Tom Meadows

Having spent the early part of his career honing the talents of others and developing some of Britain’s most promising musicians as part of the Drumtech School Tom Meadows finds himself in the enviable position of having worked with Lucie Silvas, Girls Aloud and now world wide multi platinum selling artist Duffy as she continues the promotion of her world wide smash debut album Rockferry. I caught up with Tom on a well deserved but rarely possible break from touring as he reflected on the last 18 months, the future ahead and his past successes and influences.

Tell us your plotted history, did bands or teaching come first, where did the practise and the teaching cross over and where do you think were the key moments where you made the decision to do a particular job?

It’s interesting actually because, as it’s still relatively fresh, I can see clear choices and clear branches. I’ve been in bands since I was 16 years old, when I was 17 I played in a band that were signed to the Acid Jazz label, unfortunately that whole style, that culture, was starting to die as the now-burgeoning dance and, specifically actually, drum and bass scene arrived, so bands like Galliano who were the vanguard of acid jazz music, were starting to experiment with drum and bass breaks so the whole sound was shifting; it was becoming more dance and club orientated.

So that was about the time I was finishing school, finishing A levels and I was like ‘Right OK I’m going to be a musician’. I got one offer from Middlesex University and I decided not to do that and at the time I had been offered the teaching role in the school I was actually doing my A Levels at.

Middlesex Uni, what was the course?

It was the jazz and popular music, so I was actually doing three things. At the weekends I would go out to somewhere like Switzerland and do a jazz festival, I was studying for my A Levels and on a Friday all day I was teaching drums to 11 – 16 year olds in a peripatetic way. Then the worst thing happened, or so I thought, I got sacked from a band that I had put my heart and soul into, the rug got pulled from under me. I remember ringing my best mate at the time and saying ‘What am I going to do?’, he said ‘It’s time to study’. I had studied, but I had coasted really on whatever natural ability that I had so the consistency just wasn’t there. If it was a great gig it was a great gig or it could be a horrific gig

It was in the lap of the gods

Exactly. That was an incredible turning point. That got me into studying with Paul Elliott at Drum Tech, private lessons once a week and that got me to meet the person who turned it all around; Mark Roberts. Mark Roberts is an incredible man and an incredible drummer and he basically took me under his wing and took all of the skills I had accumulated, the not inconsiderable skills from Paul; he’s an important man too who taught me how to be professional, taught me how to take pride in being a drummer, taught me really about sound and touch.

But then Mark took me on and he was like ‘Do you want to be a great technician or do you want to be a drummer’ and he is just the most inspiring guy. He taught me about how motion affects sound. I’m really aware about how when I play sometimes, or all the time, I can look awkward or just odd but those motions and that embodiment of what I’m playing is how I’m creating that pocket, I know it looks odd but ultimately that’s the personality, that’s where it becomes something.

So he was at Drum Tech

He was at Drum Tech. I was teaching there as well, doing some private lesson teaching, but after a year or so, I was asked if I’d like to teach some course stuff, I thought ‘Wow, heavy responsibilities’. I’m incredibly proud of that period of time, all the people I met and all the things they’re doing now.

So the teaching progressed, and I was approached by a great drummer called Laurie Jenkins and he asked me to dep in this hip-hop project he was doing, I did that and one of the main guys was a guy called Paul Miro, who Laurie had been in a band with for years called Apes, Pigs and Spacemen which was a wonderfully eccentric rock/metal band. After a while, Miro asked me to join AP&S, so it fell to me to promote the new record and again, it was a complete change - big rock cymbals, big drums, just a big sound. That was one of the hardest gigs I’ve done because it took me about three months to be able to play more that 6 tracks in a row. It’s not death-metal but for me and my lineage and what I’d grown up playing, it was a completely different mindset. It didn’t quite reach the potential it had but at about that time the keyboard player from the band Fiji was MD’ing a girl called Lucie Silvas and said she’d like me to play drums, I went down one very rainy afternoon, and suddenly I’m playing drums for Lucie Silvas and an incredible journey starts. About that time we were doing some great shows, great T.V. it was all very exciting and I just realised as much as I love teaching it was time to take a step back and I scaled it down, I took one foot out of that and then realised I just needed to take both feet out.

That’s a brave move

Very much so because it wasn’t like Lucie had said here’s a two-year tour, she was and is the most wonderful boss and incredible musician but with any new artist you can’t make those guarantees at all. After a couple of years it was time to do her second record and she wanted to do it with the band and it was probably one of the best summers of my life. We were down at Hook End Studios, which is part of the Sarm Group, with Danton Supple who had just done Coldplay’s record X and Y, so there were lots of geeking out questions like ‘How did you record that’ and ‘How did you record those’, brilliant. When we walked into Hook End, Morrissey had just left, and when you think that it used to belong to Dave Gilmour, when you think of the history, that gets you excited

So things were really going well and as often happens success breeds more opportunities as during that time you were approached about the Girls Aloud tour and Wembley DVD?

Totally. During that time, the keyboard player Dave Tench (from Lucie’s band) was asked to MD Girls Aloud, so he asked me if I wanted to play with them, I thought for about 3 seconds, and I was like ‘Yes, I would, thank you’ and again - welcome to a completely different mind set. Electronics, I had a drum set, I had five pads, a fatKat pedal, click, sequencers, everything. And, actually, for the type of music it was, I was playing with three of the best musicians I’d ever played with, that band could have done anything.

You’re obviously with Duffy now and the difference between an established act like Girls Aloud where you’re being called in to do a job and you know what’s expected of you to working with someone like Duffy who is a fledgling artist, do you think it’s going to be a more creative experience because they’re looking to you for your experience as well?

Well here’s the thing with the Girls - it was ‘Let’s dissect the Pro-Tools stems, lets see what we’re going to have on track, what you’re going to play, what sounds we’re going to use - is it going to be acoustic, is to going to be mixed?’. With Duffy, it’s a unique situation, and one I don’t think I will ever see again in my lifetime, in terms of looking at it from the inside out. I remember going for lunch one day, we were in the very first rehearsals way back in June 2007, walking across the way from this little green, got a sandwich, and I said in a really sort of unintentionally patronising way ‘Enjoy this now, because in a short while you won’t be able to do this’

You had that belief from the start?

She is an incredible artist. There’s a few things I could say about Duffy but, just to answer your question, the thing about it is we watched this thing grow and so there were expectations but there was also a feeling of unity and growing together, even though it’s very much Duffy and her wonderful manager Jeannette Lee, who is an incredible woman and probably one of the most interesting people I have ever met. Just for the things she’s seen and the things she’s done, you can see why Duffy and Jeannette are a formidable team. But Duffy is a true artist, she knew what she wanted, she knew where she was going, and she had a whole vision, so it was actually quite easy to slot into that vision. I think because of its nature, it’s a more organic sound. There’s room for you to be a part of the sound as opposed to ‘We’re taking this snare drum from the memory card, sticking it into the Ddrum and there’s your snare drum sound’. So now that’s why I’m using four snare drums on the gig, swapping them out. There’s that real sense that we are creating something together.

It’s a family, isn’t it, it’s not a band?

Exactly. But you know a family implies, when put in this showbiz context, a sort of "rainbow" feel, families are not like that, and it’s a family in a truer sense in that there is an inherent love and respect but, with the intensity, also comes disagreement, also comes tension, which are very quickly and easily obverted. It is a true family unit in that sense.

How do you decide where Tom Meadows turns into whoever’s drummer, where’s the line between imparting your own experience and skill onto something that perhaps someone has seen something completely differently?

In a way it’s about getting the right things around you in order that you’re still you, but blending in to the sounds around you. The gear you’re playing on dictates the way a player plays because of what you hear when you hit them. That’s a massively important part of choosing your tools because when you hit that first tom, it needs to sound like it’s placed authentically in the track. Using the right drums will immediately get you into a certain mindset, and I know that as pretentious as it may sound, it’s like method drumming; half the job is done for you by having the right sound. That’s a large part of why I’m playing Craviotto drums now because they’re just beautifully crafted instruments, that mould themselves to what you need, tuning is easy and there’s a breadth of pitch and tone I don’t get anywhere else.

All these awkward motions too, that’s where it all happens. Funnily enough, drummers have had to think about that more and more as loops and samples and drum machines have come in. There was this big thing when Drum’n’Bass came in that we had to keep up with producers and their machines, so suddenly people are putting tambourines on their snare drums or whatever to create that sound. Actually a lot of the time, a hi-hat wasn’t a hi-hat-it was a shaker but just tuned up. It’s just serving a purpose, but we’ve now got these 8" hi-hats to get that sound. I think in a way that was a good thing, it got us thinking more about the sounds around us. It isn’t just my drum kit, I’ll have a series of drums and sounds, and I’ll piece them together in a way to make it a costume for me. In answer to your other question-how I become someone else’s drummer, with Duffy it took while because I had to figure out what were her reference points were-who was she listening to? Therefore, what drums, what tuning? Let’s get to the source. Once you go there, you start to progress.

This latest chapter has happened at a time when you’re at a period of maturity, ability and understanding. Has it helped that you have found this level of success at this time rather than as your first break in your Acid Jazz days?

I had just turned thirty when this happened, it was a good time and it was the right time for it to happen. Again, there are always the prodigies, but they are the exception to the rule. There is a human timeline, and as you get into your twenties and enter in to your thirties, you’re sort of emotionally ready for things.

In life and in your career?

Exactly. If you think about the normal time line of things - you leave school, you go to university, you graduate, you start a job, move up, its actually only when you’re in your thirties that you start to capitalise on things you’ve set up in your twenties. As I was freaking out about turning thirty it was Danton Supple who actually said ‘The thirties are when you make things happen’, you set it up in your twenties and knock it down in your thirties, then the rest of your life starts to happen.

I was so intrigued when we’ve spoken before that you realise you’ve been playing the same 12/15 songs virtually every night for the last two years. Jon Green (guitarist for Duffy) was saying when he sat down to write something everything sounded like Coldplay because you’d just come off tour with Coldplay. How do you keep the chops, do you practise a lot on tour, is there time? Is sound check a time for you guys to just play something different just so you get a level of awareness outside of the Duffy bubble at the moment?

No. Sound check is a time to go over some stuff that maybe didn’t go quite so well the night before. Because we’re not bringing our own P.A. it’s vital to make sure things sound as good as they possibly can. I’ve heard other people doing TV shows or whatever, and sometimes you go ‘The sounds not very good’, that’s vital, that’s why Duffy brings her front of house engineer to everything she does. He mixes the TV shows, radio shows or whatever, so it’s consistent, so her product is heard and viewed how it should be. Sound checks are pretty focused situations for an hour and a half and, in terms of practising; I carry a little practise kit on a mini rack. To be honest with you, I would be lying if I said I practised every day, I would be lying if I said I did anything other than just try and keep myself supple, so its not creative practise, it’s just keeping the muscles feeling good. Frankly, if I’m given an opportunity to be in San Francisco I’m going to go and see the Golden Gate Bridge, if I’m given an opportunity to go to Australia, I’m going to go and see the Sydney Opera House. So yeah, the practise thing is difficult, it comes back to- "why do we practise in the first place?". I spent all those years practising to get a gig, once you’ve got the gig obviously you’ve got to keep the gig, you’ve got to keep certain things happening, but you’re playing every night, so that gets you into a different zone. When you come off that gig, you can’t play anything else! It’s all about emotions, things that happen next, you do this, and you go there. Funnily enough, it’s a little bit like exercise - it takes a long time to build up stamina and a split second to lose it all. When I was a kid, looking up at people doing great gigs, I used to think they don’t worry about anything, they’ve achieved what they want to achieve, they’re cruising, but there are so many other paranoias and little worries that come with each level.

The new album, talk of new songs, have you heard anything?

Yeah. There’s this thing now, which is kind of cool, but quite a new phenomenon, which is Deluxe editions of albums. We’ve already had the deluxe edition of Rockferry, which is 6 or 7 new tracks, so we have played some new stuff but in terms of the new album, I think Duffy really wants to go away and just focus on it rather than try to juggle live appearances as well. I think she wants to go away write a new record, produce it, bring it back to us, hopefully, and then the rollercoaster will start again. I know she wants to do it this year, but whether time constraints allow that, we’ll have to see.

Schedule wise now it’s been ridiculous, every country, over and over. Tell me about when you first went to the States with Duffy to audition for media mogul LA Reid

The first time we went to the States was October 2007; we had our big showcase out there. It was the acoustic band - me, the MD and Duffy in this rehearsal room in Hells Kitchen. We walked into this place and I had this hybrid kit. With acoustic stuff now, I just use a Cajon and some shakers, but then I had a tiny little bass drum with a snare drum set off to the left, one of those LP compact congas where the snare drum should be, and a few little effects. I walked in and one of the guys from the labels said ‘You know L.A. Reid used to be a drummer?’ and I was like ‘You are joking?!’. So L.A. Reid comes in, this enormous mogul who’s been in charge of so many people’s careers, and he looks at my kit and then at me and he makes a bee-line over. He was like ‘Wow, this is really interesting, it’s going to sound great’ and I was thinking ‘Aahh, now I’ve actually got to do something!’ - this guy is not only looking at the bigger picture of his new artist that he’s signed, but this kid, this ginger bloke with glasses and what he’s playing! It was fine in the end, though. That was October 2007 and then we went back in January to do a radio tour.

Then I think it was December 2007 when Mercy first started hitting around

Yeah, I think Rockferry was released first and then it started going to radio in about January time.

By about the middle of January last year I came to a gig and it was one of the first gigs you’d done with Duffy who turned up in the back of an AA van

Yes, the car broke down. That tour was booked in a long time before, they had this whole plot of how the tour was going to progress, the type of venues, type of shows. That venue was a boat, a grounded boat so that should give you an idea of how they wanted to start it, small but indie. But by that point it started getting ‘Who’s this girl Duffy?’. For me, the pinnacle of the weirdness was doing a gig at the Bodega bar in Nottingham, Duffy had been No. 1 for about 3 weeks with both album and single and she was on a bus, parked outside the venue doing her makeup by candlelight because there was no electricity to power the bus and we were in a toilet downstairs which was our dressing room, I had to move the cymbal out of the way in order to get to my kit.

The stage was big enough for your kit basically

Just about. I really stripped it down.

Everyone had faith in Duffy, but how it kicked off and the speed, nobody knew. They were like, ‘Hang on we’re in the middle of this introduction tour, and she’s No. 1, album and single’. Fast forward 12 months and we’re doing 2 sold out nights at Brixton Academy; it’s an amazing position to be in. We did three full UK tours last year. Some people only get to do one; we did three US tours, one of those being a festival tour in the middle.

While in America you’ve performed on the biggest talk shows on the planet with the likes of Jay Leno. What’s it like knowing that America is watching?

When you do shows in America, you get Hollywood stars as a matter of course so immediately that sort of thing is high level but they also have great house bands. On Leno you have Marvin "Smitty" Smith, Letterman you’ve got Anton Fig and Will Lee, Saturday Night Live you’ve got Shawn Pelton. We did Saturday Night Live, Shawn comes up and goes ‘Sounded great man, sounded great’ and then after we played our second track he leant through the divide and said ‘Jeff Watts is in the house tonight’ and I thought ‘Thank god you told me after!’ I was wandering through the green room and Jeff Watts is like ‘Hey man, you’ve got some great brush tricks’ It was just surreal but I was secretly thinking ‘Yes, but I know you’re bullshitting!’. So not only are you playing on network TV to millions of people, you’ve also got these ridiculous musicians in the house band. Max Weinberg from The E Street Band is another one, it’s just ridiculous. Max Weinberg is a lovely man.

Of course another huge date in the US diary were the Grammy’s, what were they like?

Great, from the perspective of the bar! Duffy went to a party the night before and it would blow any of our minds, the amount of people she was rubbing shoulders with, Sir Paul McCartney going up and saying hello, it would destroy me. She’s in that world. You ask me how I keep my feet on the ground and she’s got Sir Paul McCartney coming up and asking ‘How are you?’. Clive Davis is one of the most important men in the American music industry and he asks her to stand up and say hello and she’s not even on his label. I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting some incredible people this year.

What are you going to do with the downtime if Duffy does go away to write the new album, have you got other projects on the go?

I am very excited about recently getting married, plus also practising again and running. It all sounds a bit ‘What are you talking about?’ but these are the things, whilst it’s a total joy to be sent around the world playing drums, there are certain things that fulfil that balance that sometimes fall by the wayside so its almost like I’m just going to go and plug myself back in again, get back to normal life, running, practising, being a husband, buying a house. Regular things.

So you’re going to stop the half bottle of vodka a night and spaghetti in bed at 2 in the morning

I can’t guarantee that, it’ll just be in my own house with my wife on the running machine.