|
Galactic's
Stanton
Today that’s what everybody’s saying about Stanton Moore. The instant you hear one of Moore’s monstrous grooves, stuttering press rolls, or “jalopy” tom fills, you recognize him. The thirty-one-year-old drummer is that funky – and, man, we haven’t even started to talk about his sound. When Stanton gets behind his kit with Galactic, or with one of his many side projects such as Garage A Trios or Moore & More, there’s no doubt who it is. Call his sound infectious. Call it part jazz-meets-Bonham. Call it nouveau second-line., No matter; whether he’s boppin’ behind and 18” champagne-sparkle jazz kick or battle-worn old 26”, Stanton is serving up new-style funk. Maybe it’s a little easier to be funky if you’re born in New Orleans and have the likes of Johnny V. steering you right. But it takes something very special to rise to the top, as Stanton has done, and assume a place among the greats – drummers who’ve risen from the melting pot of Latin, second-line, rhythm & blues, jazz, and funk. New Orleans, after all, is where Earl Palmer, one of the slickest drummers ever, started out. It was also home to James Black, a multi-faceted musician people still talk about in hushed tones. And it was fertile ground for the snappy grooves of Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste. That’s some lineage. Moore is clearly next in line. His band Galactic has emerged proudly from the New Orleans scene, and after a slew of albums and relentless touring, has become the group that other emulate. Without so much as planning it, Galactic has managed to tap into today’s pulse while proudly hanging onto yesterday’s vibe. The band’s latest release, Ruckus, proves just that. The focal point of Galactic is Moore. The Crescent City literally oozes out of him. The life, the food, the marching, the sweaty nightlife—it’s all there. At a live show with Galactic, all eyes are on Stanton. As one fan proclaimed on the heels of the band’s recent performance at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, "Stanton is the center of the Galactic universe." He’s a man in motion, his hands freely traversing his kit, clicking sticks on the rims or shells, beating a jingly thud out of his de-tuned pandeiro, or even standing up and playing the front side of his ride cymbal. And when he kicks the groove into overdrive with his auxiliary bass drum, a 26" monster, it’s a sub woofer from hell. The crowd goes wild. No question, Moore’s time has come. He’s everywhere—on tour, on record, and in clinic. Stanton recently won the Eric A. Bergquist award for being one of the top clinicians of the year. He’s just completed writing a book on funk and New Orleans drumming. (An accompanying DVD was just filmed and features Stanton performing with New Orleans music royalty George Porter, Ivan Neville, and The Dirty Dozen horns.) Besides having already released two solo albums, Stanton recently contributed a track to the MD/Magna Carta collaborative CD, Drum Nation. And now he’s receiving calls to produce other bands. It seems everybody wants a piece of Stanton Moore. MD: Let’s start off by discussing your most recent solo album, Flyin’ The Koop. It marked the debut of that mighty bass drum. What’s the story behind that drum? Stanton: Every year for the last eight or nine, Galactic has played Lundi Gras, which is the night before Mardi Gras. Then, once the sun comes up, we hit the Julu parade and march around playing and looking for the Mardi Gras Indians. They’re something people like to see, and they don’t have a route drawn out, so you have to go find them. We have our own little crew, started by the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, which is a band [Galactic saxophonist] Ben Ellmas and I played in for several years. Being that Klezmer is Jewish music and we were following the Zulu parade, we started calling our selves The Crew Of Julu. I was supposed to bring a bass drum to march with, but at the time I didn’t have any drum other than a vintage Slingerland I was using at Benn’s [club]. Then I noticed that at Benny’s there was this big 26” bass drum hanging on the wall. Felix, who ran the club, let me borrow it. It had calf heads on both sides and Mardi Gras beads hanging on it. I put some duct tape on strategic spots and made it sound pretty good, then went out and played it and had a blast. And then, before I could give it back, the club closed down and Felix told me, “Just keep it.” I started creating loops with the drum and it sounded really cool, especially when you compressed the heck out of it. So I started thinking, What if I add it to my kit and play it with a remote pedal? I had a double pedal lying around, so I started bringing that pedal and bass drum to gigs. So now I have two different bass drums for two different sounds, and I play each with my right foot. On the new Galactic record, Ruckus, it’s the only bass drum I used. Aside from a few sample, it’s the one. On “Bittersweet,” “Gypsy Fade,” “The Moil”-on all those, it’s that big bass drum. MD: Did you have to muffle the drum to record it? Stanton: I think we used a strip of tape on the batter side and maybe a little piece of duct tape on the front. Sometimes we may have leaned a pillow up against it, too. But any muffling was on the outside of the drum; there wasn’t a single thing inside. I wasn’t really intending on using that bass drum on the whole record, but Mike Napolitano, our engineer, suggested we set up a sort of Flintstones kit with congas for toms. I had a cross between a djembe and a floor tom that somebody made for me. I was using a Remo Mondo snare that a friend loaned me. All the drums had either calfskin heads or simulated calfskin heads. On the big bass drum, the calf heads had split, so there was a Fiberskyn on the audience side and an Ambassador on the batter side. That drum doesn’t even have a pin in the center of the shell for a lug, just the long rods across the shell. You turn the rods and they tension both batter and audience-side heads. It’s bare-bones! MD: I know that on Flyin’ the Koop, you used Bosphorus cymbals. But on your previous solo album, All Kooked Out!, ou used old A Zildjian cymbals. I could have sworn they were old K’s. Those cymbals sounded so good. Stanton: Thanks. On All Kooked Out!, the ride was an A Zildian 20” from maybe the mid- to late- ‘60s, and the pang was a mid- to late- ‘70s model. The hi-hats were a mis-matched pair of 13s that I found at two different pawnshops in Florida. The top was an ‘80s K, but not the bottom… it looks like a K, but it has no stamp, and some kid painted “Paiste” across the bottom. It has a small center hole like an old cymbal, and it’s really hammered. One of those cymbals was an A Zildian pang. Now with Bosphorus, we’ve designed a similar pang type of cymbal and we’re into several prototypes. The one I’m using right now is like, Caw! It’s not very China-ish at all-it’s buttery, and if anything it’s a hair less cantankerous than the Zildjian pang. By that, I mean there’s a little less attack. I still have all those A Zildians. Back then, what I really wanted were old Turkish-made Ks, but they were getting hard to find. Besides, I couldn’t really afford them, so I would find old As at pawnshops for something like eighty bucks. I’d choose the ones with a darker sound. MD: So do Bosphorus cymbals measure up to old Ks? Stanton: I think that Bosphorus makes great cymbals. There’s never going to be anything that’s exactly like an old K, but, to be honest, I like a lot of my Bosphorus cymbals more than most K’s I’ve heard. I have a few old Ks that are killing, and the Bosphorus are definitely in that lineage-the hand-hammered Turkish tradition – but they’re not necessarily trying to copy old Ks. I love to have guys come over to the house and bring their cymbals. I’ve got my own cymbals on shelves behind my drums, and we just keep pulling cymbals out and playing them. I get to hear a lot of cymbals that guys have spent fifteen hundred dollars on, or traded this or that for, and some are great cymbals. MD: On Flyin’ The Koop, what drums were you using? Stanton: I was using the same kit I used at the Modern Drummer Festival: the big bass drum along with the Gretsch 18” bass drum and the 12” and 14” toms. For that album, we experimented with mic’ placement and got the drums sounding good. MD: On “Fallin’ Off The Floor,” in which you have the Mardi Gras Indians chanting, what rhythm are you playing? Stanton: It’s basically a 2-3 clave. There are two rhythms going on : a loop of this rhythm that I call “The Magnolia Special.” which is my interpretation of the Mardi Gras Indian stuff, and this other New Orleans-type rhythm I’m playing between the panderio and a snare drum with the snares off. MD: On the track “Let’s Go,” which is kind of a rolling Bo Diddley beat, you rode and crashed a lot of cymbals. If you were to re-cut that track today, would you do all of that cymbal work? The reason I ask is that on Ruckus, there’s hardly any cymbals to be heard. Stanton: Yeah! Our goal with Ruckus was to create grooves that were super relentless and head-bopping, so that the listener couldn’t stop moving. Whereas on Flyin’ The Koop- and when I’m left to my own devices- I like to play more interactively and expressively. I like to blur the lines between jazz and funk. With Ruckus, we decided to make all of the grooves clobber you over the head?: It was definitely less of a jazz approach. MD: Did the Ruckus experience shape your style permanently, or do you still have the other side waiting to come out? Stanton: Oh, of course! I’m putting together my next solo record, and it’s going to be definitely more along with the lines of Flyin’ The Koop. What you’re talking about is where my heart is- but it’s with Galactic, too. And I get to play like that with Garage A Trois too. my side project with Charlie Hunter, Mike Dillon, and Skerik. MD: “Magnolia Triangle” [from Flyin’ The Koop] fascinates me. The composer is James Black: Did you get a chance to see him play? Stanton: Unfortunately, he passed away when I was in high school and before I was aware of him. In some circles, he’s spoken of in the same breath as James Booker and Professor Longhair. But the thing is that James Black was so far ahead of his time and so erratic as an individual, that he never got recorded that much. He had some great gigs, though , like with Yusef Lateef. I’m going to tell you about two recordings you have to find. There’s The Classic Ellis Marsalis: It’s mind-blowing to hear how James Black was so ahead of his time as a drummer and composer. “Magnolia Triangle” is a fourteen-bar tune in five. Another tune, “Dee Wee,” has six bars of three as the intro and then the A section is four bars of five, a measure of three, and then four bars of five. In ’63, this guy was playing polyrhythms that blow me away today, and they’re over bars of five. And he’s crossing the bar lines! Black was playing stuff people still can’t play today. Another record is Eddie Bo’s Hook & Sling. It was recorded in 1969. The first Meters record came out in 1969 as well. Either James Black was playing Zig’s [Zigaboo Modeliste] stuff before Zig was playing it, or they were both playing that stuff at the same time. James Black was the man in New Orleans. MD: Let’s move on to Galactic’s latest work, Ruckus. The first thing you hear is that strong descending fill, followed by absolute bottom end. Observation one: Your fills have changed. They still swing, but you’re so much more "on the beat" and nailing them. All I can think of is John Bonham.
MD: That’s really a John Bonham thing. Stanton: Oh yeah, totally! That’s one of the things I dig about Bonham, Zig, Keith Moon, and Mitch Mitchell. Those guys grew up playing shuffled 8th notes and listening to blues and jazz. When they tried to straighten this stuff out, they couldn’t help but swing it a little bit. I’m always experimenting with that place between straight and swung. MD: How does a larger bass drum affect your style? Stanton: That big bass drum enabled us to make everything super fat. With that drum I was tending to play less as a jazz player and interactively, which is usually the way I play funk. I like to blur the lines between jazz and funk and improvise on the groove – just float through it. The big bass drum made me think a little more from the bottom up; it’s more of a meet ‘n’ potatoes thing. MD: Forward to Ruckus. On “Bongo Joe,” what’s the woman on the sample saying to her child? Stanton: It’s in Japanese. We’ve been to Japan several times, and Ben [Ellman] is enamored with Japanese culture. For that track, he found some Japanese dialog off a cartoon and sampled it. MD: And for the second time on the album, we’ve got that beautiful juxtaposition of harmonica and fat bottom end. Is that snare the Remo Mondo? Stanton: I think it is. Ben came in with a loop and I played all over it. I let the loop run and then came up with a groove. Then this harmonica part came to my mind. We were going for a spaghetti-western vibe, and the harmonica seemed right. MD: In “Gypsy Fade,” you’re doing this neat little cross-stick flam. Can you explain how you created this sound? Stanton: It’s something I caught when I saw Erykah Badu in Philly. I’m playing cross-stick with my left hand and hi-hat with my right, but when it comes to the backbeat, I’m hitting my right stick on top of my left stick, which is still resting on the snare drum for the cross-stick. I can open it up by widening the flam that the two sticks make. MD: I understand that you used a different sort of “click track” for Ruckus. Stanton: Yeah, I’d go in and play a groove and get everybody’s agreement on the feel and tempo. I’d record it and then we’d pick one bar and loop it. So then I’d have a loop of myself to play to. Doing that makes it much less mechanical than playing with a click track. Sometimes we would layer other sounds on the loop, like brake drum sounds, and everybody would go, “Wow, that’s crazy. Let’s go play. This will be fun!” I actually started doing that on Flyin’ The Koop. You can take the loop out after, or you can use part of it and run it through a speaker and stick the speaker in a trash can and mike the trash can! If you play on top of that groove, it’s going to give you consistency throughout the tune. We’re always trying to take new technology in a way that feels comfortable to us. Yeah we’re playing to loops, but we’re playing to loops of me. Even though we all use old, vintage instrument, we try to put a new spin on it. At one time I was a purist and didn’t want to deal with technology, but now I’m learning that you can create art with it. MD: On “Uptown Odyssey,” we hear that unique “cross-stick flam” again. I kept thinking you were going to go to the open snare, but you held back until the end of the song. Stanton: I was going to the open snare on the chorus, but Rob [Mercurio, bassist] said it sounded better on cross-stick. To me, while I was playing it, it sounded better going to open snare, but when I listened back, I realized he was right. We’re all open to suggestions in this band. When I finally went to the open snare, I think it was my Slingerland reissue 6 ½ x 14 solid-shell Radio King. I’ve had nothing but good luck with that drum. MD: “Kid Kenner”: To me, it’s almost a soul beat meets electronica, a real bouncing groove. Stanton: That one is right hand on the cowbell and left hand alternating between hi-hat and snare drum. I made a loop and ran it through a Comptortion pedal and compressed the hell out of it. That loop is the beginning of the tune before you hear the acoustic guitar, and then there’s a part where I’m playing four on the floor while my left hand is on the panderio-that’s the jingle sound you hear. MD: “Tenderness” is a cover, but for the life of me I can’t place it. Sounds like an old ballad. Stanton: No, that’s the old General Public tune we slowed down. MD: What are you hitting before the chorus to make that clicking sound? Stanton: I’m glad you asked about that. Again, I played a loop and superimposed some sounds and made it fat. Then I went and played live drums over it. Then I played a rhythm very similar to the loop on “Fallin’ off the Floor.” There are several levels, and one of them is me playing on the rim or side of the floor tom. It was out producer’s idea to do implied New Orleans stuff underneath. MD: You say you never play a double pedal in the conventional manner. But in “All Behind You Now,” there are sections where I could have sworn you were using a double pedal with two beaters on one drum. Stanton: One of the things I did was play a four-on-the-floor pattern into the Boomerang [phrase sampler], and then “reversed” it in the Boomerang. It comes out “whoosh, wick, whoosh,” and then I’ll take that and play something more involved over the top of it. Next I’ll overdub that in the Boomerang and reverse that, so that the more involved stuff is now reversed. So what you might be hearing during the guitar and drum breakdown is the backwards loop again. What’s really hilarious is that I did the initial sample at a sound check while our monitor guy, John Hardee, was testing a Wurlitzer piano. You can hear a chromatic scale in the background. Check it out at the beginning of the song. At the guitar breakdown, I’m playing a Brazilian samba, with that reversed loop underneath. MD: Which brings us to the last song on Ruckus, “Doomed,” with its Bonham-like instruction. Stanton: This one, again, I created in the Boomerang. It’s a two-bar loop and I ran it through a flanger and Sans amp, which is a guitar preamp that crunches up the sound. The funny thing is that it sounds great on everything except guitar, but it sounds really good on drums! Once you’ve got your thing looped, you can put it through any guitar effects box. This tune has no live drums; it’s all loops. What happens around 1:23 is that we copy the original loop, then start it up, this time a 16th note late: It’s sort of “stuttering.” MD: You have a ton of charisma onstage when you’re performing with Galactic. Are you conscious about the extent to which people see you as the center of the group? Stanton: Not really, especially touring this latest record. I feel like I’m playing songs a little big more. MD: It seems that you’re hitting harder and using more matched grip on stage than earlier in your career. When I saw you with Moore & More, I thought you were playing softer and that you were using more traditional grip. Stanton: I tend to use traditional grip when I play jazz, or more of the New Orleans second-line stuff. But I like to play backbeats with matched grip. With Galactic, we’ve definitely been hitting harder, but then I started backing off and making a conscious effort to play quieter. At the start of the last tour, I was cracking my maple 5As left and right, so I switched to hickory 5As. After I made an effort to play looser, though, I went back to the maples and could go through an entire gig without breaking a stick. Again, it’s about playing with intensity but not bashing. Bonham was a master of that. Sure, he had bigger sticks and big drums, but he wasn’t really hitting them that hard. Watch Led Zeppelin’s DVD. When Bonham chokes up on the right stick he’s got a giant, gaping hole between his thumb and forefinger. It looks to me as if he’s using the thumb and middle finger as a fulcrum, which is what I do, and not the thumb and forefinger, because there’s less tension. If you pinch the thumb and first finger, you see the tendons tighten up. Pinch the thumb and the middle finger and there’s no tension. Lately, even with traditional grip, I’ve been experimenting with pinching between the thumb and the middle finger. But the funny thing is that I was looking at a picture of me playing—and there wasn’t a single finger touching the stick! I was playing so loose, just using my thumb and my hand. MD: With a 26” bass drum, I’m presuming it’s a similar loose technique and that you’re releasing the beater from the head in order to get full resonance. Stanton: I always release the beater. MD: And what we’re hearing, live and in the studio, are bass drums with no holes in the front heads? Stanton: Live with Galactic, there’s a 4” hole in the 20”. With Garage à Trois, there’s no hole. And the 26” never has a hole. On Emphasizer, with Garage à Trois, and Flyin’ The Koop, that’s an 18” with no hold. I think the hole is easier for engineers to deal with. Our engineer likes the hole for big rooms because he can open up the low and in the EQ and make it fat. If I give him something that’s already fat, it’s hard to take that and put it through the PA. It’s weird because my 26” sounds wide open and gargantuan and has no hole. It’s miked from the player’s side. Usually with an 18” or 20” with no hole, I’m miking from the batter side; I’m coming up from under the floor tom. the Audix D6 works well for that.
Stanton: I nearly always use coated Ambassadors on everything- the top and bottom of my toms, the snare batter and snare side, and the bass drum. I’ll tune them up a little more for a jazz gig, but in general I tune the bottom head a little bit higher than the top. I don’t fight the drum: I find out where the drum likes to sit. I don’t necessarily tune way high. My Gretsch drums have a wide tuning span, but I try not to get them too high or too low. Nowadays, if I’m going to tuine them up or down, I’ll mess mostly with the top heard and leave the bottom one along, maybe keep it a little tighter. MD: How would you describe the difference between the new Gretsch drums and your vintage round-badge Gretsch kit? Stanton:
Just last night I had a friend over. We opened up a bottle of wind
and set up my new Gretsches- 12”, 14 MD: You’re involved in a staggering number of projects. Can you outline some of these? Stanton: Besides working with Galactic, I’ve done two hours in the last few months with Garage à Trois. I’m playing tonight with Moore & More, opening up for The Meters. I’m working on a book: my take on New Orleans drumming and how I apply it to funk. They’ll be a DVD along the same lines, to mirror what I cover in my clinics and the book. I’m working on a 20” “trash-crash ride” with Bosphorus. We’re going to call the other cymbal I told you about a “Pang Thang.” I contributed a track to the Drum Nation CD. And I co-produced an album with Robert Mercurio for The Greyhounds. They’re a Texas organ trio, but they also have vocals, which is hip. The drum sound is great. MD: How’s the rest of 2004 looking? Stanton: Galactic will be going to Japan, Australia, and Europe. We’re starting writing for a new Galactic album, I’m working on my next solo record, and I’m still playing with Moore & More. MD: Any hints on staying sane when you get so busy? Stanton:
I don’t know. I dig what I’m doing. I have a girlfriend
and I miss her when I’m away, but I guess I’ve gotten
used to life on the road. Things have been good.
|
One
of the marks of greatness in a musician is that you can recognize
him after the first couple of notes. Take, for example, New Orleans
legend Johnny Vidacovich, who once showed a young student named
Stanton Moore a thing or two about playing looser and more slap-happy.
As soon as Vidacovich lays sticks to hear, you can tell it’s
him. He’s that funky – and he’s got a sound.
Stanton:
Cool! With this record, there was definitely a lot of that. In the
last couple of years, I’ve been trying to think of ways of
adding intensity to a groove without necessarily having to play
more notes or play louder. The main way of doing that is "straightening
out" the notes a little bit. I’m swinging a little bit
less and moving a little more towards straight. Then every now and
then I’ll play a fill that comes out swung, because that’s
the way I play, and the contrast works. 
MD:
You’ve recently gone to a 12” first tom and a 16”
floor tom. Any changes in your approach to tuning?