John Medeiros Jr. has been keeping the best for a long time. In fact, he’s kept the beat for essentially everybody in the greater-Boston/New England music scene at one time or another. A life long musician, Medeiros fell in love with the drums at an early age. The defining moment came when he heard Neil Peart’s drum solo on the Rush instrumental classic “YYZ.”
“When I heard that tune and I heard the solo, I was completely blown away,” he said. “I think I was in sixth grade. I said, ‘You know, I know what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ I sat down and played drums and got beyond beating on buckets.”
Medeiros also got a bounce coming out of Berklee College Of Music. He made a lot of friends, and he had a lot of classmates who inspired him to push himself. “I spent a lot of time playing with musicians who were just way better than me,” he said. “They were a lot better than I was, whether we played jazz, rock, blues, fusion, some amazing musicians. I felt like I was doing the best I could just to keep up with those guys.”
A fringe benefit to living in a Berklee dorm were the practice rooms Medeiros could access at any time of day or night. He could simply walk down the hall to the practice room, set up his drums, and play whenever he felt inspired. “A lot of kids were practicing all the time,” he said. “It fueled me to want to practice even more. Even if I was exhausted, if I heard my buddy practicing, no matter how tired I was, I’m going to go practice anyway too. That fired me up.”
The competition from other students informed Medeiros just how good he would have to be when he got out of school. One drummer played with the Buddy Rich Big Band at Berklee. “He was a beast,” Medeiros said. “He was basically like my second private tutor. He would come in my room and tutor me and let me have it with what’s wrong with my playing. I had two friends like that who were just amazing players who helped me tremendously. Of course, all the professors were great, and the ones I studied with privately helped me a great deal. But it was the interaction with all of the other students, my peers, upper classmen.”
The aspiring drummer even had a classmate that would actually brow beat him into perfection. “He’d come in and be like, ‘Medeiros, What’s the matter with your left hand? That’s terrible. That’s all wrong. Get up. Get up off your drums.’ He would tell it to me straight,” Medeiros said. “Those lessons were very valuable because he was there. We were both practicing in the same areas of the dorms. He was constantly offering advice, constantly making corrections, and praising too.”
After his first year, Medeiros received from his friends a mock paper made plaque for “Most Improved” which his classmates had taped to his door.
Medeiros worked with a lot of big names on the local and national scenes over the years. He worked with Robbie Merrill who went on to form Godsmack. Medeiros worked with Merrill in the early 1990s in an instrumental power trio. “We were just some friends playing together,” Medeiros said. “This was way before any of that (Godsmack fame) happened.”
Medeiros’s friend and former blues jam host at Strange Brew Tavern, Howard Randall, turned the young aspiring drummer onto blues music by suggesting albums to listen to. “He was always turning me onto different records, Jimmy McCracklin, Jimmy Reed,” Medeiros said. “I think his way of teaching wasn’t necessarily ‘do this’ or ‘do that.’ It would be more like, ‘If Johnny listens to this record, I think he’ll know it.’”
Through a local musician named Dave Shaheen, Medeiros came into contact with Berklee guitar professor and world renown musician Jon Finn. Medeiros studied with Finn’s drummer, Larry Finn,(no relation), who plays in Jon Finn’s prog-rock/fusion/jazz band.
Another strong influence was keyboardist Bruce Bears. Medeiros had played with Bears in the Queen City Kings at the Black Brimmer during its Tuesday evening residency. That lineup had included Mr. Nick, Tom Martin, Adam Connelly, Mark Earley and John McGovern. “It was just getting to play with him,” Medeiros said. “He’s just a phenomenal musician.”
After working with that many high caliber musicians over the years, one memory stands out, a personal notice from Howard Randall. During a successful night at Strange Brew Tavern in Manchester, the dance floor was packed. “We go on break, and Howard leans over the drums and goes, ‘Well, you know, it’s always the drummer’s fault when the dance floor is packed.’ Then he walks away. I laughed.”
These days, Medeiros plays with a variety of bands. He segues from day to day from Mirage Band and Bob Pratte Band to Tom Keller to Erick Preston to a Tuesday night jam with Coupe Deville Band to a Sunday night acoustic duo. The drummer said it doesn’t require any special concentration or meditation to get into a new head space for each. “I just play the gig,” he said. “Whatever the music tells me to play. What the song is calling for, what’s appropriate.”
The drummer mentioned that people who have only seen him playing in one setting are often surprised to see him do something different at another kind of gig. “Some folks here me play at the Brew where I’m playing brushes. Then they go hear me somewhere else where I’ve got sticks and it’s louder and it’s a whole different scene, and they look at me like I’ve got two heads,” he said. When they ask him why he doesn’t play like that at the other gig, he tells them “because I’d get fired.”
One of Medeiros’s biggest challenges came from playing in the Jimmy Hendrix tribute act Purple Haze with Erick Preston. The drummer, trying to play it the best he could, had told Preston to let him know if he’s over the top, over playing, playing too many notes. “He looks at me, ‘John, you’re playing Hendrix. You can never be over the top. You can’t play too many notes. Give me more.’ I was like, ‘OK.’”
Blues and R&B have made a good home for Medeiros. Although he started out meeting the prog-rock challenge of Rush’s odd time signatures, the drummer has moved onto a pursuit of the groove, especially Memphis soul. He still pursues an interest in jazz but is weary of music that might not be sincere. “It’s not about a chops display,” he said. “I go more toward American heritage music. If I’m going to just throw on a record, I tend to go there a lot, roots, jazz, blues. I sometimes listen to some bluegrass. I love acoustic style blues, just the sound of the acoustic guitar.”
When it comes to the balance of technique and feeling, Medeiros gets bored quickly if the musicianship has no soul. “I think the absence of feeling, no matter how good the technique is, that’ll only keep you entertained for a matter of minutes. It’s like a bland saltine cracker. After you eat so many for a few minutes, you’re like Ok, I need to put some jelly on there. What inspired me musically is how it made me feel.”
The technique versus feeling came into play when Medeiros was drumming for Erick Preston’s Purple Haze. Hendrix’s material was recorded in two different phases with different drummers. “Buddy Miles had that pocket soul. Band Of Gypsies had that fatback groove,” he said. “Mitch Mitchell reminded me of a jazz drummer in a rock band. He really liked Elvin Jones, so he had this jazz approach to playing in a rock band. Buddy Miles had this really fatback soulful groove. I wanted to play as much of a tribute to both of them as I can.”
Medeiros does not have one particular idol drummer because he moves from one inspiration to another, preferring to listen to whatever moves him the most. “One of my favorite songs doesn’t have drums and that is ‘Fishin’ Blues,’ Taj Mahal’s version. It’s just him and the acoustic guitar.”
Medeiros enjoys his New England music scene because it keeps him busy, working with great musicians. Next month, he’ll be playing with Italy’s Roberto Morbioli. That tour will include Rusty Scott on keys and Jesse Williams on bass.
Medeiros is also a singer-guitarist with a preference for acoustic guitars. At home, he is more likely to grab his acoustic before his electric. Yet, he doesn’t enjoy fronting a band as much as he likes to power it from behind his drum set. “I guess maybe I’m more confident playing drums, but I’m confident doing either.” The drummer is also a music instructor, teaching drums six days a week at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire, Music Workshop in Salem, New Hampshire, in students’ homes in Andover with an eye toward the new Real School Of Music location.
Medeiros gets a lot of satisfaction from teaching, watching his students grow, seeing them get better and better. “Actually, a lot of them are better musicians than I was at their age,” he said. “I’ve got kids in seventh grade who are way better drummers than I was when I was in seventh grade. They’re in the jazz band. They’re playing great. They’re going to take all my gigs away.” Laughs warmly.
Not every student receives information the same way. It has to be explained differently from student to student. Thinking of numerous ways to communicate technique forces Medeiros to rethink what he does, enhancing his own music education. One of Medeiros’s long term goals is to teach at “a really great music school.” As a player, he liked to remain employed, recording, playing with well known artist, touring.
“My real goal is just to keep doing what I’m doing,” he said. “I’ve been a full time musician since the early 90s, making a living, teaching, playing. There’s a joke I heard: ‘What’s the difference between a drummer and a pizza? A pizza could feed a family of four.’ My spin on that is: ‘Well, a drummer can meet the closing costs on his house, purchase a home with his wife, have a car, pay off his student loans from Berklee College Of Music and a pizza can only feed a family of four.”