Something happened to my drumming.

Something happened to my drumming.

I don't know exactly what it is, but my drumming suddenly got different, and I think better. I'm guessing that since the band basically had the last month off, I'm returning to the songs with a slightly different perspective. I'm throwing in new little fills here and there, urging the tempo ahead in places and slowing it down in others, and overall I've noticed a certain finesse creeping into my Neanderthal style. While the brief hiatus was a bummer, doubly so since it seemed everyone in the band got so miserably sick one right after the other, I think it might ultimately have been an unexpectedly positive thing. When you hammer away at the same songs every couple of days you do get super tight, but you also run the risk of those songs' evolution slowing down and freezing in one place or another.

We have a brand new song that came together pretty quickly and now we're just sort of playing with the dynamics. I was worried at first because it has a slower tempo, and I do tend to rush things from time to time, but I've really fallen into this heavy, smashing groove in the song that I really like playing. And of course the melody is catchy as hell, and I have a good time accentuating that and playing up to it.

Here's the original demo of the song in question, featuring just Keep, his drum machine, and his guitars. It sounds way different now, but you can at least get the taste of the catchiness.

MP3: America's #1 Sweetheart "Holy Guacamole (I Like Billy Ocean)"