Jon Theodore
Jon Philip Theodore was born December 1, 1973, in “Charm City,” Baltimore, Maryland, an East coast, Mid-Atlantic state, in the Chesapeake Bay region, home to the Baltimore Orioles and the Baltimore Ravens.
Jon took an interest in drums when he was 15 years old. He attended the Gilman School in Baltimore and became involved in the school’s concert band. As a result of his band involvement, he was given the opportunity to take lessons on a full kit. He had built the personal constitution now of committed practice. In addition, he focused on learning percussion and the art of arranging.
After graduating high school at 18 years old in the early 90’s, Jon bid Baltimore adieu and headed west to Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory of Music. It was in Ohio that he pulled together some buddies and started the funk-rock band “Golden.” After some time, the band decided to make the move back east to Washington, D.C., where they would work the band full-time. Eventually, Ian Eagleson, the band’s frontman, decided to pursue higher education in Texas. Jon decided to head the short distance back to Baltimore, where he lived out most of his 20’s in his words, ” . . . as an independent adult. Or a quasi-adult . . . I was fixed on the goal of adulthood, but I was still struggling to get there.”
Jon was thinking seriously about leaving the East coast and moving out to California. He wanted to learn how to surf. He also thought that somebody must need a drummer. He felt confident that he would be able to find a band. When he got home that day, he returned a call to Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (De Facto) a musician he had met a number of years before while touring. Omar asked Jon if he’d like to come out to California and be part of a band that they were organizing, which came to be known as “The Mars Volta.” Jon could barely believe the timing of his call and said, “That’s weird man, I’ll be right there.” He flew to California on 9/10/2001 and awoke the next morning, 9/11, grateful he had flown to California when he did. He started out living in Long Beach and then moved up to Los Angeles.
Jon credits Omar and Cedric Bixler Zavala for lessons observed in work ethics and commitment to achieve their goals. Their daily driving example “was kind of infectious.” Jon went through a time when he really would rather have been at the beach than drumming with the band. But, the fervency of Omar and Cedric motivated him. He says of his time with them, “The things I learned from that, I’ll never forget.” Jon benefited working in “The Mars Volta” because he learned about dedication, methodical work and discipline to do what it took to get the job done. Jon was with “The Mars Volta from 2001-2006.
Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against the Machine frontman) and Jon have teamed up and formed the band, “One Day as a Lion.” The first release of this new band’s recording was in the fall of 2008.
Jon earned the nickname “Voodoo Master,” which came from his studying voodoo drumming in Haiti (his dad is Haitian). Although his playing is considered machine gun-like and extremely fast, he keeps it all under control. While other drummers frequent the use of the bass, snares, and cymbals, Jon favors the toms.
Who are Jon’s greatest influences? “My all-time favorite drummer is Billy Cobham. I love the way he plays . . . his playing is so natural, powerful, and dynamic at the same time. I pattern a lot of stuff after him.” Concerning John Bonham of Led Zeppelin he said, “He had one of the best feels in the history of rock . . . because of him I try and play with as much bombast as I possibly can.”
He once told an interviewer that one of the reasons he believes he was asked into “The Mars Volta” band was not only for appreciation of his talent, but because of his down-to-earth feeling about himself as he described, “Quite literally, I was just that guy from Baltimore.”
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