HT Interview: The Story of Drummer/Percussionist Todd Isler

NYC musician Todd Isler first came onto our radar through his work as the drummer for Mike Gordon’s killer solo ensemble. Outside of his role in Mike’s band, Isler also is a noted teacher and author who performs as part of two outstanding New York City avant-jazz acts – International Orange and TriBeCaStan. While Isler plays the kit with Gordon, he’s also known for his hand drumming on such unconventional instruments as Pakistani gaval, uduboo and lap drum.

[Photo by Jeremy Gordon]

Just a few days before TriBeCaStan’s record release party at DROM NYC on June 9, we wanted to share our lengthy chat with Isler (pronounced ice-ler), an affable gent who has seen it all over the years. We were immediately struck by Todd’s candor and artistic integrity in this wide-ranging interview that covers his formative years, how he came to work with Mike Gordon, his time with the Phish bassist, his other projects and the life of a professional musician in NYC.

Hidden Track: How did you first get into drumming?

Todd Isler: I’ve always loved music and my parents loved music. When I was very young my sisters and I would put on these puppet shows in my basement for other kids and I would play upside-down wastebaskets and pots and pans.

When I was nine or ten, I went to this Bar Mitzvah and I was freaked out by the drums. They took me back to the drummer and he showed me how to hold the sticks. I went slowly and learned the traditional way, I bought a drum pad then I got a snare drum and then a bass drum. Finally, for my 13th birthday I got a used kit from my teacher and started taking lessons.

HT: What were some of your early influences?

TI: When I got in junior high I became a Deadhead. The first time I did acid I was car camping, which was bullshit camping, we had electricity. My friends were already into the Dead, while I was listening to pop music and Elton John and stuff like that. [The Grateful Dead’s 1974 album From The] Mars Hotel kept playing over and over again, the actual vinyl record, and somehow it kept playing all night long. And by the morning, after my first trip, I was a Deadhead.

From there I started listening to Frank Zappa and began to touch on jazz. I was also into R&B and James Brown. When I went to high school, I developed a love for R&B. I was a little bit into Black Culture because my high school was probably 30-40% black and that culture was a huge part of my musical education. In 10th Grade I met this guy named Joe Hunter, whose father was half african-american/half native-american, a very interesting man, he was a big influence on me. He got me into jazz ranging from Miles Davis to Errol Garner and everything between – Weather Report, all the fusion stuff and even traditional music like Dixieland. He was also into world music and had street samba and african music, all this stuff that totally blew my mind. That just opened the floodgates.

HT: Did you focus on music in college?

TI: I went to Berklee for a short stint. The school wasn’t that hip back then. It was sort of a factory and the food was inedible, it was a rough place to be and I had no money. There were other personal circumstances that brought me back to Cleveland. In 1981 I met up with Jamey Haddad, who’s a pretty famous world percussionist/drummer, who was a big influence on me along with Paul Samuels and Greg Bandy and some other jazz guys. I went back to Cleveland where I was hanging with them and doing gigs – immersing myself in learning jazz. At that point it was full force, full throttle jazz.

Jamey also turned me on to Ramnad Ragavan who’s an Indian drummaster that started me on mridangham. That technique is what I use today on all the hand drums that I play. With Mike Gordon I play drum set mostly, but the other half of my life is a hand drumming life from the South Indian stuff. I use it on hand drums, uduboo and all these extremely cool instruments that friends of mine have invented. It’s kept me alive in New York City – being a drummer and a hand drummer has saved me. I don’t know if I could do it all on one instrument.

HT: And at some point you moved to NYC and met your wife?

TI: Yes, I moved to New York in 1985 and have been here ever since. My wife (Jenny Hill) is the horn player in Easy Star All-Stars. I actually saw her at Berklee. There were only ten women at the school at the time and I have this one two-second memory of watching her walk down the stairs in the main building and then I didn’t meet her until ten years later in New York. Over the years we’ve played together in a few different projects.

HT: At what point did you get together with Mike?

TI: There’s probably going to be drummers or musicians who read this who are Phish fans that might get angry or jealous, thinking I don’t deserve it or something because I was never a Phishhead. As I mentioned, I was a Deadhead in high school and that was my stepping stone into jazz and world music and I sort of just veered off in that direction.

Out of the blue, four years ago I got a call from this guy and he goes “hi, my name is Mike Gordon, your name was given to me by somebody,” it was like three people removed, and he was thinking of having me audition for the percussion spot in this new band he was starting. He said “I’m the bassist of the band Phish” and I said “oh yeah, Phish, I’ve heard of them.” I didn’t care, I thought alright it’s another guy calling me for a gig. It was cool but I didn’t know who he was. When my wife came home that day I said “hey, do you know this guy Mike Gordon the bassist from Phish?” She said “yeah” so I said “well he called me, he’s looking for a percussionist” and she flipped “CALL HIM BACK RIGHT NOW!”

I did an audition in New York not too long after the first call. Somehow it was on drum set, I don’t know how we made that switch, I must’ve told him I was a drummer. This was at Electric Ladyland and I had never been in there before. I was walking around touching all the Jimi Hendrix pictures for good luck. I brought some hand drums just to show him I do some other stuff.

Billy Kreutzmann had just played the kit I used which I thought was a good sign. So I get into the room and only Mike and Scott Murawski were there. Mike goes, “okay, let’s play like three bars of four and a bar of five, just this little riff.” So we did that and we play for a while and I started playing the groove of — this was really weird — I started playing Tennessee Jed. No melody, no bass line, only the drum part and he knew it was Tennessee Jed. I was pretty impressed that he was listening so hard to know that I was phrasing the melody just on drums, Tennessee Jed of all things! That blew my mind. I guess they liked me but that wasn’t it. I found out later that they had auditioned 30 drummers.

Anyways, so long story short we went back and forth, I went to Japan that spring thinking he already found somebody. I checked in with him but I didn’t want to bother him. I figured I’d give him one last text. And he said “oh, I’m so glad you wrote, it turns out we’re just putting the finishing touches on The Green Sparrow and I’m really busy and we haven’t decided yet, so stay tuned.”

I got back from Japan and wanted to see if he had made a decision. I wrote him this text, “hey I’m checking in” and at the end of the text I wrote “I know I’m your man.” I took a chance. It may be a bullshit thing to say, but it worked. Mike brought me up to Vermont on the spur of the moment and I went out to dinner with him, his wife and Mike’s mother-in-law. Mike’s mother-in-law liked me and likes to take credit for pushing him to take me, but we had gotten together and I stayed at his house. We played not long, a half-hour maybe, I went to The Barn where he was putting the finishing touches on some of the tunes on The Green Sparrow. I was just hanging out, I went home and a few days later I got a call from him, “I’d like you to be in my band.” Needless to say, I was extremely happy.

[Photo via Mike Gordon Facebook Page]

PAGE TWO = Todd’s Most Memorable Mike Gordon Shows & More

HT: Did you have any idea how many gigs you’d signed on for at first?

TI: We did our first gig up in North Hampton and ever since then, I’m always the one pushing for more gigs. He’s got guys in his band who have full-time jobs and it’s complicated. Mike has Phish and his family, his daughter, so he’s got a pretty full plate.

HT: Did you know the other members of the band?

TI: Mike got us all together in Massachusetts, we were rehearsing at Scott’s house. We met at this resaturant, and I walked in and these four total strangers were sitting at a table. We went around the table like kids introducing ourselves. That’s another talent that Mike has which you can’t buy, which is a real intangible. He has an ability to read people. He’s a real artist, he picks up a vibe about people. He somehow knew that these four people would be good together. It has worked out incredibly well.

HT: How much rehearsal went into those first shows?

TI: I’ve come to learn a lot about Phish and I’ve gone to a handful of shows. From what I heard, Phish would rehearse and practice incessantly. They had an insane rehearsal schedule and work ethic. It was almost the opposite with this band.

It’s not like we totally fucked around, but [Mike’s] so spontaneous and goes off on tangents so easily, that we almost wouldn’t get through a tune before he threw out a new idea. He’s very spontaneous and he likes it that way and I LOVE it that way. Being a jazz musician, that spontaneity has a lot in common with jazz, or at least the kind of jazz I like. It suits me, the way he runs the band.

HT: Can you tell me about some of your more memorable Mike Gordon shows?

TI: Jon Fishman played with us in Portland. He was only going to play one or two tunes, but he was having fun so he stuck around for basically the whole night. Once he sat down he didn’t get up. We played the longest set in the history of MGB, in something like 105 gigs – over three and a half years. We had a great time and it was drum-heavy but really great. We hooked up musically and I liked him a lot.

And then Burlington at the end of our last full tour. The very last of the tour was incredibly special. I never quite had a good time before that at Higher Ground, for no particular reason, but this was a fantastic show. Those two stand out in my mind.

Also, the first time we played outdoors in Buffalo in 2008 as part of Thursdays In The Square. There were thousands of people there and playing outdoors is my favorite thing in the world. Just being out in the air, I feel like that’s the way music was meant to be heard. Plus, MG has a very big bass sound which is clear and beautiful and when it’s outdoors it has room to breathe.

HT: What do you think the future holds for Mike Gordon (the band)?

TI: If it was up to me there would be full tours six months a year, but Mike knows that. I push for it but I dont want to be real obnoxious about it. One thing I know is that Mike loves doing this, that it feels good to him. He gets to be the man and he’s really good at it. There’s no doubt I want [more touring] to happen. Unfortunately, within months of us playing our first show, Phish got back together. That’s a huge mechanism which is in place.

This band has so much potential and so much life behind it, I want to see Mike keep it going. In the meantime, I have to survive as a musician in New York City which IS TOUGH. In order to be a musician exclusively, I teach, play, record, tour, anything I can to stay afloat.

HT: Speaking of which, can you tell us about TriBeCaStan?

TI: That’s an incredibly hip band, at most a 10-piece band with horns. Jeff Greene, who is sort of the curator of it, and the guy who writes most of the music, John Kruth, he’s an interesting author and musician. John’s played with the Violent Femmes, he plays mandocello and all these weird string instruments and guitar. Jeff collects instruments from all around the world and we incorporate these into the music. It’s so cool and fun, it’s got a sense of humor – a real world bent to it with an almost rock-jazz New York sensibility. It’s fun. All these great musicians are in it.

HT: So Friday’s concert is in honor of a new CD?

TI: Yeah, we’ve recorded two killer CDs in the past couple of years. The latest one is called New Deli – it’s always a play on words like that. Kruth comes up with these amazing titles.

HT: Which percussion instruments do you generally play at Tribecastan performances or do you play the kit?

TI: In TriBeCaStan, I’m very fortunate to have played most of the hand drums and all the drum set on the last two albums, 5 Star Cave and New Deli. Addition percussion was played by Boris Kinberg, a great percussionist and cool guy.

HT: Do you feel New Deli is a good representation of the band’s current sound?

TI: Yes, I feel this is a good representation of the band’s current sound. It’s generally a 10 piece band, a real party, and everyone gets to blow.

HT: How often does the band gig these days?

TI: My hat goes off to the two leaders of TriBeCaStan, Jeff Greene and John Kruth, who make this whole thing fly. Jeff is a student of world music and travels extensively, collecting and playing incredible instruments that make Tribecastan’s sound so uniquely appealing. John plays several stringed instruments and writes most of the music. He is also an accomplished author, having written books on Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Townes Van Zandt, and the upcoming biography of Roy Orbison.

HT: I was very impressed by what I heard of International Orange. Can you tell me how that band came together? How did you meet David Phelps and Gaku Takanashi?

TI: I met David Phelps while I was playing in a blues band called Midnight Mover in ’89 or ’90. We were playing at the old Dan Lynch’s on 2nd Ave and 13th St. The bass player in that band introduced me to him and I guess we hit it off. I then recommended him to a guy who called his band Mr. Thing and The Professional Human Beings. We did a tour in Germany in the early ’90s and became close friends. We’ve played together a lot since then.

David is completely unique. He’s not derivative at all. He’s from Texas and has elements of Duane Allman and other blues giants, as well as country music in his playing, and is one of THE baddest blues players you will ever hear. He’s also a well schooled Jazzer. He puts all of this together in a modern way.

We went through a couple of bass players in the early stages and for one reason or another, it wasn’t totally clicking. I had played with Gaku Takanashi in a cool band with some guys from India and I decided to see what he’d be like with me and Dave. Whatever that intangible quality is that makes good chemistry, Gaku has it.

HT: Are you still planning on the release of full-length album this year?

TI: All I can say is we are working on it.

HT: Who writes the material and what does the band’s live repertoire consist of currently? All originals? Any covers?

TI: Right now we do a mix of originals and some covers. Most of the originals are David’s. He has a vocal tune called I’m Sorry Your Dog Died, which needs to get into the hands of Willie Nelson, so it can become a major hit. We are rehearsing some more of my tunes and plan on debuting them an the 78 Below gig on the 15th.

Thanks to Todd for chatting with us. You can catch TriBeCaStan at DROM NYC on Friday night, while International Orange returns to the stage on June 15 at 78 Below on New York City’s Upper West Side. There are currently no dates scheduled for Mike Gordon’s band, but we hope that will change.