Q&A: Galactic’s Stanton Moore Talks to Knockdown Alley

New Orleans party-starters Galactic have a long history with Brooklyn Bowl. In fact, this week’s four-night run — Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday — is the funk outfit’s seventh summer residency in Williamsburg. And while it’s worth attending each night to see what surprises and special guests you’ll get, every show will feature the band’s irrepressible drummer, Stanton Moore. And ahead of their arrival, we got in touch so he could answer some questions for Knockdown Alley. It seems like New Orleans music has always been really popular in New York City. Is there anything to that, or is New Orleans music equally popular all over the country? I think it’s because a lot of New Yorkers travel and are culturally aware. Therefore they know and appreciate good music. We see this in other cities, too, but we’re always appreciative of our New York base. Your four-night run this month is your seventh straight summer playing Brooklyn Bowl. What significance does playing here have for Galactic? We always look forward to coming and playing this run. It gives us all an opportunity to spend some time in New York and to experience some of the things in the city that we like to check out. It also gives us a chance to invite some of the people that we have played with in the past as well as invite some people that we don’t always get to see that often. Growing up, which drummers inspired you to get behind the kit? And were you always a drummer or did you begin playing a different instrument? I started off taking piano lessons, but I’ve been drawn to the drums from a very young age from being exposed to the drum lines at the Mardi Gras parades. Once I started actually playing drums, I was first influenced by a lot of the classic-rock drummers like John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Moon, but then I started really getting into Zigaboo Modeliste, the drummers of James Brown — namely Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks — and a lot of the jazz greats, like Elvin Jones, Papa Jo Jones, and Philly Joe Jones. You’re currently touring behind Into the Deep, but are you guys always working on new material? And do you ever road-test new music by playing it live before recording it? We’re about to start working on new ideas for the next record. A lot of Into the Deep we started playing live before the record was released. The way that we write now, we usually write as we record, so we do play things before they're released, but we often record and write in a collaborative process. Which bands that you listened to growing up do you still listen to? The Meters, James Brown, John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles. The classics are always great! Do you have any crutches when writing a song—are there ever certain words or styles you feel you lean on too much? I’ve tried writing lyrics in the past and I would try to draw from my own personal experiences. But lately we’ve been collaborating with people who are much better at writing lyrics than we are. We try to focus on the music and let the people who write lyrics on a regular basis do what they do best. —R. Zizmor | @Hand_Dog