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Seven-time GRAMMY Award-winner Paul Wertico has established himself as one of the most respected drummers in his field. From his time with the Pat Metheny Group to his passion for teaching the next generation of musicians, Wertico brings unbridled joy and enthusiasm to every aspect of his work. In the first part of this iZotope-exclusive interview, he talks about his early career and the years he spent with Pat Metheny.
| Part 1 | Part 2 | How did you first get into music? I always loved music as a child, but when I was about 12 years old my parents and I moved to a new city. One day they told me, You should take up an instrument anything except the drums. But that was the only instrument I really loved, so drums were it! In sixth grade I joined the school band and thats where I learned how to read music and play the snare drum - I had a really fine teacher named Vern Pahde, who was actually a saxophone player. Then, one day I sat down at a friends drum set and I found out that I was instantly able to play his kit. We were both like Whoa! I originally dreamed about being a chemist, but when I got into high school, luckily I had another wonderful band director there named Donald Ehrensperger. He pretty much let me do my thing, which was great for me, and so I started gravitating towards playing music more and more. Also, when youre young, you kind of think, You know, if I play music, Ill meet a lot of girls and I wont have to get up early in the morning, things you find out later that arent necessarily trueat least the later part. Eventually, one thing kind of led to another and then I got a music scholarship at a university and before I knew it, music was my life. Who were some of the musicians that inspired you early on? I used to buy so many LPs Id buy anything. That was back in the days when you could go into a local chain food store and even theyd have Atlantic or ATCO records. So youd pick up a record like Cream and youd read the back and it would say Ginger Baker undoubtedly one of Europes greatest drummers and youd think Oh, Im going to buy that! The same thing went for jazz records. Id go to a department store and theyd be blowing out mono Atlantic records and it just happened to be John Coltrane or Charles Lloyd or Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis on Columbia, so I just bought whatever looked interesting. Back then, I would listen to rock, jazz and ethnic musicI loved it all. And so I would listen to all these different bands and styles and if I really felt something from it, it would become part of me. It was very much a kind of osmosis. And the fact that I didnt differentiate between rock and jazz and ethnic music really helped too because I wasnt a snob. I wasnt a jazz snob or a rock snob I just loved any good music. I also learned tons of songs that way too. I was always very songoriented, so I got to know thousands of standards and rock tunes thats a critical advantage for any musician.
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Im basically self-taught on the drum set. I taught myself how to play the kit by playing what came naturally to me and by listening to what other drummers did not necessarily by transcribing what they did note for note, but by more or less listening to what they played and then observing how their playing affected the music. Id then try to come up with my own individual way of doing a similar thing. So it was nothing for me to put on a Who record and listen to Keith Moon, and then put on an Ornette Coleman record and listen to Ed Blackwell and then put on an Olatunji record and then try to combine what I just heard. After high school, you attended Western Illinois University, but not long. During my second quarter, Cannonball Adderleys band came in and did a rhythm section clinic with George Duke, Walter Booker, and Roy McCurdy. Everybody sat in, but for some reason I didnt feel like playing. Finally, my friends said, Oh, go play! So during their last song I took the sticks out of Roy McCurdys hands mid-tune and played. Everybody went nuts. I talked to Roy McCurdy afterwards and said, Im dying here because I just want to play music I dont want to be in school. I feel like quitting. He said, I think you should. The next day I quit school and moved back to the Chicagoland area and started playing around town. Were you influenced by the avant-garde scene in Chicago? Yeah, a lot. I heard a lot of the AACM guys play around town like Steve McCall, Don Moye and Thurman Barker. I was also really into New York drummers like Milford Graves and Andrew Cyrille and some of the European drummers like Han Bennink. Actually before I got Pats gig, a lot of people sort of considered me more of an avantgarde drummer because I had this band called Earwax Control that was a very performance-art-oriented band. I always loved all that freedom. Im still like that I want to keep all my options open. The avant-garde thing always appealed to me because it really seemed like people were playing from a gut level as opposed to a completely intellectual, technical level. Of course, some of those guys were amazing technicians as well. You have to have enough technique in order to pull off your ideas, especially if theyre unusual or exceptional ideas you have to have amazing technique to complete amazing ideas. But the idea should come first, rather than the technique. And your big break came when you joined the Pat Metheny Group. That really took me from being a local Chicago drummer to becoming involved in the international scene. I hadnt been to Europe before I joined Pat and that opened up so many doors too. Did you know his music before you joined the group? Of course. Before playing with Pat, I was playing with a guitar player named Ross Trout who was a roommate of Pats at the University of Miami. In the late 70s, Pat actually called me up to play some gigs with him and I turned him down because I had a prior important gig commitment with a legendary Chicago sax player named Joe Daley who had taken me under his wing after I left college. I think Pat really noticed and appreciated that kind of loyalty. I was also into heavier music like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report, but since I loved great melodies, I always liked Pats music. Then in the early 80s, I was playing in a band called the Simon & Bard Group and we were touring around, sleeping on peoples floors not making a lot of money, but playing the type of music I enjoyed. And you even went as far as turning down higher-paying gigs to focus on the music you loved? Absolutely. Back then, I could have been doing recording sessions and weddings and staying at home, but my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) always said to me, No go play. Do what you want to do. Thats what I still do and thats also why weve been happily together for over 30 years! So, as a result, I was out there touring around the country playing creative music. Then in 1982, Pat heard me again playing a gig with Simon & Bard in a club in Portland, Oregon after playing his concert that same night and thats how I got the gig. As a musician, what was it like playing with the Pat Metheny Group? It was great on so many levels. There was an amazing depth of conception and Pat

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iZotope, Inc - Audio Processing Technology and Plug-Ins for Pro Tools, VST, MAS, Audio Unit, and It was great on so many levels. There was an amazing depth of conception and Pat and Lyle Mays really could write some heavy compositions. They werent just nice little easy tunes that anybody could blow over.

Every time you thought you had cracked their musical code, thered be ten other things youd have to crack, and youd see what deep composers those guys were. As far as freedom, it was the antithesis of what I was used to. I was the kind of guy who would show up with any kind of drum set and do anything I wanted to do. I remember playing an Earwax Control gig one time where I walked out of the club with a field drum in the middle of the night and walked down the block, still playing all the way, and never came back. I was kind of legendary for doing crazy stuff like that. However, with Pats gig, we were playing major concerts, so there was a certain amount of consistency that had to be there every night. You had to be consistently performing at a certain level because the audience was different every night. It was good discipline and it was different from what I was used to, which is always good. You have to put yourself in different situations so that you can learn and grow. The Pat Metheny Groups compositions were highly structured pieces that combined written music with improvisation almost like a small version of Duke Ellingtons or Minguss groups. Lyle Mays said it was more of a modern big band in many ways. It wasnt necessarily a jazz group, if you think of jazz as people just playing heads and blowing. It was jazz musicians playing very organized music with a lot of detail. It was sort of a mixture of jazz and the classical music aesthetic (Id often lay down my sticks totally quietly in between tunes). And then there was the challenge to make music that was tightly structured still sound fresh every night. How did you deal with the challenge? One of the secrets I tell my students is that when you play music, you try to make the things that you know like the head of the tune - sound like youre creating them on the spot. And then you try to make the improvisation sound like youve played it a million times. Thats the secret. You make the loose stuff sound like you really know it, and you make the tight stuff sound like youre making it up. With the improvisation in the PMG, it was as much the microcosm that mattered as the macrocosm. There were a lot of sequencers used in the music, so we would always know, On this tune there are going to be exactly three guitar choruses, no matter what was happening that night on stage. The challenge was to always make it sound fresh. But all the members of the Pat Metheny Group could just as easily have played straight-ahead jazz as well (if not better) than anybody else. Oh, definitely. Actually, Pat and I especially would go out after our concerts a lot of times and sit in and play bebop or whatever at a local club. It was a nice change from our normal set. We were doing anywhere from seven to eleven one-nighters in a row, and then your day off would be a travel day. Youd do this for three months at a shot, come home for a couple weeks, and go back out and do it again. We used to jokingly call ourselves The Jazz Marines. But it was a wonderful experience in so many ways and I learned a lot. And I came out of it a lot stronger because of concentrating on things like consistency and attention to detail. We never really had that many bad nights. A bad night for us would be a good night by normal standards. But a good night was never good enough for us. It had to be a great night. When the band was learning a new tune, would whoever had composed the tune come in with the whole thing written out, or would it be developed in rehearsal or in the studio? We had music charts, but I dont remember ever seeing a specific drum chart. Usually, I just played along with what the melody was or what the arrangement was and then if they liked it, great. And if they had a different idea, they might suggest something that they had in mind as an arranger or composer. As a drummer, thats my job to make the composer, arranger or artist happy. And I was more than glad to do whatever they wanted me to do because it made me grow. Although it was often different from what I was used to, I had a lot of freedom within the concept of that band it was fun. One of the things weve always admired about the Pat Metheny Group is the fact that the music that you played was very sophisticated, yet people who are not jazz fanatics can still listen to it and enjoy it. That was the strength of their concept. Wed be playing in 22/8 - playing in all kinds of odd meters yet you could whistle the tune in the shower. And it was their gift of

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of odd meters yet you could whistle the tune in the shower. And it was their gift of melody that made it happen. If you have a good melody and then you come up with brilliant harmonies, then youve really got a great song. Some people write things that try to be clever and complicated, but thats when they miss the mark. Pat used to write something and it just happened to be in seven. It wasnt like hes say, Ok, now Im going to do something in 7. Its just that they were really sophisticated musicians who wrote what they heard and felt. And there was a sort of mid-western thing. It wasnt a blues-based band. It almost had country roots in some ways and a real mid-western sound. So it had this bluecollar, everyman kind of commonality to the music, but it just happened to be in 22/8. And not many people can make that work. Like the tune 5-5-7 from the album Letter From Home. Its got a wonderful, singable melody, but good luck trying to count it out. Isnt that funny? But, its even the same thing with drumming. If a drummers really got something to say, whether its a great idea, a great feel or a deep sense of emotion, it doesnt matter how complex or crazy he or she plays. You can pretty much play anything and the audience will go along with it because they can feel that something is real. But if somebody else only has tons of chops, and theyre trying to impress the audience with their greatness, its more or less imposing on the audience. The whole idea is to draw in the audience, not play down to them or trick them. You try to lift them up, but you respect them. You dont play down to them or try to show how clever you are and how stupid you think they are. A lot of musicians make that mistake. For all of its complexity, the Pat Metheny Group was never afraid to be melodic or sentimental. Thats part of humanity. You can either think of love as being sappy or you can think of it as a deep emotion. You give up yourself to somebody that you love. And thats the way the music has to be. You have to give up yourself for the sake of the music. You cant just stand there and say, Look at me, how great I am. You have to lay it on the line, and if you do that, I think that something real is going to come across. Youre exposing yourself completely. Do have any favorite tracks or albums from your Pat Metheny Group years? First Circle was great. I really liked that song. That summed up a lot of the concept of what we were doing. It breathed. It had a really singable melody even though it was a complex time signature. I really like Still Life (Talking). I think that was a great CD. I thought Imaginary Day was really good. There was a lot of good stuff that we did. And some of the stuff that wasnt as good was still ok. We set pretty high standards for ourselves. You were with the Pat Metheny Group for eighteen years. Thats a pretty remarkable tenure in the jazz world. What kept you with them that long? It was a great gig. What made you decide it was time to move on? One thing is that I didnt want to be away from my family that much anymore. After we had our daughter, I wanted to be a great dad as well as a musician and the PMGs touring schedule made that difficult. Also, I just got too comfortable. I was always afraid to leave because I didnt know where else I would go, so when I finally did leave, it was like, Oh my god, what did I do? But it also forced me into a position of really growing again, because sometimes when you stay with a band a long time you do get comfortable. And as an artist, its OK to be comfortable with yourself and know who you are. But its not a good thing that you get so comfortable and think Oh, I dont have to do this and I dont have to do that anymore. After I left, I said to myself, Man, now what are you going to do? So I started practicing more and listening to lots of music again. I got hungry again, like I was a teenager starting out fresh. I mean, after all, change is good. Change can be scary, but Im sure it was good for them and it was great for me. Its beneficial because you have to deal with something thats unknown, and as an artist you always want to explore the unknown. Thats how I live now. Every week Im playing something totally different in all kinds

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iZotope, Inc - Audio Processing Technology and Plug-Ins for Pro Tools, VST, MAS, Audio Unit, and Thats how I live now. Every week Im playing something totally different in all kinds of great musical situations. Ive gotten really good at that now, and I love that because its always a challenge. At the same time, Im comfortable enough in my own skin that I know what I do and I know what I dont do, or wont do.
Continue to Part Two: "If jazz is to remain a living, breathing art form, it has to grow."

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

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