How drums are integral to mind, body and soul.
James Jones is a 20 year old Bristol based drummer who is at the forefront of breaking into the music industry.
Playing the drums is something that I’ve done for a long time and will probably continue to do because I’m passionate about it. Growing up, I used to watch this Youtuber called Jacksepticeye, who released a video of him setting up a drum kit and playing a cover of ‘Chop Suey’ by System of a Down when I was 13. I watched it and figured that I wanted to play the drums, and that was the first song that I ever learnt.
I was taking drumming lessons and drumming on pillows when I was at home.
There was no other access to drums for me apart from one little drum kit at school that I could use only on a Friday at lunchtime. But I just wanted to carry on playing because I realised that I really enjoyed it. In lockdown, I was skipping online classes so that I could go and play.
Then I ended up getting an acoustic drum kit when I was 15 for £50 and I played in my upstairs spare bedroom. When I went to college, I found a lot of people who also played instruments, so we just played music together all the time and I gained insight into the drums.
Bounce on a couple of years later, I went to uni in Bristol to study music with one of the guys from college and we carried on the band, and named it Copper Dog. I then started playing very avidly, not consistently, but a lot.
I started to gig a lot more and met even more people that I could play with, which was really cool as they often contrasted my style of playing and taught me new things. That’s the beauty of collaborating with a lot of different people, and that’s what I try and aim to do since I’m really interested fundamentally by the drums.
It’s like if you were constantly making yourself fall off a chair and trying to catch yourself in different ways only to end up in new positions, where you’re almost in a perpetual state of trying to get yourself someplace else, that’s what it feels like on the drums.
The drums let me have an outlet and an expression because, fundamentally, drums are a physical activity. You end up getting stuck in this headspace of playing the drums when you are playing them, so everything else gets ignored, and if it doesn’t then it gets translated into the music which can be interesting.
A lot of people create music for the wrong reason in my opinion, which is to concentrate on things that are positive to them and write about love and good times. But I think it’s a positive thing to focus on something that wouldn’t make you as happy and mould this into a good thing instead, even if that means that for everyone else it is seen as negative because they had to take on your feelings through your art. Which is really not your problem, just create and do your own thing instead of having to cater to certain people.
One of my favourite drummers, Zach Hill, said that playing the drums on stage is sort of like a pit. It’s a lot to do with ego, because why are you playing on the stage?
Looking for validation by playing live isn’t a need, but it’s important to recognise that when you do play in front of people, it might be something to be enjoyed, and that’s not something to be shy about. For me, it’s a way of taking what feeling you have for the drums and what feeling you have inside you about arts and things like that, and translating it into a medium, and that medium is playing and releasing music.
I think since starting to play the drums I have matured, and this translates to them because I hold them pretty close to me, so it means that I have more of a zen approach to most things nowadays because I am able to use the drums as an outlet. You should try and be honest about what you do, and I just try to stay honest with what I do and continue to do different things that others haven’t done before. For me, it’s really a very personal thing, it’s what I like to do, no matter if people think that I’m good or bad at it.
In terms of the future, I think it would be really good if I could carry on doing this and hopefully create my own success, to ensure that I can play the drums for the rest of my life. If I look back at how I was 2 years ago compared to now, I hope to be able to just carry on my progression.
I think since starting to play the drums I have matured, and this translates to them because I hold them pretty close to me, so it means that I have more of a zen approach to most things nowadays because I am able to use the drums as an outlet. You should try and be honest about what you do, and I just try to stay honest with what I do and continue to do different things that others haven’t done before. For me, it’s really a very personal thing, it’s what I like to do, no matter if people think that I’m good or bad at it.
In terms of the future, I think it would be really good if I could carry on doing this and hopefully create my own success, to ensure that I can play the drums for the rest of my life. If I look back at how I was 2 years ago compared to now, I hope to be able to just carry on my progression.
If I ever make music that is really successful or if I don’t, chances are you will find me playing the drums somewhere. The drums make sense to me… if anything in the world does.
