Carter Beauford

If Carter Beauford is such a good drummer—and he is—then why don’t more drummers sound like him? Why doesn’t his distinctive style catch on if it’s so good? When I go see local bands that imitate DMB, why don’t their drummers imitate Carter Beauford? It is, I think, telling that the last one of these questions can be answered with the simple rejoinder: “Because they fucking can’t.”
Imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, but in Beauford’s case, an exception must be made. His unique playing style—the hi-hat leads with his left hand, the independent movement of the kick drum, the impossibly quick single-stroke rolls—involves a level of musical proficiency that almost no other drummer alive today can copy. A frat boy in a dirty while baseball cap can strum and moan like Dave Matthews after a few months of practice, but to even begin to copy Beauford, one needs a natural coordination bestowed on very few.

When Rush burst on the scene, the prog rock drummers imitated Neil Peart. When Led Zeppelin hit, John’s Bonham’s influence could be heard in every other hard rock act. Yet in jam-bands influenced by DMB, one hardly detects a beat or fill influenced by Beauford, and because of this, his position as an “influential drummer” can be called into question. It shouldn’t be. Rather, his playing style, itself physically unable to be copied, should be held up as the very definition of the word inimitable.