Drummer and producer Dillon Barrie has been awarded the prestigious Sound of Young Scotland Award at this year’s Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Awards.

Dillon, a fourth-year Jazz student, was described as ‘one of the best known and most exciting names in the Glasgow music scene for both his musical output and his drumming’.

Here, he talks about his unexpected journey into jazz, his passion for creating immersive musical experiences through his hugely popular Supersonic nights and his plans for the future, including an eagerly anticipated debut album.

How does it feel to win the Sound of Young Scotland Award?

It feels too good to be true most of the time, so many of the projects and shows I’ve done have been a tool to open doors and take away restrictions in my creative output (like having no money or sucking at drums) so that I can get to what I want to be doing.

So, to have this money to allow me to just think about the music and my vision, as well as the recognition, is a big blessing.

What got you into music? 

I grew up in a very musical house, my parents were always singing and playing guitar and my dad sat me on the drums when I was about five. One of my first experiences of being blown away by music was the first time I was in a percussion ensemble. I was 13 and it was an arrangement of a Santana tune, and I think I was playing a woodblock or something.

That led me to percussion in a few different orchestras in Perth and Kinross, which had a huge impact on me. I didn’t really care about the percussion at all, to be honest. I feel even today that only playing drums all the time would leave a huge harmonic-shaped hole in my heart.

I just loved to be a part of the harmonies and melodies that I had never heard before and even though I was waiting 86 bars and then playing a drum roll, I was content.

What made you want to study at RCS?

To be honest, I had no idea what RCS was. I had no intention of going to uni until my music teacher asked me a week or something before application deadlines and insisted that I apply. And then I got in, so it felt like a very, very happy accident.

Why jazz?

I had pretty much no interest or knowledge in jazz before applying in 2020, it was my music teacher’s suggestion, and I just did it.

I was obsessed with Thundercat and was in the painful stage of not being able to articulate anything about what I liked about the music. I remember Wikipedia said he studied jazz and then I looked at jazz drummers on YouTube and was like ‘Ooooohhhh yeah, that’s gonna be me’.

I’ve always been drawn to the melodic and harmonic aspects of music in general but especially jazz. Of course, I am a drummer at heart and there is nothing like playing big fat beats to get people moving but my favourite part in every gig I’ve ever put on was hearing the music I had written being played for the first time by sick musicians.

It is a feeling I can’t get anywhere else. I think that led me to start putting my vocals on tunes that I would produce. I’m not good enough at any melodic instrument to express myself in real time but I could with my voice, so I started doing that.

What inspired you to start Supersonic Thursdays and were you surprised at its impact on the Glasgow scene? 

Back when the Blue Arrow Jazz Club was in its prime (RIP:( ) It was the place to be for most people in RCS and after playing once or twice with other bands, I asked if I could get my own slot.

I got literally everyone I was pals with to come as well as all my family to create the cunning ruse that I was a very popular musician.

We played some Thundercat and Jacob Mann and in between tunes, because it was pretty much only my pals and family but also because I didn’t pick enough tunes and the set was too short, I would just chat rubbish and tell jokes which went down quite well.

Then I was asked back by the manager and asked if I wanted to do it every week! I said I would do it and then started to prepare all the different bits that I wanted to make it as much like the gigs that I loved to watch on YouTube (get posters done and sort photographers and all that).

Then, I basically made a huge fuss about it online and asked people who were far too good to have any business playing with me if they were up for it, and they were!

The first Supersonic had maybe just under one hundred people there, which for me was so huge. This was in March and so from there to when term ended in June, I would do one a month and book the other three with my pals/heroes in the scene and it just kept getting busier and busier. Towards the end, we struggled to get to the stage because it was so packed.

Summer came and I decided to patch it until term started again and wanted to try a bigger venue. I ended up doing two months in a row at Òran Mórin September and October, which if I think about it now, is the stupidest idea ever but hey-ho, and from then until March this year, I did them every month or two, at different venues in Glasgow.

Sometimes it would be 500+ people at Òran Mór and sometimes I’d book one at a bad time and twenty people would come. Looking back on it now, it blows my mind to see how big it got at one point because I had no experience whatsoever and made every terrible mistake in the book, but it all turned out okay.

I think it was very much the right place at the right time, just out of Covid and people were looking for some big vibes and all the musicians wanted to jam, and it all just felt right.

It was important for there to be a place for people to try things out in a headline show vibe with a big audience and electricity in the air.

I’m incredibly grateful to have had the privilege of creating all those shows, and I have learnt pretty much every scrap of music industry knowledge I have from them.

You were creative director for the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s Nu-Age Sounds tour earlier this year … how did that come about and what was involved?

It came off the back of the Supersonic stuff. In the past, I’ve put a big emphasis on the music being one part of the experience and that properly focusing on the other parts as well can be the secret sauce that helps to draw others into your creative world.

Tommy Smith, who runs the RCS jazz course and the SNJO, asked me if I was up for helping to make the show creatively cohesive across the socials, graphics and on-stage visuals to coincide with the music and the message.

I went into mad scientist mode for two weeks, trying to work out how to even begin to get anywhere with something like this – I was working with more resources and money than I ever had before. And now that my decisions actually mattered, it was very intimidating.

The hardest task for me was to work out how to do something interesting on stage. I finally came up with the idea of having a bunch of different white panels hanging from the rafters and then doing targeted projections onto them that moved with the music and felt really immersive.

The shows were so sick and to look back and think that for the Glasgow show, there were 800 (mostly young) people at a jazz orchestra concert, is very nice. Very grateful to have worked on this.

Tell us what you’re working on at the moment

I stopped Supersonic for good in March, it just felt right to bring it to a close and it also means I have so much more time to work on production. I’m in a nice limbo before I start on the album, which will be pretty soon.

I’ve had a lot of gigs and am always practising drums but especially right now, I’ve been trying to sit and listen to whole albums while really paying attention.

Whenever I hear something really sick, I try to recreate it exactly in Logic (music production software) so that I can always achieve the exact sound and feeling I want.

It’s a really good exercise because so much of creating music for me is trying to bear my heart and properly express the feelings that I want to get across in my songs.

Granted, a lot of the time that is me wanting to drop the filthiest beat ever to make people dance but it has been important to listen to the songs that make me feel the most like that and work out exactly what is going on so I can do the same when the moment arises.

I’m also working on quitting Instagram as much as possible and replacing it with books – Richard Hannay is the goat.

Future plans?

From now until next summer, I’m going to be working on the album and playing random gigs with my pals.

The album will definitely take up most of my time because I’m aiming to get it out for the summer, and it will all be written and produced by me, so I have a lot to do. Also, I need to finish my degree.