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"Keith worked with me on the Sacred Love tour. It's a big chair to fill in my band, some of the greatest drummers in the world have sat there. Stewart Copeland, Omar Hakim, Manu Katché, Vinnie Colaiuta.

Keith took his place as if born to the job. An impeccable creative musician, powerful as well as sensitive, patient and understanding in the face of my often inarticulate and conflicting demands.

Anyone who has passed through my band remains family, brother Keith is no exception."

- Sting

 

"Keith's attitude, his enthusiasm, and everything is just great. When you're cutting tracks like we do, the band will get to a certain point when things are working and everything coalesces, and everybody realizes they are now going to play a take. To get there you need not just the drummer, but everybody to have refined their parts. We had that with this band, thanks in large part to Keith. We would get to that point and converge on something, and he would give us a take we could really work with."

- Donald Fagen (Steely Dan)

"The predominance of programmed grooves, of playing along with a click rather than generating your own time, has changed the way musicians hear rhythm and play it. Shifts have occurred in where people feel the beat and how explicit or implicit certain parts of the time are. That's been a problem for us, because we're trying to re-create a kind of rhythmic feel that predates the drum machine era, where it's really a feel generated by the players, something that has a swing and a lope to it and still has hypnotically steady time.

With Keith, everything he tried to play worked in that way. He also began with a good idea of where a tune was supposed to go, and he got better as we played it. He actually made this whole thing possible. There have been points in sessions we've done previously where we couldn't get the track or something like that. But Keith is a quick study, and his groove is just as good at the end of the day as it is at the beginning."

- Walter Becker (Steely Dan)

"... he's one of the best drummers who ever lived."
        - from an interview in Recording Magazine, July 2006

- Elliot Scheiner (Five-time Grammy Award Winning Producer & Engineer)

 

 

"Keith, Drummers like you do not come 'a dime a dozen' - I enjoy listening to your work! It's a pleasure to have met you and I am looking forward to an opportunity to play music with you! "

- Chuck Rainey (Bass Legend)

 

 

"Keith is an exciting drummer with his own style and sound. He can play soft and bash - and he puts the bass drum in unexpected places.

You'll be hearing a lot more from him - and for good reason!"

- Anton Fig (Late Show with David Letterman)

"Keith has the basic thing I need, which is the ability to keep track of the 1 in very challenging rhythmic circumstances. And it's not just the 1 but the eight-bar forms that keep us together improvisationally. Plus, Keith grooves. It's one thing to find someone who is rhythmically intelligent, but to find someone who can do that and groove is a necessity.

I feel the nature of groove music is more intelligent, sophisticated rhythmically, but even more grooving than ever. And Keith does that in a very natural way. Plus he has a very distinctive sound. He has a clear idea of how he wants his kit to sound. How he tunes the bass drum is unique.

When Keith plays he's not mathematical. He's very spiritual. He's as advanced technically as anyone I've ever played with, but his technique always serves the music. He is organic. To me, Keith sounds like a swamp - a really sophisticated, colorful, energetic swamp."

- Wayne Krantz (guitar great)

"Keith has a totally unique and personal sound and approach. Within one bar of the groove, I can tell it's Keith. There's nobody out there who sounds like him. He is one of the greatest drumers on this planet!"

- Oz Noy (guitar great)

 

All content ©2008 Keith Carlock.
Website by Eric Szczerbinski for Cold Toast New Media

 

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