Tony Royster Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tony Royster, Jr. (born October 9, 1984 in Berlin, Germany) is an American drummer known for winning the Guitar Center National Beat-Off competition in 10 seconds Hollywood in 1995 (at the age of 11), being voted #1 Up and Coming Drummer by Modern Drummer Magazine. In 1997 he was the Modern Drummer festival and is one of the youngest to shock the crowd. He soon had his first video called Common Ground on Inspiring Drummers Series. 2000 readers' poll and being voted #2 in the UK 2001 readers' poll. He is known for his use of the Moeller method as well and his blazing hand and foot speed. He has endorsement deals with DW Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth sticks, Evans drumheads, LP percussion, Drumframe, Shure microphones, and Warner Bros. Publications. Some of his influences are Dennis Chambers, Jim Chapin and Billy Cobham.

He has played with Imajin, Lazyeye, New Flava, and En Vogue. He performed on the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards show at the age of 15, and an international tour in 2001 backing #1 selling Asian artist, Hikaru Utada as well as performing with Paul Shaffer (of The David Letterman Show) in the Nickelodeon House Band. Right now he's also playing with Francisco Fattoruso. He also came out with a new video called Pure Energy on his first solo drummer video explaining all the stuff he learned and his band playing along on some of the tracks.

A video of one of his drums solos on YouTube has attracted around 1,500,000 views.^[1]

He is currently on tour with rapper Jay-Z as the band's drummer.