John Roulat - Drums and Percussion


Bone born by an idea by Hugh Hopper to collaborate with Nick Didkovsky.  They then began a long term musical exchange that began to build a body of ideas.  It was just about then that Nick called me and asked if i would be interested in doing the drums / percussion.  The timing was right and I thought it would be great to musically reconnect with Nick and to work with Hugh.


Just for the record, I did play with Nick a long, long, time ago.  We actually went to high school together and were in the same grade.  We met in our Freshman (or was it sophomore?) year.  he had a small band and so did I.  One night we decided to merge and become a mega rock sensation.  That did work out and what settled was that Nick and some key members ended up creating a group that held together until graduation parted Nick from our company.  incidentally, the other guitar player was Chris Murphy and you will hear him on the third cut solo section with Nick.  After two years Nick was working on a music project at Brown University and asked me to perform on a piece called "Canidra."  That was that musically.  We have kept in touch through out the years.  I have been performing and working with Forever Einstein since then with great enjoyment.  In the pause between Einstein projects this came up.  Here is how it played out.

Nick began sending rough mixes of the pieces to both Hugh and I.  By the way, Hugh lives in England, Nick lives in Manhattan, and I live in the high hills of Connecticut (same area Nick and I grew up in).  hugh began sending us his pieces.  Thus began a long distance compositional relationship.  I mention on the CD that it was like playing a long distance chess game.  Compositional moves were made, considered, responded to and the process resumed.  The good part was that you could easily see where a process like this would melt down in a barrage of egos, missed communications, frustrations or just the fade of time.  Not so with this project.  There seemed to me to be an inherit trust among all the members to go with the direction and flow.  I used great leeway with most of the pieces.  

If you look at some of the studio pics from the drum session you can see that I used a considerable array of drums and percussion.  I have included a spreadsheet of the expected use for them that I used as a guide.  You will note in this spreadsheet that the CD titles are not used.  This is due to my use of the CDs I was working with.  After getting so many versions of material I found it easier (lazier) to reference tracks on my master CDs of material.  Also, what is on the spreadsheet may not be how the piece was performed - attribute this to normal studio experiences - try, listen, change, listen, accept.  

My tracks were recorded at Barking Spider Studios (Warren, CT) in October of 2002.  Set up occurred on Friday night with Recording on Saturday and Sunday.  I had a great session and enjoyed the material.  I must also mention my thanks and appreciation to Marty Carlson (owner and engineer) who is responsible for the "sound" that I was looking for.  Thanks again Marty for all the hours (many of them late) in getting this project completed.

Here are some details for those interested.

The drums used here are made by DW.  I chose a number of different snares but the one used most frequently was a 1970's Fibes clear snare.  It is very loud and has a crack that, up until this project, had a difficult time finding match.  It absolutely fell into place.  This is most noted by the snare in (again) the third piece.  

For more pictures or commentary check out information I will be leaving on the Forever Einstein web site (soooooon).  Forever Einstein is the group that I have been performing in for the last 14 years.  The material is written by my close friend Charles Vrtacek.  We have been collaborating on our impression of  prog rock / jazz / whatever we call it these days.....  Like the BONE project, Forever Einstein has been represented by the Cuneiform label.  Which also brings me to my special thanks to Steve and Joyce Feiganbaum and their staff at Cuneiform.  You guys make a difference and it is appreciated!

More information ? - find it here at    www.forevereinstein.com/john 

Interested in emailing?    john@forevereinstein.com


Bone home