If things aren't sounding right during the show, I don't like to make a big fuss about it, as long as I can hear well enough to do a good show."
Along with adjusting the sound that you will hear during the show, Donovan says that bandmates should discuss their overall volume. "It sounds like common sense but you'd be surprised how many guitar players have their amps cranked to 10, when all they need is 3," he says. "The same goes with you as the drummer -- if you are in a tiny room, you don't need to play real hard. If someone's telling you you're playing too loud, he's not making a personal attack, you're probably too loud.
"If you're in a tiny club, sometimes you won't get a monitor - sometimes your drums won't even be miked and you'll have to fight for your space in the sound spectrum. In that situation - no mic and no monitor - wear ear protection. It separates your ears from the band, but the amount of hearing damage you can do in two nights is amazing."
In many small club settings, drummers may have limited mic options. If amplification is necessary, mic at least your kick and snare. Remember though, unless you have a monitor, you won't be able to gauge the level of amplification during the show. Moreover, if you are in front of the bass and guitar amps or are hearing those instruments through a monitor and your drums aren't miked (and thus aren't in the monitor), you probably won't be able to hear yourself, particularly your kick drum or toms. Donovan suggests having someone play your kit during sound check so that you can walk around the room and sense how well your drums and cymbals project.

Get Ready, Get Set
After set up and sound check, many drummers take time to stretch -- particularly their hands, wrists, and arms - and to warm up on a practice pad. While warming and loosening muscles is always important prior to playing, it becomes especially vital before gigs as new drummers typically play faster at the gig than in practice, due to adrenaline and nervousness. Muscles often cramp and can make playing through a set difficult and painful as well as increasing the chance for injury. Drinking water and eating bananas (and other high potassium foods) prior to the performance also helps prevent muscle cramps. ((Bill, I know that there have been other articles on stretching and nutrition, perhaps you can reference them here)).
While some drummers party before their shows, many established drummers say that alcohol inhibits their playing. "It's easy to slug down a few beers before you play," Sucherman says. "But it will adversely affect your playing. You won't play as well and you won't even know it."
Donovan sees choosing not to drink alcohol as one of several steps drummers should take to keep themselves healthy and sharp.
"Always go into your gigs prepared," he says. "Make sure you've got your chops. Make sure you're rested. Don't get drunk, don't get high. If you need to relax, that's not the way to do it. Take two minutes of deep breathing by yourself in a corner somewhere."
Donovan adds that if, on the other hand, he needs to get more energized before a show, he does exercises "to get the blood moving."

Nervous Energy
Some drummers say they were nervous for their first few gigs and then, as they gained more experience, less nervous before shows. Others admit to always being at least somewhat nervous before playing live. Others fall somewhere in between, saying that most of their nervousness dissipated with experience, but that other factors, like playing larger venues or with well-known artists, brings back some of their jitters.
Along with warming up and doing deep breathing exercises, checking out the venue and putting the audience in perspective are two other strategies to combat feeling nervous.
"My first gig with Rusted Root was in front of 800 people and for us, that was an intense amount of people," Donovan says. "I started to wonder what everyone was thinking about what we were doing, instead of trying to focus as much as possible on what I was doing, and taking steps to relax and focus on the task at hand. It's so easy to get caught up on people looking at you. The sooner you get over that, the better."
Zick adds, "Sometimes I get a little nervous in some of the bigger venues we play. Like when we toured with the Indigo Girls and we were playing 5,000-seat venues. My biggest crowd was 15,000.
"One thing I find helpful for that is to check out the space and actually go out where the audience will be. You can conquer that space and realize it's just a space."

Mistakes Happen
Often, the root of a performer's nervousness, is the fear of making mistakes. The drummers interviewed for this article indicated that mistakes are clearly inevitable and that it is the drummer's response to mistakes that truly impacts his or her performance and experience of playing live.
Fox reminds us that often members of the audience don't even notice mistakes. "People coming to see a live show don't usually care if you make mistakes so don't get caught up in it," she says. "There are so many things going on. The audience isn't just watching you, they're watching the rest of the band. They're smoking, they're flirting, they don't care. So relax and enjoy that it's OK to mess up. When you are on the stage, that isn't the time to worry."
While many mistakes go unnoticed by the crowd, Zick suggests that some mistakes have a positive impact. "I usually like my mistakes," she says. "I just keep playing and I don't feel bad about it. A lot of beginning players feel bad about mistakes. But you won't learn if you aren't making mistakes."
Further, dwelling on one mistake can impact the rest of the set much more significantly, if the drummer loses focus. Sucherman and Donovan agree the best thing to do is keep playing through the song. Donovan elaborates. "Never stop playing, no matter how bad you are doing, just keep going because eventually the song will be over and you'll be on to the next one," he says. "And you'll have to play that same song next weekend and you'll get another shot at it.
"If you continue to screw up the same section, then get into your practice space and isolate that section and do it over and over until you can do it flawlessly. If someone else makes a mistake, cut each other some slack because you're all still learning."
Donovan continues, "Simplification is always the way to go, if you're ever in doubt of anything. If you forget a section of the tune, just keep it simple. Nine times out of ten, nobody else is going to know and you can figure it out in the next rehearsal."
"On the other hand, if you're having a great night, the tendency sometimes is to overplay. A much more mature approach would be to take that energy and sink it into your groove and really try to get that groove as slammin' as possible. Think back to a groove that someone played with Stevie Wonder or Sly and the Family Stone. If you can communicate that kind of feeling to your audience, they'll love you forever because that's where the magic stuff is."

Adrenaline 101
Adrenaline can be a powerful and positive force as it gets drummers energized and focused for a show. However too much adrenaline can impact a drummer's sense of time.
"When you are fairly inexperienced and you go out and start playing, and you see your friends there in the audience - your adrenaline gets kicked up," Sucherman says. "Later when you listen to the tape you think there is no way that you played that fast, but you did. That's one reason why it's very important for bands starting out to tape practice and gigs and then listen to it together as a band."
While Sucherman talks about drummers rushing the entire set, Donovan describes how drummers sometimes fail to maintain even time throughout a song. "For me, dealing with adrenaline is a big deal because I get excited really quickly - a lot of drummers do," he says. "When you're in front of people and they're dancing, the first tendency is to push and to keep speeding everything up. The trouble spots I've run into are to watch when you are coming into a fill and coming out of a fill - just maintain time on the high hat to keep you in the pocket. One thing that helps going into a fill is to consciously tell yourself to pull back a little bit. If you have a lot of adrenaline, that will help you stay in time.
"One other thing that helps me is eye contact with the bass player. One of us will lean our body back if the other is rushing. Maintain that contact, so you have that intuitive connection in your rhythm section." Band Together
Typically, the people in a band end up together because of shared musical interests, not because they expect to be best friends. Whether you and your bandmates grow close personally or not, efforts at a good connection before the show and effective communication during the show will strengthen everyone's performance.
"I think it's good to get together before you go on stage," Donovan says. "One thing that we do is we play acoustically in a dressing room, I'll use a hand drum or just clap on my knee, and we just get a sense of playing together in a small little tight-knit circle. So when you go up, you're already in tune with each other and you've already been making music for 20 minutes."
The drummers interviewed for this story offered other practical advice like using a set list so that everyone in the band knows what to expect, and making sure that everyone is ready before you count off a song. Some bands also develop signals that they can use as cues, or indicate a wish to slow down or speed up. However the signals need to be simple and unmistakable.
"We know each other really well and we know our material really well," Fox says, referring to her band Babe the Blue Ox. "But it's hard to communicate on stage. Someone may want you to slow down and you may misunderstand that they think you are playing too slow. I don't know what the solution is, but try to keep communication on stage very straight-forward."

Putting on a Show
"Stage presence depends on what type of music you are playing," Sucherman says. "I've never been one for twirling or throwing sticks in the air. But when you're at a rock show, you like to see someone who is playing hard and digging in. But, if being animated gets in the way of playing well, don't do it. And if you are working for someone else, you don't want to steal the spotlight."
Zick agrees. "I get a lot of comments that people like to watch me play because I have a lot of movement in my drumming. I don't think about trying to put on an act. It comes from loving the music that I play with Mrs. Fun and from concentrating on the music and getting into the creative and emotional end of it."
Donovan offers advice for connecting with the audience. "One really effective thing is eye contact with people in the audience," he says. "It's always good to look up when you are playing. So many drummers look down at their hihat or down at their ride the entire night. And you never know that the drummer exists back there because he or she doesn't really command any presence. Whereas if you keep your head up, even if you are looking above the audience -- and just keep your focus not on your drums but on the rest of the band and the people you're playing to - that really changes the way people look at you."
Ultimately, drummers who appear to be powerfully engaged in the music, are powerfully engaged in the music. They are absorbed in the moment, not trying to appear animated, aggressive, or any other particular way. They are confident and supremely immersed in the music they are making.
"It all starts in the practice room, in the basement, in the garage - knowing your instrument inside and out, left and right, up and down," Donovan says. "Even if you aren't a master of your instrument, become a master of what you do. Learn how your band's music works. Learn the songs intimately - know the lyrics and the melody lines.
"One of the things that I learned from African music is that it's not just about one part. It's how all the parts fit as the whole. When you start to play thinking of what you play as a cog in the entire piece of music, you play differently and you start to be more present with whatever piece of music you're playing."