I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.
I didn't feel the kind of joy every day playing drums that I thought you were supposed to feel.
I was a kid living in New Jersey, who - I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.
My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be.
First time that I cried at a work of art was at a drum solo that I saw. A drummer named Winard Harper, part of the Billy Taylor Trio, gave back in - I would have been in high school - 2005 or something.
My version of a stress dream is, really, showing up on a concert stage with a drum set and not knowing the chart.
It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.