Andre Boyd, the international drummer

Andre Boyd and wife Gwen.

Andre Boyd – a drummer for the international Cirque du Soleil – likes to think of himself as a ‘young veteran.’ He is quick to say young veteran is not a contradiction in terms.

He actually began playing drums at the age of two! He began playing for a living before he was finished high school at the age of 17 and has continued non-stop to his current age of 33. That, he says, makes him a young veteran.

Some musicians went to arts and music high schools; some even continued their studies in colleges and universities. Andre wasn’t one of them. Andre’s college was the night clubs, dance halls, wedding and banquet halls and other entertainment venues in St. Louis.

“I was playing in one or two cover bands, behind a jazz vocalist, blues, church, organ at my mom’s church (he plays organ, too), rock and roll, a little bit of everything,” he said by phone from Seoul, South Korea where he is playing a Cirque du Soleil production called Quidam.

In his days in St. Louis, he remembers finishing one show and running to another, sometimes leaving drum sets and coming back to break it down and pack it up later. Sometimes there would be wardrobe changes (like tuxedos) on the run.

He was fortunate to have an older brother Chris Boyd who would become a professional drummer. And he was fortunate to live in St. Louis which was the home of two world-renown drummers Jeremy Haynes and Rob Woodie. There was also a cadre of drummers who were his contemporaries who would go on to be nationally known drummers: Joey Oscar, Mark Colenburg, Kim Thompson, Montez Coleman, Marcus Bailor, Gregory Porter, Kevin Kelley.

“I was surrounded by great musicians. It made me push for greatness.”

He played the St. Louis circuit for about 13 years until the bottom fell out of the American economy during a time of recession. It hit particularly hard in St. Louis and even harder in the St. Louis entertainment industry. He and his wife Gwen travelled to New York on a wing and a prayer for his audition for the Cirque du Soleil job.

The Cirque du Soleil job was a blessing; it provided stability and a decent enough income. But the job for the past two years has its own unique challenges: constant travelling without his family through Canada, then through Europe, into Israel, currently in South Korea and headed throughout Asia and on to Australia and New Zealand.

Through all of this travelling, Andre sets up clinics for drummers in various countries. Even when he is back in the U.S. on break he holds clinics in his current home of the Gulf Coast area and other parts of the country.

When his current world tour wraps up, he plans to move to the west coast and be an instructor at the Musicians Institute and do some work with the Microsoft brand Notes for Life.

Andre is an industrious man in the business of drumming and entertainment. And at the same time a strong family man with a wife and two adult daughters and a younger daughter. When his family eventually gathers for that family dinner on the west coast, he can make a toast, I’ve been around the world and back!