Episode 11 | Ryan Claxton | @claxtondrums
Welcome back to another episode of DrumGAB podcast. Well, we made it over the ten episode hump with many lessons learned and lots of support from my friends and advocates of DrumGAB. I can begin to see the journey that is laying before me and it is up to me to fulfill it. Thank you all for your support with this project.
My guest this week is a fellow Ontarian and while we have some mutual friends….but we have never met or spoke until this interview. Well, all I can say is that Ryan is a really great human. I feel that he is at the apex of a major moment in his life. He is about to call it a day with his current HVAC career and turn drumming into a full-time gig. Not completely cold turkey, he did get his smart serve to have a little bit of insurance while he makes the brave transition. There is no doubt, he is definitely taking the plunge and I am so stoked for him. It takes guts to follow your passion. He has a good plan though and he is driven, so I believe he will succeed.
So in the beginning of the interview, Ryan discusses where he comes from as a drummer. It all started when Ryan’s father tried to teach drums to Ryan, however, he only wished to play with his toys and it wasn’t looking like Ryan was going to follow in his dad’s footsteps. Jump ahead a decade and Ryan begins to face some facts. Drums are cool. Ryan learned from his father until one day Ryan got a Jim Chapin DVD and changed their lives forever. It spawned the desire for them to get playing with better technique and ultimately Ryan discovered a whole new layer to drumming that opened his eyes wide open. Ryan has been receiving instruction with Aaron Edgar for about a year now and this has expanded Ryan’s vocabulary entirely.
Today, Ryan has a website www.claxtondrums.ca where he has drum cover videos, drum groove exercise videos and more. It is all executed with care and in particular, the exercise videos are explained incredibly well and are totally worth checking out! He is also playing in a metalcore band Lungless. In this podcast we have a special DrumGAB exclusive of Lungless’ brand new, never been heard track “The One and Only” and we also feature “To the Part of Me That’s Missing”, which they just released a video of. The link to that is at the bottom of the podcast notes.
We round out the podcast by talking about motivation and the way life ought to be. Ryan and I connected on a very deep level throughout this interview and we leave feeling very positive about both of our choices in life and where things are heading. It was a very cool interview that I won’t soon forget.