Recommended Mike Kinsella’s 10 favorite air drum anthems

In the Chicago music scene, the Kinsella family name tends to pop a lot. Brothers Tim and Mike have played in countless different bands, most notably Cap’n Jazz, the short-lived ’90s punk act that would inspire hundreds of bands for years to come. Since then, drummer Mike Kinsella has stepped away from the kit, performing in his own bands, American Football and, more recently, Owen. However, he has not forgotten his drum-beating youth and took some time to talk with The A.V. Club about his favorite songs to play air drums to.

“Here Come The Rome Plows,” Drive Like Jehu

The A.V. Club: I imagine you just sitting on a bus and rocking out to this.

Mike Kinsella: Actually, I listen to it when I’m at the gym more. When I’m doing a treadmill or something, and then you try to keep pace with your legs, like BPM. It’s a good arm workout, I think, to try to play the whole song.

AVC: You don’t ever trip yourself trying to get the bass kicks in there, do you?

MK: I’ve never fallen, but I think three times—it happened twice, like in the same day session—the person next to me thought I was, like, an idiot or retarded or something. You know, my arms will swing and pull on my headphone cable, and then my iPod will shoot off the machine and behind me. I feel kind of dumb, because in the moment, you’re, like, all worked up, you’re going fast, and you’re nailing all the beats and stuff, and then all of a sudden it’s like, “Whoops!” And then there’s like no sound, your thing’s on the ground, you have to stop, you’re all sweaty. It’s awkward.

AVC: Do you make sure that you nail every switching time signature when you play it?

MK: Oh yeah. That’s what makes it fun, to try to keep up with it, you know?

AVC: When you were coming up in Cap’n Jazz, you were around at about the same time as Drive Like Jehu. Did Mark Trombino ever get the chance to see you play along to it?

MK: Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think he even knows I exist.

“The Trooper,” Iron Maiden

AVC: Do you improvise the fills in the song, or do you try and keep faithful to the source?

MK: That one I improvise, because that’s a different style. I can play somewhat in the Drive Like Jehu style, but that one’s got a lot of wrist action, so I just sort of fake that one. That one I just try and keep up.

AVC: It’s more fun to just do your own thing and have fun with it.

MK: Right, right. That one I just kind of go off. That one I don’t want anybody to see, because if they could hear it and watch me, they’d know I was screwing it up, you know?

AVC: It’s got some pretty long guitar solos in it. Do you ever step away from your air drums and take up the air guitar?

MK: [Laughs.] Yeah, that probably does happen. I like that, that’s a good question. [Laughs.]

“Passing,” C-Clamp

AVC: It’s got that whole soft-loud dynamic, which makes it sound like it would be a good song to warm up your air-drums to.

MK: Yeah. That drummer [Frantz Etienne]—he came up with Cap’n Jazz in our formative years—was sort of, like, totally unique, you know, like he was hitting a bunch of upbeat accents and stuff. A bunch of punk drummers don’t usually do that stuff, so when we’d play shows with them, I’d always be watching him, trying to figure out how he’s doing it, and I probably learned how to do any of that stuff just by watching him do it.

AVC: So you could hear a lot of C-Clamp in your own parts in Cap’n Jazz?

MK: No, I’d say they come out more in the Owen parts, maybe. Cap’n Jazz, it was all pretty straightforward. I’d just play as fast as I could before I pass out, you know? But when I was young like that, I’d like to go see them, and he’d always be practicing.

“The Shock Of The Lightning,” Oasis

AVC: Compared to the other songs on your list, this is pretty straightforward.

MK: I have a theory in that song that aside from just a couple sort of breakdowns where he has a couple long fills and stuff, I think it’s four beats that they just copied and pasted the whole song. It just keeps repeating. But yeah, that’s a good one.

I also have a goal as a grown man to be in some rock band where I can just get really drunk and still be able to play the parts, you know? Instead of all these math rock bands or whatever that I’ve been in, just some band where it’s super straightforward. So that one’s inspiration for that. I’d just keep hitting the snare on two and four the whole time, you know?

AVC: Do you prefer to play along to the math rock songs or the more driving, straightforward rock songs?

MK: Well, the math rock ones sort of get my attention, but this one is sort of a goal of mine to just plow straight ahead and play the song straight, you know?

AVC: Right. And you said it sounded like the beat was copied and pasted. There was a whole hell of a let of bass drum in there, which made it sound like a bad song to play while you’re driving.

MK: [Laughs.] You use your left foot. Now, because I don’t really play drums, but I drive a lot and air drum and stuff, my left foot is actually better at a kick drum than my right foot is, just from playing in the car.

AVC: Have you been able to teach yourself how to switch-hit on drums yet just by drumming in the car?

MK: Like lefty?

AVC: Yeah.

MK: Yeah, I haven’t figured out the hands yet. I’m still right-handed hands, so now I’m just sort of stuck and my right foot can’t keep up.

“Spreading The Disease,” Queensrÿche

AVC: It clocks in at more than eight-minutes-long. Do you ever tire out when you’re playing with it?

MK: Yeah. I tire out a little bit, but that’s just good conditioning, or at least it was when I actually played drums in bands.

AVC: Is that the important part of air drumming, or just drumming in general—that you have to have good conditioning?

MK: Well, no. I think people that are good drummers—and, like, a bunch of jazz drummers—probably don’t get winded. But I sort of taught myself by, like, hitting the drums as hard as I could just so I could hear them over everybody’s amps when practicing in basements. So at a young age, I sort of learned by hitting hard.

That Queensrÿche song though, yeah. It’s pretty tiring. It’s pretty straightforward the whole time, too.

AVC: If I was listening to it correctly, I thought I could hear some bongos in there. Do you play those as well?

MK: [Laughs.] I don’t air bongo, no. It doesn’t hold my interest too much.

“Alma Matters,” Morrissey

AVC: Is this what you play to when you cool down?

MK: Yeah, that’s a little casual. That beat’s super cool though, like he keeps hitting that little upbeat stuff; it’s fun to play along to.

AVC: When people think epic drums, they don’t often think about Morrissey. What drew you to that song?

MK: Well, I’ve been a huge Smiths and Morrissey fan my whole life. That one sort of comes on the shuffle and I find myself playing along.

“9 Fingers On You,” Shudder To Think

AVC: The drums in that sound heavy. Should I just assume that you beat the crap out of the air when it comes on?

MK: Oh yeah, you hit hard, but there’s a lot of little turns in that, too. It’s almost like the whole album [sounds] slower than it should be. There’s so much patience involved in that. You know, like land on a snare and wait for the fill and stuff. You’ve kind of got to stop and time it just right.

That album [Pony Express Record]—like I said, when I was in Cap’n Jazz, I just played like a wind-up monkey, you know, like really fast—that album sort of taught me to sit back and wait back. Sort of sit in the pocket more, maybe.

AVC: It’s got more of a groove than the others?

MK: Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely more disjointed than a lot of them. There’s parts that are really straightforward and stuff, but there’s some turns and stuff where you just kind of got to wait back, you know, hold back and wait for it to happen.

“Creeping Death,” Metallica

AVC: So, how many kick drums does your air kit have?

MK: [Laughs.] It’s got one, because I can’t—you know, I should try it now, seeing how my left foot is good. I’ve never been able to—since I tried, been able to do a double-kick pedal, but I wonder if now as a grown, 35-year-old man, if something clicked in me.

AVC: There’s just a certain age that you hit that you can suddenly start playing with two bass drums.

MK: Yeah, I think it’s just like enlightenment. It just creeps up on you, and then one day—I don’t know, I need to go find a drum set and try right now.

AVC: You have a solid amount of metal on your list. Is that your go-to genre for playing the air drums?

MK: Yeah, well, like you said there’s like—I was going through my playlist, and most of the stuff I listen to doesn’t really lend itself to drumming like that. It’s all sort of like the old high school or college forward of the year metal stuff that still sort of drumming-wise is more exciting. Indie rock in general sort of came on as the whole slacker, “Oh, I’m not really a musician,” you know, like that attitude. It’s not that fun to play along to not-real-musician stuff.

Like you said, though, one of the songs that didn’t make my list was an Unwound song, and I liked it just because I think it was a girl drummer playing in the band, and it’s always like so sloppy that it’s fun to play along to and try to match her sloppiness. But, didn’t make the list.

AVC: What is the hardest metal song to play along to?

MK: I imagine there’s, like, a ton of metal that happened in the past 15 years that I haven’t kept up with. It’s got progressively more faster and complicated, where the sort of stuff—like, I consider all those Maiden songs hard. They’re kind of fast and jerky, and he’s got these quick little wrists. All the Slayer stuff, I guess, is hard, but I mean it would be really hard to do all the fills perfect, but the time signatures and stuff aren’t too hard to figure out or anything.

“Hyper Enough,” Superchunk

AVC: Do you ever include Jon Wurster’s solo from the end of the music video when you play it?

MK: Oh, I never saw the video! In the video, he does, like, an extra thing?

AVC: Yeah, he just does a quick solo at the end of it.

MK: Ah, I never saw that. I’m a big fan—I actually just stopped following him on Twitter because I couldn’t read that much of what he had to say every day. But as a drummer, I just love how—I mean, he sort of epitomizes that sort of indie, “I’m just going to throw a tom in here,” just, like, kind of out of the blue, but you know he did. I don’t know, so yeah, I’m a fan of his. I’ve got to watch that video now.

AVC: A lot of the bands on this list are, for the most part, your contemporaries. Were you playing along to their songs back then just to keep a leg up on them?

MK: [Laughs.] It was just I was a fan, you know? Those were the bands I was watching and sort of learning to play the drums [from].

AVC: Who would you say was the best drummer of that scene that you came up in? Feel free to say yourself.

MK: Oh, no. Not me. Well, my favorite drummer now is my cousin Nate—Nate Kinsella—but he wasn’t really playing in the scene back then. Probably Ryan Rapsys, you know. He was in a band, Gauge, that our band used to play with all the time, and then he’s played in a bunch of bands. He was always like the guy to watch, any show he played. Just real fast and hard, like a bunch of different things—little stuff.

“Subdivisions,” Rush

AVC: I can only imagine that trying to play along to a Rush song looks a lot like having a seizure.

MK: [Laughs.] Yeah. You know, sometime you’ve go to watch the Rush documentary on the Palladia channel. It comes on every so often—I’ve probably watched it like four times—but you sit there, like, “Oh, it’s going to be crazy when he plays it,” but when he’s playing it, it looks like he’s just reading a book or something. Like, he’s doing all these complicated little polyrhythm things and it sounds like he’s doing a whole lot, but he really looks more like indie. So after watching that, I feel like, “Oh man, maybe I’m trying too hard while playing it.” Once again, I need to find a drum kit and practice again. Right now, I’d be a way better drummer all of a sudden, in the past couple years.

AVC: When you play it, do you include all the bells and whistles that Neil Peart does when he plays the drums?

MK: [Laughs.] Like the literal bells and whistles? [Laughs.] He’s got, like, seven wood blocks in there. [Laughs.] Yeah, I just play usually like a real stripped down—you know, I can only handle probably four or five drums, so that’s enough for me.

AVC: Is Rush the holy grail of the air drums?

MK: Well, according to Guitar Hero, or what was it? [Pauses.] Rock Band, or whatever; it’s really hard to play a Rush song on Rock Band. I tried a few years ago. I remember, I think it was “Tom Sawyer” was on there, and it was just like impossible for me. So yeah, I guess. According to video games, that’s the penultimate.

AVC: I’ve heard that it’s a lot harder for musicians to play Rock Band than it is for people who have never really played an instrument before.

MK: Yeah, I had a real tough time with the drums. I could never make sense of it. It never clicked, so I kind of just stopped playing them.

AVC: There’s no margin for error. Playing a real set of drums, you could easily cover up something if you slip up, but the game lets you know that you did it wrong.

MK: Well, even if you’re just playing a real set and you hit the snare, but you kind of just get the rim or something, it’s still there. You kind of get the same feeling—well, not the same, but you can tell it’s there. But if you hit the rim on Rock Band, it just doesn’t count and there’s an error, and you have to, like, try and catch up.

AVC: And then the video crowd starts booing you.

MK: Right, they start booing and you start sweating and you get nervous. It’s a whole avalanche then.

Bonus—favorite song to air tambourine to: “Criminal,” Fiona Apple

AVC: Is that the only other air instrument you’ve mastered? 

MK: I am pretty good at it. [Laughs.] I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty good at air tambourine. When it comes in with that chorus, it’s, like, mixed on top of the drums. It sounds so good. 

AVC: It seems like all great tambourine players have a great tambourine dance. Do you have an equally epic dance?

MK: I don’t think I’ve got any style of doing it. I did play—this band I was in, there’s a tambourine for the whole song, like just a straight tambourine for, like, three and a half minutes, and I remember recording it and being down there with headphones on and just my arm going, and after two minutes, I couldn’t feel my arm anymore, so I just kept doing it, and I’m sure I must have been doing the dumbest dance in the world. So, if pushed to the limit, I can have a really dumb tambourine dance.

Mike Kinsella will perform as Owen at the Beat Kitchen Nov. 12. His new album, Ghost Town, came out Nov. 8.