Plucked From Obscurity, New Primus Drummer John Hoffman Is Living The Dream

The Shreveport sticksman on gutting out a living through local gigs, putting it all on the line to audition, crying tears of joy, and more

After the abrupt retirement of beloved drum rocktopus Tim "Herb" Alexander, veteran alt-metal oddballs Primus held open auditions for a new sticksman, combing through more than 6,000 videos and an untold number of dudes attempting the triple-bounce kick pattern from "John The Fisherman." In February, the winner of the "Interstellar Drum Derby" was revealed to be 45-year-old John Hoffman, a tall, skinny, affable, preternaturally chill dude from Shreveport, Louisiana who just happens to plays drums like a circus wagon tumbling down a steep incline.

The band has been dutifully documenting the process on their YouTube channel, showcasing auditions with nine formidable finalists: established titans who've played with headlining artists (Beyoncé, Mars Volta, Kimbra, Secret Chiefs 3) as well as virtuosic, Zappa-fired drum clinic beasts (Thomas Lang, Gergo Borlai). As masterful as the competition may be, it's amply clear that Hoffman's unique playing style — a weightless bustle of high-velocity flurries, Meters-y swamp-pocket, and cartoonish cymbal clutches — is the one that would transport the band into new artistic horizons. Replacing a titan like Alexander should feel like guzzling Pork Soda-flavored New Coke, but Primus fans on Reddit and YouTube could not be more enthusiastic about Hoffman, a laid-back juggernaut who is inventive, deeply funky, blazingly fast, and drums along to The Jetsons theme in his audition video.

Having completed trial by fire by playing with Primus at the Tool In The Sand festival in the Dominican Republic, Hoffman is set to play the Sessanta V2.0 tour with A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, launching April 24, before starting Primus' five-week Onward & Upward Summer Tour in July. Stereogum caught up with Hoffer to talk about the obscene amount of work it took to get his place in the punchbowl.

You're a full-time musician in Shreveport. What was the last day job you held?

JOHN HOFFMAN: I've actually never had a day job. I delivered pizzas for a while when I was young, just for bill money when I was really doing only original music. But for the most part, man, I've been able to maintain a career playing music based out of Shreveport for over 20 years. And it's been a lot of hard work. It's a grind in order to supplement the same amount of income that other people might make. It takes daily activity. So, I've played with just about every band around here.

I play with a band called Dirtfoot. I'm in another band called Stiff Necked Fools. I host random weekly jams. I host the Monday Night Blues Jam here in town. I was playing a jazz brunch every Sunday. I was playing a church service every Sunday and then fill in every single week with random different gigs, with all kinds of different people. Probably a dozen bands. As well as teaching drum lessons. My biggest paychecks have come from the Texas area because occasionally I would head over to Texas and do red dirt country gigs. Some people don't realize, but a lot of the country musicians that are based out of Texas, they'll build a huge following in Texas and Oklahoma, and they can pretty much tour exclusively in that area and make great money.

In those first few minutes off the audition, you were almost a little fanboyish, giving them a lot of "It's an honor to be here" and "It's an honor to meet you." How were you feeling internally during the first half-hour?

HOFFMAN: I was feeling great coming into the room. Leading up to the audition I was surprisingly not that nervous. I was pretty ready. So I'm getting the drums ready before the audition starts, and there's a few of their people in the tech and the crew and everybody; we're all just kind of chatting and everything's feeling good and comfortable. And as soon as Les entered the room, the energy for me completely shifted. And, like you said, I just totally went fanboyed out. All the coolness and everything, it left my body. And I totally went into like, "Oh, Mr. Claypool. I'm so honored to be here." To be honest, man, I feel like that still. We're friends now, and I've been around him enough that it's more comfortable than it was, but I was absolutely beyond nervous. ... I remember watching some of the other audition videos and everybody was so cool. Every single drummer! It was everything I could do just to be as cool as possible.

This wasn't a golden ticket situation. You spent the weeks up to the audition woodshedding Primus songs.

HOFFMAN: Well, it's funny, man. I've been saying that it's been a lucky situation, and a lot of people in my life, they're real quick to correct me and say, "It wasn't, bro. You manifested this."... Basically, now that it's all done, I realize that the work I'd put in before the audition, I feel like was what ultimately landed me the gig.

[When] I got the invite to LA, I pretty much cut out a lot of my local gigs. A lot of my lower-priority gigs, I sort of just dried those up so that I had more time to just fully focus on Primus. And luckily for me, every single person in my life was just like, "Dude. Yeah. Go. Whatever you got to do." I got 100% dedicated. I'm a pretty big UFC fan and boxing and stuff like that. And when fighters like that go into a big fight, they go into a fight camp for two months where they go and they have two-, three-a-day training. They completely focus on the fight, their diet changes. Everything they do to mentally prepare and physically prepare for this fight. And I felt like that was kind of what I was doing. I was preparing for my fight of my life and this major opportunity. I would practice every single day, and then I would go and practice at a different studio all night where I could play and not bother anybody. I'm putting in work all day long.

I really was dipping into my savings a lot. Me and my wife, we were spending a lot of money to make this happen. And the ultimate idea was that regardless of whatever happens at the end of this, nothing bad is going to come. Even if I don't get the gig, my name is going to get out there. I'm going to have this audition video. Les is going to know who I am. They're going to know my name. And so the whole time, it was always my focus was just to present my best self. The benefits would come later.

Les gave you a nickname immediately. I figured that was a good sign.

HOFFMAN: I was told that everybody gets a nickname from Les. The day that I'm leaving, Les texts me that morning and he said, "Hey, do people call you Hoffer?" He asked me two or three different names. I said, "Yeah, people call me Hasselhoff,” or whatever. And his response was, "Hoffington. You're going to be Hoffington." I didn't know what it was for. I was just like, "OK, I'm Hoffington then, that's cool". And I'm going on Google like, What is a Hoffington? I figured it was some nautical term. I thought it was like a boat or something. I think it's just something he made up.

I had finished the audition process that afternoon, and so the whole crew and everybody in the band is kind of having a wrap party for the most part. It was a trivia night at [Claypool's wine tasting room] Pachyderm Station. I'm planning on leaving the next morning, catching my flight. The audio-visual crew, they're doing interviews the whole time I've been hanging out. During all of the audition, I had a mic on me and there was a camera following me around, so much that I totally forgot that I was being filmed and recorded all the time. So they're like, "Hey, man, before we go, can we get one more interview just to get your thoughts on the whole thing?" They set me up for the interview, and they're asking me a few questions and they say, "So how did you get along with the crew?" And it kind of hit me. I was like, "It kind of sucks, man. I really enjoyed a lot of these people. I've made a lot of friends here. It's going to kind of suck if I don't really ever get to see anybody again."

And as I'm elaborating on that, I hear, coming out of the kitchen, a group of people and they're singing [sings] "For he's a jolly good drummer.” So I see this group coming out of the kitchen, and it's led by Les. I'm doing this interview... and I'm like, "Should I keep talking... or? What's going on here?"

After a couple seconds, I realized that they're coming towards me and Les is carrying a box. I realize that they're singing to me, they're bringing me a box, and I kind of lose it a little bit. I'm full of emotion already at this point, even after the last couple of months of this process, so it didn't take a lot for me to kind of start tearing up anyway. But when I realized that they were bringing me this box, I just kind of started losing it. And he sets it in front of me. And I opened the box. And it was a cake. And written on the cake, it said, "Hoffington, You Got the Gig."

Then I really lost it. I mean, I just buried my head. The tears were coming out. So a little time went by, I realized that there's a room full of people watching me right now basically cry in my arm with my head down. So I realized I needed to get up and sort of address the situation and say something. They're saying "So how does it feel, man?" They're hugging me and all this stuff. I'm just like, [ugly crying noises].

And so Les is like, "So you got the gig, and also you're going to go with us to the Dominican Republic, and you're going to play at the Tool in the Sand Festival on stage with Danny Carey." Oh, by the way, on top of this huge opportunity in this life-changing moment... you also get to go play with one of the consensus greatest drummers that ever lived.

Tool ... when I was growing up, always seemed like a real mysterious and dark kind of band, full of mystery and shrouded by facts and kind of replaced by your own imagination. And so I just imagined [Carey] being kind of distant and kind of standoffish and weird, and he's not at all. He's just so cool. And he had the nicest and most positive and encouraging things to say to me that day that I met him as far as my future in the music industry and with Primus. And it meant so much coming from a legend like him to have sort of an approval.

You're going to get me tearing up now.

HOFFMAN: I'm trying not to myself, man, I tell you, if you'd caught this interview a couple of weeks ago, you would've definitely had me crying, man. Everything's sort of settled in a little bit now. But it is all just been such a surreal experience, and it went from just zero to a thousand so fast.

When you're playing with Danny in the Dominican Republic was your mindset like, "I'll show you who can play some drums, Danny Carey?"


HOFFMAN: Well, let me go ahead and say that there was absolutely not a single ounce of me thinking, "Oh, I'm going to go and show Danny Carey something." That never crossed my mind whatsoever. In fact, I was kind of nervous because I thought I was going to be in a chop-trading situation with him, like we're both on stage and we're exchanging eight bars back and forth or something. Man, I don't know if I want to get into a drum fight with Danny Carey. But that wasn't the case at all. It was us duetting together.

The gig day, we had our soundcheck where we both obviously played together and kind of got all the rust out. Once we were at soundcheck, I realized that it was all good. Danny, he was filling in, so it's not his material. So I realized as we're playing, "Oh, you know what? I probably actually know the songs maybe a little better than him because I've been listening to this stuff for three months straight." So when we got up there, he was actually kind of leaning on me on a couple of spots to lead the show a little bit. For the most part. I just felt like as soon as we started the first note, it was like we were just synced up, completely locked in. It just was very natural, man.

Is Les pushing you to do anything style-wise, or does he just want Hoffer to be Hoffer?


HOFFMAN: It's a combination of both. Les is also a drummer himself and extremely particular about what he likes to hear. And so yeah, the hi-hat work, that's a huge thing. Les also hates big washy, crashy cymbals. He loves splash cymbals. He likes tight choked out cymbals. I do a lot of cymbal chokes, so again, that just worked in my favor. I had no idea about any of that, but in all my videos I'm going pssh pssh pssh on my cymbals and that was a turn-on for him. He doesn't like wood snare drums. He likes metal snare drums that sound real crispy and tight. He likes dead ringers on the snare, so there's no ring. He doesn't like over-the-top China cymbals. If there's a drop where the dynamics come down, he doesn't like to hear a ride cymbal sustaining. So a lot of it is just the cleanliness of the cymbals, so I've had to get a little used to that. But I mean, my own style wasn't that different. All my videos, I'm using the 13-inch hats, eight-inch splash, 14-inch crash, 20-inch ride, a 12-inch splash, and a 16-inch stack. All my cymbals were pretty tiny. I had no idea that that's what they were looking for or that was the sound that they liked. That just worked for me.

You are easily the lightest touch of any Primus drummer. From what it sounds like, this has been to your benefit instead of your hindrance.

HOFFMAN: Yes, you're right, man. That whole style just works in favor for what they were looking for, especially Les. I kind of got that vibe from playing a lot of local gigs. A lot of the gigs that I play around here, I'm playing in a Mexican restaurant or something in the corner. And also my drum set here at the house where I'm at, where I filmed a lot of my stuff, I kind of tuned my drum set in a way where it was a little bit muffled down for my neighbors. I was trying make a little less noise. I used to get a lot of shit from people about having tape all over my drum heads. But I was doing that to try to turn the volume down here. And in the meantime, it worked out well for my videos. I liked the way it started sounding. Everything was really staccato and crisp. For the way I play, I do so many fast notes that I was finding that it was coming through and translating real well.

Did Les ask you to learn the Time's infamously difficult "777-9311," as he is wont to do?

HOFFMAN: Yes, he did. That was by far the hardest song that I had to learn. Every single night, I would be up at the jam room until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, and the last thing I would do every single night for the last probably 20, 30 minutes is work on "777." And I never quite got it. It's so syncopated. Sam Groveman, one of the other drummers that auditioned, he friggin' nailed it in his audition, man, it sounded like dead on. And he was adding the clap stack on the two and four too, which is taking a hard beat and making it even more difficult. He killed that.

I was happy that I at least got to play it with [Les], even though I didn't really play it very well. I spent probably about 10 days out there. And on one of the days, Les brought up Jay Lane to hang out with. So it's just the three of us, and we're just jamming for hours and hours, man. Jay can play that beat better than just about anybody on the planet. He knows every single note in that whole beat. And so he actually gave me a drum lesson at the end of that all, a drum lesson where he taught me how to do that. And something I was missing was this hi-hat up note. Right when the beat starts, like on the first two or three 32nd notes of the beat, there's this quick hi-hat note, and he was pointing that out. It was just so cool to actually get a real legitimate drum lesson from a legend like him. What a day, man.

SESSANTA TOUR 2025 WITH A PERFECT CIRCLE & PUSCIFER:
04/24 – Palm Desert, CA @ Acrisure Arena
04/25 – Las Vegas, NV @ PH Live at Planet Hollywood
04/27 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheater
04/29 – San Antonio, TX @ Freeman Coliseum
05/01 – Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center
05/02 – Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP
05/04 – Huntsville, AL @ The Orion Amphitheater
05/06 – Hollywood, FL @ Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
05/08 – Tampa, FL @ MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
05/10 – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
05/11 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheatre
05/14 – Manchester, NH @ SNHU Arena
05/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Mann Center
05/17 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
05/18 – Fairfax, VA @ EagleBank Arena
05/20 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Petersen Events Center
05/22 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
05/24 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music Center
05/25 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
05/28 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Van Andel Arena
05/29 – St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
05/31 – Milwaukee, WI @ American Family Insurance Amphitheater
06/01 – Saint Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
06/03 – Omaha, NE @ Baxter Arena
06/06 – Ridgefield, WA @ RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheater
06/07 – Auburn, WA @ White River Amphitheatre

ONWARD & UPWARD TOUR 2025:
07/05 – Paso Robles, CA @ Vina Robles Amphitheatre*
07/07 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Sandy Amphitheater*
07/08 – Jackson, WY @ Snow King Mountain*
07/09 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre*
07/11 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed*
07/12 – Kansas City, MO @ Grinders KC*
07/13 – Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle*
07/15 – Louisville, KY @ Iroquois Amphitheater*
07/16 – Detroit, MI @ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre*
07/18 – Lafayette, NY @ Beak & Skiff Apple Orchards*
07/19 – Essex Junction, VT @ Midway Lawn At Champlain Valley Expo*
07/21 – New York, NY @ The Rooftop at Pier 17*
07/22 – Bridgeport, CT @ Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater^
07/23 – Raleigh, NC @ Red Hat Amphitheater^
07/25 – Atlanta, GA @ Synovus Bank Amphitheater At Chastain Park^
07/26 – Wilmington, NC @ Live Oak Bank Pavilion^
07/28 – New Orleans, LA @ Saenger Theater^
07/29 – Shreveport, LA @ Shreveport Municipal Auditorium^
07/30 – Dallas, TX @ The Bomb Factory^
08/01 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre^
08/02 – San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre^
08/03 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Quarry Amphitheater
08/06 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre*
08/07 – Sacramento, CA @ Channel 24
08/08 – Sacramento, CA @ Channel 24

• with Ty Segall
^ with MonoNeon