Jerry is one of those incredibly naturally gifted musicians.  His recent gigs include the likes of Jamelia, Ms Dynamite, Courtney Pine and Will Young.  He recently did a support stint for El Negro where we caught up with him for a chat.

How much of an influence did your brother have in the early days?
My brother Nicky Brown had and still has a major influence on me as a musician.  He kind of grew me up; we shared the same room for quite a while so everything that he was embracing. I had tabs on what was really cool because when everybody was checking out soul and R n B he was getting into rock music and strong LA pop because he is a writer his writing partner, John Lint, (who lives in LA and wrote Crazy For You and Save The Best For Last) was the type of people he was (and still is) hanging with so the music we were listening to had a very strong writing base. 

It was all about melody, all about the songs, because the songs were so good you had great musicians playing on them.  As soon Nicky bought an album he would look at the credits, and I soon got into that – you know, who’s playing? who’s doing what?  I then started working out who was working in different states; you had the LA guys, the New York guys like Omar Hakim, and then obviously people would move, so you would have people who would start off working in LA, guys like Larry London, I think he started in LA and then he moved to Nashville.  You just kind of knew where everyone was and how the sound changed depending on were the music was coming from.

Jerry Brown

Apart from your brother is there any musical background
Yeah, my uncle Jimmy who lives in Long Island, New York now, he really got us into the game.  My dad had his own band, Jimmy was the drummer, and he was the drummer of the family so he got us into playing.

Were you encouraged as kids to get into instruments?
I remember going to my grandmothers house which was where the band rehearsed and I remember my uncle having a 7 piece Phil Collins set up because he was into Geneses, Billy Cobham, Gino Vinnalie, Michael Morrodo, all those kind of guys, so he was getting us into that.  But we were so young, it was too big for us, we couldn’t get it!  My dad’s record collection was so cool, from Santana to Billy Paul to Robert Palmer, so his collection was sweet and then off of his collection was Micky’s collection and then when we used to go and see uncle Jimmy, now he had a great record collection.  My cousin, Glendon  Scott, is a producer and an artist in his own right, he’s signed to Epic in America so he’s got 3 or 4 albums of his own and his dad, Uncle Rocky, was like a Ray Charles freak, and had all of the Ray Charles Spanish albums.  It got to the point where we would go round to his house and sample all of his vinyls, all of these records, our uncles and dads and everybody had, so we’ve got a huge collection of samples from different records because the guys had the connection.

How much of the gospel scene influenced your growing up, were you involved right from the beginning?
I’m a born again Christian and that’s my heart, that’s my passion for me.  When I grew up I was at Church every Sunday and I still go to Church every Sunday and have been playing in Church from 7 years old from knocking a tambourine playing bass or drums.  Gospel music is not so much a style of music it’s more of a lifestyle.  When they say gospel music is very inspirational that is very much what it is, it’s actually the word coming to life, you’re actually hearing people’s experience via their lifestyle.  It’s about songs that inspire people and what they have gone through. We have testimonies in the service where people give a record of what’s happened throughout their week and songs will come out of that as the band put various rhythms to their testimonial.  We could do anything from calypso grooves or Latino, reggae, jazz, whatever the vibe is.  So the opportunity was there for me to refine every style of music which helped later on.  It’s important that you learn as much as you can when you can.

You sit quite high above your kit.  How do you feel that affects your playing and how did you come about setting up the way you do?
It was for health reasons. My dad sells fruit and veg and has his own business in the summer holidays I used to work with him lifting massive boxes of Caribbean vegetables, which affected my back when I was really young.  But one of my major influences in the drumming industry is Pat Mastelotto who plays with King Crimson and Mr Mister and I remember reading an article about Pat where he identified the same back problem.  He sits really high over the kit so I checked out what he was doing and just his whole vibe around the kit I really liked.  There’s a couple of Mr Mister albums that I brought which had some shots of the guys in the studio and there’s a particular shot of him playing and his stool’s really high.  He was kind of looking over the drum kit, and I said it kind of makes sense, instead of lifting your hands and reaching out for things, if everything is at a certain level I think it will be more comfortable.  Its kind of like standing up as well, so you don’t have that pressure of trying to push yourself on the kit because everything is at a place where you’re looking over the drums, you’re hitting the drums downwards instead of trying to lift yourself up.

Your cymbals are about chest height, what angles are your legs at?  And do you play with your heels up or down?
I’m quite up.  My heels are flat.  Then again that’s a whole emotional position as well depending on the vibe.  I think I’ve just got into a place where I can play at that height and feel very comfortable, I think it really came into play when I was playing with Louise and then it moved from that into the Mrs Dynamite situation and just feeling really relaxed. I need to reach out not too far so I’m not stretching and everything is close and inward.  I’m using a lot more of my abdominal muscles, kind of leaning into the drums and if I need to do anything, even if I’m playing double pedals, I don’t want to lean back where all the pressure’s on my back. I’m kind of leaning forward and making sure I’m pushing the weight forward and everything’s close to me so I don’t have to do too much.  I don’t want to have to move my chest and my shoulders.  That’s another thing as well I kind of get into the vibe and I dance a lot so sometimes my shoulders move from side to side.

You’re also using 2B sticks, which are heavy sticks, and you’re getting a lot of power from a very small movement
Yeah, I think for me when I started to play Pearl drums, obviously they make their own sticks, and I started using 5As and gradually the more I started to work out I wanted to use heavier sticks so when I started the Louise tour I went from the 5As to the 5Bs and then they felt like chopsticks so I said let me move up and obviously I found the 2B.  It’s really weird because when I started playing I started on the Vic Firth “American Classic Rocks” and went down and now I’m going back up.  I just find because I’m using my fingers more and let the sticks kind of play the songs.

Note the level of the drums and cymbals

Has the Industry changed over the past ten years and, if so, how?
I think it’s changed.  There’s negative and positive sides to it.  I think for us as drummers now we have become programmers and making sure all the electrics are on our side and building shows a lot of drummers are now musical directors.
As far as the business is concerned I think we’ve lost the plot, we need to realise at the end of the day we’re bringing in an income and sometimes you can sell yourself short.  You’ve got to remember that what we do is very special and you’ve got to hold on and make sure we value ourselves and make sure we don’t sell ourselves short.  I think a lot of people are doing anything just to get a gig.  It wasn’t like that even if you were doing a club gig you were getting paid well. When I started out, players weren’t bothered about endorsements and getting free sticks and heads, it was about making sure your cv was building up, that you were playing with certain people, getting on tours, getting on albums and playing live and in the studio.  In time if you’re working with the right people, doing the right jobs, and the right gigs those guys will come and check you out.  

I think people kind of check me out because I have a product, I’m different, I have something that people want to grab onto and I think players like Ralph Salmins, Geoff Dugmore and Ian Thomas that are working all the time, for them its about when are we going out on the road, when are we making the next record, when are we going to go away, we just want to play, travel, see the world.  Nowadays I think everybody just wants to get gear.

What have the highlights been of your career so far?
There’s so many, for me as you know I work as a bass player in the industry as well as playing drums.  I think one of the highlights was when I got the gig with Dave Stewart on his first solo album and we went and toured that was really cool.  I think playing with a great gospel artist, I was actually fortunate, myself and my brother were the rhythm section with Andre Crouch so that was really cool playing with Andre Crouch together and we actually did that twice.  We did that on a BBC special as well for I think it was on a Songs of Praise.   Saturday Night Live with Miss Dynamite was really cool because I was hanging out with Shaun Pelton.  The first time I saw him was when he was doing Jon Bon Jovi solo stuff, I really dig his vibe.

What kind of drummers do you admire?
I love drummers who are just unique and make the music happen and not scared of making change.  I love Kenny Aronoff because Kenny was the guy who played 12” and then a 10” tom instead of 10” 12”.  I’ve got two drum kits and one of the kits is 12, 10, 16 and that’s just from the Kenny Aronoff influence.  His instructional videos are great.  I’ve got albums with Mary Jane Carpenter and Kenny is all over that stuff, he plays with such a great vibe and excitement. I love the Morotta brothers, Rick and Jerry, the great Steve Jordan, from the early John Schofield records right up to the James Taylor stuff everything he does is just unique. Drummers of today; Travis Barker, Antonio Sanchez (Pat Metheny) and Little John.  I also like gospel guys like Jeremy Haynes who is one of my major players, Camille Rogers, Joel Smith who’s part of the Hawkins family.  His uncle, Edwin Hawkins wrote A Happy Day which everybody sings and Joel has been playing on records from when he was a teen so I’ve always kind of checked him out and looked up to him.  Then you’ve got the great British players who I admire like Frank Tonto, Darren Mooney, Ian Thomas, Darren Abrahams, Geoff Dugmore, the list goes on and on.

What have you been up to the last couple of months and what have you got coming up?
I’ve been hanging out with some great friends of mine, Velroy Bailey, Chris Bailey, (they’re not related), we’re like family and we kind of just move together, anything that he’s doing, they pull me on or I’ll pull them on, and we try to do a lot of gospel stuff together.  So me and Velroy have been recording with a real nice choir called the Kingdom Choir, we did their album, that was last year. My brother produced an album for one of the gospel artists called Pricilla Jones, they mixed it in LA and that was really cool.  I’ve been working with a producer called Tommy D who produces Catatonia and Kylie, I was in the studio recoding with those guys at Rack, which is a really cool studio in London.  I’ve been working with a young lady called Louise Sitara at Mark Angelos studio, I’ve just finished her album, recording with Martin Pellow for his new solo album, I’ve just done a DVD with Bishop John Francis, we did an album about 3 or 4 years ago which is going to be coming out soon under an American label and we’ve packaged it with a DVD, Then I will be touring with Will Young; about 17 shows in July.

Will Young fan or not, you should try to get along to see Jerry do his stuff this summer or when you can.  A very inspirational interview – thanks Jerry!