Dave weckl
Drums
I first became aware of Dave Weckl when a friend of mine gave me MASTER PLAN in 1991. It was a complete revelation for me - a mix of fusion & free jazz and on listening to ‘Island Magic’, I suddenly realised this was the drummer that had worked with Chick Corea’s Elektric Band (I was so obsessed with Chick Corea that I had never actually looked into who were his band members!). I had the same experience that I had with almost all of the Steely Dan albums - I just could not get my head around what I was hearing - how the fuck was he playing what he was playing - where did it come from? That said, having realised he had been playing with Chick, it all made sense. Chick could have used any drummer in the world for his project, and he picked Dave.
Over the past 25 years, I must have been to see Dave Weckl in 30+ gigs - many times with Chick Corea, Oz Noy, Lee Ritenour & Tom Kennedy. But most significantly, I flew out to Berlin to see Dave play with Chris Mink Doky’s band that he put together for his project, The Board Tapes, at the legendary A-Trane club. I saw them two nights in a row and I sill never forget those gigs. Along with George Whitty on keys & Dean Brown on Guitars, every single note, riff & vibe was awe inspiring and introduced an entirely new musical dimension for me. If you have not checked it out, do so straight away: https://open.spotify.com/album/3vCh8suwWDRS2aGoZjdTV3.
Dave Weckl (plays on Dance The Rain) was one of only 2 artists out of the 60+ we worked with, that we were not able to do the session face to face. It was a mad situation. Dave was in LA, I was in Rhode Island and Jez the engineer, was in the UK. In order to get the files to Dave, Jez had to break into my house, do a round trip of 125 miles, send the files to Dave and then liaise with all of us so that we could hear what Dave was up to. We did not give Dave much to work with, a click track, a bass part by Pino Palladino, some guide vocals, a bit of piano and that was about it. What he added to this track, under the circumstances of this remote session, was a revelation and a dream. On the back of his work, we were able to attract Dominic Miller to come and lay down the guitars. Dance The Rain was actually recorded across 6 different studio including Air & The Farm (Genesis studio) and Dave’s work was the glue that held everything together.
Dave’s discography is quite something to behold in terms of its versatility - Diana Ross, Madonna, George Benson, Mike Stern, Michel Camilo, Mike Lawrence, John Patitucci, Chuck Loeb, Eric Mariental, Natalie Cole, Barry Manilow (!!), Ricardo Silviera, Dave Grusin, Adam Nitti, Jeff Richman, Jay Graydon, Boney James, Jeff Lorber and now with Unidentified Flying Project along with Dominic Miller (guitars), Pino Palladino (bass), Kipper Eldridge (keyboards), Roberto Manzin (horns), Spencer Cozens (piano), Peter-John Vettese (arrangements), Jon Kenzie (lead vocal) & Peter Cox (backing vocals).
Dave plays on ‘Dance The Rain’.
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