Need Great country drummer in Seattle area

[Seattle_BassMan]

Hey all, I'm not sure where to post this, so I figure misc should work.

Our band is starting the process of looking for a new, professional quality drummer. We're a country band playing for an artist that is signed to an indy Nashville label. The artist has had airplay and we're currently playing 70-80 gigs/year. The gigs pay better than average and we rarely play bars.We play largely originals. We will likely be playing many more gigs in the next year and there will very likely be travel involved.

We're looking for a very solid drummer, who is easy to get along with, doesn't mind playing with a metronome/click (occasionally) and can commit large amounts of time to playing music :-) Is that asking too much

Anyway, hope ya'll don't mind me posting this here. But I figure I may at least get a decent referral from fellow bass players.

[Yngwie 4String]

what does it take to be a great country drummer? I though drummers were measured by speed and precision, but mostly speed. Country drummers just keep a pretty steady albeit slower beat right?

[Seattle_BassMan]

Well, firstly, the drummer has to enjoy country music otherwise it's usually not a good experience for all involved :-)

I've played with a number of good rock drummers that just don't understand (or get) country and so they approach the songs just like normal rock tunes. That doesn't usually work out too well for the overall feel of the songs (although this is changing with a lot of the new country having much more of a pop/rock feel).

A country drummer needs to be very competent on playing shuffles, train beats, 3/4 waltz feel, able to use brushes effectively, half time feel as well as a few other beats that seem to be fairly specific to country.

To me a country drummer has to have almost the same mindset as a typical bass player....which is to lay back a little and just be subservient to the song and only play as much as is required to make the song perfect. Whereas in rock a lot of drummers take the approach to play as much as they possibly can get away with within a particular song (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I have played with a number of drummers that can play both rock and country very well. It's mostly just a mindset.

And, by the way, if you think country drummers just play rock beats, but only play them slower....then you should check out this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIzFo_UrD64

This is some pretty fast drumming if you ask me (and yes that's me on bass....hey, I gotta plug myself once in while)

:-)

[TroyK]

PM Sent