186: Letting the Music Play You, with Paul Wertico

Today on the show we have the honour and the pleasure of sitting down with Paul Wertico. If you're at all familiar with the all-time great drummers of the world or you're a jazz fan then you'll know his name and his work.

Paul is a 7-time Grammy Award winner, perhaps best known for his almost 20 years playing with jazz guitarist Pat Metheny where his distinctive "flat ride" cymbal style became a defining part of some of the group's best known recordings.

Paul is an innovative musician and a devoted educator, including his role as Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts, and as author of a new book entitled "Turn the Beat Around".

As you'll hear us say in this interview, Paul is a man frequently associated with the very word "musicality" and so it was such a delight to get to speak with him and unpack what exactly it means for a drummer to be "musical" and exhibit "musicality".

We talk about:

• How Paul learned the drums and the influential music educator who helped encourage him in developing his own unique identity as a musician.

• What it means to "turn the beat around" and how playing what he calls "front beats" can bring a unique flair to a piece of music.

• And how it's possible for his group Wertico Cain and Gray to perform 100% improvised compositions together with no prior discussion, ranging from 30 seconds to several minutes long which have a coherence and structure that mean the listener would never guess they were improvised.

We also talk about practicing with a metronome versus a backing track, what role the drummer plays in different genres and situations, and how he ended up ditching the drums to just play cymbals on a tango record in Italy.

This was a blast and there's a ton of insights and wisdom here for drummers and musicians of all stripes.

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Full Show Notes and Transcript: Episode 186

Links and Resources

• Paul Wertico Online

• Paul Wertico - "Turn the Beat Around: A Drummer's Guide to Playing "Backbeats" on 1 & 3"

• Cream - "Sunshine Of Your Love"

• Derek And The Dominos - "Bell Bottom Blues"

• Chicago - "Woman Don't Want To Love Me"

• If - "Forgotten Roads"

• The Emotions- "A Long Way To Go"

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