Chad Wackerman: Difference between revisions

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Chad Wackerman is an American drummer. He has played with Allan on many albums. These albums include Allan's "Road Games", "Metal Fatigue", "Atavachron", "Sand", "Secrets", "Wardenclyffe Tower", and the live albums "All Night Wrong" and "Blues For Tony", as well as Chads solo albums "40 Reasons", "The View" and "Dreams, Nightmares and Improvisations".

=CHAD ON ALLAN=

==Modern Drummer, December 1988==

RF: I know you always get a solo with Holdsworth. What is that gig like for a drummer?

CW: That's very, very open. Basically, I write my own parts, and the bass player writes his own parts. First, Allan writes the guitar parts then we write parts that fit with that.

RF: What about material that was previously recorded?

CW: It's still pretty open. Actually, Frank said the same thing when I joined his band: "Whatever you do, don't become a Vinnie clone or a Terry clone. I don't want a replica of someone I've already had." Allan feels the same way. Allan's approach is that he likes to get guys in his band who play the music the way he wants to hear it, but he never gives us any instruction at all. We never talk about it; we just play it.

RF: Take one of the songs you did with him and analyze that—maybe "Clown."

CW: That's off the latest album, Sand. I think I was away when he did the basics, because he did it with a drum machine first. He took the drum machine away, and I played over it.

RF: That was probably more confining than others, so pick a song where you feel good about the drum part you created.

CW: There's one called "Tokyo Dream," which is on the Road Games record. I could play it for you, but I can't really describe it. There's a part that matches up to the guitar part pretty well, where the rhythms and the punctuations are the same. The accents on guitar are the same as the drums. I used my bell cymbals to match his harmonics, my garbage cymbals to match the bass line, and a couple of different hi-hats.

RF: How was that piece brought to you?

CW: Allan played the guitar part for us. He usually has a song section and then a separate section that is the solo section, rather than using a jazz form of A-A-B-A, and just going over and over that. The tune section is fairly strict rhythmically, which isn't very typical of him, but then on the solo section, it's much more open and a bit floatier. I usually try to hear the music first. I normally don't think of drum patterns first. | try to fit in with what's going on musically.

RF: So that's a lot of improvisation live.

CW: Yes. There's still form to pieces, but they're very open.

CW: When I'm on tour with somebody, I like to listen to the opposite music of whatever music I'm playing on the tour. It's a good change. Often with Allan Holdsworth, we'd listen to pop music, Top-40 radio.

==caravan with a drum solo: the chad wackerman interview==

''©t'mershi duween # 25: june 1992 (by ben watson)

''

I met Allan through John Ferraro, again (laughs). It's always based on clicker friends. Allan had moved to California - they'd done I think one tour in the States. Gary had to go back to London and Allan needed a drummer. He'd been auditioning for a couple of weeks. John Ferraro knew Dave Ball who used to bicycle with Allan and found out that Allan needed a drummer. So Dave called John and said to give Allan a call, and he did. But at the last moment he got another tour, so John called me and said 'Holdsworth needs a drummer'. It usually works like that.

http://archive.fo/hjcvC#selection-1229.0-6.22

=ALLAN ON CHAD=

==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1982)]]==

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I did a compilation album a few years ago where guitar players did their rendition of Beatle Tunes. When they called me I had two days left to prepare something. Coincidently, Gordon Beck, a good friend of mine and a great piano player was staying for a few weeks at my place. It was his idea to do a rendition of ‘Michelle’. Now, I’m a big fan of Gary Willis. Especially when he plays swing, he sounds fantastic. I know the conflicts that may arise between bass players and drummers, so I asked him with whom he liked to play and he said Kirk Covington. Funny, because that’s half of Scott Henderson’s band Tribal Tech. We did the song pretty fast and I really liked the way things turned out, so I decided to ask them again for my new album. The problem with my own band is that they’re living spread in all corners of the world. '''Chad''' '''Wackerman''' is currently living in Australia, Gary Husband is living in England, Skuli Sverison in New York and Steve Hunt in Boston. I can only get them together for a longer tour.In th e past things turned out pretty OK, but the last tours we didn’t make a dime. I cannot keep asking these people to play for next to nothing. That’s why I have been looking for some musician’s in the neighborhood for some time now. I’m on the right path with Kirk and Gary, but at the same time I realize it’s impossible to find a replacement for somebody like Gary Husband. It’s also about finding a soul mate, somebody who’s on the same wavelenght.’

==[[A Different View (Modern Drummer 1996)]]==

RF: What comes to mind when I say Chad Wackerman?

AH: Precision engineering. Highly polished, detailed, and clear. It's just great, the combination of his ability to fly around with chops, combined with not just going potty all the time. I've been a lucky guy.

AH: I only started working with other drummers in my own band after I made a decision to move to the States, which was around 1981.

RF: And among those was Chad Wackerman.

AH: Right. I met Frank Zappa, and he knew I was looking for a drummer. He said, "You should try the drummer who is working with me; he's really good." I'd been holding auditions without the band there. I just played with each of the drummers who came along. Sometimes you get a guy who spends a lot of time learning the music—but that doesn't mean that he can play. Anybody can sit down and learn it, but I'm not interested in that. When I held auditions, we didn't play any tunes at all; we just jammed. When Chad came along I immediately really liked what happened.

RF: What was it you liked?

AH: It was organic again. There was a connection. To me, half of music is hard work and the other half is some kind of magic. I felt that when I did things, Chad was there—he heard everything. When we did eventually start playing the music together, I knew his interpretation of the tunes would obviously be different from Gary's. But I also knew they would come out sounding good. I try to give the players I work with the freedom to be themselves. That's something I learned when I was playing with Tony Williams. A lot of the time, he wouldn't give me any direction. After a while I realized that was really good for me; I had to contribute something without being told what to do. I always like to do that with the guys I work with now.

==[[Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)]]==

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 Chad Wackerman is an American drummer. He has played with Allan on many albums. These albums include Allan's "Road Games", "Metal Fatigue", "Atavachron", "Sand", "Secrets", "Wardenclyffe Tower", and the live albums "All Night Wrong" and "Blues For Tony", as well as Chads solo albums "40 Reasons", "The View" and "Dreams, Nightmares and Improvisations".
+=CHAD ON ALLAN=
+==Modern Drummer, December 1988==
+RF: I know you always get a solo with Holdsworth. What is that gig like for a drummer?
+CW: That's very, very open. Basically, I write my own parts, and the bass player writes his own parts. First, Allan writes the guitar parts then we write parts that fit with that.
+RF: What about material that was previously recorded?
+CW: It's still pretty open. Actually, Frank said the same thing when I joined his band: "Whatever you do, don't become a Vinnie clone or a Terry clone. I don't want a replica of someone I've already had." Allan feels the same way. Allan's approach is that he likes to get guys in his band who play the music the way he wants to hear it, but he never gives us any instruction at all. We never talk about it; we just play it.
+RF: Take one of the songs you did with him and analyze that—maybe "Clown."
+CW: That's off the latest album, Sand. I think I was away when he did the basics, because he did it with a drum machine first. He took the drum machine away, and I played over it.
+RF: That was probably more confining than others, so pick a song where you feel good about the drum part you created.
+CW: There's one called "Tokyo Dream," which is on the Road Games record. I could play it for you, but I can't really describe it. There's a part that matches up to the guitar part pretty well, where the rhythms and the punctuations are the same. The accents on guitar are the same as the drums. I used my bell cymbals to match his harmonics, my garbage cymbals to match the bass line, and a couple of different hi-hats.
+RF: How was that piece brought to you?
+CW: Allan played the guitar part for us. He usually has a song section and then a separate section that is the solo section, rather than using a jazz form of A-A-B-A, and just going over and over that. The tune section is fairly strict rhythmically, which isn't very typical of him, but then on the solo section, it's much more open and a bit floatier. I usually try to hear the music first. I normally don't think of drum patterns first. | try to fit in with what's going on musically.
+RF: So that's a lot of improvisation live.
+CW: Yes. There's still form to pieces, but they're very open.
+CW: When I'm on tour with somebody, I like to listen to the opposite music of whatever music I'm playing on the tour. It's a good change. Often with Allan Holdsworth, we'd listen to pop music, Top-40 radio.
+==caravan with a drum solo: the chad wackerman interview==
+''©t'mershi duween # 25: june 1992  (by ben watson)
+''
+I met Allan through John Ferraro, again (laughs). It's always based on clicker friends. Allan had moved to California - they'd done I think one tour in the States. Gary had to go back to London and Allan needed a drummer. He'd been auditioning for a couple of weeks. John Ferraro knew Dave Ball who used to bicycle with Allan and found out that Allan needed a drummer. So Dave called John and said to give Allan a call, and he did. But at the last moment he got another tour, so John called me and said 'Holdsworth needs a drummer'. It usually works like that.
+http://archive.fo/hjcvC#selection-1229.0-6.22
+=ALLAN ON CHAD=
 ==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1982)]]==
@@ Line 161: / Line 202: @@
 I did a compilation album a few years ago where guitar players did their rendition of Beatle Tunes. When they called me I had two days left to prepare something. Coincidently, Gordon Beck, a good friend of mine and a great piano player was staying for a few weeks at my place. It was his idea to do a rendition of ‘Michelle’. Now, I’m a big fan of Gary Willis. Especially when he plays swing, he sounds fantastic. I know the conflicts that may arise between bass players and drummers, so I asked him with whom he liked to play and he said Kirk Covington. Funny, because that’s half of Scott Henderson’s band Tribal Tech. We did the song pretty fast and I really liked the way things turned out, so I decided to ask them again for my new album. The problem with my own band is that they’re living spread in all corners of the world. '''Chad''' '''Wackerman''' is currently living in Australia, Gary Husband is living in England, Skuli Sverison in New York and Steve Hunt in Boston. I can only get them together for a longer tour.In th e past things turned out pretty OK, but the last tours we didn’t make a dime. I cannot keep asking these people to play for next to nothing. That’s why I have been looking for some musician’s in the neighborhood for some time now. I’m on the right path with Kirk and Gary, but at the same time I realize it’s impossible to find a replacement for somebody like Gary Husband. It’s also about finding a soul mate, somebody who’s on the same wavelenght.’
+==[[A Different View (Modern Drummer 1996)]]==
+RF: What comes to mind when I say Chad Wackerman?
+AH: Precision engineering. Highly polished, detailed, and clear. It's just great, the combination of his ability to fly around with chops, combined with not just going potty all the time. I've been a lucky guy.
+AH: I only started working with other drummers in my own band after I made a decision to move to the States, which was around 1981.
+RF: And among those was Chad Wackerman.
+AH: Right. I met Frank Zappa, and he knew I was looking for a drummer. He said, "You should try the drummer who is working with me; he's really good." I'd been holding auditions without the band there. I just played with each of the drummers who came along. Sometimes you get a guy who spends a lot of time learning the music—but that doesn't mean that he can play. Anybody can sit down and learn it, but I'm not interested in that. When I held auditions, we didn't play any tunes at all; we just jammed. When Chad came along I immediately really liked what happened.
+RF: What was it you liked?
+AH: It was organic again. There was a connection. To me, half of music is hard work and the other half is some kind of magic. I felt that when I did things, Chad was there—he heard everything. When we did eventually start playing the music together, I knew his interpretation of the tunes would obviously be different from Gary's. But I also knew they would come out sounding good. I try to give the players I work with the freedom to be themselves. That's something I learned when I was playing with Tony Williams. A lot of the time, he wouldn't give me any direction. After a while I realized that was really good for me; I had to contribute something without being told what to do. I always like to do that with the guys I work with now.
 ==[[Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)]]==

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