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A Conversation with Nick Seymour
(continued)
PM: Is it the touring band on the tracks in general? I mean, is L.A. drummer Matt Sherrod on the record?
NS: Yeah. What happened was, halfway through the record, Neil and I had realized that we're starting to sound like a band. So we gave Mark Hart a call, who'd we played with on the Woodface album and the Together Alone album; he had also toured with us since the second studio album. So he'd been an integral part of Crowded House. We rang him. [more about Mark at markhartmusic.com]
And we realized that we needed to find a drummer, because there was a deficit there with respect to Paul's passing, and also the fact that Ethan had played drums on so many of the tracks. And another guy, Ricky Gooch--we'd had Joey Waronker play drums on our first session. So we knew we needed to form a band to be able to say, "Let's tour this as a band. Let's basically reform Crowded House." At a certain point, it became obvious that that's what we were doing.
PM: And what an exciting point that had to be.
NS: Yeah. All of a sudden it was sort of like crossing into a creative threshold, realizing that you've pushed through a threshold, and you're suddenly admitting something that--a love that dare not speak its name.
So that's when we auditioned a bunch of drummers. We found Matt Sherrod in Los Angeles, and we then went on to London, and we recorded the last four tracks with Matt playing drums, and Steve Lillywhite producing. And we really only thought we needed an extra two tracks, but we got four, just because we were on fire for about four days, we just suddenly really felt this burst of energy having Matt on board. And he's a really, really creative person who's done a lot of production work himself over the years, and co-writing. He worked a lot with Macy Gray. And he's obviously played with Beck, but that has been as a sideman.
PM: Right. In that little live clip on the band's site, he comes off as a really cool dude, like a great person.
NS: He is, yeah. He's a charming man. He's got a great smile, an incredible silhouette.
PM: And he's a very good hitter. He's got a nice feel for the material, which is of course, everything.
NS: He does, yeah. Yeah, the drums just disappear to me. When we're playing on stage, I'm never thinking about the drums. Every so often I sort of go over to catch his eye if we're in a section of a song that is instrumental, and we can take it to the next level. We read each other really well. He's a good jamming drummer.
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