We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jack Ivins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jack, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
The only way to really learn the craft of playing live music is to actually play live music. That sentence may sound silly and obvious but nowadays musicians are constantly getting “discovered” from playing in a bedroom or basement on TikTok or Youtube or Instagram. While these creatives have shown us in recent years that you can certainly make money by just doing this, I think that you need your 10,000 hours and in my world of live performance, there is simply no substitute for going up in front of a crowd, no matter how small, and leaving it all on the stage. Go out and play live, it’s fun!
My story begins when I was 14 years old, one year after getting my first drum kit. My father was (and still is) a worship leader and occasionally, his drummer would be unavailable. Dad decided that I would be the one to fill in, and man, I was not ready. But guess what: learning on the job is the best way to really learn anything.
Playing in churches, youth camps, and colleges as a teenager with my dad is how I really began to understand how to perform live and vibe with other musicians. Dad would often give me a bunch of songs the day before, which I wouldn’t have ample time to prep (I also couldn’t read charts at the time), and then once we started playing, he’d often call out structure changes on the fly. Sometimes we’d be in the second verse of a song and he’d just yell an entirely new song for us to transition into. Sometimes he’d call out a song that I hadn’t been given and I’d need to improvise. Sometimes I didn’t have a wedge and we were never on in-ears so I couldn’t hear anything. All of this forced me to really pay attention to my surroundings and learn how to read other musicians’ body language to figure out exactly where we were in a song and where we were going next. I also came to realize that as a drummer, it’s ultimately on me to drive the bus.
These shows could be terrifying, but I loved them. We played gigs all over the mid-Atlantic and even played a big show in Hong Kong when I was 17 and my brother, Jim, who came along to play bass, was 15. The years subbing in my dad’s band remain a lovingly cherished memory that also doubled as an invaluable trial-by-fire which would really prepare me for the hired-gun world years later – especially the madhouse that is Nashville’s Lower Broadway.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Jack Ivins and I am a Nashville-based drummer. I play in my own bands, Burn the Ballroom and The Ivins, and also am a hired gun performer. I’ve played live for country icon, Tanya Tucker; American Idol winner, David Cook; 80s British new wavers, When In Rome; guitar virtuoso, Orianthi; thrash legend, Joey Belladonna of Anthrax; vocal powerhouse, Corey Glover of Living Colour, and many many others.
Performing in such mashup groups as Shiprocked’s “The Stowaways” or as part of tribute/charity shows, I have played live alongside current or former members of Guns N’ Roses, Megadeth, The Goo Goo Dolls, Halestorm, Daughtry, Breaking Benjamin, Yellowcard, Queen, Relient K, Poison, Exodus, Steel Panther, All That Remains, Dashboard Confessional, Badflower, Bayside, Staind, Falling In Reverse, Nothing More, Sleeping With Sirens, Machine Head, Cartel, The Nixons, Accept, Saving Abel, Goodbye June, Aranda, Attila, Dangerous Toys, Vixen, Autograph, Great White, Black N’ Blue and the list goes on and on.
Since 2015, I have worked as a cultural ambassador for the US State Department. State has sent me to Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to perform concerts, collaborate with local musicians, hold workshops, teach, and learn and absorb as much as I can from other beautiful cultures and peoples. Music truly is one of the great unifiers in this world and I’ve been fortunate enough to share several of these experiences with my guys in Burn the Ballroom and The Ivins.
My brother, Jim, and I also put on a biannual, 100+ performer charity show in Nashville called “Grunge Night.” Our event has raised thousands of dollars for both people and animals in need and features many of the most talented musicians in Nashville and beyond.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
If you want a career in the arts, you have to be able to handle rejection. There will be a TON of it. I’ve had every label pass on my bands. I’ve also had record deals on the table and then the A&R rep gets fired a few days before the big meeting so the deal evaporates. My brother and I even had an industry giant who wanted to sign us die in his sleep before we could go meet with him.
Not everyone is going to like what you create. That’s ok. You can’t please everyone and I can’t imagine trying to – that sounds exhausting. Just keep playing, work on yourself and your chops, make art that YOU like, stay engaged in the game until you decide it’s time to move on, and treat the people around you right.
Be kind. Help others. I owe so much of my career to friends and strangers giving me opportunities and trusting me to do a good job. I, in turn, try to pay it forward whenever I can. I started playing clubs when I was 20; I’m 36 and just in the past year, I played for the biggest artists of my career. Roll with those punches. It’s worth it.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Art, in all mediums, is taken completely for granted and since the Napster days, there’s been an entitlement attached to music in particular that is truly disgusting. Pay for music. Go to a live show. Buy a shirt. Buy a record. This is our livelihood and make no mistake, we are in trouble.
I believe that we need a massive injection of capital to subsidize artists around the globe.
Can you even begin to imagine a world without art?
You get into your car after a bad day at work and all you want is to listen to your go-to feel-good song, but your streaming app won’t open and no channels are broadcasting on the radio. You drive home in silence. You get to your couch and try to fire up your favorite show, but there’s only static on the tv. Frantically, you run to your bookshelf and grab your favorite novel, but the pages are blank. I think we all would find that reality horrifying; but, if we don’t protect our creatives, that is the world which we are barreling towards.
Ethan Hawke gave a great TED talk about the need of art in which he called human creativity, “sustenance.” “Sustenance” is as good of a description of this whole thing as I can think of. The sooner everyone looks at and understands art in this way, the better off our world will be.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jackivins.com
- Instagram: @jack_ivins