From 1976 to 1991 I played drums on over a hundred recordings and several thousand live shows. Below are a few of my favorite performances. The audio player in each article can be started and stopped by clicking on the blue arrow button.

Although Blue Light is my favorite Bad Sneakers tune, it’s also the one of the strangest recording sessions I’ve been in.

It was 1984 and electronic drums were all the rage. I had just gotten my Simmons analog drum kit and had very little time to adjust to it before we started recording. Unlike real drums, which have a nice tactile aspect to them, the earliest electronic drums were just boards covered with hard rubber – very unforgiving. To make things even stranger, we decided to use one of the drums as a hi-hat. With no left foot-pedal to manipulate, the body mechanics of this setup were awkward and I struggled to find my balance.

However, the sounds were otherworldly. To fill out the bizarre sonic landscape we decided to use only pang crash cymbals, resulting in a drum kit that sounded like it came from Mars. It turned out to be the perfect underpinning for this dark tale of urban apocalypse.

Credits:
Dale Dallabrida: Author and bass guitar
Shane Faber: Lead vocal, guitar
Marc Moss: Background vocal, synthesizer, guitar
Neal Tillotson: Background vocal, electronic drums

Copyright © 1984, 2009 Now & Then Music

This is a little ditty about the logistics of intimacy in the face of a global health crisis. The nuanced vocal performance by Laura Ludwig was beyond anything I imagined when I first penned this song, and it still knocks me out every time I hear it.

I was concerned that the song had no bridge, but when I heard future L.A. Groove Goddess Lynne Davis lay down her spectacular bass solo in the middle I completely forgot about that.

Credits:
Laura Ludwig Moss: Lead vocal
Keith Moss: Guitar
Lynne Davis: Bass guitar
Neal Tillotson: Author, drums

 Words and music copyright © 1991, 2009 Neal M. Tillotson

In 1991 my old Bad Sneakers bandmate Marc Moss decided to record an album of tunes he had written since the band broke up in 1987. I was back in college and had no intention of getting involved in any other serious musical endeavor, but these tunes were so good I couldn’t resist.

It was also an opportunity to make music with no expectations other than to have fun. As I recall, we recorded very quickly with little or no rehearsal. Refreshingly, there was also no arguing or debating because Marc was the boss. I was completely free to just play the drums and Marc controlled everything else.

The result was an extraordinary album of well-crafted and beautifully recorded songs entitled Marc Moss and the Art Farm. “Another Heart” is the opening track and one of my all-time favorite drum performances. The groove is intense and the drum sound is powerful. I particularly like the tom-tom figure on the verses – an unusual but very effective device.

Credits:
Marc Moss: Author, lead vocal, guitar
Keith Moss: Bass
Neal Tillotson: Background vocal, drums

Copyright © 1991, 2009 Banyan Music

This 1991 track from the Marc Moss and the Art Farm album is one of several “fake live” recordings we did throughout the years. For some reason we found it very amusing to dub in audience noises and applause on certain songs. This one was seamlessly executed, but in reality it was as far from live as you can get. Each instrument was recorded separately and I never heard the final mix until I got my copy of the record.

The upright bass player, Rick Feliz, had recently arrived from Los Angeles. Rick’s actress wife had been accepted at the University of Delaware’s Professional Theater Training Program and Rick left his music career to be with her. I was working my way through college by teaching drums at a local music store, and one day I noticed a little 3×5 notecard advertisement on the store’s bulletin board. It said “Rick Feliz, bass player. Can play anything.” I thought that was a pretty audacious thing to say, but it turned out to be entirely accurate. Although Rick was only in our area for a brief period, we were very fortunate to capture his brilliance on several Art Farm recordings.

Sax player Wayne Beardwood was a local star from the Johnny Neel Band. At a New Year’s Eve Blues jam several years later, I finally got a chance to share a stage with him.

For this session I played a 1960s vintage Ludwig kit tuned wide open. We were going for a laid back West Coast jazz sound and I think we got pretty close.

Credits:
Marc Moss: Author, lead and background vocal
Rick Feliz: Upright bass
Wayne Beardwood: Alto saxophone
Neal Tillotson: Drums

Copyright © 1991, 2009 Banyan Music