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Age Two:  Already reading Campbell’s soup and shampoo ingredients, a fascination with vinyl began and I was quickly drawn into the fuzzy tones, rumbling rhythms, and  captivating album artwork hiding in my family’s record collections.  A children’s (but legit) Fisher Price turntable and headphones were acquired the following Christmas, and for the next several years, I would remain every babysitter’s dream gig and a rat in my aunts’ and uncles’ crates, making off with whatever I could get away with.  There are still drunken disputes to this day over which albums are mine and which are Uncle Sheepdog’s.  Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein,” Nazareth’s “Hair Of The Dog,” Grand Funk Railroad’s “American Band,” and Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” were in constant rotation.  I knew all the drum parts by heart years before I’d even pick up my first (real) pair of sticks.

Age Five:  I am abducted by some of my teenage aunts who take me to what must have been more than my hyperactive five year old brain could process, because I don’t remember anything more than the t-shirt I woke up in.  Kiss, the Dynasty tour.  Their last tour still in makeup.  This is around the time the cardboard sleeves from the wire clothes hangers started getting used as drumsticks for lengthy “concerts” held in the mirror over my dresser, Fisher Price giving me every granule of its 8 watt speaker as I was already giving Peter Criss a run for his money on “100,00 Years..”

Age 12:  The infamous “tapping” syndrome settles in, and just when 6th grade band sign-up finally comes and I’m ready to bang on something, “Too many drummers.  What about saxophone?”  And thus began what would be an agonizing relationship with the alto saxophone, which I was actually good at (1st chair 7th and 8th grade.  Bow down.), but could never give the kind of love I had to offer.  I needed bombast and hellfire.  I was already trying to pick apart John Bonham on Led Zep’s “Fool In The Rain,” and beginning to break out of my 70’s/80’s rock crib with Weather Report’s “Heavy Weather” and Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunters.”

Age 13:  Several failed attempts at creating anything remotely resembling a drum kit with my own hands has been futile.  Interest in the alto saxophone has been reduced to the bite-the-reed-and-blow variety, mostly to serve as “little sister repellent.”  Fortunately, the new neighbors have two sons, and the oldest (a junior in high school) was about to become the first ever person to break the “band nerd” stereotype in my small Iowan town and change the course of  my life forever.

Age 13 1/2:  The younger of the two brothers was my age, and when big bro was away, we beat the holy hell out of the drums the school had let him keep in their garage for the summer.  Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” album had just come out and we rocked that tape (cassette? remember?) easily ten times a day.  Still clinging to a little bit of ZZ Top (Recycler did me in) and mildly entertaining bits and pieces of the hair rock surge, I knew plain old rock wasn’t going to cut it much longer.  But I continued practicing until..

Age 14:  The family is uprooted and our rent-to-farm status is upgraded to 50 acres of full-blown hog-farming, seven miles out of town, on a huge hill in the middle of Nowhere, Iowa.  My access to drums and my new best friend is reduced to nearly nothing, and is replaced with the sounds of hundreds and hundreds of pigs being pigs, 24/7.

Age 14 1/2:  In hitching a ride into town with my mother at 6am, I was able to secure a key to the band room where I would spend two hours before school and two hours after school, every day, practicing to headphones with a plan in mind.

Freshman Year: I audition for every single drumming spot in every single musical activity my school offers.  Concert band, marching band, pep band, swing choir, jazz band, you name it.  The town badass (“big bro”) has graduated and this is my chance.  I end up sharing the drum kit duties with a reluctant sophomore, but score enough face time to make a nice VHS tape to present my family at Christmas in order to build my pitch.  Somebody, was going to co-sign a loan to help me get my first drum set.   And that person would be a very tearful Granny, watching me play Wipeout (horribly), only weeks later..

And from there, I went on to secure every percussion spot my school had to offer, getting top scores in state competitions for concert percussion, doing double duty (pit and marching percussion) in marching band, taking “Best Soloist” in class 2A schools at nearly every jazz competition (including two “Best Soloist In All Classes” (unheard of for a drummer) at Iowa State Jazz Championships two years in row.  I spent every waking hour itching to play more and more, my school days running up to 14hrs with all my combined individual practice and rehearsals, my weekends spent in marching/concert/jazz band competitions, racking up more and more awards in award-winning bands led (and still to this day) by Joe Overton, who would help guide and shape me through my high school career.  Also in my freshman year, I became the youngest member to ever tour with the Celebration Iowa Singers and Band, a group that rehearsed the first three weeks of summer, 10hrs a day, learning a three hour singing, dancing, big band repertoire that would tour the midwest via bus the remainder of the summer before setting up camp for our final two weeks at the Iowa State Fair, performing three times a day.

From there I made a last-minute decision to abandon my plans of staying in Iowa and taking my scholarship to the University Of Iowa jazz program and took a generous offer from the prestigious University Of North Texas jazz program, where after a year of rigorous training and study, it just didn’t feel like a fit.  I began playing in bands for the first time that weren’t jazz or big band and it became apparent quickly just how much music I’d missed, tucked away in the hills of Iowa for 18 years.  Legendary Texas bluesman Pops Carter took me on as his drummer and I began experimenting with where my jazz upbringing could really take me..

Since that giant leap from SunnyBruch Farm to the Lone Star State, I’ve worked my way even further down I-35 to Austin, where I’ve been living and playing for over ten years, working extensively in everything from math jazz (Blue Noise Band) to Latin (Grupo Fantasma) to indie rock (What Made Milwaukee Famous) and countless sub-genres.  I also do session work and give lessons as my tour schedule permits.

Ultimately, I could never pick one style of music and play it for the rest of my life.  There’s a creative realm inside the technical understanding of the notes that is at times both playful and aggressive, and Tony Williams will always be that guiding voice for me, constantly blurring all lines and trying to create something out of notes that have been played millions of times before, hoping you can just once get it to sound as good as it sounds in your head..    It’s that burn, that grit, the slop of it all, carefully pinned down with technical grace, that makes a drummer something so much more than “just a drummer.”

Jrm is currently working with What Made Milwaukee Famous on their third album for Barsuk records while gigging around town with Graham Reynolds & Golden Arm Trio, Duke, Dertybird, and wherever his skewed style of drumming is needed.

Played/Recorded With:

Pops Carter & The Funk Monsters 1993-1994

Busta Groove 1993-1994

East Babylon Symphony  1995-1998

Blue Noise Band  1997 – 2001

Govinda  1997

Grupo Fantasma  2000 – 2005

Hurts To Purr  2004 – 2006

What Made Milwaukee Famous  2006 – Current

The Motts – 2008 – Current

Other Recent Acts:

Suzanna Choffel

Marie Claire Gamble

Two Guy Trio

The Greyhounds

Kris Kimura Quintet

Adam McInnis