Since the spring of 2005, Abe Fogle has been working with Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty fame. Fogle had been working with Ronny Jordan and Alex Bugnon when he got the call to join Thomas. Immediately the drummer set about learning the material that Gerald Heyward had recorded for Thomas’s solo album, Something To Be.

Taking over a high-profile drum seat is always a delicate situation for a musician. He must figure out his boundaries and freedoms within the material. Did Abe have freedom with Thomas’s songs? “Yes and no,” he responds, “and I don’t mean no in any negative way. I would say there isn’t a lot of freedom mainly because I try to be a stickler for the parts. Learn the parts, approach them exactly the way they jump off the CD, and from there, when you go into rehearsal, you leave it to the discretion of the musical director or the artist to tell you what you can add. I always try to approach it as if I were the session player who recorded the album, and from there I may add a couple of my own nuances.”

Robyn Flans