Veteran L.A. drummer Jamie Douglass has earned the acclaim of peers & fans with spirited, ultra-musical performances live, in the studio, and on-camera. A true team player, Douglass brings complete commitment to every show and session, using his deep band experience, strong intuition, and exceptional listening skills to serve the song above all else.
Douglass has amassed an impressive list of recording credits, including Yelawolf & Shooter Jennings Sometimes Y (oneRPM), Marilyn Manson We Are Chaos (Concord), Duff McKagan Tenderness (Universal), Shooter Jennings Countach (BCR), Avi Kaplan Floating On A Dream & Live At Sunset Sound (Fantasy), Jaime Wyatt Neon Cross (New West), Highway Butterfly (The Songs of Neil Casal), the title theme to The Ranch (Netflix), and The Whitmore Sisters Ghost Stories LP, to name just a few. Other current and soon-to-be-released recordings featuring Douglass’ drumming include Tanya Tucker (Fantasy), Robert Randolph (Blue Note), Duff McKagan (World Is Flat), Logan Ledger (Rounder), Vincent Neil Emerson (La Honda), and Jesse Dayton (Blue Elan).
Bringing an explosive and entertaining presence on the concert & festival stage, Douglass has toured the US, Canada, Europe and beyond with Shooter Jennings (2015-2022), Yelawolf & Sometimes Y (2021-2022), Duff McKagan (2019), Kara Grainger (2009) as well as many regional tours with a wide range of bands and artists. In early 2023, Douglass joined the band of New Orleans firebrand Samantha Fish, maintaining a very busy touring and recording schedule with the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter/guitarist. A recent highlight was opening for the Rolling Stones (direct support) on the last U.S. date of their Hackney Diamonds tour in July 2024.
Born in Greenwich, CT to an academic family with strong ties to the arts, Douglass began his musical career in third grade, singing classical music with a professional church choir. The experience of recording, performing and touring the Northeast USA and Europe at a young age had a strong impact on him: it taught him how to listen, and how to phrase. Taking up percussion at the age of 10, Douglass felt an immediate exaltation for drumming. Playing in ensembles of all shapes and sizes throughout high school and college, he developed an original yet adaptable sensibility that allows him to thrive in virtually any musical situation. Working for years in small clubs and studios in L.A. informed Douglass’ dynamic sense and ability to communicate anything from a whisper to a roar.
Douglass describes himself as “an old-school dance-band drummer”, well-versed in the vocabulary, rhythm, and attitude of classic rock & roll, country, jazz, rhythm & blues and their offshoots, “that glorious amalgam of American popular music”. Striving to be flexible and “beyond category” in the spirit of Duke Ellington, Douglass admires artists who have pushed the stylistic boundaries of music, “whether it was through sound, or by actually breaking up the patterns that existed before,” including Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. “They had passion and fire, and that came through in their music.” John Bonham, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Levon Helm and Keith Moon are major drumming influences whom Douglass cites.
When at home in Los Angeles, Douglass is active performing with local bands and artists (Foster Timms, Ted Russell Kamp, Mary Scholz, Manda Mosher, Zachary Ross, The Mastersons, etc), playing recording sessions & cutting drum tracks at home, playing drums & percussion in theatre productions (Spring Awakening, Sneaky Ole Time, Alex In Wonderland, etc.), and doing various film & TV-related music work (Netflix, CBS, NBC, etc.). A graduate of Indiana University and a former adjunct professor at La Sierra University, Douglass also maintains a limited private teaching practice
