Mike Clark - Drum Solo Artist

Mike Clark

Mike Clark gained worldwide recognition as one of America's foremost jazz and funk drummers while playing with Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters in the early 1970's. He became known as a major innovator through his incisive playing on Hancock's album Thrust which garnered him an international cult following. He has performed extensively throughout the US, Europe and Asia, and at all the major jazz festivals of the world.
Mike Clark gained worldwide recognition as one of America's foremost jazz and funk drummers while playing with Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters in the early 1970's. He became known as a major innovator through his incisive playing on Hancock's album Thrust which garnered him an international cult following. He has performed extensively throughout the US, Europe and Asia, and at all the major jazz festivals of the world.

A faculty member of Drummers Collective, Mike has appeared at college clinics throughout the world, and has been featured in Downbeat, Musician, International Musician & Recording World, Modern Drummer, Jazz Times, Guitar Player, Jazziz and many jazz history and method books.

Regarded as one of the most sampled drummers around, Mike's beats are respected by producers, deejays, musicians and audiences of all generations. His tracks have been sampled by musicians as diverse as NWA, Grandmaster Flash, Janet Jackson, De la Soul, Christine Aguilera, Prince and many others.

His touring band Prescription Renewal debuted in the winter of 2000 and electrified audiences across the country with an eclectic core of cross generational multi talents such as Charlie Hunter, Fred Wesley, Skerik, Robert Walter, and DJ Logic. Special guests were often featured such as George Porter Jr. of Funky Meters' fame, Kyle Hollingsworth of String Cheese Incident, Les Claypool, Will Bernard, Larry Goldings and fellow Headhunters alumni, Bill Summers. Touring concurrently that year and the next was the Roots Funk All Stars, another hot ad hoc association that paired Mike with James Brown trombonist Fred Wesley, former Headhunter cohort and bass legend Paul Jackson, organist Dr. Lonnie Smith and guitar virtuoso Robben Ford.

As a leader, his release Give the Drummer Some was very enthusiastically received, earning a rare four and a half stars in Downbeat, as was The Funk Stops Here a joint effort with Hancock alumni Paul Jackson. In 2001, Mike released the jazz-funk album Actual Proof and followed up with an acoustic jazz endeavor in February 2003 with Summertime, (featuring Chris Potter and Billy Childs), which spent several weeks in the top ten jazz charts.

Mike remains active with The Headhunters, Prescription Renewal, his jazz band and as a special guest with many of the best musicians in the world. With his vast contributions to music and drumming, he continues to influence yet another generation of young musicians as he has in the past while working to constantly further the evolution of music.