Joey Baron has been one of my biggest heroes since my teenage years. I saw him live for the first time in 2004 with John Abercrombie’s quartet at the Domicil in Dortmund and I’ll never forget this concert! During that time I was listening a lot to Abercrombie’s quartet album “Class Trip” and John Taylor’s record “Rosslyn” (my favorite JT album). There are so many records I love that feature his infectious drumming… too many to name them all. Also, I went to see Joey’s fantastic band “Killer Joey” lots of times when they came to play in Cologne, which was always an memorable experience, to say the least. He’s one of my all time favorite musicians for sure!!

I was amazed of how open Joey was to share all of his memories and to give insights into his process. And he was so generous with this time: After two hours of talking to him I said: “I hope you know that you don’t HAVE to keep talking to me! We can stop if you like, OK?” He just smiled and see “No it’s fine, I made time for this” – we kept on talking for another two hours!!

After I had started to edit the interview, I realized there was so much stuff in there that it would be hard to cut it into the usual one-hour-format, so edited the whole thing into four separate parts. Hope you enjoy!