Chords for GTDS! Podcast : Steve Smith talks about meeting Vinnie Colaiuta

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_ Give the Drummer Some!
_ _ _ _ Take that crazy rhythm!
[G] _ Excited to see you back in the [C] old room again, Daddy! _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ 14 mounted tom, 8 floor tom, 4 splashes, 2 wrongs, 10 cowbells, 4 rides, 5 snares, man!
A go-go tom rack!
It's all mounted on my infamous quadruple kick drum system.
_ Hey!
[G] I see you, my good friend!
Hey, knock it off! _ _
_ And then after one year, _ my second year at Berkeley studying with Alan Dawson, then I went back to Gary Chafee.
And at that point, Vinnie Colaiuta had just started Berkeley.
So Vinnie's two years younger than me, and I had met him _ in the summer break.
_ _ I was on tour with a big band _ made up of mainly guys that used to play with Buddy Rich in Maine and Ferguson.
[N] And the band leader was Lynn Bibiano.
_ And if you ever, like, there's a great Buddy Rich album called _ Rich in London. _
It's recorded live at Ronnie Scott's.
Well, that band is pretty much, Lynn Bibiano was the lead trumpet player, John DeFlone was on trumpet,
Wayne Knauss, Greg Hopkins, and _ most of that band became the Lynn Bibiano band.
So I was the drummer in that band when I was 19.
So we were touring around the East Coast and the Midwest.
And we played a gig in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, which is near Pittsburgh. _
And I was 19, and this young 17-year-old kid that had just graduated high school was Vinnie.
And so he just came up and introduced himself as a young drummer that's going to go to Berkeley next year.
And I heard you go to Berkeley, so maybe I'll see you there.
And liked what you did tonight.
You know, he was very friendly _ and just _ a _ _ drummer that you meet like that.
_ _ So I said, great.
So then, you know, next September came around, and I was at Berkeley, and he was now a freshman at Berkeley.
And _ we met each other and just hung out.
And then one day, you know, he goes, like, come to my dorm room and we'll practice.
So I did, and then I noticed, like, well, he was working on the exact same lessons I was from Chafee.
And then we really hit it off. _
_ And so then we went to Gary and asked him if we could, instead of each taking a 30-minute lesson,
could we take a one-hour lesson together?
_ So he said, yeah, that's fine.
Let's do that.
And Gary used to have two drum sets, you know, bass drum to bass drum.
And so we would just sit down, and he'd give us the material, and we'd work on it in the lesson.
And then we'd practice a lot.
And as it turned out, _ his mother _ moved from Pittsburgh _ to Hyannis, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Cod.
And my parents owned a house in Chatham, Mass.,
on Cape Cod, about 15 miles away or 10 miles, not too far, like a 20-minute drive.
_ _ _ _ And so all that school year, we worked on _ _ material with Gary.
And then during the summer, we could practice during the summer in my basement.
_ So we really spent a lot of time hanging out and then going to gigs.
_ And that was a pretty important part of my development, I have to say, because I had somebody that I _ could—
I was related to drumming in a very similar way, had similar influences.
And then we'd go see Billy Cobham's band and sit in the front row and kind of freak out, like, this is unbelievable.
Because Billy Cobham, like, I bring that up because he was a game changer, you know, when he showed up on the scene, he really changed everything.
And then, you know, Tony Williams' New Lifetime with Alan Holzhort, you know, we'd go and see that and be kind of freaked out by it.
But then really discuss it and try to work out a lot of what they were doing.
So it was like a little laboratory of really coming up with these, seeing what the innovations were at that time, and then trying to incorporate them into our playing.
Another big one was Steve Gadd during those years.
And, you know, we heard that he played once a week at McKell's at this club in New York with a band called Stuff.
You know, so we got on a bus and came down to New York and saw Stuff at McKell's.
And he played, it was double drums with Chris Parker and Steve Gadd, you know, so we, you know, we do that.
And _ _ took the bus to New York once to see a Herbie Hancock concert that had Tony Williams _ playing.
It was called VSOP then, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Ron Carter on bass, Herbie Hancock playing chord.
So, you know, there was a good _ _ amount of development.
And then of course there were a lot of other very good drummers at Berklee during that time that were also _ _ inspirational.
And friends like J.R. Robinson was there during that time, Kenwood Dinnard, _ _ _ Casey Shirell, you know, a lot of good players.
And a lot of guys that are good players that are not well known at this time, but were still good players.
_ And so it was an