STANTON MOORE

Steeped in the cul­ture and her­itage of his native New Orleans, Galactic’s Stan­ton Moore has become known as a drum­mer who’s pocket is a mile deep, no mat­ter what genre he lays his limbs to.  Along with his great abil­ity, being part of such a thriv­ing and revived music scene with such a tremen­dously rich spirit of col­lab­o­ra­tion has most cer­tainly helped pro­pel him into the inter­na­tional drum­ming spot­light.  Stan­ton spoke to us after hav­ing fin­ished a run of 27 gigs over an 11-day period at the New Orleans Jazz and Her­itage Festival…

You’re headed out to Aus­tralia for the Ulti­mate Drum­mers Week­end and also the Drum­scene Live tour.  This is not the first time you’ve vis­ited Aus­tralia, is it?
Yeah, I’ve been out there twice before. Last time I was there I hung with Frank [Corniola] a lit­tle bit, came to the shop [Drumtek]. We had cof­fee next door and he came out to my gig with Galac­tic. I loved it there, and I’m really look­ing for­ward to com­ing back over. It will also be the first time that I’ve played the Ulti­mate Drum­mers Week­end [AUDW], so I’m really look­ing for­ward to that.

You’ve been play­ing more and more drum­ming events in recent years haven’t you?
Yeah, well my first one was the Mod­ern Drum­mer Fes­ti­val in 2001, and I was like the new kid on the block. I think I played after the guy who was awarded the Best Up and Com­ing Award, so that was fun. At that fes­ti­val there were guys like Bernard Pur­die and Joe Morello all hang­ing out in the wings, and you have to really learn to get over any feel­ings of intim­i­da­tion that you might have. What’s really cool about drum events is that every­body truly brings some­thing dif­fer­ent, and that’s so great to watch because you can have so much fun learn­ing new things. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that you’re doing your thing, and no one else can do that quite like you can. So there’s no real rea­son to get too ner­vous or flus­tered because every­one else has their own slant and strengths on the kit. For me it’s the New Orleans thing.

You’ve just come off 20-something gigs at the New Orleans Jazz Fes­ti­val. How’s the fatigue level?
Yeah, 27, I think… And that doesn’t include rehearsals and sound checks, house guests, sit-ins and craw­fish boils! It’s a full, full sched­ule. I was actu­ally happy to get on the road so I could get more than four hours of sleep a night! But the gigs are all so much fun. I’ve got my long-time drum tech who has been with me for 10 years now and we’re run­ning four or five kits around town. He’ll have a kit set up for me at the next place, meet me at the gig I’m fin­ish­ing with my traps case, cym­bals and snare, and run to where the drums are already set up, and then he runs back to the pre­vi­ous gig and col­lects the kit and then comes back again. We’ve worked hard, and my wife man­ages me as well, so we make it a pri­or­ity to keep the stress level low and the chaos level low. All that said, it’s still pretty hectic!

The solo album you’ve released with the Groove Alchemy pack­age is doing very well. Do you have any plans on fur­ther solo stuff?
Yeah, the plan was to get that out and leave it out there a while before we go do some­thing else, but the Groove Alchemy pack­age is doing really well and we’re really pleased with it.  I’m actu­ally about to film another DVD that’s going to be more of a beginner-based thing, but that also works its way right up through inter­me­di­ate and advanced lev­els of play­ing. The book is writ­ten by Mark Wes­sels, who does the Vic Firth web­site, so it’s like a “fresh approach to drum set” thing and I’m gonna do all the video aspects of it.  So I’ll be start­ing work on that at the end of this month after this tour and one fes­ti­val gig with Galac­tic when we go into the stu­dio.  Garage A Trois just had a new record that came out, so I’m plan­ning on tour­ing that a good bit, and also I’m going to be doing a Stan­ton Moore Trio tour this year.  I’m con­cen­trat­ing more on Galac­tic, which will always be a main project, and then fill­ing in the holes with Garage A Trois. But the aim is not to be on the road as much as I was last year.

I know you’re with Gretsch, but you also recently started up the Stan­ton Moore Drum Com­pany, and have released a tita­nium snare drum in your own line.  Do you have other plans to release dif­fer­ent prod­ucts?
We may do some acces­sories and stuff, but the rea­son I really started that com­pany was actu­ally to put out just one drum, because I am very hap­pily with Gretsch and they treat me very, very well. With Gretsch we devel­oped the 4.5-inch sig­na­ture maple snare drum, which I’m very happy with, but they decided not to deal with tita­nium. So they were very kind to let me do the drum on my own, since I had spent so much time devel­op­ing it. So really that’s like a one-off sce­nario that Gretsch has let me do, and now we’re devel­op­ing another Gretsch sig­na­ture drum that’s going to be more a mid-level priced one. Gretsch have also just made me a new kit that I’m really excited about, but that I haven’t got­ten to play yet.  We’re going to debut it for this Fresh Approach DVD and it’ll be show­ing up at the stu­dio just in time for the recording.

What are the qual­i­ties of tita­nium that really appeal to you?
I was speak­ing to a guy on the net and inves­ti­gat­ing qual­i­ties of mate­ri­als for a snare drum that I could play with Galac­tic, and I told him I wanted some­thing that was bright enough to cut through with the back beat, but also warm enough for other stuff like buzz rolls.  He told me that I should try tita­nium because it was able to give that bright­ness and warmth at the same time. I asked him if he had made a four-inch drum yet, and he said that he hadn’t, so he made me one, and then even­tu­ally we exper­i­mented with a 4.5-inch drum. I worked closely with Ronn Dun­nett on this drum, and it really is a lovely instru­ment that’s very nice to play.

What can audi­ences expect to see and hear from you at AUDW?
I’m gonna play a good bit, and then also demon­strate some things, par­tic­u­larly some of the aspects that make what I do unique, as well as some of the things you can do to improve your grooves.  Depend­ing on time, I really like to take ques­tions, too, and give peo­ple an oppor­tu­nity to learn about what they’re per­son­ally inter­ested in.  For big events like this I really like to do more of a pre­sen­ta­tion type of thing and gear it more towards that edu­ca­tion side of drum­ming. We’ll have fun!

By Trent Bryson Dean

Catch Stan­ton Moore as part of the 2011 Drum­scene Live tour at any of the fol­low­ing dates and cities:

August 14 – Allans Music & Billy Hyde, Cherm­side, QLD
August 15 – Allans Music & Billy Hyde, Surry Hills, NSW
August 16 – Deakin Foot­ball Club, Deakin, ACT
August 17 – The Drum Shop, New­cas­tle, NSW
August 18 –  Allans Music & Billy Hyde, Ade­laide, SA
August 20, 21 – Dare­bin Arts Cen­tre, Pre­ston, VIC