SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

FALL, 2020

VOLUME NINE NUMBER TWO

B.B. KING

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

BRANDEE YOUNGER

(October 31-November 6)

CHRIS DAVE

(November 7-13)

MATANA ROBERTS

(November 14-20)

NATE SMITH

(November 21-27)

T.J. ANDERSON, JR.

(November 28--December 4)

KEYON HARROLD

(December 5-11)

NICOLE MITCHELL

(December 12-18)

OLLY WILSON

(December 19-25)

KENDRICK LAMAR

(December 26-January 1)

JONATHAN BAILEY HOLLAND

(January 2-8)

WENDELL LOGAN

(January 9-15)

DONAL FOX

(January 16-22)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/chris-dave-mn0000623209/biography

Chris Dave

(b. November 8, 1973)

Artist Biography by Andy Kellman

Chris Dave has been a busy and remarkably versatile professional drummer since his late teens. His work as a performing and recording musician has spanned the genres of R&B, jazz, gospel, and pop, with inspirations ranging from jazz giants such as Jack DeJohnette and Jeff "Tain" Watts to maverick hip-hop producer J Dilla. A Houston, Texas native, Dave started playing percussion as a youngster in church and quickly became intensely focused on developing his ability. As a teenager, he supported gospel choirs and singers such as Yolanda Adams and Kim Burrell. His earliest formal credit is likely on Gospel Music Workshop of America's 1989 album Live in St. Louis. After Dave graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in his hometown, he attended Howard University on a full scholarship, but an encounter with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at a Mint Condition gig led to Dave joining that band on tour and pursuing music full-time.

Dave not only established a long-term affiliation with Mint Condition, but became one of the most sought-after drummers of his generation. Mary J. Blige's Mary, Maxwell's BLACKsummers'night, Robert Glasper's Double Booked, Adele's 21, D'Angelo's Black Messiah, and Justin Bieber's Purpose represent a small fraction of his session discography. In 2013, joined by a collective of peers that included bassist Pino Palladino, guitarists Isaiah Sharkey and Tim Stewart, and vocals from Yasiin Bey and Mint Condition's Stokley Williams, Dave put together Chris Dave and the Drumhedz Mixtape, an informal step toward his first proper work as a leader. Signed to Blue Note, he recorded Chris Dave and the Drumhedz with a supporting cast of 50 instrumentalists, singers, and rappers, with Williams, Tweet, Bilal, and Anderson Paak among the guest vocalists.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/chris-daddy-dave-people-would-show-up-with-snare-drums-just-to-see-if-i-would-play-them

Chris ‘Daddy’ Dave: "People would show up with snare drums just to see if I would play them"

For some musicians, it is written in the stars. But, there’s always some learning to be done, too.

“I was always extremely drawn to music and the arts,” says Chris ‘Daddy’ Dave. “I guess I was a right-brain creative mind when I was younger, so the music helped express things you couldn’t really explain how they felt, but through music it was easier.”

Growing up playing drums in church, Dave attended Houston, Texas’ famous High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the same school attended by contemporary jazz stars Robert Glasper, Walter Smith III, Jason Moran and Eric Harland. Dave then went on to the Jazz Studies programme at Howard University, where his tutors included Geri Allen and Grady Tate, but his playing caught the attention of producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and, faced with the choice of finishing his studies or touring with R&B band Mint Condition, Dave hit the road.

Now he’s one of the industry’s most sought-after players. His distinctive beats can be heard on Justin Bieber’s Purpose, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, the Grammy-winning Black Radio by the Robert Glasper Experiment and Adele’s record-breaking 21. When he’s not busy as a session musician and sideman, he leads Chris Dave And The Drumhedz, featuring a rotating cast with himself at the core.

"Players include bassist Pino Palladino, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey and Cleo Sample on keys, all playing an unpredictable blend of jazz, hip-hop and whatever takes their fancy. We spoke to Dave to learn more about his rise to drumming stardom.

How did you meet Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis?

“This was prior to YouTube and the internet being stupid crazy. There was an album floating around that I played on, Kim Burrell, which was my first professional gospel recording - that album did a lot in the whole gospel field and there were a lot of jazz things on the album. The things I was criticised for were you can’t have jazz interludes on a gospel album, or you can’t have the odd-times we put on the album.

"So, by the time I got to Howard, that was already known and then I was hanging with Greg Hutchinson and Clarence Penn and they would come into town because they were playing with Betty Carter or Roy Hargroves. We were all friends, I was just the one in school and everyone else was working with famous artists. I was trying to finish school, that was the goal, that’s when the Mint Condition stuff happened in my sophomore year.

“I was supposed to go to class and I didn’t go because it was concert band, which I hated. I skipped and went to see Mint Condition do a show at Howard with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. My brothers loved Prince, so I just wanted to say I met Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. We started talking, they were like, ‘What do you guys do?’ ‘I play drums. My friend plays guitar, he plays keyboards, blah blah blah.’ ‘Do you have a band?’

"I was like, ‘Yeah sure,’ because in my mind they’re not ever going to hear us play anyway. Then they were like, ‘We want to come check out some musicians,’ because this was when Jimmy and Terry were starting their Perspective label. This is right after all the Human League stuff, all these hits they had, Janet Jackson.

“They came to the practice room, we were playing, Jimmy and Terry were like, ‘Hey, we need to get your number.’ I gave them the number of the girl I was staying with. After that I went back home for the summer, they were calling me and I didn’t know.

"By the time I got back to college, it was like a real search, like, ‘Yo, you have to call this number today, it’s Jimmy Jam.’ So that’s when they called me for the audition and I left the next day - it was trying to figure out how to stay in school and be on tour. I was like, alright, I’m just going to go on tour.”

What did Mint Condition want from a drummer?

“At that point, they just wanted a drummer for Mint Condition because Stoke [Stokely Williams] was such a good drummer himself, but he was the lead singer, so he was hard on all the drummers they had.

"Their first drummer was Michael Bland who played on all the Prince stuff and Prince took him from Mint, so they had no drummers in the interim and I just happened to meet them at that point. That’s how I was introduced to Stoke and everyone and then we all jammed.

"We had a cool brotherly vibe, so I joined the band and started playing with them and touring, really sitting back, learning and being kind of quiet, making mistakes here and there but learning from them.”

At one point it was kind of crazy because people would show up with snare drums just to see if I would play them

Did you want to be a full-time band member?

“I wanted to be in Mint Condition, but at the same time there were already six members in the band, so Stoke was kind enough to explain it. ‘Man, you produce, you write, you play other instruments, you don’t have to just play drums.’

"I would write the jazz interludes on their records, but I was still in a learning phase, I wasn’t trying to be a leader at that point. I was still trying to learn and be a follower.”

Who would you say has most shaped your approach as a bandleader?

“I would say Mint Condition, because I met so many people from Prince, Kenny Garrett and Meshell Ndegeocello, through Mint Condition. We might be on tour with the Isley Brothers, who are heroes to my brothers, so I’m sitting there watching and learning and talking to them, that was the real college for me.

"Watching what made their band tight, what made their show tight. Why do people really like these drummers? Why do people never hire these drummers? Just learning the whole dos and don’ts of styles. It’s like a chess game because you’re trying to let people know you can play but the most important thing is making sure the music sounds amazing, making sure the audience is happy.”

When recording with stars such as Justin Bieber and Adele, do you work with the artists directly or mainly with the producer?

“Both at the same time. We have fun in the studio, so with Adele we probably ate and kicked it a few times that day, and then Rick [Rubin, producer] shows up, we crack a few jokes and then we start listening to what we’re trying to accomplish for that day.

"Adele sings live, so everything is all live takes, it’s not like we’re laying the music today and then they come in two weeks later and we never meet. Especially when I work with Rick, the artist is there, most of the time - they’re actually singing with us while we’re playing even if it’s a scratch track or a demo.

“That’s the same with Justin Bieber. He gets on my drums and plays. He’s like, ‘What are these cymbals, what is this?’ It’s a cool vibe. It’s not a work vibe for my sessions, not saying I haven’t been in those types of sessions earlier, but that’s not my choice now to do those types of sessions. People hire me for what they know I can do, for whatever my sound is or whatever I naturally do, so it makes it a little easier.”

Do you plan what equipment you’ll need for each session?

“No, I’ve got a gang of sh*t that I’ll just have set up because I don’t know what I’m going to think of - that’s the problem! I might be hearing the song and once we get in the studio they might have added a new part, a new bridge, a new intro. I would be mad if I’m like, ‘Damn, I didn’t bring that other percussion box.’ I have drums stashed in a lot of studios, so I can get a lot of different sounds.”

Does that apply to your live performances? You often have multiple snare drums on stage.

“That started because I used to hate triggers and the triggers that were out sucked, but now technology has dampened that if you’re down on triggers! There are a lot of cool things going on, but yeah, I would use different snares back then because I would want to get to them really quick. The artist might switch the order up and, back then, the artists I was playing for wouldn’t necessarily go by the script every night, so it would be hard to program stuff around them.”

Do you use triggers now?

“Yeah, I have a new line of things coming out, laser triggers, in a couple of months. I’ll be premiering it this year. That’s with Sunhouse, it’s a small, geeky tech company. They’re doing some crazy sh*t.”

With the Drumhedz album, did you approach Blue Note or did they come to you?

“Don Was [label president] was instrumental with that going to Blue Note. He knew I had a lot of stuff in the vault, but I was trying to figure out a proper way to channel the music where it could not be disturbed and be heard in its entirety. He came to a couple of Drumhedz shows a few years back and we started to talk. It’s kind of weird, because we didn’t have any albums out, but we still had shows and we were selling out especially in Europe, Japan, China and Russia and all these other places. They’re like, ‘Why are you in Australia and you don’t have a record out?’ And we were trying to figure that out!

“That helped us out leverage-wise. Don was like, ‘I think what y’all are doing and me being president is very hand-in-hand with what I’m trying to do and the movement y’all are trying to create.’ He understood we were coming from the side of all the musicians and writers and artists - some may get monetary value but everybody just wants credits and for people to know what they do, what they contribute to anything, especially if it’s great. We represent a small portion of that. Everyone on the album, from the mixing down, is a Drumhed and family. Drumhedz is outside of just the people on the album.

People know they’re great artists, but is Bilal bigger than Justin Bieber? Of course not. So that’s why this whole project is put together

“There are artists, comedians, painters, illustrators, tech guys, people that make furniture, construction companies, it’s a big thing. Then it went inside with Blue Note being a small label trying to fight just to be heard. It was better to work with somebody small who can get the vision. This is our core audience for now because doing anything bigger we would just get lost.”

Do you see yourself as part of a wider movement with other similar genre-blending artists such Robert Glasper?

“No, I think this is a departure. When we were doing the Robert Glasper Experiment, that’s more me, Rob, Derrick and Casey sitting around playing. With Black Radio, we didn’t even know what we were going to play until we literally walked in the studio. ‘Oh, let’s play this, let’s play this, we should call Lalah [Hathaway], see if she’s in town.’ That sparked a lot of things, but that’s just normally how we play individually.

“This is more like the new movement of showing drummers as leaders with no ego or pride. It’s about the music, and the music is messages, sonic sounds and things of that nature. The drums are really mixed well and different than say anything Blue Note ever had. Drumhedz is not another Robert Glasper album. It’s not ‘this sounds like Adele or this sounds like a Justin Bieber song’.

“This is Drumhedz, so that’s why the album takes place in outer space because we’re not even on the Earth when we’re doing the album. The album starts with you going through a portal, just so you know you’re getting away from all of the other stuff. This is real musicians, artists, blah blah blah, coming together so once you get into the portal, now you’re in the Drumhedz world and the album is like a playlist of all of us together. That would be the playlist of you in the Drumhedz world, introducing people like Bilal and Tweet, they’re real special to us.

“People know they’re great artists, but is Bilal bigger than Justin Bieber? Of course not. So that’s why this whole project is put together. At the time we did this album, Anderson Paak and Sir, only the people who were their core audience knew about them, because Anderson wasn’t signed with Dr Dre at the time. They’re just people I really believe in because all of us were so instrumental in so many other things that we’re just going with our instincts now.”

http://www.bluenote.com/artist/chris-dave-and-the-drumhedz/

Chris Dave and the Drumhedz

Blue Note

Biography

You already know the Drumhedz. You just don’t know that you know the Drumhedz. They’ve been playing on your favorite albums for years, setting the tone or keeping time at the best shows you’ve ever seen, making the young stars sound like legends and the legends sound like gods, quietly stacking Grammys without ever delivering an acceptance speech, and moving onto the next gig with the simple satisfaction of a job well done. They’re the session players and the road warriors, or, “Cats that were looked over, but they’re bad,” in the words of the Drumhedz bandleader Chris Dave, who’s drummed for everyone from Adele to Bieber and Dolly to D’Angelo. “They all have stories like mine.” Sure enough, the group’s self-titled debut LP showcases a family of musicians whose credits coil like ivy around nearly every pillar of modern sound, getting together to do things to music they couldn’t on anyone else’s project.

“I never knew what it was going to sound like when we all got together,” says Chris. “But I could picture it, like, ‘This album is gonna take place in a portal. You’re getting away from Earth, from all the bullshit. You’re safe, but now you’re in our world.'”

It’s a place without genre, where elements of funk, soul, gospel, hip-hop and jazz mix until they’re an indistinguishable surging mass of solid groove. But this isn’t a jam session and Chris isn’t much for solos. His compositions are like his drumming: precise but tweaked just so, syncopated to allow the merging of multiple ideas, and flexible enough to triumph in all manner of tunings. As for this interstellar world’s residents, well, how much time do you have? There are nearly 50 Drumhedz in here, spanning core crew like Pino Palladino (bass), Isaiah Sharkey (guitar), Cleo “Pookie” Sample (keys), Sir Darryl Farris (vocals) and Keyon Harrold (horn), to old familiars like James Poyser (the Roots), Stokley Williams (Mint Condition) and Shafiq Husayn (Sa-Ra), to fresh guests like Anderson .Paak, Bilal, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Phonte Coleman.

“People say you can’t have all of these sounds in one place,” says Chris, “but how we hear things, it’s just music. You like it or you don’t. This is a ‘why can’t you?’ album.”

It’s the album the Drumhedz founder has been building toward his entire life. Chris first reached for the sticks at 3, hoping to hit skins for his brothers’ funk group. He was denied, but found his second chance at church, on percussion initially. At home dad would listen to soul and jazz, mom gospel, and his two brothers would listen to funk bands. When he started practicing in his room, “it became like a video game,” as he obsessively tried to emulating the styles he was hearing. By the time Chris hit middle school, he was drumming for Houston choirs, backing singers like Kim Burrell and Yolanda Adams. All of which made him a shoo-in for the revered High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. And thanks to a student exchange program, he’d soon be cribbing beats from boarders—non-4/4 stuff from Japan and India. Chris kept building his chops, and playing out, and graduated with a full ride to Howard University in D.C.

“But after first semester, I was trying to figure out what I’d even do with a degree,” says Chris. He didn’t have to wonder long. “Mint Condition was doing a black college tour and I cut class to see it. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were there, so my friends and I went up to them, like, ‘Yo, you should sign us.’ We didn’t even have a band. But Jimmy’s like, ‘I’ll listen to y’all for five minutes.’ I don’t even know what we played, but next thing you know, Mint Condition is calling me to be their drummer.”

Chris dropped out to open for Janet Jackson, and the work started pouring in soon enough. Lionel Richie. Mary J. Kenny Garrett. Living with Stokely in Minneapolis, he made his own Dilla-inspired beats and worked on songwriting. In studios, on tour and in private, he was perfecting his style. Early on, he met the Time, and explained to Jellybean Johnson that he learned his part on “777-9311.” The band’s response: “What the fuck? You know that was a drum machine, right? You’re not supposed to be able to play that.” Chris’s need to sponge up all he heard paid off—from 2009 to 2012, he worked on three Grammy-winning albums across three genres: Maxwell’s BLACKsummer’snight, Adele’s 21, and the Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio. In the personnel credits for those LPs, you’ll find the foundation of the Drumhedz.

“I always wanted to be in a group,” says Chris, and he was to a degree. “Me and Rob started the Experiment living together in New York, after Maxwell. But he was also signed solo, so after we did the Adele stuff, me, Pino and Poyser were like, ‘Let’s just play sometime.’ We booked a random gig in London and it sold out. Then we started doing festivals, as Chris Dave and Friends, and out of that, we start casually, some-kind-of-way touring, like, ‘How are we doing this when we don’t have a record out?'”

So in 2013, they drop the Chris Dave and the Drumhedz Mixtape (GLOW365), a free 23-track set of “nod your head to this” type grooves swirling up all the genres these guys were working in. Some of the material was culled from old recordings—like when Chris, Glasper, and Mos Def rocked Houston’s Red Cat all night—and other bits were new, but it was all overture for the album to come. It took a while, but in late 2015, Chris blocked out a month and change at Kingsize Soundlabs in Los Angeles (his primary home now). He spent a few days prepping the studio like he would his kit before a gig, then put out the call and the Drumhedz flocked from their various dimensions to help build a portal that’d transport the rest of us to their world. Chris recalls giving Goapele lyrical direction for “Atlanta, Texas”: “You’re not a woman, you’re the sun.” They’d record constantly. He’d cut it down later. The flow was most important.

“I want to play at nighttime at the festivals, not ‘you can catch me at Carnegie Hall for $200 a ticket or don’t talk to me,'” says Chris. “We just want to party. It’s a getaway.”

Sure enough the LP opens with a liftoff sequence, gives way to the astral rap of “Universal Language,” where KRNDN rhymes and Sy Smith coos, then opens up with “Dat Feelin’,” a go-go paced march through the center of the galaxy—you can almost picture space dust and hurtling asteroids as brass blows and drums pop. But despite the celestial bent, these are very human songs. There’s .Paak detailing the struggle on “Black Hole,” conflicted emotions taking musical form on “Sensitive Granite,” the flirty jaunt of “Whatever,” and Bilal and Tweet getting their Marvin and Tammi on, in five-four, during “Spread Her Wings.” Because for all their otherworldly ability, the Drumhedz are who they are because of connection. At the end of the day, they’re the cats who came together. And now that they did, you might be a Drumhed too.

https://dailytrojan.com/2018/03/29/drummer-chris-dave-is-a-powerful-force-behind-the-scenes/

Drummer Chris Dave is a powerful force behind the scenes

by KENAN DRAUGHORNE
March 29, 2018

The Daily Trojan

Behind the scenes, Chris Dave’s name is held in high regard by many in the music industry. He has recorded with artists like Beyoncé, Adele and Lupe Fiasco, so it’s not hard to see why that’s the case. But Dave, who is a drummer, says he’s earned more satisfaction from his wide range of experiences than any praise.

After years of playing backup drums for artists such as Beyoncé and Adele, Chris Dave has forged his own path by starting his band and going against the expectations of everyone in the music industry. Photo courtesy of Dante Marshall.

“I always liked playing all kinds of music instead of just one style,” he said. “The struggle was always people labeling you and expecting certain things from you, so I was always trying to push the boundaries of that as a drummer and a musician.”

Chris Dave first gravitated to the drumset as a child growing up attending his church in Houston, as a way to get involved and to please his parents without having to sing in the choir.

He began his professional career when he linked with the R&B group Mint Condition in 1993. He climbed his way through the ranks while earning a number of impressive credits with big-name artists in every genre.

Now, however, Chris Dave’s name is appearing at the forefront rather than in the credits, thanks to his group called Chris Dave and the Drumhedz. The collective released their first mixtape in 2013, and in January, they released their self-titled debut album.

“I had gotten tired of people asking us to put groups together at the last minute for festivals and other things we were doing,” he said. “We were always playing together outside of our work with artists, so it was more like a family type of situation. We always wanted to play together, so the best excuse was just to make it a group.”

The album includes a wide range of sonic styles, weaving between fast-paced, funk-influenced cuts and slower, more soulful songs like “Spread Her Wings.” Unsurprisingly, there’s a laundry list of impressive features from artists like SiR, Bilal and Goapele, as well as Anderson .Paak features on “Black Hole” and “Clear View.”

“I’ve known [.Paak] since his name was Breezy [Lovejoy],” he said. “I was out in L.A. and we met at one of the clubs where he was playing drums, he told me he was a fan and we just connected. We’ve been cool ever since that day.”

In today’s era, it’s no big deal for artists to jump between sounds and styles the way the Drumhedz do on their album, but during the beginning stages of Dave’s career, those diverse skills often went underappreciated. Cliques within genres were entrenched in the musical landscape, and mingling between them was somewhat of a challenge, often drawing questioning looks rather than widespread acceptance.

“Everybody was so in their groups; jazz peers hung out with jazz peers, so if you weren’t in that zone, you wouldn’t know when and where they were hanging out,” he said. “Same with hip-hop, same with the blues cats, same with gospel. There were always a few of us that would run into each other at different spots, and it’d be like, ‘Why are you at this reggae club, you’re a gospel singer! Are you even allowed to be in here?’”

At many points, the drummer found himself moving in a different direction than what those around him were expecting and suggesting. Instead, he trusted his core instincts and interests rather than following the standard path, and if his illustrious career thus far is any indication, he’s been wise to do so.

“I’d be telling them, ‘Hey, I’m going to go play with Kenny Garrett,’ and they’re looking at me like, ‘You just got off tour with Janet Jackson! Why would you go play with some jazz dude?’” he said with a laugh. “Man, if you can’t play jazz on the drums, you can’t play sh-t.”

https://lifeandtimes.com/give-the-drummer-some-chris-dave-discusses-ensemble-supergroup-the-drumhedz

https://soundcloud.com/chrisdaddydave/chris-dave-and-the-drumhedz

Life + Times

Give The Drummer Some: Chris Dave Discusses Ensemble Supergroup The Drumhedz

January 28, 2013

Generally, musicians always take a backseat to lead singers, rappers and performers. This is especially true in today’s mainstream, as appreciation for live music has dwindled. Despite being under-appreciated by many, elite musicians remain absolutely invaluable and key to making an artist sound good. One of the best in the business is drummer Chris Dave who’s played behind just about everybody including Adele, Maxwell, D’Angelo, Robert Glasper, Mint Condition, and Yolanda Adams. Along the way, he’s crossed paths with some equally talented players, and they’re just now getting a chance to collaborate for a full project of music they all long to make but seldom have the outlet. The ensemble – saxophonists Gary Thomas and Kebbi Williams, bassists Pino Palladino, Derrick Hodge and Joseph McCreary, guitarists Isaiah Sharkey and Tim Stewart, and keyboardist Pookie Sample – is called Chris Dave and The Drumhedz, and while they’ve performed together for years, their first studio release, a mixtape of the same name, dropped January 18th.

The result is an hour-long virtuous, genre-less, sonically superb audio experience. Life+Times catches with the world-class drummer to talk about his band, Chris Dave and The Drumhedz Mixtape, and his own personal sound.

Life+Times: So who are the Drumhedz, and why and how did you assemble this cast of individuals?

Chris Dave: Basically, The Drumhedz is like a family of friends and creative musicians that are tied together through live music. At the core would be Pino Palladino on bass, who did all the D’Angelo records is a member of The Who; Tim Stewart is one of the guitar plays, he does American Idol, Lady Gaga, all this other stuff, but that’s not his focal point and that’s how it is with everybody. It’s like a team of underdogs. Because all of our friends happen to be musicians, everybody was keen and hyped to do a project where it’s like, “think of what a record company would not want you to do. Let’s do a whole bunch of those.” Stuff you would want to play, but you can’t because of a certain artist you’re doing a session with or recording with. That doesn’t mean that those musicians don’t have ideas like back in the day. It’s really trying to show that you can still have a sonic vibe if you have live musicians. Let’s not forget that everything you’re sampling today came from a record, and that came from musicians. So, if we have that standard when we play live, then other people will get it, like, “Oh, so you can sound like that live?” instead of, “Oh yeah, they have a live band, I already it’s not gonna sound like the record. Cool, but I’d rather hear the record.” Because a lot of my friends are like that, then [when they hear us] they’re like, “man, that sounded like the record! That messed me up.” So, it’s kind of an ode and fight to keep the music, live music and musicians going. A crowd for all the unsung musicians that are behind a lot of the movement that goes along with music, and so a lot of the outside members are people like that. Like James Poyser, who’s on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon with The Roots, he wrote a lot of stuff for a lot of people, but he’s still like, “Man, I always wanted to do something like this”. So [with The Drumhedz], it’s like, “Yeah, well let’s figure something out with that, that would be fun for DJs to sample now.” There’s no music out that has that vibe like, “man, I wanna get that snare, or, oh, did you hear that break”. Everything comes from the ’70s and before, so why not do that now? We still have our influences, of course, but that doesn’t mean we have to limit ourselves from doing new music.

L+T: For the Drumhedz Mixtape then, what are people hearing?

CD: It’s basically documented audio excerpts and ideas and brief influences of things we like. Just music; not a genre of music, just music in general. It sonically has a focus on the drums, but it’s a passive focus or an aggressive focus, depending on how you listen. That’s what we were trying to go for. Eighty percent of it is all live music. Some are excerpts, some are real short, some are long, so it’s kind of like a journey into that vibe, where it goes through hills and valleys. It’s all welcome.

L+T: There’s some footage of a couple different times when you all have covered [John Coltrane’s] “Giant Steps” and [Herbie Hancock’s] “Actual Proof.”

CD: I always wanted to play “Actual Proof” with Herbie. Then I finally met him and we were talking, so that kind of influenced me that night. I told him when I go out with my band, they’re gonna wanna do one of your tunes, I just don’t know which one. I always liked “Actual Proof” and I never really played it a lot, so it was fun to play. Playing “Giant Steps”, it’s kind of like, we all used to play that all the time. So, we’ll start with that but we’ll just play it short, because for the people that don’t know, it’s like, “This is where it came from, “Giant Steps”, and now we’re gonna play [Q-Tip's] “Let’s Ride” in the middle of that.” Then for the older people, it’s like, “Hey, that sounds familiar. They’re playing “Giant Steps” but they’re not really playing it all the way through.” It’s like an educational thing without it being known, so that’s fun too because you’re hipping people to stuff. You’re kind of playing like a DJ because half the band might fade out while the rest of the band fades in with something else, so it’s almost like you’re on a mixtape. This song fades out, the DJ fades this other one in. It’s kind of like that vibe, but live.

L+T: Are people ready for The Drumhedz?

CD: Well it started because every summer we go to Europe. And you know how it is, in Europe it’ll be damn near like The Beatles, then you come back to the States and people are like, “Man, what you been up to? Where you been at?” Like you haven’t been doing anything. So every year, we’re doing those festivals and sold out shows at the club. We did Billboard Live for three nights in Japan. Paris, Ronnie Scott’s in London, these are places the “big boys” do. We’re filling them out for two nights with no product. So it’s like, the least we can do – just for the support for the last few years – is put together some kind of mixtape just to thank people for the support and then aware other people of why they support us, if they care to know.

L+T: As a drummer, how have you come up musically?

CD: I came up with gospel first. I was playing with Kim Burrell, Yolanda Adams and The Winans. Then, after Howard [University], that’s when I got with Mint Condition and started writing with them, doing tours, meeting people. After that, that’s when the Kenny Garret and Meshell N’degeocello stuff started to take place. So it was gospel, then R&B, then jazz, then hip-hop, then the Adele and everything after that.

L+T: Talk about your sound as a drummer. Your snare drums always stick out, and you’ve talked about your love for snare drums before.

CD: I guess the snares, depending on how you want to look at it, they’re all different personalities. If you’re looking at it as a life type of thing, those would be different life experiences. All snares, you can make them sound different because they’re already two sounds: with the snare on it’s a snare, with a snare off it’s a tom. So, you’re already getting twice as many sounds per drum off top. And then, if you’re into tuning and emulating sounds – stuff like that I’m into – then it really comes in handy because now, every song can sound slightly different, but more like the actual original thing, instead of everything sounding the same. If you’re playing Rob Base “It Takes Two”, but you don’t have an 808 with the kick, it’s gonna sound different. Then, you’re sitting up there with a big old drum machine and it’s just Alicia Keys on piano, when you should be using brushes on some cool, pimp shit. So the snares just give different personalities to the song and I like that you can make them two different sounds. I look at it as more hands-on and the sounds are just relative to whatever I’m doing at the time.

L+T: There a quote on your website were ?uestlove says you’re “…Probably the most dangerous drummer alive. He is totally reinventing just what you can do with drums.” Any idea why he would say that?

CD: I think he’s just being nice. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s like if a girl told you, “you have excellent eyes to be a model.” Everyday you’d still be looking in the mirror, like, “huh? I don’t get it, my joints ain’t even blue or nothing [laughs].” I’ve got much love for Quest, he’s one of my favorites because I grew up listening to that. But coming from [my perspective], while they were doing the hip-hop thing – we all kind of grew up listening to hip-hop – they were the first live band doing it like that, I was on the other end. I’m on tour with Janet Jackson, but I’m mad that I can’t go see Wu-Tang. So, I’m trying to figure out how do you do both. And then I guess the fuse starts coming. Sometimes you play a R&B song but then you start to have a hip-hop feel. But you’re listening to it as a producer too, so you’re like, “I wanna play it exactly like the drum machine, but play it live.” If you were singing, and a drummer came and played it exactly like the drum machine, you’d be much more hyped than if a dude never played the beat [how it originally sounded]. So the audience is sitting there like, “man, they started singing but I didn’t really know the song because I guess the musicians just changed it all around.” They don’t have a producer/consumer/polished, seasoned musician [mentality], which is a hard thing to learn. We all go through it as young musicians.

L+T: Did it take a while for you to get to the point where you’re at now, where you have a good balance of being a producer and musician and there’s no real genre?

CD: It’s kind of like a never-ending chase. You damn near have to have a manager or somebody around you, like, “Man, just put it out,” cause you’ll be 80-years-old in the grave talking about, “If I just had three more days, I’m telling you, there’s a version I want you to hear.” That’s how musicians are. It takes a while, but then it morphs into something without you knowing it. I think that’s kind of what it is. If you were like, “I want a group with this, this, this and this, I want the music to be like this,” but you might start rehearsing and it keeps going back to this vibe, or you start to hear a little style within everything that you do. And if you play a lot and practice a lot, it kind of comes out.

L+T: Who do you have stuff coming out with in 2013?

CD: There’s a lot of stuff I’ve been doing overseas, so a lot of those artists don’t even speak English, which has been a new, interesting thing for me. I’ve been working with Garageband, Apple, jingles, stuff like that doing a lot more writing. Then coming out this year for certain, of course D’Angelo’s record; I’m not sure if Adele is coming out this year or not. A lot of that kind of stuff, then working a lot on trying to finish my record as well, the actual album for The Drumhedz.

L+T: How will that album compare to the mixtape?

CD: It’s like you can’t really give 100 percent dosage up front, because then it might be too much. So it’s just a slow intake so that over a whole span of time, you can have a whole body of work.

Chris Dave and the Drumhedz Mixtape is available for download here.

https://www.okayplayer.com/originals/chris-daddy-dave-drumhedz-make-feel-interview.html

Chris “Daddy” Dave & The Drumhedz Are Here To Make You Feel [Interview]

3 years ago

Source: Billboard

Chris “Daddy” Dave & The Drumhedz Are Here To Make You Feel [Interview] — ***Source: Chris Dave***

The most known unknown force in music, Chris “Daddy” Dave, shares with Okayplayer why his unique abilities are meant to make you feel.

Chris “Daddy” Dave isn’t the first drummer to front a band. But his new album with the Drumhedz, a crew he has developed musical relationships with for years, isn’t your typical drum-heavy drummer’s project. Tapping into the deep well of all the music he loves — from jazz to funk, soul, hip-hop, Afrobeat and go-go — rather than focusing on his astounding skill, the recording offers listeners an opportunity to check out of reality, enter another dimension, and feel something.

STREAM: Chris Dave’s New Album With The Drumhedz & Feel Something

Dave has contributed his groundbreaking, explosive yet deeply soulful drumwork to albums by a broad array of artists from Adele to D’Angelo, Maxwell and Meshell Ndegeocello. The offerings on this album, which dropped Jan. 26 on Blue Note Records, range from the funky, instantly contagious “Dat Feelin’” (featuring SiR) to the delectable slow jam that is “Cosmic Intercourse” (with vocals by Stokley Williams) to the kaleidoscopic, hard-hitting “Lady Jane”. The iconic jazz label is home to pianist Robert Glasper, who also appears on the album, with other jazz musicians including trumpeter Keyon Harrold and saxophonists Marcus Strickland and Casey Benjamin. The core crew of Pino Palladino (bass), Isaiah Sharkey (guitar), Cleo “Pookie” Sample (keys) and Sir Darryl Farris (vocals) is joined by numerous others including James Poyser (the Roots), Shafiq Husayn (Sa-Ra), Anderson .Paak, Bilal, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Goapele and Phonte. But don’t let this long list of collaborators fool you; it’s the man with the drumsticks who’s leading the proceedings, with a voice all his own.

LISTEN: Phonte And Elzhi Reunite On Chris Dave’s New Single “Destiny N Stereo”

Dave’s playing is known for its sophistication, imagination, fire and virtuosity (astounding The Time, he learned to play the drum part for “777-9311,” which was created with a drum machine). And then there’s his unique way of choosing not only what but where to play, and where to leave space. Deceptively understated at times, you’ll need to go back to this album repeatedly to discover the exhilarating nuggets you may have missed.

@Okayplayer caught up with the Texas-born, 44-year-old legend over the phone who was about to go into the studio with The Band guitarist Robbie Robertson.

Okayplayer: Your first album as a leader came out on a mythical jazz label. How did the Blue Note record deal happen? And what does it mean to you to be releasing an album on this label?

Chris Dave: I got signed with Blue Note because of the people I’ve been working with over the years. I feel happy that we got to do the kind of record we wanted to do; Don Was [Grammy Award-winning producer and president of Blue Note Records] was instrumental in us being able to go there.

OKP: You’ve said that [the band’s second mixtape] Drumhedz Radio Show was “an overture for the album to come.” What experiences did you take from Radio Show into the new album?

CD: The mixtape was based on friends and relationships in the music industry. It was more like a small, quick musical journey, like a “Drumhedz World” — our own kind of playlist. Through the mixtape, other relationships were formed as well, like a family of all types of artists.

OKP: Around the release of the first mixtape, you told The Revivalist that you want people who don’t listen to jazz to still like live music, that this attitude “applies to all the genres we play on the record.” What can you say about the mix of genres on the album, and your general approach?

CD: If you put all of us together in a box, you really couldn’t have one type of music that defines us, that we would all want to listen to over and over. It’s a blend of life experiences, music we like, people and cultures we were influenced by, and lyrics reflecting what’s currently going on in the world.

OKP: What are some of the lyrical preoccupations of the album?

CD: “Black Hole,” featuring Anderson .Paak, deals with police brutality, and how people are trying to get ahead by any means, using the quickest or easiest way rather than doing the hard work. “Spread Her Wings” with Bilal and Tweet is about going from thinking you know everything when you’re young, to realizing you know nothing; you have to leave your nest and spread your wings to see what you can do without a safety net.

OKP: You worked with Anderson .Paak on Malibu; How did that come about?

CD: I’ve known Anderson for five or six years, since he was playing drums in L.A. He had a mixtape at the time, so I was already familiar with some of his work, and liked the sound of his voice and the way he was writing. I went to one of his gigs — this was when his name was Breezy Lovejoy; we became friends that night, and started working together right away.

OKP: You’ve said you weren’t sure what the album was going to sound like, but could picture it: “This album is gonna take place in a portal. You’re getting away from Earth, from all the bullshit. You’re safe, but now you’re in our world.” What is this interstellar theme that runs through the album (and some of your previous work, such as “Cosmic Slop” — the cover of a 40-second Dilla beat) all about?

CD: We just have our own portal. We know people have to deal with issues — things you have to tolerate to get around in the world — and at some point you want to escape. “Fuck it; I want to get back to where the Drumhedz hang out.” When you have that mentality, it’s more like a freedom thing of creating and inspiration; everyone is so respectful of each other’s art. It’s just a fun, peaceful place.

OKP: Can you share a particularly memorable moment from the recording process?

CD: When it was done, and I played it for Don, the expression he had on his face… “What the fuck am I listening to?!” — it was a good thing, not a bad thing. He knew it would be different than what was expected. There aren’t a lot of drum solos, there isn’t even an acoustic bass on it, and I wasn’t sure it would work with Blue Note; but he said that was exactly what he was looking for.

OKP: There are close to 50 artists collaborating on the album and, as you just mentioned, not many drum solos. Were you concerned about people losing sight of the fact that this is actually a drummer’s record? Your record?

CD: Technically it’s a drummer’s record because I produced the whole project and arranged it, and I write, and I was hands-on with every little aspect of it. To me it’s a drummer’s project because a drummer made it; it’s just another side of drummers, and I wanted to show that side — songwriting, arranging, bringing people together, making things happen — as opposed to just doing a drum solo. That’s not really my vibe. It’s about making people <em.feel things through the music, instead of a “look at me” type of thing. I’ve never been like that. I’m a shy person, anyway.

OKP: Tell me about being a drummer and a bandleader.

The most known unknown force in music, Chris “Daddy” Dave, shares with Okayplayer why his unique abilities are meant to make you feel.

STREAM: Chris Dave’s New Album With The Drumhedz & Feel Something

LISTEN: Phonte And Elzhi Reunite On Chris Dave’s New Single “Destiny N Stereo”

@Okayplayer caught up with the Texas-born, 44-year-old legend over the phone who was about to go into the studio with The Band guitarist Robbie Robertson.

Okayplayer: Your first album as a leader came out on a mythical jazz label. How did the Blue Note record deal happen? And what does it mean to you to be releasing an album on this label?

OKP: You’ve said that [the band’s second mixtape] Drumhedz Radio Show was “an overture for the album to come.” What experiences did you take from Radio Show into the new album?

OKP: What are some of the lyrical preoccupations of the album?

OKP: You worked with Anderson .Paak on Malibu; How did that come about?

OKP: Can you share a particularly memorable moment from the recording process?

OKP: Tell me about being a drummer and a bandleader.

CD: When you’re performing live, if people come back to see the show it’s because the drummer has a really great groove, or a flashier type of show; it’s all about the feeling you can offer. It was always a consensus for us that the drummer was the DJ of the show as well, especially if you’re touring a lot. You’re reading audiences in different countries, different venues. Most drummers I knew coming up went to theory and music classes, and most of us played piano or bass, or other instruments, so we were always writing music. Technically, my first introduction to that was Mint Condition, because Stokley [Williams] was the drummer, and the lead singer, and a writer, and produced some of the songs, so I learned first-hand. It was about being smart with your craft.

OKP: How did you first connect with Mint Condition?

CD: The day we met was during my first year at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and [legendary songwriting and record production team] Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis were on their tour, and stopped by Howard. I skipped class and went to the concert. I was with a few friends, and we met them after the show, and they were super cool. We told them we were musicians too, and for some reason they said “Let’s just go to your practice room; we want to hear you guys play.” So they came with [The Time drummer] “Jellybean” Johnson, and we just started playing, and then Jimmy Jam said he liked what he heard, and next thing you know, I’m in Minneapolis, rehearsing with the band.

OKP: Which must’ve been blowing your mind at the time?

CD: It was kinda scary; do you stay in college, or do you go on tour with a band your parents don’t know? My parents were more about education. But on my first major tour with Mint [Condition] we were opening up for Janet Jackson, and that’s when I officially left school.

OKP: Since then, you’ve been best known as a sideman. What’s important to you about focusing on your own independent projects?

CD: We were all just trying out figure out what we wanted to do. There had to be another option other than being a sideman for other people till we die. When I think about what it would be like to do my first interview at 80 years old, and I’d be asked “So, how does it feel being Robert Glasper’s drummer?” And the next question would be “When I saw you with Mint Condition at that festival, how did that feel?” — and I’d have nothing to stand on on my own. That may be good for some people, but that would be really sad for me.

OKP: What’s next?

CD: We’re touring, doing a lot of shows, recording live, and already working on the second album, so it won’t be a long wait. I’m also in studio working on the new Blue Note project — a tribute to [revolutionary jazz drummer] Tony Williams. I’m producing Jermaine Holmes’ first album (Holmes appears on the Drumhedz album and sings with D’Angelo and others). There’s another new group I’m producing, Radio Galaxy, which is one more portal in the Drumhedz world of live music. I’m doing shows in Paris and London next week with another group we just started called BDG, with Yasiin Bey, Robert Glasper, and special guests. And I’m doing more producing and writing for a few different artists I can’t talk about just yet.

The most known unknown force in music, Chris “Daddy” Dave, shares with Okayplayer why his unique abilities are meant to make you feel.

STREAM: Chris Dave’s New Album With The Drumhedz & Feel Something

LISTEN: Phonte And Elzhi Reunite On Chris Dave’s New Single “Destiny N Stereo”

@Okayplayer caught up with the Texas-born, 44-year-old legend over the phone who was about to go into the studio with The Band guitarist Robbie Robertson.

Okayplayer: Your first album as a leader came out on a mythical jazz label. How did the Blue Note record deal happen? And what does it mean to you to be releasing an album on this label?

OKP: You’ve said that [the band’s second mixtape] Drumhedz Radio Show was “an overture for the album to come.” What experiences did you take from Radio Show into the new album?

OKP: What are some of the lyrical preoccupations of the album?

OKP: You worked with Anderson .Paak on Malibu; How did that come about?

OKP: Can you share a particularly memorable moment from the recording process?

OKP: Tell me about being a drummer and a bandleader.

OKP: How did you first connect with Mint Condition?

OKP: Which must’ve been blowing your mind at the time?

OKP: Since then, you’ve been best known as a sideman. What’s important to you about focusing on your own independent projects?

OKP: What’s next?

Chris Dave and the Drumhedz is out and available for listening now.

—

Sharonne Cohen is a Montreal-based writer whose work has appeared in DownBeat, JazzTimes and Afropop Worldwide. You can find her work here.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/superdrummer-chris-dave-on-why-he-needed-to-make-his-own-album-204119/

Home Music Music Features

Superdrummer Chris Dave on Why He Needed to Make His Own Album

Percussionist whose mind-bending beats have powered everyone from D’Angelo to Adele discusses his new musical manifesto ‘Chris Dave and the Drumhedz’

by Elias Leight

January 26, 2018

Rolling Stone

Superdrummer Chris Dave

Chris Dave has drummed on some of the most popular and most acclaimed albums of the past decade, including Adele’s 21 and D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. But instrumental prowess rarely comes with the same cultural clout as singing, producing or even composing. “If you play drums, that’s what people look at you as – just the drummer,” Dave says. “I don’t want to be everyone’s drummer until I die. I want to have some kind of statement. It was always a matter of figuring out how, when, where.”

After recording for years, in between tours and session work, with like-minded instrumentalists and singers – including players and the recording engineer from Black Messiah, 2016 breakout star Anderson. Paak, and veteran R&B acts Bilal, Tweet and Mint Condition singer Stokley Williams – the 44-year-old artist finally has his manifesto: Chris Dave and the Drumhedz, an elegant romp through lurching funk, slow-burning soul, throwback hip-hop and fleet Afrobeat.

The range of styles reflects Dave’s 25-year–plus career, during which he has recorded with or played behind most of the great musicians in modern R&B, along with many in rap, gospel and jazz. He took up drums and piano in church as a child and continued his studies at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the same institution that nurtured Beyoncé and the jazz pianist Robert Glasper. By the time he was a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Dave was touring with Daniel Winans, a member of one of gospel’s royal families. During Dave’s sophomore year, he auditioned for the Minneapolis funk band Mint Condition and landed a gig as the group’s touring drummer.

Dave has maintained a hectic schedule ever since, working with Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, Glasper, Ed Sheeran and others. Along the way, he’s impressed more than his fair share of musical luminaries. Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2016, Maxwell credited Dave for introducing him to the musicians who played on the Grammy-winning BLACKsummers’night, which featured Dave on percussion and fellow Drumhed Keyon Harrold on trumpet. “At that very fragile, delicate time in my career, who knew what was going to happen, if [my music] was going to be relevant to people or not?” the singer added. “Those guys made it relevant.”

Other members of Dave’s fan club include Rick Rubin, who convinced him to become the studio drummer at Shangri La Studios, and Don Was, who signed Dave to Blue Note Records. Rubin asked to meet with Dave after seeing him play behind Mos Def on The Late Show With David Letterman. “His understanding of groove, feel and emotion is unparalleled,” says Rubin, who has produced everything from early Def Jam singles to Slayer albums and Adele cuts. Like Rubin, Was caught Dave live – playing with Glasper around the time the two men were working on Black Radio – and was enthralled. “He totally fucked me up,” says Was, a veteran bassist and producer. “There’s an incredible originality and sophistication to where he chooses to play and where he chooses to leave space. It’s like a fingerprint – there’s no one who approaches drums like he does.”

But originals don’t always have the opportunity to be original, which is part of why Dave felt compelled to carve out space for Chris Dave and the Drumhedz. This is his personal playground, where lustrous R&B ballads like “Cosmic Intercourse,” which features vocals from Stokley Williams, sit next to the head-nod workout “Destiny n Stereo” and “Atlanta, Texas,” a spoken-word treatise on the power of rhythm. “Job Well Done,” a duet between rising singers Anna Wise and SiR, reaches towards swooning late Seventies cuts like Delegation’s “Oh Honey”; it’s almost washed away by the next song, a hard-jab number titled “Lady Jane.”

Dave used multiple drum sets while recording “Lady Jane,” one of several strategies he employed on Chris Dave and the Drumhedz to keep the sound of the percussion alluringly off-kilter. “It was supposed to be a jazz album,” he says, “but I was like, I’m not even gonna have a jazz drum set on this record.” He advises listeners to return to the record “more than once, so you can hear the little things with the drums you didn’t hear the first time”: the introduction of a rifle-shot snare – Dave is a snare-drum collector and famous for using snares where another drummer might use tom-toms – and fine mist of cymbals that split up “Sensitive Granite,” or the distinctive, hissing smack that guides the listener through all the heroic riffing in “Lady Jane.”

Everything on the album was done live, which still surprises Was. “The way he is able to emulate the jagged J Dilla beats – humans aren’t supposed to play that stuff,” the Blue Note boss says. “I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a loop.”

Dave sees the album as an antidote to the stifling risk aversion that characterizes some major-label projects. “Artists wants to do stuff that maybe the label doesn’t want them to try,” he explains. “‘Would they ever let you sing something like this on your project?’ Most artists are like, ‘Fuck, no.’ We’re like, ‘Let’s do that one.'” Take “Spread Her Wings,” another rippling duet between Bilal and Tweet. “There’s no smooth Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell–type shit [today],” Dave says. “I always wanted a song with Bilal and Tweet; I just wanted to do it our way.”

“The project was to show that drummers can write, produce and arrange,” Dave continues. “It’s for all the unsung musicians: You can do whatever the fuck you want to.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/21/807158371/chris-dave-and-the-drumhedz-tiny-desk-concert

Tiny Desk

Intimate video performances, recorded live at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen

Chris Dave And The Drumhedz:

Tiny Desk Concert

February 21, 2020

by Abby O'Neill

"If you've never been to a Drumhedz show... ...we're gonna take you on a quick journey as if you're going through a record store," Chris Dave told the NPR Music offices at the top of his set, "picking up different genres of music and putting it in your bag."

Chris Dave is reasonably described as your favorite drummer's favorite drummer, or better yet, your favorite musician's favorite drummer. As a veteran session artist in the music industry, he's recorded and written with everyone from D'Angelo to Adele. The Houston native leads the Drumhedz behind a trap set, with his unorthodox, stacked crash cymbals and percussive toys.

The set snuck in with a serpentine flute line that any '70s heist flick would be proud to have. Sonic smash-cuts between the musical ideas whisk away the misconception you're in control of the ride you're about to take. Vocalist and new Drumhedz member, Aaron Camper gathered the audience with a quick invocation, putting his unique range and texture on full display.

Elzhi, formerly of Slum Village, Detroit's true-school hip-hop outfit, surprised the room with an unannounced cameo, reprising his rapid-fire cadence on "Whatever" and inciting the crowd to nod along as the Drumhedz segued into "Tainted," Slum Village's turn-of-the-millennium jam.

On "Clear View," Camper and the Drumhedz ushered in '60s psychedelia reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," as if interpreted by Curtis Mayfield. Atmospheric keys played by Daniel Crawford ran roughshod over the mix, while Chris Dave, with his gift for syncopation, fostered a musical space for his bandmates to shine.

The melodic journey ended with a praise-song of gratitude and love of family called "Job Well Done." It was clear that Chris Dave and the Drumhedz had done just that.

SET LIST

"Black Hole"
"Whatever" (featuring Elzhi)
"Tainted" (featuring Elzhi)
"Sounds Of The City" (featuring Elzhi)
"Clear View"
"Job Well Done"

MUSICIANS

Chris Dave: drums; Thaddaeus Tribbett: bass; Daniel Crawford: keys; Frank Moka: percussion; Isaiah Sharkey: guitar; Tom Ford: guitar; Aaron Camper: vocals; Kebbi Williams: saxophone, flute; Elzhi: vocals

CREDITS

Producers: Abby O'Neill, Morgan Noelle Smith; Creative director: Bob Boilen; Audio engineers: Josh Rogosin, Alex Drewenskus; Editor: Jack Corbett; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Jack Corbett, Bronson Arcuri, Kara Frame; Associate Producer: Bobby Carter; Executive producer: Lauren Onkey; VP, programming: Anya Grundmann; Photo: Catie Dull/NPR

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/getting-schooled-by-chris-dave-the-most-dangerous-drummer-alive-1.1381736

Chris Dave has a client list that includes Beyoncé, Adele and D’Angelo – and now he’s bringing his Drumhedz outfit to Dublin

by Laurence Mackin

May 7, 2013

Irish Times

Drummer Chris Dave: ‘I’m like a lab rat. I don’t really like to leave the studio so it’s hard to walk out the door unless I’m getting on a plane to play’

When a top jazz drummer rolls into town, usually what happens is that a small group of fans gets very excited, and the rest of the music world goes about its business undisturbed. When it comes to Chris “Daddy” Dave, though, things are a little different.

Dave has managed to cross genres, from hip hop to jazz to pop and back again, and in the process, he’s carved out one of the most enviable CVs in music. On the unforgiving jazz front, he’s held it down behind the kit with the likes of Kenny Garrett, Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, and Jill Scott, and last year he played on former housemate Robert Glasper’s crossover album Black Radio , which won a Grammy for best R&B record. He’s equally in demand on the rollercoaster circuit of pop and hip hop: among the artists he’s called boss are Adele, Beyoncé, Toni Braxton, Erykah Badu, Lupe Fiasco and A Tribe Called Quest. It’s little wonder then that Questlove, drummer with The Roots, calls Dave “the most dangerous drummer alive. He is totally reinventing just what you can do with drums.”

On Thursday, he’ll be taking his Drumhedz to Dublin, a Harlem Globetrotters-style outfit with a rotating roster of astonishing players (the starting line-up features sax player Kebbi Williams, Pino Palladino on bass, and Isaiah Sharkey on guitar). The band’s website features a stylish, sprawling mixtape that’s intended as a primer for their imminent album. “There’s a combination of styles and sounds just to get you familiar with where we’re coming from,” says Dave. “[It’s mostly] interpretations of other songs, like Fly Girl , which is really a Stevie Wonder song from The Secret Life of Planets that we put a little beat to. So I’m playing the beat, and the guys are playing Stevie Wonder. It’s kind of intellectual for people who like to search through it.”

This idea of musicians and DJs sifting through songs, looking for samples and hooks that they can latch on to, and knowing references to music that has gone before, appeals to Dave. When he started out he was “from the hip hop side; a lot of our friends weren’t musicians per se but they loved music. So playing samples back – that’s a task and an art as well. It’s like transcribing a beat. But the samples first came from live musicians. So we’re thinking, we don’t have anything going from live music that you might want to sample 10 years from now – that aggressive feel-good music. The craft of it is in sharing on both sides.”

He warms to the theme of developing music across genres. Typically, elite musicians communicate freely with each other within their chosen niche, be it blues, jazz, rock or hip hop. Now, though, he reckons music as a whole is opening up. “To play the jazz is a whole lifestyle in itself: transcribing, learning the the art of your instrument. Then you have your hip hop culture, your pop culture, your country, your rock, and it’s all influencing each other. Ten years ago people couldn’t perceive that one record might do that. You couldn’t go from [John Coltrane’s] A Love Supreme all the way to some Jimi Hendrix to Björk to Fela Kuti. Now I think people are understanding that all of that interaction, it’s just music. That’s where we try to get to when we play live.”

Dave’s own journey has taken him around the world in the company of the hottest acts in music. But like most musicians, the first step was one of the hardest – because he had to convince his family it was worth taking.

“I was in college at Howard [in 1994] and then I started playing for Mint Condition, and a month later they were like ‘You can either stay in college and finish school or you can leave with us and go on tour with Janet Jackson’. I had to go through the whole parent thing, of course. They didn’t know who Mint Condition was, they knew who Janet was, they knew who Michael was, and then they were like: ‘What tour? Where you gonna stay? Who’s going to take care of you? When you going back to school?’ After that it kind of spun out and it never really stopped from there.”

Exposure and influences

Dave makes no bones about how much work is involved in what he does. “It’s really how deep you want to be in that craft, that determines how good you are,” he says. “Everybody I know still practises, it’s a never-ending journey, if that’s what you want to feel.” So what does he say to young players who come to him for advice? “Make sure your influences are vast and not limited, so you have everything at your exposure. Everything that influences you becomes a part of your voice.”

There’s an old jazz saw that you should only play with musicians who are better than you, so you’re always learning – so who’s better than Chris Dave these days? “That be the Drumhedz when we come to Dublin,” he laughs. “These cats are crazy – we think alike, we know the structure and the form, but then it’s where you going to take it?”

Once that show is done and dusted, Dave has another mountain of work lined up. “I’m coming back to do a small D’Angelo tour and hopefully his album will be finished by then. Then we have some European dates. I’m going to try to take a month or two off around August to get my own album done, which is coming out on Universal. Between that, there’s a lot of session work, playing with Jill Scott on her album.”

He’s also got work lined up with producer Rick Rubin, who he previously worked with on Adele’s last record, although he says this isn’t for her. There’s plenty of rumours and no hard facts about her third album, so draw your own conclusions.

It’s an unforgiving schedule Dave cuts himself. “I’m like a lab rat. I don’t really like to leave the studio so it’s hard to walk out the door unless I’m getting on a plane to play.”

And every time he gets off that plane, he still gets the same question from his parents. “After every tour they’re like ‘you going back to school this semester?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m doing this thing thing with Kenny Garrett. ‘Who?’ Never mind, it’s crazy. It’s jazz, it’s gonna be like my hardest gig ever. ‘I never heard of Kenny Garrett, you should go back to school.’

Chris Dave and the Drumhedz play Dublin’s Sugar Club on Thursday

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568782182/songs-we-love-chris-dave-and-the-drumhedz-destiny-n-stereo

https://soundcloud.com/chrisdaddydave

Songs We Love

Handpicked by NPR Music staff and public radio hosts

Review

Songs We Love: Chris Dave And The Drumhedz, 'Destiny N Stereo'

Featuring Elzhi, Phonte Coleman & Eric Roberson

December 7, 2017

by Nate Chinen

From

Chris Dave And The Drumhedz's self-titled record comes out Jan. 26. Dante Marshall/Courtesy of the artist

Chris Dave possesses innumerable gifts as a drummer, but chief among them is the ability to make a groove just feel ... right. This isn't as simple or straightforward a feat as it sounds. And it can be a recipe for invisibility, at least among the general listening public.

For the smaller circle of admirers who make a point of checking the album credits, Dave is already a kind of legend, with a hand in everything from the new Perfume Genius album to Adele's blockbuster 21. Dave was also the indefatigable rhythm engine on worldwide arena tours by D'Angelo and Maxwell. And of course, he was a founding member of the Robert Glasper Experiment, which won a Grammy for Best R&B Album in 2013.

The Drumhedz, a shape-shifting concern that Dave formed around that time, pursues a similar nexus of black music: underground hip-hop, astral R&B, groove-forward jazz, spirit-minded soul. Some musicians in the fold, like bassist Pino Palladino and guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, are fellow alumni of The Vanguard, D'Angelo's touring band. Others, like trumpeter Keyon Harrold and keyboardist James Poyser, are fellow travelers in this convergence of styles.

Dave has promised a full-length album from this crew for years, and it's finally on the near-horizon: Chris Dave And The Drumhedz is due out on Blue Note early in the new year. It features some four dozen musicians from the larger Drumhedz family, and guest vocals by Anderson .Paak, Anna Wise, Kendra Foster and Goapele, among others.

The album's lead single, "Destiny N Stereo," features a soulful hook sung by Eric Roberson, and surefooted rap verses by Elzhi, formerly of Slum Village, and Phonte Coleman, formerly of Little Brother. Opening with a montage of ambient radio samples, the track settles into a head-nod beat reminiscent of Dave's rhythm lodestar, the revered producer J Dilla.

It's a good first taste of an album determined to stretch out from a baseline of groove, while keeping both feet on the ground. As Elzhi puts it here, "I know these lines are up high above your head propelling / Y'all hit the mainstream to catch air time something like parasailing."

Chris Dave And The Drumhedz comes out Jan. 26 via Blue Note Records.

Correction Dec. 8, 2017

This article originally stated that Chris Dave played drums on Adele's "Set Fire To The Rain." The drums for that song were performed by Ashley "Ash" Soan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dave

Chris Dave

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chris "Daddy" Dave is a drummer, composer, and bandleader from Houston, Texas. He attended Howard University. He is an influential drummer in jazz, gospel, hip hop, noted for his extremely virtuosic sticking technique and ability to play with a high degree of syncopation. He performed professionally as a gospel drummer with the Winans, before being introduced to jazz audiences nationally through his association with the accomplished alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett. He performed on Kenny Garrett's album Standard of Language, before joining the Robert Glasper Experiment and performing on Adele's Grammy Award winning album, 21.

Life and career

Chris Dave was born in Houston, Texas and began his music career in the late 1980s.^[1] He started out by playing in church and credits jazz music as his strongest influence.^[2] He states that although his father plays drums, he has never actually seen him play.^[3] As a teenager, he was exposed to jazz legends like Miles Davis and John Coltrane when listening to music with his father. Chris Dave blossomed on the drums, eventually graduating from Houston’s prestigious High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

He studied at Howard University in Washington D.C. where he met acclaimed producers and former Prince associates Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Through this relationship, Chris Dave's professional career began as he started working with R&B band Mint Condition.^[4]

Dave played drums in Bilal's live band, during the singer's period of touring in the aftermath of his unreleased but leaked album Love for Sale. This included a stint on Jill Scott's The Real Thing Tour in 2008

Discography

Mint Condition - From the Mint Factory (1993)
Mint Condition - Definition of a Band (1996)
Mint Condition - Life's Aquarium (1999)
Mint Condition - Livin' the Luxury Brown (2005)
Me'shell Ndegeocello - Comfort Woman (2003)
Me'shell Ndegeocello - The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel (2005)
Maxwell - BLACKsummers'night (2009)
Robert Glasper - Double-Booked (2009)
Adele - 21 (2011)
Eric Roberson - Mister Nice Guy (2011)
Robert Glasper - Black Radio (2012)
Chris Dave and the Drumhedz - Mixtape (2013)
PJ Morton - New Orleans (2013)
Lil' John Roberts - The Heartbeat (2014)
D'Angelo - Black Messiah (2014)
Anderson Paak - Malibu (2016)
Justin Bieber - Purpose (2015)
Chris Dave and the Drumhedz - Radio Show (2017)
Hikaru Utada - Forevermore (2017)
Hikaru Utada - Anata (2017)
Chris Dave and the Drumhedz - Chris Dave and the Drumhedz (2018)
Nariaki Obukuro - Bunriha no Natsu (2018)
Black Milk - Fever (2018)
Hikaru Utada and Nariaki Obukuro - Marunouchi Sadistic (2018)
Hikaru Utada - Hatsukoi (2018)
Anderson Paak - Oxnard (2018)
Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee (2019)
Robert Glasper - F**k Yo Feelings (2019)
Robbie Robertson - Sinematic (2019)

THE MUSIC OF CHRIS DAVE: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH CHRIS DAVE: