E. Doctor Smith
E. "Doc" Smith is a percussionist, producer and recording artist with Edgetone Records, who has performed and recorded with the likes of Brian Eno, Madonna, Howard Levy, Trey Gunn, Fareed Haque, The Deep Energy Orchestra, Facing East and many others. He often performs with his custom-made, musical instrument, the Zendrum EXP.
"Doc" began his musical journey as a teenager playing percussion in the District of Columbia Youth Orchestra. In 1980 he moved to New York where he met fellow Music Building tenants Madonna and her co-writer, Stephen Bray. With Bray, Doc performed in the Breakfast Club and The Same, produced by the legendary Brian Eno and featured keyboardist Carter Burwell, guitarist Chip Johannsen, singer Clodagh Simmons, bassist Stanley Adler, and the motto "Semper Mutants."
In 1986, Doc was invited to join Bray and Madonna in Los Angeles, and assisted on many of Madonna's biggest albums as well as other of Bray's projects including Nick Kamen, Gladys Knight, The Breakfast Club, Brian Ferry, and Steel Pulse. In L.A. Doc's sound engineering skills were honed in sessions working alongside engineers Michael Verdick and Tony Shepperd. Returning to the East Coast in 1990, Doc performed using a Simmons kit he called the "Beast." Inspired by that of British drummer Bill Bruford, Doc's 12-piece kit was the first embodiment of his love of digital drums.
In 1995, as a member of the New England trio "Between The Lines", Doc designed and built the "Drummstick", a percussion controller consisting rather humbly of a 2x6 piece of wood with 16 finger-pads. Borne of a desire to walk on stage, plug in and play like a guitarist, while accessing his beloved and virtually infinite world of digital sounds, Doc's Drummstick developed a life of its own as the group opened for acts like 10,000 Maniacs, the Neville Brothers and the Violent Femmes.
In 2000 he performed using the Drummstick with an array of music legends including Bon Lozago (Gong), Tom Principato, Bill Kirchen (Commander Cody), Paul Bollenback (Stanley Turrentine), John Wubbenhorst (Facing East), and Howard Levy (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones). Doc was also the Front-of-House engineer for the State Theatre in Falls Church, VA where mixed legends like John Mayall, Warren Zevon, Mickey Hart, Dave Mason, Bill Bruford, The Meters, Little Feat, John Scofield, Ronnie Montrose, Jimmy Cliff and many, many others.
Moving to San Francisco in 2002, Doc signed with the Edgetone Records label and in 2007 saw the release of a new Drummstick 2 CD, and the re-release of his first Drummstick CD, These were the first of 9 albums released on that label. Soon thereafter, the Zendrum Corporation in Atlanta, GA presented him with a new percussion controller, the Zendrum ZX.
Since that time, Doc has recorded and toured throughout the US, Canada and Europe. He has performed with John Wubbenhorst's Facing East ensembles featuring Tom Canning (Al Jarreau), and Jason Everett's Deep Energy Orchestra featuring Trey Gunn (King Crimson), Phil Hirschi (Mahavishnu Orchestra), Selvaganesh Vinayakram (Shakti), Fareed Haque (Zawinul Syndicate) and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra.
In 2013 Doc obtained the first commercially available Zendrum EXP, a new MIDI percussion controller. Doc used it on his subsequent Edgetone releases of "K2" with Seth Elgart, "Quantum" with Jack Wright, "Trio Electrique" with 7 string bassist Edo Castro Woodhouse and on "FutureJazz" with guitarist Peter McKibben. Today, Doc makes his home in Truckee and continues to perform with a host of international and local musicians. His latest project, the "Breslow Smith Duo" features multi-instrumentalist Jordan Breslow of the award winning Down the Rabbit Hole.
https://www.edgetonerecords.com/edoctorsmith.html
"From his tribal grooves and atmospheric sonic landscapes, E. Doctor Smith treads
a musical road less traveled. His intrepid acid jazz explorations wander into every
world musical nook and cranny, making this a trip well worth taking."
- Stephen Bray, Producer of Madonna and the Color Purple
"Wonderful, Inventive and triggers the imagination..."
- Billy Cobham, Drummer with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis
"The Doctor is in, and he's way cool..."
- Kit Watkins, Keyboardist of Camel, Happy the Man
