Jazz Fusion And Hip Hop Drumming With Alan Evans

Alan Evans is the rock solid groove drummer for Soulive and the Alan Evans Trio.

There’s a whole world of musicians just under the mainstream music surface that are finding success fusing elements of jazz, rock, hip hop, funk, and soul music into one great groove. One of the groups that have been doing this best is Soulive. After touring separately in different bands for years, brothers Neal and Alan Evans teamed up with guitarist Eric Krasno to form the fusion organ trio. Alan Evans holds down the group on the drums, mixing hip hop beats with traditional jazz elements that really gets the crowd moving. I’ve been digging his stuff with Soulive for a while now, and he’s even gone on to produce his own organ trio called the Alan Evans Trio. It’s all good music and very good drumming, so I hope you dig the videos as much as I did!

Soulive has developed a large group of fans, both musicians and non-musicians, that support just about anything they do. Check out this live medley of two Beatles’ classics “Eleanor Rigby” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04kJr6taFz0.

In all the videos I’ve seen of Alan playing, he doesn’t really take drum solos too often. I found this one live from the Brooklyn Bowl at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzxfbvSkJEM.

Lastly, Alan has also started his own organ trio with a couple of different guys called the Alan Evans Trio. Check them out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jneCX12ZXnY.

I hope you dug seeing and hearing Alan Evans play the kit. He’s got a masterful groove that fits a variety of music styles. There’s more coming your way at Play Drums By Ear, so stay tuned.

Thanks,

Chris