Jason McKenzie
I grew up in Tallahassee, Fl where I took drum set lessons from Butch Trucks from the Allman Brothers Band when I was 15 and started playing in bars when I was 16. After high school, I studied symphonic percussion at Florida State and then transferred to the University of North Texas to focus on jazz.
After graduation, I moved from Denton, TX to the burgeoning music scene of Austin where I met my first tabla instructor, Aloke Dutta. After he moved to L.A. a year later, I began studying with various professional tabla players who came through town like Anindo Chatterjee, Gouri Shankar, Subhen Chatterjee, Samir Chaterjee, and Subrata Bhattacharya. Later on, I attended the Ali Akbar College of Music and studied with Swapan Choudhuri.
I have traveled to India twice. The first time I studied tabla with Gouri Shankar in Kolkata and the second time I studied kanjira from Sathish Pathakota, Ganesh Kumar, and Subash Chandran in Bangalore and Chennai.
My musical influences range from jazz to classical Indian music, from rock to electronica. Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Shakti, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Radiohead, Beck, Niyaz, Ram Narayan, Stereolab, Karsh Kale, and Cheb i Sabbah get a lot of play on my ipod.
I tour and record with Texas songwriting legend, Billy Joe Shaver. I have also toured in Taiwan and Spain with the ground-breaking world fusion group Atash, played separate SXSW appearances with tabla master Aloke Dutta (Calcutta), singer/songwriter Tom Fruend (L.A.), and Alexi Murdoch (L.A.), performed in Pat Mastelotto's (King Krimson) group Mastica, Darin Layne Jazz Trio, sarod maestro Aashish Khan, recorded with grammy winning guitar maestro Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and with the versatile backing group Strings Attached in collaboration with such artists as Eliza Gilkyzon, Slaid Cleaves, Tucker Livingston, Sara Hickman, Barbara K (from Timbuk 3), Guy Forsyth, Jimmy Dale Gilmore (Flatlanders), and Bob Schneider.
I lived in Los Angeles from 2003-2005 where I performed with Alexi Murdoch, Pedestrian, Terra Naomi, Poolabomb, and a fusion project with Frank Zappa veterans Mike Keneally and Bruce Fowler.
In 2004, I began touring and recording with singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson and in the following two years spent my time off the road between L.A., India, Austin, and San Francisco where I attended the Ali Akbar College of Music and performed with Jef Stott and Cheb i Sabbah from the electronica world music label 'Six Degrees'. In February 2007, I moved back to Austin, Texas to focus on my band Atash and to further my education in audio engineering and sound synthesis to become a producer.