Jack Gillespie

I guess my very first contact with Jazz was from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, although I didn't know it at the time. But I love jazz because I'm a drummer. When I first started drumming, a friend introduced me to Jean-Luc Ponty. Before that, I enjoyed your standard rock-n-roll (as teenager in the 80's that would be Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Huey Lewis and the News, etc.) but really got into the different drumming styles of people like Phil Collins (Genesis) and Stewart Copeland (Police). But it was Jean-Luc Ponty's "Cosmic Messenger" that really did it for me. Casey Scheuerell's drumming on that recording was just the most incredible thing I had ever heard. After that, I purchased everything I could get my hands on from Jean-Luc and my journey into Jazz music took off. I would listen to those albums over and over again trying to get the playing down, trying different techniques, etc. to just mimic what I was hearing. Since then, I've really gravitated into two different Jazz areas — "old" school jazz (Dave Brubeck) and jazz fusion (Dave Weckl). And it still gets me to this day every time I hear a new project — it's just the way it moves me, the groove of it all, the rhythm, the syncopation, the feeling Jazz gives me is like no other music.