I had a sit-down conversation with drummer/composer/bandleader Devin Gray, a passionate, hungry musician who’s both as intensely introspective as he is outgoing and engaging. We trace his journey to becoming a musician, people who inspired him along the way, his motivation for testing the boundaries of jazz and key relationships he’s developed on both sides of the Atlantic.
Get info on how catch Devin Gray perform live here. Part 1 of our two-part interview with Devin is below:
S. VICTOR AARON: So tell me a bit about your journey you took from being just a music lover to a music practitioner.
DEVIN GRAY: I’m from Maine, I grew up in Maine, and I have some music in the family through my father’s side, and also my mother’s father… both my grandparents were playing piano, and we had a piano at the house from as early as I could remember, and they would come over and kind of play it. And so that was one thing. And then, I had neighbors, down the street that were actually in semi-successful bands in the mid-90s. So when I was early teens, I could hear them playing, and then I just loved the sound of music, obviously, and my dad through my grandfather was kind of connected to some classical music, so he had that in the house. Eventually I think I wanted to play drums because the neighbor was playing drums.
My grandfather encouraged this and told my father, “here are two CDs, give these to your son.” One was Gene Krupa, and because he knew all this music from back in the day, he saw Duke Ellington’s band and stuff, he was in the wars. So it was Gene Krupa, and it was Buddy Rich. Eventually I got a drum set at the house, started putting those together, and then I could hear the band… bands rehearsing in the open air in Maine, which is a rare thing, because it’s not that I’m in the middle of nowhere, but it’s a lot of space. That was a beautiful thing to hear, literally, the sound of music in the air, no pun intended.
Then I started playing on my own, and then the schools, and then friends that were also really into music. Our community was pretty supportive, in a certain way, where everybody loved music, MTV was rocking, music was really happening in the early 90s, as you may recall, on a social level. I just kept getting deeper and deeper into it, and felt I need to go to music school when it time came to decide “are you gonna go to business school, like your parents, or are you gonna go to music school?” Long story short, my dad did business, even though
he learned that you should be doing the things that you want to be doing in life, and so he was a little bit more supportive, telling me “if you want to go to music school and be a musician, then do it, go all the way.” So then I applied to music schools, and then I ended up getting into Peabody (Institute). And everyone was telling me, you should go study with (reedist) Gary Thomas and (bassist) Michael Formanek because, these are not your average, musicians, these are historically important figures in the music. And so I went to Peabody, and it just kept spiraling, spiraling. All of that is to say, just because like you said, it did start with the love of listening and hearing music, because I still feel exactly the same way to this day, where it’s like I’m listening all the time to all sorts of stuff.
S. VICTOR AARON: I’m gonna jump forward to the time where I first learned about you, and that was your debut album Dirigo Rataplan from a guy I’ve never heard of before, and you’ve got on it Formanek, who you already referred to, and, (trumpeter) Dave Ballou and…
DEVIN GRAY: Ellery!
S. VICTOR AARON: (saxophonist) Ellery Eskelin, right! You’ve got some heavy hitters from the prior generation backing you up on this. And, and you’re leading this record, and you’re composing all the music. What was your strategy going into this record, for your recorded introduction to the world, you know, how did you decide on this type of challenge?
DEVIN GRAY: I know this sounds kind of crazy, but for me and my musical journey, it actually
made complete sense. It wasn’t really that forced, because I was exploding with music. Being allowed the opportunity to go and study music was really big for me, because it just reinforced the love that I already had of music, and then on top of it, these teachers were so inspiring and gave me so much information, real information, because they knew that I was in it for the right reasons, and I would say still am. You really have to love it enough that you really want to make this not just a thing, not just a part of your life, but pretty much your entire life, and that I had already done, probably even in middle school, which in a weird way was potentially dangerous. Mike and I were around each other a lot at the (Peabody) school.
The same with Dave Ballou, he was at a different school, but he knew me. Ballou started teaching at Maine Jazz Camp, which is a whole other part of the equation. So when I was about 14, I was at this camp, and that was when we really got introduced to all of these New York musicians who were taking a break. In the summer in Maine was when our little musical world from our little town collided with New York in the middle of nowhere in Maine. That was when our brains really were being exploded by them. Here’s somebody that’s a part of the fabric of jazz, American history of jazz, or global history. That is our teacher, and we don’t even know that he has all these records, and bands, and people, so we were just eating it alive, because we were young and didn’t know it, and so that really fueled us long before going to music school. By the time I had gone through music school and spent some years in New York playing with everybody, meeting everybody, and keeping that momentum going, this record was just kind of like a byproduct of all of that.
I already knew that I wanted to be a musician way before going to music school. I was already playing in high school, playing at wine bars, playing gigs, playing the club dates. I wanted to do that more than get a job. I wanted to play concerts and be on stage and play the instrument, because I’ve been playing the drums since forever and so by the time I was 27, 28, I had only kind of figured it out compositionally, where now I can present this.
(Gary Thomas and Mike Formanek) gave me the confidence by telling me, “oh, you love music? Oh, you want to be a musician? Oh, you do! Okay, then cool, then this is how you do it. Just play.” Gary would just play with us. We were like 18, 19, 20, freaking out. We’ve never had a teacher just be a musician that is just cool with us.
S. VICTOR AARON: One of the things that, in addition to the fantastic playing on there by all of y’all on that debut record, was your composing, which was to me, with very advanced. It reminded me a lot of Julius Hemphill. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but I know that
In reading about you, you’ve hung around with a lot of great composers, could you tell me about some of those that you’ve worked with who were an influence on you as a composer?
DEVIN GRAY: I grew up very, very close with a saxophone player who is no longer a working musician, but is probably the best musician I’ve ever known. He’s ridiculous, but he decided not to really pursue it, but everybody in this little Maine bubble, all of these people know him, because he was the heavy top dog. He was memorizing Clifford Brown solos when we were in middle school. And he was just all over music, because he learned music on a fundamental level early. He had such a foundation that most of us didn’t really have, myself included, so that he could function in music. He knew harmonic movements, and kept learning, learning, learning, so he was so advanced that by high school, we wondered, what is going on with this guy? He was writing tunes and stuff when we were playing them in high school, that was way above me at that time, but that being said, when I went to undergrad, I realized that not everybody plays tenor saxophone or flute like that.
I know enough about hanging around these people that, you don’t copy people. You really just have to find your own thing that you like, that really is honest within your own life, because otherwise, I don’t think you can keep going on, because then what? You run out of things, because you copied somebody already, and then there’s nowhere to go. So I really learned earlier that it really has to come from the inner self of truth.
That started in high school, that progressed into undergrad, being around, especially Gary, with a very specific, personalized approach to everything. And he would never tell us to do his thing. His whole thing was, learn music, keep working on music, keep practicing and do what you like. Don’t do things for weird reasons, do it because you wanted to.
So then I started writing in undergrad also for Dave and Mike, because we started playing trio.
We started playing at a cafe in Baltimore, because they kept telling me ”just get a gig, just get a gig.” I would say “it doesn’t pay enough” and they insisted “it doesn’t matter, let’s just play every week.” So I started doing these trio gigs, and then, Ballou would show up to a rehearsal, and he’d have, like, six new tunes. They’re making so much music, these guys are wizards, still to this day, but also, without that experience, I just wouldn’t understand how any of this was possible.
Then they started encouraging me to write some (tunes) and bring some in, so I started writing for the two of them, and then playing them on gigs, and that progressed, and then I went to grad school at Manhattan School of Music, where they are very compositionally focused (with all) these harmonic ideas. That grad school experience was incredible, because you’d bring in a new piece the next day, and then everyone could read everything immediately, and so I can hear the music immediately. So then my brain started shaping what it is that I wanted to hear based off of the experiences in high school, undergrad, and then grad school in New York. After graduating, I started playing all these sessions with everybody, like Angie (pianist Angelica) Sanchez, (saxophonist) Ingrid Laubrock and (pianist) Kris Davis, of course, that’s how we started playing. Kris Davis and I started working together because it was a product of compositional practices. I was writing all the time, but I had ideas. That progressed into basically formulating the basis of the Dirigo Rataplan statement, where it was all these years building up.
I have to stand by (what I write) 100% in order for me to feel like myself. I’d have an idea, and of course, Formanek and Ellery and Ballou were just all over it. They really lifted my music into a new realm, which is also why I wanted to work with them in that way, because then I could hear my tunes.
S. VICTOR AARON: Speaking of Kris Davis, she was part of your next record. When I listen to your first two records back-to-back and get RelativE RosonanceE It’s like a totally different vibe there. I’m wondering, did you compose the music for that record with those particular players in mind, Kris Davis and Chris Speed and Chris Tordini?
DEVIN GRAY: Yeah, it’s the Chris’s band, it was kind of a little fun joke. We were playing gigs before, also, because, again, I wanted to do something with them, with that constellation. Everything, is the same thing with, like, (saxophonist) Frank Gratkowski and (accordionist/keyboardist) Andrea Parkins, where it’s coming from that impulse of inspiration. For me as a composer, I’m writing all the time. If I can find things that I like, and put them together in a way that I feel like I can present them, that I think will be interesting. That band and also that record, I still like it.
Even the records like Melt All the Guns (get it from Bandcamp here), the second one that came out, a lot of those approaches to composition are actually very similar, just in a different context but that is also what I realized what makes up a DNA part of my music as a composer. We’re not gonna make a million dollars, so we might as well make a million dollars’ worth of music.
S. VICTOR AARON: You mentioned Melt All The Guns, and I wanted to dive into that a little bit. You have a couple of mentioned Melt All The Guns releases, both involving the mighty trumpet of Ralph Alessi. That was an instance where you wanted to make a social statement, in this case about runaway gun violence here in America. So, how does writing music with a cause in mind, how does that inform how you compose the music?
DEVIN GRAY: Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s a tricky question for people that are writing instrumental music. I think it can or cannot influence the way you’re applying these thoughts to the situations. Inasmuch as I think it’s important for artists to be how they’re thinking about things and if they want to, to then explain to people. This is what I’m thinking about these days, or right now, or right during that solo, or right with these notes. You’re the one that needs to be dealing with this concept that you think is important, because there’s no other reason to do it if you don’t think it’s important. Which is why I think artists are important, because we do things that matter, and I think more people, you know, not to toot any artist’s horn, but I think the arts in general and statements like this are critical to society, because we’re making serious choices. If you don’t understand it, that’s fine, but then you should at least pretend to understand that maybe that person is thinking about something and making a statement. It’s another way of making my compositions and art exist in the world. And there were some weird reviews that came in, too, where there was some hate online, actually. Some people were digging super hard into me, which is hilarious, because I’m from the state of Maine and grew up taking a gun safety class, and we’re not hunters in our house.
My eyes aren’t shut. I understand the United States and the NRA, and the history, and also, I’m not clueless to a lot of these things, but I think, ultimately, at its core violence in general is not a good thing, and as a concept, I guess now we have to be very explicit about it. I think people should just be thinking about these things more, and/or talking with each other a little bit more about these things. There’s no more time for hiding, you know?
I would like more of that, way of communicating, or transmissions between people in the world to be existing, if possible. It would be a wish of mine, just as much as the political statements of Melt All The Guns. So, yeah. Sorry, I tangented, but I think it’s important.
S. VICTOR AARON: No, I definitely understand. It was important enough for you, to make these
these two records, the EP and the full album. Listening to those, I was expecting it to be fury, and I didn’t find that at all. What I found instead was a lot of moments of frustration, about the situation, but also a lot of contemplation and reflection. Are those some sentiments that you intended to get across with that music?
DEVIN GRAY: Short answer, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, in terms of explicitly here plus here, plus that, plus this. It’s all emotionally like a collective experience of all these things. So, yeah, yeah, I think all of those emotions are in there.
One more quick thing, just fun tidbit. That band, Melt All the Guns 2, is playing in Berlin in a couple weeks. We’re playing on June 6th (2026), the day before my birthday, with Ralph and Ms. Laura (pianist Myslaure Augustin) at KM28, this great music venue, a part of the scene, we can talk about that later. But anyway, I just had to say that, coming up, so I’m excited.
S. VICTOR AARON: You have your own record company, Rataplan Records, so what prompted you to start that?
DEVIN GRAY: The quickest answer is just about time and energy, and it’s about me making music as the priority. And believe it or not, I’ve already been kind of doing it all myself my whole life, since middle school. I can send you a recording that we made in middle school. That actually still sounds good. That was an 8th grade gift from my mom. She said “you guys should go to the studio,” and we were practicing and went in and made a CD in 1998, or whatever the hell that was. I love recording because it started way back then, too.
Dirigo came out and RelativE ResonancE came out, I learned a lot from that, as well as learning from (publicist) Anne Braithwaite, and just seeing what things are outside of just making music.
But generally speaking, it’s just tempo. I was sitting there in Brooklyn, and asked myelf, do I need to keep begging somebody in a foreign country to release my music for me? Do I need to keep emailing all these people? This is taking a lot of time and energy away from making more music. And then I realized, I was born in ‘83, we grew up with computers, I know how to use a computer, let me just upload the thing myself. I took a copyrights and contracts class in undergraduate school, and have a Donald S. Passman book around. Hmm, let me put these two together and read the internet, and then all of those things just started making sense. We are the music, and I still feel this way. My intent wasn’t to make some huge record label, putting out music is very time-consuming. I think when I’m working in the way I really want to work, I can get it out there faster, and keep moving, and just keep it going. Also, I can control it. Furthermore, I’m a composer, so having my hands in the publishing side of the compositional side is a little bit interesting to me as the business arm of myself as a musician and composer. Not that I grew up as a composer, but the fact that I own my compositions, that is my time and energy, so at a certain point, I should probably also figure out, I’m owed, like, 30 cents from somewhere, you know? And for me, I just care that it’s what I’m owed, so I should get something for my time, even if it’s way out of proportion for 2026. Having a label opened up a lot of these other doors of organization in the music.
I’m not opposed to putting other people’s music out. People are sending me music all the time. I love listening to it. I love meeting new people because of that, so it even is expanding my kind of connectivity, which I personally just love, because I love talking to people and meeting people, and connect. But, you know, so people are sending me things, and the truth is, I don’t really have a good answer for how to do it, because what it comes down to is time and energy.
I’m also busy writing new music. I have, like, five new records I don’t even have the time to put out.
For Hz of Gold, I found the space to do it, and so that was why that record came out. And Melt All the Guns came out before the band even did the tour, because I have the record label, because I know how to structure these things, and the time I spent working on these things.
S. VICTOR AARON: The takeaway I’m getting from this is that either you have time to put out your own music, or you have time to help other musicians put out their own music. It’s very hard to find the time to do both.
DEVIN GRAY: Yup. I couldn’t see it any other way for me so far, but once I find a new way, then I’ll try to do it. The last thing I’ll say would be that I’m open for consultancy. And I feel like I can charge for that, which I am doing on a private tip, but that’s not the record label. I’m not public about that, but I do offer those services to people on a sidebar, because I’ve gone through all those channels to figure out at least what I’m doing, so I can at least speak on that.
The upcoming Part 2 of this interview covers Devin’s migration to Europe, the creative ensembles he’s put together there and what makes the Berlin music scene so unique and exciting.
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