“Listening to and studying the masters is what informs me and inspires me to explore all the different possibilities of the drumset. Occaisionally I’ll hear someone say that they’ll never be able to perform as well as their idols do because they’re not gifted as their idols are. To those people I respond, “What’s the gift that those people have and you don’t?” Sure, some people are born with superior reflexes or perfect pitch, but those things are meaningless if not cultivated.

I think the gift our idols possess is really more of disposition than physical attributes. The gifted are the lucky few that have found something they are passionate about, so passionate in fact that they are compelled to investigate it whether anyone else is interested or not. Their temperment allows them to spend countless hours and years refining their craft, practicing the things they can’t do, simply because that process is the thing they find most enjoyable in life. That’s the gift.”

-drummer John Riley