Influential Bands #1: I Mother Earth

Well, I figured I might as well start off these blogs by telling you a bit about the first band that I can recall having been a real, conscious influence on me; namely a Toronto based rock band called I Mother Earth. I had started playing drums in grade six at school, but I didn't really listen to a tremendous amount of music on any kind of regular basis. It might have actually been Trevor who first introduced me to the music of I Mother Earth.

Not only did I really enjoy the band's music, but the drummer (Christian Tana) particularly blew my mind. In many places in many songs, instead of just playing the expected type of thing that a drummer might ordinarily play, Christian had a habit of coming up with some really interesting and innovative grooves, many of which incorporated toms heavily into the groove pattern instead of just reserving them for fills.

This resonated immediately with me, and I'll explain why. When I was taking drum lessons from Steve Wilson, he taught me a lot of different things about a lot of different genres of music. For the most part though, our work was focussed on various styles of rock and jazz. When he was trying to teach me the general difference between common approaches to the two vastly different genres, one of the things I remember him telling me was this: "You can play jazz [as a drummer] using nothing but cymbals, and you can play rock using nothing but drums".

Although I thought I knew what he meant, I didn't quite understand him correctly. What he meant was that in jazz, the main sound sources that carry the time feel (again, for a drummer) are the ride cymbal and the high hat. In rock conversely, the sound sources of primary importance are the bass drum and snare drum. At the time though, I didn't realize that this is what he was trying to teach me. I could readily understand how one could play jazz with nothing but cymbals, but I didn't understand how to play rock with only drums. My brain was still trying to fill in the "time pattern" (the riding pattern usually played on the high hat or ride cymbal in rock music) without using the cymbals that I had come to rely on. Back then I figured that what Steve was trying to tell me was that I could play standard rock grooves, time patterns and all, without using my cymbals!

So I set about trying to figure out how to do this. Quickly I realized that I needed to keep my bass drum and snare drum free of the time pattern so that there would be some kind of groove for the listener to grab on to. That meant that the time pattern would have to be carried by my toms. I came up with a number of simple ideas that I liked (although they were probably arguably ALL too busy for anything but so-called "progressive rock"), and started looking for places to use my ideas. In my old high school band, many of our tunes featured drum grooves heavily based around the toms. A good example of where you can hear this type of influence in the music of Enter The Haggis can be found in Life for Love from Casualties of Retail. This tom based thinking also led into grooves for songs like Lanigan's Ball, Haven, and Down With The Ship, which are based more exclusively on toms.

Anyway, back to I Mother Earth. As I said, I was already trying to figure out interesting ways to incorporate toms into my rock grooves, and here was Christian Tana doing exactly what I was trying to do, and doing it in a very interesting and musically appropriate way! Add to that the fact that the band appealed to my interest in jazz because, although they're a rock/progressive rock band, their music features a large number of extended intrumental sections, and killer solos by the various instruments. Finally, to top it all off, the band also features two percussionists playing latin percussion intruments such as congas, timbales, and cowbells, which fed into my growing interest in latin music and drumming.

The first album of theirs that really influenced me is called Dig. It was released in 1993, and distributed in Canada by EMI. Some of the sections that exemplify the grooves I'm talking about can be found on the tunes Not Quite Sonic, No One, Basketball, and small sections of Levitate and And The Experience. In my opinion, there's not a bad song on the album. It would definitely rank among my favorite 10 rock albums of all time.



The next album the band released came out in 1996, also on EMI, and is called Scenery & Fish. Another killer album; I have a hard time deciding which I like better between the two I've mentioned. I think I tend to prefer Dig, but it's close. On Scenery & Fish, examples of great tom grooves can be found on One More Astronaut, Pisser, and Songburst and Delirium. Again: great album. Another one of my favorites to be sure.


After these two albums, the band underwent some changes, and although I still enjoyed their later music, it didn't quite have the same effect on me that their earlier music did. Anyway, I don't know if their music is available on iTunes or not as the band has since broken up, but if you're interested in hearing the first music that played a major role in influencing my stylistic development as a drummer, as well as just a killer rock band, they're a band well worth checking out. To give you an idea, the one Enter The Haggis song that I've always felt had a real I Mother Earth influence on it is Twirling Towards Freedom from Casualties of Retail. Enjoy!