I heard your first roommate when you moved to L.A. was Flea?
Yeah, exactly. When I came first to New York in 2006 I was 20, and I played in a band there. We did a lot of touring for about two years, and the intention was probably to either stay there after this band broke up or go back to Australia. We had toured with Perry Farrell's band, Satellite Party. I was coming through L.A., meeting some friends that I had made on tour, and I ended up playing with Perry Farrell at a charity event that Tom Morello [Rage Against the Machine] put on at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. He invited all of his friends to sit in. Flea was one of them, and we ended up meeting that night and jammed on two songs. One was a Parliament song! We kept in touch after that, and he asked if I wanted to play drums on a solo record [Helen Burns] that he was making. So, my first place in L.A. was in Flea's guest room in Malibu, which was an insane opportunity and such a generous gesture from someone that didn't really know me that well. But we connect with people easily and rapidly when we have a musical connection with them. That was my first connection to L.A. and the L.A. music scene. Over the course of living with Flea, we talked about a lot of music and somehow Warpaint came up. I remember him saying, "I think you'd like this band." I saw them play at Spaceland in Silver Lake [neighborhood of Los Angeles] and, through a number of magical connections, we ended up playing together.
I thought you'd been in the band since the beginning.
I think they had five drummers before I joined, including the original drummer, who was [bassist] Jenny [Lee Lindberg]'s sister. They made their first EP, Exquisite Corpse, with a combination of those drummers that they were touring with. The first LP [The Fool] was the band as we know it now, me included, which we did with Tom Biller who'd worked a lot with Jon Brion [Tape Op #18].
You've ended up doing quite a bit of studio work as a session drummer.
I did a lot of that before Warpaint as well, so it felt pretty natural to continue that job.
What is your strength as a drummer? Why do people hire you over the many other drummers out there?
I think that I really love that job. I enjoy collaborating with people. I don't know if I have a dominant identity on the drums; I don't feel like I have one. I don't come into sessions thinking, "I'm going to do my thing," if that makes sense. I'm going to play the way that I always play on Cate Le Bon’s records, on Kurt Vile’s records, or on Courtney's Barnett's records. I don't bring the same ideas. I like to be as much of a chameleon as possible and try and read what the artist wants and needs. What's the dream scenario? Not mind reading, necessarily, but being a good sport and collaborator in the studio. I'm sure there are lots of other drummers that do exactly the same thing, but for some stroke of luck I get hired.
But you also get rehired, too. You have a consistent group of people that you continue to work with. I always think of you, and Cate, and Samur as a younger “Wrecking Crew” from L.A. that comes and visits me every few years. [laughter]
Yeah, we did that Tim Presley record [The Wink] together. It's so fun to make music with people that I love and become close friends with. It's the development of that rapid, intimate relationship that you can have with people when you play music with them. You can spend ten years drinking at bars with people, or you can play music with them.
What do you do to prep for someone new that you haven't worked with?
Not a lot, to be honest. I don't study people's previous music too much. Sometimes I'll happen to be a fan, and I've experienced their music whether I've been a fan or it's something that's in the ether. I'll understand what their style is. But every artist reinvents themselves in some micro degree with every new album or song that they make. It's always going to be something different. To come in and be extra-prepared clouds my judgement. I prefer coming in and reading what an artist is feeling that day and what their ideas are for this one specific song, without coming in with a predetermined idea. I think there's a real pleasure to creating something from scratch with people. That's something that keeps people interested in their own music, and other people's music, with those small evolutions that they make, from song to song or from album to album.
What's your mental state in the studio when you meet a new artist, producer, or engineer?
