DON BROCO drummer Matt Donnelly on singing and playing with personality
Given that his introduction to music was the sounds of Phil Collins and The Carpenters and his musical chops were sharpened to Blink-182 and Taking Back Sunday, Matt Donnelly’s path seems to have been long laid out.
What else could he possibly ever become than a singing drummer? He’s certainly found his calling with Brit pop rockers Don Broco.
Here, he gets to not only channel his inner Travis Barker and Dan Flint, laying down interesting and intricate beats, but he also stretches his vocal muscles, backing up Broco frontman Rob Damiani throughout the band’s catalogue.
It’s a mix that certainly seems to be working. As this issue of Rhythm hits the shelves the band are in the midst of a UK tour that includes their biggest headline show to date, a night at Brixton Academy. This comes hot on the heels of their second album, Automatic, which earned rave reviews on its way to smashing into the UK Top Ten.
As well as drumming with Don Broco you do a lot of backing vocals. Where did you first encounter singing drummers?
“I remember being in the car on family holidays and my dad was a huge Phil Collins and Genesis fan and my mum used to listen to The Carpenters a lot as well. From there I started discovering music for myself at around 13, and that was when we as a group of mates would go to gigs on our own and see bands like Blink-182, Foo Fighters and Taking Back Sunday. The natural next step from that was that we wanted to learn to play those songs and eventually write our own songs. I took up the drums and every lunchtime we would be at school learning our craft. We were all bad at our instruments, but we’d just be bad together!”