Photograph by Jason Larkin
JT Bates
JT Bates found out that he was a drummer on three songs from Taylor Swift’s surprise album folklore, which she conceived of and finished completely during quarantine, a day before the rest of the world.
The Minnesota native has appeared on albums with Midwest favorites like Bon Iver, Trampled by Turtles, and Big Red Machine in the past. Over the course of his decades-long drumming career, Bates has played in an extensive number of genres, from experimental indie-rock with Andrew Bird, to a country-rock hybrid with Erik Koskinen, to his self-written ambient sounds, and to jazz like his father performed. He contributed to Bon Iver's new single, "AUATC," an acronym for "Ate Up All the Cake," alongside Bruce Springsteen, Jenny Lewis, Elsa Jensen, and Jenn Wasner. But all of that doesn’t begin to touch on the near-endless discography of his contributions.
It was partly through his work with Big Red Machine, the brain child of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner, that Bates found himself on folklore, Swift's journey into a more lowkey, rootsy sound than she's ever done before. Dessner, who co-wrote or produced 11 of the 16 songs off the album, reached out to Bates to see if he’d be interested in drumming for a record.
“As you can probably tell by reading other info about the record, [Dessner]’s a very collaborative person, and very much goes out of his way to get as many people involved in his things as he can,” Bates says. He met him a few years ago at an Eaux Claires music festival, and knew him through workshops hosted by the PEOPLE collective that Vernon and Dessner started.
“He wasn’t allowed to tell me whose record it was,” Bates adds. With a surprise release from a pop star as big as Taylor Swift, it’s not uncommon for the recording process to be kept secretive to prevent an album leak or news of its progress.
Bates agreed and got to work in his home studio in St. Paul. While he couldn’t hear the vocals of the songs, he could play along to the instrumentals. After recording his drumming at Salon Sonics, he sent the songs back off to Dessner for notes and revisions. In just a few days, Bates unknowingly recorded the drums for “the last great american dynasty,” “epiphany,” and “seven” (which ended up being one of his favorites on the album). He sent off the final versions to Dessner, not knowing where they’d end up.
“Then you just kind of like move on—it’s gotta come out sometime,” he says. “It’s not quite like anything else I’ve done.”
As Bates worked on the album, his wife and stepdaughter joked that it was probably for Taylor Swift. But, they didn’t think it was true until an hour before Swift announced her new album.
“[Dessner] texted me like super-duper early in the morning and was like, ‘Hey, you played the drums for Taylor Swift,’” Bates says. “That’s crazy, you know, it’s totally insane.”
He’s also not the first Minnesotan to appear in the credits of a Swift record. Dan Wilson of the beloved power-pop band Semisonic co-wrote two songs on Red, Swift’s seminal 2012 record that crystalized her crossover between pop and country effortlessly: "Treacherous" and “Come Back… Be Here.”
Bates grew up in the suburbs of the Twin Cities where he was surrounded by music. His father worked as both a public school band director and as a jazz musician, and would take his kids to see his gigs. Between his father’s classical, jazz, and improv work, Bates and his two brothers fell into the world of music and now all work in the industry. His brother Dave works in Nashville as a recording engineer, and his brother Chris is a Minnesota-based jazz bassist.
Bates started drumming at an early age, saying that he didn’t choose music, but music chose him. Before he could actually pursue drumming, his father made him take piano lessons. It was a gift he didn’t realize until later in his life.
“It helps your ears and helps you understand what’s going on, and other aspects of music like melody and chord changes and things like that,” he says. “I thank him a lot for that.”
Even though he played drums since he was an elementary school student, it wasn’t until his 20s that Bates started taking music more seriously.
“I started to play really creative music, and really like a lot of free, improvised music, noisy things, but also learning how to play behind a quiet folk song in a studio at the same time,” he says.
A constant in his professional career is jazz. One of his earlier projects was a jazz trio he started with his high school friends Michael Lewis and Adam Linz called Fat Kid Wednesdays. They played for nearly two decades together, and earned themselves a favorable review in the New Yorker. “He sounds like a one-man Art Ensemble of Chicago, ready to use anything for the right sound—chopsticks, chains, his hands, and even the nub of a drumstick, which he rubs on cymbals to make them whisper as if butterflies were beating their wings upon them,” it reads.
With those same bandmates, Bates started a residency that lasted almost two decades: J.T.’s Jazz Implosion. Beginning at the Clown Lounge at the Turf Club in the 90s, Bates and friends hosted new and improvisational jazz groups. Eventually the residency moved to Icehouse, the venue founded by Brian Liebeck. Bates’s involvement with the residency ended in 2018, but he still continues to occasionally perform at Icehouse.
It wasn’t until 2015 that Bates released his first solo album, Open Relationship, with almost every sound on it coming from a drum. His other recent work includes drumming for acoustic duo Folk Uke and Jenn Wasner’s experimental project Flock of Dimes. In addition to that, he’s currently working on an EP of ambient music he wrote—sans drums.
“I’ve been around here for my whole life playing music, I’ve played with a fair amount of people that I look up to in my world and things like that, and then I think of a Taylor Swift sort of situation. It’s not something I really thought would happen,” he says.
“To have something that’s just simply culturally familiar, and then be like, that’s my snare drum… I don’t know if I have the exact words for what that feels like.”
