Amandla – The Songs of Claude Coleman Jr. (INTERVIEW)

Although most music fans are only familiar with Claude Coleman Jr. as the drummer for Ween.  Little do they know that he’s created an intriguing body of work with his soul-rock group Amandla.   The band’s sophomore release, The Full Catastrophe, is the result of a four year journey for Coleman following a 2002 horrific car accident that left him having to reacquire his abilities and motor skills to play instruments again.

However, the drums are only part of Coleman’s musical resume, as Coleman plays every instrument on The Full Catastrophe. The album’s title is inspired by both the words from Zorba the Greek and meditation teachings of Dr. Jon-Kabat Zinn for living with stress caused by pain and illness.  Coleman has battled back from the brink, while incorporating a record full of limitless emotions.

Coleman is an extraordinary drummer for Ween, as his beat keeping form the backbone of the band’s diverse styles and compositions.  Amandla is a broader reflection of that – both lyrically powerful and stylistically adventurous.  Coleman recently spoke with Glide about his multi-instrumental prowess, playing with Dean and Gene and tacking the road to recovery.

Most people who only know you from your work with Ween, would be surprised to hear that in Amandla, you play various other instruments besides drums.  Can you talk about your background as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist and which other instruments are you most adapt at?

I’ve been playing around with guitar and bass pretty much from my first moments of banging around on the pawn shop drum kit my parents got me for Christmas at the age of  9. My childhood friends and I all became obsessed with music, and we all had different instruments that became interchangeable as we spent our lives together, hanging out and jamming out to Kiss & Rush in the basement. So technically, I’ve been playing other instruments exactly as long as I’ve been drumming.

I’ve played in bands on all those instruments, but drums have always gotten the most stage time and professional work. I started writing songs when I was 15. When I was in college I started to write and record obsessively on four track, creating a terminally eclectic stock of silly tunes that spanned all styles of music. In this regard, Ween and I were living parallel lives.

It was during these years I sort of refined my skills those other instruments, as well as my approach to recording and arranging, and the songs became progressively more serious and thoughtful.

With the exception of keys, guitar bass, vocals & drums were instruments I performed on in working, touring bands. I had a long run with a group called The Wooden Soldiers on bass, and we did several records and a few tours. During that time I was in at least 5 bands playing drums, bass, guitar and singing.

I don’t play any other instruments but I can play a bunch of percussion including a little bit of vibes and marimba, which was actually my official music major for my first year of college at Kean University, because they didn’t have a drumset major. I’ve also been built several studios and managed them as an engineer/producer for hire for at least 10 years, and I’ve always treated the studio as instrument – the conduit for the expression of the song.

I think for most people it’s a shortcut to thinking and easier on the brain to just be presumptuous about it; they see me onstage drumming and close the book. Even friends close to me have narrow perceptions of who I am and what I can do. It takes effort and energy to try and understand the complexity of people’s lives and who they really are I guess, and it’s been a lifelong struggle to break out of the shell; to modify people’s perceptions. Amandla will hopefully play a role in redefining all of that; what can I do, who I am, and where I can go.

 The Full Catastrophe is very peaceful listen that seems to radiate a sense of hope.  Can you describe the song-writing process for the record and was there any particular theme or sound in your mind that was involved in its creation?

Most of the songs on Catastrophe were actually written well before the accident, and were half recorded by the time the accident occurred. I also had a new studio that was half-built in my home in West Amwell, NJ.  The accident happened, I was thrown into a world of trauma, pain and intensive rehabilitation, so finishing the songs as well as finishing wiring the studio became an instrumental part of regaining and reclaiming my self, soul and motor skills, as best as I could to finish the recording.

It was a conscious decision on my part to include all of these songs, and with the newer material I added to them there was a conspicuous absence of direct references to everything that had happened. I wanted – and needed – a record that gave me joy, hope as well as the pain and the longing that makes any great collection of songs a great record: a celebration of the living experience that could give me escape and take me away from my reality, so perhaps that was  the ‘theme’. Life as it is; the enormity and emotional range of being alive; The Full Catastrophe. The last thing I wanted was to make a record of moping, despondent music to kill yourself to.  I wanted something that I could play and listen to that be recuperative in the sense that it was almost entirely outside the reality I was dealing with.

And when I play the music it works perfectly to serve that purpose: I still have all this chronic pain and the various disabilities associated with the brain damage, so when I’m performing the tunes become this glorious artistic panacea, eradicating it all, taking me away from it. The music heals me on a nightly basis, and it’s beautiful.

So the songs have nothing and everything to do with that accident. The newest song is the title track and first song on the record, and that’s the only one that explicitly addressing the experience from a lyrical and emotional standpoint.

Which songs on the album are you most proud of and why?

The title track is special to me because I wrote it at my mum-law’s in New Zealand. That country has such a powerfully creative energy everywhere. It’s also a tune I wrote completely in my head, without any instrument at all – just out of the ether. I only had just the ideas of what it should be completely in my head, and then pressed record and recorded a drum track, writing down the sections to give this imaginative song in my mind some kind of form. When I had that down, I wrote the lyrics as a poem, and then wrote the music to go with it all. I usually at least have a song written before I attempt to record it, but this was kind of a magical process.

“Before Tomorrow” I’m extremely proud of. I was going for this Beach Boys/Manhattan Transfer thing. I read in Mojo once that Brain Wilson recorded songs like “God Only Knows” for like six months straight, so I spent about 2 weeks on the vocals alone. ”

I’m also really happy about “Down By The Way,” which is unlike anything I’ve ever done,taking on an almost jungle feel at the end. It was shaped and created completely on its own terms; it sort of created itself. Then, having the chance to put a legend like Art Barron on slide trombone who’s played on Stevie Wonder’s Music of my Mind was a tremendous experience. I felt like he transferred that Stevie-in-studio mojo my way; it was so honorable to have his pressence, and he just killed the solo, just beautiful.

The title – The Full Catastrophe is inspired by both the words from Zorba the Greek and meditation teachings of Dr. John Kabat-Zinn for living with stress caused by pain and illness.  How did these two inspirations get you through this period of your life?

My sister gave me this book while I was in rehab, and it immediately moved me, but the strength of his teachings has taken greater meaning and influence the more the years go on as I contend with the residual agony of what I’ve survived through.

Kabat-Zinn (as well as the hapless but hopelessly affable Zorba) teaches us lessons on acceptance as well as courage with grace. We need to accept all the crap along with the positive; it’s all the essence of the living experience that makes being alive so precious. In studying his teachings, my already pretty high threshold of pain and discomfort has become limitless. The struggles, tribulations and trials of being alive are exactly the same as life’s joys, gifts accomplishments, and with this understanding comes a reduction of the soaring stress on the body that the pain causes, which is great and without rest. I haven’t had a day without pain in five years; perhaps for the rest of life I’ll be dealing with it, but in accepting and processing the pain I’ve still found tremendous enjoyment in everything I do.

How difficult was it regaining your motor skills to play drums again and was there a particular rhythm or genre that you drummed to that helped in getting your groove back?

It took about seven months to get to place where drumming wasn’t a thought process. For the first few tours with Ween I was smashing my left hand into the drums and cymbals, because the left side of my body is deprived of proper feeling and suffering from paralysis, so my depth perception with the left arm was a guessing game, so every night there was blood everywhere and deep abrasions all over my hand and knuckles, which wasn’t that uncommon even before I lost sensation on that side. It wasn’t so bad until you smash an open gash about a dozen times a night for a week straight. It goes from an annoying disability to torture, plain and simple.

There was nothing specific that was helpful other than just doing it and doing it as much as possible. Because play just about every style of music the only way reacquire the skills for whichever genre was to just play that genre, that’s it.

I’m still working to regain all the finer dexterity that was lost. In a major way, everything single moment of every day is rehab, and continues to be so, until I can get to near 100%.

I’m a strong-minded person, so the whole time when I couldn’t move anything or swallow or even talk, I was just biding my time, patiently waiting for the chance to do it again. So it was never for a second an issue of can I, or will I, or how can I. For me it was a matter of time and having to wait – an issue of when.

I hired a trainer during my rehabilitation, so I would do 5 days straight of therapy from 9-3pm, then after that go straight to a gym to work until 8, three days a week. I understood that it was only me that going to determine how long it was going to take to get back to the stage. So if it’s up to me, I’m going to be extreme and disciplined about it, and make it happen, period. Victimhood isn’t my style.

Your drumming style has been described by fans as acrobatic.  Who are you primary drumming influences and is there anything in the drumming/percussion realm you still hope to learn or accomplish?

Drumming influences…Well I started playing drums because of Stewart Copeland – he’s wildly energetic, creative and musical which makes for some of my favorite type of drummers. But I’m, also very much a song person, so my favorites are also drummers pulse-makes like Russ Kunkel or Ringo. There are just too many favorites of mine to fit here; we’d have to go genre by genre or something. I draw inspiration from everyone.

I’m still learning from others and everything around me, and I’m an information junkie. If I were to say what it might be that I hope to accomplish, it might be to raise my profile as a drummer, because there are a lot artists I would love to be involved with and share musical experiences with. I’m getting a little weary of the ‘best drummer you’ve never heard’ concept. It’s creatively stifling.

This, in and of itself is a skill I reckon – to be able to put yourself out there and make people realize your accessibility.  The combination of having done this for 20 years and being a bit of homebody works against me; I’m pretty weary of scenesters and networking: I’m more interested in creating scenes rather than trying to be a part of one.

You’ve been drumming in Ween for over ten years now, how vital do you feel your drumming is to the Ween sound and is there a particular Ween track(s) that feel you had a significant role (more than others) in the song’s development?

Over the course of my friendship with the bros I’ve fell into writing and producer roles just because I was around. Songs like “Mutilated Lips” and “Flutes of the Chi” are songs that Aaron and I recorded alone together at first, with him literally telling me he wanted an “Amandla” production, whatever that means. There may be others I’m forgetting about – those guys have about 7,000,000 songs. But generally the bros operate in a very self-sufficient manner with occasional major assistance here and there.

Again, I’m modest, so I never have felt my drumming was particularly vital to the ‘Ween sound’ – I play drums, big deal. I just know a lot of brilliant, talented players out there. I’ve had three fantastic drummers in Amandla. But I do realize that live, its part of the driving musical force that along with the other members make the live shows special. I play with a lot of passion for better or worse, and that seems to affect the shows, who knows.

How did you come up with the band name Amandla or does it mean anything?

I came across the word from the Miles Davis record. It’s an attractive word to me with a beautiful melodicsim to it. A nice name for a daughter. Then after some research, discovered the word is from the Zulu language meaning “power”, and part of the political uprising chant of the African National Congress, and then it took on huge importance to me and to who I am. It was like, right on! I’m all about empowerment as well as uprising. It’s a huge name to live up to – kind of like Metallica. You can’t really suck with that kind of name. In fact Metallica need to rename themselves and give the name to some deserving band from Sayerville, NJ.

Is Amandla going to be doing any future touring and who can we expect playing in the band?

I’m going to continue touring and touring again until I drop dead on stage at age 94 on a beer-encrusted stage in Lincoln, Nebraska. Post accident I take nothing for granted, and treat each moment like it’s my last. I’m just about incapable at this point of not treating each day as if it might be my last.

I’m very committed to Amandla and spreading it out across the land. I won’t stop until intergalactic superstardom.  I’m having too good a time playing guitar up front, and the reactions have been strong and encouraging. The band is made up of members from New York City, Carversville, PA, Madison, WI and Chapel Hill, NC. They’re a group of beautiful players and even more beautiful people. No one that anyone would have heard of, but here are their names: Dave Gilbert, Eli Ward, John Hadfield and Greg Davis.  You may have heard of David Lee Roth. He’s agreed to rock the glockenspiel.

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