Jun 4, 2019
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 - “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”
• The Emotions- “A Long Way To Go”
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