2023 into 2024

Taipei, Taiwan with Johnny Orlando, Nov 2023 on the Ride asian tour

2023 into 2024 is filled with a lot of world touring, which is an absoloute pleasure after being grounded for so long during the pandemic! The last quarter of 2023 had me touring North America and Asia with Johnny Orlando and will continue into this year with Europe in February and then more world tour dates to be announced in the next few months.

This past year had me busy with many shows and festival dates all over Canada and the USA with country duo The Reklaws as well as Lolo, Johnny Orlando, Gus and other wonderful artists. I also had the pleasure to play for Alli Walkers first tour as well as MD (musical direct) some up and coming and established artists. 2023 remained a very busy year in the studio for me as well, drumming on albums and singles for people locally as well as all over North America.

I hope 2024 treats you all well, so stay happy and safe out there and here’s to a very fun, successful and happy year!

2022 recap and looking forward

Hi all!  Writing here from my hotel room in Boston on tour. It’s been a great year! To be properly back touring, making records and playing shows as much as I ever was was pre pandemic has been truly refreshing.

2022 started off rough with the omicron variant ripping through Toronto, forcing the tour across Canada with the Reklaws to be cancelled. We had just finished rehearsals for the tour and the bus had been booked etc when the news came in.

This forced me to hole up in my studio and work on records with artists from all over the country and record them either from home or from the studio with my engineer partner in crime Connor Yonge. Recapping the year, I was able to play on 15 plus albums amongst an upcoming busy travel schedule.

Rehearsals started soon after with the Johnny Orlando crew to prepare for the string of shows we had in the States headlining venues in Washing DC, Boston, NYC, Chicago, Detroit, and Montreal. This was a particularly enjoyable challenge for me as I held the position of Musical director for this run, meaning I had to put the Ableton tracks together, run the rehearsals and help with arrangements for both Johnny and the opener Gus. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this and the shows ended up being fantastic! 

Next I brushed up on the Lolo material and started rehearsals for her show at the So what Festival in Dallas. This was a blast. Dallas has a special place in our heart as we always seem to have our first gig of the year there and go out for the meanest bbq at Lockhart smokehouse. 

This show prepped us for the upcoming two week Sad Summer tour we did in the states in July alongside bands like Kneck Deep, Mayday Parade, Waterpark, Hot Mulligan and more. 

During this tour I was charting and preparing for my upcoming show with Canadian legends Finger 11. I was called to fill in for their drummer Steve whilst he attended a family wedding. The show went off so well! We were in the middle between Sloan and Our Lady Peace. It was SO much fun playing Fingers hits such as Paralyzer, One Thing, First Time and crazy challenging songs such as Quicksand that has dizzying odd time signatures.

Shortly after this I jumped on a bunch of Reklaws festival dates in Canada and then flew straight to Mexico City to headline the national arts centre there with Johnny Orlando. That was an amazing experience. Those kids were so insanely loud and excited. 

I then came back straight to more Reklaws shows, but this time It was a challenge, as I had picked up a really nasty bug in Mexico City and barely barely made it through these shows and flights. This was also the string of shows where we were sandbagged by Air Canada, a notorious airline in 2022 for almost every one of their flights being delayed, and many cancelled. We had just played a show in Thunder Bay Ontario and woke up to take a flight to Alberta only to find out that there were zero options to fly out. We were forced to hire a private plane and finally made our gig. Nonetheless we enjoyed the privilege of flying private and even stopped off for tea at a private airport in Manitoba for a little bit of a break!

After the summer shows and tours wrapped up I got to enjoy a little bit of downtime with my wife and daughter, taking her to nursery school everyday and just being around with the fam. I still played local shows and corporate events in this time but definitely enjoyed the much needed rest from travelling. 

Next was a week of rehearsals prepping for the tour that I am currently on….Johnny Orlando tour opening up for Ali Gatie across the US and Canada for 6 weeks. 

It’s been fun so far and great to so go for runs in all the cities I love and just continue to get to know them better.

Christmas will be so nice this year and I’ll rest up a bit before January when The Reklaws start rehearsals for a bunch of shows including a private resort gig in Mexico, and the Winter is a beach tour on the east coast and west coast of Canada.

February I will be taking a family vacation back home in South Africa with Liz and Sydney and then it’s back home to start another year of awesomeness!!

Wishing you all a happy new year and a wonderful 2023 ahead!

Fall 2021 and Looking back

Happy fall everyone! This time I decided to take a minute before posting on here. Obviously Covid has been an insanely disruptive time for us all, and it especially impacted my peers and myself in the entertainment business. Selfishly, the world slowing down and locking up couldn’t have come at a better time for me. March 10th my daughter Sydney was born and three days later they announced Covid as a global pandemic. Two days after that all my upcoming tours were cancelled or postponed indefinitely. 

The first three months of Covid were extremely quiet, and it afforded me the much need time of being home with my daughter and being there with Liz for all the crazy new experiences an infant brings!

I did the odd studio session here and there and immediately started teaching virtually from my home studio and doing remote sessions from there too. It was however a thrill when I was booked on a project that was actually the first day Union Sound studios opened back up, and it felt so euphoric to all make music together again in the same room, with the sense of hope around the corner for our industry. From March last year until now I have been fortunate enough record on over 20 albums both from home and in various studios. 

Now to the topic of drive in shows. At first , drive in concerts seemed to be the constant joke of memes on instagram…but sure enough by August I was doing them regularly. My first one was Ottawa blues Fest with my longtime friend Kira Isabella, and yes it was odd to have car honking at us instead of clapping and yes it felt a bit detached and surreal but then The Reklaws started their first of many circuits of them in September and within a few weeks I was very used to them. It was a pleasure to still keep busy during these insane times and I feel so grateful towards all my artists for pushing through it and creating opportunities for the band and crew. Other drive ins I have done up to date were with, Johnny Orlando, The Abrams and Scott Helman. 

In October I took part in a very fun virtual experience with Johnny Orlando where he filmed his full concert live at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto with slight differences for each country it aired in. It went to The Philippines, Indonesia, India, Spain, Italy, Germany, UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and the US. Each country had their own designated night and it was a great success! 

Next The Reklaws did a virtual taping of a show, spliced together with history of their upbringing sort of done in the style of MTV Road home. Universal Music put it out and it’s something I’m very proud to be a part of!

Come 2021, things started looking more promising with the new vaccine. My first real concert back with bodies in the crowd was the Calgary Stampede with the Reklaws and what a thrill it was! They were hot from the success of their latest single “What the truck” and man….the energy in the crowd was just so electric!! It was clearly a total release for people just to be able to enjoy music in the old way again! These past two months I have been experiencing this every night whilst on the New Found Glory tour, playing with the opening act LOLO. It has been seven weeks in the US, starting in Dallas and ending in Orlando and we pretty much played almost every main stop in the States. It’s been an extremely successful and fun time and great to know people are feeling safe coming out to the shows having to show their vaccination passport or get a negative test onsite.

It was lovely having Liz and Sydney and my parents come out to the Kansas City to visit my sister who lives there and to see the show that night! I am very much looking forward to being home with them all next week in Toronto and then starting up the next chapter of music back home.

I hope you all have a cosy winter and definitely please stay safe out there!

New decade!

As 2020 kicks off, and I begin preparing for what’s in store, I can’t help but reflect back on 2019 with a smile, as it was a total whirlwind of a time with lots of awesome people!

It was non-stop touring, travelling and recording from mid January right until mid December. Multiple tours across The US (twice), Europe (3 times) and Canada (four times) got me jumping on 5 tour buses with 4 different bands, multiple flights with others and even playing on a beautiful train in the house band for two artists…..putting my show numbers in the near 300’s.

Some highlights that come to mind include performing at the Juno Awards with The Reklaws, multiple Scott Helman hotel sessions with artists such as Hunter Hayes, Alessia Cara, Jann Arden and many other awesome others, headlining tours with Johnny Orlando, Scott Helman and The Abrams, and an awesome 2 month fall tour with The Reklaws opening up for Dean Brody and Dallas Smith! The year closed out with an extremely unique experience playing on the beautiful Holiday train across Canada backing up Scott Helman and Madeline Merlo!

So far 2020 has been off to a great start with shows around Canada, and recording a full-length record at Union Sound Studios that will be released later this year!

I always feel so lucky and grateful to get to work with the people that I do, and I am very much looking forward to another year of travel and fun!

Happy 2020 everyone and let’s make it one to remember! More updates to come as the year marches on.

Summer 2019

2019 has been one non stop whirlwind! After a brief vacation to my hometown of Cape Town, South Africa in the first few weeks of January, I have been on tour non stop for 6 months and still going strong.

First was a headlining Canadian tour with Scott Helman in support of his Gold selling single “Hangups”. This was an absolute blast and a great success. Last fall we did all of Europe opening up for Vance Joy, so it was a pleasure to play Scott’s own shows in his own country this year.

In between off days on this tour, I was able to play the Juno awards with gold selling Pop/Country duo The Reklaws as well as do some hotel video youtube sessions with Scott Helman, featuring Jann Arden on one and Johnny Orlando on the other.

Right after that tour, I jumped on another bus and went down south to start shows with The Abrams in Arizona on their Sounds Good to me tour. This took me to Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana and Texas

Without even a day break, I flew to Seattle to play a show with Johnny Orlando and then it was straight into rehearsals for his Teenage Fever tour. This tour took us all across the United States as well as Holland, UK, Germany and France.

The Reklaws have also kept me very busy playing shows and festivals in the summer, opening up for Florida Goergia Line Jason Aldean and headlining their own shows. Recently we have been rehearsing as we gear up to hit the road in the fall as we open up Dean Brody and Dallas Smith on their Canadian arena tour.

Until then, it’s one off shows in the US and Canada and some exciting recording sessions which I will write about in the next blog!

Happy summer!!