Chris Turner on Falling in Love With The Drums Every Day

Chris Turner is kind of the undisputed modern “double kick king”. Which, if that was all he was, might be of less interest to my audience. Luckily he’s also one of the most musical and creative drummers, and one of the most interesting and inspiring humans I’ve met recently.

One of the underrated benefits of getting to speak to great drummers is seeing the variety of different ways they’ve achieved, well, greatness. And you learn there are really very different archetypes, from the “acerbic everyman”, to the “systems and discipline person”, to the “rocket-fueled motivation machine”. (The last might describe Isac Jamba and Richie Martinez, among others.)

Chris Turner has the seemingly-bottomless-pit-of-motivation that some of the other guests have, but it’s combined with an easy-going, “come-what-may” kind of whimsy. He literally says he structures his life to avoid doing anything he doesn’t want to do in a given day. If you’re wondering about the obvious paradox between that approach and the discipline and longevity required to reach his level on drums, I was wondering the same thing, and his answer mildly floored me.

Chris says for his entire life, he’s strung together a series of independent days of falling deeply in love with the drums. When I asked him if he’s seen 50 First Dates, the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore rom com, he agreed “it’s like that.”

I was rather pleased that in this hour-long conversation with the world’s foremost double-kick player, we only broached double kick twice: once as an aside as Chris described his relationship with teaching, and a second time when I say I’m “not going to ask him about that.”

Instead we talk about motivation, psychology, finding a relationship with what you love, and his newest object-of-focus, YouTube.

Chris has an energy I think you’ll find infectious, and I know you’ll enjoy this convo regardless of the genre you’re interested in.

Chapters

0:16 - Chris' unique approach to motivation 6:42 - the "50 First Dates" approach to drums/Chris following his talent 10:42 - finding motivation from adversity 15:30 - Alex Honnold 20:09 - ok, but how does he motivate students? 25:14 - the definition of a "career"? 28:31 - what's the creative direction that's firing up Chris the most 33:33 - how did he come out of the gate with such high quality on YouTube 36:55 - Chris' favorite YouTube inspirations