Gerry Brown and Brian Kilgore discuss groove (part 1 of 2)

Gerry’s guest for this two-part episode has appeared on over 500 albums for artists ranging from Cold Play to Dr. Dre. If that weren’t enough, he has played on over 250 film scores and worked with composers like John Williams and Danny Elfman. Who is this undisputed master of eclectic grooves? It is none other than Brian Kilgore.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Hey everyone, joined back here on the Google Live podcast. And today's show we're joined by Master Custom. No, not just for homemade stuff. They want to feel more live, but just a little strange. It needs the kind of artist who believes those sounds belong to the moment they made. In fact, it's adamant or never still is the text digital. Today we're excited to talk with them about the art of writing texture and creating sounds that can't be downloaded. Welcome, everyone. Mr. Barnes. But I find it so funny. And it's like our music ancestors, they must be having they must be having an effing ball. Look at these guys.

SPEAKER_04 2:19

Yeah. Yeah. I know. Like I just want to I just want to play percussion.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

I just want to play percussion.

SPEAKER_04 2:26

Yeah. Where's the setting for this uh uh with a with a drum that you don't have to worry about digital settings or whatever, you know? And I and and you, I mean we have embraced technology. We do this stuff for a living. Like, you know, it should not be this hard.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

It should not be this hard, but uh whatever.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

So uh happy Wednesday.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

Happy Wednesday to you. Happy to happy to connect.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Thank you, thank you, man. Oh man, I love that t-shirt, man.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

Oh, thank you. It's uh Global Arts. Yeah, it's a musical organization here in LA that helps uh you know teach kids music and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

So that's great. Well, they obviously they know that that t-shirt signifies that a grand a true grandmaster of music, global music. You are you are that. I mean, you uh I don't know have you written a book yet? The book. Have you written a book?

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Oh, have I written a book? Uh no, you know, I've thought many times about doing that. I there's a few I would like to write. One would be just like a reference for percussionists or any musician around the world to say this is the basic vocabulary for this culture, you know, the rhythmic traditions from different cultures worldwide, just as a as like a almost like a rhythm dictionary, you know, for people. Another one I'd like to write is just the recording process and how to think about orchestrating your own grooves um in a recording setting for whether it's for um records CDs or you know, movie or TV stuff.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Is there a book out there like that?

SPEAKER_04 4:35

Not that I know of. I mean, Emil Richards wrote um uh he wrote kind of a uh text on how to approach film percussion, but it was from a very different perspective than what I've done. I've focused much more on hand percussion than he came more from a jazz vibe background before he got into into film. So some of the recording concepts are similar, but I, you know, I think learning about rhythmic traditions from different cultures, you know, it's that's awesome. But then you can take the principles that you learn, the the similarities you see between all of them and apply to those principles to come up with your own concepts and percussion and grooves.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Seems you know, what you're saying, it to me I don't know whether a Hudson music, but somebody should understand what you're saying and that what you're saying doesn't exist. And in you know, this is 2026. That doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

Yeah, that's true. I I do have a lot of friends in the music um print publishing industry, and I've I have spoken to them about that, but you know, that industry has really struggled too with the advent of the internet and how people expect things for free, you know. So uh I mean I would like to do it even eventually, maybe as a free thing, if nothing else. But the financial incentives have disappeared just like they have in music, the the the revenue streams, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Well, I'm I believe, and I just heard this from uh saxophone player, he bought a he bought the uh Jerry Hay.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

I bought the same book. I got the same thing. Because it's gonna it'll make me a better percussionist because you see how a brilliant musician thinks, it's the same concepts, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Same same thing, you know.

SPEAKER_04 6:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Gotta be said that there must be a b a Brian Kilgore version.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

Well, one day maybe. We'll see, you know. I perpetually live in the state of if I can just get through the next two weeks, I'll be okay. You know, I'm I'm because there's always so much uh work in my, you know, uh I'm always backlogged. So it's it's uh when I eventually slow down, which hopefully will be not too long, I'll be able to do projects like that. But uh I know you know the feeling.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

I I know the feeling, and I acknowledge that you have such a strong spiritual background to say that in the way that you just said it, that means everything. And base and you're saying, in conclusion, I'm I'm in the now. I don't want to get too far ahead. You know, the past that's behind me, but I'm in the now.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

So that's beautiful. Boy, does the planet need a lot of that? I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

So so how did I know you you you studied, you were mentored by the great Jerry Steinholz. What were some of the triggers when you were a little Brian Kilgore? What what what were some of those influences that all of a sudden just pew pew pew, you know, just triggering things and stuff in you your head, your ears, your heart. It was on a swivel.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Yeah. Um that's a good question. I mean, uh, really early on for me well, I had a band director when I was in seventh and eighth grade that was very good at getting Robert Sando, this is his name, Bob Sando, Robert Sando. He was very good at getting kids excited about making music and getting some of the nuances that, you know, are difficult for younger kids to come out in the music, you know, thinking emotionally as well as technically. And that got me, that had a big impact on me as far as being excited about music. And then I heard, you know, my sister had uh the Weather Report record Black Market, which has uh uh Alex Ocunia on percussion. Uh Chester Thompson played drums on that, most of it. Uh I think uh Narda Michael Walden also played on some stuff. And I heard that record and it just kind of blew my mind the the way the musicians interacted musically, always soloing, yet never soloing, always, you know, making statements, but leaving space for everyone else in the in the group to have room to make their statements. And and then of course, we had spoken a lot about this before, hearing Wayne Shorter's approach to space and stepping out when he when he when it's appropriate to, but leave always leaving space. And everyone in that group did that. That record blew my mind. And to this day, uh it's probably my favorite recording of a percussion performance. So what Alex played on there just blew my mind, you know. Then I saw them live on the Heavy Weather tour, and that blew my mind on yet another level. So, and then, you know, I I loved Tony Williams drumming. He, you know, that was uh uh another big inspiration early on. When I got to LA to go to go to college at Cal State Northridge, which is where I met Jerry Steinholtz, one of the first people I wanted to look up was Alex, and and I did. And you know, I asked him if he would teach me, and he he said sure. And and uh I said, okay, how much do you charge? And so I don't really I'm not sure. Let me I want to hear you play first, you know. So I went to his house, did like a three and a half hour lesson, and he charged me $15, you know. So he's a very giving person and happy to share his his knowledge, which I'm I'm lucky to have, you know, many teachers like that. Jerry Steinholz, Joel Leach, Bob Sando, Luis Conte, I also studied with. I I sought him out, studied bata with him, and and then he ended up playing in my senior recital in college when I to graduate. You know, we played bata together. Wow. Me, Luis, and Brad Duce. And Baja to me is a great model of how to how to build your own grooves, you know, because learning that tradition is kind of when I really started thinking about. Well, what's what are the universal components that different cultures, how different cultures approach grooves? And and when I studied Bata, that kind of got me thinking in terms of okay, each of these cultures have different things, but what are the universal things?

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Incredible that you know, I'll say it. You know, those ancestors whose shoulders we stand on. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 12:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

They directed you to the right sources. They let Lewis Jerry Steinholf and all the people that you mentioned, and I'm sure some that that you haven't mentioned, but everybody was it was all laid out for you. And all you did was just you just followed the path and and they were there.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

It's incredible.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Jerry, Jerry spoke as a teacher, he spoke sometimes in concrete terms, like you know, he he did tell me early on, if you want to, you know, you can do records and have a nice career for ten years, maybe a little more, but if you want to have a long career, TV film is is the way to go. And the beauty of film scores, playing on film scores is any and all genres are all on the table. Everything is informed by everything else. So the fact that I love studying music from different cultures made film the perfect place for me to go. The other way that Jerry, so that's a that's like a concrete piece of advice from Jerry, but he also liked to speak in very oblique terms, like, you know, he'd say something like uh, you know, very kind of indirect, and it'd make his students sit around and think, like, okay, what did he mean by that? You know, and almost like Wayne, the way Wayne Shorter talks, too. Like, what does that mean? So the beautiful thing about that is that whatever answer you come up with, with what he meant by something, is the right answer. Because the goal is to get you to think about what it means to make music, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

You know, it's it's funny you mention Wayne, and I'm gonna mention a clip that I saw, you may have seen it from from Herbie.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Talking about playing with Miles. Uh-huh. And Herbie wasn't he wasn't happy uh at the time. And evidently he's playing, and my Miles comes up to him and says, Stop playing those butter notes. And it's butter notes, what a butter, what a butter notes and stuff. And then he had to he figured it out.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

A perfect example because whatever you know Herbie put thought into what did he mean by that, and that's what Miles wanted him to do is think about it. Just think about it, you know. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Great example. Wayne. Wayne and Herbie, my two favorite.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Kings of conversation.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Kings, absolute kings. So now you're you're in LA, you're doing sessions, and you know, I think we mentioned before uh Tina Marie, but when you started to get into uh uh the movies and obviously people knew of you, but I'm assuming that these directors or whatever called that were called you in, they may have heard you heard about you, but I'm envisioning that when they met you and they heard your vocabulary of how immense it is, that was a game changer.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

Yeah, I mean I I tried to break into film early on, and it took a long time, much longer than I ever expected or wanted. However, the fact that it took so long enabled me to build a skill set of all these different things. I toured with Tina Marie, old school RB, just an incredible experience. Watch somebody night after night who gave not 100%, gave 10,000%. Like, I mean, she was, when she was on, she was in the moment. Absolutely fearless on stage, too. That was in education. I played in, you know, I played with Bill Watras, his uh jazz trombonist, uh big band. I started playing with him when I was 18, Claire Fisher, Salsa Picante, Brazilian. I played in uh Ron Powell's Brazilian band, L. Samba. You know, I played in local orchestras, I did a timpani concerto, I played Timbale's with Francisco Aguabea for almost four years. I mean, that's an education right there. Just playing time for Francisco, listening to him solo and soaking up whatever I can from him. Um so you know, I I moved down here in '79. I was, you know, basically the week I turned 18. In the 90s, I well, I started, you know, doing a lot of jingle, playing on jingles and doing studio work. But I could I had not cracked the film nut. Finally, um around 98, I I talked to my wife and said, you know what, I'm happy playing on records, I'm happy doing jingles. Forget the film thing, it's never gonna happen. So we we moved, let's move to Thousand Oaks. I, you know, it's a really beautiful community, a lot of open space, and I'll just drive in and do the work that I have and be happy. We were in escrow with that house when I get uh my first call to play on a James Horner score called with on a movie called Mighty Joe Young that featured a lot of percussion. And this call was like, you know, almost a week. Well, it was a full week of double or triple sessions with just me, Michael Fisher, and Bob Semiti doing just hand percussion and kind of world percussion. Mike is the one, Michael's the one who pulled me in on that session. And literally from that movie on, from that gig, I was I was in the the club, and they were the people that do film scores were aware of me then, and and that's become the focus of my work. Starting with that movie, it changed changed everything for me. But it was a blessing that it took so long to break into that because I got to do things like play with Francis Buddha. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

And I'm sure, I'm sure there are just moments where you're playing it's like you just oh I gotta I'm trying to soak this in, but I gotta play.

SPEAKER_04 20:06

Right, right. Yeah, and and the other thing I'll never forget, you know, my one of my my teachers that I studied orchestral percussion with Joel Leach at CSUN. When around the time I left, he said, you know, okay, and I would have done this anyway, but it it it helps solidify the concept, like never stop learning, you know, always don't let that ever stop. And I'm that kind of person anyway, but that still made me think even more about it. And any musician I play with at any point, I'm giving my best, but I'm also like, what can I learn from this person by listening and watching and and doing that? So certainly playing with Francisco was was an education. I mean, anyone, uh any one of the people I've worked with, it's a it's a huge opportunity to make music and also learn something.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

The journey is the lessons.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

Absolutely, yeah. Yep, that's that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

So again with your vocabulary from playing Nigerian Afro Beats to Irish bazook. It has has there been has there been any well maybe not now, but was there ever a time where you came across something and it's like I'm kind of aware of it, but I'm not I'm not where I'd like to be.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Oh every day.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

I'm sorry, man, I don't have a rim shot right here.

SPEAKER_04 21:50

You know, I mean Afro Cuban percussion is what hooked me on percussion because it's such a deep tradition and there's so much behind it and the the The rhythmic interaction is complex and so beautiful. I that like I heard that, and it's like that's that speaks to me. Brazilian percussion, same thing. You know, Afro-Brazilian percussion, the Bayan thing is steep. One that I didn't discover till many years into this is uh I didn't know anything. I, you know, I love West African percussion, but the Senegalese tradition is you know, the West African stuff, you know, Jun Junes and Dembeys and all that is Mali and Guinea and Senegal, but then Senegal has its own thing that doesn't go into Mali and and Guinea as much, and that's Sabar drumming. And I heard uh this master named Dudu on Diet Rose, and when I first time I heard that, it's like, what is what is this? You know, that's so there's just always these incredibly beautiful things different cultures have to give, and when I hear it, I want to learn more about it, you know, and so I've I've w found somebody in LA that played cigar that could teach, um, and it's an ensemble um you know uh of of drums that has different roles, just like many cultures. And so I put together a group of five percussionist colleagues of mine that would want to take this take a uh weekly or monthly class from this guy, and we we learned about sabbar drumming. Peter Gabriel used doo-doo and di rose on um his score to Last Temptation of Christ. That's the first time I heard it. And then of course, with the internet you can look up things, and there's a there's a great uh documentary about doo doo called Jabote. It's on the internet, and you know, you watch that and it's it's just he would compose these pieces, so there's very composed parts, but there's also within the compositions freedom for different soloists and interaction and conversations and communication. Super cool, super cool.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

There should be a documentary about you.

SPEAKER_04 24:33

Well, uh actually somebody has to talk to me about that, and I I don't know if it's gonna happen. I don't know, we'll see. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

I mean it's it's incredible. It's it's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

So you had these you know of of the of your colleagues uh uh Amy Richards, Joe Picaro, Claire, Mr. Fisher, Mr.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Aguabaya and then with all that vocabulary now when does the NWA when when does that when does that you know that that seasoning to the groove gumbo?

SPEAKER_04 25:28

Mm-hmm. It's all music, you know? And and um I was uh you know uh after I started touring with Tina, I played on every record of hers from 1986 on. I was also, of course, playing when I'm in when I was in town, which was most of the time, I did as many played with anybody that I could, you know, and and um there was this uh kind of like a folky pop singer I played with, and the engineer that had engineered her record was the engineer on NWA, and he recommended me to Dre. And that led to several mini sessions, uh, you know, with uh with NWA uh uh Easy Ease Record, West Coast Rap All-Stars. And at the time, you know, I would go and do these sessions, and I didn't even know who NWA was at the time, you know. And it happened with it, that's happened with me a lot where I, you know, I'm unaware of who somebody is, and which is kind of a uh I always felt like is a good thing because I can just go in with no preconceptions. I just go and listen, listen to the track, and what is it, what what can I bring to this, you know, which is what they want when they hire you.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

No preconceived no no, you just this is what's needed.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

All right. Thank you. This has been such a fascinating look at this musician who doesn't just play rhythm but creates tonic fingerprints. Everyone, please stay tuned to episode number two. Let's find Kilgore. Let's move till I'm gonna go.