One of the most decorated, most lauded and most respected drummers in the entire music business, Todd Sucherman has spent decades honing his skills and craft as a percussionist, to the point where he is not only the long-time drummer for one of the busiest rock bands on the planet, Styx, but is also an incredibly in demand session player across a variety of genres, and a world-renowned instructor.
But for many years, he also harboured a secret dream, at times one that seemed impossible or at the very least unlikely. Todd Sucherman wanted to write and record a solo album, and not a drum-heavy technical tome, but an album of pop/rock songs that featured his more melodic side as a lyricist and vocalist, talking about things that were near and dear to his heart. In short, he wanted to be a singer/songwriter.
After many years of thought and planning, and more than a year chipping away at it during the rare moments he wasn’t on the road or at home enjoying life with his wife, singer/songwriter Taylor Mills (Brian Wilson) and their young daughter, Sucherman has finally realized this ambition, with the release of Last Flight Home on May 2, on Aqua Pulse Records in both digital and physical formats (LP and CD).
“I think it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but as with the same sort of childhood feeling like when a kid wants to be an astronaut, I never ever thought that it would actually come to fruition, and if it did, not in a form that it came out in reality. I assumed, probably like most people, that my own record would be some sort of drum centric, jazz fusion offering,” he said.
“But I have always been drawn to songs, melodies most importantly, and lyrics and good storytelling. I gravitate to that more than I do drumming pyrotechnics. If left to my own devices, I listen to whatever I want to listen to. And I have also been fortunate that I have some good friends from the old days that were always sort of telling me that I should make a record. And I thought of all my drumming heroes, every single one of them has at least one record under their own name. That was something I always wanted to do.”
The genesis for doing an entire album of original material came when he and one of those ‘good friends from the old days,’ songwriter/producer J.K. Harrison, wrote what would eventually be the title track for this debut album.
“The whole song was basically done in about 30 minutes and that sort of solidified it in my mind that, okay, this can really actually happen. And because I had known him for so long, I could stand in a room and just suck at singing and have him direct me – to produce me, in effect. And that’s what happened. We had such a great working relationship, we went from ‘no one in the world is going to hear this,’ to ‘well, my goodness, I can stand behind a full album and proudly put my name on it,’” Sucherman said.
“As I played some of the music for a very small number of my closest confidantes, they were wonderfully and happily approving. So, I decided I was going to go ahead with the project. And it became this fun, somewhat secretive thing I did on the side. I didn’t really tell many people about it because I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced that this would follow through to completion. It became this exciting little side project. I was having so much fun with it and one day when I listed to all the songs in a row, I remember thinking, ‘yeah, that’s a record.’”
Many within the industry, and especially general music fans, were caught a little off guard when the press release announcing the release of Last Flight Home hit their inboxes, because there was little, if any, advance notice, or music biz scuttlebutt that Sucherman was even working on a solo project. He said that was deliberate, and that even those closest to him knew very little.
“I didn’t actually talk much about it with the guys in Styx. {Keyboardist and Canadian music icon] Lawrence [Gowan] knew a bit and had an inkling. I think I mentioned that I was working on a record, but that was more in broad strokes – the album as more of a concept, and that was sort of it. When you’re in a band, it’s kind of interesting because everybody’s side projects are their side projects, and they kind of exist outside the band in their own universe. I actually just sent everybody a disc the other day. And they had no impact on this at all . I didn’t play any of it for any of them along the way. I didn’t ask for any advice. Actually, come to think of it I did play a couple of songs for Lawrence before the last date that Styx played in New Orleans, so he’s had a chance to hear a couple of pieces,” Sucherman said.
“And as for Taylor, I kept it quiet from her to a degree until we started getting to the point where the first passes on the song were done in the studio, and then she would give me some vocal tips. And she also made me feel great that the two vocals I was most self-conscious about, a song called Ad Lib Everything and An Invitation, she straight away said, ‘those are two of your best performances.’ She gave me a wonderful shot in the arm with regards to those two pieces, which I love. I was afraid for the longest time I wasn’t doing the compositions the service that they required.”
Speaking of singing lead vocals, Sucherman admits that it was perhaps the most daunting part of the entire enterprise.
“Listen, I am still not comfortable in that role, really. I have always tried to do background vocals, going back to my first Styx tour in 1996. So, I am comfortable in that role, and I am definitely more comfortable sitting behind the drums, sitting safely behind some big chunks of wood and metal. To step out from behind all that was a very daunting thing, as you said. I have always been sheepish or shy or just downright embarrassed about solo singing, for whatever reason,” Sucherman explained.
“Phil Collins has always been a huge inspiration to me on so many different levels during the different phases of his career going back to playing on [Genesis album] Nursery Cryme in 1971. His drumming on 1973’s Selling England by the Pound is a monolith of progressive rock drumming. And the fact that when Peter Gabriel left Genesis [in 1975] that Phil stepped up and the next Genesis record, Trick of the Tail, was a classic, and was their most successful record to that date – that’s an astonishing story. That’s tantamount to Bono leaving U2 and [drummer] Larry Mullen stepping out and becoming the singer of U2 and the next U2 record with Larry Mullen singing is their most successful record. It’s an incredible story.
“So, I think my love for Phil Collins also gave me a little bit of a push to do this. And the fact that I met Phil Collins for the first time last September, in the midst of making this record, that was just some sort of special little thing, a little magic fairy dust moment that said, ‘yeah, continue to see this project through.’ It was a long and enjoyable process to truly find my own voice here and it’s something that I am proud of and something I can stand behind and go, ‘that’s exactly how I wanted it to be, that’s exactly how I envisioned it in my head.’”
Last Flight Home, both the album and title track, have great resonance for Sucherman as they represent an aspect of his life as a busy professional touring musician and drum clinician that keeps him away from Mills and the couple’s six-year-old daughter for various stretches of time. The longing to return home, and making the most of that home time, and the value of family infuses much of the album. For the title song, Sucherman dug deep to demonstrate the desperation he, and arguably every other touring musician with family, feels when those precious moments amongst kith and kin are closer on the horizon.
“J.K. did a lot of the heavy lifting on the structure of most of the album, because he already had some demos and some basic charcoal sketches of songs that acted as a foundation. But Last Flight Home was one of the ones where we wrote it from scratch. It was just one of those magic nights where all of a sudden you have a song, and not only do you have a song, but you have the concept that is the centrepiece of the album and quite probably track one,” he said.
“Throughout my whole career, it seemed like there was never a problem flying out to a destination. But coming home and actually trying to get home with flights that arrive on time, with the ticket that you purchased, seem to be an impossibility for years. Whether it was a broken plane, inclement weather the night before that made the crew late, or the crew has mysteriously gone, or there’s a tail light out on the plan, which doesn’t affect anything with the flight, and is a very quick fix, but there’s a three hour delay because of all the paperwork after they fix the light. It’s been one thing after another for decades just trying to get home. And I finally learned if you really want to get home, take the first flight out. Take the 5 a.m. one because it has the best chance of at least going close to the direction of where my wife and daughter are. It doesn’t matter if I get no sleep, or just 90 minutes of sleep before I have to head to the airport, if I want to get home, that’s what it takes. Sometimes I am out on a run for 17 days and then I only have two days at home before I have to go out and do two drum master classes somewhere. If I am delayed three to eight hours at the airport, those are precious hours that I am not at home.
“So, the song just came out from all of those experiences. I just started writing scenarios of frustration of being stuck at an airport. And J.K. was sitting there at the piano and we sat there and had a gin and tonic and the song was done in 30 minutes. If you’ve ever written a song, you know you could be labouring over something for an infinite amount of time. But when something like that comes together so quickly and it’s basically done, you can’t really believe it. It’s like lightning struck and you wish that it was always that easy.”
One of the most evocative tracks on the album is the wonderfully titled Sacred Book of Favorite Days, a phrase that Sucherman said he devised while under the influence of some psychedelic materials more than 25 years ago.
“And to be clear it was the last time that I ever did that. But that phrase came into my mind at the time and it’s always stuck with me. That song is more of a romantic notion that when you’re with someone who, when he looks through his sacred book of favourite days, she is on every page. And that’s why it also has that sort of psychedelic, Beatles, later XTC sort of vibe. And obviously that’s about Taylor. She would definitely be my muse – considering we’ve been together for, my goodness, 21 years, she’d better be my muse,” Sucherman said, adding the song It’s Perfection is also about his wife.
“It was really J.K. who wrote the majority of that one, and we massaged the lyrical lines to kind of fit Taylor. I just think that song really encompasses the feeling of when it hits you, like lightning, that this is the woman, this the one and this is the one situation where I can’t screw it up, and I can’t let this go. The bridge really encapsulates that feeling of falling in love and realizing, ‘oh my God, I have found the one.”
Another potently profound song on Last Flight Home, is one that is actually not autobiographical – I Can’t Use Them Anymore.
“It’s about having your life explode and certain goals and certain things that you wanted to attain truly become an impossibility and so you have to recreate yourself from the bottom up, because it’s not going to happen. After living in Los Angeles for many years, there are so many broken dreams out there – people who moved out there to become a musician, to become an actor, to become a screenwriter, and how many of those dreams have never and will never happen,” Sucherman said.
“Not everyone can be an astronaut, not everyone can be Michael Jordan. I think that song examines someone who comes to grips with the reality that this is never going to happen and it’s a case where you have to create new dreams and recreate yourself and go down a new path.”
With Last Flight Home now completed and released, Sucherman said he does not have any lofty ambitions of repeating the career arc of his idol Phil Collins and ‘going solo.’
“Listen, I would never say never, but I have no plans for that or for even playing these songs live. I have no aspirations to be some sort of singing celebrity. This really was a grand experiment to see if I could do something that I wasn’t sure I could do. But that being said, I would never say never, but there are no intentions to follow up. I am very, very happy playing drums in Styx and very happy being a session musician and doing clinics and stuff. This is just a little step out, a little foray into the unknown, into the land of make believe,” he said.
For more information on Sucherman’s varied activities and on Last Flight Home, visit www.toddsucherman.com.
For more information on Styx, visit www.styxworld.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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