My 2017 has been a lit­tle slow on the rock front, so when my friend John Mun­son called to pitch the idea of play­ing in a musi­cal it didn’t take much con­vinc­ing. ​“Sure!” I say, not real­ly a) being a fan of musi­cal the­ater; b) not know­ing what to expect play­ing musi­cal the­ater; c) not being entire­ly con­fi­dent about the two-month commitment.

So here it is, two months lat­er, and the run of Fly By Night, pro­duced by the Jun­gle The­ater here in Min­neapo­lis, is almost over. And? Well, it’s been noth­ing short of a great time, and I’ll hon­est­ly be a lit­tle bummed when it’s over.

I’m still not sure if I’m the right drum­mer for musi­cals, in gen­er­al, but being the drum­mer in this musi­cal has been pret­ty fun. The band was picked because we weren’t a ​“typ­i­cal” the­ater band, and the ​“book” (indus­try slang for the musi­cal score) was pret­ty open to inter­pre­ta­tion, so I got to make a lot of musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions instead of sim­ply read­ing my way through the mate­r­i­al. The cast is incred­i­ble and I’ve learned so much from observ­ing how they absorb and com­mit them­selves to their roles and pace them­selves through a run. The crew at the Jun­gle has been great, and over­all the vibe has been one of a big fam­i­ly from day one.

The men­tal head­space required to play a musi­cal (vs. a rock show) was inter­est­ing for me. There’s not much in the way of, say, get­ting car­ried away emo­tion­al­ly in a part and steer­ing the band to a new dynam­ic lev­el. Or extend­ing a solo if everyone’s feel­ing good. The chal­lenge is in being engaged emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly enough to cre­ate a world where the actions of the actors onstage are com­plete­ly believ­able. It requires a com­plete sort of men­tal ded­i­ca­tion, not unlike a record­ing ses­sion, but for a few hours at a time ver­sus a few min­utes. I put more time than I was expect­ing into learn­ing chore­og­ra­phy, of sorts — com­mit­ting stick changes and sam­pler patch changes and per­cus­sion moves to mus­cle mem­o­ry to nav­i­gate through the music quick­ly and smoothly.

I’m count­ing myself lucky to have learned more than I was expect­ing to, in a pos­i­tive and sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment, mak­ing new friends with tal­ent­ed and good peo­ple. In this crazy world of mak­ing music, that sort of com­bo is a gold nee­dle in an over­sized haystack.

There are four shows left in the run as I type this, so if you’re near Min­neapo­lis it’s worth a shot to see if there are still tick­ets avail­able.

And final­ly, here’s a fun thing from the mind of Roy­er Bockus—the cast and crew’s con­tri­bu­tion to the #Ham4All chal­lenge, a cam­paign rais­ing aware­ness and funds for the Immi­grants: We Get the Job Done Coali­tion. I played drums, mixed, and made my act­ing debut as ​“Puz­zle Pon­der­er #2”: