Barrett Martin

Barrett Martin is an American drummer, upright bassist, composer, producer, writer, and Zen artist. He was the drummer for the Seattle, Washington groups Skin Yard and Screaming Trees, as well as the supergroups Mad Season and Tuatara. A multiinstrumentalist and producer, he does recording session work in Seattle and Los Angeles and has played on, or produced, over 75 albums to date. He is primarily known for his powerful tribal drumming style, which includes the use of the tom toms as a rhythmic component that replaces the traditional hihat and ride cymbal. He credits the jazz drummers Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Elvin Jones for inspiring this approach to his drumming style, as well as the rock drummers John Bonham, Keith Moon, and Neil Peart. He has also stated that the heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali inspired his drumming at a young age, saying, Ali was so incredibly fast on his feet, and his hands were both light and heavy at the same time. Float like a butterfly, sting like bee, th

Martin was born and grew up in Olympia, Washington, and studied jazz and classical music theory at Western Washington University in the mid1980s. After dropping out of college to play music professionally, he later completed both his bachelors and masters degrees in anthropology, linguistics, and ethnomusicology at the University of New Mexico, graduating summa cum laude . Living in Seattle in the mid 1980s, Martin was witness to the early music scene there, joining grunge pioneers Skin Yard in 1990, and making two albums with the band, 1000 Smiling Knuckles and Inside the Eye . When Skin Yard broke up, Martin was asked to fill the recently vacated drum seat in another seminal Seattle band, Screaming Trees. The Trees went on to make two more studio albums with Martin, Sweet Oblivion and Dust , before calling it quits in June 2000.

Source: Wikipedia