(Jason Ribeiro) That difficult first album

I’m 37 and I think I’ve only just figured out who I am on the drums and what the hell they want from me. I didn’t go to music college and only plucked up the courage to try drum lessons when I was 19. After many years of studying and working as a freelance graphic designer with music on the side I decided to politely burn my bridges, take a significant pay cut and try being a full time drummer, aged 34. It didn’t go too badly, I managed to fashion a very passable impression of a working musician with all the usual functions and teaching but after a couple more years I felt something was amiss. Music is an art, a creative thing and I’d managed to successfully turn it into a regular job of sorts, leaving a nagging sense that there was something deeper that needed outing.

At 37 I suddenly decided to make an album of my own music (the musician equivalent of buying a convertible {because musicians can’t afford convertibles}). I wrote, recorded and finished a song every day for a month and compiled the least embarrassing tracks onto a debut release that I promptly stuck on the internet before I could overthink my way out of it. I can honestly say that I have never truly been happier in my life than during that time spent madly creating, it felt like the absolute best use of my time here on earth. The sense of flow and purpose was totally addictive and life-affirming. Despite this, there was still a pressure I felt in myself that whatever I was to come up would have to be good enough to account for the years of not doing it. I’d been playing drums for almost 20 years, it should bloody well sound like it! In the end I took a deep breath and went for maximum honesty and truth in the performance and concepts, to really try and be the fullest version of myself even if it was really awkward and weird (it was). I made sure to record mostly late in the evening so that other musicians in the studio wouldn’t be around to hear my efforts. In the end, I was really proud with what I came up with. It wasn’t blues or jazz or anything really, it was just me. The closest thing to me that I’ve achieved so far. It was riddled with timing errors and tuning issues but somehow that only made it more me (dammit).

I sometimes regret not doing this years ago and thus being further along the creative path but my optimistic take on it is that I needed time to try out all the options first, to absorb and integrate my experiences–musical or otherwise–until the moment organically arrived for it to manifest in the world. For years and perhaps especially as a drummer, I’d played in other people’s projects, gotten quite good at mimicking various styles but never really feeling deeply connected to any of them. I’d never asked the question, what do I sound like? What would my music be? What’s my voice? Completing this little project suddenly made me feel a whole lot more relaxed. Like, I could die tomorrow but at least there’s a record of my musical take on the world. It also made me realise that I cared less about what I did to make money. If I can do it as a musician that’s cool. If it’s doing food deliveries that’s cool. As long as I can keep making my music, then for me that’s the most important thing.