Exclusive Bob Knight Blog!
Busy UK session drummer tells us a bit about his summer:
“After some UK based stuff with Nicole Scherzinger and then a brief trip to Japan with Rumer I have spent the majority of the Summer playing festivals and one off shows all over the world with Cee Lo Green.
It has been great fun and a lot of miles travelled, we played to hundreds of thousands of people did some very memorable shows including my first time in Serbia at the launch of their amazing EXIT festival and the inaugural Star Awards show in Singapore with Aerosmith on the same bill.
With regard gear as we tend to fly in/out for these kind of shows rather than bus with our back-line I rely heavily on the consistency of Yamaha drums supplied to me via the various backline rental companies around the world.
Over the summer I have used 9000’s, maple customs, birch customs & club customs (my personal weapon of choice) and not a single kit has been anything short of fantastic. Finding the kit/sizes you want can be tricky, especially in some parts of Eastern Europe and I did have some very ‘interesting’ no name heads in Serbia that didn’t take much before they resembled the surface of the moon.
Our live sound is a lot more on the rock n roll side of things compared to the more R&B sound of his records my 4 piece band (& two backing singers) have been constantly evolving this sound since I started playing with Cee Lo 2 years ago. We are in a good place sonically and have found ‘our’ way to give him what he needs in terms of energy and excitement on stage so the end of the run was a bit disappointing as we were really flying but our current run has now come to an end as Cee Lo is back on the Voice in LA where he is on the judging panel.
I am back in London playing some local gigs and picking up bits of work with various artists including Jason Derulo, Andrea Bocelli and Andrea Begley who won the Voice last year.
Jason Derulo is a great singer whom I have worked with several times in the past and most recently we have been doing radio shows, taking his predominantly electronic music and turning it into acoustic versions has it’s own challenges but I relish those opportunities and he is a great talent to work with.”