Van's drumming burst on the scene with the critically acclaimed Southern Steel, which was Steve Morse's first release with his new trio featuring Van and Dave La Rue on bass back in 1990. It won guitar album of the year in Guitar Player Magazine and would be the first of many recordings by the trio. In addition to Van's high visibility with the Steve Morse Band he's kept quite busy playing with a wide array of other artists. Click on the name of the artist to find out more information.

Blood Sweat and Tears 
This was my first "real gig". I auditioned for B,S&T in New York City about a year after I moved to Manhattan. The band featured the legendary David Clayton Thomas and great session musicians from the Big Apple. My first show was a 4th of July festival in South Carolina with Hall and Oates for 250,000 people and no rehearsals. I remember Clayton telling me two things before the show. One, have a good time, and, two, don't read any music on stage. There's some very tricky sections in songs like Spinning Wheel, When I Die and You Made Me So Very Happy so I had to duct tape all the charts on the drum riser so that Clayton couldn't see them. I toured Japan, Australia, and Europe and all over the U.S. until I got the Steve Morse Band gig in 1989.
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Kansas 
I got to be a fan of Kansas after the SMB opened for them on a few tours. Their energy was amazing and they played every show like it was their last. Phil Ehart called about a month after our last show with them to ask me if I could take over which would enable him to concentrate more on managing the band. Phil had been an essential part of their sound and the only drummer they’d ever worked with, so I knew it would be quite a challenge. I started off tuning my drums like Phil and playing almost all of his signature fills to make the transition as smooth as possible for the guys. It wasn’t until a month into the tour that I started to add more of my sound to the shows while still paying tribute to Phil’s drumming and the sound of Kansas.
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Bernie Worrell 
My earliest influences musically were, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown and Parliament Funkadelic. Bernie Worrell and Boosty Collins were the musical backbone of the Pfunk sound. When Bernie came to see me play in Greenwich Village and asked me to join him on the road, I couldn’t believe it. The band was a combination of his friends and mine, which included bassist Wintson Roye, guitarist Dave Fuzinski (Screaming Headless Toursos), keyboardist Lamar Mitchell and vocalist and multi instrumentalist Catherine Russell. We toured Japan, Europe and all over the U.S. until it became too difficult to keep the band together with everyone’s schedule. Bernie and I co-wrote the first song “Fingers” that will be released soon in the States and Europe.
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Joan Osborne 
I had to put Joan's name in here even though I played with her before she became famous. From 1990 to 1992 I was either touring with Morse or doing sessions in NYC and playing with Joan at night. She got to the point where she'd sell out 1500 seat venues without a record deal. She was always an incredible performer and some of my most treasured musical moments were playing in small packed clubs with her.
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Billy Joel 
Ok, it was one gig, but it was at Madison Square Garden and Bill and Hillary Clinton were in the front row. Apparently Liberty couldn't make this one so I was honored to fill in. Billy was incredibly funny and relaxed which made the show even more fun for me.
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Nena 
The first tour I had done with Nena was in 2000 before I became her musical director. I loved this rhythm section of Tony Bruno on guitar (Joan Jett) and Bruno Ravel on bass (Danger Danger). This was quite a come back tour for Nena in Germany and Austria where she has her biggest audience. The CD was recorded live in Dusselldorf, Germany. We played two sold out nights for 60,000 fans with the German band Pur. I was really amazed by Nena's spontaneity and energy on stage and I've never seen anyone have so much control over an audience. She was really into making her hits from the 80's a lot heavier which was quite natural for this band.
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TM Stevens 
Started working with TM after he came to see me play with Mona Lisa Overdrive at the China Club in NYC. TM had decided to go solo after working with James Brown (Livin' in America), The Pretenders (Get Close), Joe Cocker, Miles Davis, Steve Vai, Billy Joel and Mahavishnu Orchestra. I've always had a special chemistry with TM and touring and recording with him was a blast.
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Adam Holzman 
The band's name started out as Mona Lisa Overdrive. There was a lot going on for me at this time. I had just got the Steve Morse gig, was still doing tours with Blood Sweat and Tears, and was very busy with studio work in NYC. Adam Holzman had just left Miles Davis to pursue a solo career and was doing some gigs in New York with his new band Mona Lisa Overdrive featuring Steve Logan on bass (David Sanborn, John Scofield) Kenwood Dennard on drums and a variety of guitar players like Hirom Bullock, Drew Zingg and Dave Phelps. Adam and I were both hired to play a showcase for an artist in New York and started jamming at sound check. Both Adam and I had been experimenting heavily with funk grooves spiked with trippy electronic sounds and he instantly asked me to be in his band. What I loved about this band was the combination of funk, musicality and most of all, humor. I can remember many occasions when a stuffy jazz club would turn into an MTV dance party.
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Naughty By Nature 
This was a very different experience for me. Although I had been listening to a lot of rap back in '91, I hadn't recorded any. I got a call by my old friend Dave Belochio to do a session at his studio with some guys neither one of us heard. The first thing I had to get used to was doing 8 second takes. Since they were looking for loops we only needed to get one or two good measures then move onto the next groove. Well after the session was over I went on tour for 3 weeks and came back home to hear every other car in the east Village of Manhattan playing O.P.P. with massive sub woofers. There was also a feature in Rolling Stone about Naughty's success where they gave a lot of credit to Dave Bleach and myself for coming up with the grooves that inspired the CD.
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Enrique Iglesias 
I just started working with Enrique and things have been happening fast. After two days of rehearsal we were asked to perform on the Tribute to the hero's telethon along side Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Bon Jovi, Cheryl Crow, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and many others. More important than all the superstars and celebrities in attendance was the cause and the feeling at Sony Studios that night which is something I'll never forget. Since then we've done all TV appearances, Jay Leno, The Today Show, Regis and Kelly and Rosie O'Donnell. My drum rig is a lot different then in the past with all of the samples I'm triggering. At the moment I have a hybrid acoustic/electric setup. For some songs the live sounds don't cut it, so I'm using a FAT Kat trigger pedal to the right of my kick pedal. Switching back and forth has taken a little while to get used to but is working great. I've got a total of four triggered snares. One 14", an 8" between my hi-hat and first rack tom, a 10" to the left of my hi-hat and an Acusnare to the left of the 10" which has a stereo trigger. Over the 8" snare I'm using a pole kat for hi hat samples and effects. If I play the pole kat, trigger pedal and acusnare I'm totally electric. This makes it possible to switch back and forth from acoustic to electric very easily. I'm using an MPC 2000 for the samples I got from Enrique's CD and an Alesis DM Pro 2.0 for other sounds. All of those sounds are being mixed to two stereo outs that are sent to the house to keep things relatively simple.
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The Dregs 
Though I'm not a member of the Dregs I have been fortunate to play double drums with Rod on two tours in the last year. Yes, I've played quite a few notes with the Morse trio over the years, but it was a totally different feeling playing the Dregs songs with the band. T Lavitz and Jerry Goodman were on this tour in addition to Dave, Steve and Rod and it was incredible. Rod and I got together in New York to work some things out before flying to Florida to rehearse with the band. When we stared doing shows our double drum thing took on a life of it's own thanks to Rod's musicality. I think there's more of that to come.
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Steve Morse 
When I was on tour with Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1989, I was contacted by Dave LaRue about auditioning for Steve Morse. Dave and I were in a band called Stretch in New Jersey and we had developed quite a chemistry together. I learned Ice Cakes, The Odyssey, Night Meets Light and Cruise Missile and the three of us got together in New Jersey while Steve was on tour with Kansas. A month or so later we went on tour to support High Tension Wires and the rest is history. Please click on the Steve Morse CD's for more Morse Band info on the discography page.
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Jack McDuff 
I got asked by my University of Miami buddy John Hart to play on this cd. Jack is one of the founding fathers of the Hammond B3 and wanted to put some hip-hop grooves on this project, which was a departure from is more standard. It featured a six piece horn section with Jack, John Hart on guitar, Winston Roye on bass and myself as the rhythm section for the funk tunes and another rhythm section for the swing numbers. Joey DeFrancesco was a guest soloist. This session was a departure for me because I hadn't recorded and entire record in one day with no overdubs for quite some time. It was the old school approach of showing up with sticks and cymbals and sight reading the music that was going to tape for eternity.
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