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Since you left the Pat Metheny Group, you’ve been tackling projects that are outside of your comfort zone.

It’s not just about being outside my comfort zone, but it’s also about rediscovering myself.

I remember playing at PASIC in 2002 with my trio and I recall Terry Bozzio came up and gave me a big hug and said, “Man, you’ve completely reinvented yourself!”

I don’t know if I’ve re-invented myself so much as rediscovered myself. With Pat, there was a certain role that I was trying to fulfill, but it wasn’t a real heavy drum-oriented role. I was playing what I thought was appropriate for the music and the focus was more on the cymbals than on the drums.

In this business, one of the pitfalls is that you can get known for a certain thing or style and Pat’s music was very specialized. There are not a lot of bands that play that type of music. So, although I got known for being a musical drummer, which is wonderful, I also got type cast (by people that really didn’t know me) as a light drummer and even more of a cymbalist.

However, I also like a lot of intense stuff. I come from Keith Moon. I come from Milford Graves. I come from music where the drummers really “go for it”, so now I’m able to do that more because people hear me in different musical settings and expect that from me.

The same goes for playing straight-ahead jazz. I’ve always played bebop, but people didn’t know that, or forgot that about me. People now say, “God, we didn’t know you could play brushes like that!”

Even doing commercials, usually I just wanted to get called for a 4/4 rock backbeat type of jingle. But the things I would get called for would be all mixed meter type of things. They’d say, “Oh, we know you can play all this kind of stuff.” I can, but I would have been just as happy, if not more happy, playing like Ringo or like Charlie Watts.

Now I’ve put out enough different sides of myself that people of all sorts of musical styles call me. It’s great because every week it’s a different ballgame.

These days, a number of outspoken musicians and critics are advancing very conservative definitions of what jazz is and what it is not. As someone who has played some very “out” music and has played gigs with such pillars of the tradition like Jay McShann and Milt Hinton, we’d love to get your perspective on this debate.

The Jazz Taliban seemed to take over for a while, but I think those dark days are pretty much over. If jazz is to remain a living, breathing art form, it has to grow. Sometimes people can honestly believe that one period of music is superior to others, but that can come at a high cost if all progress is squelched. I believe that we should learn and respect the past, and even lovingly recreate it, but it’s important not to get stuck in it.

I just love music, period. I used to listen (and still do) to Baby Dodds, Zutty Singleton – I’d listen to the whole history of drumming because I loved it all and I wanted to understand where everything was coming from.

But whoever I am – my spirit or whatever – it’s got a wide dimension. I feel totally comfortable playing a straight-ahead jazz gig one day, and something in 22/8 the next day, and the day after that I might be doing a rock recording session or even classical thing.

The main thing is that I never felt like, “I really need to completely express all sides of myself on this big band gig or swing gig or whatever, because otherwise no one will know how great I am.” I just love music and I can fit into it whatever the style.

All of these “weird” Paul Wertico personalities get expressed - not necessarily all in one night, but a part of it will be expressed one night and another part might be on the next night. That’s why I really consider myself extremely fortunate. I have a chance to play all these different styles. I never had to get all my ya-ya's out in one particular style. After all, you wouldn't want to use every spice in your kitchen in every recipe you make.

These days, you’re spending time passing the music on to younger players.

Absolutely – teaching is very important to me. I absolutely love it!

On your website, the list of your favorite players includes people like Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, and Buddy Rich. What’s the importance of the tradition to young players?

The one thing about jazz that’s important is that the really great players were able to truly improvise. And the same goes for rock – like Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker – they were basically improvising as well (and incidentally, both were jazz influenced drummers.)

Think about it this way. You’re hitting metal and you’re hitting plastic stretched over wood and you have to make that come alive somehow. And through making a joyous noise, the really great musicians were able to raise the spirit of humanity. They did it in such a way that they could take a simple rhythm that a million people might play, but the way they played it made people glad that they’re alive.

And I think that’s what a lot of the great drummers did. They were keeping a beat – they had this ridiculously great beat – and yet they were inside the music. They made whatever band that they were playing with sound better than had they been a drummer just keeping time. They made me feel glad to be a drummer and inspired me.

What might you do in a typical drum lesson?

I don’t have a typical drum lesson. I don’t have a set curriculum. For everybody that comes in to me – from someone that might just do it part-time to people in the Chicago Symphony – it’s almost like going to a doctor.

I’ll have them play a couple things and I’ll listen and observe. Since I was self-taught, I made a lot of mistakes, and I had to find ways to correct them. I’m able to look at these people and say “Well, this is what you’re doing.”

And I never tell anybody that they’re right or wrong, because there is no right or wrong in art. But I’m able to help them reach what they want to reach. I’m also able to show them different avenues, “You can do this, and you can also do this.”

Tomorrow I’m going to teach nine hours straight at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University without ever even leaving the room. People ask me how I can do that, and it’s funny because I’ll get there and by the time I leave I’ll have more energy than when I came in.

And when your students do really well, you’re so happy for them. I’ve had former students call me and say, “Thanks so much for teaching me all this stuff.” So to me it’s just passing on the torch.

You now have a recording studio in your home. How did you get into recording?

I was always interested in more than just playing drums. Even in the days when you only had recording studios as an option in which to record, I was always interested in engineering. I was also always interested in arranging and producing.

Even before digital came about, I would take a cassette tape and record television shows. I remember taping Lawrence Welk and Bela Lugosi and I cut the tape up so that the result was that it sounded like they were introducing our band Earwax Control on live gigs. I was always into that kind of stuff. I was always way into sound. I had (and still have) an Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man and a Maestro Ring Modulator, in which to manipulate the hell out of my drums.

As far as my home studio, a couple years ago I signed a recording deal with a new label, and they gave me a good advance. It was a jazz advance, but it was a good jazz advance. I began thinking, “Ok, I could either take this money and go into a top-rate studio in Chicago for a couple weeks and I’d have a good tape, or I could go out and get a digital system and have both a finished product and a home studio.”

Then my guitar player, John Moulder, told me about a student of his, Brian Peters, who had a PC and did some recording, so Brian came over with this little PC (he had SONAR 2 at the time). He came down to the basement, and we played a little bit to see how it was going to sound, and it sounded great. And finally I thought, “This might work.”

So I hooked up with Brian and I got a deal with Cakewalk. I got SONAR 3 Producer Edition, which blew my mind – it was great. I bought a really good PC and A/D converter and since I already had an endorsement deal with Shure, I was already was set with mics and everything. And that’s how the studio came about.

How did having a home studio change the way you recorded?

I was able to take my time. We did my CD entitled StereoNucleosis in an environment where everything was layered – nothing was done at the same time. We took about six months to do it. The whole thing was like a dream come true because we had unlimited tracking. We also achieved getting a really great sound, in which we were able to manipulate however we pleased, and we even didn’t use any outboard gear – we were using all plug-ins.

And the plug-ins were fantastic tools. Some nights I’d go on the internet and find a bunch of free plug-ins – some of the most horrible, cheesiest ones (which I love). I also bought some others and Brian also turned me on to some.

This new world opened up where I was actually able to finish what I heard, as opposed to being in a recording studio where you can get bumped or you run out of money and you say, “Okay, well that sounds good enough.” We didn’t have to do that. The clock wasn’t running – we could just take our time.

When you go to a good recording studio, it’s nice and convenient because everything is set up and you have great mics and a great board, but there are so many times when you say, “Oh, I wish I had this splash cymbal with me, or I wish I had brought the djembe with me.”

Now, I can just walk to the next room and get whatever I need. Actually, some of the “instruments” on StereoNucleosis came from the kitchen!

Since then, I’ve had people from all over the world that want me to play on their recordings send me files and I’m able to add my drum and/or percussion tracks and then send it back to them without ever leaving my house – it’s incredible.

So you’ve been recording all of your solo records at your home studio?

Mine, as well as other people’s CDs. StereoNucleosis was done in the house. And all with not one piece of outboard gear.

I also have a new recording entitled Another Side, which was done live in a day and a half with two microphones, but it was recorded at my guitar player’s church. It has beautiful natural reverb. The label, Naim Audio, is an audiophile label out of England and that’s how they do things – no mixing, no nothing – so the room sound is critical. It’s funny, but we went from six months of recording to two days. And both of them are great. Given the choice between the two methods, I prefer having more control, but it’s also nice to know that we can sound that good live.

Do you do all of the engineering yourself?

Brian does most of the engineering. I can do it, but it’s nice to be the producer and have an engineer that you can talk with and bounce ideas off of. We have a great working relationship. And now he’s the bass player in my band now as well. Also, I just laid down drum tracks in my studio for his upcoming solo CD.

Can you tell us a bit about the setup of your studio?

There are two rooms – there’s a big room that’s got all of the percussion stuff in it, and there’s another room where we record the bass and saxophone (and other instruments) that’s got a different natural reverb.

I also teach down here too. A lot of times I’ll record my students so they can actually hear what they sound like. Then I can show them exactly what they played – you hook up SONAR and you can see on the grid that this note isn’t as loud, this note is early, etc., and it blows people’s minds. They’re not used to seeing that.

It’s one thing to hear it, but then when you also see it, it’s another learning experience. You get to the point where you know exactly what’s going on, and after a while they do too. It’s a great teaching tool.

Wow – we’ve never heard of someone using music technology as a teaching tool like that!

All these kids want to be on recordings. So if they go in and if they’re lucky, they might sound good in the studio, but a lot of them don’t know why they sound good or bad. The idea is to just raise your level of consciousness to the point where you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

For instance, there’s this new device out called The Beatnik [from OnBoard Research] that I’m endorsing. It’s a drum pad with a brain that measures your accuracy up to a 512th note. So I’ll take my students and I’ll have them play on it and we’ll measure their accuracy.

In the past, when practicing with a metronome, the general consensus was if you’re not off with the metronome, you’ll think that you’re right. But when you see it on a grid, you see that you’re not off with the metronome, but your second 16th note might be consistently early or your dynamic range is fluctuating. My students can see it in real time and then see that they’re able to change it and start feeling when it’s right and when it’s wrong. It’s mind-blowing – it’s so positive.

To me, the electronic thing is not our enemy at all. All it does is just to show us what we are. If someone says, “you’re rushing.” Well, how much am I rushing? “I don’t know, you’re just rushing.” There’s not much information there. But if you can see it on a grid and say, “Ok, see that – your backbeat here is consistently early.” It’s one thing to hear it, but when you can see it, especially up to a 512th note, then you begin to understand and adjust, both aurally and physically. It’s an incredible teaching tool.

How did you find out about iZotope’s products?

Brian’s the one who turned me on to them. My first encounter with iZotope products was the Ozone plug-in, just before Ozone 3 came out. I already had some favorite plug-ins, such as the Universal Audio plug-ins (which I love), and these just added to my arsenal.

What did you like about Ozone?

A lot of Ozone 3's advancements in functionality weren't there yet, but the logical design and pristine sound quality certainly were.

So many other plug-ins on the market try to go for a "hyped" sound, simulating tube warmth and leaving obnoxious midrange and digital artifacts. Ozone abandons most of that hype to focus on sonic clarity and making what you want possible without having to navigate a graphical model of some fictional piece of outboard gear with a technologically antiquated and creatively limiting signal flow.

Can you give us a few examples of places where you’ve used Ozone?

Every time we mix down an unfinished project onto CDR to send out to someone, we'll throw Ozone across the 2 bus (even though we always leave the 2 bus empty when sending the final mixes to a mastering engineer). But just because we leave the 2 bus empty doesn't mean we don't tamper with other buses and submixes.

One of the most amazing uses I've had for Ozone was on my 2004 CD, StereoNucleosis. The first track, "Corner Conversation,” is a piece with a large ensemble of overdubbed percussion instruments creating an intense, pounding wall of sound while a set of temple bells and Remo Spoxe play melodies back and forth on top.

Recently, I heard the raw input to the bus of percussion tracks. I was shocked at how much the multiband compression on Ozone was able to transform them into something whose sum was much greater than its parts. While mixing, we actually tried experimenting with using two other multiband compressors, but the results weren't even close.

Maybe we could have gotten them to sound similar, but so much of what you look for in a piece of gear or plug-in is if you can get the sound you want as quickly as possible. If we just left the 2 bus to be compressed during mastering, the temple bells and Remo Spoxe would have been completely buried, so we found it imperative to run them through their own separate bus with another instance of Ozone, leaving the rest of the percussion slamming through the original Ozone bus. I think it's safe to say that Ozone was responsible for making that track come alive.

Have you had a chance to use any of the other iZotope plug-ins?

The other iZotope plug-in which I've used as much, if not more, is Trash. When I heard about Trash just before the release, I thought, "I've got to get this." So many of the sounds I've gravitated towards in my life have been from broken pieces of gear or things like ring modulators, that create less than friendly tones. It's so hard to get something like an amp stuck in that stage before it completely dies though, where it still works but it doesn't work right.

The song "The Eleventh Hour," also on StereoNucleosis, has a signature guitar tone at the beginning and end of the track that was created just with Trash. It totally obliterates the accented notes, leaving only the quieter ones. Trash also works great for "nice sounding" guitar tones too, which unfortunately, we had designated for other amp simulator plug-ins we were experimenting with at the time, which yielded some tracks inferior to ones we could have gotten with Trash.

Since then, we've been using Trash for seemingly every guitar part that passes through the studio, not to mention plenty of other things. The snare drum and kick drum sounds on the Stereonucleosis track "Almost Sixteen" were Trash (not to mention most of the bass guitar tones, a number of keyboards and weird sounds we created, and a lot of the other drum sounds). It's really an amazing plug-in for anything, and the best part is that when you buy a plug-in, it's like buying a bulk pack of the same great device, since you can use as many instances of it as you want.

It sounds you really found Trash to be a helpful tool.

The thing about iZotope that I really like is that the plug-ins are really human. Trash is a really human-sounding plug-in. When I think of humanity I think of all of these different emotions. And the sounds on Trash are just so amazing.

You can throw sounds through a Marshall or whatever, but you guys have programmed all these incredibly weird things. It allows someone who’s creative enough to throw something different through there that might not be normal and to come up with different sounds and different ways to use those sounds.

We've experimented with and tested a lot of plug-ins at my home studio (Brian will testify to that number being in the hundreds) but iZotope has a line of products which, for our needs, have usually surpassed most every other set of native plug-ins on the market. The only tips or tricks I could offer would be "try using them for anything and everything you can think of." It's only two mouse clicks to patch it into a track, aux send, or bus, and the best part is, you can't break it, so start experimenting!

Thanks! That’s exactly what we wanted to do. We saw a lot of plug-ins that were looking to model amps and distortion, but we saw a chance to go one step further and we wanted to put creative power into people’s hands. That’s the whole reason we got into this business – to give artists a powerful tool with which to shape their basic material: sound.

There are twelve notes and there are some different time signatures, but a lot of stuff is basically sound manipulation. When you think of Jimi Hendrix or John Coltrane, what made those guys individual is not only what they played, but how they sounded when they played it.

In creative hands, these tools will really allow somebody to find something that’s going to touch the hearts of the listeners that was not there before.

All these things are just tools, whether it’s a plug-in, or a computer, or a teacher. We’re all just tools to advance the art form. That’s what it’s about.

To learn more about Paul Wertico, visit www.paulwertico.com.