Ronald Bruner Jr. on Being a Drummer from Birth

Jazz funk drummer Ronald Bruner Jr. has played with a startling number of artists since he first picked up the drumsticks at the tender age of two, including a stint in thrash band Suicidal Tendencies, contributing to releases by artists such as Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar and appearing throughout Kamasi Washington’s mammoth The Epic. A native of Los Angeles, Bruner Jr. recently spoke with Jeff Weiss on RBMA Radio’s Bizarre Ride about his early musical education, the influence of mentors like Reggie Andrews and the unparalleled experience of working with George Duke.

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The rumor is you started playing the drums at two years old. Is that correct?

My mother says the story started inside her when she was at church, pregnant. Her and my father played at church the majority of my life, and when they decided to start making kids they made sure that the kids were raised in a church. My mother says that when she was playing in the band with my father they would get into certain things and certain grooves and I would just start kicking on beat in her stomach. It started there and literally, when I got out of my mom’s body I just completely gravitated towards drums.

I saw my father’s red drumset as a child and something inside me clicked. That’s all I wanted to do. I have memories, early, early, early, two years old, being at the NAMM music merchant show. Playing drums in front of crowds of people at two, three years old. My whole life, my whole adolescence, I had no other desire but to play my instrument. It just so happened that on top of all that I had this weird kind of voice and could sing.

Your family is like a family of geniuses.

Genius is an interesting word. I just say my family is touched.

You went to the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz.

The Thelonius Monk Institute was a program that was brought to my music teacher, who is responsible for all of us, everybody, for putting us all together to make music: Mr. Reggie Andrews.

He was a legend in LA.

Reggie Andrews is a second father in my heart. We grew up where we were just always expressive, and my father always encouraged us, chasing a dream of being musically proficient and musically great. It got to a point where my father saw that me and my brother Stephen [Bruner AKA Thundercat] – it was like the eighth and sixth grade – my father saw that this was going to be a serious thing. Then my father went from keeping us in a school that was a really diverse school, multicultural school, took us from that and said, “I need my kids.” We lived in the hood. He said, “OK, it’s time for y’all to grow in the hood. I need y’all to have the hood sensibilities.”

Locke High [in Watts] in the ’90s and ’00s was no joke.

Man, let me tell you something. My freshman year, the first week of school, they were putting people on the hoods. I remember just going to the bathroom in school, it’d be five or six different Crip hoods. If you was really about that life, you picked which hood you wanted to be from. And you go in the bathroom and they arrange a situation, they put you on and now you’re from that hood. That was my freshman year, the first day I went to the bathroom on my own.

Every Friday we had race riots. We’re from the hood, so we had those sensibilities, but we also had a part that the hood respected, which was the creativity and the ability to be from the hood but make something out of it. So a lot of the gangsters told us, they were like, “Yo, we got you, but y’all gonna do that music.” The ’90s was rough but I swear to God I appreciate that part of life, because it taught me how to, through the struggle, be a diamond. Going to hang out at my friends’ house I would see my friends and their parents just being in that movement, being in that walk forward.

When were you in Suicidal Tendencies, in high school, or right after?

I started with Suicidal Tendencies when I was 18, right after high school. I had already been in my second year of college and I was playing with this soul funk group called Polyester Players, and the guitar player from Suicidal Tendencies came to the gig. At the time he was looking for a drummer. He was into soul and funk. He came to the gig a couple of times and saw me play. I walked outside because I was too young to be in the club, so I had to go stand in the back area and go outside when we were on break, and all the other guys would be able to party.

My dad would come drive me to the gig and sit there with me, the whole gig. Thank you, daddy. I would come outside the gig, we would go get some tacos or something, we’d sit in the car, listen to some records, and that’s what I did every Tuesday night. I played with that band from 18 to 24, or something like that... The guitar player approached me while I was outside sitting with my pops talking. He said, “I wanna talk to you.” Bam! And that happened. That’s how Suicidal Tendencies popped off. Then I brought Stephen in right after that.

The list of people you play with is crazy.

I’ve been very fortunate.

The first time I saw this dude he was playing with George Duke, like a beast. It probably was like seeing Jaki Liebezeit in ’74 or something. You’re just like, “Damn.”

I appreciate that.

George Duke is on your record Triumph – one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.

Amazing man, amazing musician. I still hear him laugh.

You played drums for him for quite some time.

I started after I got out of the Kenny Garrett Band. At the next transition I started playing with George Duke and Stanley [Clarke] together. In the middle of that I was doing maybe four, five other gigs. I was on Kenny Garrett, Suicidal Tendencies, Raphael Saadiq. I was doing a bunch of stuff at the same time.

[George Duke] was another guy who always used to get on my case about putting out a record. He also used to get on my case about being authentic. He knew that I could sing, because I used to sing with his band. As the progression was going, he played at my first show in 2008. I asked him, “Hey man, I’m writing a song and I want to have you featured on the song.” We came together and the song was formulated. We just had a little crazy idea. I kind of took the idea and I went with it, and I started putting chords around it and basic structure.

It was finally my turn to make that phone call. I called George. I said, “Hey George, man, I’m in the studio at this place and I’m recording the song. Come by.” He gets on the phone, he goes like, “Hey man, I’m watching these Lakers.” At the time they were playing Dallas and it was the 2011 playoffs, and it was one of the last few games of the semifinals. He’s like, “Alright, I’m going to come over after this over.” Lakers lose, so I call him back. I say, because Lakers is my squad, “Man, we lost. Come on up to the studio.” He was like, “Man, I’m on my way.” It was the way he said, “I’m on my way.”

We were all chilling in the studio hanging out, just doing our thing. Then George says, “I’m outside,” after about 20, 30 minutes. I go outside and George pulls up in this beautiful, brand new Benz. He comes and I was like, “You could park anywhere.” He made a u-turn and he’s in front of Tony Austin’s car. Tony Austin has a space between his car and the car in front of him.

Now, George’s car was a big body. Anyway, George decides, “I’m going to park right here in front of the studio.” The space was too small, so George literally said, “I’m going to park where I want to park.” He got in his Benz and he backed into Tony’s car, pushed his car back. He got in there and fit that Benz. It didn’t matter if he bumped, he didn’t care.

That’s crazy. I feel like when you’re George Duke, you can do whatever you want.

You can do whatever you want. We all came outside, Tony was standing here like, “You hit my car.” “Man, that’s George Duke. Get your ass back the hell up.” We all sit there talking. George comes in. I give him a hug and he comes in and he sits down in the control room after he bumps, crashes the car. He does like an Austin Powers, “Dsh, dsh, dsh” and he finally parks the car. Comes in, sits down at the control booth and says, “Hey man, press play.” I press play and he listened to it twice. There was a broken synthesizer in the room. Had missing keys and stuff like that. He went in there, he looked at the synthesizer, he’s like, “I can do it on this and the Rhodes.”

The song happened. He recorded the song. After recording a couple passes on it, did one pass on the synthesizer solo, came back the control, sat down next to me and said, “You make me happy.”

He said that to me and that was my confirmation that he appreciated me. He just told me I made him happy. He hadn’t played like that in a while. That’s how Déjà Vu came after that.