Ehssan Karimi photo courtesy of the artist
BY ROB MOURA
It’s difficult to make a living playing music, and yet Ehssan Karimi — drummer, percussionist, and professional Hang player — has accomplished just that. Over the last decade he’s played for countless Seattle barn-burners such as McTuff, Ayron Jones, and the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio among them, and played to tens of thousands of people in arenas across the globe. Within 24 hours of our chat, he’ll board a plane to Hawaii to begin drumming for legendary hip-hop group Digable Planets –another result of his lifelong dedication to pursuing his dream.
From Karimi’s infancy, a life behind the kit seemed impossible. “I was born with clubbed feet,” he explains before listing multiple reconstruction surgeries before his sixth birthday. Bound to a wheelchair, he missed school while he relearned how to walk. “If I didn’t have those surgeries, I wouldn’t be able to use my feet for drumming, let alone for anything.”
Even in his recovery, Karimi found himself drawn to the drums. After bashing on an electronic kit as an eight-year-old, his parents bought him the real thing for Christmas two years later. “After my first year of high school,” he says, “I had a clarifying moment where I thought, ‘I just want to play drums.’ I didn’t have any other interests as far as pursuing a career.” That persistent mindset, and the years he spent honing his talent, brought him to Boston’s Berklee College of Music on a full tuition scholarship. “I took full advantage of it,” he says, given that he wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise.
Shortly after Berklee, he nabbed some crucial live experience as the drummer for The Scene Aesthetic, a band of immense popularity within the Myspace sphere. “That was five dudes in a van and no tour manager, getting no money at all,” he says. It would end up being The Scene Aesthetic’s last tour, as the band would call it quits soon after.
Upon returning to Seattle, Karimi spent his nights seeking community within the city’s fragmented music scenes. The search brought him to the Sea Monster Lounge in Wallingford. “The first time I went I saw McTuff, and I thought that band was nasty, as good or better than anything I saw at Berklee.” His frequent attendance at the venue ingratiated him to some of Seattle’s most talented musicians.
Within the year, he was offered to tour with Thao & the Get Down Stay Down on a bill supporting The Head and The Heart, and, later, The Lumineers at the height of their popularity. “I’d never experienced that level of jet lag and sleep deprivation,” he recalls. “My warmups consisted of just taking a nap in the green room and then, five minutes before the show it’s, ‘Wake up!’ and then you’re in front of thousands of people.”
Karimi isn’t just a sideman; he’s written his own music as well, primarily through another percussive instrument, the Swiss-made handpan known as the Hang (pronounced “Hong”). Intrigued by its capacity for composition, he spent his entire savings on a direct order from Switzerland in his first year at Berklee and immediately started writing music. Years later, his playing alongside fellow Hang player Leon Potter would become a staple of the Oregon Country Fair’s programming.
Though Karimi admits the work has its ups and downs, he acknowledges how fortunate he is, for instance, to pay off his student loans solely through his drumming. He also believes anyone is capable of that echelon of success. “Having a good attitude, being prepared, and being easy to work with, I think those things are really important,” he notes. “On top of being a badass at your instrument.”
