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The double Husky entrepreneur has been featured on Late Night With Seth Meyers while establishing a dynasty at the Boston Music Awards.
Jonathan Ulman has long ranked among the top session drummers in the Northeast. His ascension has created all kinds of remarkable opportunities — including requests to provide backbeats for songs TBD (to be determined).
“They’ll say, ‘We want some hip-hop beats’ or break beats — or some jazzy stuff or some Latin rhythms that they can then take and put toward songs,” says Ulman, a Northeastern University graduate. “I’ve been on sessions like that over the last few years in a studio and was told to give different beat patterns that could be used for songs that hadn’t even been written yet.
“The recording process is a lot different than what it used to be.”
And yet here he is — having adapted to his ever-changing world while continuing to dominate the Boston Music Awards. Ulman was recently honored as the top session musician in Boston for the eighth time since 2016.
Ulman’s reputation transcends the New England region as he learned in 2022, when he was asked to serve as the guest drummer on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
“I was sitting on my couch watching TV at 11 at night when I got a message on Instagram from the producer,” Ulman says of the NBC show. “This was something that I’d dreamed about. It was the most incredible opportunity that I’ve had in my career, something that I had worked for for so many years.”
The show has become known for “bringing in the world’s best drummers to sit in with the band,” Ulman says. “To be invited is one of the greatest nods of respect.”
During Ulman’s appearances, Meyers plugged an upcoming album by Ulman’s acclaimed Boston hip-hop group STL GLD.
Memories of the experience stick with Ulman. The celebrity guests that week included actor Steve Carell and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
“Playing on the show was incredibly fast-paced because the musical director and producers are telling you [via an earpiece] what to do while you’re playing,” Ulman says. “Somebody is saying, ‘OK, the actor walking out on the stage is taking longer than they’re supposed to — so keep playing.’ They’re giving you these instructions and you’re responding to these commands at the moment they are happening. It’s stressful but so incredibly rewarding and [it] certainly built my confidence.”
Ulman says he has never watched those appearances on the show.
“I had waited so long to be on the show and I was so nervous,” he says. “I feel like I played really well. But I guess it’s like an actor who never watches their own films. My producer, The Arcitype, texted me right away, like, ‘Bro, you sounded awesome, you have nothing to worry about.’ So that was good enough for me.”
The momentum around his career has been building since Ulman was last featured by NGN in 2018. Last year he was invited to give his first international clinic on drumming for more than 30 students at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Drawing from his 2011 Northeastern master’s degree in digital media and photography, the 44-year-old double Husky has started JMU Creative, a full-service creative agency that developed organically from his success in marketing himself.
“The business has been open for over a year and, man, it is slammed with work,” says Ulman, who also serves as Berklee College of Music’s percussion department manager. “It’s to the point where I have to debate whether to hire people to be a part of it with me.”
Musically, he says, this has been his busiest year.
“I’ve either been on the road or in the studio between 150 and 200 days,” Ulman says.
He coaches the soccer team of his 8-year-old daughter, Mary, who Ulman describes as something of a miracle in her own right. Ulman was told he might not be able to have children after being diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2005.
“Music has played a huge part in getting me through that,” Ulman says as he approaches the 20th anniversary of his illness. “Playing drums is therapeutic for me. It’s very calming. At a time when my anxiety was through the roof and being as scared as I was, music became this everyday place where I could go to decompress. It allows me to come at things from a different perspective.”
At a time when people in creative fields are fearing the arrival of artificial intelligence as a threat to their careers, the bearded drummer finds himself at peace with the new era.
“The Arcitype, who is probably the greatest producer I’ve ever known, has told me, ‘I need you because you’re imperfect,’” Ulman says. “He says drums don’t sound good when a robot is creating them. They might sound good for a minute, but after that it gets static — no dynamics, doesn’t feel human. [He says] ‘I need you to compensate for that.’”
Human nature is essential, Ulman has found.
“The computer can’t do what I do,” he says. “It doesn’t know how to program personality. Music was never meant to be perfect.”