S2 E16 - Gordy Knudtson

Welcome to this week's Drum Channel Podcast with Billy Amendola. 

This podcast features Gordy Knudtson, most known as the touring drummer with the Steve Miller band for the past thirty years. Gordy, recently retired from touring to spend more time at home and taking care of his company GK-Music.com, the first company to make and market hearing protection headphones for musicians called DrumPhones. His current model called UltraPhones is the isolation headphone of choice for top professionals across the country.

Knudtson is also an educator and author of numerous drum method books. When he wasn’t on tour, he was Head of the Percussion Department he created at McNally Smith College in St.Paul, Minnesota. 

Gordy took an interest in playing drums at age 15 after taking piano and clarinet lessons. By age 19 he was doing studio work in Minneapolis’ busy commercial music scene of the 1970’s. He recorded advertising jingles, radio & TV station logos, and industrial film scores during the day, while performing with regionally renown Minneapolis bands at night.

I’m 1982, he began a six year association with jazz pianist/vocalist Ben Sidran, performing in jazz clubs and festivals around the world, which led to his association with Steve Miller. 

In 2002 Gordy released the first book and instructional video about Open/Close Technique, which introduced nomenclature, notation, and synchronizations, and showed how it can be used to create a family of single stroke rolls which directly parallel the double stroke rolls. *Watch for a video with a lesson on Drum Channel in the near future.  

Let’s listen. Enjoy the show!