World Record Holder Moni Lashes To Launch New Book ‘The Art Of Hard Rock Drumming’

World Record holder and Adelaide’s very own Moni Lashes officially launches her brand new book The Art Of Hard Rock Drumming this Thursday at The Woodshed. It has been an ambitious undertaking with over a hundred pages, four hundred play along demo videos, guided play-along workouts that will keep any aspiring drummer motivated on drums and improve their stamina/ independence/ dynamics and even their showmanship! There’s exercises for ALL drummers, beginners through to legendary choppers! Tried/tested and refined in Moni Lashes drum clinics all over the globe. Ahead of the launch this week Moni Lashes talks to Hi Fi Way about the book.

It sounds like everything’s happening for you at the moment. It must be a really exciting time?
Yeah, I’m very, very lucky how it’s all coming together.

Launching a drumming textbook, what were your original thoughts behind doing something like that?
Well, I’ve been teaching drums for a fair while… over a decade, almost two decades, actually, but, I’ve never really thought of compiling a formal textbook, but, after doing a few drum clinics around the place, I had a couple of drummers that I actually look up to come to my clinics, and we hung out a little bit afterwards, and they’ve written and published proper textbooks. They saw some of the content I was doing in my clinics, and said there’s some great stuff here, and there’s probably a real market out there for this kind of topic in the way that I’m doing it. So that filled me with confidence, because it’s a bit of imposter syndrome sometimes, but I can see the results I get with my students over the years, and what works for certain kinds of students. I think I’m quite adaptable at figuring out a kid’s or a student’s learning style, and trying to make them the best they can be. When I got those confidence boosts from people I actually respect, I just knuckled down, and it was a huge process to be honest, and I will never do it again, but I’m glad it’s done, and it’s there forever. I am proud of it, but it was a lot of work for someone like me.

What was involved in pulling together something like this?
So basically, I wanted to compile every aspect of drumming that I thought was crucial, no matter what style of music you play, it was a matter of writing out the exercises in a systematic and chronological way that no matter what level drumming you’re at, you’re going to benefit from the start of the book through to the finish. I’d written the exercises, then I had to transcribe them onto software. There’s way smarter ways of doing it now that I found out too late, but that’s just my life. I made each individual page as a file, which, again, hindsight’s great. There’s a different way of doing it, but it took three years of solid work to get the final book in my hands. I did all the artwork myself, I did all the transcribing, all of the guitar, all of the bass backing tracks, it’s literally been a one-woman show. I’ve tried to do it all myself, something can be proud that when I die, there’s something of me and my love for drumming out there, in all of its nuts and bolts and imperfections, but it’s there.

Did you ever question life choices or have moments where you thought, “What have I done?”
Constantly, the last three months I knuckled down and really set myself a deadline, because otherwise this could have lingered on forever. I was becoming really pedantic and going through draft after draft, and audio mix after audio mix because I produced it all myself here in the studio. Then I get my producer’s hat on and I’m like, oh, I probably could do that better and do that again and again, so I gave myself a deadline. I definitely questioned all of this about a year and a half ago when my working file corrupted and I lost it. But it’s okay, because the silver lining is I got to reflect and do it better than the original, so I had some ideas of how I could change the structure. All the positive reviews and testimonials I’ve got from people in the drumming circle are that the structure alone and the way that organised this is one of the best organised books that they’ve seen. So, that was one of the things I did change after the corrupt file, so I’m glad that it kind of happened in a way.

Did you learn a lot about yourself in the process?
Definitely, I thought I was too old to pull all-nighters, but I pulled a few of those doing this project. I did learn that I’m probably a better drummer than I give myself credit for, or at least a better teacher than I give myself credit for at times. As I was saying, there’s imposter syndrome and sometimes you doubt yourself, but then I see the product of my students’ efforts and their willingness to learn and always put effort in. I have to be doing something right that my passion for drumming, helps foster some of my students’ passion for drumming. That’s what it’s all about.

Having a US publisher, does that open up exciting possibilities?
Yeah, I couldn’t believe when I actually signed that deal, because just little old me from Adelaide here on the other side of the world, I’d grown up myself learning from drumming textbooks through Hudson Publishing. That was mind-blowing that they were even slightly interested, let alone proper publishing my book, for digital worldwide distribution. But yeah, the people that I connected through that agency is, they’re just incredible drummers, and the fact they’re giving me the time of day, it fills me with confidence.

Will you need to spend time in the US to promote the book?
I’m always keen for that. That’s something that I like to self-drive those kind of things. I’ve done a Japanese clinic tour before I had my book. It was just concepts and basically the textbook without being a textbook was the clinic tour. I’ve done a couple in the States already. I’m always keen to get over there, and there’s a whole lot of drum shows the Nashville Drum Show and the Vegas drum show. I’ve had a bit of contact with those fellas over there, so I’d love to get over there and do a few promo spots and showcase my book and get South Australians on the map over there for drumming.

For those who don’t know you’ve got a drumming world record. What was the story behind that, and how grueling was it?
My dad was our band’s manager for a long time, and he was diagnosed with a really rare form of Multiple Sclerosis. It’s a very progressive and degenerative form of it. But there was actually a medical treatment available, and we didn’t have enough funds for it to send him over to Russia, it wasn’t available in Australia at the time. So my family and I, we’re a family band, so my sister’s on guitar and my brother’s on bass. We’re all trying to fund raise and come up with ideas to get some funds to get him over there. Everyone had done their job, and I hadn’t thought of anything myself, so I’m like, I’ve got to contribute. I’m the eldest here, I better start stepping up. So I just thought, if I saw someone drumming in Rundle Mall for twenty four hours, I’d chuck them a few coins, I think that’s pretty cool to see. So I set that up, and I drummed from 2pm to 2pm the next day in the middle of Rundle Mall. I was the first person to drum for twenty four hours without stopping, without toilet breaks, and outdoors as well.

I didn’t intend on doing like that, the actual world record you’re allowed to have a break every hour or accumulate a five-minute break every hour. I didn’t want to do that. I thought that was kind of easy. If you think about it, anyone could probably do that after a while, but I wanted to aim to try and get twelve hours in, and then I might take the five-minute break, but it was thirteen and a half hours in, and I hadn’t stopped yet, so I just figured I’d keep going. It was, like grueling, and painful, but it was definitely worth it, and my dad had the medical treatment, our family managed to get the funds, and he’s playing drums again. It was worth it a hundred times over, doing that drum thing and all of the other family events we ran.

The launch coming up at the Woodshed is shaping up to be a big night. What can you tell us about it?
Yeah, I’m so excited for that. The Woodshed is a great venue that our band hasn’t played there yet, but I’ve heard great reviews about it. I went and checked it out myself, and as soon as I stepped one foot into the door, I’m like this has to be the venue for my event. It encapsulates rock and roll in the best possible way. But yeah, I can’t wait for my launch event, because it’s free entry, free pizza, and I’m just trying to get as many people there to have a good time and celebrate the final completion of this book.

What’s the plan for the launch night?
It will be a combination of, I’ll play a few performance pieces from the book, because the textbook actually has some play-along pieces, kind of like at the completion of a chapter, you get to do a big boss kind of thing, like in a video game. You get to show what you’ve learned and put it into actual practice. So, there’s a couple of tracks from the book that I’ll play along to. I’ll do my usual Babes solo, so whenever we play a live gig, we have this segue into a mini drum solo, so I’m going to do that as well. I’m really excited because this is the first time I’m performing on my new drum kit. I’ve got a new Pearl Mirror Chrome drum kit. It has a Harley-Davidson attached to the front of it, so I’m finally getting to showcase this, and it will be a little bit of a performance, but I’ll do a little demo of some of the play-along exercises, so anyone who is a drummer, there’ll be a couple of practice pads at the front if they want to join in, there’s no pressure whatsoever. I’ve got lots of giveaways as well, the drum companies that support me have given me some great prizes, and we’ll pull a name out of a drum and see who wins a couple of those, and then after that, it’s just pizza and rock and roll.

Given that you’re constantly challenging yourself, what’s next in the pipeline for you?
I don’t know. I just want our band to get back on touring again. We’ve got a whole new album, that we’ve been working on for a very long time now. Life has gotten hectic in certain ways for us, and we just all want it so bad, so once the album’s done, I just want to be full steam back into touring with the band again.

What can you say about the album?
It’s still underdog rock and roll, and it’s got a few aspects of southern rock kind of smidged into there as well. We’re very proud of the songs, and we wanted it to be bigger and better than the last album, which we were all proud of as well, so we think that this is going to be our best stuff yet. That’s why we’re just dying to get it done and be out on the road where we belong.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Moni Lashes “The Art Of Hard Rock Drumming” is out now and will be launched at The Woodshed on Thursday 9 October. Free entry, free pizza and epic door prizes…