BATTERY SERIES : Matty James / Tempest Rising,

1.What is your name and what band 
 do you play for?

Matty James, I am currently drumming for Tempest Rising, plus a bit of fill in work and cover bands.

 
2.Who made you want to play drums and why?

Well, I guess having parents that love music is the biggest reason. My older brother Dan (Tempest Rising) had already been playing guitar, and I guess having me drum was fitting, so we could jam, which we did.




3.When did you get your first kit? Tell us about it…

When I was 5 years old I had a drum kit, I don’t even know what drum kit it was or where it came from to be honest, but we used cloths instead of drum skins, so I didn’t annoy everyone!  I think I possibly had other random drum bits and pieces before then. But for Christmas when I was 7 years old, Santa (Uncle Ben) gave me a 5 piece Pearl Export, which I still use every day!



4.Where your parents supportive of you and your loud / expensive new habit?

   

Absolutely, and both mum and dad are super supportive of it to this day. They never really pushed me to get a ‘real job’ or backup plan in caseI failed at music or anything, they always believed in both myself and my brother 100% whether we were to succeed or not.



5.What drum performance on an album is perfection to you?

This is always such a hard question to answer… But I have to say Eloy Casagrande on Sepultura’s Machine Messiah album,purely because he’s an absolute psycho behind the kit. He is technical, super-fast andhits  so damn hard, how every metal drummer should be. Also, Omar Hakims drumming on Daft Punks Random Access Memories album, which my Uncle Joe recently got me onto. That is pretty awesome!

6.Tell us about your current kit and set up in DETAIL.

Well, going back to the Pearl Export I got from ‘Santa’ back when I was 7… I use it still, but I just use it as a 4 piece, instead of a 5 piece. I use a 14” Pearl Sensitone Snare, 22” Bass Drum, 13” Rack Tom and a 16” Floor Tom. I am currently using Sabian’s HHX 16” Stage Crash, 20” Stage Ride and a Stagg 16” DH China.

7.If you could have a dream kit tell us about it in DETAIL

  

I would use the exact same set up as my Pearl Export, but I’d go to Pearl Reference, or even Pearl masters.. As long as it’s sparkly gold! I do want to deck my drums out with lots of percussion and splashes etc, but at the moment I have no use for any of that, maybe with a future project I’ll look into that.

8.Name your top 5 drummers excluding Neil Peart and Mike Portnoy

1. Oscar Seaton Jr (Lionel Richie)
 2. Eloy Casagrande (Sepultura)
 3. Jacob Armen
4. Danny Devito
 5.Mario Duplantier (Gojira – even though I don’t really listen to them, I appreciate his drumming a lot!)

9. Do you prefer Live or Studio?

Live 100%!! Studio is great and hearing the final product of the recording is always satisfying.. But there is something amazing about playing live.. Whether it is to 6 people or 600 people, I love all shows. If I don’t play a show for a few days, I start going a bit insane. It is rare I say no to a show, and if I do it’s never my decision,  or it is because I am already booked up. If I could play 365 shows in a year and get paid $1 a show, I would 100% do that over being a studio drummer!

   

10.Do drummers really get all the chicks and if so how do we convince the guitarist?

100% Yes!! Drummers always get all of the chicks… just not me because I’m fat, hairy and smell like Doritos.