The Soundwave Chronicles podcast brought to you by FD Productions engages in conversations with pioneering musicians, producers and experts from the music industry. We get the inside scoop on what it takes to make it in the music industry today by delving into the sources of their inspiration, their creative process, and much more as we explore a wide range of your experiences. I am your host After Love, and.
Asher Laub
·00:28
I want to welcome you today.
1
·00:29
Sit back, relax and enjoy.
Asher Laub
·00:34
Today, I've got a very special guest by the name of Johannes. He is pretty much legendary. He's a very humble guy, but his resume is like miles long and I'm just going to give you a general overview and then I'm going to have you guys take a listen to what he has to say. But his skills have allowed him to build an impressive resume as a drummer, performing with a variety of artists all over the world and recording in studios from Austria to Los Angeles and even New York. His musical education started at the age of six, pretty Darn Young at a small local music school in south of Austria, where he built his foundation through weekly drum lessons with drum coach Carl Unter Kaufler.
Asher Laub
·01:11
During his twelve years at the music school, he racked up an impressive list of awards and performance experiences before moving to Boston. After his acceptance to the renowned Berkeley College of Music, johannes strives to grow musically. He's performed with some household names, whole slew of very famous artists. He moved to Los Angeles in 2016 and he's been touring, recording ever since. He's been on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show and America's Got Talent. Stephen Colbert. I mean, the list goes on and on. He's been endorsed by Vicfirt Sticks, Austrian audio microphones, Sabian symbols. I mean, we could just talk for like a few hours about your accomplishments, but people don't want to hear me blather. Let's hear what you have to say. Johannes, welcome to the show.
Asher Laub
·01:52
I know you're a very busy guy, busy musician, and I just want to thank you for coming on. Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
Johannes Gritschacher
·02:00
Thank you. First of all, Asher, I'm stoked to be on here and thank you for your kind words. My education prepared me to do several things and nowadays I feel like in the business you have to sort of stay versatile. So I always made sure I have a well rounded education and that's what got me into doing different things from live music to studio work to even exploring. Now actually, since the past two years, I'm exploring the educational side a bit more and collecting ideas and finding ways how I can teach people and bring it out to the masses a bit more. But that's a whole nother thing that I have to get into. Yeah, I started really early and I'm very fortunate that I had a very thorough education in a local music school.
Johannes Gritschacher
·02:56
I learned reading music before I learned how to read in school, actually. So I grew up playing in lots of also classical orchestras, from school big band to playing percussion for contemporary classical composers. That was one of my first gigs. So, yeah, I was lucky enough in Austria to be around a lot of orchestral music that prepared me how to read. And I was very fortunate to have a fantastic teacher that mentored me for twelve years. I feel like that is not a very common thing that you study with one teacher for twelve years. But he really prepared me from age six until I was 18, and then I moved to the US. And A, because I always had a love for R and B and soul music and pop music in general, and most of my heroes studied at Berkeley.
Johannes Gritschacher
·04:05
And at that time, one of my friends from Vienna actually told me that he would move to Boston, and that's when I said, oh, let me take that into consideration because I was going to study at the conservatory in Vienna. But then he sort of showed me what else is out there and I said, okay, let me audition and see what's going on. And then I got accepted. And that same summer after I got accepted, I just spent my whole time organizing how I would move my whole life from Austria to Boston as an 18 year old. But luckily my friends helped me and my friend who studied with me, we eventually became roommates and, yeah, we organized it all together and I haven't looked back ever since. 2012, I moved to the USA and finished Boston, and then I moved to La.
Johannes Gritschacher
·05:08
And that's when my professional life began. And it's been great so far. I mean, in La. I feel like for what I do, there's a lot of opportunities out here and I built my network here still, I work with a lot of people that I met at Berkeley. I felt like the networking is what makes that school so special, but I think every school really has you. Even if you go to Harvard, I think the most important thing there is the network and the people you meet.
1
·05:44
Totally makes sense.
Asher Laub
·05:46
Yeah. Networking is kind of the name of the game in a lot of industries, and certainly in the music industry, obviously talent plays a major role and you put in the time and the dedication to build that talent and you said 18 years or you were with the.
Johannes Gritschacher
·06:05
Same teacher, or was it for twelve years? Until I was 18.
Asher Laub
·06:11
So I would imagine you were a pretty dedicated and pretty focused student. Pretty much a dream student for a teacher.
Johannes Gritschacher
·06:18
Yeah, where I'm from a very small town, so there's not a lot of distractions. I mean, nature is beautiful there, but it's not like as a teenager, you can go out and go clubbing a lot or I don't know what other teenagers do these days, but my thing was I came home from school and TikTok I went to the basement. Yeah, we didn't have that back then, so I just went to the basement.
Asher Laub
·06:50
Sorry, those are the good old days. No TikTok.
Johannes Gritschacher
·06:53
Yes. No distractions. Now we have to I don't want to say worry about all of that, because it is a good way to grow your business, but it does take time, as you know.
Asher Laub
·07:05
Oh, yeah.
Johannes Gritschacher
·07:07
So, yeah, I just basically went home after school, went to the basement and I dove into all the deep concepts of practicing and it felt like meditating to me to a certain point, all the independence exercises that you do as a drummer being so isolated. One thing was that I did have time to really practice a lot of technique and a lot of concepts. But the downside was that there was not really a music scene going on. You had a few events, corporate bands here and there. I would spend my summers playing gigs in hotel lobbies with my friends in different jazz trio formations. But there's not really a scene where you could go at night and see world class musicians play. For that.
Johannes Gritschacher
·08:06
I would spend my summers in Vienna because there were a lot of drum workshops and I would just take a train there and stay there for a week as, like, a 16 year old or whatever and study with world class drummers there, or visit camps and workshops for four days to a week, depending on what it was. So that's what sort of stimulated my interest to become more global and to maybe move into the big wide world rather than staying home in Austria, which is nice, too. But I felt like a lot of people that study in Austria become teachers and you study music at a conservatory and then a lot of people, which is not a bad thing, but a lot of people accept a position at a local music school teaching super young students.
Johannes Gritschacher
·09:12
But I always wanted to be on the road. I wanted to be out there and play for people. And I can always do the teaching on the side and teach intermediate students or advanced students. That was always my goal. So I thought to make that a living, I needed to move to the United States. And, yeah, La is great for that.
Asher Laub
·09:37
So what's amazing about your story is you come from a small town and you're looking to make music a career. It's difficult enough, as most people know, just to make music a career in the first, you know, a lot of people, they try to teach, but you took it up a notch. You didn't just try to become a club date musician. You went to the hub of the music industry, the global music industry, and you made your way to the top. And what is it that you feel like, okay, that's a huge challenge. I just want to challenge myself. Or did you feel like it just come really naturally? Did you envision yourself in a place like La. Playing concerts, playing on television shows, that type of stuff? Or did everything just sort of happen one step after another?
Asher Laub
·10:24
You just sort of focus on the here and the now. Just build up my skills as a drummer. What was your thinking when you were younger?
Johannes Gritschacher
·10:33
I always focused on my goals so much. That's all I had in my mind. And I really believe in the power of manifestation, or at least it worked for me back then. Nowadays, business is not easy, but back then I had such or I still have a burning passion for it, obviously, because I'm still in it. But, yeah, that's all. I would just play drums and close my eyes and imagine that I'm playing a massive stage when I was practicing. And I guess that power of manifesting, it really helped me. And now, looking back, all the hurdles I had to jump to get to where I am now, it's kind of crazy to think about it.
Johannes Gritschacher
·11:22
I mean, for really all of us, I still have moments where I get out of a bigger show and I'm like, I can't believe this is my job. I still have these moments where I'm like, I can't believe I do this for a living. But, yeah, I was never really worried about what could happen. I'm lucky enough that I have a strong support system and people around me that believe in me. And I think that really does a lot, and that really means a lot to me. And, yeah, I think I just never looked back. I was always so focused on my goal. And then you just take one step after another, and then something happens and you have to take two steps back. But then you leap four steps forward.
Johannes Gritschacher
·12:20
And you know how it is with the ups and downs, but as long as you're just so focused on your goal, I think your nervous system and your body guides you automatically to the universe, guides you to get closer to your goal. It's like almost at that point, a survival mechanism or something like that, it becomes your survival. It's like, I have to do this. There's no other way.
Asher Laub
·12:52
You sound a little bit spiritual to me. Do you do yoga? Do you do meditation? Do you have some sort of a frame of mind of, like, I don't know, a larger calling? I'm just wondering, how do you think what goes on in your mind from day to day?
Johannes Gritschacher
·13:11
Well, through some times that I moved to La. You're on your own in a big city, and you get thrown all these challenges. And I feel like what helped me a lot, I personally don't go to therapy or anything, but what helped me a lot was reading a lot of sort of self help books, just the term self help, whatever, but a lot of books about psychology and success stories and biographies. And I think I just always try to take out of those books what applies to me in that very moment. For example, right now, I'm reading the Rick Rubin book that just came out. I'm sure everybody has seen it already, this gray cover. I forgot what it's called. It's about the creative process. And that book is so simple.
Johannes Gritschacher
·14:20
The chapters are all so short, but there's so many great points in there where I read them and I'm realizing, oh, wow, now I realize in that moment what I could have done better when it came to whatever, me starting out as a producer and working with clients. Okay, this is why I was a bit frustrated in that moment. Instead of clamping onto the idea, I should have just let it go. And I'm reading a bunch of books about that, mostly nonfictional stuff, and I just take out of it what applies to me, and that's what has helped me through my sort of harder times in La.
Asher Laub
·15:09
You're a deep guy. You're obviously very insightful, and you've obviously spent a lot of time self reflecting and getting to know yourself, which is really one of the most important things in being able to achieve anything in life. On a slightly separate note, because you were talking about your concerts, are there a few moments, maybe just one specific moment that you just sort of relish in, just like a memory that could be even recent, that just excites you when you think about it? I mean, aside from playing in front of thousands of people, but is there something that you want to share with us, maybe just a moment in time, playing concerts or maybe playing on The Tonight Show or whatever that is memorable that you'll never forget?
Johannes Gritschacher
·15:53
Yeah. Growing up, what got me into music was my dad's record collection. It was not a massive record collection, but he had a bunch of vinyls around and around in CDs and a stereo. So music was always very accessible for me. And I just know watching several concerts at Madison Square Garden and watching Phil Collins, and I felt like in the past two years, there were a lot of moments that sort of exceeded my dreams, and things happened that I would have never thought I could reach, or maybe I would have. Maybe I dreamt of those things, actually, and then the dream came true, and that was an interesting moment for me. And I did play Medicine Square Garden, I think, two years ago for the first time.
Johannes Gritschacher
·17:01
And that was a moment once you reach your goals, it's a scary moment because you work all your life towards that thing. I didn't necessarily work just to play Madison Square Garden, but that is, like, sort of a milestone. And once you reach your goal. It's funny. It's not that you become ungrateful. I was filled with so much gratitude, but as soon as it happened, I was like, okay, let me just really quick redefine now my goals, or what's the next set of goals now in my life? And I find that is such a funny process. In the life of an artist, you just always work and work towards something, but then once you reach it, you're almost like, oh, what now? This was great, but okay, because we're so used to pushing. And that was a great moment.
Johannes Gritschacher
·18:01
I mean, I was so emotional not even playing. It was more so the preparation and being in a hotel in New York before the gig and just laying in the bed and watching YouTube videos of iconic Madison Square Garden performances, and that was just so powerful and emotional for me. Same with just in June, I was opening for Harry Styles with some friends of mine, and we played Wembley Stadium, and that was the same thing. I was in a hotel the night before, and I was like, I can't believe I'm doing this. This really makes it all worth, all the struggles that we have. Exactly. When you're in your practice room and you feel like, okay, this is tough. What am I doing this for? But moments like that make it all worth.
Johannes Gritschacher
·18:56
And what I take from it specifically, is what always keeps you going is finding those little pockets of success in every day. Whether it is playing an exercise and you wanted to get it to a certain tempo and you check it off, that's a moment of success. And I feel like those are very powerful. To find all these moments of success and gratitude in every day of your practice as an artist, that's just a little thing to throw out there. I find that very important. And personally, that's a great tip.
Asher Laub
·19:37
Find little moments of success in every day. That's something a lot of us can.
Johannes Gritschacher
·19:41
Overlook because we have so many big moments in our career. And then sometimes there might be a month or two where you think you're not moving at all and everything is standing still. So I think when the more you focus in those times on, what can I actually do to improve? And you try to improve every day, just 1%. That's another one of those success quotes like, try to improve 1% every day. But it is true. If you just keep on moving, then you have another one of those big moments that you were working towards, and you're like, okay, wow. Now I really see that this work that I put in that whole month where nothing else was happening paid off.
Asher Laub
·20:31
And that takes a long term vision. You have to have a lot of dedication to your craft, and you got to rehearse and rehearse. And I have to tell you, actually, for somebody who's a professional musician as of the last seven years and full time. I mean, I've been a professional musician for the last 20 years, but full time, I've found that I have less time to rehearse than I did when I was really in high school, middle school. Well, I guess you have to rehearse for these concerts. Do you find that you have more time or less time because you're devoting things to other wearing other hats in your music profession?
Johannes Gritschacher
·21:22
You know what? This year has been a bit eye opening for me because I had a lot of work up until mid June, and I did one tour after another, and then this big show at Wembley, but then mid June, July was really quiet for me. I did more studio work, but what I do in this case, instead of running out and finding the next best gig just to get more money in, I try to really sit down and see, what do I want to put my energy and work into? Obviously, I'm not a father yet, so I don't have any responsibilities in that regard. It's different when you have a house and a family. But yeah, I just had so much work that I decided, okay, let me sit down and just practice again, and that's what makes me happy.
Johannes Gritschacher
·22:41
But then, obviously, it's always greener on the other side. Then you sit there for a month of practicing, and you're like, oh, it would be actually nice to go out and play a bunch of gigs again.
Asher Laub
·22:53
And you know that's going to happen again. It's inevitable. Yeah. The wave, it's the highs and the lows.
Johannes Gritschacher
·22:59
Exactly.
Asher Laub
·23:00
I can completely relate to you, and it's nice to hear this from another full time professional like yourself, because it could be stressful also, right? Like feeling like, okay, well, I don't want it to be slow, but at the same time you're saying, but I'm a little bit conflicted. I want to also spend my time maybe expanding my horizons, maybe production or teaching or something like that. Is that what you're thinking?
Johannes Gritschacher
·23:25
Yeah, I mean, it is, really. What do you want to put your focus on? If you want to sit there and isolate yourself. I mean, you see, songwriters still do that, obviously. They might not have a financial pressure because they have millions of dollars, but they just I don't know, they go to upstate New York to this big studio in the woods, and they sit down with a team of producers for three months and work on an know, and that's that downtime. That you need to learn how to cherish, too, that you just lock yourself in the practice room and work on whatever you want to work on.
Asher Laub
·24:13
It's funny, everything you're describing the Wembley Stadium, the going up to the woods and practicing in the middle of nowhere as a band and producing music. What comes to mind is the movie about Queen. I'm sure you've seen that. Or maybe because you're a microcosm of that, in a sense. But you play Wembley Stadium. So now that you've reached this pretty much the heights of really anybody's career, I mean, you're really living the dream. And you mentioned that you have this mentality of, okay, so now what? Now I need to sort of shift my frame of mind, my goals. What is that shift that has taken place in the mind of, you know.
Johannes Gritschacher
·24:59
To be fully transparent? It all sounds fantastic to say you play Madison Square Garden and Wembley, but I did play Wembley. Not to not sound grateful, but I did play Wembley as an opener, obviously. What's the next step? Play it as a headliner. Play it as a headliner. Sorry.
Asher Laub
·25:26
Yeah. I think it's okay that you were an opener at Wembley Stadium. Pat yourself on the back for that one.
Johannes Gritschacher
·25:32
It was still special, but yeah, same with Madison Square Garden. It was part of the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball tour. So you have a bunch of artists, and they all play five songs or so. And next step would be to play, whatever, a two hour concert with an artist, and an artist that you work with a lot. So those are my goals. And really what I'm trying to do is to diversify my sort of business even more. I want to start getting into the educational side and build my career a bit more also in the drumming community, see what I can achieve there. I have done a good amount of pop tours, and most tours that I've done were in the thousand to 4000 cap, in 1000 to 4000 cap rooms.
Johannes Gritschacher
·26:33
And I'd love to scale it all up, scale everything up that I'm doing, to doing amphitheaters arenas, finding also or playing with artists that maybe keep me busy also. Throughout the year, a lot of tours that I've done were, like, maybe a month or two, and then you don't really hear from them for a while. So I'd love to find that artist that builds a family on the road with the musicians, where you're valuable to the music, where you really matter. Obviously, I still matter with the artists that are play for it. That's not wrong. But an artist that just really dives super deep into the music and that maybe does a six month tour, and that tours throughout the world. That's still my goal, to do a world tour. I'd love to explore different parts of the world.
Johannes Gritschacher
·27:42
I've played in Africa before, in USA and Europe, but I'd love to go to Asia and America, and those are all goals of mine. Currently, what I was working on the past few months is just getting better at posting videos of my work because I spent a lot of time producing in the past few years, too, in the past five years or so. And I do have some cool songs with artists, but I also have a lot of unused ideas, and it was always hard for me to be that guy who goes on the road again. And okay, now I have to focus on drums because that's what pays my bills mostly.
Johannes Gritschacher
·28:29
So I would come home, maybe set up two weeks of sessions with artists here in my studio, and then they want to schedule more, and I would be like, okay, actually I have to leave now for another month. So that was always I could never really establish a flow when it came to producing and doing sessions. So I do have a lot of hard drives with beats that I made over the years. And what I'm trying to do now is just to put these out and play drums to it. As you might have seen on my Instagram, there's a few musical ideas that I put out that I produced, and then it's obviously easy for me to just play the drums to it and put it up.
Johannes Gritschacher
·29:12
And even if it's a minute of an idea, I'd rather have it out on Instagram than sit on my hard drive and never be heard, sort of.
Asher Laub
·29:24
So you'll post, like, little snippets of what you've been producing for fans to listen to, even if it's not complete.
Johannes Gritschacher
·29:32
Yeah, exactly. Or I would just play drums first and then compose something around it just to still work on that outlet of making music. Because it has become more and more important to me to create something musical and not just sit behind the drums. It feels very fulfilling to me to make a song come to life or a musical idea come to life by putting out songs. And that feels very gratifying, I would have to say, as much as it does playing live for me in front of a big crowd, I love working on musical ideas and creating a song and then releasing it. It feels very good. But unfortunately, I'm not one of those producers that crank out three songs a week.
Johannes Gritschacher
·30:29
For me, it's more of a, okay, you might work with an artist here, you get coproduction credit or co writing credit. And I'm not really known as a producer, but I do have my credits here and there, and I do find myself in situations where I can bring myself in. But I feel like in La. You almost have to play it as game as a producer to do the speed dating sessions every day. You have like, strangers come to your house and whatever, two songwriters, and you work on all these ideas and I don't know, you might do 30 sessions and one song gets released. But I tried some of that, but then I always got the gig offers, and for me, that is how I pay my bills.
Johannes Gritschacher
·31:21
So I was like, okay, now I'm gone for another two months and then we'll see what happens when I come back. So it was always this back and forth of me going on tour and then coming back and having to almost establish myself all over again and being like, okay, who am I going to invite now for sessions? So some projects that I have were writing projects with a friend. We put out seven songs, six or seven songs under the name Hopkins, and that's sort of an indie alternative duo that we had, but we never performed. It was just a writing production duo that we formed to put out our music. And it's all originals, but the last song we released was 2021, I believe. So we haven't really worked on anything ever since.
1
·32:15
Thanks so much for tuning into the Soundwave Chronicles podcast where you can stream our interviews wherever you get your podcast. We hope you enjoyed the interview and learned something new today. And if you did, please leave a review so we can keep bringing you great content. Thank you and have a great rest of the week.
Comments