Big Fat Snare Drum

Sam Merrick's (Broadway's '& Juliet') Top 5 Influential Records

Dec 07, 2022 | 0 comments

This week’s guest is THE Sam Merrick, drummer for ‘& Juliet’ on Broadway at the Sondheim Theater in New York City. We’ll learn more about that show later on in the episode, but Sam just got done with a 1200+ long run as the drummer for the national tour of Hamilton: An American Musical. In addition to live theatre, Sam has played with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Charlie Wilson, Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires…and many more. He’s also got an amazing sample pack series called Break Habits (available exclusively at The Drum Broker). He’s a stud; people want to hire...

Willy Rodriguez' (The Mars Volta, Mon Laferte) Top 5 Influential Records

Nov 09, 2022 | 0 comments

This week’s guest is Willy Rodriguez. Willy is a Latin-Grammy award winning drummer and percussionist based in New York City. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Willy has been playing drums since he was thirteen and his list of associated acts is endless…including Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Mon Laferte, Domino Saints and more. After leaving Puerto Rico, he attended Berklee College of Music and began making a name for himself in the Boston music scene rather quickly, but he ultimately set up shop in New York City. His work with Omar eventually led to him being called to drum on the newest The...

Rod Elkins' (Tyler Childers) Top 5 Influential Records

Nov 09, 2022 | 0 comments

This week’s guest is Rod “Hot Rod” Elkins…drummer for Tyler Childers and The Food Stamps…among many others. Rod was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia and has spent his life keeping time and sharing his infectious love for music…but more importantly…his devotion to the song. Rod is fairly new to my radar. As you know, I’ve been on tour the last six weeks and I was recently in Lexington, Kentucky playing The Burl. My good buddy (and friend of the podcast, Steve from Junkdrummer.tv) came out to hang and we, of course, started chatting about Levon Helm. He mentioned that his...

Greg Hersey's Top 5 Influential Records

Nov 09, 2022 | 0 comments

This weeks guest is Greg Hersey…a percussionist and educational artist based out of Jackonville, Florida. He is currently the Director of Instrumental Music at Episcopal School of Jacksonville. I first found him on Instagram when he started tagging Big Fat Snare Drum. His creativity has seemingly grown exponentially and it’s super inspiring and his use of multi-percussion is insane. Before you listen to the episode, I encourage you to check out some of Greg’s videos to understand the context of both my questions and his approach to music as a whole. But anyways…enough of my yacking…please enjoy the top 5 records...

Dimitri Fantini's Top 5 Influential Records

Oct 20, 2022 | 0 comments

This week’s guest is Dimitri Fantini. I’m actually not sure how I first found out about Dimitri, but he was my online instructor for quite some time and I’m just a huge fan of his drumming. He’s garnered quite the collection of followers on Instagram due to his consistent posting of…well super rad awesome videos. They look great, sound great…and are very inspiring. Also check out his growing YouTube. His book “The Total Drummer: a guide to developing your style, feel, touch, groove and more” was published by Hal Leonard in 2022 and continues to receive high accolades. I’ve also included a link to...