On Jam Cruise 6, we had the distinct honor and pleasure of sitting down with arguably the most prolific drummer on the ship, Stanton Moore, for an brief but informative conversation about his history, his multi-faceted musical expression, and a little about what the future holds for the band Galactic.
Scott Finkel: Hows your jam cruise going so far?
Stanton Moore: Good, man, very good. Had a very fun little gig last night with Colonel Bruce, Robert Walter, George Porter Jr., Grant Green Jr., Jeff Coffin, and Karl Denson. That was a lotta fun. Tonight I’m lookin’ forward to playing with Robert Walter we’re doing a little duo, but we’ll have a bunch of special guests for that.
SF: Is it harder for you guys as musicians to deal with this kind of collapse of your working environment with everything else? I mean, you can’t really get away here like you can with a traditional touring environment.
SM: No, its cool you can always go back to your room at any point, for anything, so that’s all good. And its nice to get to meet some of the fans, and get to hang out and relax so, we like it. And we’ve been on every single Jam Cruise so far, so we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t really like it.
SF: Music as a form of expression is like giving yourself away, in a sense, a little bit at a time. Was there a specific time in your life that you realized, hey, I want to spend my life expressing myself to other people?
SM: Yeah, I was probably 9 or 10 years old. I mean, I started bangin’ on stuff when I was like 4 or 5 my mom started bringin’ me to the Mardi Gras parade when I was eight months old, so by about the age of 3, 4, 5, I started really noticing the drums coming down the street, so I started hittin’ on stuff.
SF: And you knew even then that this was gonna be a life-long thing?
SM: oh yeah, yeah, I feel like I’ve sorta known all my life, pretty much.
SF: Then you started playing gigs in high school.
SM: Yeah, I was 16 when I played my first gig in a club.
SF: What was that like?
SM: It was very cool. Of course it was very exciting I mean at that point it was the coolest thing you could ever do in life, and you’ve been looking forward to it for your entire life. So it was very cool, and from there I just kept playing gigs as much as possible.
SF: When you were doing those first gigs, who were some of your drumming heroes?
SM: Well, for the Jazz thing, I was way into Elvin Jones, Jo Jones, Johnny ‘covich, definitely checked all those guys out a lot. And then on the rock end of the spectrum, it was John Bonham, Keith Moon, and Mitch Mitchell, and y’know on the funk end of things, Grant, Zigaboo, Clyde Stubblefield, Jabo Starksand Russel Batiste, who is on this boat right now, he was a giant influence on me, kind of took me under his wing I was 17 and he was 24 and he let me come hang around, and move his drums for him and stuff, and I learned a lot from him. I try to take different things from all kinds of different people.
SF: That brings up a good point about different people and different styles you get such great recognition from traditional Jazz radio stations, on the internet and the airwaves, doing your trio and solo work, and then you switch over here to your rock/funk work with Galactic, and there, too, there is so much positive feedback from critics, other musicians, and fans what’s that like to kind have to flip back and forth between those two environments?
SM: Its really all just different sides of myself. I liken playing music to having a Conversation and I think its very similar to that. Different styles of music, to me, are just different topics to discuss. When you get together with a certain group of people, you guys might like to talk about one thing, you might want to talk about politics, or world affairs this other groups of guys over here, we might wanna just go and have some wine, y’know, have a good meal, and just relax together. So its different conversations. For me, what I like to do is just be well-versed, so you can participate in the conversation. You may not know everything there is to say on a particular topic, but you get in there, and you listen and you contribute what you can. And when you don’t have anything to say, you just listen.
SF: How long did it take you to learn that? I mean, when you first start out, you’re young, you’re full of energy, and you’ve got a lot to say, but you don’t necessarily learn to really listen.
SM: Right, right. Well, it takes a lifetime, really, (laughs) I’m still trying to learn that. But that’s the fun part of makin’ music, is the constant journey of trying to get better at doing it.
SF: At having those different conversations.
SM: Yeah, exactly — to me it’s become more and more natural more and more clear to me — like when I play with Galactic, there are certain things I do when I play with Galactic, I become more groove-oriented, its totally okay to just sit on a groove and just make the whole room move in unison, and that’s awesome. But you know, when I’m playing with my trio, or playin’ with Robert Walter duo, we can definitely get more interactive and you can play the songs differently every night I mean, with Galactic we play them all differently every night too, but you can really kind of interact more when you have a small ensemble. I liken that also, as a drummer, to driving when you play with a trio or duo, there’s a lot more air, so you can drive it like a sports car you can take turns, and you can play with it a little bit more. But with Galactic, its like drivin’ a mack truck, you can’t weave around as much, you just kind of get on the damn gas and go.
SF: Yeah, it kind of goes in a certain direction, you just kind of steer a bigger heavier sound down the road.
SM: Exactly. But its still fun as hell, you know. So, if you like to drive, you want to do both of those, you want drive different kinds of cars. Being a drummer is very much like that, like driving the band, the event, what’s happening. Its like you’re in charge, really, in a way. If you bring it down, people react a certain way, if you bring the energy up, people respond and if you’re not paying attention, things can really get lost in a hurry.
SF: Karl Denson has been quoted as saying that he felt hip-hop has recently been carrying the load of innovation in the jam scene would you agree, based on Galactic’s chosen direction for the new album, and what was it like working with all Mr. Lif, Boots Riley, and all those guys?
SM: Makin’ that record was definitely a very long process, but the end result definitely justifies the – (laughs) aggravation and frustration that we went through makin’ it. It was a very constructive process it might start with me laying down a beat, and then the guys comin’ in and play a bass line over it, or a guitar line over it and then we’d change it, and start constructing it into more of a structure — and then we’d have an MC lay something down on it, and it becomes more and more of a song, and once we got it pretty much plowed into where we wanted it, I’d come back in and replay all of the drums. And then maybe some of the other guys would feel they could do something better and replay some of their instrumentsso it was very much that constructing a song that is going to be around for however long, as opposed to sort of capturing a performance. So it was a different process for us, but, I’ve really grown to appreciate that process, and we’ve learned a lot doing it. We’ve learned what we’re capable of, and it definitely tightened our studio chops, together as a band.
SF: It’s got to be challenging to have to learn new logistical ways of doing things like that, while you’re trying to produce great ideas at the same time, and carry those concepts forward into future efforts, and build off them.
SM: Yeah, absolutely. It made us realize that we’re capable of doing a whole lot more, and expanding our sound. So its good.
SF: So where do you see it going the next 4 or 5 years?
SM: Man, you know it could go any of a lot of different ways, which is really cool. Right now we’re enjoying touring on this record, and going to a bunch of different places, and we’re starting to think about the next record, and who we’re going to have on it that process has definitely inspired us we might get some of the people who were on this one, but we don’t want to make a volume two of what we just did, we want to make it a logical next step.
SF: Well, listen, I really want to thank you for taking the time to sit with us and do this. One last question: what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
SM: (laughs) well, I really like chocolate chip.
