An Interview with Josh Merhar: BDL Instructor Profile
Josh has been an instructor with Boston Drum Lessons since the very beginning back in 2015. Originally from New Jersey, he’s been living in Boston for the last 10 years. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Josh particularly enjoys the challenge of making complex rhythmic concepts feel more organic and approachable to listeners.
BDL: What inspired you to first start learning and playing the drums? How old were you?
The first experience I remember really having an impact on me was seeing Blue Man Group perform in Las Vegas. I was 9 years old at the time and I had never witnessed such a remarkable display of colors, lights, and music. I was especially entranced by the music and the background drummers flailing around on their enormous drum sets, all decked out with fluorescent body paint. After the show, my parents picked up a copy of the CD, which contained most of the music present in the performance. I listened to it on repeat to the point that I had practically memorized every detail of each track. The more I listened to it, the more I wanted to play the drums to see if I could mimic the parts. After months of begging and pleading, I was gifted an entry-level drum set for my 10th birthday. I joined the school band and started taking formal lessons shortly after. Since then, it became pretty much the only thing that I wanted to do.
BDL: How would you describe your drumming style?
Such a simple question, but quite difficult to answer! I guess it could be described as dynamic, calculated, and, at times, a bit risky and chaotic. I’m a very “schooled” drummer, but I heavily gravitate toward styles of music that like to push boundaries, experiment, and deviate from the norm. You gotta learn the rules in order to break the rules, y’know? I love the creativity that comes from asking myself “what if I tried this…?”, and seeing how far I can push an idea. But of course, just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you should.
BDL: Who have been some of your influences and how have they inspired who you are today as a musician?
My two biggest early influences are Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. They both play with so much confidence and know how to make every note just feel good. Bonham’s drumming especially broadened my horizons significantly. I’ll still go back and listen to old Led Zeppelin recordings and live concerts and simply be in awe of his feel and technical ability. There are lots of grooves and fills he played where I still ask myself, “What the heck was he even doing there?” A couple years later, I started getting into much more technical styles of music, particularly progressive rock and metal. Marco Minnemann’s absurdly high level of speed and technicality got me chasing some flashier chops, while Bill Bruford’s drumming with King Crimson was an incredibly humbling demonstration of manipulating and commanding time. More recently, I’ve become drawn to drummers that have what I believe to be a very unique sound and feel. Thomas Pridgen’s and Jon Theodore’s drumming with The Mars Volta shattered all of my perceptions of what was “allowed” in music while still grooving ridiculously hard. Matt Garstka of Animals as Leaders has been an enormous influence of mine with his highly individualized sound and creative approaches to the drum set. The legendary Tony Williams was throwing down generation-defining ideas since the 70s and is responsible for some of the most jaw-dropping performances I can think of. Nate Wood’s sense of time and feel have a particular gravity that allows him to play all around the beats without the listener ever guessing where the underlying pulse went. Everything he plays just feels like the absolute perfect choice. Maison Guidry busts out some of the most creative and expressive phrasing I’ve ever heard, while possessing nearly unparalleled speed and faculty around the drum set. Chris Paprota’s flow comes across as a smooth, fluid stream of consciousness that I aspire to someday grasp. There are many more influences I have in one way or another, but I’ll leave it here for now…
BDL: Can you talk us through some of your past and present musical projects?
My first serious band started when I was in high school. We were called Bizarre Silence and we played mostly original blues rock tunes. We were heavily influenced by artists such as Led Zeppelin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Black Sabbath, and Free. At the time, we all just wished we were born in the 70s. But to our credit, I think we sounded pretty good for a bunch of 14-16-year-olds and we had some cool tunes! Even though we were young, we gigged almost every single weekend around the South Jersey / Philadelphia area during my junior and senior years of high school. During the beginning of my second year of college in 2011, Vitamin Sun formed. Our music is much more heavily influenced by a wider array of more progressive outfits, particularly The Mars Volta and Dirty Projectors. Vitamin Sun’s music includes lots of hard-hitting grooves in odd time signatures, metric modulations, intricate guitar riffs, and tonal risks you probably won’t hear much of in pop music. We’re still active, making the band the longest-running project I’ve ever been a part of. A few years after the creation of Vitamin Sun, I started playing in an instrumental progressive metal / jazz trio called GEPH. In addition to an abundance of nerdy rhythmic concepts (odd time signatures, metric modulations, polyrhythms and polymeters), the two other musicians in the band play an instrument known as the Chapman Stick. In short, each instrument has a stereo output and a range much more extended than a conventional guitar or bass. The stereo output allows each Chapman Stick to play with 2 drastically different tones simultaneously (divided as treble and bass). The most recent group I’ve been working with is Clamb, which is another instrumental trio, consisting of drums, fretless bass guitar, and synthesizers. Unlike Vitamin Sun and GEPH, which typically play very thoroughly composed songs, Clamb’s music is largely improvised. It can be described as a combination of jazz, krautrock, funk, and psychedelic styles. As a group, we love exploring dreamy soundscapes backed by hypnotic grooves akin to James Brown’s music, with some controlled chaos sprinkled throughout. I’m so fortunate to be able to play with groups that allow me to experiment with all kinds of concepts that would be deemed “inappropriate” in a lot of other settings!
BDL: How do you approach writing drum parts and making music?
It depends on the group I’m playing with and the particular song we’re working on. Every project I’m a part of is incredibly collaborative. In Vitamin Sun, for example, sometimes the guitar players or bassist will have suggestions for a drum part to back an idea they have, which then gives me a starting point to work from. On multiple occasions, I’ll approach my bandmates with a weird groove I worked out in practice and they’ll compose parts around the drums. I really like thinking about numbers to direct Regardless of the specific process, I’m always trying to consider the bigger picture by asking myself, “How does what I’m doing fit with what they’re doing?” Most of the time, whatever initial idea I have requires some workshopping before it feels more complete. I want whatever I play to complement the other musicians without stepping on anyones’ toes. It becomes a balancing act of sorts; play technical parts with confidence, but don’t overpower anyone in the process. Trial and error is my best friend when it comes to composing parts!
BDL: Rumor is you're really into puzzles. Can you talk about that and if there's any influence from your puzzle life in your drumming?
... Who gave you that information..? But yes, I really like Rubik’s cubes and other related “twisty puzzles,” as they’re known. My recent favorites are a 9x9 cube and a gigaminx. Your standard Rubik’s cube is solved using a series of algorithms to put all the pieces back into their proper place. Each algorithm contains a set of moves that repositions specific pieces without undoing any progress. I think there’s definitely a parallel between learning rudiments/sticking patterns and algorithms. The more algorithms you know, the faster you’ll be able to solve a Rubik’s cube (the current world record is 3.47 seconds). The more rudiments you know, the more expressive vocabulary you have access to. Even before I learned to solve a Rubik’s cube, I tended to approach rhythms with a numerical and somewhat modular mindset. I spent lots of time workshopping phrases of various subdivisions/rhythmic rates of various lengths. For example, if I’m trying to fill 2 measures of 16th notes, there are 32 spaces to fill. How could I use 4, 5, and 7-stroke stickings to total 32 strokes? Once I found a combination I liked, I would plug different sticking patterns into the same rhythmic framework. That’s kind of like creating a drumming “algorithm,” right? It’s definitely not the best approach for everyone, but it helped me work through ideas a lot more systematically and helped me discover all sorts of wild vocabulary I probably wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.
BDL: You also have an impressive YouTube channel. What was the motivation to start a Youtube channel and what are you currently working on for it?
Thank you! Yeah, my channel is a passion project of sorts. In addition to private instruction I received growing up, I also watched a ton of drumming videos going back to the early days of YouTube. It was a bottomless pit of drum solos, instructional videos, and concert footage. I picked up on so much vocabulary by pouring through hundreds of videos. But as my skills advanced, I started feeling like most of the instructional content I saw wasn’t really challenging me enough and had a pretty conservative approach to it. I figured there had to be other drummers that felt the same way and I felt like I owed the internet something in exchange for how much I learned using it. It quickly evolved into producing videos that 16-year-old me would have loved to see. I primarily focus on more advanced concepts and ideas that I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere. It’s also a good challenge for me to see how concisely I can break down tricky material. I generally upload a new video every Monday so I have a pretty steady churn of ideas going on.
BDL: How much do you love spaghetti?
There aren’t words in English that can effectively capture my infatuation with spaghetti.
BDL: Outside of drumming, what do you like to do for fun?
As mentioned before, I really like twisty puzzles. But I also enjoy playing bass guitar, learning Spanish, and playing video games. I should specify though, the video games I enjoy playing typically involve logistics in some form or another. My favorite game lately has been Factorio, which is based around resource gathering and managing supply chains. It’s essentially a constantly-evolving logistics puzzle. Doesn’t that sound fun!?
BDL: What are you currently working on musically and/or in your practice?
Lately, Vitamin Sun and Clamb have been working on a whole bunch of new music. Ideally, each group will do a fair amount of recording throughout the rest of the year, as well as play a bunch of shows. We’re especially itching to play live more - the pandemic hasn’t been easy on any of us and performing in front of an audience is a heck of a catharsis! Most of my individual practice recently has been focused on time, consistency, and restraint. What good is any of the fun technical stuff if I can’t play it in time, execute the strokes cleanly, and know when to use it? I feel like I have a pretty good faculty when it comes to the mechanics of playing the drums (though there’s still PLENTY of room for improvement) so I’m trying to better consider HOW to apply said faculty more creatively.
BDL: Any advice for drummers and musicians just beginning their journey?
Be patient with yourself and be persistent. Progress isn’t linear. Sometimes, you’ll advance very quickly in a short amount of time. Embrace those victories! Other times, you might feel you hit a ceiling and it could take an uncomfortably long time to break through to the other side. That’s where the patience and persistence come in. Every drummer and musician has encountered such obstacles, but they would never overcome them if they gave up. You have to be bad before you can be good! And the learning never stops. Ever. There’s ALWAYS room for improvement.