Daniel de los Reyes was born into a family that has been making a living playing music for three generations. In addition to his current gig with the GRAMMY®-winning Zac Brown Band, he has performed and recorded with a virtual who’s who of musical giants, including Chicago, Don Henley, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sting, Sheryl Crow, Patti LaBelle, and Steve Winwood among many, many others. Recently, Daniel was honored by the readers of Modern Drummer magazine as the Percussionist of the Year for 2013.

Zac Brown’s country/bluegrass/jam band provides Daniel with a unique opportunity to explore a wide range of new musical frontiers on a nightly basis. In addition to his vast array of acoustic instruments, he’s begun using the OCTAPAD SPD-30 Digital Percussion Pad and SPD-SX Sampling Pad on the road to expand and enhance his sonic palette with the power of Roland electronic percussion. We talked with Daniel during an infrequent tour break to discuss his setup, approaches to stage playing, and more.

How do feel about being named Percussionist of the Year by Modern Drummer magazine?

First of all, it’s an incredible honor for me to be given the award and to be recognized as Percussionist of the Year. I feel every percussionist in some way has something incredible to offer. Everybody eventually develops a style depending on their backgrounds. Fortunately, I feel that with my extensive musical background, a lot due to my family and the way I was raised, I have the ability to bring an open mindset to any musical situation. I do not know exactly how to answer this question, but I can say that I would like to be known as someone who is always looking for ways to complement and better a musical situation.

How did you decide what instruments to use for gigging with Zac Brown?

For every touring situation, I always make sure that I have everything I need to not only compliment the music, but to also take liberties at times that I so wish. Of course, this type of setup depends a lot on the band and the music. [In] a rehearsed production show, your setup stays the same every show, especially if they have dancers, production, lights, and sound which involves a lot of rehearsing to perform the material the same way every night. Fortunately, that’s not the case with Zac Brown.

In this band, I first started with the basics, which to me are great sounding conga drums, bongos, and timbales. Those are my staples, the foundation of my touring setups. Then I have the accessories such as shakers, tambourines, cowbells, woodblocks, guiro, and an array of cymbals that not only sound great, but also complement the drummer’s cymbals. And the Roland electronic elements add sounds that I cannot get easily with acoustic instruments.

How does playing with Zac Brown differ from other gigs you’ve had?

Every band that I’ve performed with has all sorts of different performance dynamics. It’s not only the music that we play live from recorded songs, but other material that we do that makes us change up things. In this band, compared to different bands that I’ve played with in the past, such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Chicago, and Don Henley, we do a lot more of other people’s music alongside of ours. I love this, for it gives the band the ability to perform a few different styles that we might not be known for.

This open mindset comes directly from Zac Brown. He’s an incredible singer/songwriter, but you have to be secure with yourself to take chances and try different things, and he does. He instills that into the band. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but you have to love and admire that in somebody in his place that is willing to do that. It’s a pleasure to share the stage with somebody like him.

How are you integrating Roland electronics into your percussion setup?

The Roland SPD-30 is part of my current setup. What I do [with my instruments] is separate loud and soft—I basically apply the yin and yang method to my percussion world. One side is full of chimes, soft shakers, soft percussion instruments including one-shot shakers, pods, triangles, and that kind of stuff. As we move from one side to the other, it gets progressively louder [with] timbales, cowbells, large cymbals, snares, surdos, and bass drums. In my case, I have the soft to the left, and the loud to the right.

This system is great, but the only drawback in it is that sometimes I don’t have enough time to move from [the loud side] side to the other to be able to play something soft. That’s when I turn to the SPD-30—with a click of a button, I have pretty much a similar setup that I have on the other side.

What kind of sounds are you using in the SPD-30?

For those patches like that, they’re the most basic: cabasas, triangles, finger cymbals, chimes, stuff that I have on the [soft] side. [It’s] basically a duplicate, so I don’t have to go all the way to the other side. The SPD-30 gives me the ability to not leave that area and keep that groove and keep that eye contact with my fellow musicians and still have basically the same sound, if not sometimes better.

Now, being that the [SPD-30 is on] the loud side of my setup, I also have the ability to access other [loud] sounds, which are snare drums, surdos, which I have right there. A lot of times I’ll double a floor tom or a surdo with a bass drum sound. Through the wedges that I have right next to me, it just sounds that much more intense. When you have a live situation to this degree, where there’s so much real estate between people, you don’t want to be completely over the top, but you want to have a presence on stage, and this gives you that ability. I ask for [monitor] wedges besides having my [in-ear monitors].

In the future, my next step is to completely integrate the SPD-SX sampler, along with triggers, to the production.

Do you request wedges along with your in-ears to get some of that air moving when using electronics, to balance with your acoustic percussion?

100 percent. Exactly.

For those just getting into playing electronic drums and percussion, a lot of times they’re turned off because they don’t take into consideration amplifying their sound on stage.

No, you have to. You want to create a certain volume on stage, and you want other people to hear it. [Without stage amplification], you’re hitting a pad, and all they hear is a stick hitting a pad. They have to go out to the house in these types of places where I play [or] they will never hear [the electronic sounds].

I’m constantly pulling one side [of the in-ears] out, putting them back in, pulling them out, because some songs, I want to play different. When I seal them in, I might play very intricate like I’m in the studio. Where [other songs], I just want to hear things live, and I take them out and hear everything through the wedges. So, from the soundman, I have two mixes: one for my in-ears, and one for my wedges. There is a certain volume that you want to make sure that you have, and you can only get it with certain size equipment and obviously the wedges for the electronics.

What other projects do you have going on?

This is intense—my most recent initiative is by far my most personally rewarding ever. I’m working hard and diligently on building my music camp in Fayetteville, Georgia at the moment. It’s going to be one of many camps that I’m going to build throughout the world. That’s my goal.

Is it a percussion camp?

It’s not just a percussion camp; it’s going to be a music camp, but percussion is definitely going to be one of the main tools that are used. It’s a self-contained, independent, educational, youth development facility, and it’s called DayGLOW. We’ll offer music programs, unique classes, and workshops incorporating, of course, percussion instruments, but [also] dance and vocals as the main tools to teach, motivate, and instill points of rapid integration and teamwork to our youth. Basically, I’m teaching music, being a motivator, coach, and teacher, but it’s basically bringing folks here to show them how to integrate with each other, not just the students, but the parents, too. Once you come into this camp area, everybody’s going to treat each other with equality, with the utmost respect, and to praise each other, learning to be a team. What better way to do it than using music?

Is country music a new avenue for percussionists to look for?

Most definitely. But [you have to] always think about how you’re complementing the whole thing. What ends up happening a lot of time is students learn rhythms from other countries, which is awesome to do, and that’s one of the things I’m an advocate of. But don’t think that just because of this, I’m going to add this Colombian beat [to a song]. The reality is to take all that and throw it out the door. Let all those rhythms that you learned be part of you and your mental library, but don’t [think] it has to be this particular rhythm.

I think [percussion] has not been integrated as much into the country music world because a lot of time people that play percussion have played the wrong rhythms to put into this genre of music. There’s no reason why you cannot do a drum rhythm on a [percussion] instrument, whether it be a pair of timbales or tablas. [You don’t] have to play like an Indian master to play tabla. It doesn’t matter—it’s just the sound. So playing rhythms that folks are accustomed to here, but on a different instrument, there’s nothing wrong with that. [Sometimes] that’s what goes the best with a song.

It goes back to being sensitive enough to not try to push something that does not go. Is the country world open for percussion? Yes. [But players] have to be more sensitive to the music, maybe more so than in the Latin genre, because percussion’s already integrated into that.

Thank you for your time, and congratulations on your award.

I really appreciate you guys and your support. I really love Roland stuff and I can’t wait to integrate it like I said and take it up a couple of notches.

To keep up with Daniel and his DayGLOW Music Camp, follow him on Facebook.