Stan Bicknell on Creating A Life Around The Drums

It’s fitting that two weeks after hearing from Chris Turner, a man with one of the most whimsical, intuitive approaches to drums I’ve ever encountered, we encounter one Stan Bicknell, who’s built a brand around a mindful, deliberate, disciplined approach to the drums, and to architecting a life around it.

Stan wowed audiences with his appearance on Drumeo 5 years ago. Around this time, his touring career was taking off. But after the birth of his child, Stan made the decision to put his life front-and-center, move back to his native New Zealand, and design a role for drums, drum practice, drum teaching, and drum performance, that served his life goals.

Stan’s story resonated with me, because I made a similar decision around a decade ago, when I decided to start the 8020 channel. (I should say, I wasn’t turning down touring opportunities.) Speaking to Stan was a great “meeting of the minds”, because we’ve read many of the same books, and thought along the same lines.

It’s just that he’s doing practically all of it better than I am.

Which inspires an adage - “find the person who’s doing what you want to do better than you are, and draw inspiration from them.”

Stan is like the Qui-Gon Jinn of the drums, with his disciplined practice routines, mindfulness, goal-setting, and integration between drums and life. And it shows in his playing. Stan is almost 100% self-taught, which is to say he emulated his drum heroes like Weckl and Vinnie largely without teachers as intermediaries, and while he wouldn’t recommend that for everybody, all that extra work left him with some revised first-principles.

He also coaches drummers in not-only the instrument, but in life-satisfaction, and, as the episode title says, building a life around the drums.

I hope you’ll find this discussion as fascinating as I did.

Chapters

0:00 - setting a goal without assuming you're entitled to the results 6:44 - finding humility by removing gatekeepers 12:05 - the paradox of putting in the time without feeling locked in 17:15 - small world - Richie Martinez shout-outs 20:54 - why routines are necessary for improvement 24:44 - does it ever get any easier? 29:58 - inside Stan's system for improvisation 38:10 - spending a lot of time practicing something abstract 43:49 - identity diversity and being a "whole drummer"