Lehi resident fills days with drums
Musician Jay Lawrence plays the drums for the band Jersey Street during a rehearsal at the UCCU Center in Orem Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
Musician Jay Lawrence, right, takes notes while instructing student Matt Millington during a private lesson at BYU Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
The over-flowing day planner belonging to musician Jay Lawrence Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
Musician Jay Lawrence sets up one of his drum sets before a rehearsal with the band Jersey Street at the UCCU Center in Orem Thursday, Oct. 12, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
Musician Jay Lawrence teaches a class on jazz improvisation at BYU Thursday Oct. 11, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
Musician Jay Lawrence plays the drums for the band Jersey Street during a rehearsal at the UCCU Center in Orem Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
When professional musician Jay Lawrence enters the classroom he’s a few minutes late and a little out of breath. It’s just past 10 a.m. and he jumps right into a lesson with his class in jazz improvisation at BYU’s Harris Fine Arts Center. While some of his students are just starting their day, Lawrence is already well into a busy schedule. He came from private drum lessons that morning and will run to another class after this one.
As the class wraps up, Lawrence checks his day planner to answer questions about an upcoming test. The planner is almost bursting at its leather seams, obviously well used, but when one hears his daily schedule it’s easy to see why.
After finishing a lesson on guide tones, Lawrence hustles through the maze of hallways and stairwells of the Harris Fine Arts Center. Arriving in an almost closet-sized lesson room in the basement of a neighboring building, he barely has a few minutes to sit at a computer before his next private lesson begins.
As a student plays through a number of Latin beats on the small drum set in one corner, Lawrence sits behind him scribbling notes in a practice binder. Just as the student gets the hang of one beat, Lawrence challenges him with another.
Before you know it the next appointment arrives and another lesson begins. Lawrence’s morning continues like this until 12:30 p.m. when he fights his way through unusually busy traffic to Utah Valley University for a rehearsal with one of the many bands with which he performs.
Drums are unloaded from his van, wheeled in cases to the large stage in the UCCU Center and set up along with the rest of the band’s gear: keyboards, guitars, bass, microphones, foot pedals and endless amounts of cables that snake around their feet.
For the next few hours Lawrence drums with the band Jersey Street, playing expertly through various songs that he learned about the night before.
Once the rehearsal ends he rushes to Platinum Sound & Mastering Lab in Bountiful for a recording session that stretches late into the night before an early start at a Nu Skin event at UVU the following morning. All the while he’s fielding phone calls asking if he’s available for upcoming gigs. The day planner gets more full.
That’s a typical work day for Lawrence who covers a good deal of ground teaching up to 55 private lessons a week on top of classes at BYU, UVU, Snow College and every other week at BYU-Idaho.
Add to that list recording sessions and live performances with different bands playing anything from rock and jazz gigs, to performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Utah Symphony Orchestra.
Working 10 to 15 hours a day, sometimes up to six days a week, is an exhausting schedule but one Lawrence is used to.
“There’s not too many nights off in the music business,” he admits.
At age 14 he began taking drum lessons while living in Reno, Nev., and became a member of the union at age 15.
“I was lucky that I was young and was in an area that I could get a lot of professional experience,” he said.
He landed his first gig with Barbara Eden of “I Dream of Jeannie” fame in a nightclub on his 16th birthday, and from there things took off. Lawrence performed with 85 other celebrity acts, including Tom Jones, Cher, Ann-Margret and Sammy Davis Jr.
When work dried up in Reno, Lawrence moved to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music, but after just one semester he ran out of money and took to the road, touring with Liberace. He followed that with a mission for the LDS Church, then relocated to Provo to attend BYU with plans of moving onto Los Angeles.
Once again, after just one semester, Lawrence was struggling to fund his education and returned to Nevada to work in casinos from Las Vegas to Reno. In 1986 when the Sahara Casino in Reno shut down the show he was performing in, Lawrence moved back to Utah and ended up staying.
“I found out there was lots of music to be made here,” he said with a smile.
His lifetime of hard work is evident both in his three-car garage full of equipment and in the way he plays. During a mic check before a band rehearsal people stop to stare or dance, including his own bandmates, as he lays down a beat with his foot pedal while his sticks work their way around the drum set.
With just a five-piece kit, a number of custom cymbals and one bass drum pedal it seems the possibilities are endless for Lawrence as he expertly plays behind the other members of the band. But the drum set is just one of many percussion instruments he plays regularly. Mridangams, taxi horns, washboards, tabla — the list goes on, and Lawrence has played them all, in studios and classrooms and on stage.
He’s recorded on 140 albums, four as a leader with his latest, “Sweet Lime,” going to No. 7 on the JazzWeek Charts. Add to that the three music instruction books he has written and his hectic daily work schedule and it’s amazing that he still finds time for his wife Linda, six children and 10 grandchildren at home in Lehi.
“It’s a never-ending challenge. A blend of challenge and exhilaration and expression and creativity,” he said.
For more information on Jay Lawrence and his work, visit www.jaylawrencedrums.com.
