< PreviousModern Drummer September 2021 28 Russ Miller Building an Empire One Brick at a Time By Sarah Hagan R uss Miller is known throughout the music industry as a go-to session musician, top-level music creator, in-demand educator, and an incredibly successful businessperson. He has spent his nearly 40 years as a professional musician making smart, long-term choices that have not only won him accolades and notoriety as a player, but which have also built a career focused on longevity. All of this has allowed him the freedom to make the musical choices he feels are the most aligned with the legacy he is creating. How did he build all of this? One brick at a time. September 2021 Modern Drummer 29Modern Drummer September 2021 30 When did you know that you wanted to play drums? Well, it’s funny. I started playing guitar when I was eight years old. It took me six months to learn the theme to Batman, which is like four notes, so I figured guitar wasn’t for me. But a friend of mine who lived around the corner was playing drums along to AC/DC songs. I thought that was really cool. I sold the guitar for $50, and I bought one of those plastic drum sets from Sears. Then, I started lessons. Did you immediately take to lessons? Back then, you started lessons using only the pad. My first drum teacher, Edward Hoffy, was totally blind, but he had memorized the NARD [National Association of Rudimental Drummers] collection, The Moeller Book, Stick Control, and others. I would go to my lesson, and he would make comments like, “No—you missed the 16th note on the ‘e’ of 4 in pattern 38.” It was just incredible. I took lessons for two years for hand technique before I even had a drum. Then, you just got a snare drum, and you did that for a year, and then maybe you got a bass drum and hi-hats. Now, the kids go buy a double- bass set at Guitar Center the minute they start lessons. When did you know you wanted to be a musician? When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was already saying, “I am going to be a drummer.” I was super dedicated to it. The thing is, I grew up in a very small steel-worker town in Ohio. We were basically impoverished. I remember selling my toys in yard sales to buy cymbals and sticks. To be honest with you, the drums really saved my life. My friends in the area were getting in trouble all the time. I was also growing up without a father. But I was always practicing, and while they were going out and getting drunk on a Friday night, I was playing gigs. It really sheltered me from taking those other September 2021 Modern Drummer 31 paths. Then, at some point, you decided playing drums was going to be your career path? Yes. Here’s how that turning point came about. My school had an amazing music program. My classes were wind ensemble, marching band, music composition, music theory, and stage band, and I was playing drums for five hours at school, as well as practicing after school. But I also minored in architectural engineering because I could draw well. I really liked the classes. In my senior year, they brought the first CAD [computer-aided drafting] computers in, and we learned to use them. At the end of the year, a local company came to the school, and told us, “You kids have been training on these computers that we don’t even have, so we want to offer every student in this class a full-time job.” There were 18 students in the class, and the pay they offered was $32,000 per year—which, in 1986, was a bit of dough! Everyone took the job except for me. When they asked why I didn’t want the job, I answered, “I’m going to be a famous drummer.” You see, I was always a professional drummer in my mind—even if I had to work in a factory, at Wendy’s, or at a valet park. I was a professional drummer who was a valet parker that night. I was never a valet parker who wanted to be a professional drummer. That has been my path for my entire life. I always say that my success is a combination of stupidity and faith. I have the faith in myself and in God that we will do this together, and I am just dumb enough to think it’s possible. And it is possible... That’s just it! I was like, “Whatever it takes. If other people can do this, then I can do this.” Other people might have a leg up. For example, somebody’s dad might be a famous musician and they get hooked up. For some people, it’s easier than it is for others. But at the end of the day, it’s all about a skill set. If you don’t have the skill set, you can’t play. If you can play, you can play. That’s it. What was your first paying gig? I was 15 years old, and I couldn’t go to bars, but, back then, if you had a union card, you could work in the bars. So, I joined the Musician’s Union, and I auditioned for this top-40 cover band. The guys were all 45 years old, but they hired me, and I started working Wednesday to Saturday. I made $35 a night. Of course, I had to stay backstage when we weren’t performing, and if there wasn’t a backstage area, I had to sit in the car. I was going to school, doing rehearsals for school bands, taking lessons at Zampino’s Drum Shop in the afternoon, and playing at night. Was Zampino’s the place to be for the drumming community back then? Zampino’s was incredible, and my teacher there was Scott Grewell. I learned a tremendous amount from him. Years later, he ended up buying the shop from Phil Zampino. He’s retired now. When we were kids, the drum shop was the place to hang! The best players in town were there, as well as the best teachers. We would check out gear and watch the videos playing in the corner. There was just this incredible environment of learning and camaraderie. After school, I would sometimes ride my bike ten miles to the drum shop, and then go do gigs. My precious Mom and grandparents used to drive me to the gigs, and then pick me up at 2:00 am. My grandfather worked in “I was always a professional drummer in my mind—even if I had to work in a factory, at Wendy’s, or parking cars.”Modern Drummer September 2021 32 a factory, and he had to get up at 5:00 am, so they were very happy when I got my driver’s license. Was it a tough transition when you left Ohio to attend the University of Miami? Well, when I left Ohio, I had been semi-professional for years, but I couldn’t get a gig in Miami. I auditioned for everything, but the problem was that I couldn’t play a rhumba, cha-cha, guaguancó, or anything. There was no Latin music in Ohio. There were no congas in Ohio [laughs]. So, I saved up my money from valet parking, and I hired Hector Neciosup—who is Alex Acuna’s nephew—to give me lessons. Hector would come to my apartment and play hand percussion, and I would write out the rhythms and figure out what was going on. I developed a five-step system to comprehend Latin music styles, so I could work. That system—which I applied to all these other styles—became the foundation for my first book, The Drum Set Crash Course. So, I finally started getting local gigs. I didn’t have to valet park any more, and I paid my way through college. One of the other ways I paid for school was working, teaching, and then managing Resurrection Drums—a high-end drum shop in Miami. I actually hired the current owner, Jeff Lee, about 30 years ago.September 2021 Modern Drummer 33 Did your time spent working at drum shops set you up for your future as a maker of instruments? Yes. Resurrection Drums made their own custom drums that were called Kill on Command. Readers of MD might remember the ads with the owner, John Becker, standing with his arms folded behind the kit. They made these big, long 24x24 bass drums, and I learned how to do bearing edges, cover drums, and so forth. But I think the product stuff is a combination of three things. One of them was definitely working at the drum shop. It was an amazing era where electronics were just coming into play. We learned about all the gear, and we had these cool setups. For example, when the first drum racks came out, Elliot Clay, a guy who worked there with me, made this amazing setup where a whole drum set was on one rack, and another exact kit was mounted upside down on a rack above it—it was like it was mirrored. Very cool. Second, I knew a little about architectural design and mechanical engineering, as well as how to draw things up. Third is spending decades working in studios where I was extremely detailed about creating sounds and spending time making things work sonically. You have played on more than 500 albums. Do you have any ideas about what makes you so in-demand? I think it’s the ability to execute a lot of things at a high level, as well as to be extremely convincing at a lot of things. When I am playing with Andrea Bocelli, he is completely convinced I am a classically trained, contemporary musician who can play his pseudo-pop/ classical style. In the Psychedelic Furs, the band members are completely convinced I am a punk-influenced pop drummer. They are not for a minute feeling I am some self-righteous fusion guy. In every situation, the key to the whole thing for me is finding the core art. For example, when I work with hip-hop guys, hip-hop is not my favorite music, but there is an art in there, and I have to figure out what it is—the feel, the sounds, and the attitude. The other thing for me has been focusing on the ability to play with vocalists. I’ve been able to play with some of the best vocalists in history, from Steve Perry and Ray Charles, to Andrea Bocelli and Tina Turner. I am really focused on delivering the story through rhythm, lyric, melody, and harmony. Those four things are the key to everything. There are a lot of times when I am tracking with just a vocal, piano, and click in my ear. Everything I play needs to feel good with the vocal, support the vocal, and make sense with the vocal. If the lyric is “My husband just left me,” I’m not going to play some exciting, upbeat fill—you know what I mean? Everything must work with the story, and to do that, I am acutely aware of what is going on compositionally and sonically. Your awareness of feel must be incredibly important when you are recording movie and TV music. The movie stuff is really interesting, because it is hyper-defined by time. They don’t film movies in 4/4. So, you could be playing something normal in 4, and, all of a sudden, there is a bar of 5/16 to make the cut [of the scene]. Then, it is back into 4, and you’re playing a groove, and then there’s a bar of 9/16, and then you’re in 3—it could be anything. These things are happening to work with the editing and flow of the movie, as music is subservient to “I am really focused on delivering the story through rhythm, lyric, melody, and harmony. Those four things are the key to everything.”Modern Drummer September 2021 34 the film’s story. With great movie music, you don’t even hear it a lot of the time. But without it, it’s a whole different movie. Sometimes, a musical theme is a key part of a film—like Star Wars—and, other times, the music is just setting moods. You have to sit back and ask yourself, “What are we doing here? Are we in a sci-fimovie? A love story? Should we be using tones that are organic and vintage sounding, or sounds that are modern and unique?” I have done about 30 to 40 movies with Jeff Danna, who is one of the top composers in the world. He would call me and say, “This is indigenously ambiguous. I don’t want it to sound like it’s from anywhere, but somewhere, and I want to hear something totally unique— like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It could be an African rhythm, but not on an African instrument.” Scoring a television series is kind of the same thing, but on a bigger scale. You are thinking about what you are going to do, and then what you are going to continue to do for 20 episodes a year for four years. I have to conceptualize how to expand upon my basic idea, and how I can keep a sound, an approach, a vibe, and a storyline through music that may need to last a long time. I have to make those decisions, and then stick with the story I am telling through the music. Are there soundtracks that stick out as being the most fun to work on? Some were incredible because of the experience. When you are doing a Pixar movie like Onward, or Chicken Little, you’re thinking, “This is going to be a classic Disney movie.” Then, there some projects where it’s a total gas just to come up with sounds, like Resident Evil. For the war drums in that film, I took big bass drums, put sub-kick mics inside of them, and played them with hard mallets. Then, I re-recorded some more tracks using different sticks and mallets, and I layered the sounds together until it sounded like 50 guys at war. Later, I was able to write some of the cues for Resident Evil Apocalypse, and it was really cool to be involved in the writing. It was also cool financially. I love the sound we got for the Syfy series, Continuum. I used two Korg Wavedrums instead of regular toms. So, it was a kick drum Miller’s Menagerie Drums Mapex Black Panther Design Lab “Versatus” in Peach Burl Burst finish: 7x10 and 7.5x12 rack toms, 13x14 and 15x16 floor toms, and 12x18 “Aux Drum” (with Yamaha SKRM-100 Russ Miller Subkick mounted inter- nally), 15x18 bass drum, 16x22 bass drum. Snare 6.5x14 and 4-5/8x14 Russ Miller Signature “Versatus” snares. Hardware DW 9000 Series. Cymbals Zildjian 10" K Custom Special Dry Splash, Zildjian 14" Avedis hi-hats, Zildjian 18" Avedis Crash, Zildjian 20" Russ Miller Staccato Ride with 4 rivets, Zildjian 21” Russ Miller Staccato Ride, Zildjian 17" A Custom Crash, Zildjian 19" Kerope with cluster hammering. Sticks Vic Firth Russ Miller HD Signature sticks and brushes. Drumheads Remo Diplomat Fiberskyn (on prinary snare), Remo Controlled Sound Coated Reversed Dot (on aux snare), Remo Ambassador Coated (10", 12", and 14" toms), Remo Ambassador X (16" floor tom), Remo Renaissance P3 (22" bass drum), Remo Renaissance Emperor (22" bass drum), Remo Renaissance Emperor (18" bass drum), Remo Ambassador Clear (on reso- nant side of all toms), Remo Emperor Clear Bass Drum (18” aux drum). Percussion Meinl Russ Miller Signature Multi-Bell. Electronics Yamaha DTX-Multi 12 Pad, Porter and Davis BC-2 monitor system, Russ Miller Signature Yamaha Sub- kicks (2).September 2021 Modern Drummer 35 recorded using the sub-kick mic, a small snare, cymbals, and the Wavedrums for toms. I was playing things that are common rhythmically, but they don’t sound common, because you are using different sound sources. There is a lot of fun in that. I am hyper-sensitive to the sounds of things, and that also drives all the products I create. They have to make sense sonically before anything else. What is your basic approach to developing products? It has to be inspired correctly and honestly. I wasn’t ever into companies that design a snare drum, call an artist, and the guy just puts his name on it. Either we are going to do something really cool, hip, and unique, or let’s just not do it. It’s much the same with music. I can hear the honesty in someone’s playing. I can feel if they are trying to tell me something about themselves and not the music. You launched Gruv-X Percussion—an accessories company of your own—in November 2020. What can you tell us about it? Gruv-X is a labor of love. I was super blessed to be able to deal with Takashi Hagiwara [Yamaha Drums], Remo Belli, Armand Zildjian, and Vic Firth, and I want to maintain their approach—which, again, involves a lot of honesty and love for what they were doing. Yes, they became wealthy and legendary guys because of the successes of their companies and products, but I don’t think that was ever the intention of any of it. For Remo, I think it was, “We need to create a synthetic drumhead because the calfskin heads are too inconsistent.” His inspiration wasn’t, “I’m going to do this and own a winery one day.” I believe our industry was formed through the joy and the honesty of the art of playing, the instruments, and the music. That’s what made those companies great. Unfortunately, some of them have gotten way off track. They’ve lost the basic foundation of why it happened in the first place. Were you always taking things apart, putting them back together, and creating new sounds? I do remember when I just had a snare drum, and didn’t have any tom toms, I took these canisters and filled them with different amounts of water to create different pitches. I was definitely the kid who would play under the pool table with his Star Wars toys and set up the bases. I’ve always been very organized. Even in college, my drum cases would have my name stenciled on them. Jeff Babko— who is a great keyboard player with Jimmy Kimmel, James Taylor, etc.—was in school with me, and he would laugh, “Miller came into the Miles Davis ensemble class with flight cases with his name on them. We were all looking at him like, “This guy has flight cases with his name on them—he must be good!” How did you develop your business sense over the years? Well, I never went to business school, but a lot of business is common sense. Also, I’ve always worked way down the road— sometimes to my own detriment. For example, I think I could have had a lot more flashy success at things if I would have said, “I don’t care what the end result is, I’m going to go for it right now.” But I was always like, “No. I’m not going to overplay. I am going to play what is correct.” I wanted people to look back and go, “Yeah, that guy could play drums when he had to, but he knew how to play music .” I was looking ahead, and it’s the same thing with my business. It was always things like, “We’re going to make an album, and then we’re going to make a bunch of records, and then we’re going to own a label.” For me, it’s thinking about how today’s brick helps build this building. If we come in every day and just put in one brick, that’s fine. Some days, we put in ten bricks. Other days, we can barely get one brick in. But if we just put in one brick a day, eventually we are going to have a skyscraper. That’s the way I always looked at it. Each day, I would say, “Okay, something has to happen to build this thing. Is it going to be practicing? Writing? Is it going to be this gig or an Modern Drummer September 2021 36 invention? I’m not sure what, but something has to happen every day.” The concept is like compound interest in a financial account. Each day builds on the next—even if it’s just a little bit each day. I once had a discussion with a life-long friend, Richard Shirk, where I told him I had been working for 25 years, but there are these guys around me who just skyrocket. They’re everywhere. He said, “Why are you enamored with someone who builds a building in one direction from the ground up? Sure, there will be more floors quicker, but if you build in both directions—down and up at the same time—you won’t have a tall skyscraper as quickly, but you will have one with an equally deep foundation.” I never forgot that. So, you were always planning your next steps? Yes. If I was going to do a gig, it wasn’t just about the money for that night. I was always making sure that something else was going to come out of it. It was that the guys in the band will recommend me for more work, or that the bandleader will keep calling me. Again, it was building that skyscraper one brick at a time. That’s the foundation of it. The rest of it is common sense. I figured out very young that you are starting a business as you become a professional musician. If you stand back and pretend it isn’t something you love for a minute, you can separate the business from the art. This will help you make smart decisions. The balance of art and commerce is so important. If you are too artistic, you’ll never make a living, and if you are too focused on commerce, you are going to oversell something that doesn’t exist because the art isn’t there. You are always doing a lot of different things, and you are great at making them work in a lot of different ways. I think there are two parts to that. It took me a really long time to come to grips with the fact that if I did something other than just playing, it didn’t make me a less successful player. I have friends like Jimmy Chamberlin, who has been successful in the stock market for years. I would watch and think, “Wow, how do they balance that level of business stuff and still do the playing part?” But I came to realize that it does work. They are separate things. The other thing is I realized that for something to be successful, some part of it must be excellent. Maybe the business part is excellent, but the playing not so much, or vice versa. I want to make sure the part I choose to be excellent is something I respect. I feel really good about Gruv-X being successful, because we are excellent at this thing, and we tried to be excellent. It’s not a mistake. It’s not an accident. It’s not a flash in the pan. Have your business sensibilities enhanced your playing in some way? Yes. They free me up, which allows me to be super honest in what I am doing. Now, I can just do the stuff I want to do. I don’t have to do things I don’t want to do anymore. One of the problems with playing for a living is there are times when you have to do things you don’t want to do because you need to make money. There have been times on stage when my head was down, because I was embarrassed about what was going on in another chair in the band. People in the corporate world do that too, September 2021 Modern Drummer 37 you know. Their head is down, because they are embarrassed about what is going on around them. We all have to make money, but my goal was not to be rich and famous—it was to do what I wanted to do, and play the drums. Every minute that I’m not playing, it kind of aggravates me in some ways. Ask my wife, Christine. She has to deal with it. I just want to play. I enjoy the business stuff, but what it really does is allow me to do exactly what I want to do musically. Another thing you are very passionate about is teaching. How did you get started? I started teaching back at Zampino’s Drum Shop, and I had 40 students a week. Then, while I was working at Resurrection Drums, Yamaha shifted its sales force from Los Angeles to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and all of the salespeople there were band and orchestral guys. Jim Murphy—another life-long friend to whom I owe a lot—was a clarinet player who was suddenly in charge of selling Yamaha drums. Jim called John Becker at Resurrection, and he asked if he could hang out at the shop for a week to learn about drums. John called me into his office, told me Jim was coming, and that he wanted him to shadow me for a week. Well, I was already doing clinics in grade schools to try to get kids interested in drums and take lessons at Resurrection. So, I took Jim to some of the clinics, took him to gigs, and talked about drums. It went great, and at the end of the week, he said, “Listen, you’re already playing Yamaha drums, and I want you to be a Yamaha influencing artist and clinician.” I was 20 years old, and that was my first association with a big company. I remember that I got $50 to do some of those Yamaha clinics. You have a unique way of presenting concepts so that they are easily understood, as you do through your online-learning platform, Percussion Pathway. Percussion Pathway is a culmination of all of the books and DVDs I did over the years with Warner Brothers, DCI, Zoro, and Hudson. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and as I got older, I felt really blessed to have gathered information that very few can get. I have spent time with Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Steve Gadd, and so many amazing and legendary drummers. They gave me a ton of information, and I have a responsibility to pass that information onto the next generation. By the way, what advice do you have for the next generation? There are some challenges that exist now that didn’t exist for me. There are also opportunities now that didn’t exist for me. Let’s look at social networks and the like. Along with the high visibility available through that media is a high visibility of mediocrity— which is extremely dangerous to misinform. When I was younger, there was someone to say, “No, you are not ready. You’re not ready to get a record deal. You’re not ready to shoot a video.” But now, there is no “no.” It’s great that we see things we probably wouldn’t have seen before that are amazing, but it’s bad that we are seeing things we don’t need to be seeing. In addition, I think there is real confusion about what success is right now. Success is often being measured by money, views, and visibility, and not what is going on musically. When I was coming up, you were acknowledged by what was musically successful. I still believe that if you are excellent, all those other things will happen. You’ll get money. You’ll get popular. You’ll get all the other stuff that comes along with that—half of it, by the way, you probably don’t want. Take a look at Tom Brady. He’s not the greatest quarterback in history because he wanted to be a rich quarterback. He’s the greatest quarterback in history because his focus was on being the greatest quarterback in history. Everything else that came to him was a byproduct of that skill set. Certainly, every single thing I’ve ever gotten—from recognition to money to instruments with my name on them, to platinum records on the wall—are all byproducts of my focus on a particular skill set. Do you feel some players nowadays focus too much on social media? My biggest fear about the young generation is that they are too worried about comments and views. I think, “Wow, who cares?” Follow it, unfollow it, shut it off, and do whatever you want—it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that excellence can’t be denied. Whenever excellence happens, you give it up. My reaction to excellence in music is to laugh. Someone will play something incredible, and I will just laugh, like, “Did that just happen?” At the end of the day, your core drive of doing what you want to do and making it excellent is key. Lose the focus on views and comments, and gain more focus on being excellent. When I walk into a room, I want the cats to say, “That’s a class-A badass right there”—not, “He has a lot of views.” How did you go about developing your personal sound? “I’m always thinking about how today’s brick helps build this building.”Next >