185: Eric Harland

Eric Harland thinks about time. He thinks about taking time, he thinks about giving time, and he thinks about sharing time. 

He’ll tell you: “Time is a joint effort. It’s everybody at once. You want to talk about synergy, alliance, brotherhood and sisterhood? Just watch people getting together and having to play time. So much shows up in that. There’s so much judgement, so much blame. But then you get to these points of surrender and ecstasy. Something wonderful happens because you went on this journey together. It’s so revealing and it’s so fulfilling.”

Eric Harland is one of the most in demand jazz drummers of his generation. He has played with everybody. Betty Carter, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Terrence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, Taylor Eigsti, Julian Lage, Robert Glasper, Joshua Redman, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, John Mayer, and on and on and on. He has appeared on over 400 recordings, and continues to appear at the top of critics’ and readers’ polls. Plus he once played a solo so intense that it sent my wife to the hospital. 

Here he shares his incredible story of growing up in Houston and how he came to weigh 400lbs by the time he was 16 (he eventually lost the weight in college), attending the Manhattan School of Music, becoming an ordained minister, living with singer Betty Carter (“not like that”), learning from legendary mentors, and exploring “time”. 

He also shares his thoughts on practice, community, natural wine, and what you can learn about a person by how they drive.

As a special bonus, you can hear my father’s conversation with Betty Carter from the 1980s in which they discuss how and why she mentors young players (like she did with Eric Harland).