K&S:  I hear you’re coming back on the scene.

BM:  Kind of a little bit.

K&S:  You've never really lost the love for the beat or you wouldn't have the dollars invested in the gear that you do.  So, just tell me your thoughts on that.  What’s been going on with you drum-wise lately? 

BM:  It’s been pretty non-eventful, but I miss playing.  There’s only so much interest you can keep in it just playing by yourself or practicing.  I miss human interaction with other musicians, you know, so I guess I’m going through another cycle.  I think as a musician it’s normal to go through those.  After a certain amount of time, even playing a lot, you can get to where you just have to take a break or have some time out.  I think you can get burnt out if you don’t take some time out.  Missing the human interaction with friends and playing with other musicians has made me hungry for it.  Why have a nice set of drums if you’re just going to store them or play them once a month by yourself.  I guess the drive in my spirit or my heart right now is to get back, whether it’s just occasionally playing with some other friends or whatever.  I’m looking forward to playing with some other people coming up in the near future, particularly good old friends that I’ve played with for twenty years or more.  I kept the friendship up, but I just had other things happening in my life so I did not have the time for the music.  I am looking forward to going out and playing a little bit. 

K&S:  You must really trust the musicians you play with after all this time?  How do you feel about playing secular music again?

BM:  Yeah, you know, musicians and music have their own little environment.  It can be a healthy thing or not.  Obviously, some music styles are almost a religion.  There’s a power source to it.  Many things can drive you.  Music can drive you to be an advocate on certain issues and you can use it as a medium to get across what you’re about or what you’re promoting.  A lot of times it is about lifestyles and that is not my re-entering.  It’s not about lifestyle or trying to be like this or like that or trying to make a statement.  I’ve been through so many cycles as to the reason behind why I play.  I think at this point right now playing is part of me.  You know if you’re not doing it, after a while you feel like there’s been a death in the family. 

K&S:  Exactly.

BM:  So, after a period of time you just want to play music—there’s not an agenda or the need to go and make a statement or anything like that.  It’s just the human interaction and playing and making music.  It’s the enjoyment that people get from it.  You get it as well, but it also exudes from the oneness that a band can put together.  That’s why I mentioned trusting people when we were visiting a few weeks ago.  We talked about trusting the people I play with or knowing what they’re about.  I don’t want it to be like “drummer looking for work” or something like that and then having to deal with a whole new genre of musicians. The guys that I played with in the past, and would be interested in rejoining, are personal friends that are not just music related.  Whether we ever played together again or not, we’re still really good friends, so it makes the music part, that oneness that brings the joy of playing music, so much easier.  It’s just easier.  It’s easier to do that when you have people you trust and are already kind of like family, I guess.  It would be just a few minutes of reacquainting ourselves musically and then we just click.  It’s not a new interview to see if you’re all going to work out together. 

K&S:  You’ve been doing a little sitting in here and there and warming back up to it.  I’ve been around a couple of times when you’ve just popped in.  Those were just kind of “put you on the spot” deals, but you jumped up there and did it.

BM:  I will occasionally go out to see some people play.  I occasionally get asked to sit in on a song or two.  It’s respectful, without a doubt, without even a question really, to say yes, because that’s an honor for a group to ask you to come sit in on their gig.  I just think that’s a tremendous honor.  Even if you’re not really ready you should just do it. 

K&S:  What was it like to come from the Christian rock scene back in the 80s were the music had a specific agenda to where you are now with playing music for the sake of music itself?  Have you come full circle?

BM:  Well, I don’t know if there is anything such as a full circle.  I just think you’re continually on life’s path and you learn things as you go.  That is typically what is supposed to happen.  I don’t think it always has to be through mistakes or tragedy or some dramatic blow to your life. You can have things create a great impact on your life for good, even in not making the greatest decisions, and learn from it and have a value added to your life.  You make mistakes and you step back.  I guess that’s kind of what I’ve done several times in life with music, you know, just stepped back.  I’ve tried to be careful to never let music be a  god or something that’s more important than family.  I’ve seen it happen a lot of times, and I just want to control my life.  I want to have control of it.  It’s a talent.  It’s just one thing in my life.  It’s not everything.  If I don’t have that, if I lost an extremity or something happened in my life where I could not play drums, I would not want drums to be a sorrow every time I heard them.  So I don’t let it control my life.  I love playing, and I’ve loved not playing.  I’ve enjoyed the time of just respectfully withdrawing or pulling away from the music scene, and I guess carefully examining my own life and motives as to why I play music in the first place and what I want to achieve with it.  I guess maybe it just takes some people longer.  I don’t know what the span of time is, but I think cycling in and out has been something that’s taught me a lot about myself and maybe a little bit about self-control as well.  Right now, the anticipation is to just go play with some friends in the next couple of weeks.  It’s going to be my first time to do this in quite a few years.  It has an old but new beginning feel to it. 

K&S:  Tell us about how you started playing drums.  

BM:  I was eight years old when I got my first little set that was not even a real set.  I guess I should have known at that time that I was going to be a thrasher drummer, because the kit was a Christmas present and by the end of Christmas day, the heads on the drums were all tore up.  I wonder what my parents were thinking I was going to be when I grew up.  Several years ago my mom showed me this writing pad like you get when you first start school where I wrote my first letter to Santa.  It read, “Dear Santa, I want a set of drums. I want a drum set.”  I must have been in kindergarten or first grade which was before I was even eight.  So I wanted to play drums before I actually even got a drum set.  My mom showed me that and I said “Where did you get that.  Do you keep everything?”  But I thought that was really interesting, you know, that the history of my desire to play had been preserved.   

K&S:  Skip to your teenage years.

BM:  I wish I would have used those years with much more vitality in conforming to some structure, because school could have really helped me in learning some great values behind the kit.  Due to those years and the lifestyle that I was living as a teenager, I didn’t take advantage of being in the jazz band in school or just being in the marching band, marching, learning rudiments and written music and stuff.  If I could go back and do that again, I’d do that without a doubt.  I encourage young people today, who ask me things about music, to enjoy it and participate in school.  Don’t rebel and don’t pull away from it, but grab everything they’re given.  I could have taken advantage of that and learned a lot, but in my teen years I did not.  As I grew up and got older, I got better drum sets and learned more about playing by listening to music and playing to the songs. 

K&S:  Did you play to a lot of records?

BM:  I played to records, air drummed, and stuff like that when I didn’t have a set and just got the feel.  I could do the drum solo on Grand Funk Live when I was 12 or 13 years old, sitting on the corner of the bed.  The funny thing is my brother  would sit on one corner of the bed and I would sit on the other, and we would look like a mirror image as we air drummed.  I play drums and he doesn’t, but I know if I put a set of sticks in his hands he’d play my drums.  He plays pretty well.  He says he’s not a drummer, but I say different.  He’s always been supportive of me and my playing and has even come on the road with me and drum teched.  It was such an honor to have my brother to come do that with me when we were traveling and playing.  As a young adult my goal was to play music and make a living recording and touring.  I did not want to just do club gigs and things like that.  Those are great and can be a lot of fun, but I always had that big concert tour desire.  It never came to pass, but it’s not like that was the only thing I had a desire for so I didn’t just blow everything off.  You just can’t do that. 

K&S:  What would you consider was your first legitimate band that you were in?

BM:  A Shreveport based band called Survivor back in 78 through 80.  This was the same time period that the Survivor from Canada came out with the Rocky anthem “The Eye of the Tiger”.  Literally within a couple of months, we released our first album, a home grown type of thing, and so did they.  We didn’t know there was another band in the world named Survivor, and here they’ve got the Rocky theme and got big money backing them.  We were just who we were.  We didn’t shoot rockets or anything, but that band was not destined to be a big traveling hit and success.  We wrote our own music.  We did club gigs, you know. 

K&S:  What were your influences back then, because when I listen to those songs from those early albums, there were some pretty interesting arrangements with your drum beats and stuff.  Who were your influences as far as the big drummers at the time? 

BM:  I bought the first Rush album when Neil Peart was not even on it and I thought they were great then.  I’ve always liked Neil Peart.  When “Fly by Night” came out and “2112” I was mesmerized.  I think it was the progressive drummers of the day that influenced me most.  Guys like Phil Ehart of Kansas, Ian Paice of Deep Purple, Neil Peart of Rush and Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and later Asia.

K&S:  So these guys are guys that influenced you to come up with some of the drum arrangements?  Because there was some pretty good stuff on there. 

BM:  You know, I don’t know.  Influence finds it’s way into your music a lot of times.  We all seem to be copying somebody but we’re not consciously trying to mimic them lick for lick.  I guess what you listen to tends to creep into your playing.  In our beginning days in the Christian music when the band Philadelphia was just beginning, people would call us Crush, because some of the stuff we did had strong three piece arrangement.  It was real tight, fast  with lots of beats per minute.  They called us the Christian Rush; they just called us Crush.  I thought “well, that’s funny” but, you know, I’d say I’m sure those guys definitely had an impact when I listened to them.  It’s not like you try to thread those guys’ talents into your style.  I just think it happens.  If you take lessons you go to your instructor and what that  instructor teaches or is strong in is going to be some part of your playing.  These other drummers were in a way, my instructors.

K&S:  Of course.

BM:  I believe those guys were just like instructors to me, because I never took drum lessons, but I think those times of sitting down or just driving and listening to songs and learning them, whoever it was, had an influence on my life and playing.  Certain beats and certain styles just stuck with me.  Just the velocity sometimes, you know, the cymbal techniques and things like that, especially double bass.  I’ve been playing double bass since I was about 16 or 17.  I bought the first little Zalmer Twin pedal from Kozak’s Music over on Kings Highway in like ’76 or ’77.  It was just the funniest little pedal, but it was a cool double bass pedal.  I’d never seen one before.  I bought it. 

K&S:  That sounds like a really cool piece of vintage gear.

BM:  Man, and I wish I would have kept it too, because it was really cool.  I played all through Survivor and the Philadelphia days and all of that with that little pedal.  I was just rigging it, because after a while, I just wore that thing out.  The response was just terrible, but it was what I had and it was the first.

K&S:  In your Philadelphia years you played a really interesting looking set of drums, a very large five piece set of drums.  I remember they were old, big, wooden Yamahas with all kinds of pipes, chains and gadgets.  How did you come up with the idea to have that heavy of a rig?   

BM:  I had a friend who was a pipe fitter, and I just brought my kit home one weekend and set them up out in my yard on my stage exactly like I set them up for a show, height and everything, right in the exact place.  We took measurements and heights and details about exactly where the stand would come off the platform.  Then we made my stands out of inch and a half steel pipe with threaded flanges that fit into the top of the bass of the riser.  You could literally take my drums and turn the thing upside down and it wouldn’t fall over.  Anyway, it was just something different.  I always like doing different things.

K&S:  It was very heavy metal back then, I’ll tell you that much.  It was impressive. 

BM:  Yea, it was.  My brother hated it, too, because we always had to carry our stuff.  We practiced upstairs, and we always had to carry that pipe box up and down the stairs.  I had all this pipe and gear, you know.  It was several hundred pounds worth of stuff, but when you set it up, it really looked pretty cool, and it fit the day, the age, the style, and what we were doing.  It even had some symbolic meanings that I came up with.  I felt like I had a reason for some of the things, like how I fashioned the stands and the chains and different things.  So, it was just the time period.  It was interesting like one of those cycles again.  That was a cycle and I lived through it and then went on to really enjoy more traditional setups and hardware. 

K&S:  Move forward just a little bit more.  Back in 1993 I sold you a Tama Super Star Birch kit.  I remember coming over to your house in 96 and being very intrigued by how much you had changed over the years.  You were this metal guy from back in the 80’s, but all of a sudden you struck me as being this very technical guy.  No longer were you just bashing away at a quarter note pulse.  I remember you had this very impressive drum room in your garage where you had that Tama kit set up.  It was almost sound proof, and you had triggers set up on the acoustic kit.  It was a really nice practice setup where you could just get in there and disappear.  I remember talking to you about real intricate things about gripping the sticks, and how to deal with tension and technique.  It struck me that this wasn’t the Brian Martini I knew back when it didn’t seem like those sort of things mattered.  You had evolved to a different kind of player.

BM:  Well, I think when the midi and electronics and stuff came into the music world, it changed it forever.  I was just real fascinated with triggering and I guess some of the influences I saw, like Rush and Pink Floyd, were so advanced technically and so up in the midi devices that they could play all different kinds of sounds off the drums.  I just experimented with triggers, many different ones.  I even made my own.  I’d take doorbell ringers and a tambourine and rig a foot switch.  When I put my foot down it would be triggering the regular sound, but when I lifted my foot up it would trigger another sound. 

K&S:  That’s interesting because you really have to be thinking, and you become aware of so many more things.  If you haven’t, you need to check out Akira Jimbo.  He is the triggering king.

BM:  Yeah, I’d like to. 

K&S:  Have you had an increased desire to learn how to play different types of rhythms that would cross over into other styles?

BM:  I like big band and I like jazz.  I really think that would be interesting.  It would be fun to play some of that music I listen to.  I love the energy that it has.  It’s like it can give you a smile even if you’ve got some negative things going on in your life.  The big band and swing era took hold in the 40’s and there were a lot of things happening in the world at that time but whenever you heard that music you thought of girls and guys dancing and spinning and ballrooms and swing.  I imagined they just put aside the worries of the day and just had joy for some time.  Just letting the music take them away.  I think music does that.  I think it’s very therapeutic.  I believe, and I know that sound and certain styles of music can be actually healthy or unhealthy for you physically.  I’ve really researched it and studied a lot of different things about that.  You can even look into your own life when you hear certain things and understand how it affects the way you think or how you feel.  If it is relaxing or makes me jumpy or ridged or whatever, I can tell that music definitely has the ability to affect the human body through sound.  Anyway, my desires are to bring joy to people with music.  Whoever I’m playing with, I want it to be uplifting and bring joy and happiness and release.  The majority of our day and our life is a tremendous responsibility.  Music has an ability to weave another thread into your life that takes the edge off of those cares, worries and thrills.  Even when things are up and great music can  prepare you, like a parachute somewhat, to land.  Because it’s not always going to be up and it’s not always going to be down.  I guess music is kind of an equator that puts a fifty yard line on your life. 

K&S:  Name one thing that you would like to get better at on the drums.

BM:  Finesse.  All the little finery things that I see drummers do.  Dynamics, syncopation, and clean fills. You know, I played hard rock for so long and I really focused so much of my physical attention towards power, not loudness but just being more of a power drummer rather than a real finesse drummer.  When I play and get a little finesse, I really love that place in my drumming.

K&S:  Foundational basics such as the rudiments and dynamics can go a long way if you learn them early on. 

BM:  No matter what I do, I want to be a musician.  I don’t think is ever too late to acquire new abilities behind the kit.  Learning is very inspirational and I am still on that journey.    

K&S:  So the drum set that you’re playing now, it’s an anniversary edition Premier?  Tell me a little bit about this.

BM:  Well, it’s a 75 year anniversary set Premier put out in ’97.  History has it that they made 125 kits like this in the world, and 75 of them supposedly came to the United States.  They must not have been in numeric order because papers that I got on my kit were numbered 88 so I have a registered number certificate that came with each drum that states it was a part of the number 88 family.  All of the drums have wood hoops top and bottom instead of metal hoops, which retain the heads.  This gives it an old vintage appeal.  The sizes are 10, 12, 14, 16, all mounted.  Two up top and two mounted floor toms.  I don’t use them in that configuration, but that’s how they were made.  The kick is 18 x 22 and they have the wood hoop claws to hold the heads on.  All the hardware is gold plated against a black woodgrain finish.  It is just a beautiful set. 

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